If the mushroom have a chance of poisoning the eater, then the result is that it is either useless to do this (if they give more damage than health on average), grant a minor but helpful benefit for doing tedious work (if they give slightly more health), or unbalancing (if they give substantial amount of health). Thus I don't see a purpose for this.
I see your points. It was just a suggestion/idea and not really necessary. I do wish the healing potions were a little more common though.
Why are shurikens out of place? I think a shuriken with 4 blades is the natural choice for a missile weapon which can cut 4 heads at once. Throwing stones would have to be a thrown blunt weapon. Boomerangs would be more out of place than shurikens, I think.
I meant the shurikens seem out of place because when I think of hydras, I think of Greece and when I think of shurikens, I think of Japan. You're right about the stones, guess I wasn't really thinking on that one. lol. A boomerang can be bladed and multiple use cause it comes back to you. Even though they didn't originate from greece either. Bladed disks are vague enough where they could fit in most settings I think.
I think you use the title screen and the 'q' screen too rarely to require the arrow navigation there.
I respectfully disagree on that one. Most players die rather frequently in most roguelikes (at least myself) and have to revisit these screen fairly often. I usually play several games in a row depending on how far I get or long I last. I obviously don't know exactly how hard it is to implement the arrow key navigation, but if it's not too difficult, I for one would really appreciate it.
In yes/no prompts, space is also interpreted as 'no'. (And also it exits some menus IIRC.)
The problem with the ESC key is that on some operating systems it seems to be interpreted specially, that's why it sometimes does not work. Can be fixed, yes.
I didn't know that. Wouldn't necessarily have to be the escape key then. I guess if the "q" key can be used to exit out of every secondary menu and to use as an alternative to "n". Just like to use the same key for all canceling.
Shields give protection as long as you have them in your inventory, and can be used as a weapon (a stunner, but usually much weaker than real stunners). I have posted a spoiler about shields previously in this thread.
Sorry. Must have missed that post.
Elves can just shoot the mushrooms with their bow, so mushrooms are not a nuisance for them. For other races, IMO it is a good idea anyway to always carry a dagger (and it seems that other players agree with that).
I know the elves can shoot them. It's just kind of a pain to have to always carry a dagger for the other races especially when only able to carry such a small number of weapons at a time.
BTW I would like to have a broad selection of weapons, but each weapon type would need to have a specific mathematical rule which makes sense for that type of weapon. I have idea for thrown stones (I think they would need some extra property to be useful), blade disk (alternative type of a missile blade), and axe. I would like to have spears/tridents/etc, but no idea for a rule for them.
Maybe an axe could divide a hydra into two? so a 6 hydra would become two 3 hydras? I think of the axe being used to split something down the middle. A trident might be able to do 1/3 of damage to whatever hydra it is used against instead of a specific number. Can't really think of anything for the spear except for maybe letting the player attack at longer range of maybe one space away, but that's not really a mathematical rule.
Hydra slayer really didn't look that appealing to me at first, but since I have tried it, it has become one of my favorite roguelikes along side Crawl, Frozen Depths, and Rogue.
