Version0.6

It's great how V0.6 added a bunch more depth with mob and spell description. Now I have a more understanding of the interesting monsters, and what exactly all the spells do. There is nothing more interesting than reading descriptions of mobs.

Everything is awesome, runs smoother in ascii, amulets are a fascinating addition. It gives those gems more uses. But I do have questions regarding amulets. I only found one with a character that went down to depth 7.

How long do they last? I ask because I was walking around and I opened my inventory and it was gone and thought that it was a bit strange that it disappeared. I don't remember if it got destroyed or anything, maybe I wasn't paying attention. And also, how rare are the amulets supposed to be?

Also, I can't really figure out some of the negative effects such as curse and frozen are supposed to do. Maybe there is something I am not noticing.

Thanks,
JM

*ps nerf those razorfiends, they tear up all my characters

I'm glad you like the extra text. Took me way-too-damn-long to write, but I think it was worth it.

The length of time an amulet lasts varies a bit by what you do with it. Some sorts of amulets last a lot longer than others. I'm thinking of kicking the lifespan on most of them up a bit...not sure yet. Carrying it without wearing it doesn't reduce its lifespan, only time when you're wearing it counts. There should be a message that pops up when your amulet wears out, but it could be easy to miss in a fight. They're supposed to be very rare; right now, they're the rarest type of item in the game, something roughly like 1% of all generated items are amulets.

I'm going to be adding quite a few more options for amulets in the next release...I'd planned on getting them into v0.6, but ultimately wussed out when I saw how much work it'd be to add them. So they go in on the next pass. A few ideas sputtering around in my head for other wearables, and possibly a new potion or two. We shall see.

As to the status effects, I should probably add something to the help file about how they work. Curse, basically, makes the victim take (quite a lot) more damage whenever they would take damage. Frozen is a slow-down effect, reducing your speed by roughly 1/4. Unlike the slow effect, however (which cuts speed by roughly 1/2), the frozen status stacks with itself. Getting hit by multiple cold damage attacks in a row can quickly get you to really-really-slow.

I may have to tweak the freeze effect so that it's a little more obvious, or happens a little more often. Just like I think, at the moment, lightning attacks paralyze too often.

And yeah, razor fiends are vicious. I lose characters to them, too. Thing to remember is that they've got a glass jaw; one good bolt or suchlike, and they're down for the count. I mostly tend to croak to them when I'm playing fast and not paying attention, and one pops up and smacks me a couple times before I realize it's there. I might look into lowering their damage a little bit, though.

I appreciate the extra text too! If not because of the fun monster descriptions and the helpful spell descriptions (and vice versa), such attention to detail is what makes roguelikes, as a genre, thrilling for me.

Wow, 1% of all items? Awesome, that's exactly what I was referring to in another thread, about having a rare item where one can rely on tried-and-true formulas and achieve a "safe" item (such as how I now know that a ruby plus an amulet makes an amulet of fire resistance), or branch out in hopes of a better item (amulet plus potion of death... at least I think that was an option!). I look forward to playing around with these. I did get a message when my amulet ran out though, so it was probably a heat of battle thing, JMskit.

Thanks for the clarification on the status effects. I guessed as much for "frozen", but I envisioned curse as an offense reduction rather than a defense reduction. Both are devious enough for me, though

I agree, I get a whole bunch of paralysis out of my lightning bolts, but usually when I set my sights on a target with bolting in mind, any secondary effect is unnecessary as they die so fast Storm knights tend to keep my ego deflated, though!

And yes, razor fiends certainly are tough, at least if they catch you as you open a door or turn a corner. Otherwise they are pretty easy. In the former case, I tend to use push to catch some breathing space, charge if I can withstand another attack, and blast them away. Depending on my inventory, there are other tactics. They seem to be a "watch what you're doing, dummy!" killer for me rather than an unstoppable threat.

Yeah, the monster descriptions are enticing! I agree with Dryst, detail are a key factor in roguelikes.

I guess it's an interesting concept with the amulets. IMO, I think the generation of the amulets should be at least more common, considering they do get destroyed after a certain amount of time using it. It's sort of like the amulets were nonexistent when I was playing, and I started freaking out that there were no amulets, and when I finally found one, enchanted it, and wore it, it disappeared. I found that a bit frustrating.

Ok thanks for clearing up the afflictions, now it makes a bunch more sense


Yeah by the time I see the darn razorfiend , it's too late.
That's only when I am not paying attention, but when I am, they get blasted back to hell

Thanks,
JM