User talk:Umbire the Phantom

Welcome!

Welcome!

Hi, Umbire the Phantom! Welcome, and thanks for joining NetHackWiki!

• The How to help and Style guide pages are excellent starting points.
• Special:Recentchanges is a great first stop, because you can see what other people are editing right this minute, and where you can help.
• Questions? Need help? You can ask at the Community Portal, the forum, or on the discussion page associated with each article! Just remember to sign those posts with four tildes: ~~~~. That will expand to create a signature.

You can put {{NAOplayer|NAO player account}} on your user page to link to your NAO player account. Capitalization matters.

We are really happy to have you here, and look forward to working with you!

This is an automated greeting.

-- New user message (talk) 01:41, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Please use the Summary field when doing edits

Greetings, I have seen that you did a lot of edits recently. It would be nice if you could summarize your changes in the 'Summary' field, so it will be easier for others to see what has been changed :) Stenno (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

another false premise

"Yeah, if you're just gonna ignore the readily observed fluidity of human language and ignore such basic concept as hyperbole, then there's no point interacting any further. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 04:47, 3 March 2020 (UTC)"

I ignore nothing. fluidity -> decay: when a word's usage contradicts its etýmon, meaning and understanding break down. Different words exist for a reason, to say different meanings. The popular habit is to know few words then use the same words for meanings the words they don't know already mean and sometimes the words they know even mean the opposite of the words they want. I hope I used the simple words you understand. Lysdexia (talk) 09:39, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Yep, fluidity of a language totally decays it, that's why the English language stills exists after several centuries.

Get out of my face with this absolute insult to people's intelligence. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 17:30, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Ascension - congrats!

Congratulations re ascension! -Actual-nh (talk) 13:59, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Late thanks. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 17:19, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Baalzebub

Nice copy-editing! —Netzhack (talk) 08:25, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 17:18, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

The Move

Join us on Libera :-) *bundlebundlebundle* --Bluescreenofdeath (talk) 16:44, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

thanks!

thanks for improving the changes i made on a few articles, your corrections were spot on. howdy from Texas bro D4 wryyyy (talk) 12:03, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Uh, welcome. Always happy to help. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 12:04, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

hey bud, a few of the edits you've made lately seem to remove content without adding clarity. i appreciate you fixing my edit on the basilisk's fiery gaze, but all you did was remove the message about potions; it would have been nice if you'd moved it to someplace you think is more appropriate instead of just deleting it. all that accomplishes is that now if someone searches "boils and explodes!" they'll get nothing. i'd rather be able to find the information and debate about whether it's on the wrong page, than find nothing at all.

you also removed my note that using an axe to try to break a statue is probably a bad idea. since there is a line in the current source code with YASD for this (that does not currently appear to work), it probably is a bad idea, especially if it's enabled in a future release.

i appreciate your work on this wiki and your advice, please don't take my criticism as unfriendly. D4 wryyyy (talk) 00:45, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

"Boils and explodes" is an effect that applies to all cases of fire damage, not just the pyrolisk's gaze. Furthermore, axes can't break statues, and no one but the most uniformed players are likely to try (minus people looking for messages like those anyway). In any case, I prefer to assume the reader has a modicum of sense and additionally doesn't need to be told about something that wouldn't work anyway - not to mention it makes no sense to further confuse readers with speculation about something that may or may not even occur in a future release based off a few specific lines of code. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 02:38, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Saddle: Thank you!

Thank you for the massive updates and clarifications to the saddle page! Thanks again!--Thidwick (talk) 15:15, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Couple decades (re crystal ball)?

Are you referring to the "Elements of Style" I mentioned in my summary, or what? (The original is older than that, although at the rate that relatively-formal English changes I question whether anything less than a hundred or so years old should really be considered overall out of date... especially the "rule" I was doing a special application of, "omit needless words". Not something I'm great at, but I try when I see something (to me) obvious.) I'm not offended, BTW. -Actual-nh (talk) 16:10, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The point being that we needn't adhere but so stringently to century-old standards (yes, I know how old they are, but I was understating it on purpose). Tightening wording is good but it is possible to overdo it, as I've no doubt done over the years. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 16:12, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The particular phrase (which also grates on me whenever I read it, admittedly) is "the fact that", which can virtually always be substituted by something shorter - usually just "that". -Actual-nh (talk) 17:19, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Polypiling discussion

I recently asked a question on the talk:Polypiling#Introduction - Item Class talk page, and eventually answered my own question, but I didn't add it to the main page because I don't think I'm the best person for it. You might be, if you want. Your judo grip on the English language would help here. It's about "item class" not changing in polymorphing items. D4 wryyyy (talk) 17:13, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Barbarians throwing Mjollnir

I'm not sure this is good advice for character creation, because:

• Cleaver is always the first sacrifice gift, so you'll need a second gift to have even a chance of receiving something else.
• If your second gift isn't Mojo, there are now at least two artifacts in the game, so wishing for another artifact has a chance to fail.
• You need gauntlets of power (probably another wish) to throw it.
• Mojo doesn't return for non-Valks, and it could do as little as 2 damage, so it's not even a reliable way to dispatch one enemy, let alone multiples.

Conversely, any character is almost guaranteed to get an orcish bow and supply of arrows if they survive the early levels. It's certainly possible for a neutral Barb to get Mjollnir and GoP and occasionally throw it, but I don't think it's something you should plan your character around. I'm open to counter-arguments, but I think that bit is best removed from the strategy section. --Darth l33t (talk) 15:32, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Mm, that's fair. I was only springboarding off what was already present, but I'm fine with that being removed. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 00:46, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

SLEX

Wow, I did NOT know that about SLEX (I only played it a couple times, years ago, and never got very far). I've gone ahead and deleted that page, and will delete any further that I find and/or you tag. Thanks for pointing me to that - we definitely don't want to host content about it. Ion frigate (talk) 22:23, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

You didn't have to delete the talk as well, could've probably answered similar future questions - but I figure it works either way. Wasn't aware you could delete pages though, expected that template to sit for quite a while. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:25, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh, my understanding from 17 years of lurking Wikipedia's meta-side is that standard practice on wikis is to delete talk pages when their mainspace pages are deleted. And yes, I am an admin here - I was very active back around 2010 or so, writing a large number of the SLASH'EM articles. I was actually rather surprised no one got around to desysopping me after I was inactive for seven years (Wikipedia does it after three years), but since I have the privileges, I can use them to purge the SLEX pages. I really hadn't been planning to use the admin bit, but this is worth doing.

I'm going to go through this category and delete articles that don't have any content related to other variants (e.g. SLASH'THEM) - feel free to tag any such articles you see there. Ion frigate (talk) 22:37, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Will do. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:38, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll be linking the talk page you pointed me to in my deletion summaries, so hopefully that will answer any questions anyone has. Ion frigate (talk) 22:47, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Maybe slow down and wait until there's actually a delete template before acting - a bunch of SLEX additions are preserved in THEM, such as the roles from NetHack: The Next Generation. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:49, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Sure, as I said at my talk, I'll wait for you to tag. What do you think of making a category for the articles that are to be THEM-ified? We should remove the from the SLEX category as you're doing, but we don't want to lose track of them. Ion frigate (talk) 22:58, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Already making category switches as we speak. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:59, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Editing limitations for new contributors removed ?

Mister Umbire the Phantom, have the editing limitations for new contributors been removed ? You seem to imply that in Your message. With those limitations still being active, the writing of information simply CANNOT be made more 'straightforward'. Without them, then there are more possibilities for offering detailed information to readers. Be kind to confirm that such nasty limitations have been removed. There are better manners of stopping misbehaved rascals from vandalising the wiki, and some of those manners have been discussed. It is only to apply them. Cssdixieland (talk) 02:50, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not the one to ask about it and have no administrative power in that regard - I was pondering out loud whether or not it was removed because I didn't know for sure. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 02:52, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The relevant filter, Special:AbuseFilter/10, was disabled by User:Ion frigate, an admin, who said so in the topic at NetHackWiki:Community Portal. Cathartes (talk) 02:59, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Understood, Gentlemen, then the limitations may still be effective, or they may not. If effective, then pity, because there is much that could be done, but not in small chunks of just one or two lines. That manner of working is VERY tedious. If not effective, then real possibilities exist of performing serious work. We shall see... Cssdixieland (talk) 03:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I mean Cathartes just confirmed that they were removed, so I think you should be good to go. In any case, I don't think there's much need for this level of formality. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 03:17, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Edit reason for Yendorian army

"I'm pretty sure the US military is unique in precisely none of those aspects." What about the C- and K-rations? Kahran042 (talk) 14:32, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Granted, but I don't think that's enough to hang a thesis of "these plate mail pot-wearing soldiers are based entirely on the US army" on. Not like other elements of this game haven't been similarly "kitbashed" together from various tropes (which for the record isn't a value judgement). --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 15:04, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. Kahran042 (talk) 20:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Helm of opposite alignment

Hello. Why do you keep editing said page to insist one can't wear the helm after a permanent alignment conversion? I've checked this in wizard mode in 3.6.6, it's still wearable. The referenced code only checks for the Quest branch; the alignment check is conditional on the Quest one and only changes the message besides. What am I missing? Tomsod (talk) 10:17, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

You're not missing anything, just a mishap on my end from when I was rephrasing something in an entirely different section. Easy enough to fix. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 10:19, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, okay then, sorry. Tomsod (talk) 10:52, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

No worries, simple misunderstanding. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 10:56, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Scroll of enchant weapon page

You've again changed the SLASH'EM shop service description to say that the price increases "exponentially". Could you please not? I know that in colloquial usage this word is misused for any rapid growth, but it's really quadratic in this case. Wiktionary suggests "dramatic" if you want to be generic, "rapid" works too. Also, poisoned weapons are not more expensive to enchant; it's a completely separate service. Tomsod (talk) 21:25, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

It's another case of working from an older revision, similar to the last message you left above - that happens when I leave a page I'm working on open too long. I'm trying to cut through as many of these open tabs as possible, so I'll fix that shortly. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 21:27, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh, okay, I should've guessed, thanks. I think I also haven't rebooted since June! Still, better to ask than to risk an edit war, I think. Tomsod (talk) 23:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Aye, no worries - I don't mind my edits being partially/wholly undone if they're mistaken, but I do appreciate you asking a lot. :3 --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:55, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Phrase in artifact articles

Hi, I noticed you added "depending on how many artifacts are generated" to a couple of artifact articles (e.g. Ogresmasher); can you clarify what you mean? As far as I can tell, the code to generate floor artifacts doesn't depend on the number of artifacts that have been generated, unlike (e.g.) wishing. In artifact.c, the function mk_artifact gathers a list of eligible artifacts, excluding those that aren't supposed to be randomly generated (e.g. Excalibur) or have already been generated - if it finds at least one eligible candidate, it picks a random one. There's no chance of an already-generated artifact (e.g. Mjollnir, in the case of Ogresmasher) "interfering" with the generation of a new one: the function excludes already-generated artifacts from the choosing, rather than vetoing them if they're chosen. -Ion frigate (talk) 14:56, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

I might've partly confused it with artifact wishing, yeah - I also seem to remember there being something to handle artifact generation odds for a game where you'd generated a bunch, but I can't find a commit to match. So yeah, you can chalk that up to bad memory and adjust as needed. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:31, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

It is true that you'll see fewer floor artifacts once a lot have been generated: the game selects an already-generated base item to try and convert into an artifact, and if it doesn't find a candidate, it doesn't select another item - it just abandons the attempt. So if Werebane and Grayswandir already exist, any artifact generation attempts on a silver saber will simply fail, "wasting" that 1/20 chance. But that doesn't affect the probability of a specific artifact being generated, just the chances of encountering any artifact. One of those fun counterintuitive probability things; it's not analogous, but it does remind me a bit of the Monty Hall problem. -Ion frigate (talk) 06:24, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the odds of seeing any artifact was my intended focus with those edits. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 15:51, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Reply to thanks

I appreciate the thanks for my UnNetHack entries! The reason I didn't read the letter you gave me is because I was attempting an Illiterate ascension and thought reading it would break the conduct. FYI, I'm getting the info I used for my level maps from GitHub (https://github.com/UnNetHack/UnNetHack/tree/master/dat): You can use it as well for some maps that haven't gotten on the wiki yet, like the new Nymph Level, Asmodeus' Lair, or Orcus Town. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TalentlessF2P (talk • contribs)

How'd I know? :B

Also yeah, I've used it before to add the Fort Ludios maps so I know where you grabbed them from - I do appreciate the reminder to update nymph level stuff, bhaak's still waiting on that haha. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 06:19, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Change to Template:Monsters/expanded broke front page

Hi, wanted to let you know that the recent change to Template:Monsters/expanded‎ broke the monster list on the front page. (It was completely empty.) I don't know how to fix it properly, so I undid the edit under the theory that old monsters are better than no monsters at all. Kufat (talk) 11:58, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

There aren't any new monsters added (yet) - I was trying to get the monster symbol link to point at the proper monster article instead of the Oracle disambig. The undo is fine until we can figure out another approach. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 11:59, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Fixed it - when you pasted the code generated by Special:ExpandTemplates into Template:Monsters/expanded, you accidentally wiped out the </noinclude> closing tag (easy enough mistake to make, given that the output is a mass of HTML tags with no line breaks). I regenerated it with that closing tag, and purged the cache of the main page to confirm the template is still not broken. Looks like it's all working and updated. -Ion frigate (talk) 14:54, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Acknowledged. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 14:55, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Nominating some unused broken redirects for deletion

Taken from https://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Special:BrokenRedirects&limit=20&offset=0

• The rat king
• Rat queen
• Talk (Oracle)
• Template:Monsym (the rat king)

Each of these has an empty "what links here", and they are leftovers from recent moves.

After that there are about 2300 broken redirects like this

• Source:Ref/343/use candle (edit) → Source:NetHack 3.4.3/src/apply.c.c#use candle

Note the "apply.c.c", which makes it useless. These are from DizzyBot, May 2018. We could look into them after handling the first 4.

Furey (talk) 14:57, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Redlinks left over from VOR move to userspace

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/VoR%27s_Hallucinatory_Bestiary

Can you fix these? If not, I can ask wikid if it's okay for me to fix them.

I thought [[foo]] in userspace would search for the name in that userspace, but somehow it's not. Furey (talk) 15:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for all the work done, and especial thanks for the courtesy Wikid (talk) 22:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Dealt with, np Wikid. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:06, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Redundant information about TNNT

We have some good articles about TNNT, collected in https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Category:The_November_NetHack_Tournament . And then we have more than 100 articles with very short sections about TNNT, often 1 sentence long, visible at https://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/TNNT_(the_game)&limit=250&from=39775 .

I would like to delete most of the duplicate information. As TNNT changes, it is reasonable maintenance to update 10 articles from the category. It will be fragile and expensive to update 100 more articles that say "this item is not eligible for the swap chest" or "deathmatch opponent gets one of these if the character they are based on did not have one".

Specifics:

• delete lines about swap chest eligibility and ineligibility. leave that to Swap chest.
• delete lines about initial equipment of death match opponents. leave that to Deathmatch.
• delete lines about initial equipment of dev team members. leave that to Devteam member.
• delete lines about dev team office items. leave that to the DevTeam Office.

More interesting stuff can stay, for example: t-shirt can talk about the TNNT artifact t-shirt, or kitten can mention robotfindskitten. Any borderline cases, I'm fine with keeping, because the bulk of the redundant information is the specifics above.

What do you think?

Furey (talk) 13:11, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I think considering how much the bulk of the game resembles latest stable otherwise... Sure. Feel free to go ahead with that. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:28, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Great! Feel free to talkpage me / revert if you think I am deleting too much. Furey (talk) 23:32, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Will do. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 23:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Done with the editing. Going to do one more review pass in a little while. If it checks out, then I'm done.

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/TNNT_(the_game) is now a good way to learn about differences from vanilla to TNNT.

Furey (talk) 04:23, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

stacked messages: 1-arg form vs <br>

https://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Shopkeeper&curid=1855&diff=171287&oldid=171281

The stacked message form is common, where there are several one-argument {{Message|xxx}} lines followed by a single two-argument {{Message|xxx|yyy}} line. The documentation in Template:Message shows a stacked message example. Many pages use stacked messages, such as fountain and sacrifice.

I think it's wrong to change working markup that's backed up by documentation to a new style. If you want to change other people's markup, I think you need a discussion of why
is better than the stacked form.

The part of this commit that changes the wording to say "exact" is good, I am fine with that part, it makes the prose more clear.

Furey (talk) 21:50, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Addressed. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 02:51, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

three-argument refsrc is bad =

https://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Speed&curid=4425&diff=171491&oldid=154784

Bad news: bunch of three-argument refsrc's here, albeit they are moved around from other parts of the article.

3-arg refsrc goes to 3.4.3. The line numbers on the allmain.c refs don't match with 3.4.3 source.

Every caller of refsrc should specify 4th arg, source version. In fact 3-arg refsrc puts a tag on the page and dumps it in a category. It's bad enough with 3.4.3 and 3.6.X. We need to get this in good shape before 3.7.0 comes out.

Furey (talk) 20:01, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Medusa changed to SLASH'EM monster?

https://nethackwiki.com/index.php?title=Medusa&diff=145574&oldid=145542

Looks like some kind of editing slip. The line number is good for 3.6.7 (but is one off for 3.6.1), but somehow the source version polymorphed into SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2. I think monst.c#line2293 is right.

Furey (talk) 21:22, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, feel free to fix it - you don't have to necessarily notify me about every mistake you find. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 21:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Fixing it now (and I don't post every one, this one just struck me as unusual). Edit edit edit! Furey (talk) 22:26, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Your copy editing change to "Integer Overflow" is incorrect

You took a technically accurate lede and made it wrong. I'm reverting this change. I will explain in detail on the article talk change.

Furey (talk) 11:17, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Or you could've just explained in the edit summary, this didn't require a talk page message. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 12:47, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Line refs for wiki-hosted source code

I seem to remember you had found a way to get those working on annotated source pages - do you remember what it was? I can't seem to find it, and I've made some edits where I'd like to link to lines in 3.4.3 and 3.6.0 source code. Thanks, -Ion frigate (talk) 05:44, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Should there be a page detailing boss monsters and what makes a boss monster in NetHack.

There are many monsters that fit the agenda for “bosses” in NetHack, the demon princes, the Wizard of Yendor, the high priest/priestess of Moloch, Croesus, and of course the quest nemeses. I was just considering whether it should be a page or not. --MrSurvivor1997 (talk) 11:02, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

We basically have a page for that topic already, though I guess we don't exactly use the term "boss". See Unique monster. Cathartes (talk) 03:17, 6 September 2024 (UTC)