Forum:Allow Orcish Town to be an Option! Please! Make it a conduct? Something?!

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There are so many annoying, and quite needless, changes in 3.6.x, but this is the icing on an unappetizing cake.

It was an interesting, failed, idea. Why no temple? Why no shops? I can go a whole game with NO shops (nothing before Orcus Town, anyway). Orcish Town screws pacifists in so many ways, which is an already quite difficult challenge.

Why not make the level have orcs, but with the opportunity to save the town, or at least parts of it, from destruction? As you enter the level, give a message something like "You hear orcish war cries.", or maybe something more vague (as that is NetHack's general style). "You feel a sense of urgency!" Now that would be a FUN thing to do! If you rescue a shopkeeper, they give you a random item from their shop. Rescue the priest? S/He bestows a random blessing (protection point, clairvoyance). The guards give you a "Get Out of Jail Free" card (just kidding). --User (talk) 10:13, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, Orcish Town is bullshit. And so are minesflayers, GWTWOD, and titans from polytraps -- and that's only the mines! RNG being able to screw you over is an inherent part of the game, and it will require much more widely voiced player distress for DevTeam to remove this particular feature... In the meantime you can try playing variants -- in particular, xNetHack tweaks Orcish Town so that one shopkeeper is alive and most of the loot from the other shops is still about. Tomsod (talk) 02:03, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Personally, I find there to be many other more annoying things than orctown that break 3.6 for me, although I do agree it doesn't belong into something calling itself vanilla. For me, 3.6 is a variant and only 3.4.3 is "true vanilla" :P Some public servers still host 3.4.3. --Bluescreenofdeath (talk) 07:00, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
There's lots to love in 3.6.x and a lot of things that do indeed break it. Changing gold to '$' in inventory and container menus, is just annoying. And then there are just the plain ruthless changes like changing the oversatiated prompt from 'y' to 'n'. It used to ask you if you want to stop eating. It now asks if you want to continue eating! The first time I encountered this I choked, and a quite nice character f'in died! I mean — why, why, why change this? To see if we are paying attention? After 30+ years (or whenever the feature was added) of typing a space bar to stop eating, this is hard to wrap my head around this change. I came close to death with a couple of other characters with this crap.
I am now just playing 3.6.x for the tournament. It is quite the love/hate experience. I love playing SLASH'EM and 3.4.3 on hardfought and slashem.em! Besides S'EM I never tried too many NetHack variants. I recently gave UnNetHack a go, and while fun, the increased monster generation in later turns really killed an otherwise enjoyable experience. I am at a point I cannot walk a few paces without a monster in my face. Really bad for playters who like to take their time and goof off. --User (talk) 07:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
You should give SLASH'EM Extended a try *bundlebundlebundle* :) It's SLASH'EM's kitchen sink approach taken to its logical extreme! Though I do admit that not everyone likes the changes I've made. But the "stop eating" prompt is still there like it was in 3.4.3 because I agree that only Satan would suddenly reverse the meaning of y/n in such a critical prompt :P --Bluescreenofdeath (talk) 17:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
The rationale for changing the eating prompt was players using vi-keys for movement pressing 'y' when they wanted to move and not continue eating. An edge case but it did happen some times.
The default choice for the "Continue eating" prompt is 'n', so typing a space bar will abort as previously. If it doesn't for you, there's something funky going on.
On what turn were you when you see monsters swarming in on you in UnNetHack? Note, if you've killed the Wizard of Yendor, that's deliberate that all hell breaks loose. You aren't supposed to linger around then anymore. ——Bhaak (talk) 08:22, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
It used to ask if want to stop eating, hence the issue. I play on servers and have not made any changes to that option. The default seems to now be 'y'; I'll be sure to take a look at the options and see what is going on.
I am on about turn 85,000 in UnNethack. A speedrunner, I am not! (Laughed, out loud.) I figured I'd play something nice and easy to learn the game — a barbarian. And while I am hacking through everything fairly quickly, the monster gen is just nuts! Fast travel is next to impossible. I am running into a LOT more mind flayers than I would in vanilla, and it seems nearly every monster has a wand, potion or scroll! And I thought treasure accumulation in SLASH'EM was crazy - whew! I am still on my first character in UnNethack and have managed to get to Vlad's Tower so far. And, yes, one simply should not be goofing off once the Wizard is killed. I usually wait until I have everything done before I kill him (locate vibrating square, clear out pathways to stairs, all other ascension and invocation items). --User (talk) 08:40, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
For what it's worth, the next version is going to spawn Orcs in the levels under Orctown with some of the loot from the shops, so you'll be able to reclaim whatever they don't use against you. Darth l33t (talk) 04:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)