Talk:XNetHack

With the normal Minesflayers removed, what about adding a new Mine's End with a (master) mindflayer? I know they are deadly, but so is the minotaur in one of the Mine's End variants. And Minesflayers are kind of tradition by now. :)

And BTW, great variant. :) -- Red kangaroo (talk) 17:11, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Thoughts on mithril-coats

Hi! I was reading through xNetHack's change list, and upon you mentioning remaking mithril-coats I was struck with an idea: why not just make 'elven' and 'dwarven' into another kind of object properties, like material?

It generalizes pretty well: elves start with elven items. Those can be enchanted to +7, don't get penalties from being made from wood (as opposed to iron) , and elven weapons get a d(+1) against small creatures (e.g. d5 instead of d4, like elven daggers). Orcs start with crude items, which get d(-1) against small creatures and -1 to AC. Dwarves start with masterwork items. Masterwork armor gets +1 AC. With weapons it's trickier: dwarvish short swords get d(+1), and dwarven spears get d(+2). And DnD masterwork weapons just act as +1 that doesn't stack with enchantment. +1 seems the most appropiate to me, but anything works.

Most racial items fit rather well with this mechanic, with exceptions for elven short swords which are d(+2) and dwarven weapons, which are inconsistent as mentioned before. As for mithril-coats, it works perfectly: EMC are elven, mithril ring mails which thus get +1 AC and can be enchanted to +7; DMC are masterwork mithril ring mails and thus get +2 AC but no enchantment bonus. Although if you want to keep them as MC3, you will need to tweak mithril material properties.

If you make all three parameters mutually exclusive (elven masterwork items may be a bit OP), they should fit into 2 bits. You will probably need to manually specify which items gravitate towards which races, but overall it very nicely cuts down on many similar item types. --Tomsod (talk) 10:39, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Oh, and elven cloaks/boots will probably need to be renamed to "cloaks/boots of stealth". Because otherwise elves would start with "elven elven cloaks". And dwarvish cloak is a bit of an oddity since it's worse than leather cloak despite being dwarven. Not sure what to do about it. --Tomsod (talk) 10:47, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Racial items are something that have crossed my mind before, yes - dnethack has them, I think, and it would allow further merging of similar items that have racial counterparts. There are two main problems. First, assigning traits across all racial items has some unfortunate balance implications - how do you prevent elven/dwarvish items from being totally overpowered? Right now (in vanilla) they're sort of "mid-game optimal" to use; there's nothing better than a +7 elven cloak or dwarvish mithril-coats before you find better magical items. And if you want to (in vanilla) use a sword that has an elven counterpart, you're best off using that elven counterpart because it has higher damage. But if you allow items to generate like this - for instance, an "elven long sword" which has d9/d12 damage versus small/large (if I'm reading it right), and can't rust or corrode - why ever use the "human" counterparts, given the choice? And it heavily, heavily incentivizes playing as an elf since many elven characters start with elven gear. I guess the extant problem is that we're already having trouble finding reasons why you would want to play a human, and giving the other races even more buffs only makes it worse.

The second problem is that orcish racial items just exacerbate their current problem of being useless piles of garbage that nobody ever wants to use. Even more so than human gear's woes, can we do anything that gives orcish armor some benefit at all? It really only exists now so that o monsters can have flavor-appropriate gear.

Similarly, ironwood by combining only the best parts of iron and wood would obsolete any items made from actual iron or wood if an ironwood counterpart is available.

TL;DR - giving racial characteristics to items and letting other types of items be generated as differently-racial counterparts needs to be balanced out somehow, it can't just be a pile of buffs to elven and dwarvish items. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Uh huh. I see. Can the slightly better quality of elven and masterwork items be balanced by their rarity? I didn't even consider racial items appearing outside the starting inventories of appropriate monsters, but they logically should be rare, since Yendor seems to be dominated by humans. If these 'quality modifiers' were also made unable to appear through polypiling (magically created items bear no mark of the creator), then the hypothetical elven/dwarven long swords would be more of a lucky break than a game-break. (You can find a wand of wishing on DL 1: does that imbalance the game?) Odds are, you've already fished up Excalibur by the time you find a masterwork long sword; similarly, any good racial weapon will be superseded by some halfway-good artifact, which can be obtained deliberately (as a gift), instead of by chance. And most of good secondaries for two-weaponing are rare enough that finding a masterwork version is a matter of luck even by late mid-game.

Now, let's consider starting inventories. That would be a problem, both with or without generalized racial items, were not elven and dwarven races so limited in role choices! And most of those roles have subpar weapons or armor, which most players try to replace ASAP.

Consider elven wizard: she will get an elven quarterstaff, which may or may not have a minor damage bonus. Does that bonus change the standard strategy of fighting with daggers and force bolts and sacrificing for Magicbane at the first opportunity? Not likely. I suppose being able to enchant your cloak of magic resistance two points higher is in fact a bonus, but by the time that makes a difference (i.e. +4/+5 on everything else) it's not that big of a deal. Elven priests are in similar situation, having a junk weapon (that isn't even wooden) and a good cloak, which yes will be improved a bit, but it's just one cloak! Elven rangers already have pretty much their entire inventory swapped with racial items, so my proposal changes nothing.

Dwarves have it even worse: none of starting weapons/armor of an archeologist or a caveman are likely to survive past very early game, so who cares if your leather jacket gives 2 AC, that doesn't make it competitive. The only exception is dwarven valkyrie: she will, in fact, get a very nice masterwork long sword, that can be converted into a slightly improved Excalibur. But if you are concerned about dwarven valkyries having it too easy, you may be too late.

Now, about orcish equipment. The way I understand it, lower-quality equipment exists to make a smooth inventory progression ladder. Enemy orcs usually start to appear in the dungeon earlier than either elves or human soldiers, so odds are, the first heavy armor you will find in the main dungeon will be orcish. As an example, orcish helms, while pretty mediocre, still see pretty heavy use in the early game, simply because they are dropped by the difficulty 1 goblins. Unfortunately, the whole idea is mostly ruined by the fact that you can detour into the Mines and get an almost-guaranteed DMC (provided you can overpower a dwarf), which is superior not only to orcish, but also most of human gear! I hardly remember bothering to wear any 'regular' armor with most of my characters. This could be remedied by either making dwarves rarer and tougher, or making low-level dwarves carry lower-level armor. I suppose you've already done the latter by decoupling dwarven armor from its coveted mithril material. (Also I think even your mithril-coats are one AC point worse, yes? That works, too.)

Back to topic, currently orcish body armor consists of orcish chain mail, which is bad, and orcish ring mail, which is terrible. But imagine if you could find an orcish (crude) plate mail, which, while penalized, is still as good as bronze plate mail and even has higher MC? And you could get it on like DL 5, if you're lucky. Wouldn't that be nice? Yes, orcish items are bad by design, but that allows them to appear earlier, which in turn makes them useful at the stage in game they appear in. Availability could be the bonus you seek!

Alternatively, if you really dislike the AC decrease, here's an idea from another game: orcs are mediocre smiths there, but they are very strong, so orcish armor is just twice as thick, which provides decent protection but makes it nearly unusable by other races. Thus, orcish armor could be penalized with increased weight instead.

So, my point is, making any race wear (almost) any armor with racial prefixes actually makes for a smoother inventory progression while preserving the flavor. And weapon buffs are not that decisive (+0.5 damage to some monsters? +1 to-hit? Come on), which, combined with their rarity, makes them less of an ascension kit resident.

And to cover the rest of your points: personally, I actually mostly play as human, simply because they have good attribute caps (both physical and mental) and can be neutral, the latter being important to me because really like the Eye. And ironwood is just a way to justify elven wooden weapons currently being not worse, but even better than their metal counterparts. I don't propose generating ironwood outside of elven starting inventories (except maybe very rarely).

Sorry for the many words. I feel unusually talkative today. --Tomsod (talk) 18:11, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Thinking back on this never finished discussion, here are some ideas on how to give orcish items some edge, while retaining their "crude" flavor:

1) Make all orcish weapons poisonable. Or at least, all edged ones, like in SLASH'EM. Orcs love poison, so they plausibly could make their weapons with it in mind. Orcish arrows, which are already poisonable (and frequently pre-poisoned which, BTW, already makes them useful in the early game), could have a (much?) lowered chance for the poison to wear off.

2) Allow orcish items to "ignore" one level of erosion. The fluff being, they are shitty and probably in bad condition to begin with, so some rust does not change things significantly. It's less of a bonus and more of a reduced penalty, but it's something. They could also or instead get a chance to avoid erosion at all, although the fluff here is a bit stretchy.

3) Make blessed scrolls of enchant foo "repair" crude items into their ordinary equivalents. So if you find a well-enchanted orcish item, it can be worth keeping a bit longer. Although, due to idea 1) (and racial multishot bonus), orcish weapons may actually be desirable, so this behavior could be limited to blessed confused scrolls (in addition to proofing), in order to be avoidable.

4) Speaking of racial multishot, orcish daggers and orcish spears could also be subject to it, which would be useful to Orcish Rogues and Barbarians respectively. For consistency this also should be applied to other racial items, which may imbalance them, so use your judgment here. (There are no elven roles that could seriously benefit from non-arrow racial multishot bonus under 3.6 rules, but Dwarven Cavemen would get 1d5 with spears, which is impressive/problematic.)

The last two were impromptu, actually. Except for 3) perhaps, they seem to be independent of my previous proposal. Tomsod (talk) 02:32, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Rationale behind revised wand wresting odds?

I see that uncursed and especially blessed wands have a higher chance to be wrested in xNetHack, so, going by the logic of beatitude, it's intended to benefit the player. But I don't see how it does? The only wand I have ever wrested is wishing, and you removed that mechanism. Most other utility wands are better recharged (polymorph) or broken (create monster), or are common enough not to bother. And for attack wands 1 in 7 chance is still not good enough. Heck, even keeping the wand in one's bag is not good enough sometimes, I'm not going to waste 7 turns unsuccessfully zapping while a leocrotta tramples me! In fact, I can see how the increased wrest chance can be harmful: in vanilla, I could afford to polypile things without identifying the wand's charges. In xNetHack, I probably won't dare, especially if the wand is blessed. That probably extends to all blessed rare wands, although in case of the wand of death it's a mixed blessing, at least. So, what does this change intend to accomplish? I'm quite curious. Tomsod (talk) 08:15, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

The rationale is that in vanilla, it's practically useless to attempt to zap your empty wands in a tight spot. (As an example, zapping that dead fire wand at a leocrotta not after it's already trampling you, but as it's charging towards you and you have no better ranged attack. Or perhaps you ran out of digging wands and don't want to go find a pick-axe, or whatever.) The wresting change gives you better odds in these scenarios.

I'm not particularly bothered by the effects of accidentally wresting an unidentified wand. So sometimes it turns to dust, okay, fine. Happens in vanilla too. There will be other wands. As I said in the commit message for this change, "Ideally, I would have blessed wands identify that they have 0 charges when you zap them and nothing happens (and never wrest if you didn't know it had 0 charges), to prevent an accidental 1/7-probability wrest. However, there's no way to have the charges be known without also having the recharge count be known, which doesn't make any sense for the hero to know. And it's certainly not worth putting in another known flag just for this." --Phol ende wodan (talk) 01:02, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Secret corridors

"Secret corridor squares no longer generate as part of randomly generated corridors connecting the level up" - is this meant to be "connecting the level up and level down staircases", or what? -Actual-nh (talk) 01:27, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Small vs elven shields for casters

In xNetHack, is there any advantage for casters of small shields over elven shields (the latter being neither bulky nor metallic)? -Actual-nh (talk) 00:04, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Nope. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 01:04, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Worth further clarifying the elven shields are copper rather than the wood you're used to from vanilla. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Good point (unless Phol ende wodan says otherwise, of course!) I will remove the note/clarification, then. -Actual-nh (talk) 20:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

The article itself states outright that most elven items are now copper rather than wood, and many iron items that elves would start with are changed to copper instead. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 20:56, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Actually, it states that most elven weapons are changed from wood to copper (probably because of the damage penalty for wood). -Actual-nh (talk) 22:31, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

What I'm referring to is that elven priests start with maces, whose base material is normally iron - their maces are made copper to avoid burning them (especially since elven priests are rather squishly to begin with). --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:34, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I just checked the source code - elven shields are still wood in xNetHack (at least as of the latest master on GitHub). -Actual-nh (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I just realized also - IRL, most shields were wood! -Actual-nh (talk) 21:27, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I was speaking under the assumption that you were already aware of object materials - seems that wasn't the case, but in any event spellcasting should be written with the fact that different armor can be different materials (base and otherwise) well in mind. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 22:22, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I am aware of the object materials patch; it is just as possible for the material of small shields to be changed as there is for elven shields' material to be changed. Moreover, none of the casting modifiers mention whether a shield is small or not. (See response above from the author of the version in question.) I've noted that elven shields are usually wood. -Actual-nh (talk) 22:31, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Noted/clarified, thank you. BTW, why are Uruk-hai shields but not orcish shields bulky? Is there a stats difference between them in xNetHack? -Actual-nh (talk) 14:51, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

There is a mechanical difference: Uruk-hai shields, like large shields, have the oc_bulky bit set, and orcish shields do not. This is because in LOTR, Uruk-hai are big, powerful orcs, unlike "standard" orcs. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 15:09, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Does oc_bulky have any beneficial effects? -Actual-nh (talk) 20:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Orc shaman page re telepathy: All spellcasting monsters or gnomish wizards, kobold shamans, and orc shamans in particular?

This page says "Gnomish wizards, kobold shamans, and orc shamans" have telepathy, but says nothing about other spellcasting monsters. The orc shaman page says that all spellcasting monsters in xNetHack have telepathy. Which is correct? -Actual-nh (talk) 01:19, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Quest overhaul idea

Maybe you could reinstate Master Kaen's backstory from NetHack Plus. If you don't know it, I have it in my user page here: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/User:Kahran042#Master_Kaen.27s_backstory_from_NetHack_Plus --Kahran042 (talk) 17:37, 9 August 2022 (UTC)