Description

A simple module where I put features I find to be fun. There is not much to tell about it. Seriously.

Features

Current Version

After a long period off no developpement at all, I'm proud to present to you the next version of B.O.B. : Beer is Our Bacon!

Brief changelog for version 0.1.6 - Beer is Our Bacon

Have fun!

Note : Version 0.1.6 is the last release of the 0.1.* series. As I plan to use the 0.2.* series mostly for balancing and content adding, if you have a feature suggestion, it may be the last time to say it for a while.

Version 0.1.0 was build upon the Module Template from Skizzaltix. I have to thank him for lowering the barrier of entry for new modules by making one without either too much (ToME, DB-T) features or not enough (ODE).

Chatter

Version 0.1.0

NerdanelVampire: Hey, this is fun! :)

I think this module has great promise. I've killed a few characters as I've tried to figure out the optimal strategy. One thing I noticed that the forges very rarely give anything useful, even with an okay CRE stat, like 7. (That one is for the forges, right?) A single time I was able to get it offer some sort of super-shield, but it happened to be very early in the game when I couldn't afford it. The rest of the time I had lots of money and nothing to spend it on.

EtMarc : Yes, the CRE (creativity) stat is for the forges. Actually the average number of available items is directly proportional to it. I should decrease the cash drops and increase the number of forges. As for the super-shield, was it an oversized rock slab?

NerdanelVampire: It was a self-moving shield or something like that. I later got another one from another forge.

I've been researching the optimal strategy and I have decided weaponmastery is a waste of time. Barehanded is far better. I put a lot of skill points into barehanded and some into magic strike. I check every forge in hopes of getting health or mana potions or an improvement to armor. I don't think forges should necessarily be more common, but I think they should be more useful by default.

NerdanelVampire: I think you can consider B.O.B now beaten, even though it doesn't appear to have a win condition. NerdanelVampire/Telilith saw the bottom of the dungeon and killed two Boss Iguanas.

EtMarc : The Boss Iguanas are indeed meant as the end of the actual game. I put them, and the dungeon bottom, only so that player have some kind of end goal and don't wander aimlessly fighting weaker and weaker monsters. Congratulation on your win!

Sirrocco : Well, I killed off a few characters. I think the forge subsystem is pretty interesting. It might work well as a parallel economy in a more developed module - have gold for the shops at the surface and some other resource (that could be sold for gold, for those who were not interested, but not really bought) that could be forged into some variety of Useful Thing in the right places, given the proper skills/stats. Magic is pretty obviously second-tier. Trying to have arcane blow be your primary damage source in early-game pretty much just fails - getting any real kill-power at all requires you to devote enough points to it that pretty much everything else suffers - hosing down either dex or strength means you pretty much *have* to use magic for your damage, and hosing down either dex or con makes you way too fragile. Early-game is noticeably easier on barehand - largely, I think, because weaponeers only get one shortsword. The shortsword is comparable in damage to a moderate-to-high-strength barehand attack, but the barehander gets two of them, and the weaponmaster only gets one. Sure, eventually the forges will spit out something viable for him to put in his other hand, but that *takes* a while. Also, the barely-controllable nature of stats favors the barehander. For the guy with fists, every point of strength is useful. For the guy wielding weapons, if he's stronger than his best weapon needs him to be, the extra points don't do anything for him. If he's weaker, it's probably a serious drop to the next runner-up - and he can't even tell what strength is required.

Also, on the magic side - looking at why arcane blow fails to function as first-tier, at least for most of the game. Compare to barehand. For a barehander, every point of strength gives +2 damage per attack - one to the right hand, one to the left. For a mage, every two points of power give half a point of damage per attack per blast level (as far as I could tell). Hitting the break-even point on that in fire would require eight skill levels worth of fire blast and the mana to consistently support it. The skill is doable, but as far as the mana goes, there aren't enough levels in the game. Essentially, then, magic blast is useful for when you need it - killing those "I'm not hurt by physical damage" slimes - which, in turn, means that fire blast is pretty much the only particularly useful blast. (there may be phys-immune, fire-immunes particularly deep in the dungeon, but I didn't meet any) If there's some deeper monster that is both dangerous and vulnerable to frost, then it might be worth tossing a few points into frost blast (as long as you're already investing moderately in mana and power so that you can kill the *%#$ slimes) but acid and electricity are pretty much a waste of points.

Thoughts:

EtMarc : Thanks for the comments, but the game isn't much balanced by any stretch right now, but I will try to remember them when I will do the later versions. Magic strike is not meant as a primary damage dealer, but more to allow melee fighter to waste excess SP, to be able to deal elemental damage or to take on very strong monster. Also, acid doesn't cost 4 times as much as fire, it just cost 3 more skill/spell point than fire. So at high levels, the difference will be negligeable. The necessary strength is simply twice the weight (in lb). But yeah, the forge interface needs a lot more informations. I will have to find a way to make it print the full description of the items. For the stat potions, maybe I should switch the prices around, making the increase ones cheaper. But sometimes you need an increase in one specific stat : STR, when equipping a heavier weapon.

Sirrocco: Yeah, but by the same token, after you've done that, you can't afford to take *any* other add-stat potions, because it might choke your str. I hadn't figured that the strategies would be balanced, what with the low level of detail and the fact that it was the first rev, but I thought I'd toss out some insight anyway. figuring out how things balance (and why) is something I tend to be reasonably good at (and thus enjoy). For a future reference bit (not necessarily this cycle, or even for a few cycles, but eventually) it's worth figuring out a few basic strats and getting overall advantages/disadvantages for both, where things like "can afford to hose down both magic stats" or "can afford pretty weak dex" are advantages (they let you pump points into places where it matters) and look at it in terms of things like "overall damage over time" "sustainability of max damage over time", "survivability" and "likelihood and severity of special case advantages/disadvantages". These can actually get pretty complex, even with as few stats as you have now - a barehander can afford to drop his Cre more because he doesn't *need* weapon upgrades in the same way, but that cuts into his survivability in terms of armor and health/mana potions, so high-cre barehanders and low-cre barehanders are potentially both viable, and have different strengths. Stuff like that. The cool part about it is that you can tweak stuff all over the place. If there's a character type that's a bit stronger than you'd like, but has a particular weakness to, say, fire-and-bludgeoning resistant monsters, you can just introduce a deep monster who has both of those immunities and is a bit too fast to run away from (or isn't). Ah, yes - and being longwinded. I am *also* good at being longwinded.

Version 0.1.1

Sirrocco: well, I've killed off a few more characters. I have a habit of trying to do things The Hard Way in new expansions, so I've been trying out an elemental controller. I really have to question the effect of POW, though - it looks to me like the difference between 1 pow and 11 pow for a controller (yay ranged attack!) is about 2% failure rate - from 20 to 18 - and that just seems silly. Either it should have some impact on damage, or it should have a *much* bigger effect on success rates. I haven't gone deep enough into the game to give much else in the way of feedback yet, though. Also, the way that levelling up your magic blast actually reduces your magical efficiency is a bit odd.

EtMarc : You are right that the effect of POW is not very balanced. I will put an exponential effect for the next version, but I will have to hardcode it since there is no exponential formula in the T-Engine. I will also try to make the damage raise quicker at low level, to compensate the cost increase. When I playtested it before the release, I found that the Acid spell was OK, the Electricity one was underpowered and the Hot and Cold ones were too powerful, did you get this impression too?

Sirrocco: You don't have to put in an effect that's exponential - you just have to put in an effect that's *noticeable*. I would agree that Acid was okay and Lightning was underpowered. I never actually got to hot and cold. I wouldn't say you necessarily have to have the damage increase faster at low levels, particularly if you have POW affect damage. Instead, maybe have skill reduce failure rate, and allow a magnitude slider. Higher skill means you can go higher on the slider and higher on the slider is more powerful but less efficient in the way that higher skill is now. That way, you aren't ever penalized for high skill, you always get a benefit from high skill, and you still keep the aspect where maxxing out your power means that you get a number of casts directly dependant on your mana stat (which, personally, I think is kinda cool.)

Okay. Mark up another winner (Assuming the Badass Skeleton was the big scary thing this time). I played melee with a touch of magic. Melee is actually *quite* capable of holding its own against barehand. It requires more grinding, but if you do the grinding, you wind up with a character who, stat for stat, either deals significantly more damage or is significantly more survivable. I wound up with a duellist buckler and an enchanted stone hammer(10 to 20) (+4 +12). The buckler plus going heavy on the dex meant that my AC was *quite* nice (47, at game end) and I was still dealing out about as much damage as a two-handed barehander of equivalent str (12). Now, it did take longer. First, I had to get the hammer, then lug it around for a number of levels gaining stat points and collecting statmod potions until I could wield the thing, and then once I had it I had to make sure that I either had a spare point of str or a +str potion on hand every time I wanted to drink a +stat potion of another kind. Of lesser importance, I also to make sure that my str didn't go too far *above* 12. Other things: now that we have elemental eontrol, Magic strike by comparison seems to be full of fail. There are two kinds of people who will use magic - dedicated mages and warriors who want to make *some* use of the fact they have a mana pool. For the warriors, elemental control is the obvious choice. They'd like to be able to hose down their magic stats, they'd rather not have to invest their skill points too heavily, and the only time they really need elemental damage is when they run into something that they just can't hurt (or can't hurt effectively). Acid bolt gives you a 20% fail 2d3 attack for 1 mana at 1 POW and 2 skill, which is *far* better than anything magic strike can get close to at those levels. They don't care about the fact that they're not doing melee damage at the same time - if they were doing melee damage at all, they wouldn't need the magic. It also gives a handy way to blast runners. Admittedly, they have to forge an item of Spring somewhere first, but that's okay - they won't need it for their first few levels anyway, and warriors tend to pick up CRE for the weapons and armor anyway. Life drain deserves a special mention here. It *would* be nice to have something that healed you as you fought with no charge other than the mana that you weren't using anyway, but... well, the first die requires 10 levels dedicated in Magic strike, which means that you won't get it early, and at that level it costs 10 mana per strike, which means that it's not worth just leaving on at a low level, and in order to be efficient you have to rank it up further - to 5 or so at the very least, and preferably to about 10. Once you've gotten there, you realize that it's still going to o piddly damage unles you buff out your POW stat pretty heavily, and the fact that it's 20 mana a pop means that it doesn't mean much unless your MAN stat is pretty high, and at that point you're no longer really a warrior build anymore (...but that's okay, because by the time you've managed to siphon off enough skill points to get 15-20 largely useless levels in Magic Strike, the game's probably over anyway.) Oh, and about a third of the enemies in the game are immune to it. So lifedraining warriors, while a nifty idea, never really clear the runway. On the mage side, well, we looked at magic-striking mages last version. Fact is, the ability to plink your enemies to death at range is what allows mages to live moderately happy lives.

I suppose there *is* one case where Magic Strike might be useful. You could start as an elemental control mage, build up a low level of skill (and heavily magic-wieghted stats), pick up a pair of bucklers, and then start investing in Magic Strike. You could hose down your dex something harsh, because you just don't care about to-hit, and dual bucklers will take care of your AC needs just fine. You wouldn't need much strength, because you wouldn't have any swap weapons, bucklers are light, you wouldn't be doing barehand damage, and you could keep the worn armor down to a dull roar - most elemental control armors are pretty light anyway. You'd keep a moderate level of con, and perhaps a moderate level of Cre, and buid your magic stats through the roof. Then you pour a ton of skill points into Magic Strike - possibly even drain life - and wind up with a melee attack that can do some actual damage (a few times) and is off-element from your elemental control attacks. It might work. I'll have to try it one of these days.

Oh - a few other notes. First, Banal means ordinary or boring - if it's a banal snake, why is it dropping bone chips for essence. Second, you might want to make some of your essence types plural. "you find 12 essence in a small bone chip" sounds like all of the essence was hiding in a single bone chip that you then cracked open. "you find 12 essence in small bone chips" sounds like finding 12 essence worth of bone chips, and is much more in tune with the substance-based essence messages (jelly salts, ectoplasm, and so forth). For that matter, replacing "in" with "worth of" might make it flow better as well. Third, having said that, the change from "gold" to "essence" makes me happy.

EtMarc : Ouf, I got a lot to answer there...

BucketMan: I downloaded BOB and played for twenty minutes or so. Much of what I've observed has already been said, but here goes: POW seems to be pretty much worthless. Magic is more trouble than it's worth. Barehand seems better than weapons. At least, in my case I found that barehand consistently improved, while with weapons I was completely at the mercy of teh RNG to give me better weapons, which often didn't happen. The forges are interesting, but why do they deplete even if you don't use them? Not only does it not make any sense to me, it's kind of annoying. For that matter, why do forges go away even if you DO use them? I's a forge. Why would it vanish on use? Also, why not have CRE have a more meaningful effect than just you can or can't make something? Higher CRE could allow higher quality of items rather than just different items. For example, the player finds a forge that can make a dagger. A player with 1 CRE can only make an ordinary dagger. But with 5 CRE, maybe they can make a (+2, +2) dagger. Etc. Also, have you given any thought to differentiating item/dungeon/monster themes? For instance, it seems reasonable to me that broken teeth might be used to make a potion, but I'm sketchy on broken teeth making a leather jerkin. Random body parts for potions, skin and hides for armor...just a thought. If you had multiple dungeons with different themes, the player could choose which dungeon to go in to generally find a greater percentage of monsters within the theme.

EtMarc: Barehand will probably always be better in the early game than weapons, because of the ease of increasing damage, later on I believe this advantage will diminish. About the forge depletion, they are not "forges", they are "magical thingamagys that allow you to create stuff". In short : I don't really care about the realism of it, but only about the gameplay implications. The reason I put the depletion is that they serve the same gameplay role as the unidentified dungeon items. You decide if fighting your way to it is a good idea, you do it (or not), then you either use it or discard it. I would say that it is frustrating when it contains a very good item you cannot afford only be a few essences... Changing this would mean that I would need to rework the way creativity works too, so on to your next point : I could make CRE gives you deeper items, but I fear it would make creative characters scum for early essences to get overpowered equipments for their dungeon level. Since I want to encourage more or less fast diving, I'm not very warm to this idea (but maybe other solution could be better suited). I'm planning to do dungeon/monster themes later on, but this will take a little while, since I have some difficulties already to fill the monster list. As for making different kinds of essence, I was thinking about it in the early design phase of what would become Bob. If I remember well, the reason I didn't go for it was because of the difficulty of selecting the object price through the engine. So I probably could do it by reimplementing all the value code (which shouldn't be that long/hard).

Sirrocco: Well, I wrote this before you posted that last. I suppose the "you'll be cooler later in the game. I promise." argument does offer some response to it, but I'm honestly not up for rewriting. I'll just toss it out there for now, so you can at least consider the perspective, and make use of it if it's useful.

Sirrocco: It is true that the hammer we a bit on the strong side, but I would bring some considerations to your attention before you nerf. Melee has some disadvantages that you may not be considering. Breakdown as follows.

-- in further response (having posted the old stuff) I'd note that I kinda like the game mechanic of the forges. At some point you may want to rename them and work out some applicable backstory or something, but they're kinda cool in effect. For a more advanced use of creativity (that might take a bit of programming) how about this. For things like potions, creativity increases the number of options available, and the number per stack. If you have low creativity, you might find a single stat-affect potion (or none). If you have high creativity, you get your choice of three different kinds, and one of the kinds has two in the stack. Something like that. For weapons and armor, have only the base weapon or armor shown (and creativity, again, increasing likelihood/options.) Once you pick a weapon or an armor, you can decide how much additional essence to pour in for magical effect, and if you want to attempt to guide the crafting. The more essence you pour in, the more likely it is to have something special, and the more powerful it can become (assuming a numerical flag), but the more likely it is to explode, leaving you with nothing but wounds (and the more damage the explosion is likely to do). If you guide the crafting (say, to fire) you are more likely to receive something of that season (fire magic, fire resistance, or extra damage, say) but it is also more likely to explode. The more creativity you have, the less likely it is to explode. If you are kind, you will include the %fail in the creation screen, and allow people of decent levels of creativity to include at least a moderate amount of additional essence without chance of failure.

Sirrocco: And I'm back from the mines with another experimental character. this one: can crushing do it all? Pure barehand, no magic, dealing with crush-immune characters by building his str up to the popint where they're *not* immune. It's worked, though it's not exactly optimal. Play-by-play as follows:

Basic idea - go pure barehand, taking and drinking all strength potions available, taking and drinking all -pow/-man potions available when they did not conflict with a str potion, and taking -cre potions if and when appropriate. No other stat potions drunk. Starting stats 10/6/6/1/1/6. As of level 7, 14 str (3 from leveling, 1 from potion) I was able to beat up a mean blob with my fists - not trivially, but I did it. I've definitely been feeling the lack of dex/con. I did have to run away from the first few, but shouldn't have to any longer.

By the time I got to ice spirits, I was at str 16 (level 7) - I was capable of harming them, and even did a decent bit of damage, but they were capable of harming me *much* *faster*. Dex 6 and con 8 on a melee character is really starting to push things. On the bright side, I'm now able to go toe-to-toe with mean blobs and win (as opposed to hack 'n back)

My first stone blob was actually just more of the same. level 9, still str 16, and might have been *slightly* tougher than a mean blob, but not by enough to be sure. Likewise, haunting spirits weren't exactly trivial, but weren't all that difficult either.

I just picked up a cap that gave me +10 to creativity when worn. Is this *intentional*?

Well, at level 11, with 19 str (+9), 5 dex (-1), 9 con (+3), 2 pow(+1), 4 man (+3) and 21 cre (+5, +10 more from cap), I beat up the Badass Skeleton. Cost one minor healing potion to do the job. Every skill point was spent in barehand. Gear was nothing much, other than the creativity - a cap, a leather cloak, and a leather armor. Afterwards, I gained a level, a srength point, a dex point, and a con point (Thank you, potion of uncreativity!) and managed to shellack him without in-the-moment chemical assistance.

apparently, one does not activate gems of elemental damage. Live and learn. The associated aspect - that you can throw gems of blinking at a monster and blink them - makes me happy.

EtMarc: The cap of inspiration (with +10 to creativity) is intentional. It is a rare but very good ego to get. Maybe a little game-breaking, but not too much.

I think I should explain how resistance works in Bob, which is why your stunt worked (and will continue to work in future version). There are two ways monsters (and the player) can receive less damage from an attack : the ABSORB and the RESIST flags. ABSORB reduces it by an absolute amount, while RESIST reduces it by a relative amount. So if you cannot get higher than the ABSORB value, don't bother trying. But after that, you won't have any problems damaging the enemy.

I gave ABSORB whenever the armor/skin of the monster protect from the damage, and RESIST whenever the inside of the monster is damaged less. For example, Blobs have ABSORB only because their CRUSH resistance come from their bouncy skin, while ghosts have RESIST only because most weapon go through them. You should change tactics according to which the monster possesses : against a monster with RESIST, you can make many small attacks; but against a monster with ABSORB, a few powerful strikes will be good (weapons with multiple damage types are bad for this, since each types are absorbed independently).

In your case, your melee damage was higher than the mean blob CRUSH ABSORB (15), which allowed you to damage it. As for the stone blob, its CRUSH ABSORB is lower (12), but it has a bunch of other absorbed damage types, so weapon users have trouble with it. But the haunting spirit has a CRUSH RESIST of 75, which make your blows way weaker. And since it can drain your life, you need to hurt very quickly.

This made me think about why CRUSH weapons are superior to SLASH and PIERCE. It is because the CRUSH RESIST of monsters is always lower than the two others. So a wooden mallet is always optimal, while a small sword is pretty much useless against skeletons. To solve this, I will add a bunch of new foes in 0.1.2 with good CRUSH RESIST. And I will increase the power of PIERCE weapons, since this is the most resisted damage type.

Sirrocco: Do as you will on that one, but bear in mind CRUSH ABSORB vs PIERCE ABSORB as well. When I played through as my melee character, I remember thinking that pierce was in general better than crush - it took a little longer to kill skeletons, but not so much that they were a threat, and being able to defeat mean blobs without serious issues was pretty nice. I'd say at this point, try to give your damage types some character - so that you can run strategy based on weapon type, rather than weapon type based on monster. For example, keep PIERCE ABSORBs low pretty much across the board. The whole point of piercing is that it punches through resistance. On the other hand, there are a number of monsters who RESIST pierce pretty well, for one reason or another, and perhaps (if this can be done) there would be certain of the more agile monsters who would have a bonus to AC against it. (*poke* *poke* *poke* "Aargh! Stand still and let me stab you!") (or perhaps simply a penalty to hit - as the only monsters with decent AC in those game *are* the agile ones.) On the other side, as they are long and agile, there might be a number of piercing weapons out there that gave a bonuss to AC. So, the point of pierce is that once you get your to-hit up high enough, you know that you're going to be consistently doing damage, even if you're not necessarily doing quite as much. It also means that if you're going two-weapon (say, two-weapon + dex (thus also handling any to-hit problems) rather than one heavier weapon and a shield, more strength) pierce works better, because the cost of punching through that ABSORB twice just isn't as bad, and the AC stacks. We see nimble folks running around with paired rapiers and whatnot. Crush damage, then, would have often higher ABSORB levels, generally lower RESISTs, no hit penalty, and would lend itself to hulking, enormously strong types carrying around enormous mauls, shields, and heavy armor. Slashing would tend to middling-high levels of both ABSORB and RESIST, but wouldn't have the hit penalty, and would frequently have an AC bonus as well. You couldn't afford to go as light and nimble as the piercer, but you'd have a choice of moderately heavy two-blade (What betta dan one choppa? Two choppa!) or a heavier (and potentially quite well-protected) blade-and-shield. (and at some point, we're going to *have* to throw in two-handed weapons. Not right now, but at some point.)

Also, just as a thought - it seems silly to have all of the elements of an attack absorbed seperately. If I stab my Spear Of Unpleasant Burning into the guts of an enemy, once I manage to pierce their armor with the spear, that armor is't going to do much for them about the fire. Instead, I'd suggest a case where the weapon has some designated primary attack. In my case, the spear-stabbing. If that manages to punch through the absorb, then the bonus damages go off, affected only by RESIST. If it doesn't, I don't do any damage at all. You could set up magic strike to work on the same principle - it would mean that it wouldn't be there anymore for hurting mean blobs, sure, and for mage-types it would go to pure uselessness, but it would be that much more useful for melee types - the ones who should be using it anyway - and you coud have it fire off twice if the guy managed to successfully hit with both weapons. You could even have a few monsters with, say a really low piercing absorb and really high piercing resist along with really high magical absorbs and really low magical resists to reward people for running multi-elemental. (noting that the previously described version of pierce/slash/crush means that added elements would have *particular* appeal to piercers - especially two-weapon piercers.)

Just a few thoughts.

EtMarc: Having pierce weapons generally stronger than crush weapons have the side effect that the former are less affected by absorption. And did you really find pierce damage better than crush in 0.1.1? Whenever my pure weapon users were encountering skeleton, I was always taking off my small sword to attack it barehanded, since I couldn't damage it enough otherwise. But once I got a mallet, it became far easier.

I'm not sure about this right now, but I could consider the following relation between the 3 elements : CRUSH is the domain of heavy weapons, is relatively weak but is rarely resisted/absorbed (with the blobs being an exception); SLASH is the domain of light weapons, is of average strength but often absorbed and sometimes resisted; PIERCE comes with both light and heavy weapons, is of high damage and is rarely absorbed, but is often resisted. With this scheme, CRUSH would be good for a single weapon you never switch, and without much backup elements; SLASH users would try to get the highest damage weapons or avoid some monsters; PIERCE would make for good primary weapons, but would need a lot of backup elements for resistant monsters (mainly skeletons). Hum, this could work.

About each element being absorbed separately, this is an engine issue. While it doesn't make much sense, it can add some strategical issue where some mixed damage weapons deal higher damage but are more affected by absorption. But since elemental damage will be at lot less absorbed than the physical damage types, it shouldn't pose much problem to magic strike users. (Though there are a bunch of monsters with FIRE ABSORB right now.)

NerdanelVampire: I beat the Badass Skeleton with NerdanelVampire/Ethalidus who was/is a dual-wielding weapons fighter. It was a very, very grindy game despite my high creativity stat (I think I actually drank a potion of creativity at one point) and would have been even grindier if I had wanted to use those rock shields that were persistently too heavy for me, not that I was even sure they were superior to weapons in both hands.

I was surprised that all the jackets went into the shirt slot, instead of the cloak slot. When I encountered my first jacket I expected it to fill an empty slot and wouldn't have bought it otherwise. There also are very few cloaks to be found. I think I found about three leather cloaks in the entire game, one of which was fortunately an ego item, and no other cloaks.

Version 0.1.2

NerdanelVampire: There is a new bug in which trying to create an item with a forge when your backpack is full results in the item not appearing. I just lost a turban of Autumn for it. The history says that I created the turban, but it isn't anywhere - not in my backpack, not on the ground, not even on my head.

Sirrocco: Based on your RFI for barehand, I ran my "I just hit people" concept again. He worked fine through most of the game - having problems with mean, stone, and blood slimes and the occasional significant veteran, but was merrily chewing his way through people when he hit the bottonm and found that he couldn't actually significantly damage the Grass King. I ran way for a few levels, improved my gear a bit, and came down to find that I could now consistently beat him as long as I was willing to chug healing potions. The following things were discovered...

NerdanelVampire: I think I should give a link to my newest uncrowned winner NerdanelVampire/Vezalias. I think at the moment the biggest problem with the gameplay at the moment is how plentiful lousy weapons and armor are compared to good ones, so that a lot of scumming is required even with high creativity (I got it up to 17 with the help of a hat) if you want to have good stuff, or a simple cloak. Vaults are great, though, and make the dungeon more interesting.

ElCuGo: I played a few characters. I got instakilled every time by level 1 monsters. It wasn't very fun. Good luck.

NerdanelVampire: If you have trouble surviving, put points into physical stats at startup (you can free up points by decreasing your magic stats) and max your starting skill in either of the two combat modes. That should radically increase your survivability.

EtMarc: The beginning healing potions are the key to early game survival. Level 1 monsters cannot kill you in 1 hit, but they can in 2 hit (assuming CON = 5). So don't be afraid to use them up. Also, be careful of iguanas, since they are faster than you. My strategy against them is that if they are 1 square away from me is to go back until they are next to me, preventing them from getting the first hit.

ElCuGo: I didn't know what each stat did so I left them alone. Most of the monsters are OK, but some are crazy. I found a yellow p at a point (I think it was a grassguy chief) that took me down to 1HP in one hit (I think I was level 3, so I must had about 15) I tried to run to the down stairs (no up stairs, it was dunlevel 1) but another grassguy covered my way out. In another game, I was exploring a corridor, but a iguana ambushed me in a corner: I got killed before I knew what happened. I didnt have this problem in the previous version (0.1.1 I think) in which I got killed until level 3 or so. Other people are having fun with the game, so don't worry too much about my comments. :-)

EtMarc: Well, I cannot ignore your comment, as probably most new players would get frustrated at getting killed at dunlevel 1. For the grassman chief, I will make it so that monsters cannot be generated out of depth, which is a very big cause of early death (walking bones at dunlevel 1 were a big problem in 0.1.1). As for the iguana insta-death, I will make them slightly less lethal, but the problem probably resides in the low hp players start with.

NerdanelVampire: I think out-of-depth monsters give an important spice to the game. As it is, the game has a slightly tricky start after which it becomes very easy, at least if you have patience and avoid power-diving. In fact, I could use even more OOD-ness to keep me on my toes. I suggest simply giving more hp to starting players.

Sirrocco: Personally, I think the issue is in starting with the wrong statset. If he'd started with, say, 7/7/7/1/1/7, he'd have had a much easier time of it. My suggestions would be just put together a few plausible starting packs (say, starting barehand, starting melee) and offer at the beginning of character creation "barehand/melee/custom" as three options. The people who are just playing for the first time and have no idea what they're doing will ten to pick one of the prebuilts and be generally okay. The rest will know from the beginning that they're trusting in their ability to build characters for survival, and if it kills them it won't come as so much of a shock. Personally, I also like having the occasional OOD monster.

It is important to not completely crush the newbies, because newbies are how you get players, but it is also important to not dial down the game in general just to not crush the newbies because the majority of playtime is going to be logged by people who have some experience with the game.

Two thoughts on magic - for hybrids:

EtMarc: From my own experience, magic/melee hybrids seem to be viable right now. I just played a game with a weapon/magic strike user with 4/4/6/5/9/3 starting stats. I put 3 points in cold strike and the rest in acid. I also had lots of problem getting good weapon since I finished with STR=7 and CRE=5 (at level 14), I never actually got an ego weapon. It was quite potent as I could kill lots of monster before my SP depleted and I could kill weak grassmen without having my magic strike activates.

ShoOb: Well, I seem to be having the opposite problem, I cant find too much ego armors, and when I get them they are generally worse than what I have. See ShoOb/w00t. As for CRE, it mainly depends on how lucky you are with level gains and quaffing potions, my character was banging his head against the wall mid game alot because he was only about 6 str.

and could you possibly change a few spellings as well, right now I have in mind scemitar=>scimitar, and ionised=>ionized

EtMarc: Your armor egos problem is understandable since the only armor egos right now are the seasons ones and elemental damage absorbers. Since elemental absorption is not that important in 0.1.2, it makes quite useless compared to the weapons egos. And thanks for the spelling mistakes.

Also, I'm starting to understand why I don't see all the same balance issues as you guys are seeing. I'm diving way faster than you, since I almost never take the up stairs, and I keep my player level at dungeon level + 2.

ShoOb: Could you also possibly add a monster kill count to the file dump, and maybe even a list of monsters killed? hmmm, maybe make the seasons armors more rare (I would hate doing that because of doing an elemental build) but add some elemental absorption to them? and possibly add some stuff that protects against death, and some other stuff that gives you speed (maybe even make that a stat, idk), and maybe make stuff that increases other stats besides CRE. The only problem with items that increase stats is that there is a chance that the increase it really high (consider my cloak which normally has a +1, but now is a +10, or even my uber-thick shirt, of which my leather armor is only slightly better (-4 crush, +'s to everything else).

EtMarc: I'll check if there is an easy way to create the kill list (and put it on the file dump), and if it exists, I will gladly enable it. If it doesn't it will have to wait for later... About the seasons egos, I plan to create improved version of them, like a "of Thunder" ego giving both the Lightning spell and a electrical damage bonus but only being available on hammers. But you are right in saying that there is a lack of armor egos, so I will add a few more. On a side note, death damage is meant as unblockable, so the only way you will ever be able to resist it will be to not be a living creature (hint, hint, but not in 0.1.3, maybe in 0.1.4).

Sirrocco: Random balancethought - Under current structure, making barehand and melee balanced with each other in both beginning game (what we're in right now) and endgame (where we'll be eventually) is nearly impossible. Barehand effectiveness is purely based on str (+1 dam on two strikes), dex (+1AC, +1hit), and barehand skill (+1hit). Weapon effectiveness is based on str (somewhat odd, but generally tracking on +damage), dex(+1AC, +1hit), weapon skill(+1hit, +variable AC (perhaps even more than +1)) and weapon efficiency(which increases as you dive and grind). Essentially, either you have to make weapon efficiency not go up at all ever (which is a sadness from the POV of the weapon's user, and makes the game less interesting) or you're saying that the weapon's user just plain gets more multipliers than the barehand fighter. More multipliers means that either the weapons guy is going to be overpowering in the endgame, the barehand guy is going to be overpowering in the beginning-game or both. It is also the case that weapon skill is currently jsut plain worth more, point for point than barehand skill. The effectiveness tradeoffs in BOB track on attribute points pretty closely. Attribute points are the ultimate limited resource, and they can (to a degree) be traded back and forth with each other, one for one. (skill points can also be traded back and forth, but it isn't nearly so clean.) Comparing and contrasting other advantages can best be done by reference to attribute points. A point in barehand skill is worth less than a point in dex - it's got the +hit but not the +AC. A point in melee might be worth more, might be worth less - it's got the +hit, and a variable amount of +AC: from near 0 to more than +1 per. There are very few cases where it won't be worth any. (dual-wielding hammers, maybe?) Now, you could largely solve this by handing barehand a healthy block of +AC, based on skill. I wouldn't suggest it, because it makes the options more similar, and thus less interesting, but you could. Instead, I'd suggest maybe giving +1 speed per 10 skill, and then making speed nonexistent or nearly so in items (and certainly totally absent in weapons and shields). It gives barehand something that nobody else has, doesn't derange the very early game, serves as an additional mid-to-late-game multiplier, doesn't take anything that maes anybody else cool and is reasonably in-genre. It also still keeps things relatively simple. Sure, a bit of added complexity would be nice, but one of the things I like about BOB is that every effect is relatively shallow.

EtMarc: This problem is exactly why I asked for feedback on barehanded balance. Since there wasn't any apparent problem (yet), I have delayed the solution to version 0.1.4.

Right now, an empty hand has a default attack of 1-3 crush. For version 0.1.4, I will implement the Mutation skill, which will allow the player to "buy" better barehand attacks. The efficiency of these attacks will both improve with dungeon depth and how many skillpoints the player will invest in the skill. This will make barehand and weapon fighters a lot more comparable, and thus easier to balance, while keeping different playstyles. As an added bonus for barehand fighters, the Mutation skill will give access to special attacks/moves/magics, some of which will depend on STR and barehand skill instead of POW. An example would be a bite attack : huge pierce damage increased by STR, but hit chance equals to half the barehanded one.

Instead, for 0.1.3 I have implemented another magic skill which is weak but diverse, as an opposition to Element Control which is powerful but unflexible.

Sirrocco: I've been thinking more about bucklers, and what makes them so appealing. Basically, for barehanders, youre AC is determined by your dex, one-for-one. Dex, as a main stat, has a fairly strong soft upper limit. Even small changes in AC, then, need to be significant. For weapons-users, and particularly for shield-users, AC is then boosted by a number that's a function of skill - and levels of primary skill go up much faster and much farther than levels in Dex. Under the "small changes are significant" side of things, then, the AC that gets pulled out of a shield, or espectially a buckler, is huge.

Incidentally, for mutations, it might be kinda cool to scale the overall damage back a touch, and then have it be dependent on max depth, rather than current. It would give people a reason to dive far beyond their ability just so they could touch ground and come back up. It wouldn't help out your own "pretend to be ironman no-upstairs" strategy, but it'd give the rest of us a reason to go for some riskier behavior. Possibly require a short period of time on a new level before it kicks in. Possibly just have it depend on skill level, but limit the level you can buy by depth.

EtMarc: You mustn't forget that there are diminishing returns of having too much AC. The hitting odds are HC/2*AC if HC<AC or 1-AC/2*HC if HC>AC (giving 1/2 if HC=AC). And monsters HC is equals to their level + their DEX (not shown in the monster memory, yet). So if you get enormous AC, then you'll almost never be hit, but increasing it even more won't help that much. So it is a tradeoff between dealing more damage and getting hit often and dealing less damage (because you are using a shield or a rapier) but only getting hit by lucky strikes or by magic.

As for mutation vs dungeon level, I planned to do a similar balance as for the new 0.1.3 skill. It doesn't get much better by skill, so you need to get deeper to access improvements in forges. But if you stay longer in shallow levels, you'll be less luck dependant. Because of the forges involved, the run and grab strategy cannot work (since forges are the most dangerous part of any level). A way to allow hit would be by implementing some way to bypass that, like with a gem of forge summoning...

Sirrocco: So... you're making barehand... forge-based? Doesn't that sort of defeat the whole point? I mean maybe if you had mutation types absorb forges rather than using them for gear, that might be interesting, but if you're running with mutations as a wacky form of gear, that kinda spoils part of what was cool about barehand.

As a different thought, if you are going to go with the mutation-as-forge-absorb plan, have mutation and martial arts be two different paths. Mutation would give strange and bizarre body modification powers from eating forges (and thus not even entering the forge screen to find out if there was anythig good there - yay being able to hose down CRE) and Martial Arts would give subtle but broad and useful bonuses (levels of martial arts could be plowed a la magic strike into Speed, AC, or hand damage, but each might require multiple levels. You could get away with 1-for-1 with AC, hand damage might be 3 to 5-for-1, Speed would probably be about 8-10. Possibly throw in +1 across-the-board absorb with an appropriately high cost as well. Martial arts applies only when using two bare, unmutated hands. That lets the martial artist play like the current barehander - not caring much about forges, really not caring much about essence, just beating peopel up for the experience and diving. Meanwhile, the mutants can doing other different things. Variety in playstyle is a good thing.

ElCuGo: I finally figured out what each stat does and I managed to "win" (assuming the grassman boss was the big guy). I found weird that I could wield a stone hammer and a pike at the same time, I thought pikes were two handed. Also it's weird that swords has more AC than poles, Iwould have thought that pole weapons were better to defend yourself. The magic strike menu is a bit hard to read, It would help a lot if you clear the background like the skill menu.

EtMarc: I really need to put an help file somewhere for new players.

As for the one-handness of all weapons, just assume that your character is a badass monster who can wield a 20-feet long pike in one hand. Maybe he is 12-feet tall anyway. Ok, the real reason is that I didn't want to implement two-handed weapons, as I don't want to have to deal with when you'll have more (or less) than two hands. As for the swords vs poles AC, you're not the first to mention it. Maybe I could switch, but I always though that swords, used in fencing, had more defensive potential when not in formation than polearms.

Sirrocco: martial-arts-style spearfighters would disagree. defensively, a not-in-formation spear is basically a staff with one end pointy. As long as you have decent mobility, and a decent level of threat on your individual strikes, the ability to hit your opponent before he can hit you is significant defensively. On the other side, spears don't usually do as much damage as the big choppy swords (though they are better for punching through armor). They do more raw damage than the smaller piercing swords, but are heavier and don't have the same level of control (which, I suppose, would be best represented by a bonus to critical chance. Crits (against appropriately vulnerable monsters) could reasonably be expected to double damage before absorbtion - effectively both bypassing a bit of the armor and hitting something more important once inside.

Side note. Playing as a pure mage in the early game seems nearly impossible. The thing that makes mages work is that you can kill your enemies before they ever get to you. Unfortunately, in the range up to 5th level or so (and I've yet to get a 10 mana 10 power initial mage build past that. By comparison, 10/10 in your choice of two of the three melee stats is easily doable as a starting statline, and, with the way the melee stats are structured, not as important to long-term effectiveness anyway.) it's not possible to get anything close to a 0 fail rate. The dungeons are, by design, places that speak to melee combat - lots of nooks, crannies, twists and turns, especially near forges. Melee-build characters generally have both a fair amount of survivability and a reliable way to kill most nearby monsters quickly and reliably. mages have neither, and barring stair-scumming, have no way to consistently engage monsters at range. Once you run out of monsters in perception range, you have to go looking, and that means that any number of monsters could appear without warning within one or two steps of you at almost any time. as a third or fourth level mage, the first level of the dungeon is still lethal to the point where it is not possible to be cautious enough to give a good chance at survival and still gain experience. If you would prefer that this not be the case, I might suggest some combination fo the following...

Oh, and I had a thought on the "useless weapons" issue. I don't actually know that this is the case - I'd have to run through the game again a time or two to check - but it may just be that low-level weapons are showing up in high-level forges. If you'd like, I 'll keep an eye out for that as I run through.

EtMarc: For the next version, I rebalanced the spells power, again. And I also reduced the XP needed to go to second level, so a level 1 elemental controler should be able to survive the early game better. I haven't reduced the fail rate though, so I hope the increase in power is enough to outset it. And I reduced the strength of the early game monsters too, but I didn't seem to make any difference in my testings.

The number of stat mod potions should be bigger at lower level too (they will appears in stacks starting at dungeon level 10), if it's not enough, I plan to make forge whose main use would be to "shape" your stats (by offering choices like +1 str, -1 con or +2 cre, -2 dex).

As for allowing mage to make noises, this would fit perfectly in the newly added magic skill. Exactly with some way to detect monsters from afar.

Sirrocco: I'm actually in the same position. I like the randomness in the levelling. I like the semi-controlled randomness in the potions I like the whole bit about accumulating stat potions that aren't useful now because they might be useful later, and so forth. I wouldn't want the level 100 guarantee - it wouldn't do anything meaningful for right now, and it would be a bit on the bland side in the long game. I wouldn't object to hengband-style determinism, but I'd suggest you not make it too frequent - once every 5 levels at most, possibly once every 10. In the current game, that'd basically give you a single shot of controlled statgrowth in prep for the big guy.

Version 0.1.3

NerdanelVampire: Backing out with ESC from runespell selection gives the following error: 

error: attempt to index a nil value 
stack traceback:
   1:  function `cast_school_spell' at line 815 [file `/engine/s_aux.lua']
   2:  method `activate' at line 174 [file `/engine/subsystems/easy_cast.lua']
   3:  function <158:file `/engine/player.lua'> at line 160

EtMarc: Strange... I can't reproduce it. If the bug can be repeated, can you modify line 174 from the easy_cast subsystems to output the spl variable?

ElCuGo: I can confirm I get the same error. Steps to reproduce:

  1. Start with runecraft.
  2. Press m.
  3. Press a (Cast a spell)
  4. Press b (Rune offense)
  5. Press ESC

EtMarc: Ok, now I am utterly confused. I download and compiled a fresh copy of alpha 18, downloaded on the module server the release version of BOB, and I'm still not getting the error. Even with your steps. Maybe it is a line ending issue... What OS are you using? (I'm running Linux/Debian.) And do you have any warning messages?

ElCuGo: My system is Gentoo Linux in an AMD64 box which I think is the same system Nerdanel is using. I think this is likely a 64bits engine bug but I'm going to research a bit more.

Yes, the ToME module has the exact same problem. I'm going to report the bug now.

EtMarc: I haven't tested it, but a way in which you could avoid the problem would be to replace the spl ~= -1 test in easy_cast.lua line 173 by spell(spl) (testing it is not nil).

ElCuGo: I fixed the problem tweaking the makefile. You can consider 0.1.3 unoficially beaten. :) I played a pure mage based only on runecrafting. Starting stats 1,1,6,8,8,6; 2 runecraft. Initial game is a bit dificult because magic arrow doesn't do a lot of damage, but after getting lucky to get two POW bonuses it was a little bit easier to survive. When You get electric orb you can toss al your other attack runes as it seems to be the best offensive rune spell, at least until you find the Elemental Master. Blink ball works only sometimes it's not very reliable. Fire steps and Reflexes were among the most useless to me (but I can imagine those being useful to a hybrid). Poison Dart is the most powerful tactic rune spell it made the master quite easy. Conclusion: If you survive the first levels and are a bit lucky this build runs very smoothly.

EtMarc: Runecasting, not runecrafting :). I never got electric orb while testing, so I cannot comment on how good it is, although there is a distinct lack of bolt attacks at high level. Reflexes is supposed to be better for low DEX barehand fighters, but I could increase its duration if its not useful enough. As for fire steps, I can't play without that one. This is best spells to deal with resistants monsters (mainly ghosts). I cast it, then I take one step back and let the ghost kill itself on the fire spot. Blink ball is meant to be unreliable since it is useful to disperse compact groups, but maybe it is too unreliable and I should increase its power. And yes poison dart is nice, it make many strong monsters wimps.

ElCuGo: Yes, runecasting, that's what i said. ;) I got two electric orb runes in my game, before that I used a lot of smash bolts and cold bolts, but electric orb works much better than these two, even for single enemies. The only thing I found that resisted it was the Elemental Master. The downside is that it needs a ton of mana so you need a high MAN stat (at endgame I had POW 17 and MAN 17). Reflexes would have been more useful to me if it was available at lower levels but when I found it (around level 12) I had enough killing power that most things were dead before they had a chance to hit me (your job as a mage is to kill them before they get close to you), but I think it could be useful to warrior mages. For fire steps, well it requires at least two turns which can be better spent casting two cold bolts (or smash bolts for those that resisted cold, or better yet: one electric orb). I didn't check if it damages every turn or only when the monster steps on the fire. If it's the first then it could be useful for melee warriors as an extra source of damage. By the time I got blink ball I had a 0% fail blink wich was more useful as an escape tactic, and a pile of blink gems if I wanted to teleport a monster (which I never had the need to do). The most afected are blink imps as they will often cast blink balls at you for no effect (initially I thought blink ball was broken). Wow I hope yor head won't hurt when read this I should start to break my ideas into paragraphs.

Ah yeah, I forgot. When your inventory is full and you create something it will be droped to the floor even if you have a pile of the same item in your inventory. Fortunately picking it up will still combine the two piles.

EtMarc: Fire steps deal damage each turns. The balancing problem with runecasting right now is that it would need a lot of spells to have a descent power progression. Right now, the strongest bolt spell (Pain) is level 4 and is not very strong (by design).

As for the full inventory, I only test if there is an item in the last slot, and if there is I drop the item on the floor. The previous behaviour was to always add the item in the inventory, but that caused a bug which hid the item in a slot after the last legal one. From what I gathered from reading the code, it should have dropped the item in that case, but it didn't. So the current behaviour is the lesser of two evils.

ElCuGo: Yeah! Inventory management is very buggy. For runecasting balance, maybe you can do it a bit like ToME and increase the power and cost of the spells as your runecast level increases, that way runes are useful much more time and you need less spells. Or if you want to enforce grinding you can have multiple levels of runes, e.g. "a level 2 rune of magic arrow" with more power and higher cost.

EtMarc: I will probably something similar to your second suggestion. But adding levels is as bland as fighting a bunch of colored jellys. So I will probably add some variety. Ex : magic arrow -> raise spike : stronger version, but without PROJECT_STOP (don't hit intermediate targets, like magic smash).

The reason I don't want runecasting to improve with level is remove the ToME situation where you get all the spellbooks you'll ever need really quickly. Also, keeping weaker versions can be useful sometimes.

NerdanelVampire: Sorry to respond so late, but I've been distracted... largely by playing B.O.B. :) I indeed have a 64-bit system, but it looks like the bug has been located already. In other news, I'm wondering if the gems are buggy in 64-bits too. Namely, a gem of blinking blinks ME, despite the description, and all the other gem effects are centered on me too.

I just saw the Zothique snake. Neat! :)

Green imps are however vicious. They killed my last best character and then they nearly killed my current one. The deadly part about poisoning is how it reduces maximum hitpoints and then current hitpoints to correspond with it. And of course, the same thing happens to mana. You have to cut them down quickly or you can't do it at all.

EtMarc: Poison is indeed vicious, but not only for you. Your enemies get the same effect. Since you had the Poison Dart rune, have you tried poisoning the boss or strong monsters?

Is poison too strong right now? You say it was very powerful against you, and ElCuGo wrote that it was also good against enemies. Should I reduce its effect (increasing its length as a side-effect)? Another possibily would be to simply reduce the strength of the poison using monsters.

And the Zothique snake is indeed a very obscure cameo from an unknown module...

NerdanelVampire: I think poison shouldn't affect constitution and mana stats. The current way means that the player is more vulnerable to poison at high levels since they lose more hp and mana to each successful poison attack.

I was planning to use poison against the boss, but then I saw it was elemental-based and could cast poison at me. I figured I had better chance with physical attacks, and as I was fighting for my life, I didn't want to risk attacks that might be totally ineffective. Besides, my power stat was always kind of low and I never saw much difference with toxic dart, not that I had experimented with it that much.

EtMarc: The boss cannot cast poison at you. Either you confused it with acid, or there was a bug. I'm a little adverse about removing CON and MAN from the stat loss effect of poison because these are the main use of poison against monster. And I want to preserve as similar as possible the mechanics for the player and the monsters, so I won't only change it for the player. But I will probably simply reduce the effectiveness of poison-using monsters by other means. Or I could boost the experience awarded and raise their rarity.

EtMarc: I played a character using the development version. Check it if you want spoilers : /Teaser.

This character had a few very dangerous run-in with green imps (got down to 10 hp at least once). They are way too dangerous right now and will be weakened for the next version. The toad blobs are also dangerous too, but not as much.

Sirrocco: I've not gotten but so far, but I have played early and early-middle game with an elemental controller (10pow/10mana no less). The damage was gratifyingly high, almost disturbingly so at times, but with the extreme nature of the character, I also came close to dying with rather more frequency (and less warning) than any of my more melee-oriented characters. Battles were all over very quickly. I suspect that a character who was built a little more evenly might wind up being a bit too powerful with elem control, but I rather liked the change of pace that this particular character gave.

basically, if I could see them, I had any mana to speak of at all, and there was a bit of space to shoot in, I was fine. They were dead, they just didn't know it yet, and I was in no danger - even from monsters that were a good bit stronger than I would have been happy facing as, say, a barehander. If any of these things were not true, I was under potentially very serious threat, and, with level-appropriate monsters, might die.

Version 0.1.4

NerdanelVampire: I've been trying to get hang of the mutations. A weird thing with my latest (now dead) character was how he got small claws, which increased his melee damage but turned it completely into piercing. Luckily the character also got an iguana tail so that he could do blunt damage against creeping oozes.

By the way, what is "hc"?

And, I would really like if mutation information was added to the C screen or somewhere.

NerdanelVampire: After killing several characters, I've come to doubt the usefullness of drinking mutation potions, at least in the early game if you're playing a straight barehanded/mutant hybrid (since you have skill points to only get really good in two skills and I want to win with a properly mutated mutant). Namely, they might turn your melee damage into piercing, and if you don't get an iguana tail, you're going to have to run, run, run from certain enemies like creeping oozes. Well, perhaps mutants are for the people who like playing risky.

EtMarc: You can get a list of all your mutation by pressing "b" (or in the character dump). HC means hit chances and is compared to the ennemy AC to check if your tail smash connect (Note : you can see your melee HC in the C screen).

As for mutation potions, yes they are evil. But they can save you a lot of essence on late game mutations (the ones you can get depend on your current dungeon level), and they are also quite needed by fast divers. My personnal preference is to only use them when near a mutation forge, to be able to quickly repair any problem. And getting a piercing melee attack is not the worse you can get too...

Sirrocco: Does anything affect the HC of an attack? If so, you should probably mention that somewhere. I wound up with a bite attack that was *quite* nice, but barely hit one time in three. Being able to influence the HC would have been very nice. Also, I've just died for the first time in this game with a base melee character who'd made it past the first few levels. The ice attack of ice spirits is *harsh* - particularly when they're stacked behind another monster and I don't ave a ranged attack. I ran str/con 10, hosed POW and mana all the way down, and left CRE and DEX with the 4 each that were left. I paid for it, too. A disproportionate number of my level-ups went to POW (+6 by level 8) and my CRE and DEX lagged throughout the game.I was trying for a mutation/barehand character, but found almost no mutations that I actually wanted (except the bite). I notice that in mutations, more than pretty much anything else, knowing the options really has an impact on what you choose. Now that I know about snakebite, for example, I'm a lot more likely to pick up a longer neck if I find one, even if it might not be the best choice at the time. Also, to questions. - First, is there any way to look at the "what are my mutations" screen when not at a forge? Personally, I'd like to see it appended on as another page of the character sheet, but just about anything would do. It'd be really nice to be able to tell, for example, what your latest mutation potion actually *did* to you, and how many mutation points you have left, now that it's done. - second, is there any way at all to control how unmutating works? It seems pretty clear that gaining a mutation when you don't have the points for it will take one of your other mutations away from you. Likewise, I'd suspect that if you gained a second arms mutation, your first would disappear (freeing up points). Is there any user control beyond that on what old mutations you get rid of, or is it pretty random? - As a thought, to enable a certain style of gameplay, it might be nice to set the creativity level for mutation potions *really* low - and perhaps have them available in the flesh forges as well. Perhaps have them automatically available at the flesh forges (thoguh that might be pushing things). The point would be to enable the drastically-low-cre mutant. Not necessarily to make life *easy* for him, but to make it possible.

NerdanelVampire: I've now killed quite a few barehanded mutants. Either I've played really badly lately or this is the hardest character concept yet. The best of them got down to the last level where he was handily killed by the Goblin King. (I was careless, I know.)

I think B.O.B.'s equivalent of dungeon litter is starting to become a problem. Now that there are more and more specialized items, it's harder than ever to get something useful out of forges. My level 8 character still has no hat or cloak. Perhaps the power of creativity could be increased universally?

I also find things like basalts shields appearing way too much. I suggest that shields of all sort should not be counted as armor but as weapons for the purposes of forges. After all, people with weaponmastery are only ones (save for non-combat elemental controllers) who have any interest in either, while everyone is interested in non-shield armor. I would prefer it if barehanded characters could just keep ignoring all red forges and not waste time getting shields offered in armor forges.

I also have a problem with knowledge vaults. They are basically rune depositories, and my current character concept doesn't include runes. However, I have to check every such forge for the off chance that I might find a vine cloak. It's marginally superior to a leather cloak, and cloaks of any sort are rare finds. I suggest knowledge vaults could be split into rune forges and seasonal equipment forges. Seasonal equipment has interest even among the people who don't care about the spells inside, but runes are useless without the skill.

NerdanelVampire: I finally beat 0.1.4 with NerdanelVampire/Morpheus. One thing about B.O.B. that I don't like is the reliance on damage absorption, which tends to danger value fluctuating wildly between slightly different defense/offense capabilities. There is a small window in which a mean blob (for a barehanded user) changes from "unstoppable death machine impossible to damage" to "speedbump". Also, I think it's kind of weird that a goblin berserker, a monster that finished in short order earlier character of mine, ended up doing zero damage against the character who became the winner - even before he has found that cuirass and was wearing leather armor!

EtMarc: Balancing damage absorption is a pain (if it is even possible). But I fear I don't know any better way to implement damage protection which can benefit from multiple sources, and is balanceable both in the early and in the late game. (The only idea I have which could improve the current scheme would be to make absorption reduces damage by a random amount, instead of fixed.)

The problem right now is that there is a sweet spot in