CLIVAN Balancing, Bugs and Oversights

Ok, here is the thread for posting bugs and suggestions relevant to CLIVAN.
Once a critical mass of issues are identified, then another release can be made.


Right now I have already spotted an issue with rookie kamikaze dwarfs spawning too early in the game, and this can be fixed by altering the script.
In char.dat, HPRequirementForGeneration should be set to 54, not 32.

Thunderbirds also need to be changed so they don't appear too early. Perhaps the following might be appropriate:

HPRequirementForGeneration = 70;
DayRequirementForGeneration = 3;

It occurs to me that while most mods add items, materials, and/or and enemies, most items and materials are on the higher end of the power spectrum, thus making it more likely to find, e.g., a sapphire knight sword +2 in the UT.

I feel that for every material/item useful in the mid-level GC, there should be one that is more common and is at most useful within the UT. F.ex for every Sapphire there should be a 5-10x more common Gniess. And for every Knigth Sword there should be about 50 Long Swords.

Basically what I'm saying is that LIVAN (and CLIVAN by extension) seem easy. My fist Clivan character is already GC3, and the biggest threat he's dealt with is hunger (because he's Chaotic). Your next release should include a lot of crappy materials and items. Like lead! And bottles of second-hand beer! And mini-bottles of fluids (like you would find on an airplane)!

IVAN is meant to be sadistic. Adding too many good items goes against the spirit of the game.

My first character just died of hunger. He found the aforementioned (broken) sapphire knight sword +2 in UT 1 in the first room I walked into (accurate, 4-7 damage while broken). In UT 2 he found a mithril dragon cuirass (av 22). The rest of the UT was a breeze. I know I got really lucky, but it all comes down to what Izzy posted above.

My first character also encountered a broken sapphire knight sword in UT1, and not long after, a scroll of repair...

He was later killed by a lion (presumably a polymorphed monster) and died because his only armor was a troll hide armor and some broken bronze boots.

I hev seen this sapphire knight sword as well. I agree with Ischaldirh. The game definitely needs rebalancing with a (google?) spreadsheet, with IVAN 0.5 as baseline difficulty. I'm not such a good game theorist, and I was hoping to canvass opinion from the community about the state of LIVAN's replayability.

If we take the example of the longsword, which has

Possibility = 100;

then a Knight sword would be

Possibility = 2;

instead of 13, which is presently its scripted value. That would have the effect of reducing the occurence of that item in the game, in the way that Izzy suggests.

Furthermore, for our broken knight sword we might choose:

MainMaterialConfig = { 5, GNIESS, RUBY, SAPPHIRE, DIAMOND, FLAWLESS_DIAMOND; }
SecondaryMaterialConfig = { 5, IRON, STEEL, STEEL, MITHRIL, MITHRIL; }

MaterialConfigChances = { 5, 1000, 100, 100, 10, 1; }

instead of the existing:

MainMaterialConfig = { 4, RUBY, SAPPHIRE, DIAMOND, FLAWLESS_DIAMOND; }
SecondaryMaterialConfig = { 4, STEEL, STEEL, MITHRIL, MITHRIL; }

MaterialConfigChances = { 4, 100, 100, 10, 1; }

CLIVAN has some existing crap materials. LEAD already existed in LIVAN I think, but it (and other lousy materials) is not prevalent in the game because it has not been woven into existing scripted items. Tricky, because one must presently manipulate the script by hand. (Which means the script files basically resemble their own roguelike game).

Why are there multiple SecondaryMaterialConfig choices? As far as I know the secondary material doesn't have any major gameplay effect (beyond modifying the weight of certain items from mild to drastic degrees).Combat damage stats are derived from MainMaterial exclusively, I'm pretty sure, so unless knight swords have really bigass handles...

Also on the possibility part, I think a better option than reducing the knight sword's possibility, might be to raise the long sword's. (Better still would be to do a little of both.) My reasoning being, by raising the lesser weapon's possibility, you're also helping it come out more frequently vs other high-powered weapons (and any that might be added in the future). Of course if you do that, you'll have to raise other low-power weapons' possibilities accordingly as well... I dunno, it's tough. Might be a better option to just add some other items at or below long sword power level: falchions, war picks, clubs, and the like.

IIRC the only time secondary materials came into play was when you tried to make a golem out of a weapon.

Also how come knight swords currently consist of rare gemstones? As far as I remember, the ones in LIVAN had a possibility to be made of Iron, Steel, Meteoric Steel and other lesser metals.

Azba, those are only the material configs for BROKEN knight swords. Broken items tend to be higher quality to compensate.

Oh, true.

So I wanted a look at all the new items and such.

New game
Name WHAT
"X"
Enter New Attnam
"$"
Crash

It's happened every time so far.

Sorry for the radio silence, I was away for 72 hours.


The secondary material configs are a hangover from LIVAN, and I haven't changed them since.
For the more powerful meleeweapons that lampshade introduced (like TIP_SWORDs etc) these could remain slightly more powerful than traditional weapons, but with a higher than normal EnchantmentMinusChance when unbroken and EnchantmentPlusChance = 0; when broken. This would have the effect that the player is forced to make more investments (scroll of enchant weapon, scroll of repair or otherwise) to make those weapons viable.

The ratio of (BrokenPossibility / Possibility) for the canonical meleeweapons is about 0.1 so Lampshade's weapons (and any others for that matter) could be leveled out according to that. Maybe broken KNIGHT_SWORDs should be more prevalent than normal ones?

I agree that more low-power weapons could be added, like stone-aged weapons. Revisiting those outrageous weapon material choices is a good way of controlling things as well.


This bug has been around since LIVAN as well. It stems from the bug where wishing for a flaming long-sword would result in a crash.
You wouldn't believe it, but it is a one-line script file fix. To fix the bug, add the line "IsAbstract = true;" in the following way to item.dat:

...
flamingsword /* meleeweapon-> */
{
  Adjective = "flaming";
  BaseEmitation = rgb24(150, 120, 90);
  [color=#008080]IsAbstract = true;[/color]

  Config LONG_SWORD;
  {
    ...

Have fun looking at the items.

A more puzzling matter is when a dwarven gas grenade filled with whatever, is offered at the altar of Dulcis

Awesome work Warheck! I've only played a couple games and not very far but it's good to see some new monsters and items. It's a little hard to tell when you're getting attacked in the forest, because the lights/shadows can be confused with monsters. But I know that's a feature of the original game with the trees in Attnam/New Attnam as well.

Warheck: If broken knight swords become more prevalent you might have to reduce it's broken-form material type possibilities' power level somewhat.

A one line fix... Ridiculous.

Ah well, that did the trick. Thanks Warheck!

EDIT: So I notice there are more flaming/lightning weapons, but there's no difference between them and the original. As I recall from my weapons comparisons, enchanted weapons are heavier than their normal counterparts, presumably to compensate for the added damage.

EDIT: So I looked it up, it's not the case with the flaming sword, but that is the case with the thunder hammer.

EDIT: So I notice damascus steel comes after adamantine, which in my opinion is rather silly. It should be before/after meteoric steel if you ask me.

The game crashes whenever I try to fight the sumo

I am loving all the additions though! Keep discovering new monsters and items, it's exciting Thanks for all the hard work

An alternative (but, possibly, more code-heavy) balancing option, might be to add more requirements for certain items to spawn -- days passed, specific depths (and/or specific dungeons), stat totals, or some such.

I was in New Attnam and trying to fight the sumo and it would crash when I challenged him. But now it's not letting me load my game at all. (I haven't played this game since then). Kind of a bummer since I had a phoenix feather whip of thievery +7

Darn, sorry Cap. This one's another script fix, but I'll need to put a default value in the code to stop this bug from affecting people who may want to code/script the game in future.

In dungeon.dat, you need to put an extra line in the room script for the Sumo Arena:

Dungeon NEW_ATTNAM;
{
  Levels = 2;

  Level 0;
  {
    ...
  }
  
  Level 1;
  {
    Description = "New Attnam's sumo wrestling arena";
    ShortDescription = "SumoArena";
    ...
    Room
    {
       Pos =
       Size =
       ...
       UseFillSquareWalls =
       Flags =
       [color=#00ff00]GenerateWards = false; /* <-- Add this line */[/color]

       Square ...
    }
  }
}

I hope you can load your game again

Ah ok... I had seen that in KNOWN_ISSUES but I couldn't tell if that was the issue or not. It's still not letting me load the game though - is there any way I can get some debug output or something that'll help us figure this out?

Don't feel bad about my game Thanks for all the hard work!

On the deep forest prison level, it seems that as you approach the exit to the building, every monster and their mother is attempting to get front row seats to your funeral. I had about 50+ monsters at least standing out front crammed together trying to get in the small hallway when I went near it.

It wasn't a problem, I had Muramasa so it was easymode, but it was really annoying standing there for 15 mins fighting off golems and dragons and baby mammoths, all of which have very high health and take awhile to defeat. Other monsters were cleaned in
1-3 turns each.

Good on you Papa for sticking it out and testing out the new dungeon more or less to the end. It looks like there may be a few too many monsters. I think that may be because of the respawn rate of monsters on that level, they reappear quite soon. I don't really know if it's a bug, perhaps it is a feature. I know that invisibility makes the game quite a lot easier in the forest since most monsters don't notice you.

Yeah I had invisibility, the cloaks seem a bit more common, but I've never seen a naturally spawned ring of invisibility yet.

I also had the monster problem on the deep forest level with the bridge, it was hard but I made it only because I had around 20 bottles of troll blood for instant clutch health restoration. I think it is due to the line of sight not being hindered by the river. You should also try looking into making trees form near these small passages so that monsters don't see you a mile away and fill up any way of escape for 10+ blocks.



One more thing is that I think the mango tree victory should give a score multiplier. I noticed it didn't give very much, if any bonus compared to my other deaths which made around the same progress

Sorry about this nasty trap as well. I set it to 1, which is the same as normal death. Elpuri victory is worth 2 times the score. You see, I didn't know how difficult the victory would be as compared to the Elpuri or other victories. I know for certain it is easier to complete the mango tree victory. What's your opinion on the difficulty? I'm thinking of setting a score level between 1.25 and 1.5 times for the mango tree victory.

Does that seem reasonable, or does it need to be made more difficult?

It is about the difficulty of clearing GC up to enner and beating enner. Which in my opinion is honestly pretty easy to do. You should increase haast eagle strength by a little, and give the goblin jailer boss guy some big improvements, as he is way too easy. The difficulty of this victory is only because at the bridge and at the jail, every monster swarms to you and they rape your shit.

Its really fun though and I'd say go with the 1.5 multiplier.

Hmm, I'll definitely make the characters you mentioned a bit tougher. I think there may be too many monsters on the bridge and the prison. If I lower the amount, I'll have to increase the difficulty level or the respawn rate. 1.5 is pretty big, but I'm sure it will be a worthwhile victory to pursue if I tighten some of the loose screws.

I must also remember to tone down the old Dragon Cuirass... maybe they should be made of stone materials.