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Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 2, 2016 at 5:27 pm
DARK FROG LEVEL
What was I even talking about last night, Silva didn't "skip" phoenix feather when upgrading my leg, Silva evaluates dragon hide as being worse than phoenix feather (strength + 4*flexibility). So I can keep on praying to her without any worries. The gold arm needs to be SoCMed, preferably before I go after the dark frogs so that I can catch them before they escape. I didn't can my bottles before going to the enner beast's level, either!

I offered a pile of gold/silver/jewels to Mellis (including some I bought back from the dungeon shop) and got a second permanent angel. I named him Mailing, and got a point of Wis. Tried to scum for archangels for a little while, but none arrived. Dulcis tamed some of the outdoor residents of Attnam for me. Tried to scum the zombie level for more master necromancers, but they all died before I could reach them. OH MY GOODNESS IT'S XINROCH. THE ALIVE VERSION. I would quite like to get her +4 illithium chain mail. First I need to emergency-mirror-SoCM my two bad limbs. Or one of them. Xinroch has already killed the angel that was distracting her and seems to be after me now. Xinroch charged up to me and took my torso down to black in one hit before I could finish reading the second SoCM. That was a really bad idea. fortunately I'm alive. Used my teleport wand to get as far away as possible. There's Mailing and a stack of undead up here to distract Xinroch again while I finish my enchantments. Or run away. I'm running away. I can't use the 3 SoEAs that I mirrored to upgrade my boots and gauntlets efficiently because one of each is covered in blood. I'll leave the mirrored ones on this level, let them dry out in peace on GC5, and then come back to finish the enchantments and try to finish Xinroch. Or, I could take the archangel that Loricatus just sent me to GC6 and let him deal with Xinroch for me. Or both.

Ignigena made pretty short work of Xinroch. And was even polite enough to let me get the killing blow! I brought him to GC7 to help with the frogs. Golgor Dhan just happened to be there as well. Used one of two detection scrolls to find the mystic dark frog; fortunately it was in teleport range. Tried to charm it with Dulcis, failed, it escaped. Ur-Khan is here too! The mystic frog appears in ESP range, I use another teleport charge, and kill it in two hits. I'll have to store its corpse somewhere for cloning and resurrection. Golgor Dhan is really close the the stairs back up, but fortunately he wasn't able to follow me. I probably ought to get some better body armour before I try to fight Khan and Dhan. One more point of Int and I could make octiron armour with a SoHM.

So, the plan is this:
1. Lock myself in a small room on a level with no allies.
2. Wish for a scroll of charging.
3. Use it to get 2 more cloning charges.
4. Clone 1 mystic frog corpse, 2 SoCMs, 1 wand of resurrection, 1 can of ommel snot.
5. Clone 2 frog corpses, 2 SoCMs, 1 wand of resurrection.
6. Resurrect as many frogs as possible with one WoR.
7.1. If it had one charge, mirror the two remaining WoRs, and 3 SoEWs. Then resurrect the remaining 3 frogs and enchant the +3 meteoric steel thunder hammer as much as possible.
7.2 If it had two or three charges, use a second WoR to resurrect the other 3 frogs.
8. Science talk all four frogs, and hope they have enough magic to give me permanent haste+invisibility.
9. Upgrade equipment ad libitum.

... Problem: the mystic frog teleported away the chest with the wand of resurrection and it's somewhere on GC7. Abort!

101 Agi helped me to dodge the two bosses and find my chest. In the meantime, a +3 Mjolak was lying on the floor and an apprentice necromancer spawned with a scroll of charging. The plan's going forward, but I can hold on to my wish for now!

The wand of resurrection had 3 charges, so after resurrecting Bing, Cyning, Ring, and Thing the mystic dark frogs, I've got 5 resurrection charges left (and at least one mirroring charge). Plenty. Now it's time for SCIENCE!

The floor is covered with dark frog blood. I'm glad I'm levitating. They've given me permanent invisibility and haste and raised base Int/Wis to 46/51. So I spent my wish on a helmet of brilliance, enchanted it to +3 (the wish got me another point of intelligence), and the dolphins took me up to 95/94 Int/Wis with the wisdom hat.

Now I've got 6 SoCMs, 7 SoEAs, and 1-5 mirroring charges. I want to SoCM 6 pieces of equipment and (later) 2-4 limbs, so 1 mirroring charge will be enough. First I need a good candidate for body armour. None of the pieces I've found have been above +1, so I'll have to take an elite guard's +2 piece. The mirroring wand I used before had only one charge, so having started on the other one I'm down to 0-2 charges. But all my equipment's made of the ideal materials now, and enchantment levels are halfway there. I have very little HP on vital bodyparts, so I won't be standing my ground against the likes of Golgor Dhan and Elpuri, but there'll probably be opportunities to fix all that before it counts.

Now it's time to clear out GC7 and GC8. I brought Mailing with me, but that may have been a mistake; Golgor Dhan got distracted by Mailing and killed him pretty quickly. Nevertheless, I had the dexterity and agility to lop off Golgor's limbs and kite her before she could retaliate. Legs first, for some reason. Somehow she stopped approaching me even when both arms were attached. I held back, wanting to avoid being decapitated when I approached her, but Ur-Khan was taking a side passage and about to flank me, so I had to go in for the kill. Luckily there were no problems. Ur-Khan kept all its limbs while I kited it, but died without mishap. During a final sweep of the level (tunnelling into unexplored regions looking for the last chest room), ZQ-29 snuck up on me and got some free hits in; luckily it didn't knock me unconscious like that one time. It wandered away and it took a bit of searching to find it, but once I did I had no problems killing it. Now I've got some more SoCMs and cloning charges. GC8!
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 2, 2016 at 12:49 pm
Quote
12:46 am Ighalli Anyone against removing the stat scumming from the game? As it is, getting a +1 starting stat means each level of stat gain is 10% easier.
1:16 am Serin-Delaunay I could understand if some people wanted to keep the possibility of unsupervised random start stats to use as challenge modes or to produce less predictable outcomes in UT (which are fun for quite a long time while learning the game).
1:50 am Ischaldirh I simply don't see a compelling reason to remove it, personally
1:50 am Ischaldirh A +1 or -1 in starting stats seems relatively minor in the long run
1:51 am Ischaldirh especially if it happens to be in a limb stat, since it's pretty easy (and common) to try to get artificial limbs anyways
1:52 am Ischaldirh As for Int, starting with 9 vs starting with 11 is pretty immaterial when you're trying to get ~50 by endgame
1:52 am Ischaldirh if you're going to remove this aspect, you might as well also remove the whole randomized talents system too
2:15 am Ighalli With a 10 starting attr and 50 events which trains to attr 25. The same 50 events gives only 20 to someone starting with 9 or 30 to someone who started with 11. It's not at all immaterial.
2:27 am Ischaldirh Wait, are we talking about talents here or starting attributes? Or are they linked?
2:28 am Ischaldirh They don't seem to be, most PCs start with all 10s, and I know each PC has a positive talent and a negative talent as well
2:28 am Serin-Delaunay It also not simply a +1 or -1 for some of the stats. I've seen two or three 7s in the starting limb stats, which might be immaterial after prosthesis but not when standing on a dead puppy in UT1 trying to run away from or punch a hedgehog
2:32 am Ischaldirh I've never seen anything more than a +-1 personally
2:41 am Serin-Delaunay Start a few dozen characters and take a look 8s and 12s are more common than 7s and 13s, but they're all possible.
2:44 am fejoa Argh those 7 Astr/Lstr stats make me so depressed sometimes.
3:09 am Ischaldirh I've started a lot of characters over the past few weeks and still haven't seen a 12
3:10 am Ischaldirh I suppose I can sorta remember getting an 8 start
3:10 am Ischaldirh maybe
3:11 am Ischaldirh Still. I like the random stats, personally. If there's enough momentum for it to be changed, could we at least change it in a symmetric way?
3:12 am Ischaldirh I.e., each set of starting stats averages to 10?
4:12 am Ischaldirh Goddammit
4:12 am 4zb4 I've had a lot more characters start with sub-9 stats ever since CVS
4:12 am Ischaldirh Magpie stole my crystal stone and flew off into the minefield
4:12 am Ischaldirh chased him in there, where i encountered a bloody kamikazie dwarf
4:13 am Ischaldirh promptly polymorphed him - into a mammoth - and noped the fuck out of there
4:13 am 4zb4 holy shit
4:35 am Ischaldirh By the way, how do you heal scars?
4:44 am 4zb4 Remove limb, grow new limb
4:44 am 4zb4 In fact I'm not sure that even works
5:01 am capristo it would be cool to know what the player's talent was, after he/she dies
5:19 am 4zb4 "Cap was blessed with above-average muscle growth. Was."
5:27 am capristo lol
6:37 am red_kangaroo Or maybe show it with stethoscope?
6:37 am red_kangaroo BTW, starting 7s through 9s are quite common for me.
6:37 am red_kangaroo I generally start-scum to get at least 10 in msot stats.
6:38 am red_kangaroo If it was 10 +/-1 with a rare chance of 12 or 13, I think msot start scumming would cease.
6:38 am red_kangaroo It's the 7s that hurt badly.
9:26 am fejoa I wonder what part of the code is responsible for the sevens?
1:55 pm Ischaldirh So if your head is scarred. You're basically just screwed a little?
2:26 pm Ischaldirh Also, the stat-rolling topic needs a thread.
2:26 pm Ischaldirh I'd make it but i have to leave for class like now
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 9:12 pm
You got columns and rows switched. For example, the five pronoun forms for 'she' are she/her/her/hers/herself. For 'he' the five forms are he/him/his/his/himself. There's a table at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_personal_pronouns#Basic

If you have 5 text fields, you can specify any pronoun set in the .dat files without having to hardcode any rules about their spelling. Although in the case of singular 'they' it's also necessary to specify that verbs conjugate like the plural 'they'. That way the game would correctly print messages like:
Quote
Petrus the High Priest of the Great Frog is standing here. She doesn't care about you.
Serin the human is standing here. They don't care about you.
At present the game only needs three of the pronoun forms. The 'hers' and 'herself' forms are less commonly used in English and this is reflected in the game text.

I think the 'hu' pronoun set is 'human' themed, but that's another way of looking at it!
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 8:58 pm
ENNER BEAST
Uh... My Int score is only 28, so I walked to the middle of the map before detecting enner flesh in order to be able to teleport there in one jump. She died at most a minute before I read the scroll, head floating in the river with limbs and corpse distributed on a line with them. It looks like two mines or one big mine exploded on or near her. But the positions of the limbs and head don't quite match the position of the smoke. Sailing the angel was in the area when I arrived, was wearing a ring of teleport, and was injured. I suspect the mine was set off near the beast, weakening her, and then Sailing arrived to sever her limbs and head in sequence.

I am definitely not complaining about not having to fight an enner beast personally. Also, I may choose to move her corpse and bits to a safe location. For Reasons.

Now it's time to get all the beautiful GC5 loot. The second chest room spawned here, much excite. Still need to vomit to dig through the wall. Found three rings of fire resistance in a small chest and squeed. Lots of scrolls, no SoCMs. Lots of hardened leather things to offer to Sophos. Maybe he'll start giving me scrolls of charging soon. Met a zombie of a quartermaster. You're in the wrong dungeon, pal! Threw daggers at a kamikaze dwarf of Loricatus until she died.

The chest had... an amulet of elemental protection! Deer Attabus, Fank yoo for my erly Attamas present. Faithfully, Claudia Donovan. Also, a magical whistle and an oil lamp. that's probably going to go on a SoCM if it has a genie. I'll need to corral those floating eyes and try to get permanent ESP, though. Also in the polypile: My first mustard gas grenade, and a triangular key! Now I just need a square one and Izzy's octagonal one. Also, ate all but one of the cerumen cans and now I can science talk my collection of archangels! First though, the zombie level.

ZOMBIE LEVEL
Found a wand of mirroring! Threw daggers at the veteran kamikaze dwarf. Found a floating eye, I think the third one? Should be enough to make a meal. Spent a scroll of taming on a master necromancer because I need Int points. Found another wand of mirroring! At this point I think all that's needed to take on the dark frog level is ESP, but I'll go for some archangel talk and possibly some more phoenix feather gear first. Maybe even get Dulcis on the prayer list, since I need to do more Int talking.

Went to Attnam to ditch junk, buy marginally useful junk, and read Dulcis's books. Dulcis sent an angel after the first prayer! Silva changed my crystal leg directly to dragon hide, skipping phoenix feather! That was a really good upgrade, but I probably ought to skip praying to her from now on since I don't want the two phoenix feather limbs to change to dragon hide. Cleptia still likes me despite the amount of times I read Dulcis's book.

Went to UT3 to store my corpses and UT1 to chat up my three archangels. Went back to Attnam and got a wish from the lamp. Next I'm collecting all the floating eye corpses I can to make sure they don't need to be cloned. Then it's time to clone some SoCMs!

Um... I can't find any of the floating eyes that followed me through GC1-4. My best guess is they got polymorphed by mushroom clouds then killed and eaten by my allies. Wait. Found one! Checked the crystal cave for a third, but nothing. Cloned the last one, got permanent ESP and duplicated the SoCM. The first cloning wand had two charges, I'll see about the second cloning wand later. If they're both bad, perhaps one of the mirroring wands will have three charges. Finished off the cerumen because cloning charges seem too scarce this game to spend them after I've unlocked archangels.

The second cloning wand only had one charge, so for now I'm stuck with only 2 SoCMs to mirror, unless I burn my wish on a scroll of charging or wand of cloning. Minmax favours the charging scroll, expected value favours both choices equally. Then again, even a one-charge cloning wand from the wish would get me a collection of 4 SoCMs to be mirrored at least twice, which should be enough for all my needs. Blargh, choices.

Possible next steps:
* Scum archangels until I can science talk dolphins, then blow the wish and make everything GEF and Valpurium.
* Gas Petrus and use the two acid bottles to get the Justifier peacefully.
* Clear GC7 and GC8 then science talk the mystic frog and random necromancers before scumming archangels.
* Blow the wish or a mirroring charge, get all phoenix feather limbs, then clear GC7 and GC8.
* Sleepity night night g'bye
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 8:27 pm
fejoa wrote
I found this in the news. Seems like the world is crapsack.
He didn't start off too badly but sighhhhhh.

fejoa wrote
So, this is what I understand(?) :

Pronoun: is an identifier for the character during messages?
Sex: What possibilities there are for procreating?
Gender: Social identifier in-game, self-defined? (x5 flavours)
Appearance attributes a la:
* Choose skin colour, hair colour, hairstyle, beardability, chest shape, and pronouns at birth, using points if you feel cruel

I feel like I need a colour-coded table to understand more clearly.
More or less.
Pronouns: As you said. The x5 flavours apply here, not to gender (see pronoun.is/she for an example).
Sex: As you said, but also includes biological aspects such as shape/location of genitalia, gametes produced, hormones, chromosomal configuration, and secondary sex characteristics such as breast and facial hair growth. Often these do not all match the assigned sex at birth, for a variety of reasons.
Gender: As you said, but the x5 flavours apply elsewhere.
Appearance/presentation: As you said. In the real world it also includes things that would be more difficult to let the player change in IVAN (like the clothing styles that various NPC types have), or superfluous (like wearing wigs or binding breasts - there's not much point in the game distinguishing these options from simply having long hair and no breasts).
Edit: That is the worst purple for this forum Sorry rainbow, no purple for you.
And if you'd like a less ad-hoc, more community-vetted explanation of the real-world background to this, there's Not Your Mom's Trans 101.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 6:18 pm
CRYSTAL CAVE
Found: a wand of polymorph (chest please), a blink dog (spawned one clone, refused to spawn another no matter how much junk I threw at it), a small chest (squeak), a scroll of wishing I don't remember picking up anywhere, a chameleon that changed into an ommel bone golem (NO THANKYOU *teleport*), a hattifattener (thankyou cloak), a weeping milky quartz blade (meh), 47 crystal stones to give to Silva (plus more when I get a strong pickaxe). The last crystal stone spawned a permanent angel for me. I named him Sailing. Got a point of Wis from his holy book, and one point each of Int and Wis from him while he was backed into a dead-end corridor that I dug. We can talk to all the non-mystic light frogs now! Let's go do that.

Also, with two blink dog corpses, 2 cans of cerumen, and a decent collection of equipment enchantment scrolls, it's time to take the wand of cloning for a test drive. Made a third blink dog corpse, 2 more cans of cerumen (still saving them for later), and two scrolls of harden material (taking the boots and gauntlets up to troll hide in preparation for the enner beast).

The cathedral light frogs were spectacularly unhelpful. Time to clone a batch of 5 cerumen and eat them.

Success! Now I can science talk the librarian and the mystic frogs. And harden the boots, and gauntlets, and ommel hair leg to phoenix feather. And start praying to Sophos and Cleptia.

The chest on GC3 contained: another wand of cloning! A broken adamantine thunder hammer also came out of the polypile. Dual thunder hammers? Yes. Absolutely yes. Rondol showed up with another wand of polymorph. Traded for some things I don't really need at the dungeon shop. Still no mustard gas, nor any sign of the second chest room. No wands of fireballs, but plenty of wands of striking and acid rain. Time to face the enner beast.

Oh, also my old severed lead left lead (114.9 kg) sold for 108 gold pieces in Attnam. Perks of picky prosthesis.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 5:50 pm
fejoa wrote
I wonder if it is possible to randomize starting gender for characters like darkknights? Could be a good rudimentary first step.
I can see two ways to randomise characters' gender:
1. Make the existing character prototype abstract and add one configuration for each pronoun set that that character type can have.
2. If the pronoun attribute is a database value that is independently mutable for each unit (so, not returned from a function and not stored only in the character prototype), then it could be altered programmatically when each character spawns.

I'll have to take another look at the Xinroch levels and characters before I make concrete suggestions in the Xinroch thread. But randomised dark knight genders and a female master tomb guard/Xinroch/both sound like a good start.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 4:34 pm
SUMO WRESTLING
The good: There's an archangel in UT1 waiting for me to get 40 Wis and science talk him, I replaced both cans of ommel cerumen (and stored them safely in the chest), my pickaxe and daggers are all meteoric steel now, no worries about losing stats when hungry, full, or not moving.
The bad: My agility with only one ommel hair leg isn't good enough to kite the sumo wrestler or dodge her, and her kicks went straight to my torso and I lost. I'm just going to have to go through the bear trap cycle again (with a lot more breakages and scrolls of repair burnt), or wait for Silva to upgrade the non-Mellis limbs to phoenix feather. Or go through the standard vomit-cheating procedure. I have enough cans for that. Both strategies involve praying for a long time, so we'll see which one becomes feasible first.

Both my arms suck now (Mellis turned the fabric one to gold), so I guess it's time to try to bear trap them off. I'll do this by repeatedly setting the trap and picking it up, rather than stepping on it. My low dex score should ensure that my arms occasionally get trapped while setting it.

Problem: the mithril trap is too weak to damage either arm. Even the gold one with its measly 55 strength. And I put all the bear traps from UT on the floor in Attnam. Silva upgraded the crystal arm to phoenix feather, though! Maybe this is starting to turn around. But with 57 Dex I won't be able to catch either arm in the trap. I'll have to just put up with the gold one until I can get a SoCM.

The phoenix feather arm was enough to punch the sumo wrestler to death. Hello, levitator! Time to explore UT4.

Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 3:58 pm
MITHRIL BEARTRAP
Yeah, the chest room I found had one of those. So I stood in the entrance to GC1, took off my gloves and boots, and stepped in it a lot. Managed to take both my legs off before my groin and head started getting caught and nearly killing me. Probably I should drink some of that ommel snot before I try to remove my arms.

But now the trap is broken. And because I'm a silly old bean I prayed to Loricatus to get it repaired rather than read a scroll of repair on it. Now I have a lead leg to dispose of. Well done Claudia.

No worries, mithril is hard enough to chop off a lead leg in two goes. And an arm in the meantime. One limb to go!

Wait a minute. NO, WOLF, DON'T DRINK MY OMMEL CERUMEN. GRARRRRGH!

OK, I'm sure we'll find some elsewhere. Now I have no limbs and it's time to invoke Silva for good limbs. First: an ommel hair left leg! Good call, Silva! Don't give me too many light crystal limbs! Like that right arm you just gave me. Not too many of those, mkay?

Erm, I'm getting hungry and Mellis isn't giving me food because apparently limbs are more important. I am never going to learn, am I? Fortunately he gave me an expensive fabric left arm rather than a gold one. Silva rounds off the set with an ommel hair right leg. 3 out of four good. It'll do for now.
Actually expensive fabric is not a very good material, is it? 5 strength and 15 flexibility, with no possibility of upgrade? It can't even wield a meteoric steel dagger without difficulty. And removing just arms is a much more difficult process than removing legs. And any time I pray for food Mellis could decide to replace my dextrous arm with gold. Sigh.

At least I have the stats to win at wrestling (by kicking) and science talk Kaethos now. And the agility to dodge golems in UT4.

Oh no. Now one of my legs is light crystal too.
Posted by Serin-Delaunay, Nov 1, 2016 at 2:55 pm
SHOP
SHOP!
It doesn't have much that I want. There's an amulet of ESP, but I don't need that yet. Another whip of thievery (later), another broken perception helmet, a charisma helmet (I'll be swimming in them before the end of the game). I'll take all her money though. Eventually. No mustard gas yet.

Found an altar of Loricatus! I just fought a giant spider and I am so, so poisoned and vomiting everywhere and inexplicably very hungry. Do not want to accidentally vomit on the altar. Forgot to pray to Mellis earlier, forgot to drop my empty bottles before doing so now, so I mostly got fluids. Oooops. At least there's a bottle of troll blood, that'll keep me going for a while.

Loricatus likes me! He fixed my +2 carrying belt. Found the minefield. It had a wand of cloning right next to the door! I don't have the right key to lock the door, and there's a floating eye that's going to follow me around it. I offer Mellis a bottle full of player tears.

Also found: amulet of ESP (sorry Merka), iron plate armour (so much no), arcanite helmet, broken mithril dagger of venom (yes please), helmet of understanding (OMF yes), gauntlets of Dex +1 (heart eyes), a fourth stethoscope, wand of haste (can I have 12 more please?), an oil lamp (Deer Attabus, for Attamas I wud liek: a Hie Preest Petras acshun figga wiv amyoolut of emma-lentil resistns. Luv Claudia)

Oh, and a can of banana flesh made me overloaded. Ditched the iron plate, swept up everything else, shut the door on the floating eye. You can come out later. Sold the junk to the dungeon shopkeeper (with a view to gassing her and reselling everything in Attnam). She has 1075 gold left. Before I go to Attnam and try to make a wish, I'd prefer to find the two chest rooms and make sure I don't wish for something they have. Haven't seen any trace of them so far, and I only have one scroll of detection. At this stage (with no scrolls of charging) I'd rather not be cloning them, so I'll have to dig around GC1-3 and try detection in GC4 if necessary.

Rubbed the oil lamp by accident because it got moved after I applied a pickaxe. Given how dangerous oil lamps are and how rarely they're used, there should probably be a confirmation before using them. There was no genie.

Found the hidden chest room on GC3! It even had a cloak of fire resistance next to it... on top of a mine. RNG hates me. I broke a wand of teleport in the middle of the room and (hopefully) sent the cloak and mines to different parts of the dungeon. Both mines exploded soon after. And the cloak wasn't far. I don't have any wands of polymorph or socms, and I don't want to anger Loricatus, so opening the chest can wait for now. I don't plan to spend a wish on an octagonal key when I've yet to find any scrolls of charging and don't know how many charges my wand of cloning has.