And the horn of plenty is fixed!

BTW, just so you know what I'm doing, here is the branch.

Additions:
* Buffed chilling axes and scythes of terror, because they were triggering way too rarely.
* Item graphics from CLIVAN ported.
* Best claws from alien mod ported, they are rather rare weapons using unarmed combat skill.
* Mangos and sausages added!
* Masks, a new headgear, added. Necromancers wear them.
* Taiahas ported from CLIVAN, but they don't explode when broken (they were unusable as weapons, which is stupid for a weapon) and are not normally generated - instead, they will be given as a quest reward in Mondedr.
* Scroll of body switch can be wished for.
* Cauldrons added, but not randomly generated. Can be used for special rooms (I have a vault with cauldron of healing liquid in mind ).
* Some potted plants and clocks added to the Cathedral, to make it more homey.
* Magic weapon price increased, per fejoa's suggestion. (Only of the new weapons, they had very low price.)
* New Fearless (Panic immunity) and Fasting status effects.
* Ring of bravery!
* Artifact armor "filthy tunic of martyr Bessica" grants disease immunity, fearless and fasting.
* New horn of healing and horn of plenty.

Oooh, thanks!


Yeah, that's exactly the imagery I was trying to evoke.

I have one more coding question, if anyone would be willing to help.

I'm trying to implement a new horn of plenty, which should give you one piece of food when applied. However, for some reason you are granted mutliple pieces instead.

Here is the relevant code (and relevant commit is here, but note I managed to write only a single : before each Spawn(), which is a mistake I know about ):

          else if(GetConfig() == PLENTY)
          {
            item* Food;

            switch(RAND() % 15)
            {
             case 0:
              Food = carrot::Spawn();
              break;
             case 1:
              Food = sausage::Spawn();
              break;
             case 2:
              Food = mango::Spawn();
              break;
             case 3:
             case 4:
             case 5:
              Food = can::Spawn();
              break;
             case 6:
              Food = lump::Spawn();
              break;
             case 7:
              Food = loaf::Spawn();
              break;
             case 8:
              Food = kiwi::Spawn();
              break;
             case 9:
              Food = pineapple::Spawn();
              break;
             default:
              Food = banana::Spawn();
              break;
            }

            if(Blower->IsPlayer())
              ADD_MESSAGE("Suddenly, %s falls out of the horn.", Food->CHAR_NAME(INDEFINITE));

            Blower->GetStack()->AddItem(Food);
          }

I though this should give you random piece of food with a slightly larger chance for cans (because cases 3 - 5 fall through to can::Spawn()) and bananas (because cases 10+ fall through to default, that is banana::Spawn()). Yet somewhere the code creates multiple random pieces of food per applying of the horn instead of only one, which is way overpowered.

It drains mental stats. Given that many AI options are based on mental stats of monsters, liquid darkness should make them act more dumb. I think eg. spellcasting requires that the dark mage had some amount of Int.

Yup, that was me.

However, this change was done in good faith - goblins are usually found in GC, where they are unremarkable and rather weak monsters. I wanted to make goblin berserkers a bit more interesting. With their sub par Dex, they still cannot hit that often, but can at least occasionally damage the player now (in GC, that is). They also have rather low HP, so they die easily if you can hit them.

What I didn't know was that goblin berserkers will suddenly start to spawn in UT. I have hardly ever seen a normal goblin there before! There, they are a bit hardcore, yes. (Why are they spawning there? The weaker goblins are not!)

I still think berserkers work better now than before, because they are now a monster you have to take into account when playing instead of just squashing them. They are OK for GC, and even though they should not spawn in UT, they are still rather survivable there, with some planning, luck or use of resources (zap a wand, pray or throw items at them and they are not that bad).

Granted, I like my IVAN hardcore.

When they have +5 2H swords, that's just unfair, but I don't think that's on me.

I personally hate difficulty options. It makes different player experiences more or less incomparable and in many cases breaks all game balance. We can discuss what needs to be tweaked to make the game more or less difficult, but I don't like the idea of having "easy mode" Ivan and "hard mode" Ivan.

BTW, it took me years to beat the game for the first time and I have yet to become a new High Priest in vanilla (I did it in CLIVAN, but that variant is a whole lot easier than vanilla).


It's actually, IMHO, a tiny bit less difficult than the prievous version, because of the number of new options you have with new magic items and loot. True, you have to run from some enemies rather than taking them head-on in early game, but you also have so much more different and useful stuff to work with I tend to have solutions for many more dangerous situations than before.

I think the game considers zombies/skeletons of each type separately, ie. zombie of a female tourist has frequency 500, but given how many different zombie types exist, some kind of zombie will have a much higher effective frequency.

IDK about the spawning, it's weird sometimes. I had a game where I found 3 or 4 Saal'thul even though they have the lowest possible possibility of 1, yet I didn't encounter a single cloak of fire resistance. It might be similar with creatures - sometimes you will see none in a whole game, sometimes they will be around each corner.

You also set them to frequency 2000, while base frequency is 10 000. Removing their frequency line would set them to base frequency and make them spawn more often.

I don't know about bastard swords, because nothing was changed there, so they should not be any more common than before, but I will look into rarity of magical items. I tried to make them all more rare to account for their higher numbers, but they could definitely be made more rare still.

BTW, a radical idea - what if we prevented most magical weapons and armor from spawning in UT? This way we could have a nice change of pace from lowly crawl through tunnels to mroe exciting adventure in caves/tomb.


IIRC the game picks from whole list of items based on their rarity, with some items being allowed to generate in only certain dungeons (eg. food cannot be generated in TX). You are no more or less likely to find a flaming sword in TU1 or GC6, but the +5 is much, much more likely in GC6, because enchantment chances are also weighted in favour of deeper dungeon levels. Those +5 swords on UT3 mentioned in other thread are very unlikely (but possible), while +5 swords in Oree's Lair are quite normal.

But yes, there is always a chance of random great item being generated. And given how random the generation is, there can be funny situation like the one game I found four Saal'thul, the first one in UT and the rest in GC (including one in Merka's shop).

All those new ideas I added today are from this very thread. I was bored at work, so I went through the thread and compiled the ideas to wiki, where they are more easy to read through.

Concerning the sharks/killer whales, I rather like the idea of giving sharks to Mortifer, becaues of their real-world enmity with dolphins.