The way danger is calculated basically takes into account how hard you and your foes are to kill - it calculates how much damage you're likely to dish out (ie. your accuracy, damage, speed) and how much punishment you can take (ie. dodging, blocking, HP), then does the same for monsters, then compares this to get relative danger value for you and monsters you can see in wizmode spoilers. If you look at the danger value, then equip better gear and get more stats, then look at the values again, you'll notice that danger of monsters have dropped, as they will have harder time killing you. When spawning monsters, the game looks at normal danger of the floor it tries to spawn monsters on - and because danger of monsters drops as you get stronger, it can spawn stronger enemies in lower danger areas.

Basically, because you have more HP, you can take more damage before dying - so the game spawns monsters that can dish out more damage to compensate. I understand that it's rather weird how more health means you're more likely to die, but changing the way danger works without completely upsetting game balance would probably be a nightmare...

Another thing, though, is that some very dangerous monsters use HP thresholds to limit their spawn only after you have that much HP. This can cause problems if you gain large amount of HP without the gear to go with it, and this might be more easy to rectify. Maybe we could change HP thresholds to some gameplay milestones, adding flags like "do not spawn this monster before the player kills Jenny", "do not spawn this monster before the player descends at least to GC4 (but spawn it anywhere afterwards)".

I added one last item, a wand of webbing, and all seems to be working well now. New PR!

I tried to address comments from here and the other thread, but any further remarks are of course welcome.

Oh. I'm sorry, I broke our release.

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.