Amulets are unbreakable, as are the rings.

From all the uniques you can randomly encouter, I find the reward you get for defeating Guug quite underwhelming. By the time I normally fight him, I don't care for a ruby stone or two that might drop from him.

I would suggest to change him so that he has a random amulet in his inventory. Thus, defeating him would give you nice reward - generally an amulet of ESP, which is nice, but rarely you could find the other amulets, which are even nicer.

Given we're talking about a reward for an already non-guaranteed unique, I don't see a problem with guaranteeing an amulet drop from him. You won't see him in many games, and you still have to beat him to claim the amulet.

Plus sometimes, he will generate with an amulet of life saving and use it himself instead of letting you take it from his corpse. (At least I hope monsters can equip amulets in their inventories...)

What do you think?

All status effects not granted by equipment are cleared on death. This normally does not matter, but when you eat enough blink dogs or floating eyes to get their effect permanently and then you die with AoLS, you will be life saved with the effect cleared.

I found out when a zombie of a vampire killed me on TX 8 and suddenly, I was unable to teleport away safely.

Definitely, and that's why I see no problem with requiring the player to obtain fire resistance in each game - but if there is only one item that gives fire resistance, than that's a problem.


And this is good.

Ivan is not actually that bad in this regard, because fire resistance can be gained from multiple sources (and even than is not strictly necessary, but good luck surviving kamikaze dwarves) and all other gear can be reasonably socm'd and enchanted to end-game quality. Weapons in Ivan are actually very well balanced - you are not required to find an artifact weapon like in NetHack or ADOM, you can use any weapon you like and it can be as powerful as most artifacts, only without added magical benefits. However, some equipment slots could still have more variance - especially something you caould take in place of a belt of levitation, or some good boots comparable to boots of agility. Widening the pool of ascension gear is good, IMHO.

That would be nice, but we should also have plain text logs, becase those are easy to post somewhere without the need to, once again, screenshotting your logs.

What about a tin amulet of mental protection that blocks ESP?

I still think it would be a neat effect, especially for sneaking under the noses of mages or mystic frogs, and giving this effect to an item rather than a material would not necessitate special casing like the change to tin as a material would. Plus having it as an effect would allow eg. magic mushroom flesh to rarely cause it.

It might be nice to try and differentiate the enemy rooster for each dungeon a bit, so you'll see different enemies in lower GC and at the end of TX. While I would have nothing against more differentiated end-game enemies and different obstacles to tackle, I don't think the problem with best ascension kit right now is only in end-game enemies.

You need fire resistance by the time mines start appearing in GC or TX, otherwise you're more or less toast. Cloak of fire resistance is actually the least offender, because we also have the ring and an amulet of elemental protection, which can be used for the resistance. I also don't think it's bad to require the player to have the resistance if s/he want's to have a good chance of survival - just give them the options to gain the resistance from more than a single item.

However, boots of agility are great because of the speed boost they give you, speed being the god stat in most roguelikes for the simple reason that being able to react faster makes it easier to deal with any situation and prevents other monsters from double-turning you with possibly dire consequences. I would still like to see some good reason to wear other boots - boots of strength are already occasionally quite useful, especially if you have low LStr and find a good but heavy armor. Boots of kicking need a large buff, IMHO. Some other boots to compete with agility would be nice. Even if agility still was the best boots, some players might pick a different boots when offered the choice (or is they are running with aritifical limbs and don!t need more Agi).

Belt of levitation is simply superior. No questions. Levitation is very, very powerful, and I think it's good you can only get the belt through a side-quest or a wish. However, adding some more belts you might consider when you don't get levitation, or even when you get levitation, would be very nice. I was thinking about a belt of protection (no magical effect, but very much buffed AV, maybe even unbreakable), or belt of giant strength (enchantment increases both AStr and LStr; yes, it's strong, but it could be as rare as artifacts and would be able to compete with levitation).

It would be nice to have a character log be created after you finish a game (by dying or winning). This would be a .txt file with you end-game message (same as in high scores), but also the name of your character (including alignment and possible polymorph form), your attributes, skills, equipment and inventory, plus massacre history (abbreviated, you only get how many of which monster you killed, how many your allies killed and how much died from different reasons, possibly with the cause of death for uniques, but not for everyone). If possible, could also include similar info for the pets that were on the same floor as you when you died/won.

Basically, this would ba a similar info you get when the game is finished, but in a form you can later share and brang about without the need to make many screenshots. Right not, it's not cool you get to look at this info once, but if you don't remeber to screenshot it, it's gone.

Cape of flying as a quest reward or a wish-only item sounds good, I absolutely agree with you about giving the players more choices. Unfortunately, IVAN suffers the bane of many old roguelikes, having a set of "ascension gear", the best items for their slots - boots of agility, belt of levitation, cloak of fire resistance. (That's not to say I'm never useing other items in those slots, those items are just very, very good even compared to all other equipment available.) It would be nice to mix things up a bit with more items also worthy to be in your end-game equipment. BTW, ommel hair or expensive fabric (also red) sounds great for the cape of flying.

Cape of quickness giving Agi is also an idea I like. We should have more options for cloaks than simply "pick one resistance". Hm, I could try doing a cloak of protection - made of metal, but has no inflexibility penalty, thus giving great AV in exchange for no special powers.

For other multi-slot items, maybe a full plate mail, giving you huge AV, but using up your body, head, gloves and boots slots. Hm, what would happen if one of your hands got chopped off while you were wearing the full plate mail, loosing one of the slots it is equipped in?

And if you want to try out your capes, just put them under cloak base item in item.dat, defining them in define.dat after the current cloaks, and that should be enough.

Just one quick note - I don't think equipment that grants relatively easy to come by (possibility 15 is not that low, IMHO) and more importantly permanent haste or levitation (which are two very powerful effects) would be good. Right now, you can get permanent haste only from Justifier, while belt of levitation is easier to get, but still requires you to finish a side quest or make a wish, which seems OK for an effect that mostly protects you from mines and many other dangers.

I was thinking about adding an amulet of speed which would grant haste, but would be made of bone or plant fiber, thus eventually rotting away, and impossible to SOCM. That way you would get a powerful item, but limited by its life time, while permanent haste seems simply off the scale as far as balance goes.

(The trick with Cleptia and wands of haste is a cool trick and more related to the permanent effects bug / feature than this.)

I do like the idea of great capes / hooded capes / any equipment taking up more than one slot, though. Similarly, we could have knuckledusters that would greatly boost unarmed damage, but would take both your glove and ring slot on one hand.

BTW, you need to also update define.dat and because you added a new base item (cape) and didn't use the pre-eisting cloak base item, you would need to update source as well and compile it (at least AFAIK).