Hello. I’d like to revert to an older version where the gnoll fighters still carried a shield instead of a buckler when they enter the dungeon. Is there a way to revert? I’m running the latest release of Linux Mint. Not a power user at all, so if there’s any helpful advice on this, I’d appreciate it.
If you play online, some servers offer old versions a long way back. If you play offline, it really is trivial to build the game for yourself on Linux and these days backgrounds are changeable by editing human-readable YAML files, not C++ source - you don’t need to be any kind of programmer to give fighters a kite shield.
However, it changed because “with the 0.27 change linearizing shield delay penalty, the shield was a liability for normal sized races. The penalty was sufficiently high that “remove your shield turn 1” advice reappeared and was not unreasonable. This is unfortunate, as a starting kit should ideally be useful at game start.” This is probably less true on gnoll because of the way gnoll apts interact with starting skill allotments but you still might be doing yourself a disservice by reverting it.
On linux I think the best advice for older versions is for better or worse, to compile them yourself. Instructions here, it does require command line but is reasonably straightforward as these things go. Otherwise you’re at the mercy of your distribution’s package manager. (We do now build AppImage files but these don’t go back very many versions.)
Thank you very much! I’ll look into that.
Thanks! I hadn’t considered the penalty side of things. I just have a harder time getting a gnoll fighter as far as I usually could.
I don’t think that is down to starting with a buckler, which even on gnoll may be better now. The early game is quite different and some of the new stuff can (I gather) be quite difficult to deal with until one adapts, most obviously attacks of opportunity.