or One-Trick Pony’s Journey Through The Dark Ages.
I’m half-way done with Meteorans, so it’s a right time to write about Halflings, Deep Dwarves, and Palentongas while the memories are still fresh.
After finishing Centaurs in 0.18, it was the time to deal with seven remaining Halflings, mostly mages. As a species they were quite unremarkable: an obligatory fantasy mini-humans with low HP, gear restrictions, and bad magic apts. Their only gimmick was innate rMut.
Halflings had slightly better magic school apts before 0.19, when they and Kobolds were rebalanced to make Halflings more melee-focused and Kobolds more magic-focused. Unfortunately, this didn’t make Halflings more fun to play.
Their melee aptitudes are a bit deceiving due to gear restrictions and poor magic apts. For example, you could go Short Blades, but -2 Hexes and -3 Spellcasting force you to rely on something else for setting up stabs. In theory, the Usk/WJC and Short Blades combo should be pretty good. Long Blades have the 0 apt and cross-train with Short Blades, but your best option is a demon blade and a shield, since double swords are two-handed for Halflings, and the biggest swords are not usable at all. On the other hand, M&F is a much better choice, because despite the -1 aptitude, you could use an eveningstar (!) or a demon whip with a shield, and these weapons don’t require much skill to get to the min delay.
Bows and crossbows both have a +1 apt, but the former is a trap, since Halflings can’t use longbows, although the latter is pretty good, as you can use all crossbows, even triple ones.
All of the above would be relevant if Halflings didn’t have a +4 apt for Slings. But they are too good at that, the ammo is plentiful, and it’s almost impossible to not find a sling on the first floor. As a low HP species, Halflings enormously benefit from the ability to kill monsters at range. Magic is not a viable option: Halflings have 0 apt for elemental schools, but -3 Spellcasting and -2 Conjurations are quite sad. Also, they can’t use magical staves with a shield. So unless you find some other amazing weapon early on, your best option is always Slings. Also, there was no ranged penalties from heavy armour, which narrowed your build options even more.
My only two non-sling runs were HaBe of Trog, who finished the game with a demon blade and a bunch of slaying. And HaWz of Hep, the most interesting of this whole bunch, who was a full-time lajatang-stabber, which was possible thanks to the boots of the Assassin and a hexer ancestor.
I played each combo in a different version, from 0.19 to 0.25, but it felt like going through 2.5 versions instead of 7. This is what I called the dark ages in the previous part, and it roughly coincides with the period when you couldn’t control ?blinks in Zot. New features were added at a glacial pace, and the development was focused on important, but less flashy parts of the game. Like the server code was drastically improved, seeded play became possible, the WebTiles evolved from a console+ mode into a real Tiles and got better interface with icons and pretty dialog windows.
This graph is self explanatory, even though the commit count doesn’t tell the whole story. For example, the release highlights of 0.22 are much more sad than 0.21’s, despite 0.22 having more commits. If we focus on just spells, then according to the changelog, three versions in a row - 0.22, 0.23, and 0.24 - had no new spells! The dark ages ended in 0.25, when ebering reworked the whole magic system, replacing a bunch of bolt-like and other boring spells with the positional magic™. We had some very positional spells previously too, like the prism is from 0.12 (try to guess who added the spell before clicking the link), but the devs went all-in on the positional magic in 0.25.
The game moved forward slowly, but surely. Here are my notes for each version, highlighting important changes.
0.19:
- Usk and Hep were added, Sif and Nemelex got updates
- A new portal, Desolation, with very slow exploration due to extremely CPU-inefficient fog machines
- Lair became 6 floors deep instead of having 8 floors, Slime got 5 floors instead of 6
- Clouds quickly dissipate when out of LOS :( Casting Freezing Cloud in a corridor and just walking away was too good to be legal
- Translocation restrictions apply to all Zot floors, and there was no status light to warn about that :(
- Emergency flight replaced instadeath when falling into deep water/lava
- You can use scrolls, potions, and books from the floor!
auto_butcher(true/false) option- Boxes of beasts and sacks of spiders finally stack
- Long Blades got riposte
- Monsters drop armour instead of hides
- Harm got better and became non-evil
- Derived undead got hp bars!
- Irradiate gives less contamination
- Alignment auras replaced heart status icons
- Spells: +Infestation, +Lesser Beckoning, -Haste
0.20:
- Species: +Barachim, -High Elves
- A new item type, scarves
- Wandification of some rods, the removal of other rods and high-tier wands, disc of storms was removed too. Lightning rod was added, which didn’t recharge unless you fully drained it (the bug was fixed only in the next version). Wands no longer have a full-LOS range
- Pizza and beef jerky were removed
- Tomb got non-stairdanceable stairs
- Ogres lost their crazy M&F apt, Mummies got +2 to Spellcasting
- Deep Dwarves got a direct healing ability instead of being able to recharge any wand
- Noise bar!
xvshows monster damage\finally greys out unusable itemsauto_butcheraccepts a hunger level instead of being a boolean option- All three mutation potions - cure, beneficial, and the random one - were merged into just one
- The
%screen shows HP/MP regen per turn - Console colours work for more terminals
- Coloured TLAs!
- Spells: +Poisonous Vapours, +Ignition, -Delayed Fireball, -Poisonous Cloud, -Repel Missiles
0.21:
- Gnolls!
- New god, WJC. Tweaks for Gozag, Makhleb, and Zin
- Dith’s mimic no longer copies your weapon enchantment/brand, which was a substantial nerf
- Skill targets! Although they easily overflow: setting a skill to 1.0 usually leaves you with 1.1.
sto set weapon/shield training targets - New tiles
- Wand stacking!
- Doors push items!
- All permafood items were replaced with rations
- Monsters no longer respawn, which was effectively the end of simulationism in DCSS
- Spells: +BVC, -Control Undead, -Cig’s Embrace
0.22 (a version with the least number of gameplay changes):
- New Dith, tweaks for Makhleb and Fedhas
- No more free-roaming ghosts
- Spell library!
- Capital letters for stat increases >:(
- Minimap shows the exploration horizon
- LRD can no longer destroy walls
0.23:
- Exploration traps. Monster don’t activate traps while out of your LOS, which means no more waiting for monsters to teleport to you on Z:5
- Gauntlet replaced Labyrinth
- Yet another Nemelex update, goldified decks
- Rift and 8 reworked unrands
- Seeded play
- Killer Klowns got pies
- Swamp worms got harpoon shots
- Monster weapons have not only the brand, but also the enchantment and cursed/uncursed status identified on sight
0.24:
- New Vampires that don’t need to drink blood and can change their blood state at will
- Thrown weapons reform: blowguns were removed, boomerangs were replaced with tomahawks. Javelins always penetrate now, and there are fewer ammo brands
- New Fedhas and Sif
- Vamp weapons no longer have a food cost
- Desolation’s fog no longer eats all the CPUs!
- Items could be equipped from the floor
- Traps appear in stash search results
- Summoners are highlighted when you select their summons
- Scarves are finally visible on the player tile
- Species/background icons on the New Game screen!
0.25:
- Positional magic! Ozo’s Fridge got a buff! Absolute Zero, the most balanced spell ever, was added. Dispel Undead and Agony became melee range spells, -Bolt of Draining :(
- New acquirement scrolls that allow you to select your reward!
- Miscasts/god wrath/death curses/Zot trap effects reform
- No more D:1 monsters near the entrance and better arrival vaults with multiple exit points
- Potions of stabbing
- Tin of tremorstones! It had 3 charges and a fast recharge speed initially, and the combination of the tin and Harm was truly ridiculous
- Phial waterlogs monsters!
- Magic mapping displays traps
- Distortion weapons don’t teleport monsters, making the brand less annoying
- Swapping Harm no longer drains you. Harm can appear on randarts and scarves
- Console monster list shows ranged/polearm weapons and monster statuses!
- Maggie, the first alt-timeline unique, was added
- Summons can be inner-flamed! Inner flamed monsters produce fire clouds on damage instead of just exploding on death!
The game got visibly better during this period, but a lot of pain points were still present. The biggest annoyances were food and random curses, but a bunch of small ones also remained for a while, like non-goldified manuals. Enemies have stopped respawning in 0.21, which made the late-stage hunger clock even more ridiculous: you had to pay permafood for travelling to shops and to your stash.
There will be more about that when we get to Deep Dwarves.
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