or Are We There Yet?
Since I’m done with the megaprogress, I want to get back to forumprogress (© by rypofalem) and discuss Palentongas and late-0.20s DCSS in general.
Apparently, there is a legal requirement for the game to have at least two barding-wearing species, so the devs added Palentongas immediately after removing Centaurs in 0.26. This new species had slightly better aptitudes for weapons, defensive skills, and spell schools, but also -2 Ranged and -3 Throwing, just to highlight that it’s definitely not a Centaur MK-2.
Instead of high speed, Palentongas got Rolling Charge - a free and unlimited short-range Vhi’s. The ability was handy for chasing blinkers and for getting into melee/Sticky Flame/Irradiate range to specific monsters. Thanks to good HPs, bardings, and the defensive Curl ability, Palentongas were quite durable, and you could easily turn them into competent melee, hybrid, and caster chars. And if you really wanted, you could play them as ranged chars too, because -2 Ranged apt was not completely prohibitive. My PaCK didn’t have much trouble switching to ranged weapons and winning with a ranged title.
But Palentongas felt a bit bland, so they survived only for 4 versions. Also, even though Rolling Charge was free and useful, you could completely ignore it and play the species as fast Nagas. Additionally, all this high-speed rolling felt thematically inappropriate when playing Chei-worshipping chars, but this god didn’t punish you for that.
I had 10 Palentongas left, and I won 4 of them with 15 runes. Partially I did this to get low-hanging combo high scores, but also to confirm one sudden observation about spells. But more about this later, and first let’s see what 0.29 gave the players in terms of changes and new features.
0.29:
- Meteorans replaced Deep Dwarves
- Ranged reform: ranged weapons no longer require ammo, there’s one skill to rule them all, your attack speed is affected by the encumbrance penalty, and ranged damage scales with Dex
- Long and Short Blades got Dex scaling too
- Backgrounds got a bunch of starting consumables. The goal was to make the early game less brutal after the recent monster attack speed buff
- Abyss became rewarding once again, its depth was increased from 5 to 7 floors. Rune lights and persistent min depth were added
- Dungeon shafts became “safe”, no longer landing you right next to monsters
- All unexplored stairs are fast now, instead of only the first one
- Lair got shorter: 6 → 5 floors
- Random zombies and skeletons were removed from D
- Moths of wrath can affect tentacled monstrosities and some other monsters :(
- Formicids can wield giant (spiked) clubs now
- Item sets were added
- New items: wands of light, quicksilver, and roots, scrolls of butterflies and poison. Finally you can use !attraction and ?poison together!
- Yuif’s hammers returned!
- Vitality got double HP and MP regeneration
- Holy word scrolls were removed. Most of the game they just wasted your inventory space, so it was optimal to leave them on the floor and pick them up only for doing Crypt, Tomb, and for the orb run
- Random move energy for monsters was replaced by everyone’s favourite 1/3 chance to do a catch-up attack
- Necro spells had a mini-reform
- Irradiate gives more contamination now :(
- Fridge checks for adjacent monsters :(. It was a bit too much of a nerf, so the penalty was reduced in 0.30
- Excruciating Wounds was finally removed! Somehow this brand-giving spell survived for much longer than all other brand spells, which were removed 14 versions ago, in 0.15
- A whole bunch of new icons were added, including icons for monster status effects and icons for mutations. Statue Form got a bunch of species-specific tiles
- Damage ratings were added! Initially, they were displayed only in weapon descriptions, but it was a huge UI improvement anyway
- Armour descriptions got the AC change preview
At the same time, the game still had some game mechanics that I thought were long gone:
- Monsters still use scrolls and potions. Do you remember that corridor-shaped bailey with orcs, which had a pile of summoning scrolls in the middle?
- Faded altars don’t have previews and they are fully random
- There are no artefact magical staves still
- Vorpal brand is everywhere and it’s the optimal/boring choice for a lot of weapon types
The removal of ranged ammo and introduction of item sets significantly reduced the overall inventory pressure, which was one of the top problems in old DCSS. And if you squint hard enough, you could almost feel like playing a modern version. About 90% of the pain points were either removed or addressed in some other way. But the more I played 0.29, the more I noticed that there was something missing, something big and important: the content.
The Dark Ages and especially the positional magic reform felt like a big extinction event, a meteorite that wiped out all the dinosaurs - old simulationist game mechanics, boring items and spells. And it took some time to repopulate the Dungeon with new spells, monsters, and items.
The gaps/free design spaces are especially noticeable in spells and monsters. In 0.29, Orc and Crypt were filled to the brim with popcorn, and the Depths had very few non-borrowed from other places monsters. The Zot felt scary, but repetitive. There were no new weapon types since forever.
The four 15 rune games I played felt very similar in terms of available blaster mage spells. Of course it’s possible to go through the whole game with Sandblast → Stone Arrow → Iron Shot → (optionally) LCS, but I’m talking about the absence of alternatives, about having clear winners for specific roles, and obvious gaps in level 5-8 spells in some schools. Like, your best early AoE option is OTR and Ignite Poison. Starting from S-branches, Fridge becomes the answer for everything, plus it’s the best option for Slime. Fireball is clearly the best spell for watery S-branches. Irradiate solves omni-resistant monsters, as long as they don’t have too much AC and health. LRD is an unmatched counter for brittle monsters. Oh wait, it’s actually a bad example, since there are no alternatives for this specific role still. Next, you need Ignition, Fire Storm, and Shatter for a zig and Tomb, MCC for bosses and uniques, Chain Lightning and Necromutation for Hells, Pan, and Tomb.
All four extended chars went through the same spells. Three worshipped Veh and one was following Ash, and surprisingly, Ash felt stronger than Vehumet. Pa’s mediocre magic apts meant that I had a constant “what to train” struggle, and Ash’s skill bonuses greatly helped there.
The whole list of player spells looked like this (I got these 109 spells by combining the libraries of my 15R chars):
Agony, Airstrike, Alistair’s Intoxication, Anguish, Animate Armour, Animate Dead,
Apportation, Beastly Appendage, Blade Hands, Blink, Borgnjor’s Revivification,
Borgnjor’s Vile Clutch, Call Canine Familiar, Call Imp, Cause Fear, Chain Lightning,
Confusing Touch, Conjure Ball Lightning, Conjure Flame, Corpse Rot, Dazzling Flash,
Death Channel, Death’s Door, Discord, Disjunction, Dispel Undead, Dispersal,
Dragon Form, Dragon’s Call, Enfeeble, Ensorcelled Hibernation, Eringya’s Noxious Bog,
Fire Storm, Fireball, Flame Wave, Foxfire, Freeze, Freezing Cloud, Frozen Ramparts,
Fulminant Prism, Gell’s Gravitas, Hailstorm, Haunt, Ice Form, Ignite Poison, Ignition,
Infestation, Inner Flame, Iron Shot, Irradiate, Iskenderun’s Battlesphere,
Iskenderun’s Mystic Blast, Leda’s Liquefaction, Lee’s Rapid Deconstruction,
Lehudib’s Crystal Spear, Lesser Beckoning, Lightning Bolt, Magic Dart, Malign Gateway,
Manifold Assault, Maxwell’s Capacitive Coupling, Mephitic Cloud, Metabolic Englaciation,
Monstrous Menagerie, Necromutation, Necrotise, Olgreb’s Toxic Radiance, Orb of Destruction,
Ozocubu’s Armour, Ozocubu’s Refrigeration, Passage of Golubria, Passwall, Petrify,
Poisonous Vapours, Polar Vortex, Portal Projectile, Sandblast, Scorch, Searing Ray,
Shatter, Shock, Silence, Simulacrum, Slow, Spellforged Servitor, Spider Form, Starburst,
Static Discharge, Statue Form, Sticky Flame, Sting, Stone Arrow, Storm Form,
Sublimation of Blood, Summon Cactus Giant, Summon Forest, Summon Guardian Golem,
Summon Horrible Things, Summon Hydra, Summon Ice Beast, Summon Lightning Spire,
Summon Mana Viper, Summon Small Mammal, Swiftness, Teleport Other, Tukima’s Dance,
Vampiric Draining, Wereblood, and Yara’s Violent Unravelling
Note that there were no talismans yet, so 8 forms were available via spells. The game had no “essential” positional magic spells like Plasma, Permafrost, and Arcjolt. There was no Forgecraft yet, and Summonings had a pretty limited selection of allies. It wouldn’t be fair to call 109 spells a “bare minimum”, but it’s undoubtedly better to have alternatives for specific roles than have just one option.
It’s kinda interesting that all these content gaps weren’t that obvious to me back in the 0.29 days. Of course there were discussions about adding more mid- and end-game spells, about making form spells less tedious to use, and so on. The game was steadily getting better and better, so it was impossible to imagine an avalanche of new content that was furiously approaching.
In the post about Dwarves I already mentioned how the GDR reform and monster attack speed buff made life of melee chars harder. Now we got attacks of opportunity™, which affected lightly armoured chars too. As a result, I noticed myself doing more stairdancing compared to pre-0.28 games. 0.30s versions gave the player new tools for dealing with monsters, but it feels like stairdancing is far away from being solved still.
There weren’t many screenshot-worthy moments this time, but I found this absolute gold during my PaHW game.
It was so perfect that I just closed the door and went deeper into the Depths without disturbing Boris.
The next part will be about Meteorans, the final megaprogress species, and about this whole dive into the old versions in general. Stay tuned.
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