I think that was the first non-baby dragon I've ever fought, that was a nice welcome back to the game. Level 27 human warrior at dungeon level 22:ģ9:15 - whotta haul! 'o' And my first artifact! )Īngband // Got my first-ever artifact from an ambush by two Numenorean uniques! I hope those either came along *after* Hengband forked from it, or that Hengband didn't keep them. I might still be trying to play it except that the dungeon floor generation is either a) really plain and boring-early Angband style, I suppose or b) some really different styles but sometimes really hideous things like these sort of open levels with rows of houses or outbuildings flanked by hedges, which are just an awful, ugly slog. But then they got really ambitious and replaced their small, fixed map wilderness with a completely procedurally generated wilderness-with no map view, clusters of boringly similar towns, and no obvious way to tell the level of the land into which you may wander, short of running into a dreadfully overpowered random monster-which appears to have been a big turn-off. And variants like Hengband branching off, etc. At its height it was the hottest thing going in 'band-land, apparently, and had its own development team cranking out content-far more than Angband was, at the time. Zangband is an interesting example of a game that kind of wrecked itself, at least as far as I can tell from reading about it now, and poking through its remaining web site and versions. Those nasty quests originated back from Zangband Hengband's base game experience so far has been pretty well balanced by comparison-not nearly as well as vanilla Angband's, mind you, but enough to be more or less manageable most of the time-which is maybe another reason why this quest thing stood out like such a sore thumb. Speaking of Frog, the reason I'm not playing that game-while sometimes watching expert angband.live players seemingly effortlessly dicing their way through achingly cool-looking Frog maps-is that I found even the beginning newbie dungeon experience to be packed with incredibly wonky game balance among the races, classes, and AI monsters (and what's with all the duplicate staircases in there? : p) it feels like almost no balancing of the huge amount of content in Frog has been attempted, and the player is just expected to know how things work, and what to avoid-either by reading about it in advance or doing a whole lot of learning by dying.which is what I was doing, because I prefer to see a game for myself. That definitely sounds like a rewarding moment being a noob I stumble through stuff like that in the random dungeons fairly regularly. I din't get the really sweet loot, but still a very memorable moment and great satisfaction. For instance, I recently took a wrong downstair ending up in the Royal Crypt (level 70? quest) with a level 34 character and made it out alive without failing the quest. Personally I enjoy the level 50+ quests in FrogComposband much more than the final two fights. Also, original Angband already had nasty beginner traps - Floating Eyes can para-lock you right on level 1, the dog uniques are very nasty for weaker characters, Hummerhorn swarms can confusion lock you, and going below level 40 without poison resist can get you instakilled by a Drolem/AMHD. You're probably playing melee classes, they can handle pure melee combat in Thieves Quest already I was talking about more fragile spellcasters. This is going to lose you players, as a lot of people will decide they have better ways to spend their time. What strikes me as poor game design and an excellent way to ensure that many players quit your game and never come back is giving such a side quest an intentionally misleading difficulty rating, and purposefully setting it up to assassinate the player as a way to "teach" them a lesson-in a permadeath game, no less. I suppose this is also pointing to the on/off of the free action buff being a bit goofy-but thank goodness obviously some developer knew that paralyzing the player just sucks.)Įlevated risk and elevated reward for optional side quests is fine. Free action also made Old Man Willow, another early quest, feel silly. The "lesson" of that first quest was lost entirely, because the cloaker bounced off my level-19-character-with-free-action and died immediately. (Then I went back and did the beginning quests and, since their scripted content didn't scale, found them to be no challenge, with useless rewards. The one time I went all the way through the Yeek cave beginning dungeon so far, I came out massively over-leveled, having done zero quests. I haven't found myself having to grind at all in the beginning of Hengband.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |