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[snow dwarf]

There isn't a thread for roguelikes just like that, so I'm starting one. Here you can discuss any roguelike in any way and anything roguelike related.

So what roguelikes are you currently playing?

[nenjin]

This thread seems unnecessary given the plethora of roguelike game threads on the front page, right now.

[RoguelikeRazuka]

Alright, I observe there's no specific thread for Angband and its variants (at least, I haven't seen such a one), so I'll ask here. What do you people say about tome 2.3.5? How close is it to the vanilla Angband? I mean, given I don't feel super excited about the latter, am I going to discern the brilliance of the former? What unique is there to it, compared to the vanilla and other roguelikes? In what regards (if any) is it superior?

[nenjin]

There actually is an Angband thread but it hasn't been posted in for a while.

[Frumple]

T2 is... pretty close to as nothing like angband as you can get and still largely use the same mechanics (which is fairly understandable, really -- pernangband decended from zangband more than vanilla, iirc). The comparative uniqueness comes in the form of... basically everything. More races, more classes, more items, more places to go, more things to do. It has skills, it has quests, it has gods, it's got all sorts of stuff. Playing vanilla angband and T2 is pretty close to nothing alike; if you dislike the former, it has to be on a very fundamental level to necessarily mean you'll dislike the latter. The advantages it has over other *band variants is mostly that "more", but especially in unique class mechanics, the world map and quest system (relatively simple though it is), and just options in general, gameplay wise. It's not as strong on that level these days, but it's still one of the most expansive RLs, and particularly *bands, on that front.

Personally, back when I played T2, I couldn't sodding stand vanilla angband. It bored the everloving hell out of me, and I still seriously dislike it. T2 I played the blazes out of -- it was interesting, it had all sorts of moving parts that angband doesn't have, gives bucketloads more variance and options in progression, and on, and on, and on. It's not as tight a game -- base angband is definitely the better balanced of the two, for all that matters in a single player roguelike -- but it's definitely more fun, imo.

Never did beat T2, though. I did beat Furyband, which is basically T2 on steroids and possibly a bit of crack, but not the base ToME. Furyband's actually one of the only two *band variants I ever beat (the other being steamband, via naturalist water artillery cheese), despite probably soaking a few hundred hours into playing them, though I didn't end up going for the void win or whatever that was.

[Frumple]

Zang definitely adds a lot on top of vanilla, though the divergence isn't as strong as between vanilla and T2. Overworld, quests iirc, more involved dungeon generation, more classes and races... probably stuff I'm forgetting, too.

I could never really get into it, though, m'self. Personal experience was that it was... notably more difficult than angband was, and both significantly more expansive and far less directed than T2. It did hold my interest a lot more easily than vanilla did, for what it's worth.

If you're looking for something else along those lines, you probably want to check the Hengband stuff... I think Poschengband is the most recently updated line of it. It's definitely more difficult and interesting than angband, and with nearly as many moving parts as T2. Ninjas have bloody beautiful mechanics, heh.

[Antioch]

I can't really get into other roguelikes after playing dungeon crawl stone soup. DCSS just eliminates all that tedium most other roguelikes have and it's interface is so much better.

Dungeons of Dredmor is nice too.

[Frumple]

Yeah, dcss is pretty tightly made. Shame it's such a misery to play Still have trouble remembering how I managed to stand trudging through two wins, heh. The TD mode is pretty neat, though. Probably be the only thing that brings me back in the future.

Fair amount of newer stuff's been integrating similar interface features, though. Mostly by way of goto/autoexplore stuff, which is most of what's notable about dcss.

If you're fond of dreadmor, you might consider Dungeonmans. Somewhat similar design ethos.

[ventuswings]

Out of many roguelikes, I find myself constantly coming back to Brogue.
I love it for its elegant simplicity.

[Cthulhu]

I love Angband.  It's the last of the Big Three I need to beat, I beat Nethack and don't plan on ever going back because Nethack is secretly a Bad Game.  I also beat Crawl and come back to it frequently, it's a nice middle-ground between the two.

Angband is like boiled chicken breast and brown rice.  It's good for you, but too much of it and the leanness of it is gonna wear on you.  Nethack is more like a shepherd's pie, where the programmers opened up their idea cupboards and just threw everything they found in there.  There's a lot of variety but it's kind of a clusterfuck, and a lot of the ideas were past their expiration date and have probably gone bad.

I would say that from an objective game-design standpoint Crawl's the best of the three.  But I gotta fuckin beat angband.  It's my destiny.

[Zireael]

Zang definitely adds a lot on top of vanilla, though the divergence isn't as strong as between vanilla and T2. Overworld, quests iirc, more involved dungeon generation, more classes and races... probably stuff I'm forgetting, too.

Terrific room descriptions! Something that's long inspired me but so far eluded my ability to code

[getter77]

Unangband is also pretty up there on the More front:

http://unangband.blogspot.com/

[Damiac]

Nethack is a secretly terrible game, I'm glad someone said it!  That said I played that stupid game until I beat it, otherwise my internet cooldudez cred might run out, you know?

DCSS is an extremely tight roguelike, I do like it, and the interface is really good.  That said I've played the everloving hell out of it, and I probably won't go back for at least a few months, if not longer.

Tome 4 is... barely a roguelike.  Kinda fun to play I guess, but no semblance of even an attempt to balance it, extremely random difficulty spikes, and that's just on the normal difficulty.   I beat it with a fire mage, basically the easiest way to win, and I feel no need to ever go back to it.

[Cthulhu]

Nethack hate/criticism is common in DCSS at least.  I think it was there, or on SA, or somewhere, I heard Nethack described as what happens when programmers think they don't need designers.

Which sounds about right.  Crawl's continual winnowing of ideas makes people upset sometimes, but design-wise it's good, they're mostly getting rid of useless options, no-brainer choices, false choices, etc.  Nethack is full of choices that don't mean anything and options that are objectively better than others (Protip, Silver DSM is objectively the best DSM because a free amulet slot is better than a free cloak slot, anyone who suggests Gray DSM is stupid)

 Nethack is only infallible in communities where nobody's played any other roguelikes.  It sours real quick when you're exposed to stuff like DCSS.

[Frumple]

Thanks for the suggestion of Poeschengband - I've given it a go and it seems interesting, though confusing. I get the impression there's a virtue system, but it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere? I'm playing a Paladin, so I'm trying to avoid attacking sleeping monsters and losing virtue, but there doesn't seem to be any practical way to wake up monsters before attacking (I'm missing Crawl's 'shout' command here).

Also, is dual-wielding documented anywhere? I tried sticking a short sword in my left hand to go along with my tulwar, but I seemed to be performing worse so I went back to solo-wielding.

I think the help files in game (or maybe in the game directory) give something on it. Checking, it gives at least a bit in help -> creating a character -> proficiency levels. Something else shows up in the faq part of the help files.

Dual wielding, most classes start off with zero proficiency in it (to check proficiency, hit ~, and then go to... the second page, I think. It'll have something about that sort of thing under the misc one), which means the penalties are faintly ridiculous. Can't quite remember how to check how bad it gets in poscheng, though, but it's mostly just a fairly massive (like -50 or something at the very beginning, maybe worse) penalty to to-hit. After you use it for a good while, you'll start getting better at it and the penalties will start dropping and, I think, eventually go positive. Weapon proficiency helps there, too (since it boosts to-hit for the specific weapon), as does anything in general that gives +hit -- blessing scrolls and whatnot are particularly nice on that front, once you've got a bit of gold to burn. If you don't start off with anything in it, it's probably a good idea to hold off for a while on training it, or at the very least keep something to swap/take one of the weapons off when you're fighting anything that's even the most remote of threats.

Does seem like they removed angband's shout command (it's usually shift-x, iirc), though. I think you can get a similar effect by just waiting nearby until they wake up, particularly if you're not very stealthy. Later you should be able to find aggravate equipment or whatev' (lighting effect'll do it to, I think, providing they're not light sensitive) and go things that way if you really want to. Probably stuff I'm forgetting, too. Never really bothered to care about alignment.

Insofar as I can tell, no, the virtue system isn't documented. I don't recall what/if anything it really does, either*. There's a birth option to turn it off, and as near as I've noticed checking ladder dumps of winners and such most people just don't seem to bother caring about it. I'd probably just turn it off if you don't want to bother with it. Never really noticed it adding much to the game, s'mostly just there for flavor.

*Though looking into it a bit, it mostly seems to be a very small effect. Few percent on spell failures if you're casting conflicting aligned spells, some monsters being slightly harder to tame/control that sort of thing.

E: That said, if you can stand machine translation, this looks like spoilers for one of the other heng variants. Virtues are on the left list of topics, near the top; the effects would be mostly the same in poscheng. Not too hard to puzzle most of it out, checking over it.