User:Hordes/Guide Appendix

Companion pieces to H's Minotaur Fighter Guide.

Appendix 1: Older Versions & Mechanics

If you've watched some of the older videos DCSS, you might notice a few things that are... different. This section will go over more of the major mechanical changes in (recent) DCSS history, and my interpretation for the rationale of removal. This focuses on changes that are relevant to MiFi^Oka specifically, though this is inclusive with changes that effect all/a majority of characters.

Food, Butchering, Chunks - Food was a mechanic in which you had to eat with the e command; food runs down as you explore and/or fight. The main source of food was to chop up corpses and eat their chunks. Food's main purpose (as an extremely soft clock to force players deeper) really could be automated, so... it was automated.

Food also served to punish spellcasters casting their biggest spells all the time via spell hunger. While this did create some amount of depth and had a noticable effect on balance, the devs decided that it simply wasn't necessary. For melee characters with any amount of competency, hunger did not matter past the first few floors - even for the hunger consuming Berserker, even for the corpse-destroying Gozag.

Most players automated most things via rcfile anyway so it really did not matter other than for flavor/traditional roguelike reasons. Now it is replaced by the automatic Zot clock, which is non-intrusive enough that you have to actively enable it via settings to see (it is extremely long and comes with a warning if you get anywhere close to ending, so the "don't worry" intent is right).

Curses - Cursed items would stick to you if you equipped them, rendering you unable to equip another one in it's stead. Weapons, armour, and jewllery were not identified until you wore them or used a scroll of ID. The mechanic served to create some form of strategic risk/reward (which I personally miss a lot). However, the dominant strategy was much too safe and optimal to pull off.

In versions with cursed items (before 0.27), identify scrolls as normal. When you find the scroll of remove curse, you can try on all non-weapon equipment slots, and weapons if you want to risk the extremely low chance for distortion. Scrolls of RC were in the top 3 most common scrolls and curses served zero risk once you had more than one, barring very specific artefacts like the obsidian axe and the curse-focused god Ashenzari. There was space to break this rule, but really only in the first floor or two (and no further).

Overall, if you knew the optimal strategy, there was too little of risk for too little of the game. If you did not know it, then you just got randomly punished for wearing items. Plus, in the lategame, curses just served as annoyance: items were not identified, so you had to wear every single item that you could possibly want to use. Also, lugging around scrolls of ID/RC took up two inventory slots. The devs decided that the lategame burden and "noob trap" functionality were not worth whatever positives this mechanic had, and they were removed.

Random energy, Pillar dancing, Attack of opportunity - Mentioned in the guide itself, but included for completeness' sake. Random energy is/was a mechanic where monsters would randomly get +/- 0.1 turn; a 1/3 chance for +, -, or no change. Pillar dancing is where you run around a monster in a circle (requiring a wall to circle around to do so). Pdancing let you re-roll combat infintely so long as you can take at least one more hit, as both you and the monster regenerated. Both still exist in 0.28, but the former was removed in 0.29. Attacks of opportunity heavily punishes pillar dancing as monsters have a 33% to attack you on retreat.

Exploration traps, Sourceless Malevolence - Exploration traps were introduced in the place of the more logical/conventional, hidden-traps-that-had-a-tile-associated-to-it. This causes some sillyness (like a trap activating before you even leave a staircase), so it was renamed to sourceless malevolence sometime later. Hidden-on-tile traps were annoying because it was more optimal to remember the exact tiles you traveled from and always take that path, which is way too much effort and not supported by the game's autotravel at all.

Floors of the Dungeon - DCSS likes to just remove floors from time to time, like it replaces species. It happens. No branch has been removed since the Hive over 10 years ago, though the portal Labyrinth was replaced with the Gauntlet sometime recently (due to being annoying; it was non-combat related).

Okawaru - Okawaru has existed for the entirety of DCSS, and then some. What changed recently (0.28) was that Okawaru now completely forbids allies, but gained the Duel ability. Previously, Okawaru did not care about allies, and even prior just hated you betraying allies (which didn't matter for 99% of the game). Also, in 0.29, Okawaru throwing gifts were nerfed (halved), which I didn't actually have a place to put in.

Rot, Skill drain - Rot happened with some "undeady" attacks and lowered maximum HP temporarily. Drain used to reduce your skill XP levels temporarily. Rot was removed and drain now lowers max HP; the only difference now is that rot could've been fixed with a potion of curing. This was done because it was harder to accurately gauge the effects of skill level loss compared to mHP loss.

Out of depth timer, monster spawning - Monster spawn post-dungeon generation was removed in 0.21. Previously, monsters (which somewhat quickly became way too difficult for the floor) would naturally spawn over time, which served to softly discourage pillar dancing and to get a move on. It was removed precisely because of its softness; you could still get easy monsters and had to wait a few thousand turns to gamble for them (though a monster which flat out kills you could also spawn).

Ammo (Arrows, Bolts), Fustibalus, Slings / Bows / Crossbow skill - In 0.29, ranged weapons went through (is going through) another overhaul. The seperate Slings, Bows, and Crossbows skill were unified into Ranged Weapons. As Slings was no longer its own skill, Fustibali were no longer needed. Ranged weapons also require no more ammo (annoying and did not matter later on; similar to curses), scale off DEX, and now are slowed by wearing heavier armour with less STR/armour skill.

Magic Resistance, MR - Now called willpower. Name was changed because "magic resistance" implies it also resisted offensive magic like Magic Dart (when it did no such thing).

Blowguns, Needles - Blowguns were removed with darts (a flat out buff, because you don't need to wield a dart).

Name Changes - Too many more to list. Some were renamed for clarity reasons (ring of Robustness -> ring of the Tortoise, where robust always referred to HP), some due to more overt reasons (wand of enslavement to wand of charming, done in 0.27).

The other big name changes were Wizard to Hedge Wizard and Assassin to Brigand, as the older names did not actually reflect the playstyle they implied ("I want to be a cool (offensive) mage" / "I want to sneak up on guys").