MAngband

what happened to ghost diving? I would like it reenabled in the next version if nobody has any problems with it.

You can thank Maegdae for having that feature removed.  He was using a ghost to dive down to a certain level and save it so that he would have a 'safe' recall platform for his primary character.  I don't think it will be coming back...

For the first time i find myself slightly annoyed with Maegdae... recalling into nasty monsters is part of the game. Other features of the game should not be used to cheat. I wonder if there is a way that this can be prevented while allowing ghost diving?

Well there was another abuse "we" used.

Die, and dive to like 1500 feet.
Go back up and resurect, then recall as level 1, with top gear, and kill something big, and you will become level 19 or something instantly.

Exp-system works that way.

Well yes, that was done also... as well as ghost diving to the bottom, diving back up, recalling and trying to grab something and praying it'll be neat and that you'll survive to find out.  Thing is those were all terribly risky..  a level 1 at 1500 ft with newbie gear is extremely unlikely to live.  And if s/he DOES kill something and hits level 19.. well they still have newbie gear and are not very likely to make it back, same with the dives to 6350 ( not to mention that if you made it to 6350 and back with an extremely low level character and DID find something neat you would almost certainly be pkilled for it by someone else ).

My wish is for the server to come back on.

Oh yea, and to find the One Ring.

Thats all I have to say on this subject.

Why don't we just disable Maegdae instead of disabling the ghost diving and clone wands we all had so much fun with?  :P Just kidding. At least it now takes mad skillz to powerdive.

Eh, wasn't thinking when I thought up the "Landing Pad" idea.. it only lasted a short time before omebody said it was cheeze anyway  ;D

Since when was the clone wands deal a cheeze?  (Ashi, no fair blaming me for that one.. do your research next time!) just a highly efficient strategy for dealing with Great Wyrms.  Too bad it was removed.  On an unrelated note, join the "Endless "Good" items Forever Alliance now! Campaign for the return of Clone wands and Endless Good items without any risk whatsover!"

Mad skillz?
It doesn't take mad skillz to powerdive, though it helps.. It takes a fast connection and the knowledge of the keys > and <, and what they do.  I've got a slow connection, confuse the > and < keys, lack any sort of "mad skillz" whatsover, and I can make it pretty far down that way!
I'll bet somebody with all three could make it to 6350 on short order.. Somebody want to try?

Sure, Ashi, you come try to disable my Mangband character.. just remember that he dishes out the golden rule x5...

Just kidding!

I'm with you on the clone wands returning, but what do you mean by "endless good items"?

/me steps out of the shadows, and speaks...

Ghost diving was a lot of fun, and I miss it. *shakes fist* When I get a linux server going...!!!

OK, to refute your claim that it takes a fast connection, and a knowledge of the < and > keys... I rarely make a typo at 60 WPM, and I have a dual redundant OC3 + T3 connection, going down to unrestricted full duplex 100baseT to my computer. I can download at 8MB/sec on average, and ping times are low to all hosts. This is better than anyone else who plays here IMO. My brother, who plays here unbeknownst to you all, has played on my connection and can attest to its quality. Quick nugget of info... MAngband rarely uses more than 3K/sec total of your bandwidth, and I've never seen it use more than 6k/sec. And yet, every time I try to stair-scum, I am restricted by my own character's speed and in-game lag caused by the software environment on the server itself, and bottleneck inefficiencies in the single-threaded game code. (Perhaps a second thread for disk access, and a third to keep the clients' screens up-to-date would be appropriate. If only we had money to fund R&D for our server for a couple months!) So, when you scum down the stairs, you always have to sit there for a few turns and accept whatever is at the bottom of the stairwell. It takes a couple turns for your brain to react to what's on your screen. You always take a chance on stairing into something nasty, and no "skillz" can help you when you stair into time hounds or plasma hounds. *grins evilly* Hmm, cyberdemons, hmm...

Now.. clone wands.. those were annoying and therefore a lot of fun to have. I think that with minor modifications they could have been stripped of their cheeze value - perhaps the monster could have mutated, or appeared elsewhere. Or, you get no drops or experience from a cloned monster. That would be ideal. We can't fully blame that on Maegdae, though, because IIRC one of the other players was responsible for annoying Crimson by cloning GSW's. I'm sure you can find many a debate on this elsewhere on the forums, so don't waste disk space with that here.

If I'm correct in assuming this, endless good items would mean... cloning endless GSW's to get their drops? Well, well, well. Let's all cheeze, and take away all the honor we could have had from having good equipment. "I got a Power DSM!" "How many GSWs did you kill to get it?" Can you see how this would be annoying if you got one legitimately?

There will always be people who will test the limits of the system, looking for holes so they can cheat without any alarms going off. They must be killed! No, actually, we just need to make reasonable and just decisions when it comes to those people, and try to close up the holes they uncover without sacrificing gameplay. Maybe if we had checkpoints every 2 hours of active gameplay, we could roll back players that have uncovered bugs without deleting them, and maybe offer them an in-game reward for having found the bug. Did you know that in commercial game development, they hire people to find these holes? It's called "play testing" among other names.

Hmm.. what we really need is a handful of devoted C programmers, with good knowledge of network programming in Linux. And a good way for them to communicate, like a small authorized users only IRC server with logs available online. I'd offer my talents if I could see anything in the game's future.

Anyways I think I've written just about enough for a small novel here, so I'll be going now. Let me know when the server is back up ok? I actually want to play now.

Argh Clone Wands!

According to Crimson, initially... anything legit on singleplayer is legit here.  And using clone wands is a legit tactic according to RGRA.

I will admit culpability on being the one to annoy Crimson.   He stated that the reason he took them out was because it made it too easy for someone to get all of the good artifacts 'at no risk' (note that none of the artifacts that I possess came from cloning wyrms).

I have issue with this for a couple of reasons.  

Reason 1:  Cloning a  monster makes it harder.  Cloned monsters are aggravated which adds +10 speed IIRC.  

Reason 2:  The only time a wyrm is guaranteed easy is if you have one of the _very_ few artifacts that grant immunity to it's breath.

Reason 3:   By the time you're in position to clone wyrms 'at no risk' you're also in a position to scum for GV's etc et al.

Reason 4:  Wyrms are not guaranteed to drop excellent or artifacts so it's still a lot of work if you're actually artifact hunting.

Reason 5:  Wands have limited uses and randomly blow up on recharge so if you're set to clone then you have to gather them (bypassing other useful items) and over all the work involved is IMO pretty much equal to scouring a level for items and/or vault hunting.

So what removing clone wand ability for people greater than level 10 did was... absolutely nothing to high level players and perhaps added annoyance value to mid level characters who want to take a risk.   We in general lost an amusing passtime nothing more.  It did however add yet another useless item to the Mangband experience.  What's next to go?  Summoning staves/scrolls?  People abuse them for xp you know!  And before it's stated that there's no safe way to use them... I already know of ways to finangle a single monster summon and most other people should be able to figure it out as well.

I figure that if someone figures out a creative use for a 'junk' item, well, more power to them.  There's uses for almost everything in the game if you take the time to figure them all out.