Potions of Healing

All your questions answered.
serina
Crystal Ooze
Posts: 373
Joined: Sat 15.09.2007, 18:42

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by serina » Thu 10.12.2009, 21:10

None of my meleeing characters (warriors, rogues and in part rangers) have ever had a problem getting enough heals. MAngband is all about what you choose to fight. If you have 500 HP and wish to fight the bigger dragons or worse, sooner or later you'll end up without heals or dead without heals :). However once you get stats and get properly equipped, you can kill most of these without even touching the heal-macro.

The clue is: You don't have to kill everything. There are ALOT of tools to be used other than potions of healing. For example: Wands of teleport other, wands of stone to mud (dig a trap for the huge dragon), staves/scrolls of banishment, staves/scrolls of *destruction*, staff of earthquake, scrolls of protection from evil etc. The list is LONG. Use these items as "gold sinks". You cannot bring up 432784 items in your inventory, when it's mostly full. With 700 HP, you can easily kill most monsters without heals.

With unlimited heals, resists and some speed you'll be pretty invincible (like priests). Priests however lack the pure melee power to kill everything (including Morgoth) unless you have truly incredible gear. Every class has drawbacks and different strategy. Unlimited healing capability would mean everyone would use the exact same strat. Melee while punching the heal-macro over and over. This would make the priests very sad unless they go back up to 5 BPR I imagine.

The world of MAngband offers many many tools. Figure out how to use all of them perfectly, and the minions of Morgoth will be of less nuisance. Leave greed behind and find an easier vault if you don't wish to offer up all your heal-pots as a trade-off.

ZAL

Emulord
King Vampire
Posts: 252
Joined: Mon 30.04.2007, 20:19
Location: UIUC

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Emulord » Fri 11.12.2009, 00:34

Good post Zal. Unfortunately the temptation to scum for heals is very great. Maybe if they were very expensive, but available then the temptation to scum for cheap heals would be less.

schroeder
Giant Mottled Ant Lion
Posts: 204
Joined: Sat 14.06.2008, 04:23
Location: Somewhere in Illinois in the USA

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by schroeder » Fri 11.12.2009, 03:47

Though it pains me to say this...
The current system of inexpensive but rare heals from the BM causes massive cheese.
A character can just sit outside the BM, but a heal pots, and trade them for cash and stat pots for easy, risk-free, sustainable stat gain.

I am of the opinion that pricing (and perhaps rarity for certain things) should be totally revamped for mangband. Because all though these changes take us away from the details of angband, they allow us to keep the balance of angband, which is what really counts.
Anything worth being done, is worth being overdone.
My Mangband videos; http://www.youtube.com/user/Schroederband

Hades
Giant Mottled Ant Lion
Posts: 218
Joined: Tue 14.12.2004, 22:39

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Hades » Fri 11.12.2009, 12:55

If you are saying you don't need many heals at the Bottom of the dungeon. Then I am speechless. But on a different note, not everyone plays like you do. We like to dive deep and play fast. We love the speed and thrill of the game. I've noticed a lot of players nowadays don't go below 2k, or even 3k. Even at level 50. Which is fine, its how you like to play. But you have to understand and put the matter into perspective. Other people then you play this game. Some people dive deep, some people dive shallow. And there are people like me that dive to 4500ft at level 30 =)! The whole point is, the heal ratio is not balanced. And I do agree with this. For I have checked the BM every few minutes for an hour straight and have gotten 1 or no heal potions. And No one in there right mind will ever dive at lets say 5000k below without heals, or with only one or two. Lots of unexpected things happen in the depths below.

What I am saying is, we don't need heals to be stupidly findable, but at the current moment they are to rare for there purpose and need. They are 100% essential to dive in this game for experienced players. and 1 heal pot an hour(sometimes none an hour) Is just totally unacceptable no matter what or which way you turn it.

So you might say, don't dive deep and kill petty Monsters, but in reality this is not fun for some people (Like myself) Or you might say dive to 6350ft with 6 heal potions, which is close to suicide =) or only good enough for a 5-10min dive if that. So if you never been below 3k, and are saying you don't need many heals and choose your battles. I want you to tell me this after you visited Morgoth's realm of 6350ft. Cause down there choosing your battles are sometimes not what you expect ;).

(My advice, is make heal potions show up in BM a little more, and in bulk of 2-3 a time. Doesn't even have to be often but once a half hour or so is legit I would say. Or even once an hour them come in as 2-3 a time. Doesn't have to be crazy, but it needs to be changed from me sitting in front of the BM for freaking 3 to 4 hours straight just to get a lousy 6 heals.)

Warrior mentioned the new version =). Which I am not expecting to come out for a longer time yet. So in mention of this new version and changes I hope this is one of them so I can stop wasting so much time in town and more time in the dungeon. And if the new version still has many months of development I strongly advice a temporary fix to this issue. Cause I know people like myself are annoyed with it which is one reason I hardly play anymore.

((EDIT: I am not trying to put down other players but I am just saying that the heal ratio is not balanced for the all types of players who play this game. And it needs to be. Right now it is balanced towards slow and steady play cause of the amount of heals that show up, and its not how some people play like myself. So instead of fixing it and putting in more heals, just find the balanced medium for all types of play and go from there. Perhaps a Dungeon store at lets say 5k or even 6k that's like the BM but has a more heal selling ratio? Something of that sort would definitely fix the issue and not cause a cheez of low level characters. and also will Fix the other issue that was mentioned about low lvls trading heals for stat pots. Cause then lvl 50's will have no reason to do this trade if we have a more suitable source of Heals. As I said before, doesn't have to be stupidly findable, just workable.))
PWMAngband Host - Check out http://www.mangband.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=9 and download the client, server, lib files, sound fx patch and even the source code for this new variant!

Emulord
King Vampire
Posts: 252
Joined: Mon 30.04.2007, 20:19
Location: UIUC

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Emulord » Fri 11.12.2009, 17:37

The issue with that is like what Zal said. If we get a practical source of infinite heals, priests will suck and everyone else will be overpowered since they will be able to heal constantly. If such a thing exists, it must have heals be a decent enough gold sink so that we don't have unlimited heals.

User avatar
Warrior
Evil Iggy
Posts: 667
Joined: Sat 26.10.2002, 15:00
Location: Norway
Contact:

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Warrior » Fri 11.12.2009, 19:21

So many excellent points raised by a lot of you, especially Zal displays a profound understanding of the "world" with the point being that once you are able to apply real creativity to your game it gains a lot of depth. The reason I personally enjoy the early game more than the late game is that in the early game you don't have access to all the nice, convenient things you do in the late game, you have to play better in order to do better and it is the mastery of all the random situations you encounter that equals a genuinely great experience.

On a general note (and to repeat myself from my last post) - we plan to re-balance "everything" once we have gathered enough knowledge of what works and what doesn't. Many, if not all, of the "mandatory" items in (almost) every players inventory will be modified in some way so don't worry - change is coming! But not today :)
-- Mangband Project Team Member

Hades
Giant Mottled Ant Lion
Posts: 218
Joined: Tue 14.12.2004, 22:39

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Hades » Fri 11.12.2009, 19:26

So basically you want me as a level 50 to not be able to dive because making a reasonable and logical decision will make priest suck? And even at level 50 gold is easily attained anyway. So the gold sink will never work. And then if you make the gold sink to high, it will take ages to progress and to advance in the game and people will simple quit(know I would). I played a priest and I kinged with a priest, they are fun, they are hard to play, and difficult. Doing what I suggested by adding a store in the dungeon at lets say 5k or 6k will fix all the issues.

1) We save the priest
2) People like me can still dive get heals and enjoy the game
3) I don't have to sit in town for 4 hours
4)We stop the trading of stat pots and large amount of $$$ for heal pots.
5)The "priest" still needs to dive to 5k-6k so still has time to use his healing spell.

And just to add a nitch to it. How about we make it so players can't throw or drop nor sell the healing potions they get from the store to avoid an over collection of healing potions to lower level players. It will make it so you have to dive deep in the dungeon and it will save the priest because they still have to advance pretty deep to get the prize store.

And I am aware that the above will never happen. But fixing the price of healing pots higher and less rare will never work.
And this is the last post I make on this topic, I've explained my argument to many times.
And as I said before, you can have 99 stack of heals in your inventory but if you do not know how to play. You will die a lot. I've been in this game a long time and died many many many times with 20-30heals in my inventory. No such thing as overpowered with heals. Healing takes 1 turn, healing twice takes two turns and etc etc, eventually if it will catch up with you and you die.

Warrior, looking forward to the new version. I hope this issue is fixed in some sort of way. And hopefully with the development teams wisdom the right way. Can't wait to see it =D.
PWMAngband Host - Check out http://www.mangband.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=9 and download the client, server, lib files, sound fx patch and even the source code for this new variant!

User avatar
Warrior
Evil Iggy
Posts: 667
Joined: Sat 26.10.2002, 15:00
Location: Norway
Contact:

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Warrior » Fri 11.12.2009, 20:25

Just to clarify - I originally intended to write a longer reply to each point raised by you guys but ran out of time.
A lot can be said on a "general" level and to some extent it is easier than to go into details but here is the deal:

The game is supposed to be hard.

The game is supposed to be fun.

These two go hand in hand and what we try to do is to find the perfect balance. This is not an easy task.

As in all "arguments" it is easy to say "this won't work" but typically much harder to come up with something that WILL work.
While I am convinced a shop at 5k will not "solve" this problem it is also hard to provide an alternative that will work "out of the box".

When you say the "development teams wisdom" - we have spent countless hours debating, on a high level, how to deal with this, I believe some of the things we have planned will improve overall balance a lot, things such as house building for example will change the entire concept of player shops, once you have to spend a large amount for each extra space in your house you will consider very closely what item to put there. We've discussed "soul-bound" items which will (under certain conditions at least) make it impossible for other users to pick up items they haven't found themselves and there are a lot of more advanced ideas that will, once applied to the game in a thoroughly thought out way, fix - or maybe rather make "things fall into place".

But to go back into the details, I believe the way to "fix" this is to spread the distribution of healing potions (and to be general again - also many other consumables), throughout the dungeon. Healing potions will still be findable shallow in the dungeon but they will become more common as you go deeper in the dungeon with the classic idea being:

With great risk comes great rewards.
-- Mangband Project Team Member

Billsey
King Vampire
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun 12.02.2006, 14:36
Location: Oregon, USA
Contact:

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Billsey » Sun 13.12.2009, 19:34

I'm always amazed when someone says they sat in front of shop 7 for an hour waiting for a Heal pot... Heal pots have a base depth of 750' and a secondary depth of 3000'. It seems like it'd be a lot easier, and more fun, to just drop down into the dungeon and FIND Heal pots! In the 750-1000 range it's not unusual to have one or two Heal available on each level, and I'd expect that 3000-3500 would double that. Either way you can stock up in a lot less time that sitting outside the store.

Emulord
King Vampire
Posts: 252
Joined: Mon 30.04.2007, 20:19
Location: UIUC

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Emulord » Sun 13.12.2009, 19:50

Sometimes when Im lower level, I get to 750' quickly, and stay longer than most dungeon levels so I can make a killing on heal pots.

Thorbear
Two-Headed Troll
Posts: 131
Joined: Wed 12.01.2005, 15:00
Contact:

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Thorbear » Sun 13.12.2009, 22:30

Billsey wrote:I'm always amazed when someone says they sat in front of shop 7 for an hour waiting for a Heal pot... Heal pots have a base depth of 750' and a secondary depth of 3000'. It seems like it'd be a lot easier, and more fun, to just drop down into the dungeon and FIND Heal pots! In the 750-1000 range it's not unusual to have one or two Heal available on each level, and I'd expect that 3000-3500 would double that. Either way you can stock up in a lot less time that sitting outside the store.
Afaik, Myamoto and hades are the only ones doing this.

And I think hades might've misunderstood something in Zal's post, because I'm not of the impression that Zal dives "shallow" ;-)

Judging from the fact that there are quite a few players that have managed to beat Morgoth with the current heal-pot-setting, I wouldn't think that this is a very urgent matter.
That said, I'm in favour of a small change (i.e. increase the amount of heals below 3k and increase the prices).
I am Thorbear...

PowerWyrm
Balrog
Posts: 1574
Joined: Sun 27.11.2005, 15:57

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by PowerWyrm » Mon 14.12.2009, 12:27

Billsey wrote:I'm always amazed when someone says they sat in front of shop 7 for an hour waiting for a Heal pot... Heal pots have a base depth of 750' and a secondary depth of 3000'. It seems like it'd be a lot easier, and more fun, to just drop down into the dungeon and FIND Heal pots! In the 750-1000 range it's not unusual to have one or two Heal available on each level, and I'd expect that 3000-3500 would double that. Either way you can stock up in a lot less time that sitting outside the store.
That's the point here. If you're desperate for heals, start a priest and level it until you get clairvoyance and alter reality. Dive to 750ft. Enlighten it. Cast alter reality. Repeat until you see a heal. Repeat until you have 99 pots. Put them on sale in a house.

Emulord
King Vampire
Posts: 252
Joined: Mon 30.04.2007, 20:19
Location: UIUC

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Emulord » Mon 14.12.2009, 21:25

I think a lot of people never dive shallow, and this is why we have such a shortage. I sometimes go to 50-150' for speed pots if I dont have any and there arnt any in 7. Diving at all is more fun than trying to find some in a player shop or the black market.

Maegdae
Giant Mottled Ant Lion
Posts: 218
Joined: Sat 26.10.2002, 16:52

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Maegdae » Thu 17.12.2009, 21:49

Zal, you're completely on-target as usual. I'll have to note, though, that I've never enjoyed "going around" monsters. I enjoy mangband for the sheer joy of ramming my character directly into the great wyrms and chopping them up. Given that, for me late-game playing at all is just pointless unless I have a goodly large collection of heals. (That's why I created a priest first).

Even with plentiful regular healing potions, priests benefit from unlimited 1k heals - which are quite nice. I almost just bit it from using regular heals after Carcharoth decided to breathe fire, dark, gas, and nether in a row, overpowered the 300 hp heals and rocked me down to 0.

also: I wanna get in this heal pot cheeze, everyone go scum 750 and the black market then meet me in game for what surely be small and completely reasonable amounts of not entirely ridiculous cash and bling bling :D :D :D

(also applies to destruction scrolls, enlightenment potions)
Version 3.12
GAT d- s++:- a14 C++++ UL+ P L+ E? W+ N+ o? K---- w--- O-- M-- V? PS--- PE++ Y+ PGP- t+ 5? X- R+ !tv b+++ DI+++ D+ G+ e- h! !r !z

User avatar
Flambard
King Vampire
Posts: 258
Joined: Wed 20.06.2007, 10:49

Re: Potions of Healing

Post by Flambard » Wed 27.01.2010, 12:52

Zaxx wrote:Speaking of Warrior... does he still have all those stacks of 99 heals in his house? Would be nice to start putting some for sale ;)
I second that! I was expecting Warrior's post to contain all sorts of "you don't need heal pots" lies, but he opted for a general approach ;)

Post Reply