Wesband, MP dungeon-crawler (now for Wesnoth 1.9.14+ !)

[Exasperation]

NPCs should do healing automatically as normal, but to heal with a player character, you right click on the target and select the use/cast command, then select the spell/item you want (this is less convenient than the automatic healing, but has the advantages of being able to heal at any point during your turn and being able to choose which targets to heal - including yourself). This is also how you use the silver mage's teleport, healing potions, etc.. Note that different spells/items have different targeting requirements (healing spells on yourself or an adjacent unit, teleport on an empty hex, summon spells on an adjacent empty hex, and so on).
PCs also use mana when casting spells. You get back 1 mana per turn, or all of it when there are no enemies around and you get to rest.
There are also actions to take into account; each turn you get a simple action and an attack action. You can use a potion as a simple action or a scroll as an attack action. You can give up your attack action for a second simple action. Casting a spell takes up to a simple action (if you have a high casting speed, you can cast more than one spell with an action, but you will always be able to cast at least one spell per simple action).

The version thing is just because Ken_Oh forgot to update the version number when he uploaded 0.4.2 to the add-on server. The version on the add-on server now is 0.4.2.

[Golbeeze]

Is there a way to add talent points through debug? I tried unit talentpoints= 20 but it didn't do anything. I just want to test a few builds quickly and I figured that would be the fastest way.

[Exasperation]

Not directly; for debug purposes we were using a lua script to modify talentpoints and other things in the unit.variables container, but the ':unit' debug command can only modify things in the base unit container (so you can do things like :unit hitpoints=5 but not things like :unit status.poisoned=no). You can, however, give yourself enough experience to level up (:unit experience=<whatever>) and get the talentpoints that way. Also, in Wesband/events/initialization.cfg there is a line '{VARIABLE init_talentpoints 0}' that you should be able to use to modify starting talentpoints.

[Golbeeze]

Thanks! Now its time to find out if I like evade more than armor!

[Jamini]

I've been playing this a good amount recently, and I've got to say that you all have done a really good job with it. Wesband is a little complicated at first, but once you start going it becomes fairly easy to play really quickly.

Anyway, some bugs and suggestions:

-Bugs
1. Occasionally when leaving a menu, especially the leveling menu, units SW of the affected character will be duplicated. This is especially noticeable when a defeated enemy respawns with full health after you kill it. (I've had a henchman and several enemies duplicated. I will get you guys a save with an example.

2. Twice now, around dungeon levels 6-8, when returning to town I've gotten the following error:

game_error : Unknown unit type: WBD Silver Mage

3. Occasionally traits do not show up prop

4. Feeding does not work when given to an existing unit (such as the ghoul) outside of natural leveling. I've seen this problem in SurvivalX as well as here, so it may be an issue with the ability.

5. Sometimes Initiate and civilian henchmen do not choose the abilities for their classes when they advance. (I've had a Initiate go to a mage with shadow wave and chill wave.. then lose the abilities when he leveled again, Initiate who went Dark Adept and received nothing at all for it, and Civilians who level into thieves almost never bother to learn backstab... which defeats the purpose of bothering to level them that way.

While it is cool that henchmen choose their own abilities as they level, it would be nice to at least make it heavily weighted towards the base abilities of the class.

-Suggestions
1. It's rather depressing that there are no tomes available yet in the magic shop. Right now the only spells we can learn as the ones granted by a mage's order... which are quite limited (though powerful). At the bottom of the page I've compiled a list of possible spells.

2. Secondary, random, mini-dungeons outside of the main dungeon would be a nice addition. Not only would it give us a chance to change the scenery (Imagine, in-between levels 4-5 in your set Wesband group you could take a break from the main dungeon and go explore a short single pirate ship map filled with hostile mermen, tricky naga, and one crazy goblin sailor.) but it could also be a good opportunity to give out unique items. (Such as a Balanced Flaming Sword [a sword with the balanced stat that deals fire instead of blade], or an "Ice Short Bow" that slows as well as deals decent damage.)

Having this randomly-generated would be a HUGE bonus.

3. Potions that can temporarily enchant a weapon with a special damage type, and enchanted weapons that deal unusual damage. Everybody loves flaming swords and blessed daggers.

4. It would be nice to see an Orc and Troll shamans in the class select list. Learning magic with those races is often not worth the effort... sadly. It would be even cooler if there was a "Create Your Own" adventurer, where you get to pick all the stats for your character from the ground up.

5. Light axes and Light Maces seem to be superior to their no-adjective counterparts. By the time a character has the proper body to wield either, they can oftentimes get 10-4 or higher with the Light varient. I do not know if this was intended or not.

Some suggested Spells and Tomes

Summon Elemental - Troll (Earth, Fire), Human Magic (Red) (Fire)
6 Mana, 4 Casting time (Requires a complex to cast)
-Targets empty adjacent square
-Summons an elemental of specified type. The level of the elemental is one lower than that of the caster.
-Summoned elementals follow the same rules that elementals from a scroll do.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost- 600 Base gold

Flash - Troll Magic, Human Magic (Red)
2 Mana, 1 Casting time (Requires a simple action to cast)
-Targets self
-All units (including allies) adjacent to the caster have their chance to hit reduced to 30% for their next turn. This also affects the caster. Magical spells ARE effected (unless that is impossible)
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 250 Base gold

Hex - Swamp Magic, Human Magic (Dark), Tribal Magic
2 Mana, 1 Casting time (Requires a simple action to cast)
-Targets an adjacent foe.
-The Target's strikes are reduced by half for one turn.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 350

Haste - Tribal Magic, Swamp Magic, Human Magic(Initiate)
3Mana, 1 casting time (Requires a simple action to cast)
-Targets an adjacent ally or self
-The Target receives +(casterlevel) MP for their next turn. If it is cast on yourself, you also recover MP equal to your caster level.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 200

Waterbreathing - Swamp Magic
1 Mana, 1 casting time (Requires a simple action to cast)
-Targets adjacent ally or self
-Target receives the ability to ambush in water hexes for (Caster Level) turns.
-Water walk cancels this spell.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 150

Invisibility - Human Magic(Red), Faerie Magic
4 Mana, 3 casting time (complex action to cast)
-Targets adjacent ally or self
-Target recives the ability to ambush from any hex for one turn.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 600

Water walk -Human Magic (White), Faerie Magic
1 Mana, 1 casting time (Requires a simple action to cast)
-Targets Adjacent Ally or Self
-Target treats water tiles as plain floor for (Caster Level/3) turns. This spell cancels Waterbreathing.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 300

Illuminate - Human Magic (White)
3 Mana, 3 casting time (Requires a simple action to cast)
-Targets any tile within 5 hexes
-That tile is treated as Illuminated, giving lawful units +25% damage and chaotic units -25% damage while they stand there.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 400

Bind - Forest Magic, Runic Magic
2 Mana, 1 casting time
-Targets an adjacent enemy
-Targeted enemy's MP is reduced to 0 for the next turn. It may still attack.
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome Cost - 200

Strength - Tribal magic, Runic Magic
4 Mana, 3 Casting time (Requires a complex action)
-Targets an adjacent ally
-Target ally recives (Caster Level) extra damage on all attacks for their next turn.
-Learned from a Tome
Tome Cost - 400

Vigor - Human Magic (White), Forest Magic
4 Mana, 3 Casting time (Requires a complex action)
-Targets an adjacent ally
-Targeted ally receives (Caster Level/3) extra strikes on all attacks for their next turn,
-Learned from a Tome.
Tome cost - 700 Gold

Animate Plant- Forest Magic
6 Mana, 4 casting time (Requires a complex action)
-Targets an adjacent, empty, mushroom grove or forest hex.
-Target hex is transformed into a cave (mushrooms) or grassland (forest) tile
-A Sporeling (mushrooms) or a Wose (forest) is spawned in the empty tile. It acts in the same manner as any other summon (I.E. from a scroll). The level of the summon is one below that of the caster.
-Learned from a Tome
Tome Cost - 1,200 Gold

Shield - Runic Magic, Faerie Magic
2 Mana, 2 casting time (Requires a simple action)
-Targets nearby adjacent ally or self.
-Target receives (Caster level x 10%, max of 50%) bonus resistance to all physical (Runic) or magical (Faerie) damage.
-Learned from a Tome
Tome Cost - 350 Gold

[Exasperation]

Thanks for the input. Addressing your points:
1) That sounds to me like it could be related to this bug. If so, there isn't much to be done about it on our end (although I might be able to manage a partial workaround; no promises, though, and it probably wouldn't be soon).

2) Looks to me like the Silver Mage never got converted to the new npc system (WBD <unit type> is the converted version of <unit type>), but got left in the list of henchman that could be hired in the tavern. Thanks for catching it.

3) Could you provide a little more detail about this one? It looks like the end of your sentence got cut off.

4) Not sure what's going on here; I'll look into it.

5) As far as I know (Ken_Oh wrote the WML for the new NPC system), it is supposed to be weighted towards the class abilities. For the civilian, it may be an equipment issue; you can only backstab with certain weapons, and if they're equipped with something that you can't backstab with (say an axe or a club) then having the skill does them no good. Not sure what's going on with the attack spells, though.

-----

1) Ken_Oh is already working on the tomes, and we have big plans for them. They didn't make it into this version because it already took so long due to the 1.6->1.8 conversion and the new NPC system that we didn't want to delay it further just to add additional features. It was always the plan to have utility spells be learnable (hence the 'Tomes' section in the magic shop), and the current fixed-list system is just a way to get the spells out there for testing purposes.

2) I personally am definitely in favor of world-map/multiple dungeon type stuff. However, I don't expect it to happen soon; we need to deal with things like the NPC leveling issues and fleshing out the magic system (tomes, enchanted items, etc) before we can even start thinking about working on something like that.

3) Enchanted weapons/armor are already on the to-do list, I believe. No idea how long it will be before we get to them. Some temporary weapon enchantments are already in the spell to-do list (and it's not hard to implement a spell with a temporary effect as an item too or vice versa).

4) If you read back through the thread, you'll see that Trolls only have one starting class for balance reasons. Also, with the implementation of methods for learning extra spells (i.e. tomes) the utility of learning magic is going to increase. Whether a 'Create Your Own Adventurer' option will ever return (that was the original character creation method, but it got replaced with the current 'Starting Class' system because people complained about it) I don't know. The Orc Shaman I'm putting in the 'Maybe' pile; I can't see any immediate reason why they couldn't be included.

5) The item requirements are probably going to be re-examined at some point. They do give some occasional odd results. Keep in mind that the usefulness of a weapon also depends on your build, not just its raw numbers; to a character with storm, for example, a 15-2 attack may be better than 10-4 (or for that matter, when facing a character with storm; enemies can get it now, too). Also keep in mind that items have a hidden 'item quality' number. A quality 4 light weapon is probably going to be better than a quality 0 normal weapon, and a quality 0 light weapon is probably going to be worse than a quality 4 normal weapon.

-----

Re Spells: as I mentioned before, the utility spells available now being learnable was always going to happen. Some of your ideas for new spells are interesting, though, and may very well make it into the game (although some of them have already been suggested and are thus already on the to-do list).

[Jamini]

On bugs -

2. Allright, I think I've fixed the problem in my own copy of wesband. Simply adding a unit for WBS Silver Mage (and re-adding him to the Red Mage Advancement... because it's silly not to have him.) should fix those errors.


3. Units will have the trait listed, however the description for a trait may be missing.

For example:

Enemy goblin unit X has dim (-20% xp to level), however the field that would explain what dim is when you hover over it is blank.

Once a recruited Initiate leveled into a mage had the abilities "female^strong" "female^resiliant".

Some of the elemental traits have a similar display issue.

5. 4/4 civilian henchmen leveled up, with rusty daggers. Not a single one received the backstab special, even if they were later changed to a better dagger.

On Features -

4. I can understand the balancing reasons for the troll, it's just a royal pain to level one up is all. (However, Magic Armor is amazing on a high-level troll shaman.) I am glad to hear that we might be getting orc shamans back!

On a slightly related note: are there any plans to do anything about trolls carrying mage staves? With the right circiumstances (A balanced mage staff is in the shop and an ally is willing to lend 30 gold), a level 1 troll can get a 10-4 melee attack right out the gate in addition to his regeneration and HP. Even a normal (no-adjective) staff gives him 12-2 before any advancement. At low levels staves are better than most hammers as they do not have any -evade on them (compared to most maces and hammers) and often they can last well until dungeon level 4-5.

5. Perhaps the requirements for the weapons should scale alongside the hidden quality modifier? (So a quality 4 light weapon has a higher deft requirement than a quaility 1 light weapon. While a quaility 0 large weapon [such as a greatsword] might have a body requirement within reach of a fighter after only one or two ALMAs? [while naturally, a super-high quality greatsword would have such a body requirement that only a body-specialist fighter would have a hope of using it effectivly.])

[Exasperation]

Silver Mage: I would highly recommend not trying a quick fix for that. If you just add in the unit without actually converting it to the constructed NPC system, it is likely to break the first time you use one. The reason Silver Mages haven't been converted over yet is that they can't use the teleport that the PCs get from silver magic, and the standard silver-mage-teleport ability is pretty useless in dungeons since there are no villages there. Once we decide what to do about that, they'll get converted over.

Traits: I see. Not sure what would be causing that yet (first guess: text domain issue?), but I'll put it on the list.

Backstab: Confirmed, and I see what the problem is with backstab: when the leveling code checks to see what abilities the unit needs to gain to match its new unit type, backstab gets left out.

Staves: staves will probably get both their damage output and their body requirement decreased at some point to make them better for low-body spellcasters but not as good for melee types.

Weapon requirements: These already scale with weapon quality, it's just that the formulas involved could probably use some tweaking.

[Golbeeze]

In my experience with traits, the field is blank when it is not active. For example, a melee-only unit with dextrous will show this when the cursor is placed over the traits: "dextrous: "

It may be different in this case, but with other eras I've seen this occur.

[Ken_Oh]

Jamini: I really appreciate the feedback and the bug hunting. Exasperation covered most everything that I would say.

The only thing I could add is that you can add that Silver Mage upgrade just fine, but they'll simply be gimped units, as they won't have teleport, or even the fire/cold resistances, for that matter. The better fix, for the moment, is to remove it from the tavern.

Also, dim and intelligent are the two traits that don't get altered in some way. That's strange that there is a problem.

[Exasperation]

One more note on the issues you've been reporting, Jamini: I just caught a bug while following up on your reports which was causing light/balanced magestaffs to add 35% of body to damage when they're supposed to add 15% (there was a conditional checking the value of damage_rate which should have been checking the value of dmg_rate) - so high strike magestaffs were never intended to be as powerful as they are right now.

[Ken_Oh]

4. Feeding does not work when given to an existing unit (such as the ghoul) outside of natural leveling. I've seen this problem in SurvivalX as well as here, so it may be an issue with the ability.

Jamini: I wasn't able to reproduce this. Any hints as to what I might be doing wrong? You're just giving this to your plagued henchman, right?

[Jami]

4. Feeding does not work when given to an existing unit (such as the ghoul) outside of natural leveling. I've seen this problem in SurvivalX as well as here, so it may be an issue with the ability.

Jamini: I wasn't able to reproduce this. Any hints as to what I might be doing wrong? You're just giving this to your plagued henchman, right?

Yes, however I think it may have just been a graphical glitch. Today I did another DA run and my ghoul was getting HP from feeding just fine.

I'll keep you posted if I see anything else.

[Ken_Oh]

Cool. If I still have you, what is your DA game like? Any suggestions for balance of the undead minions? I haven't taken the time lately to try them out in a full game.

EDIT:

3. Units will have the trait listed, however the description for a trait may be missing.

So I checked this out. Since the [effect] section gets cleared from traits, this is what we're left with. I tried putting in a description key but it didn't work. I have an idea that might work, but as this isn't crucial to anything I'll save it for the dev version.

FYI, putting out a maintenance release today to hopefully fix the unit leveling-up crash.


EDIT #2: 0.4.3 maintenance release is on the server. That npc level-up infinite loop? It turns out that it was caused by one line saying mode=append when it should have said mode=replace. I'm not even sure how it ever worked normally in the first place.

[Jami]

Cool. If I still have you, what is your DA game like? Any suggestions for balance of the undead minions? I haven't taken the time lately to try them out in a full game.

Mostly they seem roughly balanced against regular henchmen. While they are cheaper gold-wise than any other hench, they require some investment in skill points and XP to be made worthwhile (unlike higher-level henchmen, who just require copious amounts of gold.) Skels in particular do seem to be a bit stronger than your run-of-the-mill civilians/thieves/fencers, but weaker than leveled mages/elves/dwarves, which is perfect IMO.

Souless - Very powerful, especially if you focus on strikes. An excellent low-level minion. They lose strength later on. Personally I feel they are quite good and need very little tweaking.

Ghouls - Unfortunatly, they feel kind of weak. They start out with low HP and weaker resists than skeletons and Souless, and they don't advance as well as Skeletons do. Personally I would buff them by giving them poison right off the bat to bring them up to par with the other minons.

Skeletons - The weakest low-level minon, a properly-equipped and leveled Skeleton is as good or better than an advanced henchman. However they require experiance to be truly effective, which cuts into your own ability. I would say they are prefect.

Ghosts - Very hard to get compared to the other minions and even harder to level (Since they require a knife to create and need more XP than any other minion to level up). Really ghosts just don't quite feel worth it. Personally I would say reduce the mind requirement for soul trap (Maybe to 10, so you can get it by level 2). The units themselves are fine, however.

The Dark Adept himself is excellent character, thanks to having acess to impact, arcane, and cold at the start. He has the ability to handle pretty much anything and gets minons. If anything I would say: don't let him start with a staff. Make him more like the stock Dark Adept *no/weak melee attack at all) in order to compensate for his ability to kill anything at range.