Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's latest class, the Jester, available in the trunk version, seems made for me. One of my favorite player combinations in the game has for a long time been the Mummy Necromancer that worships Nemelex Xobeh. The developers have cut it close with the Jester, who worships NX from the beginning and is equipped with one of my favorite weapons, the powerful if unpredictable quarterstaff of chaos, which I usually have peeled from the dead body of Crazed Yluf.
I have desired just such a class for ages and am certain it will be my favorite class of all.
Mummies have long needed such a class, because they are so weak, having a poor aptitude at every skill. Only through the power of Xobeh can a Mummy hope to win the Orb.
I do not understand the connection with Xom, but perhaps the crazed god is intended to counterbalance some of the power the Jester has in the beginning. A quarterstaff of chaos is a surprising, powerful choice for a provisioning weapon, and NX is no weakling either, providing strong powers in his decks of cards. Such a weapon as the quarterstaff of chaos could be taken to the end game, despite its sometimes nasty random effects. I think the developers are going to have to weaken the weapon in order to restore balance. Perhaps a +0 quarterstaff of chaos would be more to the point.
On a different subject, I would just like to note that my Linux Mint operating system polls the Dungeon Crawl Debian repository. When a new trunk update is released by the developers, my operating system notifies me, and all I have to do is make a mouse click, enter my password, and it is downloaded and installed automatically! Contrast the ease with which a Linux user like me receives trunk updates to the method that Windows users must employ. I even made the Windows method easier by coding a batch file that installs the program faster than the Installer, but even that was more work than the Linux method. My point is that Linux is easier to use than Windows and better as a gaming PC, if one can refrain from using the latest graphical 3D shoot 'em ups.
Turn-based strategy games are the way to go in my opinion, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup represents the best of the best. Being turn-based is critical for me, because I need to be able to handle frequent interruptions from the phone and from customers. I would not play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup if it were realtime. I like the Tiles version and I like the fact that the game pauses after every turn.
2 comments:
I can not imagine how DCSS would play as real time. I get nightmares occasionally...
I love the game, just wish the developers will not remove old features as new ones are added. I am okay with items, but I like many features to be there (think : Dwarf Fortress - Adventure mode, but with DCSS ideals). That would be awesome. It is this design philosophy which has me occasionally switching on nethack, rather than being completely hooked by DCSS.
Yeah, the devs removed the Jester, probably because they felt he was overpowered. The pies were ok, but a quarterstaff of chaos was far too powerful to be given for free. Also, Xobeh is a powerful deity, and to start off with a him, a character should probably have no equipment at all or random equipment.
The devs do seem very concerned about balance, so that I think is why they axe old races, so as not to have to maintain them. They have always been concerned about keeping the races equal so as not to have everybody playing one race all the time. Yet Mummies and Trolls remain the hardest races to play. A Ghoul is more powerful than a Mummy, and an Ogre is more powerful than a Troll.
I keep playing Crawl because overall I find the benefits of changes outweigh any downsides. With my regen.sh script, I can play an interesting character for as long as I choose, defying perma-death.
I just wish my laptop had all eight directional arrows or keys that could serve in place of them, in locations that I'm used to.
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