Bay 12 Games Forum

Because nuclear hate is the sexiest of hate, apparently.

Druid Orcs are always the best. Nomnomnom your way through the whole dungeon.

Theorycrafting, ahahaha!

Orcs make awesome druids, and pacmanning your way through the dungeon is pretty great. Beyond devour, which the wilderness lore class skill lets you leverage more than most classes, orcs have excellent stats for druid and starting with proficiency in some better reach weapons is pretty good for a summoning heavy druid. Plus getting more dakka out of a high wisdom is always nice~

But! Since the ride change, they're roughly my third favorite druid race from a gameplay perspective. Generally, I split my druid play attempts into two categories -- casting (which may or may not be melee heavy; it's relatively irrelevant since everyone wants to be mounted ) and wild shaping.

For the former, lizardfolk my the top pick. They've also got solid enough stats for a druid, plus they have an innate natural attack (which synergizes pretty well with druid buff spells) and a host of nice utility abilities. Most important t'me, though, is that they come with balance as a racial skill -- every druid that's not wildshaping (and some that are) wants balance something fierce. Getting balance t'twenty means no more penalty on casting while mounted, and riding is an incredibly powerful thing that negating that penalty only makes stronger for a casting heavy druid.

Humans come in second for a casting druid, mostly for not having to burn a feat to get balance (plus every class that doesn't start with it loves lockpicking.). It really is pretty tremendous once you hit that breakpoint. Stat wise, they're ahead of orcs (Ultimately a point more of wisdom, a point less of strength, and then the advantage [by 3-5 points] for everything else), but lack the delightful devouring and wisdom-to-damage thing.

For wildshape spec'd druids, dwarves win out pretty much hands down simply due to utility. Starting with regenerating fatigue means wildshapes all day erry day, and the only way pretty much anything can match that is either being perked one of the fatigue regen items or multiclassing a passion domain cleric (Zurvash, maybe Essiah. Druids have a few religion mismatches, and I forget if Essiah's a druid capable religion. Probably Zurvash though, the pain domain is incredible.) for a few levels. Less of an advantage later in the game when you've probably managed to stumble across fatigue regen from some other source, but until then freely usable wild shape is just tremendously useful.

Second for a wildshape druid is, well. Probably human again. Wildshaping's a bit feat heavy, especially if you want to pick up more than one of the category expanding feats (not that you really need to -- plant or mythic hybrid is generally enough to dominate. Shambling mound wildshape is a freaking monster and the hybrids bring a lot of utility to the table) and still have room to pick up related goodies.

... but yeah, mechanics aside, pacmanning your way through the dungeon is just bloody incredible and I love it when disease immunity shows up on a decent stat spread. Orcs are great~

... all the races are pretty great, really. Even gnomes.

And until that day... keep playing. Occasionally, anyway

Today I actually got around to counting the total stat bonus humans have over the other races (maybe not for the first time, I'unno, but whatever!). Compared to the next lowest, halflings... fifteen (15). Humans have a total possible stat bonus of twenty-one, or +3 to all stats. Inherent potential is bloody incredible.

The gimmick, of course, is that it's a delayed bonus. Everyone else gets their stat boosts upfront. Humans have to work for it. But when they do... goddamn. They come in second for highest potential individual stat bonus for only three stats (Strength, dex, and luck) and highest (at +3) for everything else. Crazy little jumped-up monkey bastards. S'beautiful *wipes tear from eye*

... but yeah, latest critter's finally hit the rolling fog bank point. Warrior 1/ranger 4/druid 2, in that order and taking druid for the rest of the game. Simple concept, I wanted a mounted spiked chain bugger, and ranger class usefulness dies off around the 4-6 range compared to druid levels (and either instead of warrior to keep the mount from splatting instantly deeper in. Warrior was just for the spiked chain proficiency.). Once I hit level two and got that night hunter, things started going swimmingly.

Huh. Got the version from here? Or here, I guess.

Anyway, in your main folder there should be a angband.ini. Should be a graphics=X in there. 0 is ASCII, 1-5 is varying built in tilesets.

E: Ah, edit while I was typing, Nevermind.

Check the google group (login may be required, dunno) if you want some more recent news -- Mensch goes by Journeyman there and does pop in every once in a while, or answer the occasional status update request. Short form is that rejiggering a more functional engine continues apace and Mensch thinks he might have something public somewhere between now and 2015, iirc. Game's been in dev in some form or another since '99 and there's been year+ gaps between releases before, so... I remain hopeful.

I like Oglaf, personally.  Note, if you decide to look: VERY NSFW.

*high fives*

"No survivors. Even some of the trees have been stabbed." <3

But yeah, very NSFW. Was one of the first webcomics I RSS'd when settling into this new computer >_>

« Reply #99 on: August 18, 2012, 07:14:58 pm »

« Reply #100 on: March 5, 2013, at 03:22:33 pm »

It's dead, Jim Max. Or was.

... preemptively PTW because you expect it to start back up with the latest shenanigans?