Thank you for enjoying my particular... idiom... in expressing how I felt after casually tossing a stone of disarming into a summoning trap room before reading the patch notes to quite suddenly and unexpectedly face being repeatedly thwacked by a mob of very agitated monsters that I was in no way prepared to deal with. In that moment, it produced an actual record scratch sound in my head and was still processing what had happened in my post.

Thanks for your response and I do understand your view of Reddit as a company. I still considerate it to be the moronic cousin of Digg and forums of old so it's not my first choice either... but it is the most popular one (and simply works better than Lemmy) so you can have some engaging and productive discussions there. At least some of the time. Sifting through its culture of upvoting snark can be annoying in finding good answers and opinions. I legit lol'd when I saw OpenAI partnered with Reddit to train AI as that's largely like tapping into the brain of a 12 year old.

Discord is my least favorite platform as it can definitely be a cultural bubble of like-minded opinions. It's also shut off to search and there's no way to back it up so all that great knowledge can be forever lost if the group or company suddenly shut down without warning. It also demands you visit it regularly to keep up with the fast and endless stream of convos which not everyone has time to do.

The problems with all these platforms can sometimes mean you have to find straight answers from a forum post from 2007 which'll probably still be there and useful in 2037... forever immune to our modern online issues with critical thinking, reading comprehension, and empathy. Fortunately, the SPD wiki is fantastic in providing up to date knowledge transfer.

Anyway, regarding the stone change, I personally would've liked a new ID stone rather than repurposing the disarming stone, but like I said, you've been on point for years, so don't take my detail oriented style of writing as meaning I think it's the end of this corner of the world. It was just an interesting convo that I brought over to broaden the discussion of what players here think might make the game better... and to help provide some more content and engagement here tbh.

Anyway, cheers and thanks for all your great work!

Maybe... I'm not the only one who feels this way and was just bringing over a productive convo about it from the reddit sub... but getting a kill the messenger vibe here.

It's not about you. I'm just explaining my side and you keep coming back for more. Not that, "It's fine... you're wrong... deal with it." is much of an argument.

As for dev feedback, he's kind of walled himself off in his own garden here which makes me wonder if that's the reason for making unpopular choices based on limited feedback from a culture of unconditional love here.

IDK about others but 'complaining to the SPD dev' is the only reason I use Lemmy... lol... but that's out of love for the game.

This specific change, really isn't as bad as you are making it out to be.

The reason for the change wasn't nearly as bad as some made it out to be either.

The change isn't considered ideal on the PD sub-reddit so I suppose it depends on which bubble you (and the dev) are in.

Yeah, there are other solutions but they're only useful if RNGesus has provided one so I'm just not a fan of reducing the limited number of options due to this particular exploding ID mechanic.

Keeping in mind that different players have different play-styles, the issue is changing a commonly found solution for encountering certain challenges that don't have a special drop to solve them on the same level. This is especially true earlier in the game before you've collected the items needed to craft alternate solutions. You may also want to use some items to craft other more useful items rather than making up for the deficit left by changing a useful one. So additive features like a new ID stone along with the ones you mentioned are the way to go rather than reducing limited options IMHO.

Yeah I haven't played Nethack in decades so I've forgotten about stuff like that. SPD Monk meditation is the closest equiv to praying in NH. Mainly fish, crabs, and white rats can give you corpse meat in SPD.

Desktop old Lemmy... because the default theme for this sub has blinding pure white text over pitch black background which burns into my eyes and can still see it floating in the air if I blink or look away. The old Lemmy theme helps to gray the contrast a bit. I did try some other themes but they didn't format the paragraph spacing well either.

Here's what it looks like on my end...

https://i.postimg.cc/XYw6M1k0/Lemmy-Spacing.jpg

Thx for the tip on using honeyed healing. It never ceases to amaze me how there's always something new to learn in this game even after years of playing SPD.

As for the backstory, it can be interpreted in a number of ways and is really just a carry-over from the original dev logically creating some good vs bad guys. The stories were then added as other versions grew.

However, it might be time to start thinking like a dungeon master that has more tricks in their bag than, "OK what should I give the players to kill next?" and reward them with more than, "Yay, I killed everyone I met!"... lol.

There's also the matter of the Hero corrupting, enchanting, and conjuring other unwilling creatures to be fodder to kill for them which doesn't make the Hero much different than the Dwarve King. They appear to be two sides of the same coin if the Hero isn't actually helping, saving, or freeing anyone.

Finally, my other wish is that Lemmy would recognize paragraph spacing so posts don't look like a wall of text which is why I add dashes between them.

Thanks, old Lemmy's text to background contrast is a bit better and works for me as I prefer to browse in desktop mode on all my devices and it's easy to just update the bookmark.