Difficulty

[Lunever]

I'm just playing RTC-DM V0.21 at PalMaster difficulty, and although the DM dungeon is as good as perfect and I really like the high difficulty with the fast and tough and mean and dangerous monsters (the AI is suitable in V0.21 also), there are some things that are just too heavy.
Just for fun I reloaded a savegame shortly before the Dragon was dead to try out, how much damage a fireball of him would do now: It wasn't displayed, though, the entire party simply was dead (damaged should be shown, before the party drops dead).
Also the food drain is ridiculous, also the stamina drain. I mean, it's ok to increase the drain a bit to make the game more difficult (maybe the presence of Chaos causes this), but if you need a drumstick for every character every 5 or so minutes, any sense of realism is destroyed.
I think, a character shouldn't have to catch for his breath when he's walking down a long passageway, or starve when he's missing breakfast for once, just because the character happens to be powerful. Please reduce the drain to a realistic level.
It's not that the game would become too difficult through the drain, it can be played and solved even so, but feeding at that rate simply becomes unnerving and unbelievable.
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[Gambit37]

All the "draining" behaviours are presumably just functions of the difficulty level, right George? I guess it would be easy to modify any factoring in here to reduce the effects somewhat.

Having said that, I don't think it would be worth doing. If you're crazy enough to play the Dungeon at that kind of difficulty, then you should expect it to be pretty hard, realistic or not!

[Lunever]

It's a good thing that regenerating Mana now drains stamina, as it is in FTL-DM, but:
In FTL-DM stamina and Mana were regenerated in "waves", that means, first you regenerated some stamina, than came a rush of Mana, which used up some of the stamina just regenerated again, then came some more stamina, until both, stamina and Mana were full again.
In RTC Mana is regenerating and using up stamina, until Mana is full again, then stamina is regenerated normally.
At high level of difficulty that means, that you can die from regenerating, if you sleep after casting several spells (which is not unusual)!!!
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[George Gilbert]

OK, I've toned this down a bit but not too much. After all, if you're playing at such a high level, then you deserve all that's comming to you

[Lunever]

Allright, I think that will do it.
Another question: I saw in the config, that you can set difficulty manually from 0 to 15 (no level to Archmaster, I suppose). Is this only for a new "Enter dungeon", or does it add to or overrule the difficulty of an existing savegame? Does it add to or is it overruled by the difficulty set by "Make new adventure"?
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[George Gilbert]

Briefly:

- It makes no difference to an existing save game

- It *ADDS* to the difficulty of a "Make New Adventure".

[Lunever]

So what happens, if you choose dif 15 and make a new adventure from a savegame, that would be set to 15 anyway? Do you get 15 then, or is a higher dif than 15 possible?
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[George Gilbert]

To be honest, I can't remember off hand. My recollection is that it caps the addition to a maximum of 15 but I'd have to check the code again to be sure.

The point is somewhat academic however, as the game is nigh on iimpossible at Archmaster anyway, let alone beyond

[Lunever]

Ok, so far I've completed RTC only at Master5-dif (DM) or Expert (CSB), but I'm determined to complete both on Archmaster dif eventually.
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[George Gilbert]

Had a check of the code last night, and the *total* (i.e. the difficulty given in "Make new adventure" plus that set in the config file) is limited to 15 (i.e. Archmaster).