History VideoGame / Angband

* VulnerableCivilians: You can kill everyone in the home village (except shopkeepers - they are just flavour names when you enter the shop and not actually present on them map.

** The town level is full of beggars, harmless drunks, street urchins, and various mangy animals. They're generally no match for you whatsoever, even at your lowest level, so you can kill them with abandon (and they even sometimes drop money).

* VulnerableCivilians: You can kill everyone in the home village.

* '''emphasis on [[MinMaxing character advancement]]''' - *bands are ultimately about levelling up and improving the character's strengths and survivability, by any means necessary. LevelGrinding and Scumming are not as discouraged as in other games, and the design of *bands often makes this easy to do (for example, exploiting a self-replicating enemy for experience, or going up and down stairs repeatedly to generate new levels until you find one with some good items).

** Rods/Wands of Light in general, which light up a long line of tiles. If you rely on any kind of ranged attack, you'll need to spot monsters from as far away as possible, and these babies really shine in long corridors. You'd also be surprised by how many enemies are damaged by it in the early game.

* EnergyAbsorption: Silver mice have a light-draining bite, which exhausts your light source.

* ExplosiveBreeder: Some creatures have the "breeds explosively" attribute, meaning they can spawn copies of themselves. This is something fairly unique to *bands - ''Angband'' can get away with it because of its non-persistent dungeons (in any other roguelike, they would clog up the level permanently, which could unbalance the game).

* GemstoneAssault: one of the game's elements is 'shard', which means pieces of crystal/rock. Some enemies (eg. earth hounds) can breathe it at you to inflict lacerations, or are composed of it

* GemstoneAssault: one of the game's elements is 'shard', which means pieces of crystal/rock. Some enemies (eg. earth hounds) can breathe it at you to inflict lacerations.

* HolidayMode: At Christmas, Father Christmas himself can show up in town with an entourage of with red-hatted elves.

* ElementalPowers: some enemies have them, or have resistances to certain elements. Players have to rely on hard-to-come-by magic devices, rare branded equipment and high-level spells if they want to do much elemental magic.

* GemstoneAssault: one of the game's elements is 'shard', which means pieces of crystal/rock. Some enemies can breathe it at you, or are composed of it.

* EvilIsDeathlyCold: Cursed items feel this way when you wear or wield them.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts:
** Creatures with the ability to produce copies of themselves will generally kill you in this manner - they're usually relatively harmless by themselves, but once they start multiplying they can block passages and totally surround you, picking you off a little at a time.
** If met at the start of the game, a Floating Eye can keep you paralyzed to the point that you ''starve to death''.

* NominalImportance: If an artifact has a proper name, it's generally something ''really'' special, and may have unique powers.

* DungeonBypass: Practically a way of life in ''Angband''. As long as you know where the stairs are, there's nothing compelling you to remain on the current dungeon level. (Well, unless an enemy has paralysed you, or has the ability to teleport you to its location. But that's rare.) You can pretty much choose whichever depth you feel lcomfortable fighting at, and you can also use stairs as an immediate escape from danger if you can reach them.

** Also, in [[VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal ToME]], don't equip that yellow ~ lying on the ground right away. It could be the Phial of Galadriel, or something really evil...

* VoodooShark: The game's explanation for the non-persistent levels is that there is a 'maze of staircases' between each floor, in which your character always gets lost and therefore is unable to find his way back to that exact same location again. Considering that the dungeons take up significant floor space, and that your character also has access to mining tools (and, if really smart, could just leave a trail or something), it seems highly unlikely that an entire dungeon could simply be 'lost' like this. Not to mention the sheer area that this neverending collection of dungeons must take up (and we know that all dungeons of the same level occur at the same depth, because the game tells you exactly how many feet underground you are!).

* '''feelings''' - player characters in ''Angband'' have mysterious intuitive senses called "feelings", which can foresee potential danger on the current dungeon floor, or the presence of powerful items. (Prior to version 4, the player would also get feelings about the quality of the items they find; however, this has since been replaced by a more conventional rune-based identity system).

* ExplosiveBreeder: Many low-level creatures have the 'breeds explosively' ability, meaning they can spawn copies of themselves. This is something fairly unique to *bands - ''Angband'' can get away with it because of its non-persistent dungeons (in any other roguelike, they would clog up the level permanently, which could unbalance the game). Reproducing creatures include worm masses, lice, and rats, each of which which have many [[UndergroundMonkey annoying]] [[PaletteSwap colour]] [[UndergroundMonkey variants]]. These can be [[LevelGrinding ground upon]] to gain levels, but unless you're using a borg (a bot which plays the game) this is too dull to do for more than a few levels.

'''''Angband''''' is a {{roguelike}} game [[TheThemeparkVersion loosely]] [[AnachronismStew based]] on Creator/JRRTolkien's books set in Middle-earth, but with stuff from other games, mostly ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Rolemaster}}'', as well as original content. Along with ''VideoGame/NetHack'', ''VideoGame/DungeonCrawl'', ''[[VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery ADOM]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal ToME]]'', it is considered one of the five major modern roguelikes. It has been in continuous development since 1990.

* WeaponOfXSlaying: One of many properties ego and artifact weapons can have is bonus damage against particular types of enemies. This is controlled by a set of independent boolean flags, allowing (in the extreme) the artifact sword Crisdurian, which has ''all'' the Slay X flags set (and has the damage dice to make it count).

* DisabilityImmunity: warriors have this in some ways. They cannot use magic, and so have no mana, which makes them immune to mana-draining. They also aren't bothered so much by blindness; a blind warrior can still swing a weapon in front of them (which, since they're a warrior, will hit with a lot of damage), whereas a blinded mage cannot read their spell book and is therefore completely cut off from their primary source of defense.

* DungeonBypass: practically a way of life in ''Angband''. As long as you know where the stairs are, there's nothing compelling you to remain on the current dungeon level. (Well, unless an enemy has paralysed you, or has the ability to teleport you to its location. But that's rare.) You can pretty much choose whichever depth you feel lcomfortable fighting at, and you can also use stairs as an immediate escape from danger if you can reach them.

* ElementalEmbodiment: various elementals can be met throughout the game, mostly sticking to the classical elements, but occasionally venturing into more abstract territory (eg. smoke elemental, ooze elemental).

* MetalSlime: most unique enemies could be considered these - they show up irregularly, are fiendishly difficult to kill, but are usually worth the reward if you can defeat them.

* WeaponOfXSlaying: One of many properties ego and artifact weapons can have is bonus damage against particular types of enemies. This is controlled by a set of independent boolean flags, allowing (in the extreme) the artifact sword Crisdurian, which has ''all'' the Slay X flags set (and has the damage dice to make it count).
* WeakenedByTheLight: light is one of the elements in ''Angband'''s elemental system, and some creatures are harmed by it. Many different magical items can produce bright light for this purpose.

* '''infinite dungeon''' - a side-effect of the non-persistent levels is that the dungeon is effectively infinite - there's nothing to stop you from visiting the same depth as many times as you like and taking as much as you can carry away from it. The game will always generate a brand-new dungeon level every time you go, with new loot to collect and new enemies to fight. This means that the resources available to the player are effectively limitless. The dungeon itself still has a finite depth (100 floors).
* '''feelings''' - player characters in ''Angband'' have mysterious intuitive senses called "feelings", which can foresee potential danger on the current dungeon floor, or the presence of powerful items.

* '''monster memory''' - with each monster encounter, you may learn more about the monsters you're fighting. Every new piece of information you learn is stored in the monster memory, and can be recalled at any time - even by descendants who have never personally encountered the monster.
* '''emphasis on [[MinMaxing character advancement]]''' - *bands are ultimately about LevellingUp and improving the character's survivability, by any means necessary. LevelGrinding and Scumming are not as discouraged as in other games, and the design of *bands often makes this easy to do (for example, exploiting a self-replicating enemy for experience, or going up and down stairs repeatedly to generate new levels until you find one with some good items).

'''''Angband''''' is a {{roguelike}} game [[TheThemeparkVersion loosely]] [[AnachronismStew based]] on Creator/JRRTolkien's books set in Middle-earth, but with stuff from other games, mostly ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Rolemaster}}'', as well as original content. Along with ''VideoGame/NetHack'', ''TabletopGame/DungeonCrawl'', ''[[VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery ADOM]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal ToME]]'', it is considered one of the five major modern roguelikes. It has been in continuous development since 1990.

'''''Angband''''' is a {{roguelike}} game [[TheThemeparkVersion loosely]] [[AnachronismStew based]] on Creator/JRRTolkien's books set in Middle-earth, but with stuff from other games, mostly ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' and ''{{Rolemaster}}'', as well as original content. Along with ''VideoGame/NetHack'', ''DungeonCrawl'', ''[[VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery ADOM]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal ToME]]'', it is considered one of the five major modern roguelikes. It has been in continuous development since 1990.

* '''feelings''' - ''Angband'' uses a multiple-level identification system for some items, expressed as 'feelings' that your character has. For example, your character may acquire an item in the dungeon, and after carrying it around for some time, may 'feel' that the item is special in some way. They still won't know exactly ''why'' it is special - this may require them to actually use it, or to use magical means of identification. They also get feelings about the dungeon level they're on, and can sense potential danger, or the presence of worthwhile items.

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: The town level is full of beggars, harmless drunks, street urchins, and various mangy animals. They're generally no match for you whatsoever, even at your lowest level, so you can kill them with abandon (and they even sometimes drop money).