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I think it's a lot harder without infravision, but I don't think a lack
of infravision makes a character less ascendable if someone is
experienced in dealing without infravision.
Infravision makes the Gnomish mines a lot easier. You can see a really
large part of the level, and easily figure out where you should go.
For instance, if there are monsters spread out around the level, and
they are all coming at you, infravision can allow you to see them from
far away, so you can sometimes hunt them all down before they can form
a mob. You can also see from far away if you can probably handle a
group of monsters, or if you should try to find/make a chokepoint so
you can attack them 1 on 1.
Infravision also helps in pet management. Sometimes you want to move
over to your pet, so your pet can help you kill stuff. But if you
don't have infravision, moving over to your pet isn't very easy if they
are out of your light source range. It also helps keep your pet alive.
If your pet decided to wander outside of your light source range,
infravision can let you see what is attacking your pet, so you can
determine if you need to help your pet. For instance, a pet can kill a
lot of weaponless monsters, but if infravision allows you to figure out
your pet is getting whacked with a pickaxe, you can get a better idea
if your pet will need to rest up some HP after the battle. Also, if
your pet is having pathing issues trying to get to you, infravision can
help you more quickly find where your pet is having his issues.
Granted you could try to prevent this stuff by always staying near your
pet, but that takes extra turns (i.e. you want to explore a square to
see if the stairs are there, but your pet doesn't want to randomly walk
near there). It's also harder to eat corpses when you are always near
your pet, since pets like to jump in front of you to eat every corpse
it can safely eat.
Lack of infravision is worse for the dagger classes. Dagger management
is harder without infravision. Not only do the dagger classes tend to
want to be able to kill things before they are in melee range (which is
hard since the light source range isn't very big), infravision makes it
alot easier to figure out where your daggers are. Alot of monsters in
the Mines like to pick up daggers, and infravision makes it easier to
find targets you can kill and retrieve daggers from before something
else picks it up. If you throw daggers in more than one direction,
some of your daggers might be outside of light source range when you
move to retrieve the daggers. Infravision can allow you to see what
monsters are picking up your daggers, so you can hunt them down first.
I'll try an analogy to explain my stance on infravision. I think magic
mapping makes finding Vlad's tower alot easier. However, I don't think
the lack of magic mapping makes a character less ascendable, and I
don't think it is difficult to find Vlad's tower without magic mapping.
Similarily I think infravision makes the Gnomish mines alot easier,
but I don't think the lack of infravision hurts experienced players.
<<What's wrong with magic missile? I thought it was about the only
offensive spell a mid/late -game wizard ever needs.>>
Vanilla nethack cone of cold / fireballs allow you to attack things
that aren't lined up with you. Sometimes you want to avoid ranged
attacks (i.e. dragon breath, wands, etc), or maybe you are getting
zapped with a wand you want, and you want to kill the wand holder
without it getting another chance to use a wand charge.
Vanilla nethack cone of cold / fireballs also did a really large amount
of damage. Like it seems faster to kill single targets by centering a
cone of cold on them, than to magic missile them. And clearing out a
group of monsters seems faster with a cone of cold also. It's
perfectly doable to just use magic missile, but I really like having
the option of an uber nuke that's not stuck on a really really long
technique timer.
<<Yeah, but if you start with the sleep spell you hardly kill anything
anyway, so you level up slowly while your pet buffs itself on all those
sleepy monsters. Therefore, by the time you start seeing elves in a
+oSleep game, your pet(s) should be pretty much maxed out and your slow
progression through the dungeon should mean you have focussed your
#enhancements on daggers (rather than spells or quarterstaff), while
acquiring other means of dealing with sleep-resistant melee monsters-
for instance magicbane, a decent dagger stack, a +oMM, or maybe just a
good old wand of BOING>>
I think the main scenario I fear is getting a +sleep wizard to the
bottom of the mines to find out it's the undead version. I think the
+sleep wizard isn't balanced. A +force bolt wizard has an easy time at
destroying almost anything that need to be dead. A +sleep wizard has a
super easy time at killing non-sleep resistant monsters, but a hard
time killing sleep resistant monsters. I've gotten Tourists through
the undead version of the bottom of the mines, so I'm not worried that
the +sleep wizard would be in danger of dying... it's just that the two
wizard types have very different play styles, and I don't like the
+sleep style.
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