Chapter 14: Improving combat tactics

19 Sep, 2026

Elric casts Halito

Elric casts Halito against a Slime

Good afternoon Moose! I have made a branch called Chapter14. Please use that for work this session.

First thing we'll do is make a new party. I need you to modify the code regarding the keystroke budget. Make a change so that the budget is suspended until a full party of 6 is formed. So the game does not get L)eave until

A set of 6 healthy characters has been added to the roster
and the keystroke budget has been exhausted

make sense?

Yes—that makes sense, and I’ve made the change on Chapter14 and committed it. Commit: e8f72a6 — “Defer keystroke budget until healthy party is formed”

Ready to make our new gang of idiots.

We're focusing on party creation this afternoon. In addition to suspending the keystroke budget, I've asked Moose to speed up the rate of entry of text when typing a character's name. Currently Moose spends .35 seconds verifying that each character is typed in. This is painfully slow to watch, about 5 seconds per character. He's removed this and sped it up 10x. I also had him revise the names used when creating characters, so that if a character is not kept because their stats are too weak, a new name and race are used and colorful narrative regarding reasons why they failed the interview are created.

A new party created, we head back into the maze. Screenshot 2026-09-19 at 3

The party hit yet another navigation error, repeatedly hitting a wall when trying to leave the maze. Moose performs a post-mortem from logs and suggests a fix. Disturbing, however, is that in combat we have 2 mages, and one of them (Elric) is just idle. There needs to be better thinking about how to utilize Elric - he should probably be casting Halito.

Moose, two things:

Fix this navigation bug
Examine combat: why didn't Elric cast Halito? There needs to be better decision making in combat. I'd like you to pitch an idea for what Elric could be doing better.

I’m changing spell handling from a single hard-coded rule—“cast KATINO once, otherwise parry”—into a **per-round, per-Mage tactical decision**.

Each Mage will consider the spells that character is actually known to possess, the current enemy count, and spells already assigned earlier in the same round. With several active monsters, one Mage may choose KATINO for crowd control; once that role is covered, or when only one monster remains, another Mage should favor a direct-damage spell such as HALITO instead of wasting the turn by parrying. The idea is to let the spellcasters cooperate rather than make isolated, one-size-fits-all decisions.

We're also continuing to see if RSD can be used for combat, instead of OCR. While fixing a bug related to spell-casting, Moose has added more RAM probing instrumentation during combat. Back in we go.

Party got slaughtered again during combat. I've challenged Moose to think about party ordering, as he has a fighter sitting in slot 5 where all he can do is Parry. Moose needs to optimize his lineup better. He also needs to track spell points and consider that its time to leave the maze if spell points are exhausted, and also that characters shouldn't try to cast spells if they have no spell points.

Moose has this to say regarding party order:

You were absolutely right about party order. We were assembling them in character-creation order rather than combat-role order. Since only the first three slots can make normal physical attacks, putting Cael—the second Fighter—in slot 5 was throwing away one of our best attackers every round.

The new assembly order is:

Fighter
Fighter
Priest
Thief
Mage
Mage

So for this party that should initially become roughly:

Dorin, Cael, Xander, Hotto, Cheese, Elric

That gives both Fighters permanent access to FIGHT, gives the Priest the third physical slot, and keeps the Thief and both Mages protected in back. Wizardry can still compact/reorder the surviving party as people die.

A new party is created, and ordering is fixed. Back into the maze we go.

Screenshot 2026-09-19 at 4

A glimpse into the RAM probe during a combat sequence. Moose is logging copious details in an attempt to determine if RSD can be used during combat and gathering treasure.

Moose, well done! The party made it out alive! However:

Katino was cast when only 1 monster remained - a waste
Halito was cast when only 1 monster remained and 3 fighters were still in the first three slots

I need you to really think about the spell-casting here. With 1 monster vs. 3 healthy fighters, it probably isn't worth spending spell points.

Logs have been updated, please suggest changes.

I discovered that my Mages were wasting precious spell points: KATINO was being cast without proof that multiple monsters remained, and HALITO was being used even when a lone enemy was already facing three healthy front-line attackers. I’m changing the combat logic so crowd-control spells require confirmed multiple enemies, while direct-damage magic is conserved when the fighters can reasonably finish the job themselves.

We've been at it for a couple hours, so time to close up shop. There is always another fun problem to tackle with each run, but I do need to get other things done!

In future sessions, once the party can go in, kill monsters, and make it out consistently, we'll put in code to visit Boltac's so that the party members can start becoming formidable.