[Crawl] ["a"] a the Human Fighter -- The Midgame Pendulum Hits the Very, Very Bottom
Erik Piper
limited to melee only should do is rush into the Elven Halls immediately
upon finding the entrance.
Elf:1
-----
?oAcquirement
Well well well. I'll be getting lots of weapons from Trog, I don't need
books or food, I've eschewed rods, miscellaneous acquirements are
usually bad, I've had bad luck with money acquirements... that leaves
jewellery or armour. There are a lot of bad jewellery types left to
discover, and undiscovered types get first priority when determining
what acquirement will give you. I choose armour. It's some kind of ring
mail. Oh well.
!oStrongPoison
I try to wait it out, but no luck -- I have to spend a !oH after all.
While I'm healing up, my rest is interrupted, I pray, and get my first
good Trog gift - a +9,+0 randart vorpal falchion. Better than the
scimitar, at least...
...and soon after I get a cursed long sword to match my armour. Whew. ;-)
Lair:1
------
That acquired ring mail was +2-of-poison-resistance, so I take it -- I'm
switching back to the Lair anyway, and getting into poison-heavy depths.
Lair:4
------
Back to the yak pack. It all goes a lot more smoothly now. I find the
entrance to the Slime Pits, but that's something for the very far future.
Lair:5
------
My first major post-slowing battle -- survivable due to a little
fortress on the edge of the level, or at least of this part of the level.
I discover (yes, only now!) that snails can be danced with well using
hack, hack, hack, back, hack, hack, hack, back. 'Course I usually simply
don't have to worry about such things -- this guy is unusually weak. :-(
Trog gifts me a randart vorpal great sword. I decide to keep it even
though it's not shield-compatible -- there are times when I need to do a
lot of damage in a hurry.
I find the Swamp entrance. I don't feel ready for the Swamp yet.
Lair:4
------
Ascending into the remaining part of this level that a stair check
revealed nets me one very small section with one very angry hydra
adjacent to the stairs. Fortunately...
#........
..Fr..#
#....#
##r@..#
#.rrr.#
#...Dl#
##.b.r.#
...some grey rats with their high speed come to the rescue. But I
*still* get that damn hydra on top of me after some maneuvering. Arrrggh!
I'm hungry, so I use a potion of might rather than the might invocation.
Damn! I'm cornered, so I can't afford to fight anyway. OK,
teleporting... still in this section! Arrrrgh! Teleporting again...
I am *really* low on reserve supplies. I'm just plain not doing too well.
After a stash trip, it's...
D:11
----
Part of the problem in this game is that the branches have come so
shallow, and I chose to dive them. The main dungeon is probably much
easier than them by this point -- barring things like the beehive on D:10.
Ooh, a troll! I always like to line things up when I'm about to use a
beam attack.
##.#####.# ##.#####.#
#...@....# #....@...#
#........# #........#
....T....# .....T...#
#........# #........#
#....o...# #....o...#
...<.....# ...<.....#
##.##.#..# ##.##.#..#
Here it's not really necessary -- the orc will go down well enough on
its own -- but it's an instinct that I've found useful. I use the wand
of draining on it; in general, my order for consuming the "big attack
wands" is draining, lightning, cold, fire(ball), because this gradually
takes me from the most frequent to least frequent immunity of the four.
An uneventful D:11; some interesting finds but I'm holding out to get
the most out of an upcoming ?oDC usage.
D:12
----
## ###@..........#
#[#####.#####
#o# #.#
#o# #.#
#p# #.#
#.# #.#
#C# #.#
#.# #.#
#.# #.#
The apparition of Bevoker the Cutter, a powerful Kobold Assassin.
Heh. :-) Never have the words "you can't take it with you" been so
important. (Bevoker was carrying a variety of powerful rods when he died.)
He did get to keep his weapon of draining, though. :-( Weapons of
draining are MURDER for characters with an AC-based defense. I escape
melee range without using my most precious potions or scrolls, or piety,
by berserking just before reaching the stairs.
After redescending by another staircase, I carefully check to see the
relation of my new position to where the ghost was last seen. I don't
head straight for him, though, because I don't know what's between me
and him. Plus, I'm hungry. Plus, he, too, is moving.
Randart cloak. OK, just finish this level and it's time for a curse
detection.
I find Bevoker's ghost, but at a three-square distance, and I don't have
any ID'd wand to take him down. (I do have 2 I forgot to ID...). Another
"stair'port" follows. The wands are slowing and enslavement. Oh well.
!oGainStrength.
The guardian naga I just killed turns out to have been out on a stroll
from its home. But I have one other task to take care of first. I ascend
to D:11 and berserk *not* in order to fight monsters, but rather to
generate hunger so I can eat the guardian naga's mutagenic chunk before
it rots. Oops, it lowers my dexterity. Not so bad though, really -- stat
loss mutations are the most harmless of the bad mutations.
A scroll shop. No unknown bad scrolls to buy for cheap "free ID", and
nothing I want to have immediately, though I'll come back (using the
.lst file that Darshan's patch generates when you do a character dump)
for the weapon enchantment scrolls once I have a nice ego weapon of a
nice base type.
!oMutation.
Takes off another point of dexterity and gives me regeneration. The
extra food cost won't be so bad as long as I'm wearing this ring of
sustenance, but I have some new rings on the horizon. The main problem
is that I now have enough mutations that there's no guarantee that if I
gain a new one and it demands removal, a single !oCM isn't guaranteed to
zap it. Still... I love risk. :-)
And here's another one, right away. Should I? Should I?
I just *have* to know.
You feel extremely strange.
You mutate.
You hunger for flesh.
You mutate.
You feel jumpy.
Yeah, that should work. :-) Well, *this* game has just changed
directions pretty fundamentally...
Trog gifts me a randart long sword with no special properties. Whatever,
Trog. The guardian naga's lair nets... well, it's hard to say until I do
a curse check. Some nice consumables, though.
The long sword's +12,+5. I think I just may phase out that vorpal
falchion after all. This is the last Trog gift I'll comment except for
the useful ones.
I try to take down the ghost (and a hill giant) using missiles and some
teleporting around this mostly-cleared level. If it weren't mostly
cleared, I wouldn't teleport if you *paid* me for it. I get the hill
giant, but hunger and the clearing of the level drive me off it... I
decide to risk starvation and hit my stash for the ?oDC run. It nets:
the +2 cloak of Repulsion (+4 dex)
...and costs me a snack.
This level contains the Hive entrance.
D:13
----
A centaur. I make sure not to sacrifice it -- every corpse is worth the
same value when sacrificed, but some corpses generate a lot more chunks
than others. Normally you can't use more than a fraction of the larger
corpses before they rot, but a berserker...
YA unseen horror. As an armoured character, I have much more time to
maneuver against these things than an evasion character (in Crawl, it's
really hard to evade what you can't see).
## ###.....#
..##.....# #
...x.....# #
####....## #
##....###
#.@...##
#..#..##
#..#..##
##....##
###.###
#...y
#####
I met it at the "x", but since it's hurting so slowly, I've decided to
make my stand at "y". Unseen horrors are basically invisible bats on
steroids, so some forward and back motion a la the bat dance is
generally enough to bring it into melee range even when you can't see it.
It still beats me up pretty bad. Well, the monster density in the main
dungeon isn't TOO bad... I'll teleport.
Erolcha! With a wand of draining! At range! Scrollporting and leaving
the level for some stash work...
When I return, I meet the UH again. No corridors around! So I use a wand
of disintegration...
#..........#
#.........#
. ##...#######
... #....###
.).# # #..#).@#
..?.## ###.....#######
......##.....###......
#............# #......
########....## #......
...to make my own. It runs out of charges earlier than I'd like, but it
still gives me the needed whacks at the UH. Whew.
The strange formation to my left is a vault, guarded by four traps at
the edges. My T&D skill doesn't save me from the Zot trap I cross, and
my sword and most of my jewellery get cursed.
Heading to the Lair to try out some armour before reading a ?oRC, I meet
Bevoker's ghost again... while rounding a corner. :-( But some
maneuvering...
####.#.##.##
........#.#.
.....@Hp..##
#...........
#.##...##..#
...does more than I'd hoped for.
y - a ring of see invisible. :-/
Bevoker's ghost gets me on the way down. I use a set of "brown" stairs,
hoping to use them for a quick "free teleportation." Unfortunately the
ones on the other end are brown too and happen to be linked to precisely
these ones. Ack. Bevoker, as a high-level shortblader, has a superhuman
to-hit, and I get drained yet again. :-(
.......##
....@....
#..O##..#
#..p##..#
#.......#
#.*..#..#
Back to D:12 yet again and caught rounding a corner YET AGAIN. After
some hunting for a willing victim, I find a pillar at the position
marked with a star that helps me use an ogre to screen Bevoker.
I give up trying to reach an isolated part of D:13 from above it with
Bevoker chasing me about D:12 (my hoped-for teleportation strategy costs
too much food); I hope to get in through D:14.
D:14
----
A new scroll, that does nothing. I was wielding my hand crossbow...
it'll be Vorpalise Weapon. Oh well.
I sight a skeletal warrior, and decide this is a *fine* time to test new
staircases into D:13. :-)
D:13
----
Oh. Yeah. Erolcha was in this part.
Unrelatedly I also suddenly realize: Oh. Yeah. I HAVE THE CARNIVOROUS
MUTATION. Which I haven't been making use of. Oops.
A berserking uneventfully takes Erolcha down, along with a pack of ugly
things.
Amulet of resist mutation.
D:14
----
1 potion-might and 1 Trog-might take the SW pack down. Note that unlike
most undead, and even unlike most undead with something that looks like
magic, SW are considered magic users by Trog, so be sure to pray before
takin' 'em out.
With my newfound carnivorous mutation :-), I'm able to berserk a LOT
more freely. GREAT!
Wand of flame.
p - a scroll of enchant armour.
Back to the stash I go. I simply can't stress this enough.
On the way, I lose patience and simply take out Bevoker by berserking. I
get drained a full level in the process, natch. :-(((
Lair:4, small section
---------------------
Standing on L:5, I wield my short sword of flaming, pray, berserk,
ascend, and hope for the best. It works! HURRAY!
Hydras are yummy. There's something about a hydra lunch that mere game
mechanics can't convey... but you feel it anyway. :-)
Lair:6
------
Nothing of note.
Lair:7
------
Things that are here:
a meat ration
a runed ice dragon armour
The mundane protection on ice dragon armour is fantastic, especially in
light of its low evasion penalty. But there are no cold-based attacks in
the Lair system except for a few from uniques, and there *are*
fire-based attacks (ice dragon armour causes fire susceptibility) and
more importantly, lots of poison out there. I prepare to stash it and,
more importantly, to remember it later on. :-)
Another !oCM and a stash trip.
A wand shop. I don't buy wands, except for healing, unless I know
EXACTLY what kinds of stores the game holds and there's one I think I need.
The entrance to the Snake Pit.
A ring of poison resistance... This means I could do the hive in that
ice dragon armour if I want.
Lair:8
------
Errr... don't ever, ever, test unknown wands against something right
next to you until you've ID'd fireball. :-/ It got a scroll, looks like
it wasn't a critical one though.
When you can't find a bottleneck, at least an almost-bottleneck can be
better than nothing...
..mhh#
##hh##
##.@.#
###.##
Death yaks. A berserk at the stairs against them includes the gambit of
killing lots of small stuff at first in the hopes of getting Trog to
extend the rage. None happens, and most of the tough stuff remains at
the end of the rage. :-( The teleport ability really comes in handy here...
A post-berserk crisis where all the teleportations in the world, and
even my sole scroll of blinking, aren't helping -- in fact, worse and
worse enemies just keep on piling on -- is broken by the use of Trog's
Haste invocation, which counteracts the slowing. Shoulda used it sooner.
#..x.## #...##
##....###....#
###..##....##
#..D#@.######
##.#Y..###.#.
####...#....
##.....#...
#..........
In this scenario here, I was berserking at approximately the x when a
hydra made a surprise appearance. Taking the blows from the Y (I'm not
even attacking it, for fear of killing it) is tough, but it sure beats
taking the blows from the D. And teleportations on this level are a
really unsure thing -- I've already landed out of trouble into trouble
several times.
And then -- with me NOT being slowed and AFTER having already taken out
one @#%@ hydra -- another appears, three wands all fail at the same
time, and the hydra pretends I'm buck naked and does an insane amount of
damage in one turn.
You die...
Moral of the story: use something less challenging than a no-spells
no-rods human fighter next time. :-) Or swing the pendulum even faster
-- if I'd swung into the Hive, for instance, I could have probably
gained quite a lot at relatively little risk, and gained a lot of
momentum. The same is also true to some degree for the Snake Pit. I also
was far too insistent on doing Lair:8 in one piece; I should have quit
it while I was ahead.
In a way it's a good thing I died -- players getting to the bottom of
the Lair don't need such a ridiculously detailed guide anyway. :-) And
most of the rest of the (pure fighter's) game revolves around tactics
and strategies similar to the ones discussed up to here, and the same
constant improvisation.
Erik
Rubinstein
> In a way it's a good thing I died -- players getting to the bottom of
> the Lair don't need such a ridiculously detailed guide anyway. :-)
Arrrrgh, too bad it's over now. But I disagree with your last statement:
I enjoyed your adventures very much and now I feel somewhat lost,
because - my fighter is still alive and I found some of your technics
quite instructively (though I differ in one or the other detail). I
really was looking forward to learn some more for my current journey...
So, if you need an idea for your next story: how about a Minotaur
Gladiator? ;-)
I probably should post my own story, but with my crappy non-native
spelling it wouldn't be much fun, neither for the readers nor for
myself. :-(
Btw, my current MiGl is the most promising char I've ever played! He did
both the Lair and the Snake Pit in one run, both were cakewalks and I
still have to find some opponents which aren't going down in less than 4
whacks (with Okawaru's extra might, though). Only hydras are somewhat
problematic, that's why I start training Maces & Flais now for
alternative treatments. He's also a pure fighter, no spellcasting, no
rods. Ranged attacks: Bows at 11 (7) now. Main weapon: vorpalized +4 +6
war axe of chopping. This thing is bloody much *FUN*!
Rubinstein
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>
>>In a way it's a good thing I died -- players getting to the bottom of
>>the Lair don't need such a ridiculously detailed guide anyway. :-)
>
> Arrrrgh, too bad it's over now. But I disagree with your last statement:
> I enjoyed your adventures very much and now I feel somewhat lost,
> because - my fighter is still alive and I found some of your technics
> quite instructively (though I differ in one or the other detail).
More info! More info! I like to learn too, you know!
> I really was looking forward to learn some more for my current journey...
> So, if you need an idea for your next story: how about a Minotaur
> Gladiator? ;-)
Since r.g.r.m. is a bit overflowing right now I'll take advantage of
that for some security through obscurity. :-)
Kenku "Skullbreaker" (staves specialist), launched as a fire
elementalist -- two firsts in one character. Hopefully this character
will prove the point that staves are not only not bad, they're downright
munchkiny, once you apply a little finesse.
Common-elf Elyvilonite Crusader going for "Elf Ballista" or whatever the
top-level title is -- another double; this one will be considerably
harder than the other.
Bows patch -- cleverly delay until the next alpha release, then release
one that respects any changes there. ;-))) (Judging from posts on
crawl-dev, Brent has picked up pace lately, and a release now seems to
be a matter of months, not years.) Well, OK, a near-immediate release
would be more useful as it could provide inspiration for the archery
model in the alpha.
I mention all this because minotaurs are *excellent* candidates for the
bows title -- they have a good bows aptitude and poor (invocations) to
awful (other stuff) aptitudes for other sources of ranged attacks, and
meanwhile thanks to their high strength, they can eventually enchant a
bow all the way up and still reap the benefit. 'Course it's still
probably more a liability than a benefit (though the same is not true
for the use of bows *as such*). Thus I have also considered being less
ambitious and going for a Minotaur Ballista. Trouble is I'm already
planning Okie for the Kenku, and I don't want to double up gods in all
of this.
Hmm... if I just use bows as a means rather than an end, it could be
training for the common-elf game...
I really sweat the details of all this too much, I think. ;-)
> I probably should post my own story, but with my crappy non-native
> spelling it wouldn't be much fun, neither for the readers nor for
> myself. :-(
I had a lot of fun reading the DitL's on t-o-m-e.net back in my ToME
days...including the ones that weren't written by native-speakers. The
writers and those committed enough to read such writings share a common
passion for a roguelike, and the roguelike itself amounts to a "shared
natively-spoken language" all its own.
[a bloody fun Minotaur]
> This thing is bloody much *FUN*!
>
> Rubinstein
It *does* sound bloody fun! :-)
Rubinstein
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> Erik Piper wrote:
>>
>>
>>>In a way it's a good thing I died -- players getting to the bottom of
>>>the Lair don't need such a ridiculously detailed guide anyway. :-)
>>
>> because - my fighter is still alive and I found some of your technics
>> quite instructively (though I differ in one or the other detail).
>
> More info! More info! I like to learn too, you know!
I doubt you'll find that interesting, but - here we go...
(none of the words below are meant as 'my way is better than yours',
it's rather the other way around or just a matter of taste)
The most significant difference probably is our stash management. At
least until the early mid-game I carry scrolls and potions you wouldn't
dare to risk. Every once in a while of course I lose some precious stuff
that way, which of course seems to prove your method as the better one.
But that happens so infrequently that I just weigh it against my overall
laziness and prefer to be less picky.
OTOH I *never* would dare to play around with starvation like you do (or
did in your recent post). 5 years of playing Nethack probably left some
scars behind... ;-) Living with occasional starvation maybe needed for
playing a berserker, but then it's one of the reasons why I don't like
to play them.
In my current game I've learned an easy but decent (though pretty
obvious) method of corpse management: easy spoken, I always try to carry
one single corpse (as long as it's not too heavy) around. When I kill my
next monster, I don't have to wait for prayer timeout, I just drop this
one (it may be rotten by now), offer it (and the other new corpses, if
more than one) and pick up the most recent and/or eat some of the fresh
ones, if I'm hungry. That way I managed to survive the Mines with almost
no 'clean' food. Meanwhile I think there must be a difference between
fresh and older, though not yet rotten orc flesh. Losing stats happened
at least less frequent this time than it used to do. Also, as a positive
side-effect, I still can offer the rotten corpse, while rotten chunks
would have been entirely wasted.
Scrolls of enchant Armor/Weapon: I usually don't wait using them as long
as you do. The optimist says, soon I'll get that artifact weapon/armor,
then the scrolls would have been wasted anyway. The pessimist agrees,
cause w/o a slightly better equipment _now_ I probably don't survive up
to the point where those artifacts appear. That even goes for ?oID, but
always depends on the vague feeling whether I need it or not.
At last something so obvious you even haven't mentioned so far (unless I
missed it): pseudo IDing missiles.
It still might be useful for new players at least, but slightly spoilish
for beginners who probably want and *can* find this out by themselves
and entirely uninteresting for the one who calls himself the "pedantic
one". *g*
Take it as a
*Cookie for noobs:
With almost every char, including spellcasters, I use darts in the early
game. While the dart skill is less useful for later (and thus will be
skipped ASAP), it trains the throwing skill (which also is less useful
for spellcasters, but) and helps surviving the first few levels at
least. Very soon you have lots of darts, say 50+ from one sort and a few
others which don't stack. The latter are the interesting ones: either
slightly enchanted or even ego darts (flaming or ice). As soon as I have
enough of those, I drop the 50+ but one. This one I allocate to one of
the last letters in the alphabet, like 'z'. Now every time I'll pick up
new 'vanilla' darts, they will stack with the z-dart and I drop them
immediately (mind you, too many missiles can easily burden you). Just
take care to keep a single 'template'.
Of course you can extend this method for the other vanilla darts, too
(dwarfen, orcish, elven) which are going to e.g. u,x,y and, at the very
least, the same for arrows and bolts if you are going to use them. This
way you'll get the most out of your missiles w/o even wasting one single
scroll of identify (I wrote it out since I guess only new players are
still reading). Put the missiles you actually want to use in front of
the alphabet ('f'iring uses alphabetical order) but not to a or b which
are both reserved for 1. and 2. weapon slot (you can do it, though they
won't 'f'ire then).
*End Cookie
>> [...] how about a Minotaur Gladiator? ;-)
>
> Since r.g.r.m. is a bit overflowing right now I'll take advantage of
> that for some security through obscurity. :-)
>
> Kenku "Skullbreaker" (staves specialist), launched as a fire
> elementalist -- two firsts in one character. Hopefully this character
> will prove the point that staves are not only not bad, they're
> downright munchkiny, once you apply a little finesse.
As a 'staff-adict' (guess I'm not the only one) I'm particularly
interested in this one! :-)
> Common-elf Elyvilonite Crusader going for "Elf Ballista" or whatever
> the top-level title is -- another double; this one will be
> considerably harder than the other.
Sounds somewhat masochistic to me, but I'm quite sure you know what
you're doing. ;-)
> Bows patch -- cleverly delay until the next alpha release, then release
> one that respects any changes there. ;-)))
Meanwhile I regret not having followed your indroduction thread about
your bows patch (which was pretty long and right now I'm not in the mood
to work through all that posts). At that time I wasn't particularly
interested in bows, but my current Mintotaur has changed my mind
dramatically!
I never thought I'ld ever would kill Yaks entirely from afar with a
simple +2 +2 Bow. Can't wait to get a nice artifact bow. *evil grin*
> [waking my appetite on the forthcoming Crawl version]
>
> I mention all this because minotaurs are *excellent* candidates for
> the bows title
What you say! :-)
Btw, they are outstanding fighters, too...
> -- they have a good bows aptitude and poor (invocations) to awful
> (other stuff) aptitudes for other sources of ranged attacks, and
> meanwhile thanks to their high strength, they can eventually enchant a
> bow all the way up and still reap the benefit. 'Course it's still
> probably more a liability than a benefit (though the same is not true
> for the use of bows *as such*).
Again, I regret not knowing anything about your bows patch. Maybe I'll
have a look at it during the next days.
> Thus I have also considered being less ambitious and going for a
> Minotaur Ballista. Trouble is I'm already planning Okie for the Kenku,
> and I don't want to double up gods in all of this.
Don't know why, but Okawaru actually acts very untypical in my current
game: it's not raining tons of axes of orc slaying (though I'm clearly
playing an axe master), but *really* useful stuff instead. As I already
told somewhere else, 1. gift was a swamp dragon armour which let me do
the Hive immediately and in one easy run, 2. gift a wizard's(!)hat of
integrity, res_cold/poison, sense surroundings and +3 Int. The latter
was so much welcome, since now I don't have to waste any skillpoints or
a ring slot for my dangerously low Int.
> Hmm... if I just use bows as a means rather than an end, it could be
> training for the common-elf game...
>
> I really sweat the details of all this too much, I think. ;-)
You're welcome ;-)
>> I probably should post my own story, but with my crappy non-native
>> spelling it wouldn't be much fun, neither for the readers nor for
>> myself. :-(
>
> I had a lot of fun reading the DitL's on t-o-m-e.net back in my ToME
> days...including the ones that weren't written by native-speakers. The
> writers and those committed enough to read such writings share a
> common passion for a roguelike, and the roguelike itself amounts to a
> "shared natively-spoken language" all its own.
What I'm talking about is this: for these little (in your terms) post I
almost spend a whole afternoon, with all that fumbling around with
crappy Google Translate and Gnome Dictionary. Now imagine I would try to
post something like your incredible reports. I'm afraid there wouldn't
be much time left for playing!
> [a bloody fun Minotaur]
>> This thing is bloody much *FUN*!
>
> It *does* sound bloody fun! :-)
Which has to be delayed for 2 days at least: too tired today and no time
at all tomorrow. Though I expect him to die somewhere sooner or later, I
*really* don't want to YASD him (what even seems almost unavoidable to
me). The hardest thing right now is to prevent myself from overrating
and from playing while tired.
Rubinstein
smar...@yahoo.com
see more, please. I'm curious about how you'd get, say, that kobald
assassin going, or a so-called "bevoker". BTW, I somehow missed part
two, the bit leading up to the temple.
The midgame is where I run into trouble. If I die off early on--
happens not infrequently-- it's no big deal. Not much time wasted, not
much in the way of attachment. If I die in the middle (or early middle
or late early) then it's frustrating. If I die a bit after that, well,
I probably saw something new and maybe beat my best score.
Anyway,
I noticed at one point you got a stat bonus, Eric, and put it into Dex
"of course". No-brainer, eh. Is that a no brainer for all fighter types
or was there something about the situation that made it such an easy
decision?
How strong is strong enough to get the most out of bows? I'm surprised
dex isn't the key with them, like in most rpgs. True enough though, in
real life strength determines how much you can pull and how steady you
are.
It's funny that you say that vanilla fighters are tougher to keep
alive, because magic users die on me way too often. I'm keen to know
ways you have of increasing survival.
It seems to me that minotaurs are the best race for fighters. Their
affinity for bows is a big part of that conclusion. Bows reliably show
up early enough to help out. Crossbows are nice, but may not show up
until you meet yaktaurs. Minos do well with all the hands weapons,
IIRC, although I don't see why you'd want to use anything other than
axes or mace/flail. Long blades, as your example shows, show up kind of
late, and pole arms are pretty much junk (not that I know firsthand,
it's just my impression from what I've read here).
The drawback to minos is that they can't wear helmets but in most games
(at least to the parts I've experienced) that's not a big deal. Wizard
hat artifacts can be pretty nice, regular wizard hats can be enchanted,
and nice helmets don't seem to be much more common than nice hats.
I realize that minos suck at stealth and magic, but by then we're not
really talking a fighter anymore. Still, I'm keen to learn about these
other routes, too.
I agree with Rubinstein that throwing is a good way to go early on,
except I don't use darts. Instead I collect spears and daggers and
throw them-- bit of a pain compared to darts, but prevents getting the
darts skill. I suppose I should try darts again but I don't remember
finding many nice ones. Throwing's just a stopgap to bows anyway.
I'm curious about opinions regarding starting class, particularly for
minotaurs, but other fighter types too. Hunters start with a bow, but
that's going to run out of ammo pretty soon. Also stuck with dodging,
shields (but no actual shield, so there's a good chance that that skill
is going to go wasted for quite a while as shields aren't exactly
abundant), a dagger, and light armor. Still, sort of interesting.
Oddly, given that strength is so important for bows, only had 17.
Chaos Knights looked bad (to me) all round: Invokations, Short Blades,
Dodging, Stabbing, and only one point of Armor. Equipment was lame,
too: short sword and robe.
Monks apparently are meant to go the stealth route, with significant
amounts of Dodging and Stealth. Cool that they have 4 points of
Unarmed, but it's not so great that they don't have any weapons
skills-- or even a weapon. Just to make me look like a jerk, the RNG
spitefully produced a dwarven jewelled helmet next to my test case. +1
as it turns out.
Berserkers start with an axe (good), spears (nice if you like throwing
assorted junk like me), and leather armor (ungood). Skills go Fighting
2, Axes 3, Polearms 1, Throwing 2, Armor 2, Dodging 2. So, that's 9
points of what I'm looking for.
Gladiators get choice of weapon (still, gonna be an axe with me), ring
mail and a buckler. Better than the Berserker's gear if you ask me,
although I'm not keen on shields. Skills: Fighting 3, Axes 3, Armor 2,
Shields 1, Unarmed 2. 10 points of good stuff and one point of maybe.
Fighters go a lot like gladiators except with slightly better
protection and 2 more points of shield skill. By my way, that's 9 good
and 3 maybe.
So, looks like Gladiators might be the way to go, depending on how you
feel about shields. If you're against them, Berserkers might be the
way. IMO, Berserkers rely a lot on finding some decent armor early on,
although the religious ability lets makes them pretty good at
surviving.
Now, I know all this is stupidly obvious, but I'm curious if anybody
has any input and somebody might find it helpful. I did. For some
reason in thought MiHu started with slings. Still, I think the lack of
ammo on early levels makes them less viable.
Erik Piper
> I enjoyed reading it and I'm sorry "a" didn't do so well. I'd like to
> see more, please.
I found the willpower to start up "b" the Minotaur Gladiator and start
logging him, but failed a maintenance check mid-way to the Temple and
launched another attempt at a Skullbreaker instead. I'm not sure what's
the bigger disincentive -- the logging, or the fact that I really am
more interested in less "normal" characters. The funny thing, though, is
that for me, characters with no non-physical attacks are actually highly
*atypical* -- which is I think is part of what pulled me through when I
was logging "a" -- I was doing something new for me.
The other thing pulling me through is that single-role humans are very
weak -- a born JOAT in a specialist's role has, well, a very exciting
time before him. ;-)
> I'm curious about how you'd get, say, that kobald assassin going,
I tried all of the relevant unascended races (besides kobolds, these
were by my reckoning the irrelevant ogres and formerly ogre-mages, the
semi-relevant kenku and common elves, and the highly relevant gnomes)
and a couple of the ascended ones (dwarves), and all in all I found
kobold assassins to be among the easiest to get going. The early game is
when poison is at its most useful; it only takes a couple of poisoned
needles to take down a hobgoblin, gnoll, ogre, or other early-early-game
terror, and by the late early game, you start getting good with short
blades.
> or a so-called "bevoker".
The first ingredient is a berserker. :-) It needs to be a berserker
capable of surviving a very long time without ever getting a rod,
because precisely that may happen. The second is a race that is
reasonably good at Evocations; outstanding Evocations is nice, but not
necessary (e.g. Kobolds are at 90 IIRC).
The built-in Amulet of the Gourmand was really useful, as you can burn
through a LOT of food berserking, and (unless you're willing to
sacrifice a lot of rations) you can miss a LOT of chances to berserk in
situations worthy of it when using a character who suffers the normal
hunger model.
Perhaps the easiest combo for the job would be a foo-dwarven berserker:
great fighters, good evokers, able to *start* as berserkers. I tried
these early on, but they lacked cool-factor for me, and I didn't yet
know all the dirty tricks I know today.
> BTW, I somehow missed part two, the bit leading up to the temple.
http://tinyurl.com/cnrzo - Part I - Until Temple
http://tinyurl.com/9sx6t - Part II - Temple to Lair
>
> The midgame is where I run into trouble. If I die off early on--
> happens not infrequently--
Same for me. :-)
> it's no big deal. Not much time wasted, not
> much in the way of attachment. If I die in the middle (or early middle
> or late early) then it's frustrating.
Same for me. :-(
> If I die a bit after that, well,
> I probably saw something new and maybe beat my best score.
>
> Anyway,
>
> I noticed at one point you got a stat bonus, Eric, and put it into Dex
> "of course".
I think I may have been making fun of myself. I'm a dex fanatic... it is
true, though, that the current maintainer called Dex "the most important
stat after Int" at one point.
> No-brainer, eh. Is that a no brainer for all fighter types
> or was there something about the situation that made it such an easy
> decision?
Dexterity helps with a shield, and I long blades are either slightly
tilted towards Dex or right in the middle. Per-incident likelihood (not
efficiency) of training is affected by Dex for missile skills, shields,
and T&D. It's affected by Str for pure-weapon skills other than unarmed
-- I thought perhaps long blades would be Dex-based. On the one hand
this contributed to my bulging XP pool in the late early game; on the
other, it helped with the slightly hard-to-train Dex skills I mentioned.
All in all hard to say. Dex has a cornucopia of little benefits; Str has
that obvious and juicy capacity bonus; otherwise, with no Str-based
weapon, I don't think there are so many benefits.
> How strong is strong enough to get the most out of bows?
Ru's calculation: http://tinyurl.com/8xc7d
My opinion: I thought I saw something a little different (can't recall
what); I need to clarify this, obviously, before I start changing
things. :-)
> I'm surprised dex isn't the key with them, like in most rpgs. True
> enough though, in real life strength determines how much you can
> pull and how steady you are.
The trouble is that a) the current model is out of line with the one for
melee weapons and some other missile weapons, b) it doesn't make sense
-- your strength isn't helping you get the *physical* best out of the
bow, but somehow its *magical* best (unless we assume that, unlike every
other weapon in the game, damage-only (only!) enchantment
("enchantment"!) bonuses for bows/slings are physical), and c) it puts
bows (and slings) at a long-term disadvantage, as you want your
"serious" weapons to have the highest damage bonus possible by the endgame.
> It's funny that you say that vanilla fighters are tougher to keep
> alive, because magic users die on me way too often.
Maybe I was too biased towards my own playstyle. I thrive on
flexibility; with purely physical skills, what you can do is very
tightly defined (though often quite powerful within its boundaries). For
a different view, look up the conversations between me and Johann Strandell.
> I'm keen to know ways you have of increasing survival.
Cheat, cheat, cheat. :-) I don't mean *real* cheating, of course, but
bend the game mechanics until they snap and shatter. You can go even
further than I did and use dirty tricks like dropping scrolls on the
ground when a humanoid monster is chasing you, for example. (Might also
work with other carrying-capable monsters.) But that particular trick
makes even me feel dirty.
> It seems to me that minotaurs are the best race for fighters.
Purely-physical fighters? I'd have a hard time thinking of a better one.
Skills and food consumption are so vital in Crawl that I find the
constant diving pressure and the melee-aptitudes penalties applying to
the most ridiculously beefy races hit them harder than the lacking HP
here or there on a minotaur. So, yeah! Once you start considering some
serious evocations or eventual minor spells, Dwarves start racing up the
charts.
> Their affinity for bows is a big part of that conclusion. Bows reliably show
> up early enough to help out. Crossbows are nice, but may not show up
> until you meet yaktaurs.
The trick is to peek into the Elven Halls as early as a peek (not a
dive) is survivable. This gets you a hand crossbow, which is more than
enough for a start (and lets you train with less valuable and heavy ammo
than bolts -- note that you will also lose fewer missiles as your skills
go up, though I can't recall whether it's Throwing or the missile skill
itself -- thus you'll be losing extra darts rather than extra bolts).
> Minos do well with all the hands weapons, IIRC, although I don't see
> why you'd want to use anything other than axes or mace/flail. Long blades,
> as your example shows, show up kind of late,
For me the Mines aren't late. :-) My Short Blades only reached 5 before
switching, and that's actually an exceptional lot IME -- probably
related to the big pool (you can turn off skills until your face turns
blue, but if your pool is big, you're just *gonna* train your most-used
skill).
It can be difficult to get an axe better than a hand axe before the
Mines, so while an axeman won't have the pool problems (problems?) "a"
did, he won't necessarily be hitting much better pre-Mines. Also, the
early game is swimming in short blades, giving a good chance of a find
like my dagger-of-venom find.
The real reason for axes is that the image you get in your head is
really, really cool. :-)
[...agreement/inspiration...]
> I'm curious about opinions regarding starting class, particularly for
> minotaurs, but other fighter types too. Hunters start with a bow, but
> that's going to run out of ammo pretty soon. Also stuck with dodging,
Minotaurs are equally good at armour and dodging; it's stealth and
stabbing where they lose out. These three plus short blades work best as
a suite, but they're not *bad* as individual units. Also note that light
armour solves some extra worries about heavy armour hampering your Unarmed.
> shields (but no actual shield, so there's a good chance that that skill
> is going to go wasted for quite a while as shields aren't exactly
> abundant),
Agreed.
> a dagger,
You know my opinion on da blades :0) But due to the synergy between
STR-based weapons and bows, and the STR bias of minotaurs' involuntary
skill increases, there really is something to be said for an axe (or
mace... sure, you have the whole butchering-problems thing, but you can
find a half-decent mace/flail early, you don't have to worry about
whether you find a flaming one or not, and minotaurs *might* be able to
use giant clubs, though don't take my word on that).
> and light armor. Still, sort of interesting.
> Oddly, given that strength is so important for bows, only had 17.
Since strength only affects the extent to which you can use a bow's
damage bonus, you'd do just as well as the start bow-wise with a
strength of 4. :-)
> Chaos Knights looked bad (to me) all round: Invokations,
Out of all the non-physical skill, Invocations are a minotaur's best;
meanwhile, Makhleb offers some pretty nice stuff. But early
survivability hinges a lot on how focused your character is, and a CK's
Invocations disperses your starting investment.
> Short Blades, Dodging, Stabbing, and only one point of Armor. Equipment
> was lame, too: short sword and robe.
>
> Monks apparently are meant to go the stealth route, with significant
> amounts of Dodging and Stealth.
It's odd, since there is no special bonus (much though there perhaps
should be, say, at the cost of a toning-down elsewhere) for unarmed
stabbing. Of course, stealth isn't just for stabbing -- it's also very
useful for guerilla tactics that, besides helping survivability, are fun
intellectually.
Again, lightly-armoured unarmed characters have fewer worries than
heavy-armoured one -- not to say that heavy-armoured characters can
never be effective at unarmed.
> Cool that they have 4 points of Unarmed, but it's not so great that
> they don't have any weapons skills-- or even a weapon.
They do -- their fists, horns, and feet. :-) You wouldn't want the
initial skill dispersal inherent in giving them weapons skills (other
than fighting) anyway, and starting weapons are usually nothing special;
why not wait for your marriage? (To a war axe, I mean.)
> Just to make me look like a jerk, the RNG
> spitefully produced a dwarven jewelled helmet next to my test case. +1
> as it turns out.
You should see all the early boots and helmets my Kenkus find. Yep, even
randarts. :-)
Incidentally, "jewelled" is one of the deceptive helmet tags -- it says
nothing about quality.
> Berserkers start with an axe (good), spears (nice if you like throwing
> assorted junk like me),
I don't think spear skill helps with thrown spears, though I'm not sure
offhand.
> and leather armor (ungood).
Not necessarily bad, though I too would probably slightly tilt towards
Armour skill in the long term.
> Skills go Fighting
> 2, Axes 3, Polearms 1, Throwing 2, Armor 2, Dodging 2. So, that's 9
> points of what I'm looking for.
One of either armor or dodging will be most likely wasted, unless you go
for elven chain, where the armour skill will soften the slight to-hit
penalty a bit, or you go for something very close to a balance between
the two, and you use the lightest of the heavy armours... AFAIU.
> Gladiators get choice of weapon (still, gonna be an axe with me), ring
> mail and a buckler. Better than the Berserker's gear if you ask me,
> although I'm not keen on shields.
It's hard not to train unarmed with a minotaur, and the punch attack,
which a shield blocks, is the ring at the center of the auxiliary
unarmed merry-go-round IMO.
[...agreement...]
> Now, I know all this is stupidly obvious, but I'm curious if anybody
> has any input and somebody might find it helpful. I did. For some
> reason in thought MiHu started with slings. Still, I think the lack of
> ammo on early levels makes them less viable.
I've found slings to do OK that way with a little luck... but in the end
of ends, they're... slings. :-/
Erik
Twisted One
> smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> I enjoyed reading it and I'm sorry "a" didn't do so well. I'd like to
>> see more, please.
>
> I found the willpower to start up "b" the Minotaur Gladiator and start
> logging him, but failed a maintenance check mid-way to the Temple
"Failed a maintenance check" means what?
> I tried all of the relevant unascended races (besides kobolds, these
> were by my reckoning the irrelevant ogres and formerly ogre-mages, the
> semi-relevant kenku and common elves, and the highly relevant gnomes)
"Unascended"? If that means "not won with", it seems you're wrong.
Weren't there kobold *and* kenku YAVPs here fairly recently?
--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>> I found the willpower to start up "b" the Minotaur Gladiator and start
>> logging him, but failed a maintenance check mid-way to the Temple
>
>
> "Failed a maintenance check" means what?
It means I failed an attention-deficit-disorder check. :-/
The intended phrase (tongue in cheek, but actually understandable unlike
the nonsense "maintenance check") was "willpower check."
>> I tried all of the relevant unascended races (besides kobolds, these
>> were by my reckoning the irrelevant ogres and formerly ogre-mages, the
>> semi-relevant kenku and common elves, and the highly relevant gnomes)
>
> "Unascended"? If that means "not won with", it seems you're wrong.
> Weren't there kobold *and* kenku YAVPs here fairly recently?
At the time when I was trying to ascend a bevoker, there were no kobold
YAVPs (though there was one informal statement of victory and one
informal statement of being-ready-for-victory-and-then-quitting). Then I
ascended a kobold, which was the recent kobold YAVP...
No kenku YAVPs out there yet, at least not showing up for [kenku YAVP]
in GG.
Erik
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>>Rubinstein wrote:
>>>Erik Piper wrote:
>>> [I'd do some things differently than you did in that erotic
masterpiece, The Story of A, in which an athletic, resourceful man gets
serviced by a hydra...]
>>More info! More info! I like to learn too, you know!
>
> I doubt you'll find that interesting, but - here we go...
> (none of the words below are meant as 'my way is better than yours',
> it's rather the other way around or just a matter of taste)
I'd say taste.
> The most significant difference probably is our stash management. At
> least until the early mid-game I carry scrolls and potions you wouldn't
> dare to risk.
Looking back over, I find I understressed the most important scroll of
all -- blinking. You can die as a delayed consequence of an
unnecesarily-carried, fried scroll of blinking much more easily than due
to a ?oEA one way or the other, since they are, quite simply, a "get out
of death free" card.
[...]
> OTOH I *never* would dare to play around with starvation like you do (or
> did in your recent post).
It's a sacrifice of the short term for the long term (making sure I have
enough rations for the whole game), but I'll admit my obsession with
eating only chunks reaches irrational heights sometimes. You know how
experiences in your youth can leave you with habits that you apply
without regard to the real situation at hand? Crawl has a youth too...
and mine was spent learning the ins and outs of chunks. :-)
[...]
> In my current game I've learned an easy but decent (though pretty
> obvious) method of corpse management: easy spoken, I always try to carry
> one single corpse (as long as it's not too heavy) around.
My Crawl youth was spent on characters with strengths in the instadeath
range... :-P ...and gods who didn't meddle in my eating habits! :-PPP
> When I kill my next monster, I don't have to wait for prayer timeout, I
> just drop this one (it may be rotten by now), offer it (and the other new
> corpses, if more than one) and pick up the most recent and/or eat some of
> the fresh ones, if I'm hungry. That way I managed to survive the Mines
> with almost no 'clean' food. Meanwhile I think there must be a difference
> between fresh and older, though not yet rotten orc flesh.
case CE_CONTAMINATED:
if (you.attribute[ATTR_TRANSFORMATION] == TRAN_LICH)
this_chunk_effect = CE_CLEAN;
else
{
switch (you.species)
{
case SP_GHOUL:
// Doing this here causes a odd message later. -- bwr
// this_chunk_effect = CE_ROTTEN;
break;
case SP_KOBOLD:
case SP_TROLL:
if (!one_chance_in(45))
this_chunk_effect = CE_CLEAN;
break;
case SP_HILL_ORC:
case SP_OGRE:
if (!one_chance_in(15))
this_chunk_effect = CE_CLEAN;
break;
default:
if (!one_chance_in(3))
this_chunk_effect = CE_CLEAN;
break;
}
}
break;
(Sorry!)
> Losing stats happened at least less frequent this time than it used to do.
> Also, as a positive side-effect, I still can offer the rotten corpse, while
> rotten chunks would have been entirely wasted.
But you could have offered it in the first place rather than ever
picking it up? I'm missing something here... of course there *IS* the
advantage that you don't have to do guesswork regarding rotting periods,
but I'd rather have the extra carrying capacity. My love of free
carrying capacity probably relates to my dungeon-hoovering fanaticism,
though (but that fanaticism has a real practical reason for me
personally -- I would never remember what's junk and what isn't if I
left junk laying about where I found it).
> Scrolls of enchant Armor/Weapon: I usually don't wait using them as long
> as you do. The optimist says, soon I'll get that artifact weapon/armor,
> then the scrolls would have been wasted anyway.
In my experience, it's a *very* rare artifact weapon that outperforms a
+9,+9 weapon of slicing... it's a *very* rare artifact armour that
outperforms a +8 (?) robe of resistance or higher-dragon armour. But
this is less true for a pure fighter, of course, with all the
otherwise-unavailable powers he can find in randarts.
> The pessimist agrees,
> cause w/o a slightly better equipment _now_ I probably don't survive up
> to the point where those artifacts appear.
That's Okie's job. :-)
> That even goes for ?oID, but
> always depends on the vague feeling whether I need it or not.
??
> At last something so obvious you even haven't mentioned so far (unless I
> missed it): pseudo IDing missiles.
[brilliant technique for pseudo-IDing missiles]
Whew... the thing is, now *I'm* the one who's too lazy for a technique. :-)
Considering the power of a hand crossbow, darts are by no means just a
toy for the early game anyway, so this stuff can be pretty important.
[challenge ascensions E. has planned ahead]
[...]
>>Common-elf Elyvilonite Crusader going for "Elf Ballista" or whatever
>>the top-level title is -- another double; this one will be
>>considerably harder than the other.
>
> Sounds somewhat masochistic to me, but I'm quite sure you know what
> you're doing. ;-)
You'll notice it's *second* in the order... ;-)
>>Bows patch -- cleverly delay until the next alpha release, then release
>>one that respects any changes there. ;-)))
>
> Meanwhile I regret not having followed your indroduction thread about
> your bows patch (which was pretty long and right now I'm not in the mood
> to work through all that posts). At that time I wasn't particularly
> interested in bows, but my current Mintotaur has changed my mind
> dramatically!
>
> I never thought I'ld ever would kill Yaks entirely from afar with a
> simple +2 +2 Bow. Can't wait to get a nice artifact bow. *evil grin*
I was also amazed by what my bevoker was doing by the endgame... missile
weapons come *so* *close* to being roleplayable before falling flat :-/
>>I mention all this because minotaurs are *excellent* candidates for
>>the bows title
>
> What you say! :-)
Somebody set up us the bows!
>>-- they have a good bows aptitude and poor (invocations) to awful
>>(other stuff) aptitudes for other sources of ranged attacks, and
>>meanwhile thanks to their high strength, they can eventually enchant a
>>bow all the way up and still reap the benefit. 'Course it's still
>>probably more a liability than a benefit (though the same is not true
>>for the use of bows *as such*).
>
> Again, I regret not knowing anything about your bows patch. Maybe I'll
> have a look at it during the next days.
Maybe I'll finally *work on it* again during the next few days. (Where's
that ICQ "embarrassed" icon when I need it?)
> What I'm talking about is this: for these little (in your terms) post
:-/ :-) :-D
In any case. If you ever decide to write a log, I look forward to it, no
matter what the grammar and spelling.
> The hardest thing right now is to prevent myself from overrating
> and from playing while tired.
Perhaps the most important Crawl advice... and the hardest to follow.
Erik
Rubinstein
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> Erik Piper wrote:
>>> Rubinstein wrote:
>>>> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>>>> [I'd do some things differently than you did in that erotic
>>>> masterpiece, The Story of A, in which an athletic, resourceful man
>>>> gets serviced by a hydra...]
Aah, your marvelous art of snip-quoting! ;-)
>>> [Erik astinishingly expecting to learn something from - me!]
>>
>> The most significant difference probably is our stash management. At
>> least until the early mid-game I carry scrolls and potions you wouldn't
>> dare to risk.
>
> [I find I understressed the most important scroll of all -- blinking]
Fully agree. Meanwhile I've learned that painful lesson a little bit too
often for my taste, but I forget about it again and again. I even
managed to lose some of my most promising chars by just forgetting about
the one(s) in my inventory due to panicing. But enough is enough: Right
now I'm carving "BLINK OR DIE" into my monitor screen.
Seriously now: this one is definitely worth to stash! But then I think
your way of stash organizing is an art I'm still too lazy for (not the
only reason though, but more further below <*>).
> [...]
>
>> [Rubinstein too coward to take the risks of starvation]
>> [oops, a self-insult. Is this allowed?]
>> [Nevertheless, don't snip it please]
>
> [...]
> Crawl has a youth too... and mine was spent learning the ins and outs
> of chunks. :-)
Basically the same here, though my 'youth' was quite different from
yours (fortunately. I *love* diversity). Usually I'm no friend of
statistical observations, but this time I can't resist: out of >1000
dead chars (I hope there never will be something like a 'Crawling Rights
Foundation'), I've lost <5 to starvation. Only 1 of them died from plain
starvation, all others from starving as a symptom for (or result of) a
much worse problem. Btw, I'm much more afraid of the negative
side-effects (not being able to cast spells or using boosters like
might/berserk) than of starvation itself.
So what do you think how many chars did you lost (if any at all,
directly or as a side-effect) from your risky games with starvation?
Just curious...
> [Erik wasting some precious looking code snipped to completely C++
> illiterate Rubinstein]
If (*IF*) I understand this part of food.cc correctly, than even Kobolds
and Trolls should have a slim (1 in 45) chance of catching a
contamination. Something I entirely fail to recall from my former games.
> case SP_KOBOLD:
> case SP_TROLL:
> if (!one_chance_in(45))
> this_chunk_effect = CE_CLEAN;
> break;
I guess what you was trying to tell me here was the probability of
contamination being PC race dependent. But how does this apply?
Minotaurs seem to belong to the default group with a chance of 1 in 3.
Anyway, I couldn't find any hint in food.cc indicating any differences
between a fresh and a somewhat older (but not yet rotten) chunk. So yes,
I must have been dreaming:
>> Losing stats happened at least less frequent this time than it used
>> to do.
[shifting up this 'dream' a bit, for keeping in context]
> break;
>
> break;
> break;
>
>
> (Sorry!)
Forgiven, but thanks for the breaks.
I probably could need some or the other. ;-)
>> [SCS (single corpse surfing)]
>> [...]
>> Also, as a positive side-effect, I still can offer the rotten
>> corpse, while rotten chunks would have been entirely wasted.
At first I had a hard time to understand your following question
> But you could have offered it in the first place rather than ever
> picking it up? I'm missing something here...
Assuming I don't want to touch any 'natural' food, but chunks only. Also
imagine I'm usually not (and don't want to be) hungry after a fight, but
prayer still has to time out. If I now would offer the fresh and keep
the old corpse, there would be a much higher probability of having a
rotten corpse when I actually want/have to eat something. In this case I
would *have* to find and kill some edible monsters while still hungry
(=additional risk, and of course I still want to pray during the fight)
After killing the monster I'ld still have to wait for prayer timeout to
get my chunks. Whereas with my now prefered method I'ld just have the
*option* to dissect this (fresher) corpse now, with the additional bonus
of not having to wait for prayer timeout this time.
Got the picture? Sounds much more complicated than it actually is...
Or in short:
while taking a fresh one and eating/offering the old one(s), I just
extend the time window in which I'll keep more options open.
But let me guess (and here we're back to different viewpoints again),
you neither carry chunks nor corpses around but simply stash them on the
floor!?
If that is true, which also would fit to what you've stated here...
> My love of free carrying capacity probably relates to my
> dungeon-hoovering fanaticism, though (but that fanaticism has a real
> practical reason for me personally -- I would never remember what's
> junk and what isn't if I left junk laying about where I found it).
...then we both seem to focus on almost opposite priorities:
You - equipment
Me - time/energy
From my point of view, time, energie and food are almost exchangeable in
Crawl, with the main difference of the latter being a limited resource,
as you know all too well. So, just moving around to reach my pile of chunks
appears like 3 steps forwards - 2 steps back to me (leave alone the risk
of an entirely rotten pile by the time you reach it, just another waste
of energie, because it was potential piety stuff which also is some sort
of energie). Leave alone your runs for stash managment.
Taking this to the edge, we even (or better: almost) could compare the
relation between energy and equipment to the relation between energy
and matter in RL: while it's possible to transform one into each
other,in the end you can't actually *win* something. The art of playing
Crawl is probably all about the balance between those two forms.
But then it's pretty late now and I'm not quite sure whether I still
understand my own theories anymore...
*almost looking like Einstein, with a strange, sheepish flair though*
Anyway, you're still one step ahead while I'm waiting for my first win.
But I strongly believe in more than just one single 'golden way' to win,
that's why I love this game so much. That's also why I even don't want
to argue which methods might be the 'best' (feel free to do so, if you
want, of course). Diversity is the name of the game! :-)
>> [early use of enchant scrolls]
> [...]
> ...it's a *very* rare artifact armour that outperforms a +8 (?) robe
Throwing in another '?' here. Is this actually possible?
>> The pessimist agrees, cause w/o a slightly better equipment _now_ I
>> probably don't survive up to the point where those artifacts appear.
>
> That's Okie's job. :-)
Future experience may change my mind, but for now I still believe in the
best possible equipment at *any* given time, which of course includes
'as soon as possible'.
>> That even goes for ?oID, but always depends on the vague feeling
>> whether I need it or not.
>
> ??
Uuuuh, careful. The answer to these 2 innocent question marks would
directly lead to my most irrational side (mystic, voodoo, black magic,
caballa, all that stuff. Not really, but sort of...) which I promised
myself to *never* *ever* discussing in the public. With a probability of
98.35% this also would lead to yet another flame war.
Buhuhuhuuuuuh ~~~~~
> [brilliant technique for pseudo-IDing missiles]
"Brilliant". C'mon, you must be kidding!
Obvious like rolling cigarettes, something *every* one just needs to
survive... *g*
> Whew... the thing is, now *I'm* the one who's too lazy for a
> technique. :-)
Still kidding, aren't you? For me it appears much less cumbersome than
any kind of sophisticated stash management (leave alone yours).
To the cost of very little real time, but not a single bit of precious
crawl time (=energy =life =everything =...you get the point)
> Considering the power of a hand crossbow, darts are by no means just a
> toy for the early game anyway, so this stuff can be pretty important.
Works with bolts and arrows too, of course.
I know that you already sort your missiles as soon as you detect some
enchanted ones, so you're sooo close already. If you only could bring
yourself carrying around larger amounts of more or less useless missiles
for a while... *g*
[OT] What a long post again. Without these I'd easily have a winner
by now! ,-) -> sleeping on one eye already...zz.z.zzz.zzzzzz
Rubinstein
Igor D. WonderLlama
> smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Minos do well with all the hands weapons, IIRC, although I don't
see
> > why you'd want to use anything other than axes or mace/flail. Long
blades,
> > as your example shows, show up kind of late,
>
> For me the Mines aren't late. :-) My Short Blades only reached 5
before
> switching, and that's actually an exceptional lot IME -- probably
> related to the big pool (you can turn off skills until your face
turns
> blue, but if your pool is big, you're just *gonna* train your
most-used
> skill).
>
> It can be difficult to get an axe better than a hand axe before the
> Mines, so while an axeman won't have the pool problems (problems?)
"a"
> did, he won't necessarily be hitting much better pre-Mines. Also, the
> early game is swimming in short blades, giving a good chance of a
find
> like my dagger-of-venom find.
>
> The real reason for axes is that the image you get in your head is
> really, really cool. :-)
I've always liked axes/maces because they are so tilted to one side.
Long blades tend to be in the middle. The way I assume the better for
the strong/dextrous code works, having it tilted one way or the other
is vastly better than in the middle. Since you only get so many
statpoints, focusing exclusively on one stat that your weapon is tilted
should give you more total bonus than alternating between the stats
when your weapon is balanced. And obviously more than focusing on a
stat when the weapon is balanced. Am I correct in this interpretation,
or is there a balancing factor in the code to offset this?
> Again, lightly-armoured unarmed characters have fewer worries than
> heavy-armoured one -- not to say that heavy-armoured characters can
> never be effective at unarmed.
I've got two characters going now. Both inspired by "a" (got me back
into crawl). One is a demonspawn martial artist planning on using
heavy armor. Right now armor is at 13 in the early swamp. Using the
only randart armor I've found which is +2 scale mail with resist poison
and cold. (I think it's scale, the 5/-2 one anyway.) Working well so
far, ev at 10, attacking seems fully effective. Hoping to go to
heavier armor later, but right now that randart is too good.
Noticed one very odd thing. He put on a dwarven spiked helm early
(nice find for unarmed). Then he grew horns. But he still has the
helm on. Do horns prevent me from putting on a helmet, but not
forcibly remove an existing one? My headbutts are pretty deadly, but
I'm guessing that's just because spiked helms do that, not because the
horns and spikes are adding. Is this all intended?
As a total aside, the other character is my old standby, Mountain Dwarf
axe fighter. Tried Ely for the first time. He's my first character
started in months, and he has killed all the vault guards. Isn't brave
enough to go further into Vault 8 yet, but he's going really strong
despite not finding a single usable randart, executioner's axe, or rod.
(He did find an early ring of slaying +6/+5 and another +0/+8 though.)
Despite clearing Elf halls, Naga pits, Swamps, Hive, and two
acquirements used trying for rods. I now believe the hype about Ely!
Twisted One
> It means I failed an attention-deficit-disorder check. :-/
>
> The intended phrase (tongue in cheek, but actually understandable unlike
> the nonsense "maintenance check") was "willpower check."
Meaning you simply gave up?
By the way, as of last night your final "a" installment was still not
visible on Google Groups, which puts the lie to someone's recent claim
here that you can "keep current" using Google Groups. I repeat: web
based sucks. (I was checking google for it because somehow, I saw
replies to it implying you died, but the original article is missing
here...otherwise believe me I'd go read it in a Real Newsreader(tm)!)
> At the time when I was trying to ascend a bevoker, there were no kobold
> YAVPs (though there was one informal statement of victory and one
> informal statement of being-ready-for-victory-and-then-quitting). Then I
> ascended a kobold, which was the recent kobold YAVP...
Ah, so you meant in the past...
I guess the term "ascension" for a win is specifically used for
roguelikes in the "fetch this and return it to dungeon level 1 and then
go up some stairs" genre of roguelikes? Since it seems to be used for
crawl and nethack and both start you in the dungeon, both have up stairs
on dl1 that exit the game, and both have as the win condition that you
use those stairs with a specific object in your inventory -- an amulet
in one case, an orb in the other...
Twisted One
> Looking back over, I find I understressed the most important scroll of
> all -- blinking. You can die as a delayed consequence of an
> unnecesarily-carried, fried scroll of blinking much more easily than due
> to a ?oEA one way or the other, since they are, quite simply, a "get out
> of death free" card.
Except that it's only such if it's carried, so how can it be
"unnecessarily carried" unless you know *for sure* you won't need it soon?
> But you could have offered it in the first place rather than ever
> picking it up? I'm missing something here... of course there *IS* the
> advantage that you don't have to do guesswork regarding rotting periods,
> but I'd rather have the extra carrying capacity.
Guesswork? I always get a variety of amusing messages when stuff begins
to rot -- you smell decay, yuk; something smells rotten; smell of
rotting meat makes you sick; and there's something really disgusting in
your inventory. Plus of course you can look at your inventory to see if
the word "rotting" is in the description of an item you might otherwise
want to eat.
> My love of free
> carrying capacity probably relates to my dungeon-hoovering fanaticism,
> though (but that fanaticism has a real practical reason for me
> personally -- I would never remember what's junk and what isn't if I
> left junk laying about where I found it).
Eh -- if it's laying around in an explored area, rather than moved to a
stash or in a new area, it must be junk no?
>> What you say! :-)
>
> Somebody set up us the bows!
We get shot at.
Main Deflect Missiles turn on.
Twisted One
> Fully agree. Meanwhile I've learned that painful lesson a little bit too
> often for my taste, but I forget about it again and again. I even
> managed to lose some of my most promising chars by just forgetting about
> the one(s) in my inventory due to panicing. But enough is enough: Right
> now I'm carving "BLINK OR DIE" into my monitor screen.
Why not just hack the game executable to substitute that phrase for LOW
HITPOINT WARNING? (Or, if you have an actual operating system on your
computer, or are a Windows developer with the requisite suite of
expensive Visual Thises and SDK Thats, edit the source and recompile.)
> Seriously now: this one is definitely worth to stash! But then I think
> your way of stash organizing is an art I'm still too lazy for (not the
> only reason though, but more further below <*>).
The Ogre hits you with a giant spiked club!
Ouch, that really hurt!
*** BLINK OR DIE! ***
You say "Oh, shit! They're all in my stash!"
The Ogre <CENSORED -- not suitable for younger viewers!>
You die...
> Only 1 of them died from plain
> starvation, all others from starving as a symptom for (or result of) a
> much worse problem.
Being trapped in a disconnected area without teleportation or digging,
you mean? (A hazard in numerous roguelikes. Lost a fortunately-low-level
char in Oangband that way myself once. Most of my roguelike starvations
have happened in ADOM though. Food is notoriously problematic in the
early game in ADOM, until you find a dependable source of ... certain
herbs.)
> After killing the monster I'ld still have to wait for prayer timeout to
> get my chunks.
Prayer timeout tends to happen after taking just a few steps anyway, IME.
Chipacabra
news:07udnbe9sIY...@rogers.com:
> By the way, as of last night your final "a" installment was still not
> visible on Google Groups,
Is it still not visible for you? It shows up fine for me, as of now. Only
took a moment on Google to find it.
Twisted One
It is not there yet. An advanced search for posts up to 7 days old with
"human fighter" in the subject in this newsgroup reveals Blow by Blow
(first installment), From the Temple to the Lair (2nd), and Midlevel
Pendulum (third). That one ended with him doing the Mines. Which leaves
the one where he's rumored to have died.
Unless Google discriminates on some basis or another, my not seeing it
means IT IS NOT THERE, so you can't have seen it either. You may have
seen one of the other three installments and mistook it for the one in
question.
Jeremey Wilson
"Twisted One" <twist...@gmail.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xoadnd8oTb8...@rogers.com...
> It is not there yet. An advanced search for posts up to 7 days old
with
> "human fighter" in the subject in this newsgroup reveals Blow by Blow
> (first installment), From the Temple to the Lair (2nd), and Midlevel
> Pendulum (third). That one ended with him doing the Mines. Which
leaves
> the one where he's rumored to have died.
>
> Unless Google discriminates on some basis or another, my not seeing it
> means IT IS NOT THERE, so you can't have seen it either. You may have
> seen one of the other three installments and mistook it for the one in
> question.
You should read all of "Midlevel Pendulum (third)", and then be less of
a dick.
--
Jeremey
smar...@yahoo.com
has been a part of rpgs as long as I can remember (thinking
pen-and-paper here, not PC). It doesn't strike me as sleazy in the
least.
I'm not sure exactly when Elven Halls starts usually, but centaurs
start turning up around, oh, say, level 6, just in time to burn up
excess experience getting a couple levels in bows. And speaking of when
things show up, I usually find a morningstar or flail before the mines.
I may even find a war axe with decent bonuses prior to the mines and
almost certainly within. However, as in your example with "a", yes, you
will find long blades in the mines but options are limited, to, say, a
+1 +0 scimitar and a falchion. Meanwhile, you have 0 skill in long
blades.
I can see why you're going that way, you like dexterity and the late
game long blades are nice. I'm probably overly focused on strength and
trying to wring out of it all I can.
No, minos can't use giant clubs.
The butchering thing is a bit of a pain while using maces because I'll
have the mace type in slot a and a bow in b and need to remember what
letter the axe is in, but it's not that big a deal. Ceteris paribus
I'll use a axe in slot a just to avoid extra keystrokes. In any event,
I usually end up carrying around several weapons that I figure I'm
going to ID sometime and naturally some have edges. It's also a good
idea (as you illustrated with "a") to carry a weapon one doesn't care
about but is still fairly effective for dealing with jellies. No, no
problem, just make that backup a dwarven hand axe.
What you have to say about the fun in stealth and stabbing makes me
wish I got somewhere when I tried it. Right now I'm still berserking--
and doubtless building habits that will make the transition to a
stealth character more difficult. Maybe a monk would be a good way to
break into them.
Rubinstein commented on how infrequently his characters have died due
to starvation, I can go a bit better: I only recall one ocassion when
I've allowed a Crawl character to get to starving status. Granted,
I've lost a few stat points to sickness from eating iffy corpses and
picked up mutations that way too. I think it's just that I'm not very
cautious and dislike going backwards. Reading on, TwistedOne remarks on
ADOM's notoriety for early game starvation. Food wasn't much of a
problem there for me, either, although I do recall getting to starving
status more than once or twice. While I'm not very good at Roguelikes,
I guess I can reasonably claim I'm good at keeping my guys fed.
I tried your corpse carry method today, Rubinstein. I kept forgetting I
was carrying one and ended up missing out on some sacrifices. Also, it
was a lot of weight. I'll try it again sometime but I ended up going
back to my usual habits-- wasting time waiting for prayer to end (but
it's not like I'm going to lose anything, I'm going to cut up a corpse
in a little bit), carrying a lot of chunks, being picky only when I'd
mutate, and using excess healing potions to deal with sickness.
Twisted One
> The butchering thing is a bit of a pain while using maces because I'll
> have the mace type in slot a and a bow in b and need to remember what
> letter the axe is in, but it's not that big a deal. Ceteris paribus
> I'll use a axe in slot a just to avoid extra keystrokes.
Who the heck is Ceteris Paribus? One of the d00ds who stabbed Caesar or
something? :)
Chipacabra
> Chipacabra wrote:
>> Twisted One <twist...@gmail.invalid> wrote in
>> news:07udnbe9sIY...@rogers.com:
>>
>>>By the way, as of last night your final "a" installment was still not
>>>visible on Google Groups,
>>
>> Is it still not visible for you? It shows up fine for me, as of now.
>> Only took a moment on Google to find it.
>
> It is not there yet. An advanced search for posts up to 7 days old
> with "human fighter" in the subject in this newsgroup reveals Blow by
> Blow (first installment), From the Temple to the Lair (2nd), and
> Midlevel Pendulum (third). That one ended with him doing the Mines.
> Which leaves the one where he's rumored to have died.
>
> Unless Google discriminates on some basis or another, my not seeing it
> means IT IS NOT THERE, so you can't have seen it either. You may have
> seen one of the other three installments and mistook it for the one in
> question.
Try one more time. Here's a hint: The post where "a" dies is the
beginning of THIS thread.
Chipacabra
> Unless Google discriminates on some basis or another, my not seeing it
> means IT IS NOT THERE, so you can't have seen it either. You may have
> seen one of the other three installments and mistook it for the one in
> question.
>
Oh, and I certainly did not mistake the post. Cut and pasted from Google
Groups, with my own >s added to offset it:
Twisted One
> Try one more time. Here's a hint: The post where "a" dies is the
> beginning of THIS thread.
I told you already. I did the search I described, and didn't see it.
Only the other three. If you are calling me a liar then this discussion
is over. If not, then you really need to clarify what you mean because
it looks like you are.
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>>Rubinstein wrote:
>>>Erik Piper wrote:
>>>>Rubinstein wrote:
>>>>>Erik Piper wrote:
>>>>>[I'd do some things differently than you did in that erotic
>>>>>masterpiece, The Story of A, in which an athletic, resourceful man
>>>>>gets serviced by a hydra...]
>
> Aah, your marvelous art of snip-quoting! ;-)
>
>>>>[Erik astinishingly expecting to learn something from - me!]
I'm not very good at roguelikes; the successes I *do* [1] have are to a
large extent of what I've learned from others. You learn the best if you
always keep your ears open...
>>>The most significant difference probably is our stash management. At
>>>least until the early mid-game I carry scrolls and potions you wouldn't
>>>dare to risk.
>>
>>[I find I understressed the most important scroll of all -- blinking]
>
> Fully agree. Meanwhile I've learned that painful lesson a little bit too
> often for my taste, but I forget about it again and again. I even
> managed to lose some of my most promising chars by just forgetting about
> the one(s) in my inventory due to panicing.
Yeeeaaaaggghhh... yep. If rule number one is "don't play late at night"
(thank God for aioe's free newsserver -- now I, a dialup user, can again
waste my latenight hours *discussing* roguelikes instead of pointlessly
killing off my roguelike characters so successfully launched during more
aware hours :-P), then rule number two is "hit a crisis, take a
real-life break." And it's just as hard to follow...
[...]
> Seriously now: this one is definitely worth to stash! But then I think
> your way of stash organizing is an art I'm still too lazy for (not the
> only reason though, but more further below <*>).
I can't remember where I mentioned it, though it seems I must have...
Actually, my Crawl stashes are *nothing* compared to my former ADOM
stashes. In Crawl I just have a bunch of piles by in-game type, plus a
pretty library and maybe a "to be DC'd" pile or, more rarely, a "to be
ID'd" pile. Well, and the occasional trophies pile or whatever. So --
look at ingame categories til I find one with an excess, go to square
for that ingame category, drop, repeat. Now ADOM... I think the insane
complexity of my old *ADOM* stashing habits can be best illustrated by
the pile type that could only be termed "things that can be used for
stat-scumming after the type of stat-scumming related to that other pile
over there runs out of steam"... :-)))
>>[...]
>>
>>>[Rubinstein too coward to take the risks of starvation]
>>>[oops, a self-insult. Is this allowed?]
>>>[Nevertheless, don't snip it please]
>>
>>[...]
>>Crawl has a youth too... and mine was spent learning the ins and outs
>>of chunks. :-)
>
> Basically the same here, though my 'youth' was quite different from
> yours (fortunately. I *love* diversity). Usually I'm no friend of
> statistical observations, but this time I can't resist: out of >1000
> dead chars (I hope there never will be something like a 'Crawling Rights
> Foundation'), I've lost <5 to starvation.
How can one check? I looked up a known starvation death and noticed the
"-9999", but that's shared with stat-loss deaths...
> Only 1 of them died from plain
> starvation, all others from starving as a symptom for (or result of) a
> much worse problem. Btw, I'm much more afraid of the negative
> side-effects (not being able to cast spells or using boosters like
> might/berserk) than of starvation itself.
I was hoping you wouldn't ask that. :-) My last "major" character to die
died of starvation -- I was handling starvation-entered-from-berserk
as if it were starvation-entered-during-normal-hungering. :-(
You know -- assuming you're like me -- those X seconds that you spend
staring at the screen with your mouth hanging weirdly open when instead
of the usual flow of messages, you see "you die..."? X was a pretty big
number at that moment...
(Of course, I have all sorts of weird deaths, often not detectable in
the scores file line alone -- "a reaper wielding a scythe of orc
slaying" doesn't say anything about the }oFixation I was *evoke-testing
in Hell (!!!)*, "an electric golem" doesn't tell the story of winning
the Crusader anti-lottery and passing out from berserking in Zot:5 after
teleportitis from a fire orb bounced me into a crisis, "a bolt of
lightning from Antaeus" doesn't tell a thing about how, having not done
Cocytus in so long, I mistook him for an ordinary C bumbling about in
the Cocytus goal-room, and only saw him in LOS in the brief time between
beginning-of-turn and "you die..."... "a skeletal warrior wielding a
long sword" doesn't mention the part about me changing clothes on an
almost entirely uncleared level... "an acid blob" doesn't tell half the
story of how I spent most of the game unable to eat chunks (>1
herbivorous) and, too afraid to spend precious extra herbivorous-
compatible food on defense, I gradually descended into a mutated mess
and dove the Pits underprepared in hopes of a !oCM... and so much more!)
> So what do you think how many chars did you lost (if any at all,
> directly or as a side-effect) from your risky games with starvation?
> Just curious...
I don't know.
>>[Erik wasting some precious looking code snipped to completely C++
>>illiterate Rubinstein]
>
>
> If (*IF*) I understand this part of food.cc correctly, than even Kobolds
> and Trolls should have a slim (1 in 45) chance of catching a
> contamination. Something I entirely fail to recall from my former games.
...and even berserkers have a slim chance of catching a bad case of
post-berserk unconsciousness... :-) Fortunately, the contamination
effect is a little less severe. It happens, but it takes a *long* time
to reach a 1 in 45 chance, especially if you have some real-life luck in
that regard.
>> case SP_KOBOLD:
>> case SP_TROLL:
>> if (!one_chance_in(45))
>> this_chunk_effect = CE_CLEAN;
>> break;
>
> I guess what you was trying to tell me here was the probability of
> contamination being PC race dependent. But how does this apply?
> Minotaurs seem to belong to the default group with a chance of 1 in 3.
I was surprised, too -- not to see those numbers (they match my
experience), but that Minotaurs would ever get those numbers; the mental
image I get of them is pretty carnivorous-looking. Probably just a
balancing decision.
>>>[SCS (single corpse surfing)]
>>>[...]
>>>Also, as a positive side-effect, I still can offer the rotten
>>>corpse, while rotten chunks would have been entirely wasted.
>
> At first I had a hard time to understand your following question
>
>>But you could have offered it in the first place rather than ever
>>picking it up? I'm missing something here...
>
> Assuming I don't want to touch any 'natural' food, but chunks only. Also
> imagine I'm usually not (and don't want to be) hungry after a fight,
> prayer still has to time out. If I now would offer the fresh and keep
> the old corpse, there would be a much higher probability of having a
> rotten corpse when I actually want/have to eat something. In this case I
> would *have* to find and kill some edible monsters while still hungry
> (=additional risk, and of course I still want to pray during the fight)
> After killing the monster I'ld still have to wait for prayer timeout to
> get my chunks. Whereas with my now prefered method I'ld just have the
> *option* to dissect this (fresher) corpse now, with the additional bonus
> of not having to wait for prayer timeout this time.
> Got the picture? Sounds much more complicated than it actually is...
I keep trying to imagine myself carrying so much extra weight, and
can't... I guess mainly I'm more willing to fight hungry -- in the worst
case, I'll break my general approach and have a snack (I'm more liberal
with these than with rations) to fuel a special power.
Back to the formative years, though -- a DECj is very light on food
consumption, since most of his spellcasting has a food cost of 0, so
basically he never pays anything but the 3 food for turn charge for
existing... and no corpse saccings to worry about. Perhaps if I go on to
play more "normal" fighters (Kobolds are a completely special case),
I'll look at things differently.
> Or in short:
> while taking a fresh one and eating/offering the old one(s), I just
> extend the time window in which I'll keep more options open.
>
> But let me guess (and here we're back to different viewpoints again),
> you neither carry chunks nor corpses around but simply stash them on the
> floor!?
DECj history: chunks.
Bevoker history: chunks, although after an important battle, I'd
generally have no trouble finding the appetite to eat post-battle on the
spot ;-)
Various fighter-mages: chunks. 'Course most of these have been
no-consecration (no saccing kills/corpses) gods, and food management
with consecration gods is very different. Maybe that's why I needed a
kobold to win. :-)
My characters (again, usually being no-consecration or
no-corpse-consecration characters) have usually been in a situation
where if they weren't generating corpses faster than the rotting
timeout, it was a sign of a deeper problem.
> If that is true, which also would fit to what you've stated here...
>
>>My love of free carrying capacity probably relates to my
>>dungeon-hoovering fanaticism, though (but that fanaticism has a real
>>practical reason for me personally -- I would never remember what's
>>junk and what isn't if I left junk laying about where I found it).
>
> ....then we both seem to focus on almost opposite priorities:
> You - equipment
> Me - time/energy
>
> From my point of view, time, energie
That's the beauty of Evocations -- (nearly) food-free energy :-))
> and food are almost exchangeable in
> Crawl, with the main difference of the latter being a limited resource,
> as you know all too well.
Energy is limited too -- you can't be more berserk than berserk, you
can't be more lichform than lichform, you can't do more conjurations
damage than a max-munckined 27/27/27 character casting crystal spear,
there are only so many power boosts out there, (non-randart) weapons can
only reach +9,+9...
Food is limited mainly by diving speed ("time" above). I like the rush
of diving; it's filling a gap left from years of ADOMing and
potential-energy-based Civilization-ing before that...
> So, just moving around to reach my pile of chunks
> appears like 3 steps forwards - 2 steps back to me (leave alone the risk
> of an entirely rotten pile by the time you reach it, just another waste
> of energie, because it was potential piety stuff which also is some sort
> of energie). Leave alone your runs for stash managment.
Actually, I try not to leave undissected corpses on the floor, and if I
can be bothered, to consolidate them onto a few squares or into my pack,
for a completely different reason -- the level map is my indicator to
myself of what needs to be checked and what not, and since a multi-item
stack capped by a corpse looks the same on that map as just-a-corpse, I
want to save myself nagging doubts. :-) I, too, don't want (in ordinary
cases -- there are always exceptions) to make switchbacks for stuff on
the floor; rather, I try to always have fresh flesh in my pack or
cheaply attainable. Keeps me diving -- though in the case of a god with
piety leak (like, say... Vehumet -- formative days again), that can be
called a *good* thing. :-)
'Course like many things in Crawl, piety involves diminishing returns. I
was surprised to hear your many reports of frequent use of Might, but
I'm more and more of the opinion it merely puts your piety back low
enough that you can actually gain some from a reasonable investment again.
> Taking this to the edge, we even (or better: almost) could compare the
> relation between energy and equipment to the relation between energy
> and matter in RL: while it's possible to transform one into each
> other,in the end you can't actually *win* something. The art of playing
> Crawl is probably all about the balance between those two forms.
Or between potential and kinetic energy. I guess you "win" by having a
better intuition for the "nature" of the energy you choose... and by
knowing you've chosen it. This discussion is cool in that respect.
>>...it's a *very* rare artifact armour that outperforms a +8 (?) robe
>
> Throwing in another '?' here. Is this actually possible?
It's possible (see Bevoker), but I can't recall offhand whether or not
+9 is possible.
>>>The pessimist agrees, cause w/o a slightly better equipment _now_ I
>>>probably don't survive up to the point where those artifacts appear.
>>
>>That's Okie's job. :-)
>
> Future experience may change my mind, but for now I still believe in the
> best possible equipment at *any* given time, which of course includes
> 'as soon as possible'.
Formative days? A DECj who needs his AC or his weapon is doing something
wrong... ;-)
My Kenku Reavers (well, intended Skullbreakers) (well, Fire
Elementalists) have suffered (and my current reaver is suffering) for
his hardheadedness to be sure, but he has a buffer named "Bolt of Fire"
to ease the suffering... :-)
>>>That even goes for ?oID, but always depends on the vague feeling
>>>whether I need it or not.
>>
>>??
>
> Uuuuh, careful. The answer to these 2 innocent question marks would
> directly lead to my most irrational side (mystic, voodoo, black magic,
> caballa, all that stuff.
My words above about the "nature of energy" are hardly innocent of that
sin...
> Not really, but sort of...) which I promised
> myself to *never* *ever* discussing in the public. With a probability of
> 98.35% this also would lead to yet another flame war.
> Buhuhuhuuuuuh ~~~~~
>
>>[brilliant technique for pseudo-IDing missiles]
>
> "Brilliant". C'mon, you must be kidding!
> Obvious like rolling cigarettes, something *every* one just needs to
> survive... *g*
Startky (a prepackaged type I smoke) are cheap, and I figure if Philip
Morris bought the company, they can't be *that* bad... :-)
>>Whew... the thing is, now *I'm* the one who's too lazy for a
>>technique. :-)
>
> Still kidding, aren't you?
In light of recent discoveries I've made, I'm becoming very careful
about kidding anyone, period.
> For me it appears much less cumbersome than
> any kind of sophisticated stash management (leave alone yours).
> To the cost of very little real time, but not a single bit of precious
> crawl time (=energy =life =everything =...you get the point)
I have -- as you might have guessed from my obsessing with map-as-memory
-- an awful short-term memory. Maybe "too short-term-memory-and-
concentration-limited-in-the-absence-of-strong-stimuli" would be more
accurate than "too lazy". :-)
(I have a strong hunch that the dissemination of information on
Attention Deficit Disorder into Germany has been good enough that you
can read up on it and understand my otherwise-pretty-incomprehensible
words above better.)
[...]
[muuuussttt sleeeep...]
muuuussttt sleeeep...
[1] I'd like to start a petition campaign for the addition of DE "doch"
or CZ "přece jenom" into English. :-)
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>> Looking back over, I find I understressed the most important scroll of
>> all -- blinking. You can die as a delayed consequence of an
>> unnecesarily-carried, fried scroll of blinking much more easily than
>> due to a ?oEA one way or the other, since they are, quite simply, a
>> "get out of death free" card.
>
> Except that it's only such if it's carried, so how can it be
> "unnecessarily carried" unless you know *for sure* you won't need it soon?
*One* is a lifesaver. I've yet to enter a situation where two or more
would have saved my life, but one would not have. Thus the "unnecessary"
ones are any in my pack in excess of one.
>> But you could have offered it in the first place rather than ever
>> picking it up? I'm missing something here... of course there *IS* the
>> advantage that you don't have to do guesswork regarding rotting
>> periods, but I'd rather have the extra carrying capacity.
>
> Guesswork?
You know your general satiation status, but not your precise status, and
thus you can't be sure (except perhaps with ridiculous amounts of
beancounting) whether you'll re-enter Hungry first, or the
freshly-acquired chunks you couldn't eat after the first ones satiated
you will rot first. There are *guidelines* I keep in mind like
"Standard-hungering 'Hungry' is about 2 chunks wide" and "chunks will
generally rot before you can eat if their sister chunks were eaten at
the 'top' of 'Hungry'", but it's all pretty fuzzy.
>> My love of free carrying capacity probably relates to my
>> dungeon-hoovering fanaticism, though (but that fanaticism has a real
>> practical reason for me personally -- I would never remember what's
>> junk and what isn't if I left junk laying about where I found it).
>
> Eh -- if it's laying around in an explored area, rather than moved to a
> stash or in a new area, it must be junk no?
It could have been merely overlooked.
Erik
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
[EP: I started to log "b" the minotaur gladiator, but failed my
maintenance check [sic]]
[TO: maintenance check?]
>> It means I failed an attention-deficit-disorder check. :-/
>>
>> The intended phrase (tongue in cheek, but actually understandable
>> unlike the nonsense "maintenance check") was "willpower check."
>
> Meaning you simply gave up?
Meaning the save and the log are sitting on ice for a day when I can
convince myself to "do" them rather than something more entertaining, or
when they become the most entertaining thing to do.
> I guess the term "ascension" for a win is specifically used for
> roguelikes in the "fetch this and return it to dungeon level 1 and then
> go up some stairs" genre of roguelikes? Since it seems to be used for
> crawl and nethack and both start you in the dungeon, both have up stairs
> on dl1 that exit the game, and both have as the win condition that you
> use those stairs with a specific object in your inventory -- an amulet
> in one case, an orb in the other...
I'm not sure that I've ever heard anyone else call a Crawl win an
ascension, but it seemed only natural to me, for the reason you
mentioned. 'Course from what I've read, the stairs up from DL:1 are only
a checkpoint in the Nethack ascension, but... in any case, you ascend.
Erik
Chipacabra
h...@rogers.com:
> Chipacabra wrote:
>> Try one more time. Here's a hint: The post where "a" dies is the
>> beginning of THIS thread.
>
> I told you already. I did the search I described, and didn't see it.
> Only the other three. If you are calling me a liar then this discussion
> is over. If not, then you really need to clarify what you mean because
> it looks like you are.
>
http://tinyurl.com/9vawm is the groups.google.com link to the post where
"a" finally dies.
As an aside, I did a search for "human fighter", and got that post (["a"]
a the Human Fighter -- The Midgame Pendulum Hits the ... ) as the 6th
result, with "you die..." displayed in the preview text.
Just to see what would happen, I just tried an advanced search for posts
up to 7 days old with "human fighter" in the subject, just like you said
you did. The post came up as the third result.
Erik Piper
> Eric,
Erik. :-)
> that so-called dirty trick of dropping items to distract pursuers
> has been a part of rpgs as long as I can remember (thinking
> pen-and-paper here, not PC). It doesn't strike me as sleazy in the
> least.
Definitely everyone needs to find his own way on "ethics" in the
roguelike sense -- e.g. Brent Ross find Silence to be overpowered and
refuses to use it; I find it to be balanced and use it where
appropriate. I find item-dropping to be overpowered and refuse to use
it... but I see your point.
> I'm not sure exactly when Elven Halls starts usually, but centaurs
> start turning up around, oh, say, level 6, just in time to burn up
> excess experience getting a couple levels in bows.
I usually still have other welcome venues at that point.
> And speaking of when
> things show up, I usually find a morningstar or flail before the mines.
That's the really nice thing about maces/flails (and polearms for that
matter) -- decent ones tend to show up early.
> I may even find a war axe with decent bonuses prior to the mines and
> almost certainly within. However, as in your example with "a", yes, you
> will find long blades in the mines but options are limited, to, say, a
> +1 +0 scimitar and a falchion. Meanwhile, you have 0 skill in long
> blades.
Base weapon-type damage isn't everything -- I've played numerous
short-blades characters who sooner or later were carving through
everything they saw like through hot butter. Thus I don't mind a
1-handed sword with good accuracy and speed just because it has less
punch than an axe. (Though falchions are just a learning toy).
The thing is with the 0 skill in long blades for characters that start
with short blades is that the effect of cross-training combined with the
inevitable big pool combined with how quickly early levels in a given
skill are gained, it's not 0 for long, and it's not even 5 for long.
> I can see why you're going that way, you like dexterity and the late
> game long blades are nice. I'm probably overly focused on strength and
> trying to wring out of it all I can.
Also, there are a *lot* of long blades generated in an average game, so
it's pretty easy to find some nice ego blades by, say, the end of the Halls.
But "overly"? Like Ruby says -- diversity makes Crawl go round. The two
categories come pretty close one way or the other, so it's mainly a
style difference.
> The butchering thing is a bit of a pain while using maces because I'll
> have the mace type in slot a and a bow in b and need to remember what
> letter the axe is in, but it's not that big a deal.
Darshan's patch includes "easy butchering" -- it will search for the
first letter with a valid weapon in your place. I'm fairly certain it's
in the patch's default ini settings (Darshan only turned off by default
the new settings that had a reasonable chance of doing harm or being
annoying).
[...]
> What you have to say about the fun in stealth and stabbing makes me
> wish I got somewhere when I tried it.
I never got anywhere at first, either. And really, stabbing's not a
game-winner on its own (especially if you do the Hells, where even if
you had a maxed stealth counter, you literally can't stab every threat),
but it *is* a powerful supplement.
> Right now I'm still berserking--
> and doubtless building habits that will make the transition to a
> stealth character more difficult.
Bevoker was a stealthy berserker. :-) Actually, stealth is pretty useful
for berserkers -- there's nothing that creates a sigh of relief quite
like sitting there with 10 turns of slowing still in front of you and
seeing "A gray snake. It doesn't seem to be interested in you."
> Rubinstein commented on how infrequently his characters have died due
> to starvation, I can go a bit better: I only recall one ocassion when
> I've allowed a Crawl character to get to starving status. Granted,
> I've lost a few stat points to sickness
Well, they're never really lost, just on vacation and forgot to post
when they'd be back.
> from eating iffy corpses and picked up mutations that way too. I think
> it's just that I'm not very cautious and dislike going backwards.
Me too! (Memories of Tina Hall...)
> Reading on, TwistedOne remarks on
> ADOM's notoriety for early game starvation. Food wasn't much of a
> problem there for me, either, although I do recall getting to starving
> status more than once or twice. While I'm not very good at Roguelikes,
> I guess I can reasonably claim I'm good at keeping my guys fed.
If there really were a Crawl Characters' Rights foundations, cynical
starvation of characters as appropriate to fit my ends would be the
first point in the indictment (can ordinary citizens indict?). Forcing
them to fire Magic Dart at a wall all day with no overtime pay would be
the second...
Erik
Erik Piper
>>> But you could have offered it in the first place rather than ever
>>> picking it up? I'm missing something here... of course there *IS* the
>>> advantage that you don't have to do guesswork regarding rotting
>>> periods, but I'd rather have the extra carrying capacity.
>>
>>
>> Guesswork?
>
>
> You know your general satiation status, but not your precise status, and
> thus you can't be sure (except perhaps with ridiculous amounts of
> beancounting) whether you'll re-enter Hungry first, or the
> freshly-acquired chunks you couldn't eat after the first ones satiated
> you will rot first. There are *guidelines* I keep in mind like
> "Standard-hungering 'Hungry' is about 2 chunks wide"
I just realized this makes no sense -- hungering rate has no effect in
the chunk-width of "Hungry." Blame it on late-night posting. :-)
> and "chunks will
> generally rot before you can eat if their sister chunks were eaten at
> the 'top' of 'Hungry'",
It does, however, affect this equation -- which is why regeneration
effects (which speed hungering) are a slightly better deal than they
seem at first sight.
Erik
Erik Piper
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> Only 1 of them died from plain
>> starvation, all others from starving as a symptom for (or result of) a
>> much worse problem.
>
> Being trapped in a disconnected area without teleportation or digging,
> you mean?
In Crawl, this can happen too -- in the Mines and in the main branch of
the Lair (in both cases you're most likely to encounter it in the bottom
2 levels, and the chances are higher IME in the Mines, probably due to
the 100% probability of Mines levels being "spotty" (complicated term --
think of it as "having a layout like Mines levels :-)") compared to the
Lair levels' less-than-100% chance).
I never wanted to believe it could happen -- then one night, it happened
to me. Cursed up a storm that night...
For (not only) this reason, if you find a ring of teleportation in the
early levels, don't throw it away; you'll eventually have a game where
you'll be glad you didn't. They're the lightest "infinite-charges"
teleportation/digging item out there.
Erik
Rubinstein
>
> I've always liked axes/maces because they are so tilted to one side.
> Long blades tend to be in the middle. The way I assume the better for
> the strong/dextrous code works, having it tilted one way or the other
> is vastly better than in the middle.
I'm very interested in how this works as well. The only spoiler page I
know about this topic is:
http://www.swallowtail.org/crawl/weaponspeeds.shtml
(by Brent Ross)
It's indroduced with the words "Here's some details (not too spoily, it
isn't really documented, and the effect is typically very small)".
The meaning of the word "typical" in this context is beyond my
understanding, but "the effect is very small" suggests not to overrate
the effect.
> Noticed one very odd thing. He put on a dwarven spiked helm early
> (nice find for unarmed). Then he grew horns. But he still has the
> helm on. Do horns prevent me from putting on a helmet, but not
> forcibly remove an existing one?
Yes and no, as far as I know. Just try to remove and wear the helmet
again... *evil grin* (but don't blame me if you didn't get the joke)
Rubinstein
Twisted One
> Just to see what would happen, I just tried an advanced search for posts
> up to 7 days old with "human fighter" in the subject, just like you said
> you did. The post came up as the third result.
Must have shown up between my previous posting in this thread and when
you did that, then.
Google groups is definitely not very prompt in getting new articles. :P
Twisted One
> Darshan's patch includes "easy butchering" -- it will search for the
> first letter with a valid weapon in your place. I'm fairly certain it's
> in the patch's default ini settings (Darshan only turned off by default
> the new settings that had a reasonable chance of doing harm or being
> annoying).
Patches aren't much of a help to Windows users, as a rule -- they
generally don't have the tools installed for applying patches and
compiling things.
> If there really were a Crawl Characters' Rights foundations, cynical
> starvation of characters as appropriate to fit my ends would be the
> first point in the indictment (can ordinary citizens indict?). Forcing
> them to fire Magic Dart at a wall all day with no overtime pay would be
> the second...
Why do that? To powerlevel the skill?
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>> Darshan's patch includes "easy butchering" -- it will search for the
>> first letter with a valid weapon in your place. I'm fairly certain
>> it's in the patch's default ini settings (Darshan only turned off by
>> default the new settings that had a reasonable chance of doing harm or
>> being annoying).
>
> Patches aren't much of a help to Windows users, as a rule -- they
> generally don't have the tools installed for applying patches and
> compiling things.
Darshan provides his patch pre-compiled for Windows users. If you aren't
already using it, a) you'll be delighted when you start, and b) you can
find it (in its various forms) at:
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/mazewest/
>> If there really were a Crawl Characters' Rights foundations, cynical
>> starvation of characters as appropriate to fit my ends would be the
>> first point in the indictment (can ordinary citizens indict?). Forcing
>> them to fire Magic Dart at a wall all day with no overtime pay would
>> be the second...
>
> Why do that? To powerlevel the skill?
Spellcasting is discounted at low character levels (flat until clvl 5,
cost rising linearly until clvl 15, if I recall correctly (if I don't,
the error is a matter of one level one way or the other)
fartknocker
<erNO...@skyAM.cz> blah:
>
>Also, there are a *lot* of long blades generated in an average game, so
>it's pretty easy to find some nice ego blades by, say, the end of the Halls.
I'm currently running an HeCr who found Remove Curse before the Halls.
So now he's tried on every single armour and weapon that the dead elves
dropped. Indeed, there are some very nice things to be found in the
Halls. Elven long swords of foo is common, but several +2 elven chain
mails of foo and elven bows of foo are grand style. Way to buff a
spellcaster.
Elethiomel
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> I guess what you was trying to tell me here was the probability of
>> contamination being PC race dependent. But how does this apply?
>> Minotaurs seem to belong to the default group with a chance of 1 in 3.
>
> I was surprised, too -- not to see those numbers (they match my
> experience), but that Minotaurs would ever get those numbers; the mental
> image I get of them is pretty carnivorous-looking. Probably just a
> balancing decision.
Minotaurs are humanoids with bull / cow characteristics.
Humanoids - generally omnivorous
Cattle - herbivorous
I guess we're lucky Minotaurs aren't herbivores from the get-go in Crawl ;)
smar...@yahoo.com
Regarding game ethics, I'm in "if it works, do it" camp, although I
really don't take advantage of half the stuff I read about. I know that
people end up limiting their options intentionally to provide more of a
challenge, but I haven't got that far with any roguelike.
Regarding bows, I guess the short version is that I'd hate for a newbie
to not use them because I know they work. Picking up and using them
regularly increased the lifespans of my fighter types and given that
I'm going a strength route with them anyway and thus far the magic
bonuses on the bows I've found haven't been more than maybe +3, I'm
really not going to sweat this disadvantage you've mentioned.
I'm still not seeing the advantage to long blades, so I guess I need it
spelled out. The advantages of the mace/axe route is that it's
flexible, it handles hydras without relying on finding a burning
weapon, fairly powerful weapons are available earlier, and Trog drops
them a lot. I suppose that last might have something to do with
character skills? Or not, I think I remember him dropping a pole arm on
me once.
Actually, I have now got somewhere with a stealthy character. I copied
off you and made a deep elf conjurer. I'm a bit lost with it now
because I'm past where you left off but I am enjoying the benefits of
stealth combined with the ability to magically throw large hunks of
iron. I think I'm in danger of wearing out the Z key, though.
Sorry I spelled your name wrong. You can call me Dave if you like.
Twisted One, that phrase means all things being equal. Are you allergic
to looking things up? You would've satisfied your curiousity much
sooner if you had.
Jeremey Wilson
<smar...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1116170532.8...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Erik,
>
> Regarding game ethics, I'm in "if it works, do it" camp, although I
> really don't take advantage of half the stuff I read about. I know
that
> people end up limiting their options intentionally to provide more of
a
> challenge, but I haven't got that far with any roguelike.
Crawl is more than difficult enough without voluntary conducts. Aside
from picking a difficult race and abhoring Nemelex, I can't really think
of any Crawl conducts. I guess people sometimes go for weird final
titles, but I've never seen any _that_ weird -- like, no YAVPs for
Dungeon Masters or Very Crazy Persons.
Ideas!
-- Advance no skill not on your starting list. I guess you'd need to
make an exception for starting characters who begin with neither stealth
nor armour, and for those lacking both spellcasting and fighting.
-- spellcaster, no spells outside of starting book.
-- win the game without taking off any of your starting equipment. This
might actually be easier than either of the above.
-- Don't take a god.
-- Speed games: get three runes and the orb, don't stop anywhere else.
This'd be an interesting competition, anyway.
> Regarding bows, I guess the short version is that I'd hate for a
newbie
> to not use them because I know they work. Picking up and using them
> regularly increased the lifespans of my fighter types and given that
> I'm going a strength route with them anyway and thus far the magic
> bonuses on the bows I've found haven't been more than maybe +3, I'm
> really not going to sweat this disadvantage you've mentioned.
I think the major disadvantage of bows is that they tend to get less
useful the further along you get, so investing XP in them can be a waste
of experience. You're usually better off going the fighter-evoker
route, since evocations stays powerful throughout.
> I'm still not seeing the advantage to long blades, so I guess I need
it
> spelled out. The advantages of the mace/axe route is that it's
> flexible, it handles hydras without relying on finding a burning
> weapon, fairly powerful weapons are available earlier, and Trog drops
> them a lot. I suppose that last might have something to do with
> character skills? Or not, I think I remember him dropping a pole arm
on
> me once.
Acquirement leans towards your skills, but there's still a chance you'll
get a polearm or a short blade when despite your aces skill.
I guess the advantages of long blades are that they cross-train with
short blades, which a lot of classes begin with, and, um, they tend to
be faster than axes and flails? And there are some powerful ones
(double swords and katanas) that can be used one-handed, so you can
still wear a shield. The trouble is of course that most games you'll
never see a double sword or a katana, and shields don't seem to be a
very popular skill anyway. Probably rightfully -- you need an awful lot
of skill before you can wear anything other than a buckler without a
pretty huge hit to your attack speed, and wearing one precludes you from
easily swapping between weapons and rods. If Erik patches the rods to
weaken them somehow (or make them one-handed), I'd probably use shields
more often.
> Actually, I have now got somewhere with a stealthy character. I copied
> off you and made a deep elf conjurer. I'm a bit lost with it now
> because I'm past where you left off but I am enjoying the benefits of
> stealth combined with the ability to magically throw large hunks of
> iron. I think I'm in danger of wearing out the Z key, though.
Where are you at?
> Sorry I spelled your name wrong. You can call me Dave if you like.
>
> Twisted One, that phrase means all things being equal. Are you
allergic
> to looking things up? You would've satisfied your curiousity much
> sooner if you had.
Just ignore him. Everyone will be happier -- you, him, innocent
bystanders...
--
Jeremey
Erik Piper
> <smar...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1116170532.8...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> from picking a difficult race and abhoring Nemelex, I can't really think
> of any Crawl conducts. I guess people sometimes go for weird final
> titles, but I've never seen any _that_ weird -- like, no YAVPs for
> Dungeon Masters or Very Crazy Persons.
I've thought about the Very Crazy title a lot, actually. Probably doable
with a mummy or a Nemelexite, and then the question becomes, which is
less abhorable? :-)
>>Regarding bows, I guess the short version is that I'd hate for a
>>newbie to not use them because I know they work. Picking up and using them
>>regularly increased the lifespans of my fighter types and given that
>>I'm going a strength route with them anyway and thus far the magic
>>bonuses on the bows I've found haven't been more than maybe +3, I'm
>>really not going to sweat this disadvantage you've mentioned.
>
> I think the major disadvantage of bows is that they tend to get less
> useful the further along you get, so investing XP in them can be a waste
> of experience. You're usually better off going the fighter-evoker
> route, since evocations stays powerful throughout.
(X-)Bows are kind of right on the line. They're certainly a powerful
tool, but you can't really "play an archer" due to the
not-quite-powerful-enough damage and, for bows, the lack of ammo. X-bows
come close to letting you do so, as there really is enough ammo out
there to take you through the game -- but then out of spite, Crawl puts
the first guaranteed xbows in the Elven Halls. :-(
Darts and slings, on the other hand... :-)
I actually came within sight (well, distant sight) of a win with a deep
elven "warver", a warper/archer/conjurer. (Aptitude-wise, DE's are the
best crossbowmen (well, crossbowelves) in the game.) But it was a pretty
long time before I stopped having to "coddle" the xbows skills by
feeding it with XP from conjuring.
Erik
Erik Piper
> Erik,
>
> Regarding game ethics, I'm in "if it works, do it" camp, although I
> really don't take advantage of half the stuff I read about.
I guess there are two categories of actions benefiting the "player
token" (the PC, the FPS avatar, whatever) that become narrowly or
broadly "verboten" among player communities:
- bugs making possible benefits outside of the rules of the game
- poorly chosen rules of the game (misdesign)
Often it's hard to tell bugs from features and misdesigns from good
designs; for example, without someone coming out and saying "the way
banishment works is a hack of a hack, and levitating to hack the hacked
hack is unfair," one can only rely on their best judgment of whether or
not banishment is meant to be avoidable.
Sometimes code-diving can help -- for example, I felt guilty for the
longest time about using amulets of the gourmand to convert contaminated
(orc-like) flesh into clean flesh by letting it rot, but the code
comments clearly show an intent to make rotten flesh as such "clean" --
and clean is a chunk category quite distinct from contaminated, so it
really is meant to be that way.
Misdesigns are pretty hard things to judge, as what seems balanced to
one person may seem imbalanced to another -- my differing view on the
balancedness of silencing compared to Brent's is an example of this (if
you're interested in that discussion, you can look for [brent zin TSO]
and will probably bring up the thread.
With dropping stuff, there are two categories:
- gold-dropping
- item-dropping
Gold-dropping is pretty easy to judge -- there's no reason to even be
able to drop gold, gold-dropping works differently and more beneficially
to the player than any other kind of dropping (0-turn drop), and nothing
in the game or documentation hints at it being that way; barring a
surprising revelation in the code comments, I can't imagine seeing this
as fair.
Item-dropping is a little harder to judge -- monsters are sometimes
greedy; why not take advantage of it? -- but the player needs only 1
turn to drop an item, but monsters need 2 (if not more) to pick it up.
Thus it feels like an asymmetry in the rules, and it feels unintended --
buggy. That's why I feel squeamish about doing it.
> I know that
> people end up limiting their options intentionally to provide more of a
> challenge, but I haven't got that far with any roguelike.
That's a different category, though -- it's looking at something that
you consider to be perhaps powerful, but still balanced, and eschewing
it anyway.
> Regarding bows, I guess the short version is that I'd hate for a newbie
> to not use them because I know they work. Picking up and using them
> regularly increased the lifespans of my fighter types and given that
> I'm going a strength route with them anyway and thus far the magic
> bonuses on the bows I've found haven't been more than maybe +3, I'm
> really not going to sweat this disadvantage you've mentioned.
The strength requirement for using bow enchantments is more of an
endgame thing; in that period, you can either sigh as you fruitlessly
apply yet another scroll to your +foo, +8 weapon, or start enchanting up
your bow. (Which, in a meta sense, is probably why the percentual
enchantment failure system exists -- to make the choice of what to
enchant more interesting.) In that situation it's more important how
high you can bring it that how high it started.
> I'm still not seeing the advantage to long blades, so I guess I need it
> spelled out. The advantages of the mace/axe route is that it's
> flexible, it handles hydras without relying on finding a burning
> weapon, fairly powerful weapons are available earlier, and Trog drops
> them a lot. I suppose that last might have something to do with
> character skills? Or not, I think I remember him dropping a pole arm on
> me once.
Sort of a summary, then:
- LOTS of long blades generated in a game, including an area with a nice
density of ego blades (elven halls); bottled efreets can generate good
swords too...
- Some really nice -- if rare -- types, including one fairly achievable
one (demon blades)
- nice speed, which also means low spell hinderance
- good accuracy, and still respectable damage
- lots of good 1-handed swords
- with races that aren't guaranteed to always get involuntary gains to
their strength or to their accuracy, you can rest safe in the knowledge
that either one is OK
One thing perhaps biasing me is the large number of crusaders I've
played -- they can temporarily fire-brand their weapons whenever they
want from level 2 onwards. Reaving fire elementalists with an
acquirement free for books and better Fire than Conjurations can also
rest safe in the knowledge they'll probably get a book of Fire (contains
the flaming weapon enchantment). In any case, though, it requires a
fairly large dose of bad luck to leave the Halls with no flaming weapon.
With the skills aspect, it's 50/50 -- on the one hand, investing XP into
maces/flails just to be able to handle hydras due to the flaming axe you
couldn't find is a sacrifice. On the other hand, the initial period of
training shortblades due to the beginner's longblade you couldn't find
is also a sacrifice.
I think people tend to overestimate the power of speed on a weapon. Once
damage gets high enough that enemy AC isn't cutting into your damage
too strongly, it's really nice to be doing said damage more often than
the other guy. :-)
> Actually, I have now got somewhere with a stealthy character. I copied
> off you and made a deep elf conjurer. I'm a bit lost with it now
> because I'm past where you left off
Well, "b" is fairly atypical -- D:9 is the kind of level where you
really only have I guess about a 30-40% chance of already having an
enhancer staff, and enhancer staves totally turn the game around. And
that's ignoring the "otG on top of that...
> but I am enjoying the benefits of
> stealth combined with the ability to magically throw large hunks of
> iron. I think I'm in danger of wearing out the Z key, though.
If you're on Windows, you might like to check out Loonie's pages and his
tip on a freeware application that can, among other things that I've
never bothered to learn, magically create F-key macros for Crawl. My Z
key is deeply in debt to Loonie. :-)
> Sorry I spelled your name wrong. You can call me Dave if you like.
Actually, I rarely call anyone anything on Usenet, except when replying
to a third party, or when angry. :-)
Erik
smar...@yahoo.com
I certainly agree, but then I'd say ADOM and Civ II (on deity level)
are tough enough, too. That doesn't stop people from playing ADOM as
Merchants using only thrown coins to attack (OK, so only one guy did
that) or going for landings prior to 1000 AD in Civ II on deity with
highest barbarian settings and no advantages from huts (and they did
it, too). And of course, picking difficult races and eschewing Nemelex
worship do count as one of these community constraints in Crawl. It is
true that Crawl discussion isn't shot through with so-called challenges
(iron man, eternium man, tupperware guy,
play-in-your-underpants-while-remaining illiterate, etc., etc.) like
the ADOM newsgroup was.
Maybe you could point me to a good discussion of how fighter/evoker
goes. Maybe if I knew more I'd ditch bows.
"Where are you at?"
My current attempt (named generically "seven", guess how many came
before?) has been to at least D:12, Lair:6, and Mines:4. Copied off
Erik and had all skills but spellcasting off, but turned on stealth at
some point and also trained translocations. Took a couple spells I
don't need and haven't used (teleport other, conjure flame although
that last might save me sometime.) I'll probably go a bit deeper in the
main line then do the swamp.
(re: twisted one)
Occasionally he says something sensible, but you're right, mostly
everything he touches turns stupid. Does anyone know how I can ignore
his posts (using Google)?
"...two categories of actions benefiting the "player token" (the PC,
the FPS avatar, whatever) that become narrowly or broadly "verboten"
among player communities:
- bugs making possible benefits outside of the rules of the game
- poorly chosen rules of the game (misdesign)"
I'd say there's a certain amount of 1337ness to it as well. In ADOM,
stairscumming the Infinite Dungeon was LaMz0rZ, d00d, according to the
community, but other exploits like kick-robbing stores or getting a
nearly infinite amount of wishes were cool-- so far as I could tell,
anyway. I'd guess this was because any newbie could come up with
stairscumming but you'd have to've been around a while to figure out
that kickrobbing was possible. Occasionally somebody would say they
pretended the ID didn't exist or that they never, ever, ever used it,
not once even by accident-- with the implication that only a dirty
lowlife would. Whatever. It's not as if it wasn't entirely possible to
hang around cavern levels and get just as much loot as the ID provided.
I'd say that if you're calling it ethics, you may be taking it too
seriously, Erik. It's your choo choo and you can run it on whatever
track you want, of course, but the imaginary monster's feelings aren't
hurt because you didn't give it a fair go. You certainly don't need to
feel guilty about it. I'd say play the game as it's written, but that's
just me (and my not-so-very-expertly-run choo choo train).
Re: Long blades.
Obviously, I'm going to have to check this out for myself, but I do
thank you for taking the time to map out your reasons. I've been
curious about your reasons for other decisions, too. For instance, in
the b line, you shut off everything but spellcasting. I copied it, but
I don't know why I'm doing it.
"With the skills aspect, it's 50/50 -- on the one hand, investing XP
into maces/flails just to be able to handle hydras due to the flaming
axe you couldn't find is a sacrifice."
It depends on what shows up, I guess. I mean, if it's a sacrifice or
not. If I'm finding flails that fit a niche (disruption, say), or
better, find one that becomes my main weapon, I don't see training
maces and axes as a sacrifice but as flexibility. Both the mace and the
axe lines are decent and having both may open up opportunities to use
effective ego weapons or artifacts. Short blades, other than quick
blades I guess, don't look so good. Thus far Jeremey's point that a lot
of characters will start out with short blades is the most persuasive
reason IMO to go with long blades. Or, better yet, (again, just IMO)
avoid characters like that if you're going the berserker route.
"it requires a fairly large dose of bad luck to leave the Halls with no
flaming weapon."
Obvious puns aside, maybe what's messing me up is that I'm taking the
Halls too seriously. I've never even gone in them because I read they
were so rough. Considering how soon they turn up they probably aren't
all that bad. Still, it seems like you would usually run into hydras
before finishing the Halls.
Twisted One
> Twisted One, that phrase means all things being equal. Are you allergic
> to looking things up? You would've satisfied your curiousity much
> sooner if you had.
Which phrase? (no quoted material!)
Twisted One
[post with a rude aside directed at me tacked onto the end]
Er, what? What did I ever do to you?!
Twisted One
> It is
> true that Crawl discussion isn't shot through with so-called challenges
> (iron man, eternium man, tupperware guy,
> play-in-your-underpants-while-remaining illiterate, etc., etc.) like
> the ADOM newsgroup was.
Was?
What happened to it?
[implied insult to my intelligence deleted]
Hey guys, it looks like some village is missing its idiot. Showed up
here with the name "smartwick" (an ironic choice if ever I saw one) but
no phone number to call if you find it wandering in the streets...
smar...@yahoo.com
in this thread (or ever, for that matter) you asked me the meaning of.
I'm responding to you, because I think it's bad manners to ignore
somebody without telling them why, exactly. Short version: You're
annoying and I suspect you're a troll. Everyone reading this but you
should probably stop right there because I'm not going to say anything
they don't already know.
Long version: I don't know what you did to annoy Jeremey, but you've
annoyed me mainly by asking stupid questions followed with equally
stupid fights. Not that asking what a Latin phrase means is stupid,
exactly, but the way you put it was a bit dumb, and then turning around
and asking me what I'm talking about when I answered was completely
stupid.
Basically, you're a waste of time and you're rude about it. This became
obvious when I happened to read an exchange of yours where you asked
who Pascal was (why broadcast your ignorance like that?) and then had a
snit when somebody provided you with a google result, something you
should've done for yourself. Let's add "lazy ass" to the list.
The laziness isn't the big part, though. It's the stupid arguments.
What sort of idiot replies to an obvious spam post in what's obviously
(obvious, that is, to anyone but a child or illiterate) French and then
start an argument about it and continue that argument when proved
wrong? That is, it was French and it was Spam, exactly as it appeared
at first glance. And that's just a recent example.
The question becomes "is anyone really that stupid?" and, well, yes,
but you don't usually find them online because the profoundly stupid
can't work a computer. So my conclusion is that you're someone who
finds it amusing to waste people's time with lazy questions and idiotic
arguments. Oh, ha, ha, ha. Look, you just stole ten minutes from me.
Good for you.
Twisted One
[assorted namecalling and insults deleted]
Eh? What the devil are you on about?
I asked what that Latin phrase meant because *I didn't know* and indeed
it is hardly common knowledge. I asked who Pascal was for the same
reasons. I asked what your answer was referring to because you neglected
to quote anything, so I didn't know which of my recent questions you
were replying to! And again you neglected to quote anything, so now that
I know which question it was (the Latin phrase) I no longer have the
*answer* handy...*sigh*. When the Pascal question (which wasn't in rgra,
and so isn't even relevant to any discussion *here* anyway) was
answered, it was answered with the world's dumbest possible answer: a
google search for "pascal". Well THAT ought to narrow it down! As for
the spam, not being fluent in French I couldn't read the thing to know
what it was. If I see obvious spam, I don't respond, unless there's
something humorous about it. On the other hand, if I see a post I simply
cannot parse, I respond remarking on this fact and reminding the
original poster of the froup's lingua franca. That post may or may not
be a spam; without understanding it *I don't know* what it is. And my
default behavior if a post is not fully comprehensible for me is to make
a little noise about this fact. It means somebody is not communicating
clearly, and either doesn't realize it or doesn't care. If they don't
realize it, they are well served by being notified of the fact. (As I
recall, the putative spam's subject was in English, but was generic and
could as easily have been intended to be roguelike-related.) There was
also some silly suggestion that I should have pasted the whole thing
into babelfish, magically divined that the incomprehensible stuff in
front of me was French (rather than just "not English" -- well I could
tell it was latinate in origin, but there's several currently popular
latinate languages and no obvious a priori way to narrow it down
further), and translated it. No, I should not have; instead, the
original poster should have tried to communicate in the group's dominant
language. For instance French, for the most part, belongs in the fr.*
newsgroups. This isn't a matter of discrimination but of audience
maximization. (Of course, if the particular post in question really was
a spam, it's actually a good thing that the moron failed to communicate
their sales pitch effectively. But that's beside the general point.)
It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. If postings that are
unreadable or contain unreadable subsets are made, but nobody points out
the problem, the original poster might remain unaware of it. This is a
bad thing if it's a non-spammer -- they could be understood by a larger
subset of the group's readership if they took care to make their post
readable. Using the group's dominant language and avoiding obscure
Latin, acronyms, names, or other terminology that isn't documented in
the group's FAQ is generally a good idea, and one I myself practise, so
it isn't too hard or anything. It means your posting gets read and fully
understood by a larger set of the interested people than otherwise. If
your intent is to communicate successfully this should be desirable to
you. On the other hand, it's good if a spammer mucks up and doesn't find
out they did -- but a spammer won't read any followups anyway, so they
don't get alerted to their failure the way a legitimate poster would.
I also think your implication that anyone who cannot read *French* is
illiterate is a crass and bigoted opinion, and probably a snobbish one
too. If French literature is so vital for everyone to be able to read,
why is it that the majority of human beings in *industrialized*
countries know little or no French and get along fine despite this?
Civilization has yet to collapse due to French having been outcompeted
by English and probably Spanish. There are at least a quarter billion
unilingual English speakers (and readers and writers) out there -- you
would class them all as illiterate, and look down on them?
Lastly, I did not steal anything from you; you donated the ten minutes
on your own initiative.
Rubinstein
> [...]
> So my conclusion is that you're someone who finds it amusing to waste
> people's time with lazy questions and idiotic arguments. Oh, ha, ha,
> ha. Look, you just stole ten minutes from me. Good for you.
And now... Ladies and Gentlemen, here we are at the 'exciting' birth of
yet another 'exciting' flame war! <crunch, crunch>
As a sidenote (and a hint), there's more than just one 'twisted' reason
for using a decent newsreader... <emoticon(':twisted:')>
Rubinstein
Twisted One
Yup -- using a real, standards-compliant newsreader instead of Outhouse,
some other HTML-loving reader, or (horror of horrors) a Web based
interface, your stupid HTML tags (which aren't valid anyway, not in 4.0
transitional at any rate) don't render for me. This is especially nice
if someone uses <blink> or <marquee> in a post. Also, your <crunch,
crunch> actually appears instead of being mysteriously omitted in my
display of your posting, which is what would happen under HTML
rendering, since unrecognized/bogus HTML tags are silently ignored by
compliant HTML renderers.
Jeremey Wilson
<smar...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1116211497....@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Twist, the phrase, of course, was ceteris paribus. It's the only
phrase
> in this thread (or ever, for that matter) you asked me the meaning of.
>
> I'm responding to you, because I think it's bad manners to ignore
> somebody without telling them why, exactly. Short version:
<snip short(?!) version)
Got that out of your system? See, when I said "everyone will be happier
if you just ignore him", I kinda meant ignore him in the opposite way of
that. I think you should probably try a different tack.
--
Jeremey
Rubinstein
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>>[...]
>>>So my conclusion is that you're someone who finds it amusing to waste
>>>people's time with lazy questions and idiotic arguments. Oh, ha, ha,
>>>ha. Look, you just stole ten minutes from me. Good for you.
>>
>> And now... Ladies and Gentlemen, here we are at the 'exciting' birth
>> of yet another 'exciting' flame war! <crunch, crunch>
>>
>> As a sidenote (and a hint), there's more than just one 'twisted'
>> reason for using a decent newsreader... <emoticon(':twisted:')>
>
> Yup -- using a real, standards-compliant newsreader instead of
> Outhouse, some other HTML-loving reader, or (horror of horrors) a Web
> based interface, your stupid HTML tags (which aren't valid anyway, not
> in 4.0 transitional at any rate) don't render for me.
They were 'made by hand', intended exactly that way (but not to "render"
for you).
> Also, your <crunch, crunch> actually appears instead of being
> mysteriously omitted in my display of your posting...
What, you actually got no popcorn? No soundfile was played?
Must send a bug report...
Rubinstein
Kornel Kisielewicz
> (re: twisted one)
>
[snip insults at Twisted One]
*sigh* Here we go again...
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"Oh come on. We both know the truth about this game --
vapourware." -- Anathiel about GenRogue
Kornel Kisielewicz
> Jeremey Wilson wrote:
> [post with a rude aside directed at me tacked onto the end]
>
> Er, what? What did I ever do to you?!
>
Oh come on, don't push it -- he's right, and he wasn't rude at all :
"Just ignore him. Everyone will be happier -- you, him, innocent
bystanders..."
Smartwick is a person who is very close to getting with you into a
pointless flamewar. You may enjoy that, so this is the place where
Jeremy may be wrong, but I assure you that Smartwick wont, neither will
"innocent bystanders". So basically he's right, and he just warned
Smartwick, that he's on the verge of being dragged into a flamewar. As
you see Smartwick was neither Smart enough, not Wicked to take that
advice, and flamed you. So basically Jeremy was right :-)
--
At your service,
Kornel Kisielewicz (charonATmagma-net.pl) [http://chaos.magma-net.pl]
"If hackers will ever use virtual reality, it would show a bunch
of text terminals floating around them..." -- The Sheep
Erik Piper
> smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> It is
>> true that Crawl discussion isn't shot through with so-called challenges
>> (iron man, eternium man, tupperware guy,
>> play-in-your-underpants-while-remaining illiterate, etc., etc.) like
>> the ADOM newsgroup was.
>
> Was?
>
> What happened to it?
I can't tell if you're being ironic about the below or just overlooking
it, but it is a rather weird thing about us humans that we tend to
intertwine "outside" histories and our "inside" histories in our heads
as we tell our tales...
I'm fairly sure Dave [1] (Smartwick) meant
"...as the ADOM newsgroup was in the past period when I frequented it."
:-)
Erik
[1] Come to think of it, Dave, when talking about you in the third
person, "Dave" sure sounds a lot nicer than "Smartwick." :-)
smar...@yahoo.com
ADOM group and challenges haven't been a big topic lately.
Jeremey, yes, it is out of my system. As I said, I consider it rude to
ignore somebody without saying why. I know that I've been annoyed in
chat when somebody did it to me. I don't much mind being ignored, just
the not knowing part.
Obviously, if Twisted is a troll bent on provoking people, I did play
into his hands. However, maybe he's not and how's he going to learn
better if I don't tell him why I think his input is so worthless that
it should go unread. Now, my previous post might look like pointless
raving to you, but to me it was my honest opinions expressed in plain
language. I won't pretend it was all meant as constructive criticism
but there is some in there. I admit that it derailed the thread. The
loser was me because it was my questions that went unanswered.
I presume it's impossible to ignore someone while using Google Groups.
No big deal, my page down button works.
Erik Piper
> Maybe you could point me to a good discussion of how fighter/evoker
> goes. Maybe if I knew more I'd ditch bows.
Here you go:
(At least I hope it's a good one. :-) )
> "Where are you at?"
>
> My current attempt (named generically "seven", guess how many came
> before?) has been to at least D:12, Lair:6, and Mines:4. Copied off
> Erik and had all skills but spellcasting off, but turned on stealth at
> some point and also trained translocations. Took a couple spells I
> don't need and haven't used (teleport other, conjure flame although
> that last might save me sometime.)
Conjure flame is enormously powerful if used right -- I really oughta
get the little bit more of "b" done that's needed to justify a second
installment, since there's an instance of a lifesaving usage of conjure
flame in there. In short, though:
- Nothing that's afraid of fire will pass through it.
- NOTHING THAT'S AFRAID OF FIRE WILL PASS THROUGH IT!
- You can throw any conjuration but ice ones through it without harming
the conjuration or the conjured flame.
- (Fighter-mages only) Some non-fire-resistant things will sit in it
fighting you, so you basically get a free extra attack each turn.
- You can summon fire elementals from it.
You have to be careful in the phase where miscasts are a reasonable
possibility, though, as getting overexcited and moving into your own
flame after you miscast Throw Flame is as embarrassing as it is YASdeadly.
> I'll probably go a bit deeper in the main line then do the swamp.
Depending on your level and your enhancers, I'd recommend doing the
Swamp "late" -- around the time where you can withstand 1.1 rather
unlucky turnsworth of hydra attacks. (50ish or for safety's sake 60ish
HP.) Everybody makes mistakes; give yourself room for them.
[How can I -- essentially -- killfile someone if I'm on GG?]
Visit Google, then aioe.org. Note: Google step optional. :-)
> "...two categories of actions benefiting the "player token" (the PC,
> the FPS avatar, whatever) that become narrowly or broadly "verboten"
> among player communities:
>
> - bugs making possible benefits outside of the rules of the game
> - poorly chosen rules of the game (misdesign)"
>
> I'd say there's a certain amount of 1337ness to it as well. In ADOM,
> stairscumming the Infinite Dungeon was LaMz0rZ, d00d, according to the
> community, but other exploits like kick-robbing stores or getting a
> nearly infinite amount of wishes were cool-- so far as I could tell,
> anyway. I'd guess this was because any newbie could come up with
> stairscumming but you'd have to've been around a while to figure out
> that kickrobbing was possible. Occasionally somebody would say they
> pretended the ID didn't exist or that they never, ever, ever used it,
> not once even by accident-- with the implication that only a dirty
> lowlife would. Whatever. It's not as if it wasn't entirely possible to
> hang around cavern levels and get just as much loot as the ID provided.
The ID is a "treadmill": low-risk, low-reward, but in the end actually
high-reward for patient players, because it's sustainable for a long
time and the low risk still remains. Thus it's no pr00f of sk1llz :-) to
power up using the ID. Roguelikes attract on average quite a gamist
mentality (though ADOM is an unusually narrativist roguelike), so I
think it's only natural for an element that doesn't truly challenge
anything but the player's patience to fall into disrepute in a
roguelike's community, even if the people with a distaste for it can't
clearly formulate why. (And even if this leaves Angband's popularity
impossible to explain. :-D)
-----------------------------------------------
More on the words "gamist" and "narrativist":
www.indie-rpgs.com/
-----------------------------------------------
You answered your own question later on, in a sense -- even though the
other "questionable" techniques in ADOMland you mention can raise some
eyebrows, they take some skill along with the patience.
For the record: I scummed the ID when I felt like it, didn't when I
didn't. I mean no disparagement by "scummed"; it's just what I call ANY
safe-but-boring technique. In my eyes, there's an even better reason for
avoiding scumming than its inability to prove skill: IT'S *BORING* of
*Extra Might*. :-)
> I'd say that if you're calling it ethics, you may be taking it too
> seriously, Erik.
I guess just using too strong of words. But I'm a gamist to the core,
and what I look for in a roguelike is, I've learned about myself, a
variety of choices fairly well balanced against each other that present
a challenging path to victory, that happen to be internally consistent
(if you read the link above, then: are passably good from the
simulationist standpoint) and have at least some little framework story.
If the challenge feels "weirdly" reduced by some action, or if something
looks like a treadmill, I start feeling squeamish.
OTOH there is a certain l33t pleasure in presenting proof-of-concept
that an element of the game is "broken" (Mark Mackey's nemelexite) or at
least edging towards the gray area (Bevoker). And that way you get to
have your cake and eat it too. :-)))
> It's your choo choo and you can run it on whatever
> track you want, of course, but the imaginary monster's feelings aren't
> hurt because you didn't give it a fair go.
:-)
> thank you for taking the time to map out your reasons. I've been
> curious about your reasons for other decisions, too. For instance, in
> the b line, you shut off everything but spellcasting. I copied it, but
> I don't know why I'm doing it.
The Spellcasting skill receives a 50% discount until level 5, then
gradually rises to 150% of its nominal cost at level 15. (Or 4/14; can't
remember which.)
> "With the skills aspect, it's 50/50 -- on the one hand, investing XP
> into maces/flails just to be able to handle hydras due to the flaming
> axe you couldn't find is a sacrifice."
>
> It depends on what shows up, I guess. I mean, if it's a sacrifice or
> not. If I'm finding flails that fit a niche (disruption, say), or
> better, find one that becomes my main weapon, I don't see training
> maces and axes as a sacrifice but as flexibility.
With the sheer quantity of ego long blades out there, they're a lot of
flexibility all on their own.
> Both the mace and the
> axe lines are decent and having both may open up opportunities to use
> effective ego weapons or artifacts. Short blades, other than quick
> blades I guess, don't look so good.
The core problem is that you'll have a lower top skill level than if you
concentrated on one of the two skills. If your skills are quite
concentrated (not unusual for a berserker), it's not *such* a problem;
otherwise, it's a step on the road to serious skill dilution.
> Thus far Jeremey's point that a lot
> of characters will start out with short blades is the most persuasive
> reason IMO to go with long blades. Or, better yet, (again, just IMO)
> avoid characters like that if you're going the berserker route.
Definitely with a non-spellcasting combo whose initial stats/involuntary
increases go to strength, axes win out.
> "it requires a fairly large dose of bad luck to leave the Halls with no
> flaming weapon."
>
> Obvious puns aside, maybe what's messing me up is that I'm taking the
> Halls too seriously. I've never even gone in them because I read they
> were so rough. Considering how soon they turn up they probably aren't
> all that bad. Still, it seems like you would usually run into hydras
> before finishing the Halls.
They're most troublesome for AC-based characters (draining beams will
annoy you to death no matter what your AC if you can't dodge/deflect
'em) and for characters with no ability to kill in 1-2 turns at range
(summoners will spam you to death, and if your magic resistance is low,
you run a significant risk of getting banished to the Abyss by the elves
who can do that, e.g. DE Mages).
There's a difference between trolling the Halls for long blades and
diving the Halls in earnest, too, as "a"'s story illustrates.
Erik
Rubinstein
> smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> For instance, in the b line, you shut off everything but
>> spellcasting. I copied it, but I don't know why I'm doing it.
>
> The Spellcasting skill receives a 50% discount until level 5, then
> gradually rises to 150% of its nominal cost at level 15. (Or 4/14;
> can't remember which.)
I'm currently also trying to adept this technic, so I was looking
forward to your answer, but I'ld like to go a little bit more into
detail here:
Do you mean skill- or character-level (IMU only the latter makes sense,
just want to be sure rather than guessing)?
Does only Spellcasting recieves 50% discount? If not, I'ld like to know
why you consider Spellcasting more useful than say Conjurations or
[Elemental] Magic (again, I can guess one or the other reason, but I'm
interested in your opinions, in particular about the pros and cons of
this technic).
Rubinstein
fartknocker
<eri...@skySP.czAM> blah:
>With the skills aspect, it's 50/50 -- on the one hand, investing XP into
>maces/flails just to be able to handle hydras due to the flaming axe you
>couldn't find is a sacrifice. On the other hand, the initial period of
>training shortblades due to the beginner's longblade you couldn't find
>is also a sacrifice.
You don't really need flaming weapons or maces for hydras. They go down
very well from a few simple arrows. Bow of Ice or an initial cold attack
is best as it slows down reptilians. Axari the HECr ;) uses either
Paralyze or a Blink variant with this technique, it works and the hydra
doesn't even get a bite.
Twisted One
> Twisted One wrote:
>
>> Jeremey Wilson wrote:
>> [post with a rude aside directed at me tacked onto the end]
>>
>> Er, what? What did I ever do to you?!
>>
>
> Oh come on, don't push it -- he's right, and he wasn't rude at all :
>
> "Just ignore him. Everyone will be happier -- you, him, innocent
> bystanders..."
He was advising people to ignore me. That I consider rude -- it's
belittling. "This is not someone worth paying attention to" is how I
read his remark, and that is definitely an insult.
Twisted One
[a mixture of stuff, including some insults, such as an accusation of
worthlessness]
Bitter much?
Erik Piper
reply never showed up on r.g.r.m. :-(. So here's a whole new reply.
Rubinstein wrote:
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>>smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>>For instance, in the b line, you shut off everything but
>>>spellcasting. I copied it, but I don't know why I'm doing it.
>>
>>The Spellcasting skill receives a 50% discount until level 5, then
>>gradually rises to 150% of its nominal cost at level 15. (Or 4/14;
>>can't remember which.)
>
> I'm currently also trying to adept this technic, so I was looking
> forward to your answer, but I'ld like to go a little bit more into
> detail here:
>
> Do you mean skill- or character-level (IMU only the latter makes sense,
> just want to be sure rather than guessing)?
Character level.
> Does only Spellcasting recieves 50% discount?
Yes.
> If not, I'ld like to know
> why you consider Spellcasting more useful than say Conjurations or
> [Elemental] Magic (again, I can guess one or the other reason, but I'm
> interested in your opinions, in particular about the pros and cons of
> this technic).
Even though the answer above is "yes," there are still pros and cons to
consider.
Pros:
* You enter the midgame with "more skills for the XP" than you normally
would be getting.
Cons:
Most of these stem from the fact that the normal course of diving is not
enough to purge your XP from your pool into spellcasting when everything
else is turned off; you have to sit around and fire spells at the wall
to drain your pool satisfactorily.
* You spend a lot of time consuming food (by existing, not casting --
you use a zero-food-cost spell to drain the pool) without generating
any, since it will often take several full drainings of your MP pool to
drain out your XP pool. (Only starting draining sessions when your
distance to the "top of hungry" is at least "one chunk high" makes this
problem smaller -- you're using up time when newly generated food is the
most likely to rot before being used.)
* It's a bit tedious, which is both objectively, real-world bad and
dangerous for your Crawl PC, as it can lead to errors of inattention.
* At the end of each draining of your MP pool, you are dangerously
vulnerable to wandering monsters. (Going to cleared areas for the
draining makes this threat smaller.)
* While quite powerful in its own way, Spellcasting skill is less
directly helpful for taking down the enemy in fewer turns than the
Conjurations, Necromancy, fighting/enchanting (for crusaders who use
this technique) or [element] skills it replaces. By the midgame, this
isn't really a problem and on the contrary Spellcasting really starts to
shine, but it does make the early game trickier (except for the nice
boost to MP).
Erik
Rubinstein
> I originally replied to this just after you posted it, but somehow the
> reply never showed up on r.g.r.m. :-(. So here's a whole new reply.
...and I already thought you don't like to talk to me anymore. ;-)
> Rubinstein wrote:
>> Erik Piper wrote:
>>
>>>smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>
>>>>For instance, in the b line, you shut off everything but
>>>>spellcasting. I copied it, but I don't know why I'm doing it.
>>>
>>>The Spellcasting skill receives a 50% discount until level 5, then
>>>gradually rises to 150% of its nominal cost at level 15. (Or 4/14;
>>>can't remember which.)
Btw, this looks like 100% cost will be reached at level 10 (or 9, if
4/14 is true), at which there's no benefit anymore.
> ...there are still pros and cons to consider.
>
> Pros:
> * You enter the midgame with "more skills for the XP" than you
> normally would be getting.
I still don't get it. Ok, by the time you enter the midgame you surely
have a higher skill in Spellcasting and a greater pool of unallocated
skill points. But "more skills for the XP"? How that?
Also, meanwhile I start to believe that with the 50% discount you
actually _win_ something, as in "less skill points needed for reaching
the same skill level" (other than just the tradeoff with skills you
muted before). Is this correct?
> [Cons]
I think I could deal with the Cons you mentioned here. But what's about
hungerless spellcasting: is there a difference between the two methods?
Rubinstein
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>>I originally replied to this just after you posted it, but somehow the
>>reply never showed up on r.g.r.m. :-(. So here's a whole new reply.
>
> ...and I already thought you don't like to talk to me anymore. ;-)
>
>>Rubinstein wrote:
>>
>>>Erik Piper wrote:
>>>
>>>>smar...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>For instance, in the b line, you shut off everything but
>>>>>spellcasting. I copied it, but I don't know why I'm doing it.
>>>>
>>>>The Spellcasting skill receives a 50% discount until level 5, then
>>>>gradually rises to 150% of its nominal cost at level 15. (Or 4/14;
>>>>can't remember which.)
>
> Btw, this looks like 100% cost will be reached at level 10 (or 9, if
> 4/14 is true), at which there's no benefit anymore.
What's confusing you here is the confusing fact that the true cost of
the Spellcasting skill from level 15 (or 14, or 16... call me dumb) on
is 150% of its nominal cost, i.e. what one finds in the racial aptitudes
lists. Loonie can probably explain it better if he happens upon this
post. So when it's at 100% of nominal cost, it's still at less than its
eventual true cost.
Basically what I understand happened is that at one point in the
development of Crawl's game balance and "feel," the devteam decided that
it should be easier to become a good spellcaster if you start early, and
tacked this gradual transition from bonus to penalty on top of the basic
layer of aptitudes, etc.
>>...there are still pros and cons to consider.
>>
>>Pros:
>>* You enter the midgame with "more skills for the XP" than you
>>normally would be getting.
>
> I still don't get it. Ok, by the time you enter the midgame you surely
> have a higher skill in Spellcasting and a greater pool of unallocated
> skill points. But "more skills for the XP"? How that?
I'll use a metaphor.
You go to a baeckeri and discover, or know from the past, that they're
selling Berliners for 1 EUR, while kornriegels are 2 EUR. Tomorrow BTW
Berliners will be 2 EUR and from the next day onwards, they'll be 3 EUR.
(That's probably pretty expensive for berlinerss and kornriegels, but
whatever.)
If (IF!) the personal values for you of berliners and kornriegels are
the same and will remain the same even if you buy lots of berliners
today (say, you have a sweet tooth), then you will want to buy as few
kornriegels as possible today so that you have more to spend on berliners.
Even if the set of Berliner costs is .5/1/1.5 or 2/4/6 (just like Crawl
aptitudes are rarely 1:1 balanced against each other), this still more
or less holds true.
Of course Berliners and Kornriegels get eaten, while Crawl skills stay
with you forever once you "buy" them, but that just makes the argument
stronger, I think.
> Also, meanwhile I start to believe that with the 50% discount you
> actually _win_ something, as in "less skill points needed for reaching
> the same skill level" (other than just the tradeoff with skills you
> muted before). Is this correct?
Less XP needed for reaching the same skill level.
>>[Cons]
>
>
> I think I could deal with the Cons you mentioned here. But what's about
> hungerless spellcasting: is there a difference between the two methods?
Hungering is a matter of int, Spellcasting (reduce hungering), and spell
level (increases hungering), so that was just shorthand for saying "you
use a spell of the lowest feasible level to do the 'pumping', and
usually with a serious spellcaster that will mean a food cost of 0
either right from move 1, or fairly soon after that."
I forgot to mention three technical notes (because they weren't pros or
cons, I guess).
-- given a choice of "pool-draining" spells that are otherwise equally
attractive, a single-school spell has the extra attraction that it
minimizes the dissipation of XP out into things other than spellcasting.
Of course if that skill isn't extremely directly useful, then this
leaves you even more short-term vulnerable than before. That's why my
shorthand phrase for this technique is "shooting magic darts at the
wall" -- if you're going to be training just one thing alongside your
spellcasting, you can't do much better from the short-term survivability
standpoint than Conjurations.
-- you can vastly reduce the negatives of this technique by going a less
radical route than turning off *everything* but spellcasting -- instead,
leave a critical skill or two on. You'll get fewer discounted levels of
spellcasting, but also vastly less tedium, risk, etc.
-- in practice I find it most prudent to stop long before level 15 --
ironically it's around the time spellcasting reaches 100% of nominal
cost. This is because of "skill hill" and because of the growing
short-term weakness resulting from pumping a "long-term" skill like
spellcasting to the detriment of a "short-term" skill like conjurations.
Erik
Twisted One
> (That's probably pretty expensive for berlinerss and kornriegels, but
> whatever.)
How so? They're just metasyntactic variables to me, and the numbers may
as well have been pulled out of a hat, save the demand that they fit the
1/2/3 ratio to correspond in proportion to the Crawl spellcasting skill
costs.
> -- given a choice of "pool-draining" spells that are otherwise equally
> attractive, a single-school spell has the extra attraction that it
> minimizes the dissipation of XP out into things other than spellcasting.
I thought this was done with all the other skills turned off? Or are
there other XP "leaks" besides into skills?
Igor D. WonderLlama
Twisted One wrote:
> Erik Piper wrote:
> > -- given a choice of "pool-draining" spells that are otherwise
equally
> > attractive, a single-school spell has the extra attraction that it
> > minimizes the dissipation of XP out into things other than
spellcasting.
>
> I thought this was done with all the other skills turned off? Or are
> there other XP "leaks" besides into skills?
You can't really turn skills off. When you deselect them from the
skill screen, they really just train 1/4 as fast.
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>> (That's probably pretty expensive for berlinerss and kornriegels, but
>> whatever.)
>
>
> How so?
Well, you can buy things that are fairely berliner-like for 20-30
Eurocents in the Czech Republic, and assuming prices in Germany are only
twice as high...
...but yeah,
> They're just metasyntactic variables to me.
:-)
> , and the numbers may
> as well have been pulled out of a hat, save the demand that they fit the
> 1/2/3 ratio to correspond in proportion to the Crawl spellcasting skill
> costs.
More precisely: to the initial situation, the exact middle of the
transition, and the end of it.
>> -- given a choice of "pool-draining" spells that are otherwise equally
>> attractive, a single-school spell has the extra attraction that it
>> minimizes the dissipation of XP out into things other than spellcasting.
>
>
> I thought this was done with all the other skills turned off? Or are
> there other XP "leaks" besides into skills?
Turning off a skill doesn't actually prevent *all* transmission of XP to
the skill; it just takes a look at every "training incident" and only
passes an incident through if it passes a random check with a 75% "fail
rate." If you're mostly generating training incidents for, say,
Conjurations and Spellcasting, then a lot of those incidents will
*still* pass through for Conjurations, simply because Spellcasting is
quite ornery about judging things to be valid training incidents. I'm
not in the mood to look at the code, because I don't even think there's
a simple snippet of code somewhere telling Spellcasting "turn up your
nose at most attempts to train you," but pick up a conjurer, turn off
Conjurations and fire magic dart at the wall, and you'll see what I mean.
Erik
Rubinstein
> Turning off a skill doesn't actually prevent *all* transmission of XP
> to the skill; it just takes a look at every "training incident" and
> only passes an incident through if it passes a random check with a 75%
> "fail rate."
Wait, that's very likely the source of all my confusion: I always
thought XP would stay for eXPerience, but from within the context you're
using it now, it seems XP = Skillpoints (for which I'ld rather expected
SP or SK, though).
An 'official' abbraviation table for Crawl still doesn't exist, right?
Rubinstein
Mehdi Tibouchi
>
> What's confusing you here is the confusing fact that the true cost of
> the Spellcasting skill from level 15 (or 14, or 16... call me dumb) on
> is 150% of its nominal cost, i.e. what one finds in the racial aptitudes
> lists. Loonie can probably explain it better if he happens upon this
> post. So when it's at 100% of nominal cost, it's still at less than its
> eventual true cost.
It took me some time to realize that the ``level'' you're refering to
here is character level, not skill level, and it makes a lot more sense
now, so I thought I would point it out in case some other inattentive
lurker should have missed this as well.
--
Mehdi,
fond of your crawly rants.
Twisted One
> Twisted One wrote:
>> Erik Piper wrote:
>>
>>> (That's probably pretty expensive for berlinerss and kornriegels, but
>>> whatever.)
>>
>> How so?
>
> Well, you can buy things that are fairely berliner-like for 20-30
> Eurocents in the Czech Republic, and assuming prices in Germany are only
> twice as high...
So these are real objects of some kind, actually traded in one of the
world's economies (apparently spanning some of Western and Eastern
Europe), I take it. And fairly inexpensive, so probably
consumable/disposable goods of some kind. (Then again, some rich people
consider cars and the like to be disposable, so...)
> Turning off a skill doesn't actually prevent *all* transmission of XP to
> the skill; it just takes a look at every "training incident" and only
> passes an incident through if it passes a random check with a 75% "fail
> rate." If you're mostly generating training incidents for, say,
> Conjurations and Spellcasting, then a lot of those incidents will
> *still* pass through for Conjurations, simply because Spellcasting is
> quite ornery about judging things to be valid training incidents. I'm
> not in the mood to look at the code, because I don't even think there's
> a simple snippet of code somewhere telling Spellcasting "turn up your
> nose at most attempts to train you," but pick up a conjurer, turn off
> Conjurations and fire magic dart at the wall, and you'll see what I mean.
That is very strange. Is it meant to make it hard to train up
Spellcasting above other, more specific magic school skills? Or...?
Erik Piper
> Erik Piper wrote:
> > Twisted One wrote:
> >> Erik Piper wrote:
[berliners and kornriegels at the baeckerei]
> So these are real objects of some kind, actually traded in one of the
> world's economies (apparently spanning some of Western and Eastern
> Europe), I take it. And fairly inexpensive, so probably
> consumable/disposable goods of some kind. (Then again, some rich
people
> consider cars and the like to be disposable, so...)
They're baked goods.
You can find some images of berliners here:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=berliner&btnG=Search
For some reason, I can't find much on kornriegels; perhaps a typing
error on my part -- my German is not very good.
> > Turning off a skill doesn't actually prevent *all* transmission of
XP to
> > the skill; it just takes a look at every "training incident" and
only
> > passes an incident through if it passes a random check with a 75%
"fail
> > rate." If you're mostly generating training incidents for, say,
> > Conjurations and Spellcasting, then a lot of those incidents will
> > *still* pass through for Conjurations, simply because Spellcasting
is
> > quite ornery about judging things to be valid training incidents.
I'm
> > not in the mood to look at the code, because I don't even think
there's
> > a simple snippet of code somewhere telling Spellcasting "turn up
your
> > nose at most attempts to train you," but pick up a conjurer, turn
off
> > Conjurations and fire magic dart at the wall, and you'll see what I
mean.
>
> That is very strange. Is it meant to make it hard to train up
> Spellcasting above other, more specific magic school skills? Or...?
Are you asking about the sliding difficulty of training Spellcasting?
AFAIK, this is meant to make things easier for players who choose to be
a spellcaster immediately than for those to choose to be one later on,
though why that aim exists, I don't know.
If you're asking why Spellcasting is rather resistant to having XP
pumped into it, I don't know; I don't know if it's even intentional.
Certainly the fact that it can never be trained on its own, but only in
conjunction with at least 1 school skill, has an impact, though you'd
think that e.g. casting magic dart with Conjurations turned off would
train Spellcasting significantly more than Conjurations (assuming
similar aptitudes), whereas in practice this is not the case.
Erik
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