Nethack vs Angband

[David Justiss]

I've played nethack several years now (only won once, partly because I
was unspoiled for more than half that time.) Then about four months ago
I decided to try Angband. Angband is a good deal simpler and less
interesting. I would say overall Nethack is easily the better game. So I
was thinking after I finished that first long Angband game where I was
killed by impact hounds just after getting to experience level 50, I
would go back to playing Nethack. But after playing several quite short
games of Nethack (short partly because I was playing the two classes
with the most variety which are also quite hard in the early game:
tourists and wizards), I started playing Angband again and have been the
last few weeks. maybe because Angband is less frustrating? What do you
all think of this? Is my attention span too short or what?

Asher

killed by a soldier ant and an impact hound on level N

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

[Joshua Rodman]

This thread topic, especially crosss-posted like so, is generally best
case ill advised/boring/old, and worst case a glaring troll.

On 2006-02-20, David Justiss <daju...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I would say overall Nethack is easily the better game.

And when you begin it along these lines, you deserve a spanking.

NAUGHTY ZOOT. (zut?)

-josh
--
Grim. Grom. Grümmer.

[Tobias Wolter]

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.games.roguelike.nethack.]

On 2006-02-20, David Justiss wrote:
> I started playing Angband again and have been the last few weeks.
> maybe because Angband is less frustrating? What do you all think of
> this? Is my attention span too short or what?

I think that starting a Holy War by these means is inadvisible.

-towo
--
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a frac-
tured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also some-
thing that was broken. (Terry Pratchett in `Hogfather')

[pete mack]

David Justiss wrote:
> I've played nethack several years now (only won once, partly because I
> was unspoiled for more than half that time.) Then about four months ago
> I decided to try Angband. Angband is a good deal simpler and less
> interesting. I would say overall Nethack is easily the better game. So I
> was thinking after I finished that first long Angband game where I was
> killed by impact hounds just after getting to experience level 50, I
> would go back to playing Nethack. But after playing several quite short
> games of Nethack (short partly because I was playing the two classes
> with the most variety which are also quite hard in the early game:
> tourists and wizards), I started playing Angband again and have been the
> last few weeks. maybe because Angband is less frustrating? What do you
> all think of this? Is my attention span too short or what?
>

This sounds like a troll to me.

In any case, I agree on one thing. Angband is a very simple game. In
Glenn Wheeler's words:
1. Kill Sauron
2. Kill Morgoth
3. Don't die

Sounds like you still don't have it under control to me.

[Aste...@gmail.com]

Aw, can't we have a classic apples vs. oranges bash?

I was waiting to be amused...

[topazg]

On 2006-02-20 21:46:09, "David Justiss" <daju...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Then about four months ago
> I decided to try Angband. Angband is a good deal simpler and less
> interesting. I would say overall Nethack is easily the better game.

mmmmmm....... I smell napalm.

I would say not. It is beautifully simple in concept yet strangely difficult to
master, just like all good games.

--
Take Care,
Graham

Pos(0.3.0a2) Alpha "Natar" XX L:1 DL:50' !A R--- !Sp w:Short Sword +0,+0
Pos(V/T//NPP) W H- D+ c-- f PV+ s- TT? d P++ M+
C-- S+ I- So B ac GHB- SQ+ RQ+ V+ F:Better monster AI (Acting like decent
players without automatically knowing where the player is - randomly roaming
the dungeon etc...)

[Twisted]

topazg wrote:
> mmmmmm....... I smell napalm.

Actually, that's tritium and 239Pu you smell.

Ladies and gentlemen! I hope you all remember your duck and cover
drills...and do not look directly at the flash if you don't have
resBlind.

> I would say not. It is beautifully simple in concept yet strangely difficult to
> master, just like all good games.

Which variant? (Vanilla is strangely easy to master; steam maybe, or O
or S?)

[RS.14]

The title is poorly chosen, IMHO, and as others have said, we really
don't need a fight over this. Personaly, I have played ADOM, NetHack,
and Angband, and enjoyed them all at different times. So play whatever
you please.

But as to your question... I know what you mean. After recently loosing
my best character the first time I met Demogorgon, I had a hard time
getting back into NetHack, and played Angband a lot. It seems more
straightforward I guess, and less to chance; I don't need to plan for
if I don't find a co-aligned alter at minetown or if I meet a MMF or if
I can't find Levitation before Medusa.
It also seems easier to get a decent character going; for me, short NH
games are still common. In Angband, it seems like it's a whole lot
easier to get something and play for hours, instead of minutes.

But as I said before, play whatever you please. They are both great
games.

[topazg]

On 2006-02-21 00:59:31, "Twisted" <twist...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I would say not. It is beautifully simple in concept yet strangely difficult to
> > master, just like all good games.
>
> Which variant? (Vanilla is strangely easy to master; steam maybe, or O
> or S?)
>

I think the mastery is mainly psychological. Especially once you've had a winner
it's that "I'm indestructible" red mist that always descends on my games until
the moment when my indestructibility gets called into question :-)

[FunkyD]

< rant >

Gotta start by saying... wow. C'mon people. We ALL hate flaming and
trolling in our newsgroups, but it constantly amazes me to see the
unnatural FEAR of posts that might not be well received. If yer gonna
flame, flame and be a baby, otherwise, please, just keep it to
yourself. It's a public newsgroup, so you won't impress anyone with
high post-counts, and you're unlikely to gain praise by saying, "SEE!
I told you there was gonna be a flame war! I am teh l33t Nostrodamus
of usenet!".

< /rant >

Ok, onto the subject, I've been playing NH since the old days, and
Moria/Bands almost as long. Yeah, they are completely different games.
I suppose I take the view of them in a way, kinda like Diablo. *grin*

Nethack is a little more like that first time playing Diablo. There's
an objective, and you're always excited to pick up great gear and
become immensely powerful on your way to the end of the game. It can
be a fast road, or a long road, and there's always that next step that
you have to prepare for. There aren't many ways to cheat (scuming,
breeder-farming, etc), but in almost the same way, there are
"acceptable" exploits if you wanna use them (polypiling, etc).

*Band is like Diablo after you've gotten to the end of the story.
There's a final boss (Baal on Hell difficulty), but in the big scheme
of things, that's ages away. The rest of your time is spent killing
things, avoiding the occasional REALLY nasty randomly generated mobs,
and farming up the uber elite set of gear you've always wanted (and
will NEED for the endgame). It's a little more monotonus, but hey,
that just gives you more time to "bond" with your character.

Both are fun. Some of the other alternatives are to try things like
TOME, which expands on the *band concept, and tries to breathe a little
more life into it with more options, more towns, and more things to do.
Lots of variants do this.

What would REALLY be exciting, would be to see a new hack variant come
out. New puzzles for us to solve, new quests, a new storyline, while
still incorporating all the randomness that makes nethack, and (very
much more so) *band a constant roller-coaster of great success stories,
and frustrating losses....

D

[Werner Bär]

"FunkyD" <Funky...@gmail.com> schrieb ...

> The rest of your time is spent killing
> things, avoiding the occasional REALLY nasty randomly generated mobs,
> and farming up the uber elite set of gear you've always wanted (and
> will NEED for the endgame).

I have my fair share of winners. But i don't farm anything
(except maybe in the first game of a new variant)
(or don't you talk farming monsters when you mention farming?)

You don't need an uber elite set of gear in the endgame.
You do need some nice artifacts in a normal game, but there are
enough very common ones, so no need for scumming.

In one of my last games, i was very glad to find Thorin at 4400'
in the drop of a unique, since it improved my constitution from
18/179 to 18/200+. But i think i could have made it without.

Werner.

[Timo Pietilä]

Werner Bär wrote:
>
> "FunkyD" <Funky...@gmail.com> schrieb ...
>
>> The rest of your time is spent killing
>> things, avoiding the occasional REALLY nasty randomly generated mobs,
>> and farming up the uber elite set of gear you've always wanted (and
>> will NEED for the endgame).

> You don't need an uber elite set of gear in the endgame.

> You do need some nice artifacts in a normal game, but there are enough
> very common ones, so no need for scumming.

You don't need them, but you will find some. Artifactless winner is
quite possible.

Timo Pietilä

[FunkyD]

>>You don't need them, but you will find some. Artifactless winner is
quite possible.

True, true, but keep in mind that the two of you (Werner and Timo) are
pretty much as elite as possible in the heirarchy of *band players. In
the same way, yeah, there are people who can probably kill Diablo with
a sharp stick and a suit of broken armor, but the vast majority of
players keep a character for a LONG time, farming (gathering, sorry)
equipment that will ensure them a victory in the endgame, even if they
make some mistakes.

To tie back into the main subject, veteran Nethack players increase
their challenge by adhereing to "conducts" that the game keeps track
of. (like remaining a vegetarian, not using wishes, etc)

You sick rascals need something new to test ya... :)

[Twisted]

FunkyD wrote:

> You sick rascals need something new to test ya... :)

That's what variants like O and S are for. ;)

[Antoine]

Artifactless egoless bookless hobbit mage. I suggested it a while ago
but no one seems to have leapt to the challenge yet. Next competition
maybe?

A.

[David Justiss]

"FunkyD" <Funky...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140538790....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com

> < rant >
yeah. I didn't think posting that message would cause any trouble.
didn't mean to flame anyone or anything or start anyone else flaming.
> < /rant >

I've never played Diablo, but I have played the original Rogue and Hack.

> Both are fun. Some of the other alternatives are to try things like
> TOME, which expands on the *band concept, and tries to breathe a little
> more life into it with more options, more towns, and more things to do.
> Lots of variants do this.

I'll probably try TOME sometime soon.

> What would REALLY be exciting, would be to see a new hack variant come
> out. New puzzles for us to solve, new quests, a new storyline, while
> still incorporating all the randomness that makes nethack, and (very
> much more so) *band a constant roller-coaster of great success stories,
> and frustrating losses....

I have accually designed a new hack variant in a bunch of text and
spreadsheet files on my computer. It's based mostly on nethack
because I've played that longer, but if I ever have that much free time
again I'll likely add more angband influence stuff.
The problem is I'm no programmer. I know a tiny bit of visual basic
and that's it. Sadly my roguelike will probably never be
playable.
I've accually once made it somewhat kindof playable with pen and
paper and a couple programs in BASIC to do calculations, legos for the
map.. yeah I used to have WAY too much free time, but I haven't done
anything with that game in a couple years.

Asher

[Timo Pietilä]

Antoine wrote:

> Artifactless egoless bookless hobbit mage. I suggested it a while ago
> but no one seems to have leapt to the challenge yet. Next competition
> maybe?

Why not. Winning criteria: fastest winner or who has most uniques killed.

Timo Pietilä

[Eddie Grove]

Timo Pietilä <timo.p...@helsinki.fi> writes:

The problem is that, currently, you cannot encode this in the
savefile. The game really ought to save the ego defs at birth,
but in fact it recomputes them from ego.raw/ego.txt. The same
thing for artifacts. At least I think this is true; I could be
confused again.

Eddie

[Timo Pietilä]

followup only to r.g.r.angband

Artifactless is birth-option so that is not a problem. For egoless you
need to edit ego-item.txt (leave version stamp, remove everything else,
and it works). bookless means that you have to edit object.txt too and
remove books from there.

Timo Pietilä

[Igenlode Wordsmith]

On 21 Feb 2006 Antoine wrote:

> FunkyD wrote:

[snip]

> > To tie back into the main subject, veteran Nethack players increase
> > their challenge by adhereing to "conducts" that the game keeps track
> > of. (like remaining a vegetarian, not using wishes, etc)
> >
> > You sick rascals need something new to test ya... :)
>
> Artifactless egoless bookless hobbit mage. I suggested it a while ago
> but no one seems to have leapt to the challenge yet. Next competition
> maybe?
>

The advantage of using it as a competition character, of course, is that
you could beat the opposition without actually having to *win* ;-)
--
<Igenl...@nym.alias.net>

* Never assume malice when ignorance is a possibility *

[Timo Pietilä]

FunkyD wrote:

> To tie back into the main subject, veteran Nethack players increase
> their challenge by adhereing to "conducts" that the game keeps track
> of. (like remaining a vegetarian, not using wishes, etc)

Same applies to angband. There is birth-option to prevent using shops,
no upstairs and no artifacts.

> You sick rascals need something new to test ya... :)

Nethack is not new to me. I have ascended with almost all classes. I
don't like it as much as angband, because luck plays so big role in it.
It also feels like puzzle-solving game, not a strategy or tactical game
like angband. Nethack has gazillion "tricks", angband doesn't.

IMO nethack is like leisure suit larry and angband is like quake.

Timo Pietilä

[Antoine]

Igenlode Wordsmith wrote:
> On 21 Feb 2006 Antoine wrote:
>
> > FunkyD wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > > To tie back into the main subject, veteran Nethack players increase
> > > their challenge by adhereing to "conducts" that the game keeps track
> > > of. (like remaining a vegetarian, not using wishes, etc)
> > >
> > > You sick rascals need something new to test ya... :)
> >
> > Artifactless egoless bookless hobbit mage. I suggested it a while ago
> > but no one seems to have leapt to the challenge yet. Next competition
> > maybe?
> >
> The advantage of using it as a competition character, of course, is that
> you could beat the opposition without actually having to *win* ;-)

Oh no - the advantage is that you would not only have to *win* but win
in the minimum number of turns :-|

A.

[topazg]

On 2006-02-22 08:15:31, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Timo_Pietil�?=
<timo.p...@helsinki.fi> wrote:

>
> Nethack is not new to me. I have ascended with almost all classes. I
> don't like it as much as angband, because luck plays so big role in it.
> It also feels like puzzle-solving game, not a strategy or tactical game
> like angband. Nethack has gazillion "tricks", angband doesn't.
>
> IMO nethack is like leisure suit larry and angband is like quake.
>

Ahahahaha, wonderful. Simply beautiful. Nethack is the Leisure Suit Larry of the
roguelike world, and Angband is the Quake. Can there be competition between them
any longer!

Cheers for the smile Timo :-)

[Wim Benthem]

you get "No object(90,1) error in store_choice_hook(): can't find
item(90:1)" errors, if you remove the books from object.txt though,
not only at the start but also if you're in the dungeon and the stores
refresh.

--
Wim Benthem

[Timo Pietilä]

Wim Benthem wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 06:54:46 +0200, Timo Pietilä
> <timo.p...@helsinki.fi> wrote:

>> Artifactless is birth-option so that is not a problem. For egoless you
>> need to edit ego-item.txt (leave version stamp, remove everything else,
>> and it works). bookless means that you have to edit object.txt too and
>> remove books from there.
>

> you get "No object(90,1) error in store_choice_hook(): can't find
> item(90:1)" errors, if you remove the books from object.txt though,
> not only at the start but also if you're in the dungeon and the stores
> refresh.

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure I did a change for this and it wasn't very hard.
Do you get it if you comment out books from /script/store.lua?

I might have edited source to get this working, but don't remember just now.

Timo Pietilä

[Andrew Sidwell]

Timo Pietilä wrote:

> Wim Benthem wrote:
>> you get "No object(90,1) error in store_choice_hook(): can't find
>> item(90:1)" errors, if you remove the books from object.txt though,
>> not only at the start but also if you're in the dungeon and the stores
>> refresh.
>
> Hmmm... I'm pretty sure I did a change for this and it wasn't very hard.
> Do you get it if you comment out books from /script/store.lua?
>
> I might have edited source to get this working, but don't remember just
> now.

Commenting out the entries in script/store.lua is the right way to do
it. No source editing required.

Andrew Sidwell

[mattneu]

How do you deal with resistances with egoless character?

--
Matt
mat...@gmail.com

[Wim Benthem]

On 23 Feb 2006 07:08:03 -0800, "mattneu" <mat...@gmail.com> wrote:

>How do you deal with resistances with egoless character?

By using swaps, avoiding anything you can't deal with, and
hoping/praying for the right DSM. Bookless makes it *much* harder
because you'll have to get some rods of detection, and you
can't use Restiscance of Scarabtarices.
I once got an egoless high-elf ranger to about 3000' feet,
before an Ancient multi-hued dragon got me.

--
Wim Benthem

[Timo Pietilä]

mattneu wrote:
> How do you deal with resistances with egoless character?

Amulets, rings and DSM:s are still allowed. Resistances are not a
problem as long as you play carefully and allow yourself to have
resistance holes that can be patched with swap gear.

Much harder is getting speed and HP high at the same time. Bookless
artifactless egoless hobbit mage would have incredible small HP or very
slow speed, no matter how you play it. You need at least one very good
RoS to get to near Morgoths speed even with haste, so you cannot use it
to second RoCON (one +6 one is simply necessity, there would be no other
means to increase CON).

Timo Pietilä

[Twisted]

Looks like you need the following endgame kit:

MHDSM -- basics and rpoison
shield, helmet, gloves, boots, cloak -- AC and reduction of acid damage
weapon, bow -- damage
RoCon(+6) -- HP
RoSpeed(+15) -- Speed (apparently max possible now)
AoTrickery(+5) -- Speed (and another source of rpoison)
Lots of scrolls of teleport, potions of healing, and potions of speed.

With this you can just get to hasted speed +30 and avoid Morgoth double
manastorm. You'll want to avoid heavy breathers and ranged damagers of
all types as much as possible, need to use guerilla tactics against
later uniques (pillar dancing/LOS abuse or at least retreat and regroup
a lot), and go mainly for elemental wyrms for upgrades and
easy critters with large drops for consumables (which will include food
and oil!) ...
You may even find some of the damage-dealing rods and staves useful
even late into the game. Wands and rods of stone-to-mud and staves of
perception will be a must...

[remuz]

I look forward to seeing you crazy guys trying this competition, and
telling us your adventures. :)

[FunkyD]

Yeah, this is getting borderline ridiculous.

Next, I say see who can win first without using diagonals in any way.
Then, things start to get really tough... :)

[Wim Benthem]

Unfortunately you will be a few percent short of 100% saving throw,
so you need free action too, altough against morgoth preventing double
moves is probably more important. You can get free action from an
amulet of the magi, weaponmastery or devotion (just enough WIS for
100% saving throw)
An amulet of the magi will also cover See Invisible and confusion
resistance.

Doing enough damage is another problem. Since your STR is so low, the
best melee weapon is a Tulwar. A +15 Tulwar will only give 92 damage/
round. (drops that would have been excellent will often produce +15
stuff)

A heavy crossbow with seeker bolts enchanted to +15 will do 168 damage /
round max. If you count misses, a staff of power/holyness will be better
than that with 120 HP of damage. Rod of fire balls are144 and a wand of
annihilation is 250 HP.
In Angband 3.0.6 a wand of annihilation and 99 scrolls of recharging,
some rods of teleport other, scrolls of rune of protection and a huge
pile of healing stuff should give you a chance at morgoth, altough you
might be killed by a double move or failure of teleport away.
If you are really lucky you can get 620 HP.

currently I've spent 600k turns and my hobbit mage is level 17 at
dungeon level 10.
10 STR sucks, no phial sucks, no ID sucks, no detection sucks etc.
At least my longbow is at (+9,+9)

--
wim Benthem

[R. Dan Henry]

It's called Crawl.

Not to mention the many other newer RLs -- and there's more on the way
as the second Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge is just about to start
(well, has as I write this, depending on your Time Zone).

But Crawl is the game known for never letting up at trying to kill you.

--
R. Dan Henry
danh...@inreach.com

[Twisted]

R. peDantic Henry wrote:
> It's called Crawl.

Yup -- you will die and die and die in the first 6 or 7 levels no
matter what, usually to a vastly OOD pack of something, and there is no
way to prepare or escape -- no stores, no ubiquitous teleportation
items, no frigging potions of speed ... and that's even if you are a
proven winner of O, arguably one of the toughest Angband variants out
there since it challenges at every depth and requires major tactics
changes from V...

[ManaUser]

Twisted wrote:
> R. peDantic Henry wrote:
>
>>It's called Crawl.
>
>
> Yup -- you will die and die and die in the first 6 or 7 levels no
> matter what, usually to a vastly OOD pack of something, and there is no
> way to prepare or escape -- no stores, no ubiquitous teleportation
> items, no frigging potions of speed ...

Uh, Crawl has stores, potions of speed, and ubiquitous (or at least
common) teleportation items*. Not that I didn't die constantly when I
tried it, of course.

*The thing about teleport scrolls in that game, is they take two or
three turns to activate, so if you wait till you're almost dead, it's
too late.

--
My email address: http://manauser.info/email.gif

[Twisted]

Oh and did I mention that because of the persistent dungeon levels,
even if you do escape that OOD pack, you will not be able to just
"generate a different DL5" to hope it's tamer, and they may well bottle
you up in higher levels, where the low rate of monster generation and
inability to regenerate THOSE levels will eventually ensure you die of
resource depletion long before leveling up or equipping up enough to
take on (or even run past) the OOD horde without being massacred?

It seems to be balanced with "you must get a lucky start to survive" as
a design goal, rather than "you won't die past DL1 or 2 or so except by
a completely-avoidable mistake or resistance/whatever hole". Since I am
unlucky, this means it's unplayable for me; people who can find work
outside Southeast Asia with only a bachelor's degree, routinely win the
lottery, and get laid weekly/more often (men) or monthly/less often
(women) may find it to be easier than Angband, however...

Of course, there's often something in your dead char's stuff that might
have helped, if it had been identified before the fatal events ran
their course, but of course it wasn't, since the game generates much
less identify than Angbands do, and what you do identify invariably
proves to be the various least-useful items of the things you've found,
while the 3 or 4 potential life-savers are still waiting for
identification when you die. (Again, if you're of the "lucky"
persuasion, YMMV regarding what happens to be identified first.)

And the mechanics are more complex. With Angband, it's fairly easy to
compute and manage the risks, at least for known monsters, and to know
and to get and to identify the most critical risk-mitigation gear
(teleportation/speed pots early; detection; then esp and resists...)
whereas there's all kinds of complexities in Crawl (gods, berserking,
assorted class- and race-specific stuff that goes way beyond stat
modifiers and device ability and saving throw, ...) -- mind you, ToME
and descendants are reportedly similar and Nethack and cousins far, far
worse still in that regard -- making detailed mechanics spoilers that
go way beyond "the damage cap for this breath is that; the damage cap
for..." absolutely necessary to survive for any length of time. That
doesn't help much. In my opinion, it's a poor design decision; a game
should not penalize newcomers with massive disadvantages due to not
having the experience/web search results to have constructed/downloaded
a "cheat sheet"; rather, it should be possible to make significant
progress from game to game without outside help. Most mainstream video
games have this; either completing the game is trivial (easy to get
1ups or to save/load state -- e.g. Sonic and Quake, respectively) but
exploring it is interesting (there are tons of secrets), or completing
the game is nontrivial but you can use what you learned from each game
to get further (older Mario games -- you learn the levels and better
jumping; most games that depend on learning precision jumping/movements
of some kind or other). Angband also has the lack of a need for cheat
sheets. The cause of death is generally obvious; either you stayed too
many rounds in the ring, stepped in LOS of the wrong foe(s), let
something summon, or otherwise made a mistake or took a risk that
turned out poorly, or else you are paralyzed to death (ouch! need, what
was it, ah yes free action before this depth next time), go from 650hp
to -150 in one move (Gak! What did it breathe? Oh, so there is some
benefit to wearing those rings of resist poison that'd started showing
up!), or whatever. It's usually clear that you need to either detect
and avoid whatever or have whatever resist and/or so many hp ... and
more generally, you can guess the amount of damage you may take in the
next round from what's detected/visible nearby and know you should cut
and run (or pray). But there's no identifiable single mistake behind
most Crawl deaths -- something (or, quite often, a pack of several
somethings) was generated that was too tough to handle, and not
avoidable. Usually it was melee/other unresistable damage that did it,
so resists aren't the answer. Usually it was not likely you could have
had significantly better hp at the time (from stat gains or leveling
up). Usually it was not likely you could have had much stronger armor
or a better weapon (to kill them before they did too much damage to
you). Usually there was no obvious tactical error, other than "went to
DL5 and the RNG seed was thus-and-so at the time", or maybe
"accidentally double clicked crawl.exe instead of angband.exe". Nah,
the latter is a strategic error rather than a tactical one. :) It
almost always seems you can't chalk the death up to anything other than
"bad luck", basically -- the pattern usually being:
* Monsters too tough to deal with with the hp, stats, race/class,
(identified) equipment,
and (identified) items you had at the time showed up when you first
went to level N.
* Either these killed you right then and there, or you somehow avoided
them.
* But they got you eventually, since you had to push past them to get
to level N+1 and
later to go back and forth to other levels generally; or, they scared
you so bad in one or
two rounds that you didn't even try and just ran back to level N-1
like a scared little
girl, and spent the time from then until you starved scumming the
earlier levels hoping
for a lucky find (either an actually new item, or a
formerly-unidentified one after getting
an id scroll dropped) or enough levelling up and incremental
item/equipment gains to
fight past, if not actually wipe out, the mob at level N.

Monsters getting between you and the stairs is another problem (not
always avoidable). Monsters being faster than you and killing you
before you can retreat down the stairs is another. Monsters being as
fast and you let them get in melee range, or being faster, and
*following you down the stairs* is yet another -- at least you can get
just a few, maybe if you're lucky and the stairs are in a dead-end of a
corridor just one, of the nasty mobs separated from their pack, and the
reduced number *might* be manageable, perhaps by using the pillar dance
attrition trick, if, that is, it doesn't take so long that you starve
before killing them that way. And they aren't faster than you. And the
dungeon cooperates by generating a pillar/some multiply-connected
corridor structure. And you don't have troublesome additional foes show
up and get in your way. (Keep in mind that digging's even rarer than ID
in crawl, if it even exists at all...likewise detection...likewise
enough clear space to fight something in without risk of
interruption/complication by additional monsters, given the small size
of the levels.)

[Joshua Rodman]

I've been playing crawl for about 4 months now. I've learned some
things from spoilers/usenet threads, but mostly just from playing.

On 2006-03-01, Twisted <twist...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh and did I mention that because of the persistent dungeon levels,
> even if you do escape that OOD pack, you will not be able to just
> "generate a different DL5" to hope it's tamer

When there's something nasty on a level, you go elsewhere. Usually
down. Then you come back up later when you're stronger and eat them for
their tasty XP goodness.

This doesn't discount that they might kill you before you have this
chance, but it's the sensible response.

> It seems to be balanced with "you must get a lucky start to survive" as
> a design goal

Yeah my largest complaint is 70-90% of characters will die before they
hit level 3. It's a bit of a grind to not even remember "was THIS the
character who found the .. oh right that was two chraacters ago"

It does help to make your successes feel more meaningful without losing
_too_ much time, but it's kind of frustrating. A 'variant' called Crawl
Alternative got made with an easier start as the primary change.

> Of course, there's often something in your dead char's stuff that might
> have helped, if it had been identified before the fatal events

I've learned to play the ID game pretty effectively in this game. To
some extent I just know what certain items are (bone lantern, magic
lamp) from past games. Or at least, what they can be. Some of my
characters have learned the Identify spell and I've learned a lot from
them. But the scrolls, amulets, rings, wands, etc all get pretty much
identified via play. It's definitely possible, but slightly
tricky/interesting to accomplish. No "sell all potions to the shops"
here, which I never liked.

> And the mechanics are more complex. With Angband, it's fairly easy to
> compute and manage the risks, at least for known monsters, and to know
> and to get and to identify the most critical risk-mitigation gear
> (teleportation/speed pots early; detection; then esp and resists...)
> whereas there's all kinds of complexities in Crawl (gods, berserking,
> assorted class- and race-specific stuff that goes way beyond stat
> modifiers and device ability and saving throw, ...)

There _are_ many options in crawl, in terms of what god to choose and
what power to invoke and what skill to build up etc. But for the most
part the interactions are all pretty discoverable through direct play.
When you chop the hydra's heads off and it grows more, it immediately
occurs to stop with the chopping. I have _not_ had the need to look
into obscure actions and spoilers of the many (some would say puzzly, I
would say _arcane_) combinations of things. you would find in nethack.

In Angband you can fill out your monster memory without dying (run away
run away). In crawl you tend to fill out your personal game knowledge
by dying. It's a much faster game though, so it works.

No cheat sheet required.

> But there's no identifiable single mistake behind most Crawl deaths --
> something (or, quite often, a pack of several somethings) was
> generated that was too tough to handle, and not avoidable.

Oh, I very strongly disagree. Out of depth packs do happen, and
sometimes they cause unavaoidable death (much more frequently than in
angband). But you should be playing defensively. You already found the
stairs, and the moment you see your first orc on level 2, you run for
the stairs and get out of there. You don't wait to find out if maybe
there are more, and maybe they have a priest with them.

Angband lets you find the trouble and then run away, crawl expects you
to avoid it actively.

I do die without any chance for recovery in the first few levels, but
beyond this, nearly every death involves some obvious mistakes (obvious
to me anyway). The primary difference is crawl will clamp down and wipe
you out for your errors in turns you can count on one hand.

> Monsters getting between you and the stairs is another problem (not
> always avoidable). Monsters being faster than you and killing you
> before you can retreat down the stairs is another.

Fear the snakes.

> Monsters being as fast and you let them get in melee range

Always remember to run _early_, not late. Running away too often is a
good strategy.

> perhaps by using the pillar dance attrition trick

Generally, a character is piller dancing is on borrowed time. It will
happen sometimes, especially very early. But avoid getting into this
situation at all costs. Run early, run often.

It's a cruel game. But it's definitely playable. First, learn to be a
proper coward, kill weaklings, run away from anything that can challenge
you. Second, learn to optimize the identification game through tactics
and repetition. Third, start learning the interplay of skills via
experience. If you get this far you're well over the hump.

If I was the designer, I'd still crank the difficulty down about 30%.
--
Grim. Grom. Grümmer.

[Twisted]

Joshua Rodman wrote:
> When there's something nasty on a level, you go elsewhere. Usually
> down.

I.e. out of the frying pan and into the fire. Besides there being only
two places to go (namely "up" and "down" instead of MAX_RANDOM ("up,
then down to alternative DL5 number 0x574fd2b7"), there's the niggling
little fact that Crawl's dungeon is much more compressed (such as I've
been able to empirically determine, anyway) than Angband's; a one DL
drop in Crawl is a much bigger increase in expected-danger than a 50'
drop in Vanilla, unless it's the 50' drop just after statgain ;)...

[identifying stuff]

Eh -- flavors are randomized, aren't they? You can't count on them
being a particular thing; they shouldn't even be more likely to be a
particular thing (and aren't, at least in Angband). Of course, Angband
makes remove curse plentiful in the temple and unnecessary, while Crawl
makes it hard to get and nearly essential, as it does ID itself...of
course there are some tricks (certain item types may be more useful to
identify than others, typically; a big stack of foo type is most likely
to be bar, baz, or quux...) but ... not much identify? Almost no
detection? How are you expected to survive when it's nigh-impossible to
find the resources you need to do so, nigh-impossible to confirm you
have (or don't have) same and which inventory letter you need to use to
access it, and nigh-impossible to detect threats in advance? It must be
like playing Angband as a warrior with the "no detection rods or
staves" ironman option that hasn't been implemented yet, the
ironman_stores option, some kind of shorter-dungeon mod,
IRONMAN_WARRIORS_HAVE_MAGE_HITDIE, and six or seven other (mostly
identify-related) ironman options not even DarkGod was sadistic enough
to implement as ironman options in a band...yeah, I noticed that
instead of being able to soak up (melee, at least) damage in bucketfuls
in the early levels, Crawl's warriors are nearly as fragile as
Angband's mages, and easily die to a couple of fairly ordinary melee
monsters with a little bad luck such as lack of healing/escape items
and detects...oh yeah, lack of healing/escape items and detects is only
bad luck in Angband. In Crawl, it's the norm, and anything describable
as an "abundance" of same is equally describable as a "miracle".

Add to the anomalous melee class fragility the steeper
difficulty-vs.-DL curve AND the greater likelihood of OOD monsters
(affected by the above, compounding both) AND the detection woes AND
lack of escapes AND lack of healing AND smaller levels AND the
attrition factor (Angband: battle leaves you low on HP, rest up or
quaff CCW, then move on; Crawl: battle leaves you low on HP, you wonder
why it doesn't ask you DYWYPI right then and there and save you the
bother, because there is no CCW or equivalent to quaff and you will not
have the opportunity to hide in a corner/retreat and rest up to full
health, even if you've lucked into more food than I've ever seen in six
ordinary (i.e. single-digit-DL) games of crawl in just one or two so
that you can afford the luxury of resting to full health before moving
on, and you have a recipe for frustration, concocted by Satan himself
and loosed on the world as a prelude to Armageddon, presumably so that
a subset of the population will be so traumatized as to actually look
forward to the Tribulation and may enlist to help him bring it about
... a clever plan if ever I saw one, but the word "diabolical" was
coined precisely to describe this particular guy's plans, so I suppose
we shouldn't be too surprised.

[Hydras]

Hydras? Those must be native to double-digit DLs. I ain't never seen
em. Not in Crawl.

[Fill out game knowledge by dying; it works.]

It doesn't. As I said in my earlier post, and you failed to address,
the deaths I see aren't ones you learn from, such as specific monster
capabilities, tactical mistakes, resistance holes/HP levels that should
have been filled/met, etc.; rather it seems to be "fighting things will
kill you by attrition, so don't bother; oh yeah, but the only escape
option is blown the minute you run crawl.exe." The conclusion is summed
up by the following Famous Movie Quote(tm):
"The only way to win is not to play."
(Extra brownie points if anyone else here is old enough to know this
one. Prove it by saying which game(s) it referred to; there are two
correct answers, one of which is a very commonplace game that usually
ends in a draw and the other one of which has had some invitations
offered in the 60s and 80s but nobody's yet decided to take anyone up
on such an offer. Fortunately.)

> But you should be playing defensively. You already found the
> stairs, and the moment you see your first orc on level 2, you run for
> the stairs and get out of there.

And if you haven't found any stairs yet? (Retreat to the ones you
already know about and at least die with a higher turncount, even if of
starvation or something equally ignominious compared to the orc or
whatever. And if the monster's faster than you? Or hits you from range?
Or...)

> Angband lets you find the trouble and then run away, crawl expects you
> to avoid it actively.

Another sadistic design choice. Angband has copious detection options,
even for fighter classes, but doesn't make you need them that much if
you have decent escapes. Crawl makes you need them a lot ... and want
for them, too. Just like ID. And food, and healing, and nearly
everything else except for some obscure reason light, where Angband
does, but only in ironman, which nobody sane plays, unless they
actually enjoy Crawl.

> I do die without any chance for recovery in the first few levels, but

> beyond this...

There's a "beyond this"? I figured it hadn't even been implemented yet.
That would explain why that part of the code was made unreachable,
without needing to suspect the coder of being Satan and all that stuff
above about Revelations and hell on earth and suchlike. Occam's Razor
suggests it's far more likely the game's the way it is because the
deeper levels haven't been implemented yet, rather than because the end
is nigh, but if you say so ... I'll go find a quiet place to go and
pray, where no one's ever heard of Dungeon Crawl, until the end comes.

> The primary difference is crawl will clamp down and wipe
> you out for your errors in turns you can count on one hand.

Angband, of course, doing likewise in turns you can count on no hands
(paralyzed without free action -- what turns? you don't get a move!) or
one single finger (poison without resist or monstrous HP)...

> Fear the snakes.

I do; after all, there's no escape. As soon as you see one, you may as
well shift-Q. OK, crawl does kill you faster than Angband sometimes.
The turns until death is negative here; you're basically dead before
it's even closed to within melee range, let alone made a tactical
error. Angband makes early fast creatures either weak in attacks
(various) or weak in defense (cave spider etc.) so you can kill them
before they do much damage, one way or the other. Crawl makes early
fast creatures damaging and fairly tough, so you dive to their depth
and then die and don't reach the "Application fault: caught SIGSEGV
(jumped to 0x00000000)" screen caused by the null pointer where the
unimplemented levels are eventually supposed to go. ;)

> Always remember to run _early_, not late. Running away too often is a
> good strategy.

Said running to be accomplished with the copious teleport scrolls,
speed potions, and other early game escape aids Angband supplies,
right? Unless you made the mistake of double clicking the crawl.exe
instead, of course. ;)

[Run early, run often. Run away from anything that can challenge you.
Run... run ...]

Indeed. In Angband, you run, maybe with a speed potion or teleport
scroll or even just using stairs with maybe an assist from a phase door
scroll to get out of melee range first. In Crawl you run, don't walk,
run, by the following procedure: shift-Q, Y, enter, double click
"angband.exe" ...

And what is the big idea with setting followups to some weirdly named
group that Google won't let me post to? (it errors trying to follow up
this post by the supposedly foolproof method of "click reply, type
stuff, click post" -- I didn't make any error, unless replying to this
post at all is an error? And the group name in question seems to be
non-human-readable! WTF are you on? Acid? Pot? Windows? Outhouse
Distress, for God's sake? Please tell me it isn't the latter...

[FunkyD]

btw, the correct quote was:

"The only winning move is not to play."

:)

Gotta DL crawl..... someone post the creators site pls.

[mattneu]

Currently 300k turns, level 6, dungeon level 3 :) Hardly worth
mentioning yet.

I do have a question, though. I just emptied out ego_item.txt; do I
have to do something with lua, too, to make sure it's not generating
ego items?

--
Matt

[Eddie Grove]

"mattneu" <mat...@gmail.com> writes:

You probably need to delete ego_item.raw which will then be
regenerated from your modified ego_item.txt.

Eddie

[Joshua Rodman]

Google does turn it up, but with the generic name it's tricky.
I'm on linux so i installed with the normal linux package install
methods.

For other platforms: http://www.dungeoncrawl.org/?d

There is a 4.1 in the works but it's not baked. Ie. balance is much
more against you.
--
Grim. Grom. Grümmer.

[Joshua Rodman]

On 2006-03-01, Twisted <twist...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Joshua Rodman wrote:
>> When there's something nasty on a level, you go elsewhere. Usually
>> down.
>
> I.e. out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The next level could be worse, but if you know there's something nasty
on the current level, you should take that chance.

> there's the niggling little fact that Crawl's dungeon is much more
> compressed

True. This is exciting.

> Eh -- flavors are randomized, aren't they? You can't count on them
> being a particular thing;

What I mean is stuff like "an unmarked disc", "a pack of cards", "A
brass lamp". I do not mean "a bubbling pink potion". There is one
semi-gimme (like potions of slime mold juice).

The items such as I mentioend nearly all have multiple forms, but
sometimes one tends to be most common, or you know what they do. For
example, I know that if i evoke a brass lamp I usually get an efreet who
attacks me. Maybe if I was good at magic he would fight for me or
something. But what I do is kill him and take his flaming sword.

> Of course, Angband makes remove curse plentiful in the temple and
> unnecessary, while Crawl makes it hard to get and nearly essential, as
> it does ID itself..

In my last game of crawl I had 8 scrolls of remove curse stashed in the
temple, along with 5 of identify. They _are_ in limited supply, but with
careful play there are enough of them, for sure.

> Almost no detection? How are you expected to survive when it's
> nigh-impossible to find the resources you need to do so,
> nigh-impossible to confirm you have (or don't have) same and which
> inventory letter you need to use to access it, and nigh-impossible to
> detect threats in advance?

There are detect spells but they're uncommon. You're expected to die a
lot. The monsters (unlike Angband) do not know you're there ahead of
time. More often then not if you back up after you peek around a corner
they'll never know you were there. And if they do know you're there,
run away, try another set of stairs, avoid that part of the level.

Maybe you won't die. Probably you will. >:)

> Crawl's warriors are nearly as fragile as Angband's mages, and easily
> die to a couple of fairly ordinary melee monsters

Level 2 is a big milestone. Don't fight hobgoblins if you can help it.
Rest to full hitpoints. Avoid fighting multiple monsters at once.

Also, there's a big difference in starting combos. Ogre fighters sound
good, but they're terrible. They miss all the time. Go with a Troll
Berserker or a Mountain Dwarf Gladiator. In general, gladiators are
much more survivable since they know how to use their weapons already.

> lack of healing/escape items and detects is only bad luck in Angband.
> In Crawl, it's the norm

Yep, you have to get out of 90% of problems with your wits. It's hard.

> Crawl: battle leaves you low on HP, you wonder
> why it doesn't ask you DYWYPI right then and there and save you the
> bother, because there is no CCW or equivalent to quaff

Cure wounds? What a waste though. Even in ang, CCW is kind of
pointless as a source of healing.

> and you will not have the opportunity to hide in a corner/retreat

Go somewhere safe if you have to. Close a door, go back to the level
you just cleared.

> even if you've lucked into more food than I've ever seen in six

> ordinary games of crawl in just one or two so that you can afford the

> luxury of resting to full health before moving on

Everyone has enough food. Eat the corpses. You don't always get the
food when you want it, but overall there's enough if you plan for it.

Again in my last game (draconian monk) i had about 10 meat rations, 8
bread rations, an assortment of fruit, 25 honeycombs, 3 royal jellies, a
cheese, a slice of pizza, and so on. I don't think i would have ever
eaten it all, had I survived.

I died because I decided to play with the stone giant, who I'd never
seen before, and he was meaner than I expected. And I didn't use the
right items (wand of disintegration, hello.. mcfly)

> Hydras? Those must be native to double-digit DLs. I ain't never seen
> em. Not in Crawl.

The shallowest I have seen a hydra is probably depth 12, or depth 5 in
the lair. They don't have so many hitpoints, but _boy_ do they dish out
the damage.

> failed to address,

"failed to address" is rude. Try more couth.

In general you seem unwilling to accept that the game may put you in
unwinnable situations. It _will_ put you in unwinnable situations. If
you can't handle this, then don't play it.

However, many situations you are describing as unwinnable are
handleable. If you come to crawl from angband it seems impossible, but
all that is necessary is a _huge_ tactical alteration. Fight very
opportunistically. Fight when you will win, not when you will lose. If
you engage in a losing fight, you will probably die, even if you decide
to run away after the first round. If you want the ability to run away,
play a Spriggan, but you will have to be even more cowardly.

Playing this way you will still encounter death in the early game (less
frequently), but must learn to shrug it off and try another character.
Once your character gets his sea legs, most deaths are avoidable, and/or
will teach you something.

"The only way to win is not to play." -- WOPR

>> But you should be playing defensively. You already found the
>> stairs, and the moment you see your first orc on level 2, you run for
>> the stairs and get out of there.
>
> And if you haven't found any stairs yet?

Then you are in your first minute of playing. command prompt -> up
arrow -> enter. start again.

>> Angband lets you find the trouble and then run away, crawl expects you
>> to avoid it actively.
>
> Another sadistic design choice. Angband has copious detection options,
> even for fighter classes, but doesn't make you need them that much if
> you have decent escapes. Crawl makes you need them a lot ... and want
> for them, too.

This just isn't true. Crawl doesn't have Drolems. Crawl doesn't have
carrion crawlers. You can detect things with your eyes. Your light
radius is permanently 8 or so, and you can make decisions based upon
what you can see. Yes as a level one character an orc priest can kill
you in one round, but just get over the early game. You will die, you
will die, and then you will live to explore the dungeon to the extent of
your ability.

A few games ago a promising spriggan stalker died in the following way.
I shot a spiny frog with a dart, and it noticed this and started heading
towards me. Then I heard the challenge of a deep load croak (which is
the Spiny Frog) noise. I didn't think about it, but this was the game
telling me that I was now fighting TWO of them, and I hadn't even
spotted the second. I died. If I had been thinking, the message would
have told me "run away", and I had at that time plenty of good escape
routes. The game does give you enough information, you just have to use
it.

There are almost no instant deaths. There are 2 rounds later deaths.
If you walk up to a pool of water and see 4 electric eels on the edge of
your vision, you STEP BACK. If you step forward and they all shoot you
with lightning which hits you twice each on the rebound, you will die.

It's a different game. If you want a greater sense of fairness, play
something else. If you want to die less in early game play something
else. Crawl demands a very different sort of focus that would not apply
if the game was made to suit your angband expectations.

>> Fear the snakes.
>
> I do; after all, there's no escape. As soon as you see one, you may as
> well shift-Q.

If you see one before it sees you (check with x), then you can leave.
If it's seen you, then you throw things (spells, darts) at it, until
it's next to you, and then hit it and cross your fingers. If you're
level 1 you have a chance. Level 2 you might make it. Level 3 it's
just XP.

> Angband makes early fast creatures either weak in attacks (various) or
> weak in defense (cave spider etc.) so you can kill them before they do
> much damage, one way or the other.

Angband's early game is seriously boring. I snooze my way through it.
I consider Crawl's early game too punishing, but I live with it. I
consider Angband's early game completely uninteresting, but I live with
it. Adjustment in either camp is welcome.

Oh and when playing super weak r/c combos in ang, especially with a
questing variant, you can die at level 1. I guess this is more
interesting, but with the whole buying crap in the town component, it
means you die 10 minutes in, instead of 30 second. 9 minutes of boring
store scouring, and then 30 seconds of game. Give me the 30 second loss
any day.

Oh and for crying out loud, give me a variant that does not randomize
the town. Ever. It doesn't add any interest, but it does slow down the
first few minutes.

> Crawl makes early fast creatures damaging and fairly tough

Oh just try a troll berserker already, you'll eat them for lunch.
Literally. Because otherwise you'll starve. >:)

>> Always remember to run _early_, not late. Running away too often is a
>> good strategy.
>
> Said running to be accomplished

without any magical aid whatsoever. You don't *need* teleport away or
speed or anything. If you get out of sight the monsters will make wrong
turns. They're not omniscient.

> And what is the big idea with setting followups to some weirdly named
> group that Google won't let me post to?

My newsreader asked the question in a way that was not helpful or
useful. I made an error. Sorry!
--
Grim. Grom. Grümmer.

[Twisted]

Joshua Rodman wrote (re Crawl):

> There is a 4.1 in the works but it's not baked. Ie. balance is much
> more against you.

Dammit! Right after I got a machine with a 64-bit processor too! If I'd
stuck with 32-bit, this version would be a cakewalk, since making the
balance much more against you would make it wrap around to positive on
a 32 bit architecture.

[pete mack]

Joshua Rodman wrote:
> However, many situations you are describing as unwinnable are
> handleable. If you come to crawl from angband it seems impossible, but
> all that is necessary is a _huge_ tactical alteration. Fight very
> opportunistically. Fight when you will win, not when you will lose. If
> you engage in a losing fight, you will probably die, even if you decide
> to run away after the first round. If you want the ability to run away,
> play a Spriggan, but you will have to be even more cowardly.

This sounds like a game worth trying.

[Antoine]

Joshua Rodman wrote:
> On 2006-03-01, Twisted <twist...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > failed to address,
>
> "failed to address" is rude. Try more couth.

Twisted is getting overexcited in a whole bunch of threads and starting
to rant... another round of trolling seems to be in the offing.

A.

[Twisted]

Joshua Rodman wrote:
> What I mean is stuff like "an unmarked disc", "a pack of cards", "A
> brass lamp".

Never seen any of those objects, or anything else of the general sort.
Just the sort of stuff you find in Angband, minus any kind of escape
items, any kind of detection items, staves, and rods. And precious
little healing, phase door equivalent, or ID. At least the middle one
is actually a controlled teleport, which actually makes them too useful
to waste on trivial things like shoot-n-scoot tactics.

> Rest to full hitpoints.

This would be sound advice, if only they'd implement at least the
general store part of angband's town level. Without dependable food, on
the other hand, this is asking for it as surely as fighting at below
par is. It just takes you longer to die that way. It's also more
boring, and your more impressive turn count is countered by the
embarassing COD on the death certificate. Crawl is a medical examiner
with delusions of gamehood, as near as I can determine without
executable-hacking. Its main and favorite activity is pronouncing you
on the scene at 03:14 Eastern time of <insert your choice of violent
trauma or malnutrition here>.

> Yep, you have to get out of 90% of problems with your wits. It's hard.

I have as many of those as any ten people I ever met, bar maybe three
specific unusual personages. Trust me. It's not wits. It's luck. Wits
need information upon which to base decisions, for which you need
either a) better detects, b) game mechanics information that is
nonobvious, c) some kind of clairvoyance, d) a debugger attached to the
process, e) a hex edited executable, or f) all of the above. Most
likely f.

> Go somewhere safe if you have to. Close a door, go back to the level
> you just cleared.

Doors won't keep out starvation, and what level you just cleared?
You're lucky to have survived it and reached some sort of stairs.
Forget "cleared". The only reason you're on this level with <insert
nasty monster #2> is because you fled here from the level above which
had <insert nasty monster #1> in the first place, after all! Also see
earlier post, particularly the part about the frying pan and the fire.

> Everyone has enough food. Eat the corpses. You don't always get the
> food when you want it, but overall there's enough if you plan for it.

"Plan for it" appears to be "don't rest", which in turn appears to be
"never get hit", which in turn depends on "hack AVG to report crawl.exe
spuriously as a virus, and consequently delete it". :P

Corpses rot, have side effects (sometimes quite bad), and generally
have all kinds of problems that make them not necessarily all that
helpful. Plus they show up by the ton when you have a dozen rations and
are full; then they all rot, and no more appear until early in the next
game after the inevitable, followed by the eminently evitable "Oops! I
did it again! I double clicked that fucking exe file! I really need to
get around to patching AVG...who keeps installing the fucking thing,
anyway?!" I believe this phenomenon to be closely related to that of a
"six bus an hour" route meaning you sit at a stop for 59 minutes and
then six of the same bus, five of them empty, all drive by at once, and
none of them actually stop, and then it suddenly starts to rain, and
part of their downsizing strategy has of course been to replace
expensive bus shelters with bus stop signs while telling their brokers
to buy gobs of publicly-traded umbrella and rain slicker futures. And
nevermind that the shelters had already been paid for and installed. I
guess they can be recycled or something?

[Fighter fragility]

If a simple, brute warrior type is this hard to keep alive even in the
*early game* before substantial non-melee opponents show up in spades,
I hesitate to risk even contemplating any more complex class,
particularly of a non-brute (i.e. max strength and hit die) race!

> In general you seem unwilling to accept that the game may put you in
> unwinnable situations. It _will_ put you in unwinnable situations.

So will Angband (rarely) and Oangband (somewhat more commonly). Must
Crawl do it *every game*? :)

> Fight when you will win, not when you will lose.

So, rat farming until CL 20 and a couple thousand HP. Gotcha.

> If you want the ability to run away, play a Spriggan, but you will have to be even more
> cowardly.

Sounds nice, until you run into your first ranged foe and die in 1
round instead of 4. :)

> Yes as a level one character an orc priest can kill you in one round, but just get over
> the early game.

I might, if it was possible to actually reach and play some non-early
part of the game. :)

> Oh just try a troll berserker already, you'll eat them for lunch.
> Literally. Because otherwise you'll starve.

I did -- he didn't starve. His first encounter with ranged attackers,
unfortunately, did not go well (although it did go predictably).

> My newsreader asked the question in a way that was not helpful or
> useful. I made an error. Sorry!

Then it is seriously broken. Thunderbird doesn't ask questions when you
tell it to do something else. Only one evil megalomaniacal megacorp
makes software that has pretensions to being capable of intelligently
thinking for itself and doing stuff (such as asking questions) on its
own initiative with the naive expectation that this will ever
accomplish anything besides a) annoying the user and b) screwing things
up. As a hint they also made, in a similar vein, an OS in which things
routinely pop up and unexpectedly grab focus, a word processor with the
world's most annoying infamous dancing paperclip trying to distract you
to give you with advice in the middle of your writing, and a certain
puppy dog avatar whose animations consume 37% of a reasonably modern
CPU and lag out the whole user interface. I'm guessing this same
company is responsible for your newsreader. If that is the case, then
it asking you questions like some kind of crude simulation of a human
being is the least of your problems. Switch to Firefox before it's too
late. However, it's probably already too late, and the only sure way to
clean all the worms and spyware you have is to wipe and reinstall
everything. I'd even throw out the hard drive and replace it with a new
blank one, to be sure. Lots of things survive a delete or even a
format; I learned this from the experts on CSI. And there are some
things that you don't want to survive in any trace whatsoever. Cyanide
is one of them. The things that crawl up from the black depths of
untold despair and creep in through Outlook's numerous and
ever-changing assortment of back doors are the others. For a detailed
reference, http://tinyurl.com/zhhry -- note that this list is
undoubtedly incomplete. A more abbreviated but more technical one can
be found on most antivirus vendors' Web sites, but it doesn't really
convey it, y'know? And their names for the various horrors are just
stupid.

[Antoine]

Twisted wrote:
> Joshua Rodman wrote:
> > What I mean is stuff like "an unmarked disc", "a pack of cards", "A
> > brass lamp".
>
> Never seen any of those objects, or anything else of the general sort.
> Just the sort of stuff you find in Angband, minus any kind of escape
> items, any kind of detection items, staves, and rods. And precious
> little healing, phase door equivalent, or ID. At least the middle one
> is actually a controlled teleport, which actually makes them too useful
> to waste on trivial things like shoot-n-scoot tactics.
>
> > Rest to full hitpoints.
>
> This would be sound advice, if only they'd implement at least the
> general store part of angband's town level. Without dependable food, on
> the other hand, this is asking for it as surely as fighting at below
> par is. It just takes you longer to die that way. It's also more
> boring, and your more impressive turn count is countered by the
> embarassing COD on the death certificate. Crawl is a medical examiner
> with delusions of gamehood, as near as I can determine without
> executable-hacking. Its main and favorite activity is pronouncing you
> on the scene at 03:14 Eastern time of <insert your choice of violent
> trauma or malnutrition here>.

[rant snipped]

Can I implore all and sundry not to take any of the assorted flamebait
in this post...

A.

[pete mack]

Twisted wrote:
[crawl gripes about insufficient supplies, escape, detection.]

There are many winners in crawl. This would seem to explode your
hypothesis.

[Joshua Rodman]

On 2006-03-01, Twisted <twist...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Yep, you have to get out of 90% of problems with your wits. It's hard.
>
> I have as many of those as any ten people I ever met,

I'm not saying you're dumb. I'm saying you'll have to try different
stuff and learn what works.

>> Everyone has enough food. Eat the corpses. You don't always get the
>> food when you want it, but overall there's enough if you plan for it.
>

> Corpses rot, have side effects (sometimes quite bad), and generally
> have all kinds of problems that make them not necessarily all that
> helpful.

Okay, from this comment alone it's clear to me that you're either not
interested or willing to learn to play the game. Eating corpses is
absolutely necessary, and the side effects you can have encountered at
your depth is poison (obvious one this remember what you ate), and
sickness, which seems bad, but isn't. The stats come back. I get sick
many times in every game and it's fine.

If you don't eat meat chunks, you won't have enough food. You won't be
able to cast enough magic, you won't have the time to rest, and you
won't get anywhere.

> If a simple, brute warrior type is this hard to keep alive even in the
> *early game* before substantial non-melee opponents show up in spades,
> I hesitate to risk even contemplating any more complex class,
> particularly of a non-brute (i.e. max strength and hit die) race!

It's not nearly as cut and dried as you'd think. A brute force warrior
gets _better_ at his weapons and types and becomes quite impressive.
You build up magic resistance ability and can weather nonmagical
situations in ways that a magic user would handle quite differently.

My last Draconian Monk would kill most spellcasters before they could do
anything, via sneaky tactics. Those he couldn't (level layout) were
usually defeated through a combination of excellent dodging, the Repel
Missles spell (pale dracos are good at air magic), and a steam breath
weapon. Bows and Crossbows can also be more deadly than spells.

Moreover, a brute force warrior can learn magic, or whatever skill you
think is needed to compliment your existing skills. There's no reason
your Dwarf Gladiator can't become an expert Earth Elementalist.

>> If you want the ability to run away, play a Spriggan, but you will
>> have to be even more cowardly.
>
> Sounds nice, until you run into your first ranged foe and die in 1
> round instead of 4. :)

Spriggans are also excellent at dodging. I find it much easier to
survive a surprise pack of centaurs with them than most setups.

Then again, I train dodging quite intentionally with them.

>> Oh just try a troll berserker already, you'll eat them for lunch.
>> Literally. Because otherwise you'll starve.
>
> I did -- he didn't starve. His first encounter with ranged attackers,
> unfortunately, did not go well (although it did go predictably).

If can hide in cover, they'll approach. Ranged attackers have very bad
accuracy in meelee. In an open level, that kind of race/class requires
being very careful about how you explore, or just immediately crossing
to the stairs on the other side and moving on.

>> My newsreader asked the question in a way that was not helpful or
>> useful. I made an error. Sorry!
>

> [errant rant elided]

Uh, I'm using slrn. It's in the headers. I've been away from usenet
too long and when it asked me to manually place something in the
Followup field, it was trying to get me to limit the groups to followup,
but I didn't unerstand what it was hinting at.
--
Grim. Grom. Grümmer.

[Twisted]

Well no wonder then! If you switch to a newsreader with a user
interface, this might stop happening. ;)

[mattneu]

Hm. I think I did delete the .raw.

Didn't one of the various updates to Vanilla make it update .raws when
.txts change, tho? I'm sure I've seen that behaviour somewhere, though
it could be in variants.

Thanks, I'm going to rest assured that poor Pip will not be tempted by
any ego items. He's got to use willpower on those books, though ;)

Level 9, 250'. No items of note, but Grip and Fang are dead.
--
Matt

[R. Dan Henry]

On 01 Mar 2006 21:57:34 GMT, Joshua Rodman
<jro...@duckerDOTorg.fake.domain.example.com> wrote:

>On 2006-03-01, Twisted <twist...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Corpses rot, have side effects (sometimes quite bad), and generally
>> have all kinds of problems that make them not necessarily all that
>> helpful.
>
>Okay, from this comment alone it's clear to me that you're either not
>interested or willing to learn to play the game.

Please, leave it that way. Do not attempt to convince him to try Crawl
again. He won't leave rgra, he'll just annoy rgrm as well.

[David Howdon]

Twisted wrote:
> Joshua Rodman wrote:
>> When there's something nasty on a level, you go elsewhere. Usually
>> down.
>
> I.e. out of the frying pan and into the fire. Besides there being only
> two places to go (namely "up" and "down" instead of MAX_RANDOM ("up,
> then down to alternative DL5 number 0x574fd2b7"), there's the niggling
> little fact that Crawl's dungeon is much more compressed (such as I've
> been able to empirically determine, anyway) than Angband's; a one DL
> drop in Crawl is a much bigger increase in expected-danger than a 50'
> drop in Vanilla, unless it's the 50' drop just after statgain ;)...
>

Sounds like an interesting challenge - although since I've never won
angband I doubt I'll do well.

>The conclusion is summed
> up by the following Famous Movie Quote(tm):
> "The only way to win is not to play."
> (Extra brownie points if anyone else here is old enough to know this
> one. Prove it by saying which game(s) it referred to; there are two
> correct answers, one of which is a very commonplace game that usually
> ends in a draw and the other one of which has had some invitations
> offered in the 60s and 80s but nobody's yet decided to take anyone up
> on such an offer. Fortunately.)

The movie was I think called "War Games". The two games used in the
film were noughts and crosses (although being an American film I think
they called it tic-tac-toe or some such) and "Global Thermonuclear War".
However since the premise of the film was that the machine (WOPA?)
managed to generalise a principle to reach that conclusion it would be
more correct to say it would apply to any games to which Zermelov's
algorithm can be applied.

What do I win

--
To contact me take a davidhowdon and add a @yahoo.co.uk to the end.

[Twisted]

Brownie points -- but you're third in line :)

[Jeff Greene]

"David Howdon" <"davidhowdon[nospam]"@[donotspamme]yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:2qCOf.68991$mf2....@newsfe6-win.ntli.net...
> Twisted wrote:

>
>>The conclusion is summed
>> up by the following Famous Movie Quote(tm):
>> "The only way to win is not to play."
>> (Extra brownie points if anyone else here is old enough to know this
>> one. Prove it by saying which game(s) it referred to; there are two
>> correct answers, one of which is a very commonplace game that usually
>> ends in a draw and the other one of which has had some invitations
>> offered in the 60s and 80s but nobody's yet decided to take anyone up
>> on such an offer. Fortunately.)
>
> The movie was I think called "War Games". The two games used in the film
> were noughts and crosses (although being an American film I think they
> called it tic-tac-toe or some such) and "Global Thermonuclear War".
> However since the premise of the film was that the machine (WOPA?) managed
> to generalise a principle to reach that conclusion it would be more
> correct to say it would apply to any games to which Zermelov's algorithm
> can be applied.
>

/*Nitpick*/ WarGames: The exact quote was (referring to Global
Thermonuclear War). "A strange game. The only winning move is not to
play.". The computer was called the WOPR, (War Operation Plan Response)
pronounced "Whopper" .

The movie was also notorious for shedding light on the concept of a computer
hacker, & that computers can be used for mischief.

-Jeff

[Solf]

pete mack wrote:
> This sounds like a game worth trying.

IMO, this is a game that is *definitely* worth trying :)

Myself, I've played a lot of Moria (in ole good times), then a lot of
*band... Never won either of those though (without backing up savefiles
that is).

In the end I came to Dungeon Crawl and I must say that for my personal
tastes DC seems better. Faster and more straightforward with less
tedium. And more "interesting" to boot -- I prefer to be able to "mold"
by characters (i.e. skills) rather than have to deal with preset form
(i.e. mage/warrior paradigm). Skill-based *bands seem to address that
somewhat, but I tried a couple (Sangband, Steamband) -- and in the end
they seemed too long and/or too easy/unbalanced to continue (I've got
"good" characters going in both -- both abandoned out of boredom
mostly). Then again my probable problem is that I played entirely too
defensively after DC -- which led to a boring game.

Maybe the defining distinction between *band and Crawl is this: in
*band you can/should farm for certain equipment to advance and to win;
in Crawl you have to make do with what you found (as you can't farm
very well until late in the game and even then you are constrained
[e.g. by food]).

Now for some points that were raised -- I do believe that "game start"
is sufficiently "broken" in DC -- it is indeed the case for me that I
have to go through *many* characters (maybe ~10) before I get one that
gets through the beginning of the game into territory where player
skills begin to matter more than dumb luck... But since this game
beginning takes very little time -- it's not *that* bad... if you don't
get disheartened when you lose early character. Oh, and btw, I've had
more success early on starting "mage type" characters as opposed to
warrior types -- simply because as a mage I don't have to get close to
any monster :)

However another DC problem is even worse than "game start" issue above
-- and that is game mechanics opacity... I seriously don't envy anyone
who would try to play DC unspoiled... Though some apparently do and I
suppose they find fun in it :) The game mechanics are in many cases
entirely opaque/non-obvious -- at least for me. One obvious/early
example is training armour skill vs. dodging/stealth skills. It turns
out that you train dodging&stealth skills if you are wearing "light"
armour and you train armour skill if you wear "heavy" armour. It's
completely black and white here -- you can't possibly train them at the
same time, for example. OTOH, all those skills will help you (to a
different degree) regardless of what kind of armour you are currently
wearing. Weird, eh? :) And this example is probably the least obscure
thing in the DC list of obscurities -- and many of those obscurities
are actually very important similarly to the armour/dodging skill
issue.

As such, in my opinion, the proper way to enjoy Crawl is:
- Read various spoilers/hints (especially such things as racial skill
aptitudes).
- Select a playing strategy that seems viable and suits your own
playing preferences.
- Finally play.

The above, of course, is a bad game design. It shouldn't be that way in
a "proper" game (IMO). But if you are willing to to expend an effort to
overcome this initial hurdle, you may find out that Crawl is a
surprisingly good game.

If anyone decides to try Crawl, here are a couple of URLs to get you
started:
Darshan's Travel-patched Crawl version --
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/mazewest/ -- DC with travel/stash patch
-- auto-explore + keeping track of things you leave on the floor +
automated navigation between dungeon places.
Various Crawl spoilers (I consider some of those essential) --
http://www.swallowtail.org/crawl/hints.shtml

P.S. If anyone's wondering -- I have one legitimate winner in Crawl, so
I'm partly speaking from experience.
P.P.S. After playing Darshan's Crawl version with auto-explore I doubt
I'll ever want to play a RL without such feature. When I tried Sangband
& Steamband I actually wrote auto-explore for them -- otherwise I
couldn't really play. If there's interest, maybe I'll get around to
publishing my auto-explore code.

[R. Dan Henry]

On 6 Mar 2006 07:52:46 -0800, "Solf" <sol...@gmail.com> wrote:

>P.P.S. After playing Darshan's Crawl version with auto-explore I doubt
>I'll ever want to play a RL without such feature. When I tried Sangband
>& Steamband I actually wrote auto-explore for them -- otherwise I
>couldn't really play. If there's interest, maybe I'll get around to
>publishing my auto-explore code.

I'd certainly be interested.

[David Justiss]

"Solf" <sol...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141660365....@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com

> pete mack wrote:
> > This sounds like a game worth trying.
>
> IMO, this is a game that is *definitely* worth trying :)

> In the end I came to Dungeon Crawl and I must say that for my personal

> tastes DC seems better. Faster and more straightforward with less
> tedium. And more "interesting" to boot -- I prefer to be able to "mold"
> by characters (i.e. skills) rather than have to deal with preset form
> (i.e. mage/warrior paradigm). Skill-based *bands seem to address that
> somewhat, but I tried a couple (Sangband, Steamband) -- and in the end
> they seemed too long and/or too easy/unbalanced to continue (I've got
> "good" characters going in both -- both abandoned out of boredom
> mostly). Then again my probable problem is that I played entirely too
> defensively after DC -- which led to a boring game.
>

Thanks for the links, I will have to try this game. From yours
and Joshua's description it sounds more similar to Nethack
than Angband, but I will try it myself and then I'll be able to
compare.

David Justiss

--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

[Billy Bissette]

"David Justiss" <daju...@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:cd25bcaf80953706d47...@mygate.mailgate.org:

> Thanks for the links, I will have to try this game. From yours
> and Joshua's description it sounds more similar to Nethack
> than Angband, but I will try it myself and then I'll be able to
> compare.

Crawl feels very much more like Nethack than Angband, from the
brief times I've played it since this thread started. Things like
the danger of the monsters depending on their equipment, along with
a myriad of other aspects, are much more Nethack-ish.

Someone suggested using a Troll Berserker as a starting character.
For that, I somewhat have to disagree. While it is a decent character
for a true beginner to try, I found it was quickly outclassed by
nearly every other race/class combination that I tried. The ability
to eat corpses at any time is much outweighed by the rate that the
troll gets hungry. My non-troll attempts were actually having less
food issues, as well as seemingly doing better in combat.

[R. Dan Henry]

On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 04:26:09 GMT, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com>
wrote:

>"David Justiss" <daju...@hotmail.com> wrote in
>news:cd25bcaf80953706d47...@mygate.mailgate.org:
>
>> Thanks for the links, I will have to try this game. From yours
>> and Joshua's description it sounds more similar to Nethack
>> than Angband, but I will try it myself and then I'll be able to
>> compare.
>
> Crawl feels very much more like Nethack than Angband, from the
>brief times I've played it since this thread started. Things like
>the danger of the monsters depending on their equipment, along with
>a myriad of other aspects, are much more Nethack-ish.

OTOH, it isn't a puzzlebox game like NH. It is essentially a tactical
exercise, like Angband, and so it feels much more like Angband than
Nethack to me. There's a few interactions, but you don't have to do any
of that twirl a dead cat over your head at midnight type stuff that
Nethack is full of. Kill monsters, take their stuff, the rest is
details.

Still, Crawl has a feel all its own, and I would only say it is closer
to Angband than to Nethack, not that it was Angband-like.

> Someone suggested using a Troll Berserker as a starting character.
>For that, I somewhat have to disagree. While it is a decent character
>for a true beginner to try, I found it was quickly outclassed by
>nearly every other race/class combination that I tried. The ability
>to eat corpses at any time is much outweighed by the rate that the
>troll gets hungry. My non-troll attempts were actually having less
>food issues, as well as seemingly doing better in combat.

I don't find it so. Without a good deal of bad luck in monsters leaving
corpses, Trolls are normally running about at Full or better. Kobolds
are the easiest race to feed; centaurs are the only ones that I have
trouble with after getting used to the Crawl food system. Centaurs
combine extra hunger with no extra eating capacity. A Troll Berserker is
very powerful at the start; their weakness is their learning curve is
rather flat. They gain skill levels slowly and they can't afford a lot
of skills. Fortunately, they don't really need many. My best games,
however, have tended to be Deep Elf Fire Elementalists, however. They're
quite powerful, but frail, so I'd advise running at least a few bricks
first to get some feel for the game. If one doesn't like Trolls, then a
Minotaur is an excellent choice. Hill Orcs and Dwarves aren't bad,
either.

[Billy Bissette]

R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com> wrote:
> Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:

>> Crawl feels very much more like Nethack than Angband, from the
>>brief times I've played it since this thread started. Things like
>>the danger of the monsters depending on their equipment, along with
>>a myriad of other aspects, are much more Nethack-ish.
>
> OTOH, it isn't a puzzlebox game like NH. It is essentially a tactical
> exercise, like Angband, and so it feels much more like Angband than
> Nethack to me.

Oh, certainly. I can play Crawl and live. And when I die, it isn't
something I could have avoided with some obscure knowledge. And I don't
have to worry about pet management from the start, or the various other
Nethack concerns.

To me, it feels like a Nethack that has been streamlined for more
immediately playability. Rather than an Umoria/Angband that has been
turned towards Nethack ideas.

>> Someone suggested using a Troll Berserker as a starting character.
>>For that, I somewhat have to disagree. While it is a decent character
>>for a true beginner to try, I found it was quickly outclassed by
>>nearly every other race/class combination that I tried. The ability
>>to eat corpses at any time is much outweighed by the rate that the
>>troll gets hungry. My non-troll attempts were actually having less
>>food issues, as well as seemingly doing better in combat.
>
> I don't find it so. Without a good deal of bad luck in monsters
> leaving corpses, Trolls are normally running about at Full or better.

I seem to have exactly that issue too often though. Trolls get
hungry fast, and a run without non-poisonous corpses can be a dangerous
hit on the normal food reserves.

I had less problems with a Naga, even using the poison spit ability.
It could go a pretty long time waiting for a corpse drop even after it
had dropped into the "Hungry" range (where it would actually eat a
corpse.) Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous with
a Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick, which was
annoying...

But it wasn't just the food issue. I found Troll Berserkers were
actually dying more often at and beyond the third dungeon level than
other combinations. Now, I have to acknowledge that the first few
levels were pretty trivial for the Troll Berserker, and some of the
competition didn't *make* it to a successful third dungeon level run...
Maybe it is that the troll doesn't necessarily encourage more careful
or intelligent play, but rather to just run up and slug it out and
then let your regen heal you while you walk to the next creature...

And mind that I'm still talking about fairly low level gameplay.
I'm not claiming I'm playing anywhere near the best Troll Berserker,
and certainly not the best of the others.

[Joshua Rodman]

On 2006-03-09, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>
>>> Someone suggested using a Troll Berserker as a starting character.
>>>For that, I somewhat have to disagree. While it is a decent character
>>>for a true beginner to try, I found it was quickly outclassed by
>>>nearly every other race/class combination that I tried. The ability
>>>to eat corpses at any time is much outweighed by the rate that the
>>>troll gets hungry. My non-troll attempts were actually having less
>>>food issues, as well as seemingly doing better in combat.
>>
>> I don't find it so. Without a good deal of bad luck in monsters
>> leaving corpses, Trolls are normally running about at Full or better.
>
> I seem to have exactly that issue too often though. Trolls get
> hungry fast, and a run without non-poisonous corpses can be a dangerous
> hit on the normal food reserves.

It was me who suggested Troll Berserker. Crawl's combat (as mentioned)
has wide variability, so sometimse you can get an inaccurate perception
of combat ability form a small sample. Also it's essential for trolls
not to use a weapon.

The food _can_ be a problem, but ceases to become so when you are
familiar with the game. One of the things that makes sense as a troll
is to descend more rapidly because larger monsters mean more food.

You're not the only one with this response to my suggestion though, so I
suppose they're nto for everyone.

> I had less problems with a Naga, even using the poison spit ability.
> It could go a pretty long time waiting for a corpse drop even after it
> had dropped into the "Hungry" range (where it would actually eat a
> corpse.) Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous
> with a Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick,
> which was annoying...

I've tried these but not a lot. I like them because they're quite
stealthy, which is my preferred style in most rogulikes.

> And mind that I'm still talking about fairly low level gameplay.
> I'm not claiming I'm playing anywhere near the best Troll Berserker,
> and certainly not the best of the others.

I think you're right about forgetting to be careful. But a lot of it is
about keeping trog happy. An enraged troll can slice through an out of
depth nasty quite quickly, but you have to be careful about the
hangover. Tactics.

That's what I love about both rogulikes. Tactics.
--
Grim. Grom. Grümmer.

[Solf]

Billy Bissette wrote:
[snip various discussions of various Crawl character combinations]

Since my post seem to have generated some interest in Crawl, I'll post
a few tips (in my opinion, rec.games.roguelike.misc may well disagree
:)) about playing easier Crawl characters.

Personally I haven't player Troll Berserkers and the like, so it is
kinda difficult to comment on them for me... So I won't :) Except that
you should know that invoking berserk (by any means) consumes a *lot*
of food, 3/4 of a meat chunk if I'm not mistaken.

Also spell casting consumes food depending on spell level... But that
can be offset by having high INT and Spellcasting skill.

If food problems seem to be overwhelming at first, a few tips:
- You *must* eat corpses to survive.
- Learn what corpses do what. Some are "clean" -- always safe to eat
(unless rotten), some are poisoned -- safe to eat if you have poison
resist, poison you otherwise; some are "usual" in that they give you a
chance to make you sick (that chance depends on race, 1/3 for many);
and yet some (later in the game) can give you mutations. Personally I'd
say you should eat "usual" corpses if you don't have clean corpse handy
-- even with 1/3 sick chance it seems safer (you can wait out sickness;
but remembers that you don't regen HP while sick).
- As was mentioned earlier, Kobolds might very well be the best race
for keeping fed -- they can eat corpses even when not Hungry (thus up
to Full). And they have normal food consumption rate. The downside is
that Kobolds cannot eat non-meat food (which may be important later in
the game) and that Kobolds are pretty weak stats wise.
- You can always take a drastic measure to avoid food issues -- play
Mummy ;) However, Mummies are very weak stat-wise and cannot use
potions (e.g. potions of healing). Mummies have other perks however,
such as being immune to mutations (you can still get a bit damaged by
nasty mutation attempts, but it is not nearly as bad as actually having
bad mutations) and having triple Life Protection. Also much of the game
is balanced about food consumption and Mummies not having to eat are
somewhat "broken" in certain respects. Overall, I would not suggest
playing Mummy when you are not yet well-acquinted with Crawl unless you
really have issues with food management with other characters.
- Every character in Crawl that cannot eat corpses (at non-Hungry) by
default dreams about the day when (s)he finds an amulet of gourmand :)
That amulet lets you to eat corpses up to Full even if you don't like
raw meat by default and it also makes any "clean" or "usual" chunk that
is rotten count as "clean non-rotten" chunk (so if you have "usual"
chunks that may make you sick -- wait until they rot and they'll be
guaranteed clean with that amulet).

Some ideas about easier character types:
- As I already said before, however curious it may sound, personally I
found starting easier with magic-based character. Thing is -- magic
based character can usually kill starting monsters from afar one-by-one
and rest to full mana in betweens. Once you get a more powerful damage
spell than your starting one, it is also likely that early meeting with
an early unique will go easier than it might for a melee-based
character.
- Take stock of starting equipment of your chosen starting combination.
Certain parts of equipment may not see an upgrade in a long while (in
particular -- ranged weapons (bow, xbows) and spell books (depending on
how (un)lucky you are). In fact, for myself, starting spell book is the
defining factor when choosing starting combination -- thus I like
Crusaders :)
- Unless you are planning to play a strength-oriented fighter type, I'd
strongly suggest to consider High Elf as your race. Speaking from the
top of my head (therefore might not be 100% accurate):
-- High Elves get one of the best initial stats and stat progression in
the game (again, unless your focus is on strength). I believe only
Demigods are better in this regard, but Demigods needs more food and
cannot worship any deity (deities are important part of Crawl and a
huge help). And racial stats are important in Crawl -- stat values
matter for many things and there's no abundance of potions of gain foo
to "max" your stats. In fact, I don't believe there's "max" in Crawl --
not that you are likely to get far above "norm" anyway :)
-- Experience penalty for leveling can mostly be disregarded IMO.
-- High Elves have ok-to-good skill aptitudes for many purposes. Skill
aptitude is far more important that leveling exp penalty IMO.

I also find playing AC-based characters far easier than playing
Evasion-based characters. This includes spellcasters (but spellcasters
must limit themselves to (-2) evasion penalty armours or perhaps (-3)
at the extreme -- because the higher armour evasion penalty is, the
more difficult it is to cast spells). To go AC route, you should find
and use what is classified as heavy armour (this applies only to main
body armour; accessories such as boots are irrelevant) -- heavy is
anything with (-2) or worse evasion penalty *and* NOT elven (all elven
armours are considered light armours). There are two main differences
between heavy and light armours:
- Heavy trains Armour skill (for a higher AC and less evasion penalty)
while light trains Dodging (higher evasion) and Stealth skills.
- Heavy armour with decent skill in it guarantees significant minimal
damage reduction for each attack while light armour does not (you may
still take full damage from an attack regardless of your AC number if
you wear light armour).

"Playing the ID minigame":
In Crawl you are most likely will need to identify most stuff by using
it. That includes scrolls, potions, armours, weapons, literally
everything :) You will most likely to save your ID scrolls for
identifying stuff that you couldn't identify by using it -- such as
many types of jewellery. Note that some scrolls, for example, will be
identified only when used in right conditions -- e.g. "remove curse"
scroll will be identified only if you use it while wearing a cursed
item. My approach here is to initially collect a lot of un-ided scrolls
and items... Then use-id items until one of them turns to be cursed...
Then I start reading un-ided scrolls.

If you used an item (scroll, wand) and it didn't identify itself, it'll
be marked {tried} in the future, so that you'll know that you need to
take another approach to identifying the item (perhaps zapping wand at
the wall to see if it's digging wand).

There *are* cursed items in Crawl, so when you use-id stuff you should
be prepared to deal with them -- such as scroll of "detect curse" to
check all your items prior to wearing them or having scroll of "remove
curse" to remove any cursed items post-factum. Note that there's no
items that can cause blindness, so having remove curse scroll on hand
is insurance enough.

If you do dabble in magic, look out for "detect curse" or "remove
curse" spells. Either of those can be a huge help. There's also
"Identify" spell, but the requirements for that are so steep that it is
considered a waste -- you are better off using detect/remove curse
spells and using ID scrolls in rare cases when something is not
use-ided (there's more than enough ID scrolls for that).

And last, but not the least, Crawl is being discussed in
rec.games.roguelike.misc news group. In fact, most posts in that group
are about Crawl despite the "misc" moniker.

[Erik Piper]

Billy Bissette wrote:
> R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com> wrote:
> > Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>
> >> Crawl feels very much more like Nethack than Angband, from the
> >>brief times I've played it since this thread started. Things like
> >>the danger of the monsters depending on their equipment, along with
> >>a myriad of other aspects, are much more Nethack-ish.

Hi there,

I decided to reply to your latest post instead of Josh's, Solf's,
RDH's, etc., since we guys already discuss Crawl plenty enough among
ourselves in r.g.r.m. without doing it in r.g.r.ang as well. :-)

Regarding the above bit, I should think the first thing one would
mention is permalevels! :-D

> >
> > OTOH, it isn't a puzzlebox game like NH. It is essentially a tactical
> > exercise, like Angband, and so it feels much more like Angband than
> > Nethack to me.

I'd say Crawl's not a puzzlebox game, but it certainly is a puzzle
game, where the puzzle is tactics and you don't get the last puzzle
piece until the game is over. "If I burn this resource now, will I be
kicking myself 2000 turns from now?" "If I conserve this resource now,
will I be kicking myself 2 turns from now?" "Is there an alternative
more plentiful resource I can use, or would that just leave me in worse
shape and still needing to use the less plentiful resource I was trying
to conserve?" And so on. Of course this is quite close to calling it a
"tactical exercise"; I guess what I'm getting at is that "puzzle" is
not necessarily bad, it's just "puzzle with a large but fairly constant
set of pieces" is not for me, and sounds like it isn't for you (and
that, like me, you have some trouble enjoying Nethack even if you think
you could probably do OK if you tried).

> Oh, certainly. I can play Crawl and live. And when I die, it isn't
> something I could have avoided with some obscure knowledge. And I don't
> have to worry about pet management from the start, or the various other
> Nethack concerns.

Well, you *can* acquire pets, of a sort but managing them simpler than
managing a Nethack pet, let alone pets, as far as I can tell. Mostly
because Crawl pets are all various shades of temporary (most of the
good ones disappear after a time, and very, very few of the
non-disappearers can really survive much combat, so there's not much
point in coddling them).

> To me, it feels like a Nethack that has been streamlined for more
> immediately playability.

It feels that way to me too, although writings on what Linley was
aiming at when he started out point towards inspiration (both regarding
what to do and what not to do) from both Nethack and Angband.

[Troll berserkers]

> I seem to have exactly that issue too often though. Trolls get
> hungry fast, and a run without non-poisonous corpses can be a dangerous
> hit on the normal food reserves.

Hmm I dunno, it took me relatively few runs with a TrBe to get to a win
when I finally ran some Trolls recently. But then a) I have a lot of
experience with Crawl, b) I'd immediately abandoned Trog and so he
occasionally sent monsters to "punish" me that ended up as lunch (not
that this didn't have its downsides both in general and for satiation
in particular, of course), and c) the goal for that game (I tend to do
games with a goal) was to break the speedrun record, so I was
extra-unlikely to waste much time between corpse generations.

Watching my hapless brother-in-law try to break through with a MiBe and
not getting past 10th level much, the biggest problem I see with a
beginner running a berserker is a tendency to go heavy on the
berserking. Because it costs at first sight nothing but food, it seems
like a cure-all. But actually, it costs food, a risk of paralyzation,
and (until you luck into an AoRS) a period of slowing that translates
into a further food cost plus a piety cost (time=piety with Trog).
Really, Might is sometimes a cheaper solution, even piety-wise! So I'd
say to learn to run a berserker well, it can help to try some other
essentially magicless classes (fighters, gladiators, monks, hunters,
etc.) and gradually raise the limits of what you can handle without the
crutch of berserking.

You might have been too nice to Trog as well. I tend to feed my
characters first and my gods later -- if the characters survive, the
gods will get their share, thankyouverymuch.

> I had less problems with a Naga, even using the poison spit ability.

They're pretty good. Poison spit kills things, which lets you eat. :-)
Plus you're not charged non-stop for poison spit. But not being able to
eat until satiated is a pretty big disadvantage relative to Trolls.

> It could go a pretty long time waiting for a corpse drop even after it
> had dropped into the "Hungry" range (where it would actually eat a
> corpse.) Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous with
> a Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick, which was
> annoying...

That's untrue; poisonous flesh is treated as clean for poison-resistant
PCs, unless it's rotting -- rotting flesh is guarantees sickness unless
you're a born flesh-lover, in which case there are varying likelihoods
it'll make you sick, depending on just how much pleasure your PC
derives from wallowing in filth. Ogres like it somewhat, Trolls quite a
lot...

> But it wasn't just the food issue. I found Troll Berserkers were
> actually dying more often at and beyond the third dungeon level than
> other combinations. Now, I have to acknowledge that the first few
> levels were pretty trivial for the Troll Berserker, and some of the
> competition didn't *make* it to a successful third dungeon level run...
> Maybe it is that the troll doesn't necessarily encourage more careful
> or intelligent play,

I think you're on to something there. Careless, thoughtless play will
be punished sooner or later in Crawl no matter what your combo.

> but rather to just run up and slug it out and
> then let your regen heal you while you walk to the next creature...

Actually, that's what I *did* do with the speedrunner. But I went into
the job with a lot of Crawl experience; had I done so a year ago,
I'd've been massacred.

BTW you *were* playing unarmed, right? There's not much point in going
armed for a Troll.

Hope your interest is piqued enough to keep you slugging away!

e.

[R. Dan Henry]

On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 08:35:00 GMT, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com>
wrote:

> I had less problems with a Naga, even using the poison spit ability.

Nagas are one of Crawl's more interesting races. Some really nice bonus
features (see invisible, spit poison, innate poison resist), but their
slow movement is a real risk.

>It could go a pretty long time waiting for a corpse drop even after it
>had dropped into the "Hungry" range (where it would actually eat a
>corpse.) Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous with
>a Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick, which was
>annoying...

If they aren't rotting, poisonous chunks will never make you sick.

> But it wasn't just the food issue. I found Troll Berserkers were
>actually dying more often at and beyond the third dungeon level than
>other combinations. Now, I have to acknowledge that the first few
>levels were pretty trivial for the Troll Berserker, and some of the
>competition didn't *make* it to a successful third dungeon level run...
>Maybe it is that the troll doesn't necessarily encourage more careful
>or intelligent play, but rather to just run up and slug it out and
>then let your regen heal you while you walk to the next creature...

You can also back up and heal faster than the opposition. Doesn't work
with fast monsters, but that shouldn't be anything really dangerous at
that point, unless you berserked and nothing should be left alive by the
time you slow down.

I do admit that TBs encourage overly bold play due to feeling
invincible. Still, I do above my average with them. And I don't play the
best game, either. I've only manage a rune once and never won.

[R. Dan Henry]

On 09 Mar 2006 09:02:06 GMT, Joshua Rodman
<jro...@duckerDOTorg.fake.domain.example.com> wrote:

>It was me who suggested Troll Berserker. Crawl's combat (as mentioned)
>has wide variability, so sometimse you can get an inaccurate perception
>of combat ability form a small sample. Also it's essential for trolls
>not to use a weapon.

Until they can find a really big mace-style weapon. That's a viable
alternative for Trolls. For one thing, it uses one of their better
skills. For another, they don't suffer the main drawback of maces, since
they can carve meat with their claws without switching out a blunt
weapon. If you're a Berserker, Trog with eventually start dropping
weapons at your feet. Picking up at least the basics of hitting stuff
with a big stick is one method of dealing with Hydras (sharp Troll claws
make them grow more heads) and you open up the possibility of getting a
truly cool random artifact weapon. And given your armor limitations as a
Troll, getting a good set of item abilities is going to be harder than
average.

[R. Dan Henry]

On 9 Mar 2006 03:22:16 -0800, "Erik Piper" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:

>to conserve?" And so on. Of course this is quite close to calling it a
>"tactical exercise"; I guess what I'm getting at is that "puzzle" is
>not necessarily bad, it's just "puzzle with a large but fairly constant
>set of pieces" is not for me, and sounds like it isn't for you (and
>that, like me, you have some trouble enjoying Nethack even if you think
>you could probably do OK if you tried).

For the record, I've won Nethack exactly as many times as Angband. Once.
The difference is that I kept playing Angband afterwards (and have won
three different Angband variants, including multiple Steamband wins).

But I still suck at Crawl.

[Billy Bissette]

"Erik Piper" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:

> Billy Bissette wrote:
>> Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous with
>> a Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick, which
>> was annoying...
>
> That's untrue; poisonous flesh is treated as clean for poison-

> resistant PCs, unless it's rotting -- rotting flesh is guarantees

> sickness unless you're a born flesh-lover, in which case there are
> varying likelihoods it'll make you sick, depending on just how much
> pleasure your PC derives from wallowing in filth. Ogres like it
> somewhat, Trolls quite a lot...

Hrm. My Naga certain got sick sometimes from corpse parts that
at the least were not marked as "rotting." Anything in inventory,
I listed the options to make sure I was eating the right thing.
Anything off the ground, I had just dissected from something
recently killed.

[Rubinstein]

Billy Bissette wrote:
> "Erik Piper" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>> Billy Bissette wrote:
>>> Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous with a
>>> Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick, which was
>>> annoying...

With "they" you seem to refer to *poisonous* chunks and that's what Erik
was refering to:

>> That's untrue; poisonous flesh is treated as clean for poison-
>> resistant PCs, unless it's rotting

>> [...]

>
> Hrm. My Naga certain got sick sometimes from corpse parts that at the
> least were not marked as "rotting."

This can very well happen, but is no contradiction to what Erik said. In
your case the chunks were not poisonous. What you obviously don't know:
there are a lot of monsters in Crawl from which you get *contaminated*
chunks (e.g. orcs, jackals and a lot more) with a certain probability to
make you sick, even though they never would poison your char. These
chunks are not marked as such, but you'll learn this *on the fly*.
After a while you'll just ignore it anyway, even when you know they
*could* be contaminated: eating only clean chunks in Crawl would mostly
end in YASD caused by starvation.

Note that beginners are often scared by sickness (as I was, btw., which
probably originates from Adom), but it's less dramatical than it sounds.
You don't heal as long as you are sick, so you better stay away from the
heat until your health is back. After a relative short time the sickness
will be over (if you don't want to waste a potion of healing to stop it
immediately). The worst thing that can happen are a few stat points
being drained, but even this is temporary (recovering usually needs
longer than sickness, though). Also, potions of restore abilities (to
repair your stat points if you don't want to wait) are reasonably
frequent in Crawl.

R.
--
"Try ballyhoo - it chokeberry not!"
(from an article about spam-art and dada...)

[Billy Bissette]

Rubinstein <pib...@gmail.com> wrote in news:47c5i4Fev7tgU1
@individual.net:

> Billy Bissette wrote:
>> "Erik Piper" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:
>>> Billy Bissette wrote:
>>>> Mind, I didn't have to care about corpses being poisonous with a
>>>> Naga, either... Though they could still make a Naga sick, which
>>>> was annoying...
>
> With "they" you seem to refer to *poisonous* chunks and that's what
> Erik was refering to:

Ah, I was just meaning chunks in general. Not *only* poisonous
chunks.

That poison resist wasn't enough to make eating corpses entirely
"safe."

[R. Dan Henry]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:40:54 GMT, Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com>
wrote:

>"Erik Piper" <er...@sky.cz> wrote:

OK, I think I see the problem. Poisonous flesh and flesh that makes you
sick are entirely different things. A kobold chunk will always poison
you if you don't resist poison, but it will never make you sick. Orc
flesh will sometimes make you sick, but poison resistance has no effect
on this.

[Rubinstein]

Yes, your last statement is true.

Don't underrate Res_poison though, especially not when it's *for free*
(as in not wasting a ring slot). It's a benefit througout the entire
game. Even though poison will bother you less often later in the game,
you can meet some heavy poisonous creatures in the end. Poisonous chunks
are also quite common, not contaminated ("safe" unless rotten) and
already a great benefit just by the number of edible chunks it adds to
your menu card. Energy in Crawl (in form of food and chunks) is not
growing on trees...

The Nagas' awful slowness is not without a reason.

[smar...@yahoo.com]

Just some general comments about Crawl, because I like it and hope
others will too.

The classes and races are nice. When I looked at NetHack it didn't seem
to have much of a variety. ADOM had a good variety but many of the
actual combos weren't very good. What's the point, for instance, of
having a dark elf merchant, except for challenge? Crawl has some loser
combos-- and worse, a couple of loser classes-- but at least Linley put
some rational limits on the combos. And while any starting character
has the potential to become good at nearly anything, the end characters
at least have a few different types. This is in constrast to ADOM,
where everybody seems to end up in heavy armor and a missile weapon
expert. There's a real nice variety of races in Crawl, too, with little
bonuses and penalties to each. The best array of races I've ever seen
in a game.

I know this has been said, but for me the best thing Crawl has going
for it over Zangband (the only *band I've tried) is the persistant
level feature. Whenever I run into the chance to get easy experience, I
take it, I'm just that way. So in Zangband I went up and down up and
down up and down and pretty soon I was over the whole staircase
experience. Crawl doesn't let you farm for items as much as ADOM,
either. There's no picking pockets, for instance. When I first tried
Crawl, I was saying "what do you mean I can't sell to shopkeepers?" It
turns out to be a good thing, because I'm not boring myself silly
dragging items all over the map. Crawl keeps you moving.

I actually like that you die a lot in the early game, at least with an
unfamiliar or tough combo. I've gotten so that I can pretty well
survive the early game with a minotaur berserker or a deep elf
conjurer, but I've also learned to damn well be careful once I get a
character to the midgame. The early game is quick-- real quick for many
characters. The real sad thing is getting past the early game and dying
because you screwed up. Dying fast might be bad luck, dying late is
because I did something stupid. I've died in the late game and it makes
me swear a lot. Is that good? Yes.

The magic system is neat, too. I started out with berserkers, got a win
with one, tried a lot of other classes, and quit playing for a while.
When I picked up Crawl again, I started playing one of the best combos,
probably the best combo, deep elf conjurers specializing in fire/earth.
Holy crap do they rock. The two best spells-- I won't spoil them for
you-- are so good they're overpowered, actually. It's fun figuring out
what the "two best spells" are, because people disagree. People
disagree on what skills are overpowered, too. Plus, there's a lot of
other neat spells-- few if any that I'd call worthless.

Speaking of skills, they're all pretty good. Some you don't want to
raise very much, but you can turn them off. Some that you do want to
raise that are slow goers, which does lead to a certain degree of
repetition. Hey, so you gotta disarm some traps to raise the skill. It
makes sense. So does letting yourself get hit to train armor or
dodging. Anyway, it's not tedious to lean on the "wait a turn" key a
bit. One thing that is sort of silly is what I think of as "fireworks".
If I have a magic using guy, and you want him to train, say, earth
skill and not stealth, every time I have a lot of spare XP I shoot off
some earth spells.

The XP pool concept is neat.

Dang, religion is neat too, can't believe I haven't got to that yet--
it's very much a distinguishing feature of the game. But I bet not that
many are really willing to read much more, if this far, so I'll pack it
in. Great game, though.

[Erik Piper]

smar...@yahoo.com wrote:

> having a dark elf merchant, except for challenge? Crawl has some loser
> combos-- and worse, a couple of loser classes-- but at least Linley put

I cry more over the loser races, really. Class in Crawl is just a set
of initial equipment, skills, possibly a religion, and stat tweaks.
It's easy, without even really trying or aiming for it, to finish the
game with the skill title ("Your_character the
title_coming_from_your_highest_skill") for some skill you didn't even
have in the beginning, to say nothing of the many characters who end up
e.g. "essentally a conjurer" when they began as a reaver
(fighter/conjurer), "essentially a transmuter" (magic-enhanced monk)
when they began as a monk, etc.

So class, much though I hate to admit it (I like to avoid repeating
classes in my wins), is meaningful only in the beginning of the game,
or a bit into the midgame in the case of class-defining things that are
hard to get otherwise (e.g. a book of conjurations).

Race, meanwhile, defines many many things throughout the whole game,
most notably how quickly you'll become good at what. Even if you could
start an Ogre as a Reaver, you would just suffer and suffer trying to
play them out that way. (I speak from experience ;-) .) Anyway, the
races each offer distinctive play experiences, sometimes just a little
different from the most-similar race (e.g. certain types of Elves),
sometimes radically different from everything else (e.g. Mummies). So
when a race is crap, or too similar to another race, it's quite a bit
of lost potential interestingness for the game. Fortunately, there's
not much of that, though there is a little.

e.