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The idea of a god with a hunger conduct is intriguing, and there's potential there, but this implementation isn't quite right. Starvation should be a sacrifice the player makes, so negating all the penalties of hunger sort of defeats the point entirely. Most of the abilities are fairly generic and n...

Nice title! Did you level up Invo so high specifically to keep your Oka title? I love God titles, so I often do this as well.

OpTm is my favorite combo in Crawl. I always dream about being able to take on the shape of a powerful monster while keeping all my badass rangz and stomping monsters to dust. I've won the combo before in a 3-rune game, but the problem with OpTm is that by the time you reach this point of ultimate p...

I've noticed a recent 35k turns 15 runes win with Beogh and I don't understand how it works :( Well if you don't understand how a player made a cool accomplishment, certainly it means something is wrong with the game, and not that another player maybe found a good strategy? The player trained Invo ...

I kind of think of it as "tactics are the actions I take 1–50 turns from now, strategy is what I'm working towards in the long term to make my tactics work better." That's right, but the term is misunderstood and misused constantly, to mean something completely different like "positi...

Watch zxc's streak game videos on Youtube for an example of maximally intentional play. Recalibrate your mental game. Give yourself a pat on the back every time you steamroll over a potentially dangerous situation by using the right resources, or when you dump an empty wand instead of a full one. Th...

This is a great observation, and not necessarily so obvious. I certainly had been playing the game a long time before I even really thought about using down stairs defensively. In my opinion, branch entrances can be some of the most dangerous situations in the game if the map generator is unkind. Br...

you're doing more work for something which is more situational And more fun. And not necessarily more work. In my stabby runs I'm typically one-shotting upwards of 50% of the tough uniques I run across, even orbs of fire and entire rooms of tough monsters. I wouldn't even call it particularly "...

I love Felids, I love Enchanters, I love Hexes, I love UC, I love stabbing, and I love Transmutations. In theory, I'm perfectly positioned to love Confusing Touch. I've historically tried to learn it on every viable character, early or late-game. I confess I might not have found the right use case a...

These weak monsters already give insignificant amounts of exp, and if you're obsessed with killing them for that "optimal" exp, it's only your own obsessions that are betraying you. The gain is not significant enough to affect your game at all, and you're just wasting turns that will ultim...

The spells in the Necromancy book are easily enough to mop up Vaults / Depths. Merfolk have -2 apt, which isn't unsurmountable, and you have a viable headstart on Simulacrum with ice magic. (Although it's more fiddly than Animate Dead and Death Channel.) It is not really that huge of an exp investme...

njvack wrote:You can use conjurations and melee together. You should! Especially if you're playing Chei!

This. Chei's stat boosts should also allow you to conserve some exp you'd otherwise be spending on spell schools, which you can use to spend on much needed weapon skils.

v - +0 robe of the Game Afoot {Str+4 Int+3 Dex-4} This is one of the worst possible armor items I could imagine for your character. The primary purpose of strength is to wear heavier armor (particularly if you're a caster and not engaged in melee), which you've locked yourself out of with the very ...

Excepting centaurs, fast species are also frail, so there is greater value in getting out of melee range or danger generally. Blink also allows you to pass a monster in the case you get surrounded or even just sandwiched in a hallway. Movement speed can't save you in a situation like this, and caref...

And btw, reason ghouls can't berserk is due to the basic metaphors of life, death, and "undeath" that have surfaced in various mutations throughout cultures. Life is cyclical, contains growth, renewal, spurts, emotion, and passion, etc. Berserk, metaphorically, is the urge to survive. As l...

Everything should be able to berserk, transmute, etc....I don't even quite understand what the counter-argument is. In life, most of the time if you don't even understand the counter-argument, it doesn't mean that you are somehow super-right. It means only that -- you simply don't understand the ot...

Here's another great tidbit I looked up on knowledge bot earlier today:

golden eye[1/1]: Come in packs! Confuse (checks MR)! Tiny! Fast! Also, they blink (getit). Can't see invisible.

Thanks knowledge bot!

/// Whose skill should be used for a pain-weapon effect? static actor* _pain_weapon_user(actor* attacker) { if (attacker->type != MONS_SPECTRAL_WEAPON) return attacker; const mid_t summoner_mid = attacker->as_monster()->summoner; if (summoner_mid == MID_NOBODY) return attacker; actor* summoner = ac...

Does a spectral weapon of pain get a damage bonus based on your Necromancy skill? No, only hexes, charms, spellcasting, intelligence, and anything else that influences spell power for a hexes/charm spell influence spell power. I'm not sure this is necessarily the whole story. I haven't been code di...

"Optimal" is poorly-defined, which is the cause of so much confusion around here. I'll assume you're optimizing for win rate, which is probably a decent default assumption, although there are other ends that could reasonably be optimized for (turncount, score, wins per real time, tournamen...

Shatter is basically useless against flying monsters, which is a lot of monsters.

Retreat can also be useful for mobbing enemies. For example, if your summons have gone after a monster in this kind of situation: X = enemy S = Summon @.SS### ...SSX. ...S### This configuration favors the monster, and if it's a tough monster and you leave your summons to their own devices, the monst...

I think slow+exhaustion are sufficient penalties to berserk without adding random paralysis. Those are demonstrably not sufficient penalties. Berserk provides a tremendous increase in damage output, and slow is not a particularly problematic debuff. Berserk is equivalent to might + haste. The reduc...

I think we should just remove krakens ... they are basically free xp. What is often so drastically flawed about this line of reasoning -- and especially so in this case -- is that the argument imagines only an ultra-simplified scenario with only one super-experienced nearly-perfect player, no other...

You put way too much exp in shields, but to let that hold you back at this point would be sunk cost fallacy. If all you have is a basic large shield -- not some crazy randart or something -- then you definitely want the exec axe. Train axes only from here on if you're worried about the delay.

duvessa wrote:the most important factors for species strength are speed and hp

This is why Centaurs are the best species.

Interface-wise, I would prefer If searing ray brought up the targeter every turn, even if every space but the original target was considered "out of range." ... I guess the downside to keeping the targeter up is that currently, I can conceivably bring up the targeter for a different spell...

Which brings us back to my OP, that the interface needs changing to reduce accidental resting when you didn't realize the ray has run out. Although it's a bit silly to have a key dedicated to one specific scenario with one specific spell, this or something like it is probably the right solution. Ac...

Well the thing is, currently it isn't a drawback, the spell is totally reliable in 8 directions and it's trivial to get monsters to follow you on one of those. A retargetable spell would be useful in a much broader variety of tactical applications, far beyond what the current spell can do. That is ...

Allowing retargetting would literally take away the spell's only drawback. Despite how it may feel, the behavior of having to stand in one place and pass turns to cast increasingly powerful bolts at low mana cost is not in any meaningful sense a limitation. That is the feature that makes the spell p...

You already have perfectly suitable--even ideal--endgame weapons. Penetration is an insanely good brand for a longbow, and you have the best polearm-type with enchantment as high as any mundane weapon can go, with arguably the best brand, plus an powerful on-demand evokable buff. Consequently you ha...

On IRC and forums you can expect to hear people treat the wiki like a joke, as if it's a bunch of nonsense written by morons. This seems to be just a running meme at this point, and bears little connection to reality. The same people will then point you to the LearnDB as a better source, which is a ...

And do not underestimate the value of additional regen. AC provides a benefit only at the moment you take damage. Regen is useful any time you are below max hp, and its usefulness can be multiplied by your play, typically encouraging good play. Careful luring and kiting are rewarded by additional hp...

There are ways you can combine Earth Magic and Necromancy -- using LRD to turn your own skeletons into walking bone bombs, for example -- but in this case you've used your resources to develop abilities that directly interfere with each other. On the one hand, you've picked up two major Necromancy s...

I like Zot Defense for something different. Once I tried doing ZD without any Zot powers as a challenge, and even that was fun. Got a lot further than you might think.

Only good gods should be able to have alliances and nobly accept changes in followers. Evil and chaotic deities are willing to squabble with each other. That's why they aren't good gods. Sif Muna and Vehumet wouldn't be best buddies because they both dig magic. They aren't going to meetups for Magic...

Also, identify that wand of teleport so you can be sure how many charges you have on it. That can be a real lifesaving item if you get silenced. It may seem like a rare scenario outside of places like crypt, but all it takes is waking up Mennas once and getting within his aura of silence, and you're...

There's a lot of things you can afford to drop in stash, just depends on how many spaces you're trying to free up and how much running around for stuff you're willing to tolerate. You can afford to drop most of the food. You only really need one stack of rations and one stack of snacks. If you run o...

I just made good use of it to finish off a powerful unique in Spider with my Kobold. Particularly useful for Kobolds too, because of their low hp. I've determined that I'm probably going to pick up every ambrosia I find. Also, based on feedback from the interface. looks like confusion makes shields ...

I used every ambrosia potion I found as a deep dwarf, for obvious reasons. I also see it being very useful if you end up surrounded or facing down a single tough enemy. If you're always playing optimally, maybe you see it as unnecessary, but most players don't always play optimally. Like the other p...

And as if like clockwork, acquired a quick blade, branded it distort, then scooped up 2(!) more acquirements in Spider:1. It really is too much sometimes. Also, I love how KoAK combines the thrill of stabbing sleepy monsters in a burst of blood as well as banishing them in a cloud of vapor. So many ...

I love this combo: kobold's short blade specialty mixes well with the distortion brand, and innate gourmand lends itself well to spamming banishment on tough foes, especially with an amulet of faith. I have had a couple of near-misses with this combo, including one time I played too late in the nigh...

You're upset about being given good advice in a forum titled "Dungeon Crawling Advice." Now that's something else.

So, went ahead and ascended this one. The Orbs of Fire turned out to be not a big deal as long as I stacked all my buffs and took them on solo, I could take them down pretty easily in melee. Also, I used exactly all of the recharge scrolls that appeared in the game, without needing to dip into mana ...

At the time I learned Statue, I had very few options to gain some breathing room if something closed into melee range. So it gave me added durability against many monsters that otherwise would have been burning many healing wand charges so early and often. I don't have a problem with using the wand,...

So, my long-term goal with Crawl is to ascend every species (10 down so far). I'm working on Deep Dwarf, and I've gotta admit, I'm not a big fan of this no-regen thing, although I think it's improving my play. I've gotten to a similar point in the game with a past DDEE and a DDNe (the latter had a h...

Simulacrum really doesn't shine until Vaults/Depths when you start seeing big beefy/tanky monsters with regularity, such as giants and dragons (though hydra and death yaks also make great snowmen and appear earlier). Since those monsters tend to give lots of chunks, they also give lots of copies, an...

I'm impressed, I have a fair number of wins by now and I still haven't managed to win DD. Congratulations!.

Leveling Elf with Shatter was a breeze with my recent DrCj, you should be fine. The axe is garbage, you have plenty of +Int and can cast level 8 spells hungerless. Probably level 9 too. Since you're not having spell hunger issues, you don't really need to wield the staff of energy all the time, but ...

Repel Missiles is always a great idea, especially since you drew Shoals and Snake, both of which are great places to get pummeled by ranged attacks. Whether you focus more on weapons or spells depends on whether you want to be more of a full hybrid that can take on endgame opponents in melee as well...

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