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Defensive training still has legit thresholds, in that AFAIK the game doesn't track fractional AC/EV/SH. Yep, on this level there are definitely thresholds. You don't gain TOO much by optimizing for them, but I definitely run the math for armour training breakpoints on any light or medium armour ch...

I like the idea (and would be happy to implement it if there's dev interest.) Suggestion on XL thresholds: I think XL26 is a bit too late for the final version of this. It's not too hard to win the game prior to XL26, and even if you don't you're only getting to experience their final form for a sma...

[...] but it would be nice to see some other method of determining what is popcorn like maybe how often players die to that monster at that dungeon level. I thought a little bit more about this, but there are several complications in using this method: ⋅ The monster which got the killing...

Majang wrote:I'm even more covetous about MR or rN, where an extra pip can be the difference between life and death in the mid game.

I'm curious; what devastating rN attacks are there in the midgame?

It's almost always possible to hurt stuff for a quarter of their hp reliably We must be playing a different game. Attacks in dcss are anything but reliable; even with a great weapon and mindelay it often takes 50 auts or more to deal 25% HP. I suspect the cleaner UI of melee (tab) is making you und...

It's almost always possible to hurt stuff for a quarter of their hp reliably We must be playing a different game. Attacks in dcss are anything but reliable; even with a great weapon and mindelay it often takes 50 auts or more to deal 25% HP. I suspect the cleaner UI of melee (tab) is making you und...

IMO one of the best parts about using the distortion brand is the tele effect. I'm not worried about losing XP, and teleing a monster is almost as good as banishing it a lot of the time. If it's an especially dangerous monster that I want to ensure dies, I can just find it and kill it by itself.

Re: that bug report; I suspect what's going on is that you don't have enough spell power to hit range 3. At low spell power, Dazzling Flash is only 2 range.

Well, the upside of IMB is that it's a fairly good single-target single-school spell (it's cheap to get online and does the job of a single-target spell fairly well), the occasional splash damage is mostly irrelevant to it. That many squares hit is way too strong for a typical level 4-6 spell (You ...

A Level 4-6 AoE Fire Magic spell, FireFury. Can't miss, randomly chooses between one of the following patterns centered on the player: ... I don't think, personally, that I would ever want to use a spell that I didn't know what I was going to target, the upside would have to be very very large for ...

A Level 4-6 AoE Fire Magic spell, FireFury. Can't miss, randomly chooses between one of the following patterns centered on the player: ..###.... .....#.#. ..####.#. .#.#@#.#. .#.####.. .#.#..... ....###.. ..##..#.. .#..#..#. ...###.#. ..##@##.. .#.###... .#..#..#. ..#..##.. .....##.. .###..#.. .#.##...

Suggested revision: When Ds get the first mutation of a facet, they have a chance to veto it. Doing so removes that facet from any subsequent generation, and instantly gives another facet of the same tier, along with its first mutation. This way, you don't have a noob trap of delaying mutations. Yo...

What percentage of starts can reliably survive an adder at XL1? I suspect it's quite small. At least the OoD spawning adders didn't spawn till you had a little time to gain XP. I don't think you can realisitically add much more threat to XL1 characters. The problem with D:1 is that it has both XL1 a...

Now, aspirationally, I think it could be really cool if overgrowth worked like a slow-growing (literally) corrupt, spreading out from areas that the player walked while the ability was active. This sort of combines the "Summon Forest" notion with corruption, and could transform an area - ...

4) Necromutation is a form spell, and should be considered such. This makes it an intruder from the start: all form spells are situational. I don't get it. How situational is Blade Hands? Or Dragon Form? Or Hydra Form? Form spells, aside from necromutation at least, are built to be your primary off...

I don't understand the question, but I can provide some pseudocode for how this works. Hopefully that either answers the question, or helps frame in in a way I can understand. The player object stores a cooldown on each ability (USKAYAW_AUDIENCE_TIMER and USKAYAW_BOND_TIMER) After all the monsters a...

qepasa wrote:str for a mage is wasted point

This isn't obviously true unless you find a robe of the Archmagi or something. I've played quite a few mages in medium or heavy armour, and str is very useful then.

Recently finished a VpEn - Gozag game. Undead form seemed much better than Alive. I switched around D2 and never switched back. I'd recommend some other limitations in Undead form, certainly dropping rC++ to rC+, and maybe adding MR- (low magic resistance was the biggest resistance problem so doubl...

My issue with that mutation line is that you can die while autoexploring or hitting 5 with it. Pip 3 makes part of your HP regen apply to your mana pool instead; for most sources of damage that's fine because you have guardian spirit, and MP is just better than HP. But Poison ignores guardian spirit...

Today I learned that early Okawaru is actually incredibly reliable if you've left a few worms alive you can go back and kill. That's annoying.

It's definitely possible. XL is a rather coarse measure -- using XP would be better. Unfortunately, there is no fine-grained measure of XP which I can get from Sequell data. At least, I don't know how to do it, maybe some Sequell wizards can figure it out. Many things in-game depend on XL, so it's ...

First, I agree with the design goal for piety that you proposed; piety is a tool you gain 'as you progress through the game, which you spend to make your life easier' and 'generally speaking, you should get more piety as you progress deeper into the game and venture into more difficult areas'. I thi...

Going back to the original graph. The problem I always have with the 'lethality by XL' analysis is that XP aptitudes exist. Game progression (and hence difficulty) scale with XP-gained far more than they do with XL. And that makes the random distribution of XP apt blur out features on the difficulty...

For clarity, '1.5 Invocations spellpower boost' means that it's added into the spellpower calculation at the same time as your spell schools. This value will be multiplied by your int factor and by your enhancers, and then stepped down if over 50.

Shadow mimic also uses monster code to attack, and these are different from player codes. Some spells for example deal different damage: stone arrow used to be strong. Throwing used to be very good with Dith, because monster throwing is strong. Not sure what is the current state for these though, I...

To answer the OP, I think the rule of thumb is: if you kill things with attacks, pick strength. If you kill things with spells, pick intelligence. Hypothetically if you don't kill things with attacks or with spells, pick dexterity; but like Siegurt said, it's hard to imagine a good build like that....

It's nice on Ash blasters. You can't swap to staff of energy, but by cursing an enhancer staff on you get a boost to Evo... which is what you need for CBoE.

Similarly, at max power confusing touch on a short blade has a 20% chance to confuse a gold dragon per swing at max power. Spending 2 turns worth of attacks (4 swings of dagger or rapier) gives a ~60% confuse chance, so this is not a bad way to get rid of dragons or undead/demons with lower HD than...

Unrandart bucklers bug me. You don't get a million unrandart drops, and so by the time you might find a shield one, it's a pretty big sacrifice to not use a two hander or a medium or large shield and the XP requirements for medium aren't all that bad. Warlock's mirror is an example. I wish it were ...

Well, at a minimum I think them having a custom 30% bonus to XP is absurd. Given their low threat level, I suspect that could be non-controversially eliminated. But in the end, it doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it less expensive to ignore it. Even if they gave 1XP, it would be worth the co...

Indeed. Trolls are a trap. They are extremely easy in reaching Temple/Lair but then they die to hydra or in Lair branches/Vaults because of awfully low AC/MR (talking about new players here). So after dying as Tr new players should start a Mi and get to Lair just easily (comparing to Tr's extremely...

Ah, OK. Sure, weapon gifts specifically are worse on Trolls. But I don't really think that's a good argument against TrMo; it only affects 2 gods, and only a tiny portion of their power.

It sounds like the primary problem with Imps is that they're insufficiently lethal; not surprising since they have the melee of a goblin, but better resists and defenses. The most direct solution is to increase their melee damage, but that makes them indistinguishable from phantoms (which are actual...

Re: being disappointed in Oka gifts... that's inevitable. The game gives everyone but gnolls lots of nice stuff they can't use. I don't think it's much of a downside to any race. There is still important difference. As Tr you will be disappointed by the fact of receiving a gift, especially if you u...

I was also primarily considering Siegurt's inexperienced players. For new players, Mo is pretty much strictly suboptimal. I think god variety is pretty important to the 'inexperienced' stage. Re: being disappointed in Oka gifts... that's inevitable. The game gives everyone but gnolls lots of nice st...

Troll monks have decent dodging scaling (because they start with a decent amount of dex and will never suffer from too heavy of armour), great shield scaling, and have gained a lot of midgame armour options since I first started playing. Three years ago, I'd have agreed with your assessment. Now... ...

They're actually ghosts. A pseudoundead transformation of the ordinary moth. Ghost moths are made, not born.

Yeah, combat-generated portals become down-only. But that doesn't affect randomly generated portals you find. Of course on qaz it's a bit hard to explore abyss.

(I'm also very very skeptical that abyss is easier than V:5 on qaz. V:5 is no joke, but neither is the abyss.)

magipi wrote:I really hope that you are just kidding.

Nope. I really hope you'll respond to my opinion with something substantive.

rN+++ is not a huge advantage. On the other hand, rN- might finally make rN relevant in a 3-rune game, so... maybe it's worth it?

I'd nominate TrMo as a better beginner start these days than MiFi or MiBe. Instead of simplifying out god choice (which is interesting and engaging), it simplifies out weapon, armour and skilling (which all are less interesting and have some newbie-traps.) It teaches pillar dancing via fast regen. A...

However, Spriggans are unable to use long bows, but can use fustibaluses with a shield.

Jorgrun doesn't shatter any more.

And in fact sometimes the missile does hit the tree, if this analogy were accurate. Sometimes it doesn't, because reasons (monster stepping on alarm vs shaft or TP). Nothing in the answer or game indicates this or says anything about "heat seeking" in advance, but "missiles are suppo...

Slight hijack: Do you know how range affects the umbra? Do you only get the boosts against monsters that are in the Umbra? Or do you keep one-or-both based on you being in the umbra?

Can you think of a concrete scenario like this where perfect knowledge of the state would change the optimal decision? There are two ogres. You can attack one of the ogres. It is better to attack the ogre that is more likely to hit you. With state tracking, you know which ogre this is; without stat...

It would still be optimal to track your state vs. each monster. If you're lower on HP it'd be more optimal to run away when you have higher odds of being hit, it'd be more optimal to take your lumps when your HP is higher. I don't think you've thought through this scenario fully. Suppose you do tra...

Duvessa, I'm not sure I see your objection. While it's true that this adds state, in what way would tracking that state provide an advantage? If it doesn't, then you'd have no incentive to track it and it shouldn't reduce optimal player burden.

My claim is that crawl is differentially spiky between EV/SH heavy characters and AC heavy. If you think it should be equalized the other way, remove GDR.

Inspired by VeryAngryFelid's complaints about spikeyness in another thread and context. EV and SH builds have a harder time with intuitive threat assessment than AC builds. You may be able to tab through 3 orc warriors while taking no damage, while the fourth high-rolls twice and nearly kills you. I...

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