Search • The Tavern

Right, that's about the size of a buckler, and the kid presumably has 0 Shields skill. I wasn't advocating that bucklers get any better in any way. Assuming a large shield is genuinely somewhat large, which it should be given that small creatures can't use them, it should be possible to more or less...

@OP, it sounds like you're doing a lot of fleeing into unexplored territory while low on health. That's usually a good way to get killed. It probably would have been worth reading a scroll of teleportation or using some other escape consumable when trying to escape from the stone giant initially.

If long swords allow you to attack-move monsters, monsters should be coded to attack-move players as well. Monsters who can wield already put a small amount of effort into encircling the player, but monsters with long blades should try way harder.

Bucklers already have the ability to block ranged attacks; they just aren't very good at it compared to melee attacks. That's probably fine. bucklers take almost no investment.

The problem with simply improving the SH value is that the problem with shields is not how well they block what they block, but that they don't block enough. They are bad at blocking multiple attacks per turn, they are bad at blocking ranged attacks, and they don't even try to block most of the non-...

I like the idea of shields being used via 'v' to either cause knockback or some kind of stun, because it gives melee-heavy folks an extra escape option, and melee-heavy characters are more likely to be able to put the extra XP into Shields that (ideally) should be required to give it a decent chance...

FWIW, one of my more successful recent YASDs was a merfolk who went with Nemelex. I spent most of the game swimming in decks of every kind, including both summoning and destruction, to the point where I had to dump them all over the place. I got most of my kills with polearms and a rod of ice, and u...

Oh, I see the error I made in interpreting the formula for static discharge damage. Now it makes more sense that it sometimes does good damage. With that out of the way, I'd like to re-ask the other question: is it optimal to go through the pre-lair/lair portion of the game using a combination of Sh...

I've been trying out with OpAEs recently, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I'm still a little confused about a few things. For one thing, the wiki lists the damage of static discharge as: 2 + 1d(15 + (1d100-1)/10) The maximum that yields on a very, very lucky roll is 12.4. In usin...

I haven't played many bookless backgrounds, and to the extent that I have, I haven't done all that well with them, so let me ask: what are some things that are significantly helpful for those backgrounds in the early game? Starting with a book generally means starting with some combination of powerf...

I agree with Ossuary. Ordinary monsters help out weak characters and new players. Also, if there are no "vanilla" monsters, the special ones will stand out less -- every time you see any monster it'll have some weird quirk you have to handle.

Why is GDA bad? On paper, it looks better in most respects, so I'm guessing it's some or all of the following: the additional -3 penalty to evasion/spellcasting, which presumably gets dropped to -1.5 additional penalty by Armour skill; the extra 9 Strength you have to have to wear it effectively; th...

Yeah, I enjoyed that ring a lot. cTele + anything is pretty good . . .

Castro the DEIE has escaped with the Orb and 15 runes! This is my second win overall. It's my first time taking a character to Pandemonium, first time going to any hells except Cocytus, first time killing any hell lord, and my first escape with more than 3 runes. It's my first time casting Ice Storm...

Maces work by impact force, which is discharged into the target. The only way it would make sense to have them cleave is to have them only cleave if the original target dies, and then only cleave to one additional target who would receive all the "overflow" damage from the swing. It would ...

Finished off the pan lords and escaped, after only 31 levels. Man, does it always take that many levels? I ran across the famous Hellion Island, but no angels beyond some holy swine.

Lom Lobom and Gloorx Voq down. Man, there are so many random levels between real levels. . .

So I got the abyssal rune, picked up a CBoE, and headed for Pandemonium. I almost immediately picked up a slow movement mutation, and now I want to leave. How do I leave? EDIT: never mind -- I escaped from the demons with controlled blinks, managed to recover control, got a demonic rune, from a smok...

If at some point in the future summoning starts reserving MP, how does that work with summon spells that summon multiple monsters? Do you have to wait for every last butterfly to die before you get your 1 MP back, or every scorpion to get back 4? Will you be able to prematurely send away a summon to...

Needing to (x) a monster to determine if it's a melee bruiser or can breathe four bolts of fire at me in a turn would not be OK. I think it would probably be good to ensure that chimerae would only be able to use one ranged power per turn in any case. That said, I think Roderick's ideas for how to ...

It does seem like you'd be forced to (x)amine the chimera to learn which heads it has, though an inspired tilist might be able to make it obvious in tiles.

Choko5 just mentioned an idea involving Chimeric monsters with multiple heads in a thread about summoning, and I'd like to retool that idea as a new type of monster. Here's the concept: there's a base Chimera monster, which is randomly generated with depth appropriate heads, much like a hydra. Unlik...

Whoa, twelwe -- I didn't like the proposal much either, but there's no reason to yell at him. His math isn't a problem -- it's fine to have a proposal which lacks complicated math.

I memorized Statue Form with the intention of using it as a poor man's Necromutation -- I believe it reduces torment damage, right?

Re: CBoE versus staff of channeling, the staff seems more reliable. Is there any particular reason to use the CBoE instead?

Thanks for all the useful advice! The -10% hp mutation is one I just picked up. I already used the single Cure Mutation potion I've found during the game so far to cure -20% hp mutation. Necromutation to avoid Torment is tempting, and I think I know where a Necronomicon is, but which spells should I...

I've got a ice elementalist coming along pretty well and I'm considering taking it to the endgame. My first two found spellbooks included Sublimation of Blood, and the Book of Cold (the one with Freezing Cloud), which were great finds, but then I got no more useful spells until around the time I was...

If you're really concerned about healscumming off /RE, add /poly as one of the possible effects of /RE. No one will ever intentionally point it at themselves again.

What I am about to propose will be contriversal. The only reason it will be contriversal is that as humans we all have a bug in our thinking that tells us familiar is eqaul to good/right, and unfamiliar is equal to bad/wrong. We all need to rise above this basic human fault. You clearly do not unde...

When reaching was added to all polearms, all monsters wielding polearms got reaching. I'm not sure, but I assume the same thing happened with axes and cleaving, and if it isn't true, it should become true (cleaving would only affect player + player-friendlies, I assume). Whatever the traits are for ...

Seconding XuaXua -- it's not that shields are bad (though they may well be) -- it's just that after being given one or two or seven I presumably have enough of them that SoA should stop giving me more.

Congrats on your first win! Man, you got some crazy luck on the mutation lottery there -- +8 AC, cold resistance, and +10% health is great.

In terms of acquirement regret (and gifting regret), I think receiving an endless parade of shields from armor acquirement when wielding two-handed weapons has got to top the list. Is there any way to limit this -- at least limit it to one vanilla shield, and one shield of each ego or something? It'...

If you're wearing armor w/o an evasion penalty, you need fewer skill levels to eliminate the shield penalty. For average-sized races, the breakpoints become 1, 11, and 21. Edit: from LearnDB: "When wearing a robe (or other EVP 0 armour), you need less shield skill to eliminate just the casting ...

Oh, here's another question about late-game evasion-based fighters: what armor choices should be considered? I didn't have access to any of the light dragon armors, but I had a +11 artifact chainmail IIRC, and access to troll leather / fire dragon / ice dragon / storm dragon / gold dragon armor, tho...

I recently had a MeAr die while escaping with the orb and 5 runes in a way that was probably avoidable (why wasn't I swiftness'd constantly, for example?) In the process I ran into a few late game questions I'd appreciate advice on: 1: If you want to dip your toes into post-endgame content, is it be...

Hatches drop you to the same point each time you use them -- they are only randomized the first time you use them.

Tried delving Cocytus a few times, and made it down to 7, but the repeated tormenting made me run away repeatedly and burn through permafood. I decided to grab the orb with only 5 runes and run for it, but was killed on the way out by a very fast pandemonium lord who summoned a bunch of tormenting a...

Wandy is up to 5 runes now, having cleared the Shoals, Spider, Slime, Vaults, and nabbed the Abyssal rune on his third visit (a voluntary visit this time). In Slime, the artifact amulet of rCorr helped a lot, but he still took some damage to his armor set, which was partially replaced by swapping ar...

He made it out of the Abyss without incident, even managing not to get mutated by Neqxotecs, even after having to melee one down (it got the drop on me). He finished off the spriggans, confiscated the quickblade of distortion, and continued down through the dungeon. A few levels down, he ran into a ...

Oh, I see -- I missed that last case of the calculation. Thanks! I have been using a fair amount of poisonous cloud, now that you mention it -- it's pretty good against those spriggans, for example. :D Yeah, I had that ring on because there was a dragon around -- I'll swap it out now that I've been ...

I boosted polearms to 26 and cleared out the Spider Nest, mostly uneventfully, but burning a bunch of potions and a teleport scroll to get away from a ghost moth, a moth of wrath, and two emperor scorpions (one berserked). I dropped all the summoning crap I was carrying after remembering that Okawar...

Whoa, crap, I've got this all wrong. The delay on the bardiche is 2.0, which I thought meant that the best it could get down to is 1.0, which would be obtained at 20 skill (-.1 per 2 levels). Does it actually get down to .7, or does it just take more than I thought to get to 1.0? Also, re: rods, I d...

I just found a sweet vault in the lower dungeon filled with liches, ogre mages, and elf casters of various sorts. After I cleared out, I picked up a ton of randart spellbooks and the first two decent permanent evocable objects all game. I enchanted my Rod of Destruction up to +9, and I started clear...

How much A do the various poisoning attacks deliver?

+5 damage weapons are immune to corrosion. The accuracy bonus doesn't matter.

It looks like elliptic has it set to prevent autopickup of scrolls of unholy creation and potions of restore abilities. Both of those seem useful to me -- does anyone know why they should be ignored?

There are a few threads currently discussing tips for wizards right now, and it's got me thinking about my default plan for wizard skill progression. Because the wizard is a versatile background with a wide variety of utility spells to handle any circumstance, I like to play to that versatility by g...

I appreciate the advice given so far -- that all aligns fairly well with what I currently do. I've still got a question, so let me reframe my initial query a little: when playing a character with powerful auxiliary attacks, is it best to go for the fastest weapon possible at the beginning of the gam...

When I start a new octopode mage, I always aim to equip it with a dagger. My reasoning is that a dagger is the one weapon which has a delay of 1.0 without any skill, meaning that a) using it never eats an extra turn you might need to escape, and b) I get constriction attacks as fast as possible. For...

Search found 3027 matches