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After running my TrHu as a palette cleanser to rinse the taste of failure out of my mouth, I decided to try and score a win with a more respectable combo. Took around six tries to get one of the ground, but I finally managed to win with a Naga, which was sort of a white whale of mine for a while. I ...

There really was no "all of Slime" for me, experience-wise The layout was absolutely perfect for diving. I killed maybe one slime creature pack and 3-4 Azure Jelly/Acid Blobs per floor and nothing else. Although I kind of lost track of how much experience anything was worth because somewhe...

Yeah, I know, a three-rune Troll win isn't exactly worth bragging about. But my last win is so old that it was a MDDK, so whatever! I've been splatting HOArs, GrEEs, and various Tms and AEs on and off for years on end until I finally said fuck it and picked Troll. And then won on my first attempt. B...

It's true, I don't really know for sure exactly how good a job +30% HP does at counteracting large-size penalties. And I have even LESS idea how Ogres with +40/50% HP would stack up against Draconians with +10% HP plus some AC, or how those stack up against Gargoyles with -20% HP but a ton of AC. B...

It's true, I don't really know for sure exactly how good a job +30% HP does at counteracting large-size penalties. And I have even LESS idea how Ogres with +40/50% HP would stack up against Draconians with +10% HP plus some AC, or how those stack up against Gargoyles with -20% HP but a ton of AC. Ba...

If you're going to explicitly disincentivise the use of the signature large-character mechanics, than what remains to distinguish new Ogres from Draconians? Draconians also have mostly-flat aptitudes, some equipment restrictions, and more durability than a typical human wizard thanks to extra HP and...

It ought to be acknowledged more that choices like "what kind of weapon/character to I want to have" are, for the most part, made at character select. If someone wants to play a character who uses polearms, they are likely going to choose merfolk, hill orc, etc. And if they want to play a...

The average maces aptitude is about -0.7. -1 isn't very far below average, and giant clubs are still a no-brainer on ogres, anyway (which is why I suggested nerfing it to -2 or -3, not -1). This is preposterous to me. Giant clubs and large rocks are special weapons which are stronger than usual but...

I'm seeing some pretty major issues with this proposal. For one thing, fluctuating base stats tends to effect either too much to be workable or not enough to be interesting. The dexterity means that your EV is a bit swingy, which is kind of whatever. At minimum maybe you lose a couple points compare...

I'm not certain you're approaching this from the right perspective. Spelunky is a game about interacting with the evironment. It's a good game because the environments are good, player movement is well-tuned, and monsters and items are designed such that they make the environment more interesting to...

Did the change actually do this? It looks like PF's commit just makes it so that all plain equipment is now +0 and nothing else is changed. Indeed, yes. Be careful what you wish for, guys! :P If "plain" means "neither glowing or runed" then yes that's what happened. It's a diffi...

Oh yeah, this is a 15-runer for sure unless you do something stupid. I mean, obviously you should train Conjurations and Fire so Sif Muna will gift you Fire Storm, but that goes without saying.

You began with the premise that 0.15 Nemelex is not very good because the Deck of War is too dilute for it to be worth random-drawing from it (which I agree with). But doesn't this proposal just make that problem worse? You are never in a situation where you're equally happy to draw a nuke or a tele...

Picking a weapon class at the start of the game is a good idea in general, but doubly so if you worship Trog (or Okawaru). Their weapon gifts are weighted by your skills. If you'd had 16 in Long Blades and zero in everything else, the vast majority of your weapon gifts would be long blades that you ...

My Maces & Flails skill is currently at 20, and I'm usually using two rings that combine for +12/+9 slaying bonus. I figure those rings mean I'd want to go with a fast weapon, and avoiding the 2-handers allows me to use a shield (although I only have a +2 shield of reflection). Speed is a non-f...

For the branch in general, we're still mulling over what option to pursue. The core thing we have to decide is if we want to change how food works in the long term. Moving to floor-only food drops and removing spell/ability hunger (food usage only to prevent scummy behavior) is one direction. This ...

6) You are a Vampire, Ghoul, or Troll ... you're suddenly given the middle finger when you try to do anything in the extended endgame. One of these days you should really try doing extended with a vampire, ghoul, or troll. I would, but then I would have to play a Vampire, Ghoul, or Troll. And also ...

Mostly for the sake of clarifying my own thoughts, I'm going to take a step back and look at what impact hunger currently has, with chunks included, across a general spectrum of character types: 1) You are a mummy. Food is irrelevant. 2) You have an Amulet of the Gourmand. Food is essentially irrele...

The number of chunks the game produces greatly exceeds the number of chunks you can actually eat. Between rotting and the inability to eat chunks when not hungry, only a tiny fraction of potential nutrition provided by corpses is ever consumed. If chunks didn't rot, all players had free gourmand, an...

I'm usually not a fan of Ashenzari, but the combo with Ogre does sound nice. I might have to try that sometime.

Why Necromancer, though? If defenses were your concern, wouldn't Ice Elementalist have made more sense?

Can you give me a crash course in using Makhleb's invocations? Never tried them before. Minor Destruction is very weak and should probably never be used by a Deep Dwarf. It's like tomahawk-level damage or something, if that (it often casts Pain which is often resisted). Major Destruction, on the ot...

How could they actually be reworked to avoid this issue? Seems like it would be un-fixable unless a significant change occurred, things like... Making them passive 'always-on' like Te/Ga flying, but that would require some odd 'drawback' like MP rot (28 MP now 26 until you turn off that level 2 spe...

Aspiring conjurers should not know Spellforged Servitor and Conjure Ball Lightning at the same time. Or Orb of Destruction. Just...stay away from spheres in general, maybe. 164956 Sjohara the Fencer (level 17, -22/115 HPs) Began as a High Elf Air Elementalist on June 2, 2014. Was the Champio...

As much as I'm usually not in favor of species/background removals, I'm genuinely surprised every time I remember that Halflings still exist.

You made an attempt on the Elf vault as a [i]Formicid[\i] with a [i]quarterstaff[\i]? Are you mad? Vampiric Lajatang + shield would be very strong. Claymore + shield would also be strong, but going from 0 to 24 skill on a character who cares about spells is probably impractical. Dire Flails and Quar...

I'm assuming from context that you started with maces and switched to axes after finding the heavily enchanted one you're wielding. That might have been worth it if your mace at the time was very bad, but in general axes aren't a great weapon class and switching weapon classes is usually pretty expe...

Well, for very light armor, it's a usually a non-issue regardless, because +2 robes and leather armor are trivial to find. The biggest part of the problem, if there is one, is that one of the advantages of heavy armor--the high enchantment cap--tends to be irrelevant, since you usually won't have en...

If you're going to get impatient and berserk away the last 25% of The Royal Jelly's HP, remember to switch your Amulet of Resist Mutation back to rCorr first. Alternately: don't berserk The Royal Jelly and use some of your 15 stockpiled attack wands you stupid frigging idiot. (Funnily enough I was s...

The hungerless casting mutation is a good idea for Kobolds and I think it could also work on Felids. Corpse eating would be good for Trolls, I almost never play Ghouls, so I don't know what would be good for them. For Simulacrum I would support a slight modification of option 4: Casting simulacrum ...

I think Trolls should definitely be able to eat corpses off the ground. It's flavorful, the functionality already exists, and it's mechanically indistinct from the old implementation. I see no reason not to do it. Kobolds should probably get the same ability, or a mutation that gives them hungerless...

Most of them are useful ONLY if you go directly into melee combat, and even then they have a pretty good chance of being mediocre (Helm), useless (Blade, most of the time), or actively harmful (Metamorphosis most of the time). Helm card is actually super good so I don't know what you're talking abo...

I noticed in the changelog that Nemelex gifts decks of escape separately from War again. That's good; I don't think Nemelex was going to be viable with just one deck. I also think the decision to get rid of strategic effects is generally a good idea, primarily on the grounds that I've always liked g...

Crystal Plate Mail has an encumbrance of 23. Doesn't that mean there are huge casting penalties for being below that in strength? I thought I saw my casting percentages skyrocket when I went from 22 to 23, but then again was training armor skill at the same time. I'm a little wary of spending scroll...

I don't expect to be able to cast anything of note with 7 Charms now. I just figured that if it took around 12 Translocations to get just a mono-school level 2 spell reliable in this armor, getting a level 6 spell was a pipe dream. I have no experience casting in anything heavier than fire dragon ar...

In my efforts to learn how to play non-mage starts, I've been running a lot of orcs of Makhleb. This one is going quite well, with two runes and most of the Vaults down so far, but my skilling plans have kind of gone to hell due to a number of recent developments and I'm not sure how I want to proce...

14916 | Lair:3 | Identified the +9,+9 trident of Severance {pierce, rF+} (You found it on level 3 of the Lair of Beasts) 15003 | Lair:3 | Offered knowledge of Conjure Ball Lightning by Vehumet. 15373 | Lair:3 | Found a staircase to the Swamp. 15475 | Lair:3 | Learned a level 6 spell: Conjure Ball Li...

Well, if you DO suddenly find yourself in a situation where you need Wandering Mushrooms, you won't have any and won't have any means of making any. And it seems like it would usually be pretty hard for a Wandering Mushroom to kill something by accident, let alone enough things to meaningfully impac...

I'd say the opposite. Getting -Str +Int and having no spellbook puts you in a pretty lousy position with no advantages Why? You can continue to stay fighter while you are looking for books. It's very unlikely you will get Str below 8-9 especially if you choose Str on levelups. "Fighter on D4 w...

I don't think unlucky stat changes would shut you down as badly as you might expect. I'm not saying it kills the character, I'm just saying it shuts down your options. If you lose the wrong stat relative to your start, it's pretty much a no-brainer to abandon that strategy immediately. You aren't r...

Any god that gives you an early power boost is probably fine. Okawaru, Fedhas, and Yredelemnul being the most obvious possibilities that spring to mind (though Yredelemnul might make things too crowded to use Spectral Weapon effectively). As a light-armored hybrid with no ranged capability, you prob...

From my very limited experience with the background, I've gotten the impression that Spectral Weapon is the only thing in the Skald's spellbook that has a significant chance of turning the tide against anything that's likely to kill you in the early game (Regeneration never hurts either, but Necroma...

...As it stands, I feel like you're almost guaranteed to get a more interesting character by choosing background first and then hitting the random button for race selection than you are by playing an insectoid. The difference is that it is this race evolves. It is quite uncommon to start playing as...

I'm not certain that stats in Dungeon Crawl are interesting enough to make this race fun to play. You have a 1/3 chance of magic being a pain to break into, a 1/3 chance of inventory management being tedious, and a 50/50 chance of favoring light or heavy armor. Is a +Str/-Int insectoid anything more...

LMAO.. Elf is 100% worth it for those who are prepared and know what they are doing. The loot is worth it, on par with Vault 5 loot , in fact I like Elf 3 loot better than Vault 5 loot, from my experience. Seems I always find something uber that I need there. Many times it is recommended to do Elf ...

Well, they would definitely be banned from Yred. The other gods are debatable, but would probably be okay with nonliving worshipers. I really like the halved piety gain, it should nicely screw with god choice and use, while preserving the depth of the religion system. Only a couple of gods care abo...

I do have some armor shuffling I can do. I have a +3 artifact cloak with no resistances (or regular cloaks with magic or poison resistance), but I'm never sure how valuable small AC bonuses are, so I haven't been wearing it full-time. The other issue with taking off my current cloak is that if I unw...

In the process of trying to prove that Fighter is an awful background in the game design forum, I somehow wound up with a four-rune Hill Orc Artificer of Makhleb (played as though I was a fighter from floor 1). I've cleared through Zot 4, as well as the Elven Halls and the Crypt (so the dungeon is p...

Doesn't a bardiche have the same damage but considerably worse delay? I'm not sure if reaching is worth the slower swing speed. I think 170 rounds down to .9 rather than .8 at min delay, so it might not be a huge difference in the long run, but it takes a fair bit longer to get your weapon skill hig...

I still feel like I see many times more maces than polearms even though halberds show up fairly consistently, but maybe I'll give the trident a shot next time. I'd still dump a halberd for a great mace hands down, but I've given up on assuming I'll be able to stick to one weapon class anyway (someti...

Considering that tridents are better than flails and morningstars their availability isn't much of an upside, either. Really the best thing about maces is Pikel's whip and great maces being very good and very common. Demon whips are very good but so rare that they shouldn't factor in the decisino. ...

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