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Extended is just as easy as everything else after Lair:1, man. I disagree, because of hellfire, torment, hell effects and mummy death curses. Slime and Abyss are usually quite easy after getting 3 runes, in my experience. And we have come full circle in this thread. None of those are actually that ...

I'm not sure why it's desirable to reduce randomness. Personally I think the variance in outcomes in crawl combat is a plus, not a minus, though I don't want to argue in support of this position right now. Less randomness makes Crawl more of a solved game, which is not healthy for its lifespan expe...

That would be a huge difficulty increase for new players. It's already hard enough teaching new players to use their consumables rather than hoard it. I'm not so sure the artificial increase in excitement is worth the tedium it'd add for experienced players.

Patashu wrote:I think you meant to post this in CYC.

A joke?! You don't say.

It can be very difficult to follow conversations in ##crawl due to the progress updates generated by bots from every server. Putting the bots on ignore is not a solution as they provide useful data when queried (learndb, monster stats, statistics, logs). At this point in the game's lifespan it's not...

Can you give us an example of what you consider to be a "very nasty fight"? Khufu? The Royal Jelly? Randomly-created Pandemonium lord? Cerebov?

Or will this invocation create its own unique monsters to challenge you?

Your ghost was tough, but I did ya proud. 65484 | Slime:6 | Noticed tasonir's ghost (legendary OpEE) 65549 | Slime:6 | Killed tasonir's ghost also, whenever I take on TRJ I generally look to see if I can find a full corner on the outer edge of the vault structure. Exposes you to only three tiles at ...

dck wrote:Well holy orc knights aren't hugely interesting either.

Tavern seems to oscillate between hating monsters that are interesting and hating monsters that aren't interesting.

Should have known it'd be Art of War. It's very applicable to many other fields, not just Crawl (or warfare), but it's more of a broad-strokes thing. Not many people have the overall experience (or ability) to convert broad-strokes advice into precise tactical movements.

TheDefiniteArticle wrote:That's the one nagging doubt about writing a Crawl guide: some dude in China already wrote the best Crawl guide a long long time ago, and if I posted it in here it would be totally ignored. But then given what I just wrote, maybe that should be my goal.

I'd be curious to see this guide.

I agree with crate, I don't like the idea of ranged stabbing at all. The explicit drawback of stabbing is that you have to get in close to your target, sacrificing safety and positioning for the chance at an instakill. When you take that requirement away, what's left?

Ashenzari reasons.

If you get lucky and find a rod early on it's very worth it to invest in some Evocations for them. A rod of shadows or inaccuracy is an amazing power boost.

I generally use them as part of my pre-fight setup, not during a pitched battle.

As for a suggestion for "improving" them without buffing them, I think a change as simple as allowing Demigod to control the allocation of all stat increases from XL gain could do wonders for the race's feel and distinctiveness.

"Demigod" is just flavor - what they are, mechanically, is the Race with Huge Stats. We could just as easily rename them Humans or Golems or whatever, it has no impact on the actual mechanics of the Demigod race. Don't get distracted by the shiny wrapping. The question at hand here is, &qu...

Entirely separate from the mechanical issues at hand here, I would prefer to keep Kobold over Halfling as kobolds have actual (and varied!) representation in the game. The Crawl versions of Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves have successfully differentiated themselves from the Tolkien origins, but I don't thi...

Why use attack wands on jellies/eels when you can just polymorph them?

Frankly I'm surprised they didn't already count as summons.

You could do sheep instead of yaks if you wanted to reduce the danger level here.

That said, doesn't Polyphemus already cover the Y class of monsters?

What's the purpose of komodo dragons now, then? They aren't that much tougher than yaks and yaks have a special feature of appearing in packs.

I've been killed by an allied demonic guardian opening a door that I closed the previous turn, allowing sight for an orc priest to smite me. Units under your control should respect doors (maybe only if they see you close/open it?).

Klown wrote:Why are cure mutation potions so rare in such a mutation-heavy game?

Would you care about mutations if you could easily cure them?

Keep in mind he's playing Vine Stalker so it's not as if he lacks a source of (pseudo)vampirism. On the other side of that coin, for a character who can't heal via quaff/evoke it would behoove him to have as many sources of alternative healing as possible. 12 in M&F for mindelay on whips/demon w...

Electrocution is one of the better brands for a whip, you already have an investment in Maces & Flails, and on top of that it's trivial XP-wise to hit mindelay with whips (requiring 12 skill). Longswords will eventually get outclassed and higher levels of blades require a lot of XP. As a summone...

Fucking javelineers holy shit.

Invest in Dodging as soon as possible, especially if you decide to give up the shield and go with the bardiche. You'll be able to get it up from 1.7 to 7-8 very quickly and you'll see a big jump in your EV thanks to it. Keep in mind that higher skill levels are much, much more expensive to progress ...

Thanks for analysis! No time to go into details right now, but one idea that crossed my head: banishment should send different characters to different Abyss levels. You could model this on character XL, or also the banishing source's depth. Doing something like this could allow Banishment strength ...

Lava swimming is almost exclusively flavour: fits the theme, and easy to turn into game mechanics. Compare with Beogh water walking. Sure, I agree. Why restrict something so flavorful to later on in the game though? By the time you have lava swimming you'll likely have a method of flight. Brannock:...

I do like lava swimming, but I wonder how often you'll have opportunities to use it. Other than randomly generated vaults, there's the Volcano and Gehenna. Where else?

To be frank the proposal is perhaps *too* safe and conservative. It's not very exciting, you basically start with Slow Movement 2, rC-, and a small amount of fire damage on hit, eventually switching out Slow Movement 2 for rF++. So in effect you handicap yourself early on for guaranteed later obtain...

At a minimum I'd love to see the suggested Okawaru change to be implemented. Individually sacrificing each corpse after a major battle is insanely tedious (but auto_sacrifice helps!) and doesn't fit with Okawaru's flavor. Why does the God of Grand Battle care about dead bodies? They aren't going to ...

What's different specifically about Brogue's stairs? I haven't gotten around to playing Brogue and I don't see anything enlightening turning up on my searches for "brogue stairs".

I went through Swamp 5 today on a HuWn and was caught off guard by a spriggan druid accompanying a pack of 20-25 hydrae/dragons and a couple thorn hunters. After fighting and teleporting away a couple times and trying to draw out the druid I realized that thanks to its speed and convoking I wasn't g...

Shield of Friction.

If mercenary/pet shops became a thing then Beastmaster wouldn't be unique compared to other backgrounds - they'd just get guaranteed access to a pet (similar to how Conjurers get guaranteed access to a spellbook, etc).

Not that I think it's a real issue.

I'm in favor of Hill Orc -> Orc and Lava Orc -> Salamander. But this is off topic.

A bloodsucking race seems at odds with Vampire, even if they do rely on different mechanics. And if we're talking different mechanics here, Blood Orc (as they stand) overlap a little bit with Vine Stalker.

I'll always support more flavor in Crawl, but not spoilery mechanical interactions like this.

It is probably because it is temperature related unlike bolt of cold? Bolt of cold is a physical shard you can block with a shield. I'd envision the breath to be like an all-encompassing wind chill. Aren't you thinking of Throw Icicle? Bolt of Cold pierces enemies, much unlike a blockable shard.

After roughly ~3 hours total of spectating Dithmengos on CSZO today I feel safe saying that it's the Shadow Mimic part of Dsomething that's the most powerful part of the current incarnation. The rest of his abilities feel/seem balanced and flavorful. The damage amplification you get from shadow mimi...

Not sure Dithmengos should be Evil. I think a neutral god of shadows would be more interesting.

If you quaff ID a potion of beneficial mutation before Lair and get an awesome mutation (like fast movement), it would be a good idea to stop quaff ID'ing potions until you have identified also mutation and cure mutation. The next potion just might be cure mutation... Don't ever quaff ID potions: 1...

"likely"?

No apostrophes or dashes please. They're incredibly inelegant and stereotypical.

^^^ I must have not been paying attention to whether or not I got invigorated from chomping - your explanation makes sense, thanks. My first attempt at VS got two runes and died on Vaults: 5 from sloppy play. Could have easily cleared it out with stairdancing, but meh. After 3 straight hours of play...

Should vinestalkers be able to drain magic from plants and fungi?

jejorda2 wrote:I could swear I've been hit by poisoned tomahawks already.

I can confirm that tomahawks of poison do exist.

Wahaha wrote:People sometimes learn spells without being able to cast them, you shouldn't count those.

Do you mean only 100% chance of miscast spells, or "unreasonably high chance of miscasting" or what?

I dunno. The game already has lots of "do you want to do this dumb thing?" warnings. It's almost self-playing at this point.

My major concern with inventory management is that equipped items take up quite a significant chunk of what's supposed to be in your *backpack*. Assuming you're fully kitted out, that's weapon, shield, hat, torso, gloves, boots, 2 rings, and amulet: nine inventory slots. If we were to go to 26 inven...

Are manuals so powerful that they can't be placed earlier in the Dungeon without reducing their strength? It seems to me that finding an early manual should change a game significantly, but I'm not sure if they would have nearly that effect if they were weaker to go along with being able to show up ...

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