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Could always make summons durable with a cost for having them out, and a delay before summoning again if they die. Total # of summon spells could be reduced also. Summon demon is the most obvious candidate for removal, but you also could make a case for imps, canine familiar, butterflies, ice beasts...

You can "encroach on other schools" with dual school spells if need be, and just make relatively few "pure" summon spells. One of the strongest *and* least frustrating summoning spells in the game already does this. This problem extends to gods too though. Ally commands need to w...

The simplest improvement would be to make ally commands do what the ally commands say, rather than having them do something different.

I also went unarmed for tmut. I died, but not because I chose that. Damage output was actually really good. I died because I didn't have the patience to maintain good habits with positioning and got a death knight + 2 freezing wraith combo (one I hadn't seen previously) just after lair. After gettin...

The reason you want to close distance is at minimum the monster has a chance to hit you with an attack that is weaker than its ranged options (IE orc priest choosing melee over smite). This isn't true. The chance of an orc priest smiting is the same whether you're next to it or not. Same for monste...

They hit 10+weapon. If you have 20-50 health you can just straight up lose if you roll poorly on early floors like ~D:4. The odds of this reduce dramatically as you go further, but so does the threat from "spike" taurs. There are lots of monsters where you want to close the distance ASAP. ...

Early game centaurs can easily 1v1 you to death in melee even if you're at full health, and it's not like you can run from them.

By that token, changing a single aptitude by any multiple of 3 makes no difference, right? What a clever, worthwhile thing to post. If you feel it isn't, your own arguments could use some self-reflection re: "blows your mind" earlier. Rationale doesn't become more or less valid depending ...

Well, the original M&F apt change certainly made a substantial difference for people who liked to play ogres. 3 aptitude points is an awful lot. It's the difference between something being an extremely solid option and something being not really viable at all. Also, if we take the statement &qu...

One of which is to avoid no-brainer decisions, which OP presented troll UC to be. Is that in dispute? You should read the PR, in particular ebering's reply, which does dispute this. I read it, but it isn't plausible unless we're willing to accept "damage potential for XP" as reasoning in ...

Can you stop derailing threads with lesswrong sloganism mixed with (willful?) misrepresentation of devteam positions. Regen was not removed because it was like Trog's hand. Regen was removed for the combination of reasons presented in the commit message taken together as a single conjunct. The desi...

How much you get contam-proc'd in hell depends on what god you're using. Zin doesn't care, and picks like Makhleb and TSO spend a lot less time than others because they heal on kill. I guess Kiku and Sif Muna give you lich form guaranteed, if you're willing to actually train that. The others might f...

Buddy, let me know when you have logic of your own to lay on me. If you honestly cared and it had a chance of changing something I'd take this on good faith and try. But mutations have stayed in their present form since .22 so it's hard to believe that. As it stands, the people doing the work on th...

Seems to work for me, and is a much more convenient option than fsim. Thanks!

By that logic, OP's case that M&F giving trolls two viable options (one more defensively oriented than the other) is better than one holds more credibility than the refutation that high M&F aptitude would suddenly make big clubs too strong or effective on trolls. The shield point is strong; ...

Do you do Slime? A single shining eye gave me Berserkitis, clumsy 1, frail 1 and low mp1 in a couple of turns despite me using summon butterflies to block LOS. I had to use 2/3 mut pots to get rid of berserkitis, and then an OOF gave me deterioration 2 on zot:2. You really want a way to block LoS f...

Kiku is the strongest god option among the 3 by a margin, but if you see Dith early it's reasonable to take it. Kiku might be on next floor...or 5 floors away. Kiku also gives you more early if you're skipping pots/scrolls, since you have some guaranteed magic access and with any luck you'll get the...

What bothers me a lot with current reaching is that it makes every orc/gnoll/vault guardian fight a chore because I need to manually examine them to figure out of there are any reachers among them. I play the text version. That's going to stay the same no matter what as long as reaching/damage on g...

Basic movement speed is useful, but overrated in crawl. We have enough data to be very suspect that simple move speed is a major predictor of how likely a player is to win. Centaurs do well in winrate, but felids and spriggans are average-to-below in that stat. Nagas are above average. Chei finishe...

At least with Zin you can block new mutations, so you can scum for pots w/o making the problem worse. OP with large shield is pretty solid so you can definitely get through most things with Zin, including abyss. The mut game is pretty bad, I wish it got more attention than randomly removing spells b...

In extended, you are constantly harassed by waves and waves of enemies, hell effects, torment, hellfire, etc You're really not. Pan's monster generation rate is faster than what you're used to in Dungeon (rip), but it's still not that fast and most of the stuff that gets generated is harmless trash...

I would never enchant a shield, AC is much better. I would never enchant a shield preferentially, but I will certainly enchant one if armor slots are maxed. This can legitimately happen if you get some +11 chainmail of 3 resistances, +4 slaying, and +inv in orc or something similarly ridiculous. Ty...

In the early game, picking up and using a 0 skill sling is valuable if you know it isn't cursed/aren't a caster. Beats throwing stones, and it crosstrains throwing anyway. Highly enchanted slings (usually random artifact stuff) continue to be useful for most of the early-mid game. Something like pun...

XP does have diminishing marginal utility per skill spent, yes. With defenses it's more complicated because you often don't want to invest in dexterity (non-chei), and heavier armors somewhat reduce the benefit of training EV. But hybrid defenses are still very effective, you can wade through a ton ...

Most people say necromutation is bad. Statue form has a divided opinion. Some people really like it in extended, others don't bother or can take or leave it. Many recent nerfs have been: a) removing the option completely on shaky/overly general justification (no way to "actually try the thing&q...

Fedhas should utilize corpses in some way. It fits the theme of decomposition, and corpses are an interesting resource to play with. Make some of his abilities require a fresh corpse to decompose in order to use. Maybe spellpower based on monster hd. I'm not a fan of this unless demons start making...

If you want to self-troll pick Sif Muna or Xom. If you want a strong troll pick Trog, keep Ru, pick Okawaru/Hep/whatever isn't dependent on casting spells. If you've invested in throwing from early on, you can kill hydras reasonably consistently by throwing boomerangs. Obviously javelins and and lar...

Another way to put it is that Pan is probably safer on average, but has some really high variance. Hell might dump a couple tier 1 demons on you at a bad time, but it will never toss you immediately adjacent to a pan lord with silence + glaciate the moment you go down a staircase. I guess that's alw...

TSO actually does let you poison freely, and will allow stabs against demons/undead while making them into regular attacks otherwise IIRC. Green draconian of TSO would be fine in extended, it's not like you'll get huge mileage out of most non-fog breath weapons there (though grey's extra AC is alway...

I often do hells first too. Hells have higher density of threatening enemies I think, but the ability to duck back to vestibule with some consistency makes it attractive. Also two of the hell branches benefit from having an obvious particular resistance to emphasize, so you can optimize gear for the...

Trog sucks in extended. You can get 15 runes with any god choice, even Xom, but Trog is one of the least fun endeavors for it. I think I'd rather have Xom in extended even, though in 3 rune Trog is a top 3-4 god. TSO is good in extended. Zin, Kiku, Makhleb are also top choices there. If you must pic...

Okawaru is underrated, especially as a god for weaker players. Heroism doesn't give you as much damage as berserk, but it does give you a lot more control over a fight (you still get better damage and attack rate, higher defenses, and obviously no constraints on movement or magic/item use), which m...

Nemelex got nerfed relative to its .22 or so days. It's still a top tier god choice, but it's a lot less annoying to use now. Calling it "overpowered" in the company of Trog, Kiku, Gozag, Hep, for example is something of a reach though. It's better than picking Sif Muna early or taking Xom...

Depths are more dangerous than elf and vaults, however. I usually go S branches --> Elf --> Vaults --> Depths. Scimitar +4 isn't amazing but it should be workable in vaults still. I had a game where I was stuck w/o demon blade until V:5. Scimitar is better than trident, slightly better than war axe,...

As for centaurs and their speed advantage, I think they're beyond repair. Movement speed simply is a very big advantage in this game because you generally have to pay somehow for escape tools or they're limited in quantity. Centaurs have a built-in very simple escape tool. I think they should be ex...

Demon blades are significantly more rare than broad axes (can spawn on orcs) or demon tridents (likely in shoals and more common on uniques AFAIK) in practice. Hell knights in depths can have any of the demon weapons, but you can get good 1h weapons from other types earlier/more often. Elf might get...

The problem comes with actually supporting XP gains other than 100%. If you don't, you almost certainly will get unfair interactions or the game performing differently than intended. If you do, you're now designing and managing mechanics for multiple difficulty levels. DCSS is not Dark Souls, but th...

Running for stairs is slow/risky with the slow effects, PoG or cBlink will get you there though. I'm a big fan of fog and lig in W:3, torment immunity is pretty valuable even if you can't move. Good to have cancellation just in case, though usually with TSO + lig + fog I can clear tomb pretty safely...

^ same goes for AC, training armor/dodging skill has some break points/jumps as it does not appear the game uses fractional AC or EV.

"It does nothing" is an extremely optimistic assessment that has not held up to scrutiny in other games. I see no reason crawl would be an exception as there are lots of interactions in crawl where XP can disproportionately effect one thing compared to others. Consider a combo of stairdanc...

I'm not convinced necromancy is that much stronger than alternative schools/similar xp investment elsewhere. What leads us to have such a suspicion in the first place?

11. Shoals has some amazing physics, even more so than other branches. Water can even cover the upstairs specifically! 12. "Teleportation vs causality" 13. Critical existence failure trope - any value above 0hp, you can fight and cast spells at full capability. 14. Healing of all types is ...

Unidentified consumables operate at a cross-purpose with having consumables, and that's always bothered me in the early dungeon. When you only have one of something, use-ID doesn't help unless you're already in a bad situation. But if you're already in said bad situation, you only have so much time ...

Sidestepping the question of whether the game is too hard or easy: Arguments of the form "this change will make the game too hard" can easily be dealt with by simply buffing the players. For instance, If it is determined that caster types are too weak after some change, one can give start...

Getting chain confused with no way out sucks. Gozag can petition curing pots, but that would get expensive quickly. You cannot petition while confused, anyway. Huh, thought you could. Glad I didn't try that. W/o that spider is a straight up death trap for mummy of Gozag and should be considered at ...

Note that while Gozag is more beneficial to mummies than to other species, other species using Gozag are still easier than playing a mummy of Gozag. That said, mummy is my most played/favorite species and the only one I've bothered to get "greater species" with. It's certainly doable. You ...

The idea of the skill system is to tailor its use to what the dungeon presents, and this happens with reasonable frequency. Stats are somewhat an extension of the skill system, though they do tend to overlap. Gnolls take the adaptability to an extreme and are perhaps on the forgiving side, but it's ...

Well, there's that poll at the top. Considering the results, I'd say the current codebase wins by a large margin. At this very moment, there are 17 votes for leaving shafts as they are, and 16 votes for reducing them. Is this really a large margin to you? By the way, I am really surprised that 33 p...

I can't imagine 27 M&F + stealth + dark maul + boots of assassin would fail to OHKO. Vulnerability --> paralysis for tier 1 stab. If I'm not mistaken a tier 1 stab does + 1100% damage, which on 52 base with +10, vorpal brand, and 30 "short blade stabbing" bonus would let you kill TRJ e...

Removed, was off-topic.

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