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This argument is tangential. Tabstorm's right: you shouldn't get surrounded by speed 10 melee monsters in a vacuum. The 'big dumb monsters' that exist after the first few floors of the dungeon are typically made dangerous by other enemies (guardian serpent : naga = orc wizard : orc) Magic-oriented c...

tabstorm wrote:why don't you just not get surrounded...

too busy pressing tab

Spells are powerful, but looking at the game in terms of caster vs tabber is creating a dichotomy that magic users are bound to lose. If you are training magic in order to get hypothetical endgame spells online, you are wasting xp and making the game much more difficult for yourself. Train things th...

I think that poison (on both ends, but i'm talking here about the status/damage type as it effects enemies) is a poorly designed mechanic in that it is just another xtra damage brand except that you have to lure enemies in order to get that xtra damage, instead of just getting it up front (as is the...

Will the demonspawn mutation ignite blood turn allies hostile or anger okawaru?

The -ctele status should be visible in zot. Imbalanced weapon/ elemental attributes should be flattened (mf te ho etc). Demonic guardian should be made into an active ability, then removed because it overlaps w/ makhleb. Airstrike/shatter should do = damage to all enemies/players. Entropy weavers sh...

Get rid of okawaru's terrible ally conduct? While we're at it, prevent allies from turning hostile (except on a timer, when that applies).

Is there anything wrong with purely strategic spells, in the manner of r/dmsl? I feel like a spell that gave rf+ and rc+ wouldn't be broken as a level 5/6 charms spell (in fact it would probably be underpowered). I can even imagine the strategic question of 'should I train the charms to learn this +...

More frustrating than cast 3 magic darts, walk 60 steps, repeat?

Liches would be able to LCS you, but they waste a bunch of turns struggling to escape the net, so it's basically consumable antimagic. Also you [always?] hit netted dudes. Inaccuracy bolt is real effective (thanks bcadren).

remove skeletons
remove animate skeleton

It would have to be a species. But making this work in a moderately intuitive way would be about 1000x more difficult than it would be worth.

Actually, disto can make low-damage fast weapons pretty powerful because it does irresistable additive damage. An early whip/dagger of distortion is an excellent weapon, if you can tolerate the annoyance cost.

Regen is good in the early/mid game. It does nothing when you are 'in control' and can easily retreat, but any time you don't have a safe place to rest you want as much regeneration as you can get. Teleports/ Shafts/ Bad Exploration can all lead to situations where regen makes a considerable differe...

Each linear character build may have distinct gameplay (i.e. a Pure Summoner plays differently from a Conjurer or a Heavy Armour Melee Dude) but if it were always optimal to stick to one group of skills throughout the game, each of these character archetypes would always play the same every time you...

At least, I haven't heard anything like "might is better than agility" or vice versa. So maybe you're saying you'll have "greater quantity and breadth of consumables as the game progresses"? I would value my last blinking over my last agility or my last lignification. I would ev...

Turtle flavor

Wait, do you automatically die at 50% hp (assuming you are being hit by monsters that outdamage your regen)? Even if you are able to attack while retreated, it seems awful to have to treat 50% hp as 'basically dead.' Playing this would be like playing a felid with even less hp, slow movement, and no...

Plus using consumables early generates a feedback loop, of sorts. You need to use fewer, less valuable consumables when you do use consumables (in general), thereby giving you access to a greater # of powerful consumables as the game progresses. Strategic tips: At some point I realized that the majo...

Well, right now Lugonu's 'thing' is that you have to start w/ her to use her. Which is undesirable IMO because I think that in-game god choice is an interesting decision. So ultimately I think that Lugonu should just be a temple god, and there shouldn't be an AK background. The flavor stuff suggeste...

If you are going to do this, you may as well just make Lugonu a temple god.

I often want to know which monster summoned a certain mob (so that I can kill the mob more efficiently by killing the summoner), but sometimes there are multiple possible summoner candidates. This problem is especially pronounced in elf. I consider the status quo problematic because it encourages ke...

False. Unless the game in question is a metagame (like nethack). A deep game is difficult even when the player has perfect knowledge of how it functions. See: chess/go/tetris

The big issue is when temple spawns on D:7 instead of D:4. That's 3 floors worth of piety that I'm not getting, which is incredibly important in a game that doesn't give you the ability to just go and grind and instead forces you along. Back to the Ru issue, I don't want to play a 20+ hour game wit...

dpeg wrote:will you use or ignore that D:3 Ru altar?

Funny example because it is always correct to join Ru if you find the altar and don't have a god yet.

Right now merfolk and octopodes can pick up items on deep water, presumably for flavor reasons. However, all species should be able to, because it is not a significant buff and it is inconvenient to have to lure monsters in order to avoid item destruction especially when using projectiles/fighting e...

Invisible monsters are a spoiler gimmick. Every one has different movement/mechanics, and some of them are extremely dangerous (ghost moths). They also encourage dumb optimal play whenever you are on a level that could contain an invisible monster--they are kind of like traps, in a way. I think that...

I think it is worth noting that while dg/magic classes have a high chance of winning in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, they are not always easier for a new player, just because they have a lot of strategic options and skilling decisions to make. (Whereas Trog/a fighter with some...

Can't say I have any experience chei speedrunning, but I would probably have stepped from time were this a normal game. (Don't know what your invo was tho)

ion_frigate wrote:There's no other skill that's required for basically every character,

Evo Fighting Dodging? Not saying I disagree w/ your point overall, but in theory it can be ok to have skills that benefit every character, so long as the question of when/how much to train them is not always obvious

Dynast made this point, but it definitely seems reasonable to use summon demon while standing on stairs to take out threats (especially individual threats) you could not safely tank alone. I suppose you can still get mutated the turn you summon a nexoquec, maybe? Anyways, in regards to the thread to...

I get that evo is strategically boring compared to magic from a skillpoint allocation standpoint. Also, evo contains too great effect diversity for one skill (but this could perhaps be ok if evo was less powerful than comparable but more narrow options or if evocables had a consistent compensating d...

one fewer badly designed god in the game So I like memes and all but I think it is important to articulate why you hold certain things to be true, rather than assuming they are self-evident. Sorry if I am being dense. I agree that Pak (as is) should be removed, and I 'instinctively' feel he is poor...

If this change were implemented and conveyed to the player properly, I still feel like I would lure quite a bit: if you are facing an elephant that you can't beat, you are now incentivized to continue luring it until energy randomization gives you a gap square so that you can abandon it on another f...

Pakellas seems to have a few problems: He provides the player with unlimited access to effects that should not be unlimited (Heal Wounds, digging, enslavement, etc) and his effective prohibition of spellcasting impinges upon Trog's design space. Additionally, most Pakellas characters play more-or-le...

Wait, this isn't Yiuf's Corner?

what are some other examples of names in crawl that are extremely hard to remember how to spell or to remember how to pronounce? Most of the demons. This is annoying when you want to look up their abilities in game (for whatever reason). DCSS names should all be ordinary and American, for maximum c...

The intent behind this post was to question the design decision that 'straight buffs' are bad design, seeing as many types of effects are worth using whenever you have the opportunity to. In hindsight, though, it might really just be the +numerical bonus spells that devs (and players) object to, rat...

How is a spell like Ice Beasts different from a spell like Phase Shift? In the sense that it is always correct to cast each of them before combat, assuming that hunger and ~5 mp is not a huge concern. I guess that one answer is that Ice Beasts' power level depends on the situation at hand/ your posi...

Huh, Kiku and Sif (just for her channeling) seem decently more powerful than Veh IME. I even prefer Dith as a conjurer, unless I am using fire.

To add: you are getting negligible value out of Kiku's book gifts/Receive Corpses because your armour is too heavy. A good leather armour/ring mail might be optimal for now.

Maybe there are plants in the way? If not, and if you are certain that there are no staircases leading to unexplored terrain, this is a bug.

Getting invo and spellcasting to 15 sounds like a waste.

The restriction on mushroom mobility feels inconvenient rather than meaningful. IMO the restriction is a convenience, in that it forces them to behave predictably in combat so you can position yourself accordingly. I suppose it is inconvenient in the sense that you are forced to lure monsters and i...

Rokirem wrote:Is it possible that there is a set of stairs that leads to some secret part of a floor with the Mines on it or something?

Yes. Look for stairs with an *

Ideally, if DCSS deaths are supposed to be 'fair' or 'deserved,' you should be able to figure out where you went wrong without anyone else's input, and (even moreso) you should have been able to identify the danger prior to the death and subsequently avoided it, had you been a better/more careful pl...

Wait, if the game is supposed to lie to you about elemental susceptibility (because you can't be expected to know what gear a monster has), does it also lie to you about MR? That seems undesirable.

phloomp--I feel as though this would lead to players counting how many turns they had been in combat w/ enemies, and removing the amulet if they are clearly winning combat prior to the time it would activate (because it is 'optimal' to wear it at all other times, seeing as combat is swingy). You cou...

IMO when runed door vaults are done 'well' they are basically micro-portals: an optional risk you can take with some sort of implied reward. It is bad, then, for there to be two different uses for runed doors, but frankly it is tough to imagine someone designing a runed vault with the intention of i...

I'd buy the demon blade and train it to min delay. Maybe find a buckler for the cheap defense. There is nothing wrong with meleeing most monsters--I find that most 'casters' end up as hybrid characters. Now that you are in the midgame, Ash gets really fun. You can learn basically any (lv 6 or less) ...

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