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 player. The majority of deaths are 'fair,' IMO. However, there are a number of unintuitive/concealed mechanics, so it isn't always apparent that something is as dangerous as it actually is. Brainlessness paralysis or the relative danger of the *Rage mutation are perhaps examples of concealed info. According to the manual:
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If any attribute drops to zero for some reason, you will experience very unpleasant side-effects, being slowed and suffering some stat-specific negative effects.
This doesn't mention specific effects of stat-zero, nor does it mention the probability of those effects occurring, so it is up to the player to infer that statzero is probably bad and should be avoided at all costs. *Rage is only spoilery in that you can't know how likely it is to trigger without spoilers--that being said if you know that going berserk at an inopportune point could be fatal, and you have the rage mutation + a way to get rid of it, you should probably get rid of it. Alternately, you could play in such a way that going berserk is unlikely to kill you.
Learning all of DCSS' mechanics is borderline impossible, but you can get a good enough idea through experience/reading spoilers. For example,if you hate paralysis deaths, you should know to be very careful around things that can paralyze you, and you can almost always learn that something can paralyze you from its description.
Any death by drowning feels awful--especially in conjunction w/ tornado. Lom Lobon is a trap and it sucks. Deep water/lava shouldn't auto-kill you IMO; it could at least give the player a turn to blink out/activate flight.
sage1234 wrote:I realize that 0.17 is too easy and the game needs to be made harder.
I don't think that this was the intent behind the amulet change: AFAIK the intent was to make 'perfect' resistances less common because they are (arguably) bad design regardless of their power level. In the case of .18's amulet reform, the game might actually be easier now overall: a good reflection amulet is so much better than access to swappable stasis/clarity/rmut in the vast majority of situations that the amulet reform might be more of a buff than a nerf, at least in a 3-rune game.