Death by Glaciate

[suldrek]

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/suldrek/mor ... 223306.txt

This was probably my favorite character so far - I've only been playing DCSS for a few weeks. I ascended one Gargoyle Berserker during this week, and started a Gargoyle Fighter with the intent of going deep into the extended game. Which I succeeded in doing; however, this really pissed me off. I didn't quite get where I wanted to go (needed to go.)

The only real danger in Pandemonium I had found so far (around 40 levels or so, I reckon) was a single random Pandemonium Lord who had access to singularity. That was a bit frightening - it took me about four turns but I got out, and I had hasted/buffed prior to getting into his LOS anyway. I've found pande lords to be notoriously difficult to detect (they seem to love to be awake and wandering) but every once in awhile I get lucky and they don't notice me, giving me time to back off and prepare. That's with three or four ticks of stealth, too.

The singularity lord was pretty early on in my pande experience. I had already maxxed my fighting and maces out, and had a +9 holy wrath eveningstar. This was more than enough to clear every non-random Pan lord in combination with haste, finesse, stoneskin, shroud and regen (I had all five runes.)

I was TRYING to find a Ziggurat. After those forty levels, I hadn't found one - and this is one reason I'm posting here. I still lacked artifact gloves/boots/cloak even after clearing everything in the game except for two hell levels (I even did the one Zig I did find - in Depths - to level 10.) If the game gave me any, it gave me trash. negative attributes, negative enchantment levels. I got the shield of the gong early on, but it's useless for this stage of the game - I don't want to be swarmed by hellions, hell sentinels or other UNAVOIDABLE damage types. They're difficult enough as it is. But here's the bitch:

After a string of appearing in Pan levels RIGHT NEXT to Pan lords (including Mnoleg) I buffed up prior to going into the portal this time. The only exception was haste - I always seem to have enough time to cast it (and honestly, even if I had here, it wouldn't have made a difference.) This Pan Lord was out of LOS on port in but right around the corner. As soon as he saw me, he hit me with Glaciate. It did 25% of my total health (which was 199) through RC+++. I hasted and backed around a corner. Another turn passed, and he appeared. Glaciate again. 25% more of my health. I use a wand of healing, figuring he's getting lucky on the RNG. Another smack of glaciate, this time I resisted fully. I read a TP scroll. Glaciate, almost dead. I used a wand of heal wounds. Dead.

I put countless hours into this character. I understand the nature of roguelikes, but I am highly questioning some of the design mechanics of DCSS. Unavoidable damage is -seemingly- fine in the amounts like torment or hellfire deal, but these end game spells are ridiculous. There was -nothing- I could do in this situation. If I had known he'd spam an end game spell like that 5 times in a row, I would have teleported immediately. But I've never come across anything doing anything remotely like that since I started playing DCSS. I stand corrected, but honestly, I'm not sure I can bear running another character. After all, chances are, I'm just going to get wiped out in a similar fashion again. I'm sure there are better players with a lot more time than me who might have long figured out how to deal with a situation like this (maybe if you get hit with Glaciate one time, you should teleport?) But jeeze - after dealing with all the named Pan lords, is it really necessary to have randoms that can five round a character like this by themselves?

[bel]

is it really necessary to have randoms that can five round a character like this by themselves?

Don't let a Pan lord hit you for 5 rounds if you can't handle it. Teleport, blink, fog, whatever. I would have teleported immediately if I land in a Pan lord's chambers on entry.

  Code:

 v - 12 scrolls of fog
 z - 10 scrolls of blinking

Why oh why? Fog is great: if he can't see you, he can't glaciate you. Also, it helps to remember that it is one of crawl's design goals to never have your character "invincible". But deaths are not random at this point in the game, one can always trace them back to tactical mistakes. That is how it's supposed to work, don't get discouraged by it.

[scorpionwarrior]

You would probably like the game more if you pretended Pan and Hells didn't exist, that's what I did after slogging through pan the third or fourth time and I don't regret it one bit.

[duvessa]

Pan lord glaciate is up to 200 damage and they can be as fast as speed 19 ("normal" speed is 10).

I was TRYING to find a Ziggurat. After those forty levels, I hadn't found one - and this is one reason I'm posting here. I still lacked artifact gloves/boots/cloak even after clearing everything in the game except for two hell levels (I even did the one Zig I did find - in Depths - to level 10.)

I don't understand why you wanted artefacts? Artefact status in Crawl is strictly negative in practical circumstances.

Anyway yes, after early game Crawl isn't really playable without spoilers imo (and I tried for a long time believe me).

[suldrek]

I've been playing with spoilers since day one. It's the only reason I was in pandemonium - ziggurats (and permafood.) I wanted to work on my spell casting so I could actually do all of a Zig's levels. I had just gotten necromutation to safely castable, and that took 20 levels of pandemonium easily.

I understand pan lord glaciate can do that much damage. What blows my mind is that one would spam it five rounds in a row (I died 6 auts after noticing him.) This would kill basically any character in the same amount of time - maybe an Ogre or Troll in a couple more, given they have more HP. Chances are, even if I had teleported IMMEDIATELY upon getting hit with glaciate, I still would have died. This kind of situation is acceptable in a game that has save states...but I don't feel it's very fair in a game that doesn't. Especially after investing 20+ hours. Dying in six turns is fine in the first 30 minutes, especially when it's usually avoidable. The impact is exponentially more horrendous with the noted time investment.

Why did I want artefacts? In this case, way more useful than what I had. A +2 cloak of magick resistance isn't nearly as useful as even something like a +3 cloak (rf+, int+4) Gloves of strength, same thing. Artefacts may not always be a good thing (and they aren't) but I don't think it's much to expect that after 87 some levels of exploration you'd have found something with two positives and no negatives for slots like gloves, cloak, helm, boots. I was suffering with the ring mail armor because of the great resistances it had - if I had simply found those extra armor slots with a single element resistance, I could've worn pearl dragon armour (which i had stashed) or something equally better than ring mail.

[Berder]

After a string of appearing in Pan levels RIGHT NEXT to Pan lords (including Mnoleg) I buffed up prior to going into the portal this time. The only exception was haste - I always seem to have enough time to cast it (and honestly, even if I had here, it wouldn't have made a difference.) This Pan Lord was out of LOS on port in but right around the corner. As soon as he saw me, he hit me with Glaciate. It did 25% of my total health (which was 199) through RC+++. I hasted and backed around a corner. Another turn passed, and he appeared. Glaciate again. 25% more of my health. I use a wand of healing, figuring he's getting lucky on the RNG. Another smack of glaciate, this time I resisted fully. I read a TP scroll. Glaciate, almost dead. I used a wand of heal wounds. Dead.

If something is hitting you that hard, heal wounds is not your best option. Heal wounds only heals 24 dmg on average and you were getting hit for 50. Didn't you have any scrolls of blinking? That would get you out of trouble from most situations, even at the last minute. If there was no space to blink to, you could dig through a wall and then blink through to the other side.

Also: if you need to get out of LOS and the corner is right next to you, you should step around the corner before you haste. That results in less time or no time in LOS.

Also: if a dangerous enemy you're not sure you can kill hits you hard the moment you see him, that's a good time to consider getting out of the fight entirely, such as by reading teleport immediately (or reading teleport once you stepped back around the corner). Because if you aren't sure if you can kill him from 100% hp, your odds are substantially worse if you start fighting him from only 75% or 50% hp. After you escape you can rest and fight the dangerous enemy from full hp under ideal conditions (or avoid it entirely).

The bottom line is there are usually ways to deal with these situations. A lot of it depends on your sense of when you're in danger, which you develop through playing.

Occasionally you will die anyway. But most games you won't, once you've made it to the endgame.

[suldrek]

If something is hitting you that hard, heal wounds is not your best option. Heal wounds only heals 24 dmg on average and you were getting hit for 50. Didn't you have any scrolls of blinking? That would get you out of trouble from most situations, even at the last minute. If there was no space to blink to, you could dig through a wall and then blink through to the other side.

Also: if you need to get out of LOS and the corner is right next to you, you should step around the corner before you haste. That results in less time or no time in LOS.

Also: if a dangerous enemy you're not sure you can kill hits you hard the moment you see him, that's a good time to consider getting out of the fight entirely, such as by reading teleport immediately (or reading teleport once you stepped back around the corner). Because if you aren't sure if you can kill him from 100% hp, your odds are substantially worse if you start fighting him from only 75% or 50% hp. After you escape you can rest and fight the dangerous enemy from full hp under ideal conditions (or avoid it entirely).

The bottom line is there are usually ways to deal with these situations. A lot of it depends on your sense of when you're in danger, which you develop through playing.

Occasionally you will die anyway. But most games you won't, once you've made it to the endgame.

I agree, Heal Wounds wasn't my best option. I had considered using blink, actually, but given the target area of glaciate I really didn't think that was my best chance. This guy was moving fast and got right next to me in no time. After getting hit with it twice (i believe, maybe three times with the last a full resist) i used a wand of teleportation (or a scroll, can't remember) and was hoping to ride out. Didn't happen.

I still feel cheated here, merely because I've never seen ANYTHING spam a spell like that five times in a row.

[Berder]

I agree, Heal Wounds wasn't my best option. I had considered using blink, actually, but given the target area of glaciate I really didn't think that was my best chance. This guy was moving fast and got right next to me in no time. After getting hit with it twice (i believe, maybe three times with the last a full resist) i used a wand of teleportation (or a scroll, can't remember) and was hoping to ride out. Didn't happen.

I still feel cheated here, merely because I've never seen ANYTHING spam a spell like that five times in a row.

The pan lord was probably faster than normal so it was doing multiple things each turn, not just glaciate, and you got a bit unlucky.

A scroll of blinking is usually your absolute strongest way to escape any bad situation unless the level is -cTele. If you use several of them you can put some distance between yourself and anything chasing you, no matter how fast. Then you might read magic mapping if you're really desperate and the enemy is really fast, and head for an exit. Or just teleport once blink has given you some breathing room.

[Lyrick]

Now that you have experience, you can not underestimate the RNG and be fully prepared to lose a character at its sole whim.

[dpeg]

Numbers by me:

(1) The only real danger in Pandemonium I had found so far (around 40 levels or so, I reckon) was a single random Pandemonium Lord who had access to singularity. [...]
(2) I put countless hours into this character. I understand the nature of roguelikes, but I am highly questioning some of the design mechanics of DCSS. Unavoidable damage is -seemingly- fine in the amounts like torment or hellfire deal, but these end game spells are ridiculous.
(3) There was -nothing- I could do in this situation.
(4) But jeeze - after dealing with all the named Pan lords, is it really necessary to have randoms that can five round a character like this by themselves?

I understand your frustration, but I think your complaint is about the wrong mis-design.
Players better than me have explained that (3) is wrong. But that's not the big deal -- after all, it is conceivable that a Pan death is unavoidable (it's just really hard to achieve that, as people here will prove time and again). The problem is that the game actively lulled you in a false sense of security -- see your (1). It is actually a hint of good design that the game can still put up something resembling resistance in Pan, e.g. an opponent that can kill a character in five rounds (4). The problem is that this happens very, very rarely, see (2).

I have never really bothered about the extended endgame (neither as a player nor as a developer). When Erik (one of the two founding developers for DCSS) left, he maintained that the game should keep some reserved space for grinding (Mummies, Pan) -- it scratches an itch with certain players, he told us. I think that's alright, but perhaps Pan could stand to be more lethal nonetheless. I am not moved by the point "It took so long to get this character that far, he should be invincible by now" -- that's obviously very much against the spirit of the whole genre. If it was like that, the endgame would cease to be a *game*. So perhaps we can make it more game-like by trying to increase chances for deadlier combinations of monsters. After all, we can assume that the player has everything she could possibly want. (In your case, you said you were lacking artefact gear, but that's perhaps an unreasonable desire.)

[Blobbo]

Why did I want artefacts? ... after 87 some levels of exploration...Pandemonium (around 40 levels or so)...

Well, if your guy could survive 40+ levels of Pan and 87 levels of exploration... he's strong enough already. I kinda don't think he needs more artifacts to win the 15 rune game. Unless you were playing for some kind of "number of zigs cleared" record, which is a different thing altogether.

[mikee]

What blows my mind is that one would spam it five rounds in a row (I died 6 auts after noticing him.)

Isn't 6 auts 6/10 of a turn?

[tasonir]

I assume the 6 auts was a mistake and he really meant 6 turns, and we can probably assume they were 10 aut actions like reading teleport, quaffing heal wounds, etc.

I think we're running into another case of people who like to min/max, aka overbuild their characters. I have it a bit in me, I like to use transmutations because transmutations + unarmed is flat out better than melee weapons (you paid for it with learning level 5-6 spells). I haven't yet scummed pan for 300,000 turns, but I can understand the people that do. Sometimes I really do want to multi-zig an octopode to have 8 ridiculously awesome randart rings and end up with 80AC or 130 mana, etc.

The question that I think should be answered is: How much does crawl support this playstyle? I think the answer is fairly clear, although some of the players who grind Abyss for 300k turns may not have realized it when they started their runs. You can grind forever, and you will max out all skills, and find absurdly good equipment. However, there's diminishing returns on how much maxing out your 4th spell school really helps your character, and so even with everything maxed, you remain mortal. Full randarts, even very good ones, tend to overlap a lot of properties, and while you may never die to purely resistable attacks of fire/cold with rF/rC+++, there are plenty of unresistible attacks that will still pose a credible threat. They may be rare, but they're out there. This is what makes glaciate so powerful - it is 60% unresisted.

In short, an obsessively grinded character is stronger than a normal endgame character, but it's only by 20-50%, not 3 or 4 times as strong. You'll handle things easily, but can still die rapidly, as intended. Some post-post-endgame content exists, as in mega-zigs, but these are experimental at best and probably force makhleb on you.