Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar


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Zot Zealot

Posts: 991

Joined: Monday, 15th April 2013, 15:10

Location: Augsburg, Germany

Post Sunday, 24th November 2019, 12:42

Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar

The trap system overhaul in 0.23 has been criticized several times including by me in another recent topic.

Now look what happened to Nebukadnezar who still tries to beat his own 15-rune streak record of 21 consecutive wins:

  Code:
 3609 | D:4      | You fall into a shaft and drop 3 floors!
  3610 | D:7      | // 3 floors ???
  3867 | D:6      | HP: 1/61 [gnoll/+0 spear (9)]
  3868 | D:6      | Slain by a black bear

This ended a streak of 6 wins with 15 runes. Note that this happened to a TrCj. Trolls usually have an easy start even with classes which are not recommended. Full morgue file is here.

I often watch Nebukadnezar's games and know that he's playing ultra carefully. This included e.g. making kill holes in tomb:3 (!) - which lead to a nerf to LRD which no longer can destroy walls now.


*******

Being shafted often leads to extremely dangerous situations when you fall down and are surrounded by several foes. If you are lucky you have emergency or buff options (fear, blink, teleport, might etc.) but this means that you lose these valuable consumables. If you are unlucky this just means starting a new game or - in the above mentioned case - starting a new streak.

For me personally there are probably two options remaining: continuing in 0.24 with my old love, Ashenzari, or returning to 0.22.

Thanks to the devs for *many* improvements in the last years but the trap overhaul is still a problem.


*******

If you have a look at crawl philosophy ...

Crawl philosophy wrote:The possibility of unavoidable deaths is a larger topic in computer games. Ideally, a game like this would be really challenging and have both random layout and random course of action, yet still be winnable with perfect play. This goal seems out of reach.

... you'll see that unavoidable deaths *can* happen. But I ask the devs to reduce the probability of these unavoidable deaths. Returning to the trap system of 0.22 is a possible solution.

For this message the author Turukano has received thanks:
speciesxx

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Sunday, 24th November 2019, 18:20

Re: Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar

I watched the ttyrec of this death, and it exhibited severe mistakes, to the point of looking like a suicide. They sighted a worker ant and instead of moving back to explored territory to mitigate noise, they fought it immediately, then when the black bear and gnoll appeared they key-mashed against both at once, while poisoned, with an inventory full of unused consumables. Calling this an unavoidable death is absurd.

For this message the author duvessa has received thanks: 3
Fingolfin, nago, Turukano
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Zot Zealot

Posts: 991

Joined: Monday, 15th April 2013, 15:10

Location: Augsburg, Germany

Post Sunday, 24th November 2019, 18:55

Thanks for watching the ttyrec.

I didn't see the game but I watched Nebukadnezar so often that I just couldn't imagine he would make mistakes...

Additionally, here are some words from our chat today which was after I started this topic.

(German:)
Spoiler: show
Turgon: Hi. Ich war so frei und hab Deinen 'shaft death' ins Forum gestellt.
[...]
Turgon: In der Hoffnung, dass sich da was ändert.
Nebukadnezar: hm
Nebukadnezar: ungewöhnlich war, dass ich keine id-scrolls hatte
Nebukadnezar: und damit in d4 auch keine potions kannte
[...]
Nebukadnezar: ich hätte sie in d7 trinken können
Turgon: Blind-quaff ist auch nicht unbedingt etwas für einen, der auf streak spielt
Nebukadnezar: nein, aber in dem Fall hätte es geholfen z.B. might zu haben
Nebukadnezar: ich schreibe im Forum später noch was dazu
[...]
Nebukadnezar: kommt nicht oft vor, wenn man lvl 4 kommt

(English translation:)
Spoiler: show
Turgon: Hi. I put your 'shaft death' to the tavern.
[...]
Turgon: Hoping for some change.
Nebukadnezar: hm
Nebukadnezar: uncommon that I had no id scrolls
Nebukadnezar: and therefore didn't know any potions on D:4
[...]
Nebukadnezar: I could have quaffed them on D:7
Turgon: Blind-quaff is not nice for somebody who looks for a streak
Nebukadnezar: right, but in this case it would have helped to have e.g. might available
Nebukadnezar: I'll add something in the tavern later
[...]
Nebukadnezar: this doesn't happen often when you reach lvl 4

For this message the author Turukano has received thanks:
nago

bel

Cocytus Succeeder

Posts: 2184

Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05

Post Monday, 25th November 2019, 13:20

Re: Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar

I also watched the ttyrec. As duvessa mentioned, the death was very far from unavoidable. The first and main mistake was fighting the worker ant in an unexplored area. From there, the mistakes compounded. They even had two identified scrolls of teleportation in their inventory when they died!

Keep in mind that people, including most streakers, play the game for fun, and are not necessarily trying to optimize every decision.

As for unavoidable deaths more generally, ideally one should not have unavoidable deaths. However, there's no way to specify such an outcome in a game which is randomly generated without using special rules. And higher variance, in general, is good for these types of games (because it increases fun and replayability). Most unavoidable deaths occur in the very early game, where you have no resources, and thus there are no viable decisions to be made. My proposal is to start every character with a limited "out".

Blades Runner

Posts: 593

Joined: Tuesday, 11th December 2018, 19:14

Post Monday, 25th November 2019, 18:01

Re: Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar

This one ended my tournament streak, not many options here: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Th ... 225358.txt

But even w/o shafts game can screw you. I've gone down D:2 --> D:3 and had orc priest immediately adjacent, no identified consumables yet (and no duplicates, so quaff/read ID in advance wouldn't help). To avoid getting ganked by more orcs I took priest back up stairs, but lost the fight regardless.

Worst example I've ever had was the ever-adored D:1 death. FeEn, encountered a bat 1v1 at XL 1. It tabbed me to death on RNG rolls. No counterplay at all; bats are much faster than felids so running is pointless too.

I have 114 wins in 756 games, death count inflated by newbie + mummy learning curve. The examples above (plus a couple more D:1 jackal encounters) were among only a small handful of no-counterplay deaths I've experienced in crawl. I'm not sure I've seen even 20 of these, and they're almost all either D:1 unwinnable faster enemy as bad species/background or getting shafted next to an adder at XL 1 or something.

If you get just a LITTLE more time, you can usually find a way out if you're careful. Take this game: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Th ... 221121.txt

This was a D:4 to D:7 shaft, as a Naga (so no running from stuff). Later got shafted again D:10 --> D:13 (very dangerous spike!), encountering S branch tier stuff. Also a typical "no MR FOR YEW" type of game so I got paralyzed in Orc...though the bad luck didn't hold out much longer after that. But even a small mistake made on either of those shaft scenarios would have ended it while never finding the great unrands/stabilizing later.

~~~

As an aside, I do dislike how Zot:5 interacts. If you have -Tele or amazing magic you can survive or avoid a tele trap into lungs, if not you need a specialized setup because you aren't teleporting back out with purple draconians/QS dragons around. I find this a pretty distasteful way to end a several hour run, even if I've managed to luck my way out of that happening I am forced to acknowledge it was only by luck I survived it. I know Malcolm fishes for -tele during his streak for this reason, which is the kind of grinding that's pretty frustrating. This can also be accomplished by always finishing the game with Ashenzari etc, but again I'm not sure this is a good thing to encourage.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 216

Joined: Saturday, 25th March 2017, 16:51

Post Monday, 25th November 2019, 19:40

Re: Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar

TheMeInTeam wrote:As an aside, I do dislike how Zot:5 interacts. If you have -Tele or amazing magic you can survive or avoid a tele trap into lungs, if not you need a specialized setup because you aren't teleporting back out with purple draconians/QS dragons around. I find this a pretty distasteful way to end a several hour run, even if I've managed to luck my way out of that happening I am forced to acknowledge it was only by luck I survived it. I know Malcolm fishes for -tele during his streak for this reason, which is the kind of grinding that's pretty frustrating. This can also be accomplished by always finishing the game with Ashenzari etc, but again I'm not sure this is a good thing to encourage.

I lost a chat in a similar situation. He was teleported in Zot: 5 to the lungs. Those are things that should be changed. Or at least opted out.
I’m going to start looking for -Tele stuff on my games. That’s a good idea!

Spider Stomper

Posts: 203

Joined: Wednesday, 17th June 2015, 00:14

Location: Germany

Post Monday, 25th November 2019, 21:49

Re: Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar

Dropped from D4 (90% explored) to D7 .
So I'm a 3.9-troll facing 7.
Thanks to stealth noone wakes up und stairs to D6 are visible soon.
I checked my inventory: still no scroll of id.
The only scrolls I know are those which I read-id in former lvls.
I have a lot of potions but all are unknown.
In D6 I head into 1 direction. No chokepoint/pillar.
The location where I died is the first with a corridor.
The first enemy I see is an awake ant.
Ants are faster than trolls but suspicious to poison.
Sadly my 2 darts won't hit.
A black bear and a gnoll with a spear are active right after throwing the first dart.
I'm in a corridor and none of these 3 poses a threat in a 1 vs. 1 and I'm pretty sure that this is close to the easternmost border of the lvl. It won't get better. This is D6-popcorn and wouldn't look strange in D4 where my troll belongs.
Besides lucky hits there is the risk of the bear bersercking and getting poisoned by the ant.
It happens.
In the morgue you can see that I misssed once and the next time I hit...but without damage.
A bear who bersercked only needs 1 hit from a troll to finally die.

No: I'm not saying that I'm a victim of unlucky rolls.
I know that this can and will happen.
One of these situations where a potion will....
Wait.
I dont know any potions !
And this is imo my mistake a lot of turns ago: not quaff-id my potions.
What I feared was: getting marked, killer bees, ugly things, centaurs, uniques, etc.
Against them I couldn't hope to test my potions when facing them.

It was not an unavoidable death.
It was me having no scroll of id and where (by D3, D4, D7) used to be something of value was nothing.
I played like I had potions and was a bit shoked that there weren't any known.
Even when I had checked it 100 turns ago.
I was rather happy with the situation until I died. It could have been much worse (location, enemies).

The part of my brain responsible for potion-managing was on auto-pilot and even when checking my inv. I kind of thought: that's D3-D7: of course I have potions identified. I always do that. Why do you even want to look ? Don't you trust me ?

Like Duvessa wrote: I had a lot of consumables.
What he didn't see: they were unknown.
What noone can know: that I believed that I had some potions identified and readily available.

It wasn't an unavoiable death.
It was me not used to not knowing some potions.

I'm a programmer.
It was a disturbing death.
Felt like a syntax error.

Next time I'll quaff-id my potions (#>1) before going upstairs (never done that before).

No: I wasn't drunk...which makes this death even more disturbing.

Edit:
My win%=60%.
Usually my decision-making is good (which lead Turukano to blaming shafts but the encouter+location weren't D6/D7).
Here it was .. absent.

For this message the author Nebukadnezar has received thanks: 3
Airwolf, duvessa, nago

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