CiP: NaFi

[whitenerdy53]

I'm asking for some advice here because I've never made it this far with a Naga before. I'm currently lvl 16 (char dump attached), using the unrand demon blade "Leech" I found on D:4. (I was training polearms before I found this but decided it was worth switching to long blades because it came so early.) I've already got min weapon delay, no penalty for my shield, mephitic cloud and venom bolt (the only spells I use so far) at <10% and about 10 points in dodging, but I'm not sure what skills I should be focusing on. I plan to keep playing as a melee-spellcaster hybrid and hope to get all 15 runes. Any of you who've played late-game Nagas have suggestions on how I should proceed?

[Sandman25]

Train Armour, deformed body mutation does not affect AC bonus you get from training it. You will get 14/22 AC per level of Armour, that's about 2 AC per 3 levels. (With Helmet instead of hat it will be 15/22).
Do you have any books?

[whitenerdy53]

Books I've found so far include:
Grimoire of Retrieval (artifact book with only apportation which I yoinked from Trog just to spite him )
Young poisoner's handbook (this is where I got Mephitic cloud and venom bolt)
Book of burglary, book of cantrips, book of changes, book of control

[Sandman25]

These are not good books for the character indeed. Train Armour and then see if you find other books. Control Undead can be useful if you want to get 15 runes, it greatly supplements Venom Bolt and Vampiric weapon and is not wasted experience if you find Necronomicon.

[whitenerdy53]

I made it to Snake Pit 5 and had mostly cleared a pack of nagas when one teleported me. I wound up in a closed room with around 8-10 greater nagas with a little over half health. Used a slouch after they hasted themselves to weaken the pack while fighting them in melee. After killing about half, I had roughly a third of max health, and decided to fight a couple more turns to see if regen and vamp would bring me back up (they usually do) with escape options at the ready in case I dropped any lower. I hit one more time and dropped instantly to zero from a venom bolt plus a hit from a halberd.

[whitenerdy53]

I checked the morgue file (attached) and the history said the venom bolt hit for 52 damage. Is it normal for a venom bolt to hit that hard even through poison resistance or did I just get some really bad luck? Any other general advice on what I could have done differently would be much appreciated as well.

[Sar]

Well you could've picked a better god (which would be pretty much any god, really).
Your EV is hideous for a Cheidude. And that's with a +5 ring!
I would get more Invo - something to have Step from Time at 1% failure. That would also up Slouch damage if you use it.
I would probably enchant that barding you had. And probably train some Stealth (not much, but with Cheidex and +5 apt you can easy become very hard to notice)... oh, and you even had a manual.
And last, but not least: you can cancel Tele status by applying another tele to yourself (so reading one of your 8 scrolls of teleportaion when you got tagged by Teleport Other). that would prevent landing in the rune vault.

[Sandman25]

Greater naga can deal up to 57 damage with Venom Bolt no matter what AC/EV you have (I don't know how rPois affects that though).
I don't see any problems with your skills. Maybe except you underused spells (training Conjuration/Poison/Spellcasting to 10 is a waste if you cast Venom Bolt only 17 times for the whole game). Perhaps Shoals could be easier for the character (Merforlks don't have rPois and can be both confused by Mephitic Cloud or just killed by Venom Bolt).

[whitenerdy53]

I realize Chei isn't an easy god, but he makes a fun challenge and he's part of the reason I play Nagas anyway
I had been training Dodging to raise EV, do you think I should've used a lighter armor for better EV?
Invo was next on my list to train, so should I get Step from time before focusing on defenses?
I just got that barding from Lamia and planned to enchant it back at stash. I didn't think Stealth was all that useful since I had heavy armor and didn't rely on stabbing
I would've cancelled the teleport if I had noticed before it happened. (too used to auto-attack I guess )

According to the wiki, rPois reduces damages the same way as rF and rC (50-33-20%) but maybe the Naga's natural poison resistance only helps to prevent the status effect and not reduce the actual damage (like Zin's vitalisation)?
I trained for Venom bolt to help kill hydras because I was using a long blade and other than that, I only used it to blast a few uniques before they closed into melee. I tried Shoals first but had some trouble with Ilsiuw so I decided to tackle Pits instead, although maybe more levels of the main dungeon would have been easier.

[Sar]

I would probably use lighter or heavier armour with some brand. I don't think your AC was too bad, but with so much Dex you should've had more EV.
The way training EV in heavier armours works is that you get no return for a few N levels of Dodging (or little return? Not sure) and then it begins to raise steadily.
Also Fighter is a bad background for Chei (and Nagas aren't the best race for Chei either).

[dck]

Your defenses were okay but they could've been improved by wearing lighter armour that allowed more EV without compromising AC (like ring or scale maybe) and that'd have the added benefit of allowing stealth which is important as a slow-goer.
See the thing is you had a lot of SH and SH is pretty good for some things, but it's like counterfeit EV that stops working against pretty serious like bolt spells.
Naga rPois is normal rPois.
For hydras you could've just excluded and left or use wands, again the excluding bit is helped by not wearing a chain mail. Training all those skills for a bolt spell to use against a very specific enemy who resists said bolt spell wasn't good exp management.
Also you used zero chei abilities, while bend time is effectively an annoying version of melee haste and you were meleeing things a lot.

[Siegurt]

Greater naga can deal up to 57 damage with Venom Bolt no matter what AC/EV you have (I don't know how rPois affects that though).
I don't see any problems with your skills. Maybe except you underused spells (training Conjuration/Poison/Spellcasting to 10 is a waste if you cast Venom Bolt only 17 times for the whole game). Perhaps Shoals could be easier for the character (Merforlks don't have rPois and can be both confused by Mephitic Cloud or just killed by Venom Bolt).

It looks like rPoison effects venom bolt in a slightly non-intuitive, way:

  Code:

 case BEAM_POISON:
        if (doEffects)
        {
            resist = poison_player(coinflip() ? 2 : 1, source, kaux) ? 0 : 1;

            hurted = resist_adjust_damage(&you, flavour, resist,
                                          hurted, true);
            if (resist > 0)
                canned_msg(MSG_YOU_RESIST);
        }
        else
        {
            hurted = resist_adjust_damage(&you, flavour, player_res_poison(),
                                          hurted, true);
        }
        break;


...


bool poison_player(int amount, string source, string source_aux, bool force)
{
    ASSERT(!crawl_state.game_is_arena());

    if (player_res_poison() > 0)
        maybe_id_resist(BEAM_POISON);

    if (you.duration[DUR_DIVINE_STAMINA] > 0)
    {
        mpr("Your divine stamina protects you from poison!");
        return false;
    }

    if (player_res_poison() >= 3)
    {
        dprf("Cannot poison, you are immune!");
        return false;
    }

    if (!force && !(amount = _maybe_reduce_poison(amount)))
        return false;

    const int old_value = you.duration[DUR_POISONING];
    if (player_res_poison() < 0)
        amount *= 2;
    you.duration[DUR_POISONING] += amount;

    if (you.duration[DUR_POISONING] > 40)
        you.duration[DUR_POISONING] = 40;

    if (you.duration[DUR_POISONING] > old_value)
    {
        mprf(MSGCH_WARN, "You are %spoisoned.",
             old_value > 0 ? "more " : "");

        learned_something_new(HINT_YOU_POISON);
    }

    you.props["poisoner"] = source;
    you.props["poison_aux"] = source_aux;

    return amount;
}

...

static int _maybe_reduce_poison(int amount)
{
    int rp = player_res_poison(true, true, true);

    if (rp <= 0)
        return amount;

    int reduction = binomial_generator(amount, 90);
    int new_amount = amount - reduction;

    if (amount != new_amount)
        dprf("Poison reduced (%d -> %d)", amount, new_amount);
    else
        dprf("Poison not reduced (%d)", amount);

    return new_amount;
}
...
int binomial_generator(unsigned n_trials, unsigned trial_prob)
{
    int count = 0;
    for (unsigned i = 0; i < n_trials; ++i)
        if (::x_chance_in_y(trial_prob, 100))
            count++;

    return count;
}


Basically Venom Bolt first attempts to poison the player, (with even odds of one or two poison levels) and if you have poison resist it you attempt to resist it, each level of poison has a 90% chance of being resisted, if you resist all the poisoning, then your damage from venom bolt is reduced (to 1/3) otherwise it's not reduced at all.

That means with rPois, you have a roughly 85.5% chance of reducing the damage from venom bolt by 66.6%, the rest of the time it will do full damage.

Oh, it also means that you have a 100% chance of reducing the damage done by venom bolt by 66.6% under the effects of Zin's Divine stamina (Vitalisation)

Edit: Just checked and Vitalisation counts for resisting pArrow damage as well, the more you know!