Shoals vs. Swamps

[nago]

Merfolk javelineers could use being less overpowered. (Oh and fauns and satyrs are also forest abominations which are found in shoals now specifically to make it even worse.)

FR: If Ilsuiw steps next to a kraken, she uses the kraken as a mount.

This would make Shoals more interesting

Bloax please sprite this

Did someone call?

I want that in 0.15 or at least in the 1st april 0.16

[LackofCertainty]

As a person who primarily plays heavy armor melee characters, Swamp is definitely the easiest branch for me, and Shoals is definitely the most difficult.

Snake and Spiders are a wash in between swamp and shoals. I generally prefer snake just because of the slow movement speed of nagas.


P.S.
I find it kinda odd that people are criticizing others for saying, "Use invisibilty against ghost moths," but they didn't seem to take issue with, "Use invisibility for shoals." I find it a lot more practical to expect a person to be able to bust out a couple uses of invis for few ghost moths in spider's than to expect people to have constant access to it for whenever packs of nasties show up in Shoals.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Here is how you fight ghost moths:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/thede ... rticle.txt

That dude is very half-assed, I barely even paid attention (which is why it has zero HW potions lol), would easily be better if I had used planning or careful skilling or anything. The stat distribution is terrible, but according to Bart skalds don't count as mages, so I had to settle for crap Str and then all the random level-ups went into Int which barely even helps me. He's an atheist deliberately not using charms and wearing unbranded armour just to prove a point, also no rPois. He entered Spider at XL14 which is totally reckless and stupid and not something I would ever do normally. Still kicking all butts. I just killed a ghost moth with no risk to myself, and it's only going to get easier because my sword isn't even near mindelay yet AND I haven't busted out CBL on anything. My only worry at this point is food (like I already said, the biggest benefit of rPois is that Spider/Snake don't have corpses unless you have rPois), but fortunately I have a decent supply, and after I get this rune I won't need permafood for a while.

Don't get excited by that sword either, it is just a boring wight drop, it happens almost every game probably, all I did was enchant it. There's a bunch of other half-decent long blades I could've enchanted instead and this character would be no weaker.

you can escape from sharpshooters, but it doesn't make them less formidable once you challenge them.

What?

You only fight sharpshooters at a time and place of your choosing. If at ANY point, you don't like how the fight is going, you can leave and try again with no cost (unless you are a troll, but then you just loltab like you do in every other situation), and no repercussion of any kind!

So uh, whatever positioning I want, whatever combat arena I want, I'm guaranteed to have 100% HP and MP no matter what, I can retry as many times as I want, wow gee hmmmm, let me think, yes that makes them less formidable.

You do not have to challenge these, Ilsuiw/javelineers either.

Unless you are using consumables or playing a spriggan, yes you do. That is what fast means.

Shambling mangroves hit for 40+ damage, unsafe with AC~20 and no EV for 3 turns+. Underestimated=deadly.

It is 41 damage, and that is not even a little impressive fyi. Hill giants hit for 40+ damage and they are fodder at this point in the game. Shambling mangroves are speed 8 which means unless you are rooted, every other lair branch monster that matters does significantly more damage per aut. And again, you are only rooted for the 3 or so turns it takes to blow him up, and the thing will most likely not even get close enough for a single melee hit, unless you're a melee dude yourself, in which case mangroves are wimps regardless.

Thorn hunters cast spell preventing easy escape, javelineers don't.

The easy escape is called taking one step backwards and thus being outside its LOS. Javelineer movement speed traps you much more quickly, much more reliably, on a wider variety of terrain, and the javelineer can attack during this process, while the thorn hunter can only impotently re-enter your LOS every turn until it eventually gets lucky with random energy.

+5 ring mail is quite lucky. Usual mail is rather +2. ?oEA are precious and possibly a waste on a rmail.

No, that's entirely backwards. EA is precious because it increases your AC. Every single turn that it does not increase your AC, you are wasting that scroll's benefit. Ring mail is super good by the way, it is like mottled dragon armour only it appears on D2 and has rF+ and needs fewer EA scrolls.

19EV at XL20 alone seems low, yet is absolutely fine on Deep Dwarf.

The fact that DD are so overpowered as to get away with being ridiculously stupid does not mean that doing so is "fine". 15/19 defenses at XL20 are a joke.

Only one class started with invisibility. The spell requires great investment, so it's a rare commodity at xl15.

Why are you doing spider at xl15? There's only one situation where I would advise doing spider at xl15, and that situation is "I've already cleared all of orc and D, and since I can't handle Depths yet, I have to choose between Spider and Shoals." Because, as I've tried to explain, Shoals is harder than Spider.

Training melee early requires experience. I think that we at least agree that I should rather start with magical skills as a spellcaster, then get some defenses, then... sorry, these spellcasters aren't all worshippers of Ashenzari and my exp is mostly limited to these categories at xl15. I might get melee competency at the price of spellpower or spell success rate. Ghost moths aren't something I want to kill with basic melee competency, though. 6AC is bad, but 12AC not unusual at this point of game, species and findings dependent.

This is what you sound like to me:

<Sequell> hybrid[2/5]: <odjn> hold on, how am i supposed to cast AND level up melee skills

Why do I have to start as a mage? Oh right, because Ash Vehumet Kiku Oka and probably every other useful god "don't count" so I have to pick a background with really uber starting gear. And Gargoyle Draconian Demigod Halfling Merfolk Hill Orc "don't count" because picking good races isn't allowed, or maybe because in your imaginary version of Crawl there are only 5 races, I don't know, whatever. Plus magic that makes you better at using weapons "doesn't count" as magic? Does staff of earth "not count" as melee?

Fine, here's an atheist, charmless High Elf since you already said High Elf is okay and I didn't wanna play a character to XL15 only for it to not meet your absurdly demanding yet entirely undefined criteria. Obviously this is a task of great magnitude, but my incredibly average Crawl skills seem to have pulled through:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/thede ... rticle.txt

He kills orb spiders and jumping spiders with Airstrike, uses IMB on packs, and melees dudes in the face with greatsword both to conserve MP and because for close single targets it does the best damage. CBL is DEFCON 1, haven't had a reason to cast it yet. If that doesn't fit your criteria you'll have to outline them plainly because I really have no idea. Leaving him in stasis for now so the link doesn't break, when next I play I will finish Spider, and then get Charms and a god because Vaults is dangerous "for realz y'all".

If it is a question to me, then no. I am trying to prove that it's not normal to have AC 44 on XL 13 caster and that AC 20 does not allow to have easy time in Spiders, especially without rPois. Here is another example for you, DE with AC 16 at XL 17 (5 AC comes from wielding a weapon so it is AC 11 really).

Spider would be ridiculously easy for that XL17 character, even with all the dumb crap you did, so I don't understand how that is meant to prove anything.

[Viashino_wizard]

Merfolk javelineers could use being less overpowered. (Oh and fauns and satyrs are also forest abominations which are found in shoals now specifically to make it even worse.)

FR: If Ilsuiw steps next to a kraken, she uses the kraken as a mount.

This would make Shoals more interesting

Bloax please sprite this

Did someone call?

all my dreams have come true

Now let's get Baconkid to draw this and make it a loading screen.

[shizmoo]

Havent been far on melee been playing casters. Only hard thing I faced in Swamps was that turd Nikolai without rElec. I went at him three times fully buffed and almost got 2-hitted all three and decided wait until I got res. Shoals on the other hand is way harder, if one of those 5 nets that fly across the screen catch you youre being prodded by tridents on your knees praying with limited areas to run away.

[Knight9910]

It's funny. I know Nikola CAN spawn outside the Swamp, but he never seems to. I've gotten to a point where I just think of him as another swamp threat. ^^;;

EDIT: Well, I've discovered something else myself - Orbs of Fire aren't as bad as I'd been lead to believe. Its fireball barely did a fifth of my health bar in damage to me and then I two-shotted it with crystal spear. For some reason I remembered them being worse than this... Guess my other characters were just squishier than this.

[Magipi]

An interesting addendum to the original topic: I was spectating the bot qw yesterday, and it chose to do Snake intead of Swamp. It went Snake, Vaults 1-4, Depths, and only after all these it went to the Swamp. I wonder why. Character: GrBe.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/qw/morgue-q ... 210421.txt

[Knight9910]

That is a good question, mag. Maybe qw's programmer could answer it?

EDIT: Also, another update. One orb of fire isn't a huge threat. Dangerous, but not a huge threat. Two orbs of fire hiding behind a brimstone fiend absolutely is.

[and into]

Bart's idea to split off the EV vs. AC discussion was a good one, so I did:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=11886&p=166335#p166335

Now we got a dedicated thread to talk about casters, "casters," castahs, etc., and how EV and/or AC applies to them. And this thread can be dedicated to talking shoals and swamp.

[shizmoo]

It's funny. I know Nikola CAN spawn outside the Swamp, but he never seems to. I've gotten to a point where I just think of him as another swamp threat. ^^;;

EDIT: Well, I've discovered something else myself - Orbs of Fire aren't as bad as I'd been lead to believe. Its fireball barely did a fifth of my health bar in damage to me and then I two-shotted it with crystal spear. For some reason I remembered them being worse than this... Guess my other characters were just squishier than this.

The only threat I learned the hard way about them is their stupid malmutate. They were pushovers then I start to notice my character being slow/etc and find out im slammed with many bad mutations basically ruining the character. Why the hell does an orb of fire have malmutate?

[TheDefiniteArticle]

An interesting addendum to the original topic: I was spectating the bot qw yesterday, and it chose to do Snake intead of Swamp. It went Snake, Vaults 1-4, Depths, and only after all these it went to the Swamp. I wonder why. Character: GrBe.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/qw/morgue-q ... 210421.txt

I didn't make the bot and could be totally wrong. Here are my educated guesses:

The watery and inconsistent terrain creates problems for automation (just look at how awful swamp autoexplore is) and makes alligator/hydra movement unpredictable (you have to do mental gymnastics to see how long it will take to reach you and/or figure out the correct way to move and I don't think qw is programmed for that, just look at how it steps randomly to deal with disturbances). Although it's usually very easy to manage Swamp, situations can become very bad if you handle them incorrectly. In general Swamp requires different behavior, and again, I don't think the bots like qw do much of anything differently than they do in normal dungeon levels.

Snake on the other hand is pretty similar to normal dungeon levels, and very low-risk because everything is slow. The only fast threats are anacondas, which aren't a threat because qw is a high-AC berserker, and shock serpents, which aren't a threat because qw is a Gargoyle. Even the most dire situations in Snake can be solved with a couple Bros provided you have the durability to survive a little bit longer, compared to Swamp where bad situations are harder to quickly defuse and Bros are frequently hampered by water (i would wager this is a big deal for bots, who use simple flowcharts to deal with tough things).