Why do hungry ghosts and death cobs exist?

[Laraso]

Neither of them do any amount of damage worth concerning yourself about, yet they are given huge EV and the ability to put you into starving in 3 turns or less. They are basically an 11 on a 1-10 scale of obnoxiousness. Death cobs especially, since somebody had the brilliant idea of giving them 25 speed. I never used to have a problem with them, but coming back to this game and playing it again it feels like the hunger they cause has been buffed by over 5x the previous amount.

Is there any real purpose to them existing? If permafood is too common, you could simply lower the amount of permafood that is given to players, no need to add an enemy that requires you to eat a meat ration every other turn when fighting it.

[nago]

Because it's funny and certainly not spoilery to have a monster who can't attack your hp in zot but can kill most chars in 5 turns even with insane ac/ev while locking any ability. At best I consider them a toll in form of ?Tele or ?blink to pay to explore zot (as due to how swingy is combat in dcss you usually may have to reset a fight against a death cob)

Quite unrelated but I've lost a 'strong' FoBe because I've opened a door and met 3 death cobs. I certainly undervalued the situation and should have played differently the earliest turns but I'm not 100% sure it wasn't an unavoidable death. And in any case it's certainly a very good design to end in a situation where I could just keep eating to stay alive as their offence is pathetic only to die when out permafood.

Hungry ghost are simply stupid.

[Laraso]

Would anyone actually be sad if we were to, let's say... Oh, I don't know, remove them?

[Sar]

well

[WingedEspeon]

Would anyone actually be sad if we were to, let's say... Oh, I don't know, remove them?

No.

[tabstorm]

As far as I know, it was decided that though hunger is both annoying and not overly relevant, a good solution would be to make it more relevant by giving some monsters (death cobs and hungry ghosts) a more powerful af_hunger effect that induces soft paralysis on the player in the form of repeated eating.

[byrel]

Quite honestly, I prefer the acute annoyance of death cobs to the chronic annoyance of butchering and food management. It's actually a challenge instead of simple tedium.

[Doesnt]

My main annoyance with it is that many of my characters could afford to just ignore chunks and small food and survive on just rations after a point with basically zero risk. Now that death cobs sap hunger, the threat of running out of food is very real at the very last part of the game, so I have to actually play the stupid chunk game instead of ignoring it.

[tabstorm]

Quite honestly, I prefer the acute annoyance of death cobs to the chronic annoyance of butchering and food management. It's actually a challenge instead of simple tedium.

But you still have to butcher all game... So that dosen't change, but now you have an annoying monster that has something resembling af_paralyze but mostly does not damage you. Death cobs don't induce a strategic food-management challenge.

[Sar]

I don't think they're supposed to? You either kill them with ranged attacks, have high EV (or SH, lol), use allies from god abilities, spells, evokers or just try to outdamage them.

[Laraso]

As far as I know, it was decided that though hunger is both annoying and not overly relevant, a good solution would be to make it more relevant by giving some monsters (death cobs and hungry ghosts) a more powerful af_hunger effect that induces soft paralysis on the player in the form of repeated eating.

Quite honestly, I prefer the acute annoyance of death cobs to the chronic annoyance of butchering and food management. It's actually a challenge instead of simple tedium.

But that's the thing, it doesn't make hunger any more relevant than it already is. If anything it just amplifies how annoying and tedious it really is. You see hungry ghosts like what, maybe 2 or 3 times in D during a typical game? They're never a threat because they do no damage and are speed 10, but their very high EV and hunger attack still makes you want to run away from them anyways simply because they're incredibly obnoxious to fight. And then they don't show up again until Zot, also known as the end of the game, where they suddenly start moving at speed 25. And even then they still don't do much damage and are still pretty uncommon.

So what is the net gain of having a monster like this? We get to piss off the player occasionally by offering a monster that doesn't kill players, but instead essentially just destroys their consumable food items? Didn't we remove that ability from Harpies back in 0.14? Why are we adding it back again? I thought everyone was in favor of the removal of item destruction.

just try to outdamage them.

That part is incredibly easy as they don't do any damage to begin with. The problem is that you hardly have a chance to attack because you have to eat every other turn. Honestly, even if they have some sort of purpose for being in the game, they aren't fun or interesting to fight in the slightest. Rather, I feel like smashing my head against a brick wall every time I see one. It seems like awful design to me, it almost feels like they were intentionally created to simply annoy the player as much as possible.

[Sar]

That part is incredibly easy as they don't do any damage to begin with

I obviously meant outdamaging their "hunger damage".

they aren't fun or interesting to fight in the slightest

If we're talking opinions, I think they are better than lots of monsters. I find them pretty funny as well.

[RBrandon]

Who would think that a monster that leverages the most unfun system of the game would be unfun?

[lazorexplosion]

From memory, cobs don't have see invisible, so any potions or wand charges of that you've got are good for some free kills.

[ebering]

Taken totally out of context but also completely relevant to the discussion at hand

  Code:

<@dpeg> our players need something to get worked up about!
<@dpeg> it is vital for their mental hygiene


[tasonir]

Get angry or go senile?

[Witidek]

They exist to kill idiots like me.

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17-a0-2134-g56a2587 (webtiles) character file.

620427 Witidek the Axe Maniac (level 27, 247/273 HPs)
             Began as a Hill Orc Fighter on Oct 21, 2015.
             Was the Champion of Beogh.
             Starved to death
             ... on level 3 of the Realm of Zot on Oct 23, 2015.
             The game lasted 05:44:10 (68335 turns).

Witidek the Axe Maniac (Hill Orc Fighter)          Turns: 68335, Time: 05:44:10

Health: 247/273    AC: 49    Str: 24    XL:     27
Magic:  33/33      EV: 19    Int:  8    God:    Beogh [******]
Gold:   6475       SH:  0    Dex: 20    Spells: 6 memorised, 12 levels left

rFire  + + .     SeeInvis +     K - +9 executioner's axe (freeze)
rCold  + . .     Clarity  .     s - +6 plate armour of Free Will {rN++ MR- Dex+2 Stlth+}
rNeg   + + .     SustAt   .     (no shield)
rPois  +         Gourm    .     n - +2 helmet
rElec  .         Spirit   .     L - +4 dragonskin cloak
rCorr  .         Warding  .     e - +2 pair of gloves
rMut   .         Stasis   .     v - +4 pair of boots of Summertime {rF+ SInv}
MR     +++..                    A - amulet of Reent {+Fly Regen+ Str-2 Slay+5 SInv}
Stlth  ..........               W - ring "Ped Qade" {rC+ MR++ SInv}
                                B - ring of Lad Qeorch {rPois Str+2 Stlth-}

@: fainting, extremely resistant to hostile enchantments, extremely unstealthy
A: walk on water, fire resistance 1
a: Smiting, Recall Orcish Followers, Give Item to Named Follower, Renounce
Religion, Evoke Flight
}: 3/15 runes: barnacled, silver, gossamer


You were on level 3 of the Realm of Zot.
You worshipped Beogh.
Beogh was exalted by your worship.
You were fainting.

You visited 11 branches of the dungeon, and saw 55 of its levels.
You visited the Abyss 1 time.
You visited 1 bazaar.
You also visited: Ice Cave.

You collected 9757 gold pieces.
You spent 3282 gold pieces at shops.

Inventory:

Hand Weapons
 x - a +7 blowgun
 K - a +9 executioner's axe of freezing (weapon)
Missiles
 w - 31 silver javelins (quivered)
 y - 12 throwing nets
 H - 17 javelins of penetration
 Z - 2 curare-tipped needles
Armour
 e - a +2 pair of gloves (worn)
 n - a +2 helmet (worn)
 s - the +6 plate armour of Free Will (worn) {rN++ MR- Dex+2 Stlth+}
   (You found it on level 8 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   
   It affects your dexterity (+2).
   It greatly protects you from negative energy.
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
   It makes you more stealthy.
 v - the +4 pair of boots of Summertime (worn) {rF+ SInv}
   (You found it on level 3 of the Elven Halls)   
   
   It protects you from fire.
   It lets you see invisible.
 L - the +4 dragonskin cloak (worn)
   (You took it off Tiamat on level 2 of the Realm of Zot)
Rods
 D - a +4 rod of clouds (14/14)
   (You found it on level 3 of the Crypt)
 G - a +3 rod of ignition (11/11)
   (You found it on level 1 of the Shoals)
Jewellery
 d - the amulet "Moumemiasm" {Stasis rC++ MR+ Dex+3}
   (You found it on level 3 of the Elven Halls)   
   
   [amulet of stasis]
   
   It prevents you from being teleported, slowed, hasted or paralysed.
   It affects your dexterity (+3).
   It greatly protects you from cold.
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
 A - the amulet of Reent (around neck) {+Fly Regen+ Str-2 Slay+5 SInv}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines)   
   
   [amulet of regeneration]
   
   It affects your strength (-2).
   It affects your accuracy and damage with ranged weapons and melee attacks
   (+5).
   It lets you see invisible.
   It lets you fly.
   It increases your rate of regeneration.
 B - the ring of Lad Qeorch (left hand) {rPois Str+2 Stlth-}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 8 of the Dungeon)   
   
   [ring of loudness]
   
   It affects your strength (+2).
   It protects you from poison.
   It makes you less stealthy.
 C - an uncursed ring of protection from fire
 J - the amulet of the Four Winds {Clar rN+ MR+++}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 8 of the Dungeon)   
   
   [amulet of clarity]
   
   It provides mental clarity.
   It protects you from negative energy.
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
 W - the ring "Ped Qade" (right hand) {rC+ MR++ SInv}
   (You took it off Erolcha on level 8 of the Dungeon)   
   
   [ring of see invisible]
   
   It protects you from cold.
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
   It lets you see invisible.
Wands
 l - a wand of invisibility (2)
 N - a wand of teleportation (4)
 Q - a wand of fireball (4)
 T - a wand of cold (4)
 V - a wand of polymorph (17)
Scrolls
 f - 9 scrolls of identify
 m - 3 scrolls of blinking
 o - 2 scrolls of enchant weapon
 r - 14 scrolls of teleportation
 u - 29 scrolls of remove curse
 z - 4 scrolls of recharging
 I - 10 scrolls of fog
 P - 7 scrolls of fear
 X - 4 scrolls of magic mapping
Potions
 b - 7 potions of flight
 g - 5 potions of haste
 h - 8 potions of might
 j - 20 potions of curing
 q - 6 potions of resistance
 E - 3 potions of cancellation
 F - 3 potions of invisibility
 O - 10 potions of heal wounds
 R - 4 potions of berserk rage
 Y - 8 potions of agility
Miscellaneous
 k - 2 phantom mirrors
 p - a phial of floods
 t - a box of beasts
 S - a legendary deck of summoning {the Elements}
Comestibles
 a - 23 bread rations
 c - 24 meat rations
 i - 50 fruits
 U - 6 royal jellies


   Skills:
 O Level 27 Fighting
 O Level 27 Axes
 + Level 16.9 Throwing
 * Level 21.8 Armour
 * Level 16.1 Dodging
   Level 3.2 Shields
 - Level 1.5 Charms
 - Level 1.6 Translocations
 - Level 14.0 Invocations
 - Level 10.4 Evocations


You had 12 spell levels left.
You knew the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Apportation           Tloc           #.........   92%         1    ##.....
b - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          98%         2    ###....
c - Summon Butterflies    Summ           #.......     99%         1    ##.....
d - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       #.....       99%         2    ###....
e - Conjure Flame         Conj/Fire      #.......     100%        3    ####...
f - Phase Shift           Tloc           #.........   100%        5    ######.


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (15/15)            Temple (1/1) D:4            Lair (8/8) D:11
 Shoals (4/4) Lair:4       Spider (4/4) Lair:5        Slime (0/6) Lair:8
    Orc (4/4) D:9             Elf (3/3) Orc:3        Vaults (5/5) D:13
  Crypt (3/3) Vaults:3       Tomb (0/3) Crypt:3      Depths (5/5) D:15
    Zot (3/5) Depths:5   

[xentronium]

Nobody's mentioned this is a buff for mummies?

[dynast]

Nobody's mentioned this is a buff for mummies?

shhh, dont let them know a hungerless race exists in this game...

[Croases]

I like both of them but you can mostly just walk away from hungry ghosts and death cobs are yet another enemy that you shouldn't ever be meleeing (provided that you have a food clock).

I propose that their AF_HUNGER attacks be made into gaze attacks instead, so that they can't reliably hungerlock you but can force you to eat while they close the range. This also makes "go invisible" a more obvious tactic against cobs.

[duvessa]

Making other races more annoying to play is not a buff to mummies.

[Laraso]

I highly doubt they were legitimately proposing that this is a buff to mummies. It was quite obvious, to me at least, that they were being facetious.

[asdu]

Quite honestly, I prefer the acute annoyance of death cobs to the chronic annoyance of butchering and food management. It's actually a challenge instead of simple tedium.

The problem with death cobs as a challenge is that combat with them is qualitatively worse than normal combat due to bad mechanics and bad feedback. Instead of the normal hp bar you have a few adjectives (and knowing crawl I expect the scale to be completely misleading) and you're forced to use a form of healing with its own obscure rules, you can hurt yourself by doing things that cost hunger and your AC suddenly become irrelevant for some reason. Thus, all previous feedback you have regarding what your character can do in a fight doesn't really apply to these 2 monsters. To make it worse they both have crazy EV which makes combat even more swingy and feedback less reliable.
I actually find hungry ghosts to be much worse than death cobs. While death cobs can't be safely avoided since they're fast, by the time you reach them you're probably walking around engorged anyway and you have enough shit to throw at them that you can afford to spitefully go full overkill. Hungry ghosts for me are like D:5 hydras in the sense that some characters (many, even) just can't kill them fast enough so they have to be avoided, which can be done almost without fail because speed 10.
This doesn't seem worth it just to make a couple of joke monsters relevant.

[byrel]

Fact of the day... EV:
Spriggan > Hungry ghost > blink frog > black mamba = adder = water moccasin = death cob

Yup. Hungry ghosts have silly amounts of evasion. So do adders.

[BugHunter]

Here's an idea: Make hungry ghosts occur less often, but be more special when they do. When a player character dies of starvation, it comes back as a hungry ghost instead of a regular player ghost. So you'd encounter a "hungry player ghost of BugHunter (Troll Conjurer)". It would be much like a normal player ghost (maybe toned down just a bit), plus a hunger attack.

Of course, not many players die of starvation. I'm sure someone can do a Sequell query to tell us how many.

[Laraso]

Here's an idea: Make hungry ghosts occur less often, but be more special when they do. When a player character dies of starvation, it comes back as a hungry ghost instead of a regular player ghost. So you'd encounter a "hungry player ghost of BugHunter (Troll Conjurer)". It would be much like a normal player ghost (maybe toned down just a bit), plus a hunger attack.

Of course, not many players die of starvation. I'm sure someone can do a Sequell query to tell us how many.

They are already very uncommon, you fight like 2 or 3 at most in a typical game. Your suggestion would mean they would be virtually non-existent, the only time you might see one is in Zot where death cobs exist, and I don't think we need to be throwing player ghosts who inflict hunger at players alongside the death cobs.

[BugHunter]

Well, I thought the suggestion was to get rid of them completely. Making them virtually non-existent, is heading that direction. But you're probably right about them almost exclusively in Zot because of the death cobs. Can someone with better sequell-foo (and a handy IRC client) run an appropriate sequell query to see how often people starve to death, and where? I'm also curious as to what classes might starve the most.

[RBrandon]

New monster request: Hunger Fiend

Spells:
Symbol of Hunger
Summon Terrible Hunger
Hungfire
Hunger's Call
Hunger Form

[Laraso]

New monster request: Hunger Fiend

Spells:
Symbol of Hunger
Summon Terrible Hunger
Hungfire
Hunger's Call
Hunger Form

Let's not forget hungerstorm, deals irresistible hunger damage in a 5x5 smite targeted area, creates hunger-inducing clouds throughout the entire affected area and spawns numerous hunger vortex.

[dynast]

Funny sotry:

Today my friend got convinced to get back to playing crawl after nearly 2 years, he had only played for a few days, very few hours a day, one of the last species he had played was a centaur and he decided to try one again but, before getting into the game, he was constantly asking me "how to not starve". I explained to him that much had changed and centaurs were no longer herbivores with fast metabolism.

So, we got into the game, he Chose CeAM, pretty shitty combo if you ask me but ok, and he then proceded to waste as much arrows as possible against bats. The thing that really started bugging me was not that he was butchering every corpse left on the floor but that he was constantly trying to eat chunks while already satiated. Everytime the status showed "Hungry" he would start eating chunks, after eating chunks he would try to eat more chunks, if he didnt had any chunks he would eat some other food instead. At that point i stopped giving him food advice and just tried to make him get as far as possible without stupidly dying.

In conclusion, he is now at orc 4 with plenty of food, even though he is resting a lot, wearing his amulet of regen and casting all his shitty spells to get out of narrow spots and find new ones to get himself into with inner flame, havent found a single hungry ghost or food vault. Its weird, right? spending most of his key presses on something that did not change his game in the least bit.

[tabstorm]

Funny sotry:

Today my friend got convinced to get back to playing crawl after nearly 2 years, he had only played for a few days, very few hours a day, one of the last species he had played was a centaur and he decided to try one again but, before getting into the game, he was constantly asking me "how to not starve". I explained to him that much had changed and centaurs were no longer herbivores with fast metabolism.

So, we got into the game, he Chose CeAM, pretty shitty combo if you ask me but ok, and he then proceded to waste as much arrows as possible against bats. The thing that really started bugging me was not that he was butchering every corpse left on the floor but that he was constantly trying to eat chunks while already satiated. Everytime the status showed "Hungry" he would start eating chunks, after eating chunks he would try to eat more chunks, if he didnt had any chunks he would eat some other food instead. At that point i stopped giving him food advice and just tried to make him get as far as possible without stupidly dying.

In conclusion, he is now at orc 4 with plenty of food, even though he is resting a lot, wearing his amulet of regen and casting all his shitty spells to get out of narrow spots and find new ones to get himself into with inner flame, havent found a single hungry ghost or food vault. Its weird, right? spending most of his key presses on something that did not change his game in the least bit.

Unsurprisingly, food isn't a meaningful constraint on the player 99% of the time.

[jason0320]

They work as some nice late game threats, and a reason to use your permafood.
And any ranged build that survived that long can easily take them down before being touch by them.