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The removal of curse scrolls and subsequent rebalance is a gigantic debuff for Ashenzari, a god that is already well-known for being difficult to gain piety with early on. With how hard it was already to get your possessions cursed, this just takes the cake.

A better rebalance would have been to make cursing possessions free and uncursing them require one ?rc per item, but this change goes in the other direction, turning Ashenzari from the god of adaptation and learning to the god of FloorRNG.

Please forgive me, but I'm not sure what you're talking about. I gather it's a new commit, but TBH I don't know where to look for these.

MainiacJoe wrote:Please forgive me, but I'm not sure what you're talking about. I gather it's a new commit, but TBH I don't know where to look for these.

Here is the git, and here is the particular change I am referring to in the post.

Wow. Super awesome that change in Ash curse minigame is finally happening! Not sure that "always get curse you need" is worth 3 cursefoo scrolls. Will have to see how that works out; certainly increases the pressure to curse weapon.

I have yet to play a game with the change, but when we discussed this on ##crawl-dev, people agreed that it makes early piety gain easier, but later item swapping harder. Which sounds pretty good to me.

Instead of complaining at first sight, give it a try! If it is bad, we'll listen if you can tell us what and how you played. Starting a thread with this topic is not gonna change anyone's opinion.

You made me think for a moment that Ashenzari got removed.

Pakellas first, please.

Jesus Christ it finally happened.
Rejoice!

edit: only ?curse foo were removed. I hoped this swipe had enough momentum to bash away also ?RC.
Half of joy for now.
I change the other half for the hope I don't have to wait 0.28 to see ?RC gone (fuck, I just checked Ash was added in 0.8 and I consider it still a new god).

Anyway I don't understand how this commit makes later swapping harder: from the log I don't see any change in ?RC generation code, so a Ash's follower should have now more ?RC and easier time to swap items in any moment. How is possible the contrary?

Interesting that there are so different opinions about this change!

Hurricos wrote:The removal of curse scrolls and subsequent rebalance is a gigantic debuff for Ashenzari

le_nerd wrote:Wow. Super awesome that change in Ash curse minigame is finally happening!

So what do I think?

First of all, randomness didn't fit at all to a god of knowledge and seeing. Thematically, this change is very welcome. Also, as speedrunner - no running back to stash - the appropriate scrolls often took 4 (!) slots in my inventory. Now you'll only need one slot for remove curse scrolls.

le_nerd definitely made the most important point about the new change:

le_nerd wrote:Not sure that "always get curse you need" is worth 3 cursefoo scrolls.

This will be the main question!

I remember that getting the favoured curse scrolls by sacrifice was vital for the development of the entire char. Unfortunately, this was very dependent on luck. And I remember two games in which I sacrificed > 10 scrolls per game and didn't get the curse scroll I wanted!

So worshipping Ash is less random now - you are guaranteed to bind one item you want. But you can't get more out of one scroll.

So I think as well: let's see how it works.

So one kind of randomness is replaced with another. Now we can decide what to curse unless we have none to begin with. Can we finally get rid of luck dependency? Can Ashenzarites get a curse item on demand?

dpeg wrote:people agreed that it makes early piety gain easier, but later item swapping harder. Which sounds pretty good to me.

Can you explain how? In early you'll get overall less scrolls, so even if you can choose which item to curse, it isn't an obvious net gain.
In late game Ashenzari conduct becomes largely irrelevant unless somebody's willing to continuously swap e.g. rings, in which case he'll still get as many curse jewellery scrolls as he did before.

Why should I bother to reply to

Bart wrote:
dpeg wrote:people agreed that it makes early piety gain easier, but later item swapping harder. Which sounds pretty good to me.

Can you explain how?

if all you can come up with is

Bart wrote:Can we finally get rid of luck dependency?

Funny thing, ash early piety gain does not depend on scroll drops but gear itself, whatever if you have 10 rc scrolls if you havent even found a ring yet.

From my experience, cursing your weapon, especially if it's a 2 hander, it's often the best and easiest solution to quick gain piety.

Getting some gear to curse after building enough piety to use Ash' passive boost it's more a mid-game problem - and in the past, also getting the right ?curse foo was in the equation.
Anyway I still hope to see ?RC crumble to dust.

Dpeg, why do you bother to reply if you actually do not want to reply? Why do you selectively quote my post and claim it's all I can come up with? I recommend PM-ing if you feel offended rather than joining me on my level. I didn't intend to antagonize anyone and I'm sorry for the tone. I have asked this question in a polite way several times in the past and haven't received satisfactory reply - that's where my impatience came from.

My concern is - why do we gain piety reliably with all gods, but not Ash? Why make such an exception? Ashenzarites are randomly crippled in the part of the game where divine help is most needed. Gods are taken ASAP to help survive early levels where we don't have yet consumables at disposal. Previous changes tried to address early Ash game by moving powers to lower piety levels. This suggests that my concern is valid, yet the fundamental problem remains untouched.

Some gods in Crawl "access" player's equipment, yet they give items, not take them away. It works, because players are not granted to have things to give away. Redundancy does not hurt, but absence cripples. I claim that Ashenzari cannot be reliably balanced around items that might come in dozens, yet might also be absolutely scarce. It's not only a problem of early game, but also of late game, where swapping is a rare necessity, but scrolls still come at a high rate.

But I played Ash a lot specifically because I enjoyed randomness...

Sar, aren't you joking? Have you maybe considered joining Xom? Do you know that if you want randomness, you might also go godless, as this is the equivalent of curseless Ash game?

Ash lets you see through walls, gives you clarity, sInv, allows to retrain skills and identifies items - all to reduce randomness - and then it relies on items which spawn absolutely randomly.

I've played a bunch of Xom games too, it's fine as well, but different.

Bart wrote:and then it relies on items which spawn absolutely randomly.

I think you mispoke there, everyone relies on absolutely random drops, ash is the god who benefits more from it, since you can change your skills to whatever the dungeon gives you.

For goodness sake...

I've played a ton of Ashenzarites. To start with, I'd keep a stack of say, 5 remove curse scrolls in my inventory, and turn off autopickup and pray over new ones I found. This always ended up with me being short on curse jewellery. It would be super frustrating, I'd get tones of weapon scrolls and decent numbers of armour scrolls.

I eventually figured out that while the scroll generation was heavily biased against curse jewellery when sacrificing individual scrolls, gathering a stack of 6 or so would give you plenty.

I have to guess that the code was something like 'is it a curse weapon scroll? roll dice y/n, is it a curse armour scroll? roll dice y/n' or something else that resulted in curse jewellery being very rare if you sacrifice ?RC scrolls one by one, but fine if you do it in chunks.

All that needed to be done was look at that code and rework it to make it a single dice roll.

Or I could be talking out of my ass, but the whole bias against curse jewellery when sacrificing individual scrolls but not when sacrificing 5-6 at once was very real.

While I have to accept that crawl is changing, this:

"the risk of getting the "wrong" curse scrolls, especially in early game."

Is basically a misunderstanding. Once I figured out the quirks of curse scroll generation I never had any problems getting the curse scrolls I needed.

Turukano wrote:I remember that getting the favoured curse scrolls by sacrifice was vital for the development of the entire char. Unfortunately, this was very dependent on luck. And I remember two games in which I sacrificed > 10 scrolls per game and didn't get the curse scroll I wanted!

Willing to bet that it was curse jewellery you needed, and you were sacrificing the scrolls one by one hoping 'this time it's gotta give curse jewellery'. Don't worry I've been there.

pray over a stack of 3 or more and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a couple of each type.

Elystan wrote:For goodness sake...

I've played a ton of Ashenzarites. To start with, I'd keep a stack of say, 5 remove curse scrolls in my inventory, and turn off autopickup and pray over new ones I found. This always ended up with me being short on curse jewellery. It would be super frustrating, I'd get tones of weapon scrolls and decent numbers of armour scrolls.

I eventually figured out that while the scroll generation was heavily biased against curse jewellery when sacrificing individual scrolls, gathering a stack of 6 or so would give you plenty.

I have to guess that the code was something like 'is it a curse weapon scroll? roll dice y/n, is it a curse armour scroll? roll dice y/n' or something else that resulted in curse jewellery being very rare if you sacrifice ?RC scrolls one by one, but fine if you do it in chunks.

All that needed to be done was look at that code and rework it to make it a single dice roll.

Or I could be talking out of my ass, but the whole bias against curse jewellery when sacrificing individual scrolls but not when sacrificing 5-6 at once was very real.

While I have to accept that crawl is changing, this:

"the risk of getting the "wrong" curse scrolls, especially in early game."

Is basically a misunderstanding. Once I figured out the quirks of curse scroll generation I never had any problems getting the curse scrolls I needed.

I love the schoolmarmy "I can't believe you didn't think of this obvious solution" combined with completely incorrect understanding of how the game determined which curse foo scroll to create topped with talking out of your ass statistics.

added

Elystan wrote:
Turukano wrote:I remember that getting the favoured curse scrolls by sacrifice was vital for the development of the entire char. Unfortunately, this was very dependent on luck. And I remember two games in which I sacrificed > 10 scrolls per game and didn't get the curse scroll I wanted!

Willing to bet that it was curse jewellery you needed

You just lost your bets. :-)

In both games I played octopodes, desperately hoping for curseA because a single cursed cap already results in fully bound in armour. Instead, I got tons of curseJ scrolls.

In one of these games I luckily found an acquirement scroll, asked for armour and was very happy to get a simple cursed +2 cap or something.

Elystan wrote:pray over a stack of 3 or more and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a couple of each type.

This could have worked?

Turukano wrote:
Elystan wrote:pray over a stack of 3 or more and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a couple of each type.

This could have worked?

no, it was exactly the same as sacrificing 3 individual scrolls one at a time.

That simply can't be the case. I've played a statistically significant number of ashenzarites (hundreds at least) and every time without fail sacrificing individual scrolls makes me miss out on curse jewellery and sacrificing stacks gives me a roughly even distribution of scrolls.

Gonna get my wizmode on

Agh it creates remove curse in stacks of 12 and I had to remap my hash key to enter after my enter key fell off so I can't drop them to pray individually. I was totally about to prove either myself or all of you wrong but now I can't.

My cursed scrolls still exist in my inventory despite converting to latest patch. Think its bug?

carbonbasedlifeform wrote:My cursed scrolls still exist in my inventory despite converting to latest patch. Think its bug?

They were likely grandfathered in so that nothing in your game broke. Devs don't usually fiddle with existing games' inventories, etc.

Elystan wrote:That simply can't be the case. I've played a statistically significant number of ashenzarites (hundreds at least) and every time without fail sacrificing individual scrolls makes me miss out on curse jewellery and sacrificing stacks gives me a roughly even distribution of scrolls.

Code:: /** * Sacrifice a scroll to Ashenzari, transforming it into three new curse * scrolls. * * The types of scrolls generated are random, weighted by the number of slots * of the appropriate type available to the player. * * @param item The scroll to be sacrificed. * Is not destroyed by this function (obviously!) */ static void _ashenzari_sac_scroll(const item_def& item) { mprf("%s flickers black.", get_desc_quantity(1, item.quantity, item.name(DESC_THE)).c_str()); const int wpn_weight = 3; const int jwl_weight = (you.species != SP_OCTOPODE) ? 3 : 9; int arm_weight = 0; for (int i = EQ_MIN_ARMOUR; i <= EQ_MAX_ARMOUR; i++) if (you_can_wear(static_cast<equipment_type>(i))) arm_weight++; map<int, int> generated_scrolls = { { SCR_CURSE_WEAPON, 0 }, { SCR_CURSE_ARMOUR, 0 }, { SCR_CURSE_JEWELLERY, 0 }, }; for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) { const int scroll_type = you.species == SP_FELID ? SCR_CURSE_JEWELLERY : random_choose_weighted(wpn_weight, SCR_CURSE_WEAPON, arm_weight, SCR_CURSE_ARMOUR, jwl_weight, SCR_CURSE_JEWELLERY, 0); generated_scrolls[scroll_type]++; dprf("%d: %d", scroll_type, generated_scrolls[scroll_type]); }

Take a look at the code for yourself. The important bit is the for loop at the bottom. For each scroll to be returned, it does a weighted random choice between weapon, armour, and jewellery, taking into account your species but nothing else. The reason you feel like you're getting more curse jewellery when you sacrifice multiple is most likely selection bias. You notice the times you get curse jewellery when you sac multiple and notice the opposite when you only get one ?curse scroll. It's probably because Curse Armour appears more often and you only really need one or two curse weapons, meaning that when you get mostly armour for a long time it's easy to feel like no jewellery scrolls are coming.

So i won new Ash 15rune-CeFi. Decided to play relatively safe just to not die and enjoy this combo as much as possible. I must say he is slightly more powerful in extended because of +3item slots and with scrying+passive mapping you can pretty much loot every scroll of remove curse within the sight ending up with 10+ with ease.

Overall, I personally think he is more balanced now. In the case when game decides to smite you with no-scrolls-of-remove-curse-like fate, he will become true god of no switching ( which resolves situational item switching problem). Otherwise he is very powerful, even more powerful now than before I would say.

carbonbasedlifeform wrote:Overall, I personally think he is more balanced now. [...] Otherwise he is very powerful, even more powerful now than before I would say.

Hurricos wrote:RIP Ashenzari

RIP = Recently Improved Power?

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