Hybridization

[Sandman25]

I pretty much always hybridized whatever I was playing, since the cost was relatively low, and the gain quite high. This dulls the differences between different games, making things less interesting, and reducing replayability. A hybrid is a fun option to have, but it shouldn't be always the optimal one. I think this fork has achieved a much more balanced approach, where hybridization is still possible, although quite costly (as it should be, since it is balanced out by large benefits), but specialization much easier (with the tradeoff that it is much faster to train). And since there are so many different specializations, the variety is greater compared with a bunch of grey areas the blend most common factors together. In vanilla, even strong fighters almost always required significant magic investment by the time you reach extended game. Likewise, magic users always need significant fighting skills as well, to be able to deal with situations when their magic was ineffective. Consequently, you end up with games being much more similar than they need to be, even when starting with very different species and backgrounds.

Do you agree?

[Shard1697]

I don't see why a varied approach shouldn't be optimal.

[Sandman25]

I don't see why a varied approach shouldn't be optimal.

What do you mean?

[dynast]

Lol no. Playing a hybrid is way more interesting and weaker than playing a focused character, you may at best want to get basic spells like regen, blink, repel, meph cloud.

[amaril]

Each linear character build may have distinct gameplay (i.e. a Pure Summoner plays differently from a Conjurer or a Heavy Armour Melee Dude) but if it were always optimal to stick to one group of skills throughout the game, each of these character archetypes would always play the same every time you played one (i.e. all Summoners are the same).

If it were never optimal to hybridize or adapt to what you find in the dungeon (because, for example, experience is scarce and what you are doing is always 'good enough') the game would have no strategic depth whatsoever.

[Sandman25]

Lol no. Playing a hybrid is way more interesting and weaker than playing a focused character, you may at best want to get basic spells like regen, blink, repel, meph cloud.

Do you mean it is optimal to ignore weapon/fighting/armour with human magic background? That quote was about the whole game, not just early game.

[dynast]

If it were never optimal to hybridize or adapt to what you find in the dungeon (because, for example, experience is scarce and what you are doing is always 'good enough') the game would have no strategic depth whatsoever.

I think we are already there(for the majority of the games, at least), though i still think the game has strategic depth, just a narrow one.

[goodcoolguy]

Sounds like gibberish, not something you can agree or disagree with.

[dynast]

Those skills are mandatory for any character and does not make you a hybrid, from my point of view, at least. Being good at surviving and killing does not equal hybrid, being good at killing with a combination of different trained weapon(both melee and ranged) and spells do.

[Arrhythmia]

I'm more curious as to how he solved the problem he saw, rather than naval gazing over whether or not it's a problem to begin with.

[Sandman25]

Those skills are mandatory for any character and does not make you a hybrid, from my point of view, at least. Being good at surviving and killing does not equal hybrid, being good at killing with a combination of different trained weapon(both melee and ranged) and spells do.

I think if you have weapon/armour/fighting, it means you are good at killing things with weapon and thus hybrid (assuming you have level 5-6 spells also which you usually do as human elementalist).

[Sandman25]

I'm more curious as to how he solved the problem he saw, rather than naval gazing over whether or not it's a problem to begin with.

Basically you have a shared resource which is spent when attacking with melee, ranged and spells.
You cannot be great with weapon unless you have high Str, Fighting, Weapon, Dex. Fighting does not increase max HP.
You cannot be great with spells unless you have high Dex, Int, Spellcasting, Magic school max (not average). The latter to increase difference between casters (you cannot train Conjurations and then cast Fire Storm/Glaciate/Poison Arrow etc. with a character).

[Blomdor]

I'll leave the discussion of what is "optimal", not "optimal", whether "hybridization" is a good thing, what it even is, etc. to people smarter and far better at the game than I. However...I've managed 15 runes with two different pure melee characters. One of them *knew* haste, but from what I recall and gather from its morgue, it never bothered to cast it. I almost never cast a thing, either in extended or elsewhere. And I am not good at this game.

In other words, this point here, "In vanilla, even strong fighters almost always require significant magic investment by the time you reach extended game," is not something I can possibly agree with. You absolutely do not *need* to use magic to get any of the runes or defeat any of the hell/pan lords. Melee is very, very strong in Crawl, with or without self-buffs or whatever else a hybrid might do.

[jwoodward48ss]

How does the latter change increase differences? It seems like you'd just find every conjurer doing all conj, instead of focusing on one element.

[Sandman25]

How does the latter change increase differences? It seems like you'd just find every conjurer doing all conj, instead of focusing on one element.

Spells were changed too. Fire Storm is pure Fire in that fork.

[Sandman25]

I'll leave the discussion of what is "optimal", not "optimal", whether "hybridization" is a good thing, what it even is, etc. to people smarter and far better at the game than I. However...I've managed 15 runes with two different pure melee characters. One of them *knew* haste, but from what I recall and gather from its morgue, it never bothered to cast it. I almost never cast a thing, either in extended or elsewhere. And I am not good at this game.

In other words, this point here, "In vanilla, even strong fighters almost always require significant magic investment by the time you reach extended game," is not something I can possibly agree with. You absolutely do not *need* to use magic to get any of the runes or defeat any of the hell/pan lords. Melee is very, very strong in Crawl, with or without self-buffs or whatever else a hybrid might do.

Yes, "need" could be replaced with "optimal" there, you are right.

Let me explain more. In vanilla it is optimal to get apportation, blink, regen etc. with many characters, it is basically a no-brainer. In that fork casting blink with low Int/Tranlocations/Dex/Spellcasting might cost too many stamina points and when you are out of stamina you get very significant penalties for attack speed/damage/accuracy/defense/stats. so casting a spell (or throwing a javelin, shooting with sling etc.) might be a very bad idea for some characters.

[Shard1697]

Having stuff like dex affecting spellcasting speed makes me want to throw myself off a cliff

[Sandman25]

Having stuff like dex affecting spellcasting speed makes me want to throw myself off a cliff

Yes, that was one of the reasons why I stopped playing that fork. I am not suggesting the change, just asking for opinions about hybridization and variation

[genericpseudonym]

How does the latter change increase differences? It seems like you'd just find every conjurer doing all conj, instead of focusing on one element.

Spells were changed too. Fire Storm is pure Fire in that fork.

I think at present magic in that fork is horribly unbalanced/OP, at least if you play as a halfling (who now get racial wild magic).
The spellpower cap for all spells was increased to 999 and I think the scaling was changed, because my guy was getting up there around the end of lair with 3 enhancers and hitting for 400+ damage with IMB.
It's a bit silly because some of the spells seem to scale much more weakly with spellpower: the battlesphere still adds about 5ish damage to each hit and fulminant prism hits for 20-40ish.

Having stuff like dex affecting spellcasting speed makes me want to throw myself off a cliff

Yeah the fork is a bit goofy. There are amulets that double (!) your spellcasting speed, but I ditched that one for an amulet of "stamina shield" to turn my 150 stamina into extra health and become invincible.

[infinitevox]

Slightly off-topic, but this is just another reason that forks are good for the overall health of the game.
They give devs/players a chance to try new and potentially radical changes without pissing off the majority of the playerbase, and we can gather some fairly valuable information even from the failures.
I think Firestorm being pure Fire, Glaciate pure Ice, etc is an excellent idea.

I kinda like the concept of the stamina system, at least on paper, but (and I haven't played it, so take this with a grain of salt) I think I would find that system would be very tedious in actual execution.

Having stuff like dex affecting spellcasting speed makes me want to throw myself off a cliff

This pretty much sums up my feelings here completely, too.

Directly to the topic at hand:
My only webtiles recorded 15-Rune win was with a DsWr.
Despite the book background, and the spells I "learned", I only cast 1 spell the entire game: Blink
And I cast it a grand total of 2 times. (My endgame weapon was actually a randart morningstar with -Cast...)
I would call that character an absolutely pure melee duder, and argue that while utility spells are nice to have, they are not a necessity at all.

Also, on my first 6 out of 7 webtiles recorded winning characters, I have a grand total of 19 spells cast, split between like 5 spells. (Blink/Regen being the main ones, followed by a few casts of Fireball, meph cloud, and sting?)
By my anecdotal evidence, I have to disagree with the paragraph written by the DCSS fork dev.
Strong fighters don't need significant magic investment, they can instead rely on Evo/Invo if they need to shore up any weaknesses in the character.

I will say though: I'm convinced that an End Game caster's power level is much higher than an End Game melee character.
And given the plethora of XP available in extended, and the variation and range of threats, its almost dumb not to pick up some spells. (With maxed out everything, why not?)
Realistically speaking, with "infinite" XP, the skills/aptitudes difference between any two characters played by the same person will approach zero barring some sort of self-imposed conduct. A person is going to gravitate towards the skills/spells/abilities that are the most effective, fun, and to a lesser extent what they're familiar with.
So I can see where they're coming from, I just think that maybe they're being a tad disingenuous, if we're using your average player as the basis for the analysis.

[qwesdf]

Which fork is this?

[CanOfWorms]

it's circus animals

[Sandman25]

I kinda like the concept of the stamina system, at least on paper, but (and I haven't played it, so take this with a grain of salt) I think I would find that system would be very tedious in actual execution.

Try the fork, it is anything but tedious. Normal speed for all characters is 9 so you cannot retreat for long to restore stamina, there is no resting in the game (you are instantly healed back to full HP if there are no nearby monsters, but you get a monster instantly in view if it was just beyond your view). It is actually extremely hard game for melee on hardest difficulty level and Trog does not help, I died very quick even as HOBe and alike.

[WingedEspeon]

I have to disagree. I find Hybrids to be weaker that relativly pure builds, within limates. A mage with armour/fighting and no weapon skill is not a hybrid, it is a mage with defensive skills.

I say within limates because getting reoekk missels online by vaults is generaly good, but takes very little effort because you can cast it out of combat and even take off your armour and switch in +int gear to cast it.

[and into]

Do I agree with what, exactly? It is really unclear to me what the quotation in OP means regarding "hybrid."

Different players seem to have very different things in mind when they use this word; it is probably more opaque than "caster" which is saying something.

[Shtopit]

I see a huge difference between hybridization and dipping.

Hybridization would be, to me, a character which is equally good with stealth and maces, or with conjurations and armour, and uses both in roughly the same quantity.

Dipping, to me, is a character with a melee build which can cast blink, apportation, regen, haste, silence, or a chei PC that goes melee and casts cBlink.

It doesn't seem to me like Crawl does much to encourage any of these. Reason #1 is that Crawl wants you to have an efficient killdudes. Once you have one trained, you can use it over and over, be it a weapons skill, conj or something else, and, unless it's short blades or an elemental school, it will always function. Reason #2 is that armour + shields and magic tend to cancel each other out, because most wizards have low strength. Reason #3 is that, once you reach the point of being an ironclad AC monster, reasons to use helpful spells go down fast: you are so hard you will rarely need to random blink, silence or invisibility don't work against demons so you are used to suck it up and think of something else, and the most powerful helpful spells can be substituted with untrained evokables and consumables.

So dipping is cool and gives a couple more options, but it isn't needed. You can win the game with just armour and stick without much planning. Hybridization seems to me to be actually detrimental. The big exception are Chei characters, who can do pretty much anything and turn themselves into an ironclad Vashnia with melee capabilities if they want to, but still wouldn't benefit that much by training both e.g. conj and bows.

[Sandman25]

Do I agree with what, exactly? It is really unclear to me what the quotation in OP means regarding "hybrid."

It is optimal to use a weapon with a caster.
It is optimal to use low level support spells with a melee guy.
Do you agree that this is not good and it should be harder to use whip of electro as SpWz?

[Sandman25]

A mage with armour/fighting and no weapon skill is not a hybrid, it is a mage with defensive skills.

Yes, everyone shares this opinion I believe.

[Shard1697]

I see a huge difference between hybridization and dipping.

Hybridization would be, to me, a character which is equally good with stealth and maces, or with conjurations and armour, and uses both in roughly the same quantity.

Dipping, to me, is a character with a melee build which can cast blink, apportation, regen, haste, silence, or a chei PC that goes melee and casts cBlink.

...you wouldn't call a character who learns spells up to level 5 and 6 a hybrid? The starting class everyone points to as a "hybrid start", Skald, basically supports itself with level 2 and 3 spells... spectral weapon being the "hybrid"-iest spell I can even think of.

Do you agree that this is not good and it should be harder to use whip of electro as SpWz?

Not who you're asking, but my 2 cents is that it's great and one of the strengths of Crawl as a game

[Sandman25]

Not who you're asking

Thank you for the answer. I wasn't asking, I was answering what I am asking

[goodcoolguy]

I think most people regard a character that casts no spells higher than level 3 and kills things primarily with melee weapons as a melee character. If you have a character that goes through 2 out of 3 runes meleeing, understood as in the previous sentence, before getting some level 4 to 6 summons, charms, and/or translocations online, this again is a melee character.

Skald is not a classic hybrid background. It is a melee background. If there is a classic hybrid background, it's ice elementalist.

[Shtopit]

...you wouldn't call a character who learns spells up to level 5 and 6 a hybrid? The starting class everyone points to as a "hybrid start", Skald, basically supports itself with level 2 and 3 spells... spectral weapon being the "hybrid"-iest spell I can even think of.

Here I have a few things to say. #1 is that Skald has some problems as a class, since it attempts to do exactly the same thing a normal melee character can do giving up passive abilities (Str, AC) for active abilities (spells) which need to be called upon to be used. This is why it doesn't seem to me like the game system pushes towards such a PC, although the UI offers a class like this. #2 is that I would call a lvl 2 Skald a hybrid, but a lvl 27 Skald which lives through lvl 2-3 spells to me is a melee build which took a dip in magic during its first levels. A lvl 25 character that can cast lvl 6 spells but also has 27 in a weapon and 24 in armour and shields (this is a random example, I didn't run the numbers) has put much more importance into melee for a long part of the game and I call him a melee build which is taking a late dip into magic.

As far as hybrid starts go, Enchanter works a lot better, or, at least, makes much more sense to me. There's however the problem of how much hybrid backgrounds actually are going to be played as hybrid. After the first book, you can do anything you want. So yes, there are hybrid starts, but I don't think an actually hybrid character build is going to have an easy life, or that the game encourages building up "real" hybrids for its whole duration.

[Sandman25]

A lvl 25 character that can cast lvl 6 spells but also has 27 in a weapon and 24 in armour and shields (this is a random example, I didn't run the numbers) has put much more importance into melee for a long part of the game and I call him a melee build which is taking a late dip into magic.

Why not caster build with a late dip into melee? When I play elementalists of non-Vehumet, I usually stop at level 6 spells.

Edit. Examples: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 225442.txt http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 031809.txt

[and into]

Do I agree with what, exactly? It is really unclear to me what the quotation in OP means regarding "hybrid."

It is optimal to use a weapon with a caster.
It is optimal to use low level support spells with a melee guy.
Do you agree that this is not good and it should be harder to use whip of electro as SpWz?

Backgrounds in the "mage" category should carry around potentially useful weapons. The cost of doing so is an inventory slot (really cheap). Ditto wands, blowgun, etc. Eventually, it usually makes sense to train something other than your primary spell school(s) + defenses, because the first ten skill levels of <foo> are much, much cheaper than skill levels 11 to 20 of <bar>. Exactly what you train once your priority skills are in a good spot will depend on the game.

For similar reasons, low level (or even mid- and high-level) spells can be good ideas on "melee dudes." Heavier armor without sufficiently high stats does push you more toward sticking with the basics though, at least in a 3-rune game.

I don't think there is anything wrong with this fundamentally, though I am sure some things could stand more fine-tuning within this framework.

[Shtopit]

Why not caster build with a late dip into melee? When I play elementalists of non-Vehumet, I usually stop at level 6 spells.

Edit. Examples: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 225442.txt http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 031809.txt

Well, that's a pretty long dip. I was thinking of a melee PC that can cast lvl 6 from 1 or 2 schools. I guess I would call that character, in the last levels, a true hybrid, since you were using the sword a lot but still casting abundantly for direct damage, buff, mobility and hexing.

[Sandman25]

I think 1 level 6 spell is not enough to be a hybrid because of haste. http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 224836.txt

[Shard1697]

I think these are all pretty arbitrary distinctions!

[Shtopit]

I'll ask the Oxford English Dictionary to add them, then

[Blomdor]

I feel like this is all related a bit to Crawl's lack of a "class" system. It's deities (Trog and magic, TSO and poison, etc.) that limit what the game allows and encourages you to train, more than background. Race introduces aptitudes, but only a relative few have actual restrictions. Character development in Crawl seems to be based quite strongly on adapting to what is found after making those first decisions. So "class"-like distinctions - "melee character", "blaster", "sneaky rogue" - are difficult to pin down; the game itself flatly doesn't make them as far as I can tell, outside of the flavorful title you get based on your single highest skill.

So, to the question posed earlier of "It is optimal to use a weapon with a caster.
It is optimal to use low level support spells with a melee guy.
Do you agree that this is not good and it should be harder to use whip of electro as SpWz?"...

I'd have to say no. It's just a reflection of the way the game is designed. Most characters, barring the aforementioned deity-based restrictions on necromancy or magic in general, can pick up and use regeneration if it seems prudent. And all characters barring felids can train for, and use, a whip of electrocution if it's the best weapon around and it appears to be a good idea. You're just using what the dungeon gives you, because Crawl doesn't use a class-based system of character progression; it is mostly based on what you decide to do with what you find.

Making it prohibitively more difficult to use a whip on a spriggan wizard versus a spriggan fighter would seem like a very strange and un-Crawl-like restriction to enforce.

I'm not sure if any of this adds to the discussion or makes any sense. Just trying to figure this out, myself...

[DracheReborn]

I feel like this is all related a bit to Crawl's lack of a "class" system.

In theory, crawl's skill system should produce the equivalent of "classes". You might think of a heavy melee fighter as a character with high skills in Fighting, Weapon, Armour, and Shields. A "hybrid" fighter, in comparison, might be a character with high skills in Weapon and Dodging, and moderate skills in Fighting, Spellcasting, and Charms. In actual practice though, it's not very hard to build a character with ALL of the above skills, and as a result all crawl characters tend to feel like hybrids (well, assuming your idea of hybrids is vaguely similar to mine).

I think there are 2 causes for this:

1. Too much XP in the game, as speedrunners routinely show. With so much XP, it is possible to skill to a global optimum, and it shouldn't be surprising that the global optimum looks very similar from game to game.
2. Low skill levels (up to ~10) are too cheap, so cheap that they can be considered "no-brainers" for many characters. This is why low investment weapons like whip of elec, or low level spells like Repel Missiles, are good for so many characters - they cost so little XP, they might as well be free.

I don't know if this is an actual problem, but if change is desired, one way to do it is to raise the cost of skills (and especially the costs at low levels) in order to make XP allocation more meaningful. As a side effect, this would make aptitudes (affects skill costs) and backgrounds (the initial skills you start with) more meaningful too.

[and into]

People are abusing the phrase "no brainer." At arbitrary levels of abstraction anything can be described as a "no brainer," that doesn't mean it is a problem. Using consumables is a "no brainer." So is worshipping a god. Removing these "no brainers" would actually remove meaningful and interesting choices. The interesting choice is not whether but how to use consumables. "Do I train things other than dodging, armor, fighting, and weapon skill?" is never how the choice actually presents itself in a game. The question is when and how to branch out based on some function of how you like to play (what you think is fun), what you think is optimal, and what the RNG has thus far made available. The choices one makes with respect to this may involve some "no brainers" but also, often, involve many other nuanced choices without a clear/obvious "best" answer. In this sense it is not dissimilar from consumable use; sometimes but not always it is obvious when you should use a specific item.

Even with cuts to number of levels, there might still be too much experience in a 3-rune game. But you need to hit a sweet spot. Too much or too little will actually reduce meaningful choices. It would be a problem if experience were so tight you couldn't adapt your plans regardless of the items available to you.

Comparing how characters look at the end of the game is not useful at all in thinking about this issue. The real problem would be if all characters looked the same upon reaching different skill levels (say, compare a wide range of characters at char levels 8, 14, 20, 26). If they look too similar at any of those places, this tells you where (approximately) in the game you might need to cut down on average available experience. It might also tell you what skills are currently too strong/appealing.

Of course even in a 3-rune game if you clear crypt, elf, most of a ziggurat, etc., you are going to be glutted with experience compared to a character that doesn't clear much of the optional content. This doesn't really matter because you could have just won the game already. If you extend your game doing other stuff, sure, let people build whatever character they want, chase all the shinies, etc.

[Sandman25]

Has anyone considered limiting skill levels/points in some way? With skill level limit, your total of all skills cannot reach more than 30 before 1st rune, 40 before 2nd rune, 50 before 3rd rune and so on. That would mean you stop receiving XP for killing monsters at some point. It naturally solves problem of XP farming and removes need to have food clock. Of course limiting skill points instead of skill levels is better because with limiting skill levels eventually Tr/Mu will have the same number of skills as Mi/DE which is bad.

[tabstorm]

What definition of hybridization is the OP using? I'm going to use "learning spells of level > 4" because the investment is too low otherwise and doing things like training evocations is always optimal.

If you are a melee user with low-medium Int, it is usually ideal to learn apport, blink, passage, rmsl, maybe spectral weapon, regeneration, animate skeleton. These are the best spells in the game, period. That is why you learn them every game. You probably shouldn't bother with other spells until you are in the "win more" phase of the game, which usually means around XL22+

If you have medium Int, the same rules apply, but you should aim for higher-leveled spells. The important thing to remember is:

conjuration depends on your spellpower
summoning depends on how powerful your summons are
necromancy depends on how powerful the enemies you kill are

It's rarely a good idea to branch into a conjuration school unless the book drops very early. For summoning and necromancy it is sometimes a good idea, but necro is preferred over summoning. Summoning and Necro are vastly superior to conjuration because they give allies and are mostly single school, while many conjurations are multi-school and the Conjurations school appears to exist mainly to soak up XP.

If you have higher int, any of the above schools is fine. It's probably still a good idea to pick up a weapon but it's not necessary. If you train fighting and enchant a decent elec weapon you don't need to train weapon skill. You'd be surprised how far you can go without training weapon skill: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue//tabstorm/morgue-tabstorm-20160602-202827.txt this is a MiBe but you get the idea, you can kill lots of enemies with a 0-skill, well-enchanted elec weapon.

The funny thing is that heavy-armor melee is actually more adaptable than a mage with high int. You can use any armor that you find on the ground, and finding a single high-enchant plate or chain can be a game-changer to carry you through the early and middle game. You can easily change weapon schools with cross-training. Mages are much more constrained in their armor use and even when a new book drops, more XP must be invested to use spells outside of the schools you were already using. No such thing is needed for heavy-armor melee. Viable armors tend to drop all game, and a melee character can always use a light armor with good enchant and basetype, mages cannot. Book drops are a whole lot less reliable than this without help from Vehumet, Sif, or Kiku. You really can't count on getting depth-appropriate tools as a mage without divine help, so it's probably best to just train melee.

[Shard1697]

I still don't really understand when I would want to know apportation. Is the idea to just yoink every item you discover while exploring to you instead of walking to them, because that's marginally less risky since a monster could see you? 'cause hoo boy that does not sound fun

[Doesnt]

Yeah pretty much, although I personally only bother with Apportation on dangerous levels, if there's a known dangerous threat in the item's LOS, or if it's a book/fancy-looking randart that I want before any potential battles caused by moving onto the item.

It's also regularly used to snag runes and bolt, particularly the barnacled (not fighting a full hut of merfolk dudes is value) and abyssal runes but also many of the extended ones if you decide to play that for some reason.

[tabstorm]

There's no reason not to learn it and you can cheese certain levels with it.

[Sandman25]

The funny thing is that heavy-armor melee is actually more adaptable than a mage with high int. You can use any armor that you find on the ground, and finding a single high-enchant plate or chain can be a game-changer to carry you through the early and middle game.

I think you meant "high str characters" instead of "heavy-armor melee". I am playing OgWz at the moment and I switched from caster in robe/TLA to melee in GDA before finishing Lair. I had to stop casting spells completely but after entering Depths I have Animate Dead at 8%, Blink at 1% and Haste at 30%.

[Shard1697]

There's no reason not to learn it and you can cheese certain levels with it.

In what situation am I gonna want to cheese a level with it instead of killing the enemies on the level, and getting XP for my trouble?

[Arrhythmia]

There's no reason not to learn it and you can cheese certain levels with it.

In what situation am I gonna want to cheese a level with it instead of killing the enemies on the level, and getting XP for my trouble?

The last levels of the hells are the most obvious ones, since the danger/reward ratio of fighting hell-lords is way out of whack.

[Shard1697]

why would I even do extended if I don't want to fight hell/pan lords

that's like the 1 fun part of it. and "smart" play is just "don't do extended"