Just my two copper on wand removal...

[tabstorm]

here have a muwn with no haste and no healing: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 171418.txt
you can't get much worse than muwn.

[VeryAngryFelid]

here have a muwn with no haste and no healing: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 171418.txt
you can't get much worse than muwn.

Well, MuCK is worse than

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0 | D:1      | tabstorm set off with: a +2 spear, 2 scrolls of teleportation, a +0 robe

IMHO.
Still nice win, of course, especially with taking random god.

[tabstorm]

well I had already won MuCK and Xom gave me wands of hasting and healing so..

[VeryAngryFelid]

But it wouldn't give them in trunk.

[dynast]

Then my argument would be that if you dont put any of the fruits into special packages the apples would be the least damaged ones.

And then I said "I tried transporting apples without special packages and they rotted away" and you said "that's because they are apples, try bananas which are eaten more often".

No no nonono, Naga is the fruit here, so when i said dont play --En i didnt say to try another fruit, i meant "dont put dem apples into a shitty bag or they will squish each other", or "that truck is not made for transporting apples".

You still didn't reply what is your strategy for NaEn to guarantee win without haste. And no, winning NaEn is not an argument since you can be lucky. I am more interested in simple question "Is it possible/common to get into situation when only haste can save your Naga?" and I believe the answer is yes.
Though the whole discussion is really strange, it's common knowledge that it is easier to die with Chei than without Chei and we have an equivalent of that (Naga is equivalent of "with Chei", hasted Naga is "without Chei")

Go gozag so you can bribe the orb run, also Gozag has passive active abilities the moment you join him, you might make the argument that its because he gives haste but i just say its because he gives you anything, the potion petition is pretty much a extra life early, you can also make the case that gold distraction lets you play as a kiting naga and call me a hypocrite, i dont care. Chei will likely kill a naga before he can do any good. The way i played my last NaEn was to simply transition to a full fighter, picking up the first decent heavy weapon that showed up(luckily, a axe) and slowly adjusting armor and stop using the starting spells.
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 173112.txt

[VeryAngryFelid]

No no nonono, Naga is the fruit here, so when i said dont play --En i didnt say to try another fruit, i meant "dont put dem apples into a shitty bag or they will squish each other", or "that truck is not made for transporting apples".

So do apples need special transportation? Does NaEn need haste?

Go gozag so you can bribe the orb run, also Gozag has passive active abilities the moment you join him, you might make the argument that its because he gives haste but i just say its because he gives you anything, the potion petition is pretty much a extra life early, you can also make the case that gold distraction lets you play as a kiting naga and call me a hypocrite, i dont care. Chei will likely kill a naga before he can do any good. The way i played my last NaEn was to simply transition to a full fighter, picking up the first decent heavy weapon that showed up(luckily, a axe) and slowly adjusting armor and stop using the starting spells.
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 173112.txt

  Code:

Armor: Robe              |     5 |    39 |    16 |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    60
       Leather armour    |       |       |    35 |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    35

Slow and in robe, you are saying?

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8386 | D:8      | Identified the +2 ring mail "Igil" {Int+2} (You found it on level 8 of the Dungeon)

  Code:

       Scale mail        |       |       |   212 |    83 |       |       |       |       |       ||   295
       Ring mail         |       |       |       |   123 |       |       |       |       |       ||   123

Nothing surprising here, though I suspect wearing +0 scale mail was not optimal (if you were wearing one).

  Code:

Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 |
---------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Fighting       |  1  2  3  4     5     6  7  9 10 12 13 14 15 16    17 18    19 20    21 22    24 | 24.1
Axes           |              2  4  5  6  7  9 10 12 13 14 15 16    18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27    | 27.0
Armour         |              1  2     3  5  6  8 10 12 14                               15 16 17 | 17.7
Evocations     |                       5                                                          |  5.4
Shields        |                                            6  9 11 12 13 14 15    16 17          | 17.1
Short Blades   |                                                                                  |  1.0
Dodging        |                                                                                  |  1.5
Stealth        |                                                                                  |  4.4
Spellcasting   |                                                                                  |  2.0
Hexes          |                                                                                  |  3.0


Sorry, I don't want to continue this "Naga does not need Haste" discussion. It needs haste because it cannot kill dangerous monsters with brandless dagger putting all XP into fighting.
I know about brandless dagger because of

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Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Dagger            |    29 |    93 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||   122
       War axe           |       |     4 |   360 |   354 |       |       |       |       |       ||   718
       Short sword       |       |    30 |    12 |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    42
       Flail             |       |       |     4 |    17 |       |       |       |       |       ||    21
       Broad axe         |       |       |       |   283 |   929 |  1075 |  1254 |  1158 |  1244 ||  5943


[dynast]

So do apples need special transportation? Does NaEn need haste?

I was very clearly talking about your background choice, why do you keep trying to stick your wand in there?

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Armor: Robe              |     5 |    39 |    16 |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    60
       Leather armour    |       |       |    35 |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    35

Slow and in robe, you are saying?

You cant simple ignore your starting background, even if you are not going to train your starting spells you might wanna use them.

:) Sorry, I don't want to continue this "Naga does not need Haste" discussion. It needs haste because it cannot kill dangerous monsters with brandless dagger putting all XP into fighting.

You cant kill terence, edmund and orc warriors with a brandless dagger, but you sure can spit poison them to death, they are the only early game enemies with anything resembling AC.
You might be right and maybe nagas are the ones who benefit from haste the most, we may never find out, the game is too random to reach a consistent conclusion, but you presented it in the worst way possible. You picked a background with escape maneuvers and you need haste because you cant kill enemies? Could have just said nagas need haste more than spriggans do.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ok, I got your point. Naga does not need haste because it has unlimited berserk from turn 1 or it is my own fault for choosing a shitty combo.

Edit. It was not my background choice, it was crawl sudden death tournament combo.

[removeelyvilon]

I am pleased to announce that nagas can still read and quaff, and that none of Chei's abilities are being removed!

I'm going to hold you on that one.

[ZipZipskins]

apples are a delicious fruit and nagas are imaginary snake people

right?

[Lasty]

This thread is a perfect example of a classic de fructus argument.

[PleasingFungus]

While I am talking in general, Naga needs that wand of hasting to survive early game. What are you going to do when you are pursued by a pack of gnolls with distortion weapon or a couple of ogres? Fight with low AC/EV and hope nothing bad happens? Isn't haste the only GUARANTEED way to avoid death in such situation?

...er, how many nagas were finding early-game /haste to begin with?

[VeryAngryFelid]

...er, how many nagas were finding early-game /haste to begin with?

It does not matter. I was trying to disqualify "Naga does not need haste" argument. If it does not have haste in those situations, it dies.

[PleasingFungus]

pretty sure it matters insofar as /haste is totally irrelevant

and also insofar as invis, tele, blink, damage/hex wands, etc etc etc do exist

[Sar]

Just to clarify, I thought NaEn is good because Nagas are fairly stealthy, because playing as one I'd wear a robe/lighter armour for a solid part of the game anyway and because EH/Confuse are very good and are easy to get running on a race with good magic affinity, which a Naga is. I'm not arguing with you, dynast. It's obvious who of us is a better Naga player and a better player in general - that information is easily available on our scoring pages. Just explaining the reasoning that led me to the apparently wrong conclusion.

[VeryAngryFelid]

pretty sure it matters insofar as /haste is totally irrelevant

and also insofar as invis, tele, blink, damage/hex wands, etc etc etc do exist

I don't think dynast meant "Naga does not need haste because it has blinking and invisibility". Otherwise we cannot discuss anything because every consumable can be replaced with other consumables so nothing is needed.

[duvessa]

What is even going on in this thread

[Sar]

Fruit logistics.

[ZipZipskins]

It's just fruit salespeople shop talk, no big deal. Fortunately, lots of good information for when I open up my big fruit startup early Q2 2017. Like apples can't just be in an apple mountain in the back of my truck. Gotta get crates for those puppies so they don't end up like a goddamn naga.

You know, all this reminds me, pomegranates are my favourite fruit, right? Well those and mangos and pears. But really the thing is, I don't know why. Pomegranates are a huge pain in the assbutt, like, they're not really designed to eat. They're designed to dump a bunch of stain bombs all over the floor and not really give you any sustenance. I've heard you can score them and quarter them underwater and the pulp and shit floats and the arils sink, but who has time to do like, a big fuckin bucket of water in the sink to eat pomegranates? Plus they're expensive so I probably won't sell them at Zip's Fruit Cooperative (subtitle: Zoot Fruit Riot). Anyway, I guess the real point is that wands aren't even a big deal.

[removeelyvilon]

Why do they have so much trouble accepting that a straight up nerf is then called nerf? 999 haste "charges" is still worse than 1000 no matter what reality you're from. Except the reverse-verse of course.

[VeryAngryFelid]

All fruits are designed to be eaten, that's how plants create other plants. You are right that fruits are not designed to be cut and seeds to be removed (so no new plants appear from the seed), that's how human is fooling nature.

[Lasty]

@VAF imagine the gnoll with a spear of distortion has a haste potion too, or amulet of rage. Now every race needs /haste to survive by your argument. This is a player nerf, not a naga nerf. Heck, let's say that gnoll has a wand of haste -- we just saved your naga by removing it!

@removeely, the argument isn't over whether this is a player nerf (it is), it's an argument over whether it specifically nerfs nagas and mummies significantly more than other species. Outside of wizmode, the answer is no, because you don't have a wand of haste anyway.

[ZipZipskins]

All fruits are designed to be eaten, that's how plants create other plants. You are right that fruits are not designed to be cut and seeds to be removed (so no new plants appear from the seed), that's how human is fooling nature.

Wait, THAT'S how plants create other plants? Holy shit!

[VeryAngryFelid]

@VAF imagine the gnoll with a spear of distortion has a haste potion too, or amulet of rage. Now every race needs /haste to survive by your argument. This is a player nerf, not a naga nerf. Heck, let's say that gnoll has a wand of haste -- we just saved your naga by removing it!

I don't care about nerfs as long as they are not intended to affect casters only. I even thanked all devs in that thread for removing the wands, it is a great change IMHO.
Though I would thank you once again if you removed silly things like hasted gnoll with distortion Sonja is more than enough

[VeryAngryFelid]

All fruits are designed to be eaten, that's how plants create other plants. You are right that fruits are not designed to be cut and seeds to be removed (so no new plants appear from the seed), that's how human is fooling nature.

Wait, THAT'S how plants create other plants? Holy shit!

Sorry I was lazy to describe it in detail at 3 AM.
Basically animals eat fruits, seeds stay unharmed, animals keep traveling, eventually seeds get out of animals stomach, some seeds drop on ground and new plants grow from them. Thus plants get to new territory where they have never grown before.
Other plants use wind to expand, those typically don't have fruits.

[ZipZipskins]

...maybe I should have put sarcasm tags on that one

[Siegurt]

@VAF imagine the gnoll with a spear of distortion has a haste potion too, or amulet of rage. Now every race needs /haste to survive by your argument. This is a player nerf, not a naga nerf. Heck, let's say that gnoll has a wand of haste -- we just saved your naga by removing it!

@removeely, the argument isn't over whether this is a player nerf (it is), it's an argument over whether it specifically nerfs nagas and mummies significantly more than other species. Outside of wizmode, the answer is no, because you don't have a wand of haste anyway.

Well, obviously there are cases where any non hasted character would die, naga or not.

I think the point here is that there are cases where a non hasted naga would die and a non hasted race that was normal speed or faster could live because he could walk away. Whereas a hasted naga could also live in that situation.

That means less availability of haste hits nagas *slightly* more strongly than it does other races.

Personally i dont think the difference is enough to warrent much, if any, discussion, nagas weren't horribly weak before, and they aren't horribly weak now, the slight alteration in the racial power scale has not drastically undermined the game in any way,

Honestly I don't believe that were you to rank the races objectively by power (if you could actually do such a thing) that nagas would even change ranking as a result of this shift.

However i do think that it is probably *technically* true that the removal of the haste wand slightly more negatively influences nagas than faster moving races.

[CanOfWorms]

I think the point here is that there are cases where a non hasted naga would die and a non hasted race that was normal speed or faster could live because he could walk away. Whereas a hasted naga could also live in that situation.

That means less availability of haste hits nagas *slightly* more strongly than it does other races.

but you see, the only situations where this is true is when nagas don't have access to haste, which is the early game. thankfully, we increased the generation of haste potions, therefore... this is a net naga buff!!!!

[Siegurt]

I think the point here is that there are cases where a non hasted naga would die and a non hasted race that was normal speed or faster could live because he could walk away. Whereas a hasted naga could also live in that situation.

That means less availability of haste hits nagas *slightly* more strongly than it does other races.

but you see, the only situations where this is true is when nagas don't have access to haste, which is the early game. thankfully, we increased the generation of haste potions, therefore... this is a net naga buff!!!!

That isn't true at all, there are certainly a non zero number of dangerous situations past the early game which a hasted Naga could walk away from, and an unhasted naga could not walk away from, it is also completely possible to have some form of haste available very soon after starting a game.

Perhaps you meant "access to a haste wand" which is the only way I can make any sense of your second comment.

Of course, if that is what you meant, that is also wrong. To be clear, the total availability of uses of haste from all sources in the game was reduced. That some of those uses were in wand form and are now in potion form is irrelevant.

Also the claim that "you won't have a wand of haste early" is also false, it is unlikely that you will, but it is also unlikely that you will find 0 potions of haste by vaults 4, both of these things can and do happen sometimes. Speaking in absolutes regarding item availability just undermines whatever point you might have.

[TonberryJam]

Chei being slow isn't really an issue for Chei. If you're in a situation where you conclude moving faster is ideal, then you should realize all of Chei's abilities easily compensate for it. Best amulet of Chei is Faith I think.

[Shard1697]

Except you don't get all of Chei's abilities when you join. You have to earn them, and the whole time you're earning them you are slow. Chei is very dangerous early on.

[prozacelf]

All fruits are designed to be eaten, that's how plants create other plants. You are right that fruits are not designed to be cut and seeds to be removed (so no new plants appear from the seed), that's how human is fooling nature.

Wait, THAT'S how plants create other plants? Holy shit!

See, when two plants love each other *very* much, they get bees or birds or what have you to eat nectar from their flowers, and in doing so deposit pollen onto the plant they love. After X time, a fruit grows with seeds in it. And then the miracle of life proceeds.

[severen]

The department of transportation lied to use. Its really lack of speed that kills.

[severen]

Except you don't get all of Chei's abilities when you join. You have to earn them, and the whole time you're earning them you are slow. Chei is very dangerous early on.

And you need fairly high invocation to get step from time working (about 10-11).

Having done a 15 rune Op in normal crawl and an 8 rune OpFi in hellcrawl of chei I am not gonna say Chei is bad, but chei changes your strategies immediately.

Here is the things with chei. You are immediately slow but you get +1 stats at first which does almost nothing for you. Even at OK piety you will be at +5 which does help but is not enough to make you awesome. Therefore chei adds danger early on. This is a fact. Also I have had people tell me temporal distortion basically doubles as lesser beckoning, this is not true, temporal distortion is an interesting and useful ability but it in no way guarantees things get into melee range.

IMO when playing chei its important to leverage the fairly quick powerup in dexterity by leveling dodge. Without points in dodge skill your extra dex doesn't help much. However Chei piety gain is pretty fast and you can end up with about 8 or so more EV than you might get on another character (normal sized) by the time to get to about +10. This is important because that extra EV can make you considerably more tanky and the extra str/int will make your main damage source do a good bit more damage. The extra EV will make you a good bit more tanky and you finish fights earlier. So if you have a few tools (stealth, some spare teleport scrolls etc) you can often get to this point where you you have jump ahead enough on the power curve to make up for the added danger. Later on you can mature out the Chei abilities to make up, to some extent, for other issues.

I have experimented in hellcrawl a decent amount and I was somewhat surprised at how good chei seems to be in hellcrawl simply because of the fairly fast jump ahead on the power curve and that this is not equipment based. If you know how the play chei and get a few useful extra tools then chei can do all runes even without spectacular equipment. Oddly in this case I think getting Chei as early as possible is actually for the best. A late chei is worse because you get little boost but are slow. Alot of people rightly don't want chei on D2 in normal crawl because if they run into an unforatunate corner Ogre they may be dead without tele just because of slow. But on the other hand if you get the full +15 as early as possible (backed up by smart skilling) you can make the later D's etc much "safer".

Anyway Chei is the most vulnerable at low piety. Certainly it is a net negative. When you join chei you should, ideally, be doing so with an initial plan to deal with the fact you are going to be objectively more vulnerable. Some people would reccomend being fairly strong when you join so you can take the hit. However I would say given my experience in hellcrawl the value of taking the risk as early as possible might be greater than people may realize.

[dynast]

When you have a fork with splatratio so high that you make Chei look good.

[severen]

When you have a fork with splatratio so high that you make Chei look good.

Actually its the power curve not the splat ratio.