The Tavern

Because the consumable-grinding routine of
"Once you got abyssal rune -> enter Abyss:1 -> pick item you see -> escape immediately -> repeat" is very silly.

You want to grind items? Enter ziggurats with taking some risk. Or Pans, whatever.

Is "Abyss item grinding" really a thing? If your char is strong enough to Abyss-scum, what kind of item are you after?

The character doesn't need to be that strong to do abyssscumming. If char is just enough to get abyssal rune then it's ok. The exit generates really fast.

if a character is strong enough to get your 3rd rune, still, what kind of item are you after? you're at the end of the game unless you really want to do extended, and you don't need to grind for extended(extended IS the grind)

I would hate Abyss even more if it didn't contain any food.

Shard1697 wrote:if a character is strong enough to get your 3rd rune, still, what kind of item are you after?

Carrying a distortion weapon so if a bazaar spawns you can scum gold in Abyss. But even so, once you are strong enough to do this most portal spans have ceased (do bazaars spawn in extended? I've never done extended.)

In another thread someone reported scumming abyss with a Sp at XL 24 (they visited it more than 60 times); the abyssal rune is not required for their strategy. From Sequell, we find that 10-12% of Sp at XL >= 24 go on to die somewhere. How many of them would have died if they had infinite consumables? I'm pretty sure that some determined soul can do it at a much lower XL and with less preparation (the strategy in question was using controlled blink). Even if one wants to use controlled blink, assuming that the player has one or more wiz sources, you can get it online much earlier (Sp have very good Transloc apt). This seems to me to be a "tedious but optimal" situation which one shouldn't encourage.

There are really no satisfying solutions with the abyss the way it is, but the obvious ones of removing item generation / making monsters durably summoned seem the simplest to me. Many people would probably find it distasteful, so I'm not sure it's worth doing.

I have scummed abyss plenty of times, there are chars which can grind abyss 1 as soon as a portal to it is found, like a Vp of mak... you dont think having 10 more Xls and 20 more blink scrolls before doing the rest of the game is useful? That is definitely a case of making my, and others' evidence fit your conclusions.

The fact that in 2017, we have a so called roguelike with effectively infinite food, xp and items for minimal risk is a disgrace. If we can't come together as a community to fix this then maybe we deserve a nuclear war

It's easy enough to be out of depth in Abyss as it is, when any single random elf wizard can toss you in there from mid-level Dungeon.

But oh, let's remove every occasional random boost or way to build up resources through hours of tedium, and make sure the game is uber perfectionist for the people who already know how to get to 15 runes blindfolded anyway. /sarcasm

Incidentally, just yesterday I met two kobolds with distortion blades on D:1...

FR: Make the only thing that generates in the Abyss new potions of mutation.

There's also AK start-Abyss scumming. It seems optimal to always try to find a door out and start the game with monk piety; if you find some loot in there, too, then bonus. Now I know that the start-Abyss is different than the in-game Abyss, and presumably this includes floor loot generation but I don't know for sure.

I dunno about Abyss but I really think Ziggurat access should be fully locked until the player has all the 15 runes. Its existence screams of bonus content instead of a place that's only generally used to sneak out a few guaranteed items like a disgusting hobo and get out at Zig:9 or 10.

ONIchinchin wrote:I dunno about Abyss but I really think Ziggurat access should be fully locked until the player has all the 15 runes. Its existence screams of bonus content instead of a place that's only generally used to sneak out a few guaranteed items like a disgusting hobo and get out at Zig:9 or 10.

Zigs are not boring; extended is boring. People who want to try non-boring bonus content should not be forced to do the boring bonus content first.

MainiacJoe wrote:There's also AK start-Abyss scumming. It seems optimal to always try to find a door out and start the game with monk piety; if you find some loot in there, too, then bonus. Now I know that the start-Abyss is different than the in-game Abyss, and presumably this includes floor loot generation but I don't know for sure.

I think it's fun to try, but I've rarely gotten more than a couple items there before I needed to run away. I'd expect to meet mobs I wouldn't really want to take any chances actually facing with no training, so it doesn't last very long.

I can't figure out whether to take these threads seriously or not. People who seem to know all the tricks to get well into extended wishing for things - actually, for lots of removals - that would make mid-game harder (in what are already nightmare cases, in this example) for people who can't touch extended yet. All supposedly just for the purpose of narrowing the options of endgame somewhat. Why not just press the devs to add a few levels with no drops and crazy hard new bosses to the end of extended?

MainiacJoe wrote:Zigs are not boring

I see, the world is vast. It's refreshing to see exotic preferences occasionally.

Suicide zig diving is far more interesting than whatever else you can do when the game you are currently playing did not generate what you want or need to win it.

zigs are definitely fun the first few times you do them, if you are not the kind of person who does like. crazy multizig runs a lot

Gozigzag wrote:Suicide zig diving is far more interesting than whatever else you can do when the game you are currently playing did not generate what you want or need to win it.

In what situation does a game not generate what you "need" to win it, but you are able to reach a zig? What item are you talking about?

Gozigzag wrote:Suicide zig diving is far more interesting than whatever else you can do when the game you are currently playing did not generate what you want or need to win it.

When I get that far, I sometimes do some levels of Zigs just hoping for more relics with convenient sets of resistances.

Maybe I'm still thinking too much about Hell, not sure... But I'm leery of going to Pan without most of those, either.

Now if it were just about officially winning, fairly often by that point I could get out with the orb. (Exceptions being games where almost nothing exciting dropped from Orc far into Vaults, too many shops were just food etc., and I had a great ongoing expenditure of consumables.) But I agree sometimes it's more fun to just try your luck at a Zig... At least some! Occasionally, you may even get the type of awesome item you wanted. I don't usually go past Z:7-10 though, myself.

Shard1697 wrote:In what situation does a game not generate what you "need" to win it, but you are able to reach a zig? What item are you talking about?

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 125334.txt
No tornado, wanted tornado =(

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 214211.txt
No tornado, found tornado =)

I overheard some devs talking about a possible removal of abyss entirely.

Gozigzag wrote:http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue//Dynast/morgue-Dynast-20170210-125334.txt
No tornado, wanted tornado =(

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 214211.txt
No tornado, found tornado =)

Wait, are you Dynast? I don't think you needed Tornado to win, you might train some weapon or Iron Shot etc. long time ago instead of getting Air to 22 without tornado.

TrumpTrain wrote:I overheard some devs talking about a possible removal of abyss entirely.

That would actually be the strongest impulse for me so far to not to upgrade to the latest version... Abyss is cool and should stay forever.

That would be the strongest impulse for me so far to upgrade to the latest version

too bad he made it up and abyss is going to continue making games suck

I like Zig diving in depths because it's mostly free XP and items so you can finish your "build" until things get too spicy, in which case blinking/haste/god abilities can bail you out. It's pretty much a "win-more" situation though, if you can go zig-busting and risk a pandemonium/tomb floor you can just.. go win or something.

The Tavern

Remove item generation in Abyss

Remove item generation in Abyss

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