The Tavern

A list of things you can't know in-game, but are actually very immediate (so not like the to-hit formula).

- GDR: there is no mention of it in-game. Poor gargoyles!
- Precise piety numbers: gain, loss, total, current level, level needed for abilities to kick in.
- Shields become less effective the more hits they block in the same turn (said just like that, not formulas).
- Hit dice.

Feel free to add yours or point out if I wrote something wrong.

-Monster Speed

You do get something like 'It is fast' and "It is very fast' on the xv screen, but it isnt helpful.

For example, if you quaff a haste potion is a wolf spider still faster than you? Or if you are still faster than a hellion as a spriggan when you are slow?

The only way to know is to query the bot.

Monster attack speed depending on weapon used. Until today I had no idea it is better to gift spear than glaive to allied Orc Warlord.

Monsters deal +50% damage when berserking. It cost me about 10 scrolls of teleportation/blinking to finally get loot from Elf thanks to Deep Elf Blademaster with amulet of rage.

Spell power gets multiple stepdowns. Training magic schools for damage is never a good idea: it's either too low damage anyway or too small increase (stepdown divides it by 8 near max spell power).

Monsters can have fighter flag. Don't quaff agility, it does not help much vs them.

Resistances. How much damage rF+ saves you comparing to none. How much damage rF++ saves you comparing to rF+.

Venom Bolt, Poisonous Arrow and poison in general. Does it really work vs rPois monsters?

-Relative value/effects of AC and EV. Some enemies/spells/attacks are relatively harmless if you have high AC, some if you have high EV, and an unspoiled player can only guess at which might be which. You can figure it out with trial-and-error, but it's certainly never made clear, especially with regards to things like undodgeable effects.

-What can/can't be blocked/reflected. You can block attacks from any direction equally well, regardless of which way you're moving or attacking. Not to mention it's pretty common to see that utter shock on new players' faces when, say, an orb of destruction is blocked or reflected. How should an unspoiled player know whether or not a given attack is blockable?

-How effects work together. Do these two stack, or does one replace another, or can they be active at the same time without stacking? For example, should an unspoiled player know if quaffing haste before berserking will make them even faster when berserked? If you want to try every permutation and combination of effects yourself, you can technically figure it out, but short of that you're pretty much left guessing.

-Differences in spellpower value. Some spells are valuable at any spellpower, and you can really stop training the skill once you can cast the spell safely; others are only really valuable at high spellpower. Similarly, some spells will remain useful as long as you keep boosting spellpower, while others will rapidly become useless regardless of spellpower.

-Which effects can be resisted, and how. Sure, it's fairly intuitive that you can resist a bolt of fire with fire resistance, but how about things like Pain, or smiting? You can figure it out with enough playtime, but it's not presented clearly to the player.

-In the same vein as the GDR comment, the classic "which weapon is better" question. When faced with a +X spear with Y brand, and a +A trident with B brand, for example, how should an unspoiled player have any idea of which is better? Let alone when you're comparing more disparate items, like, say, a bardiche and a dagger.

-In the same vein as the piety comment, where cutoffs lie (or if they even exist). Ru, for example, will cheerfully allow you to make sacrifices enough to earn more than max piety, despite the fact that this rounds down to max piety. Or ghouls can eat forever without being engorged, with extra food not adding nutrition.

-In the vein of the poison comments...it's not just spells and weapons that become underpowered as you get further in the game, but spell skills, and gods. How should a player know if something they've invested a great deal in throughout the game will eventually become almost useless?

-Noise. Sure, now we have a noise-o-meter, but what do relative levels of noise mean? What does it mean if I was noisy and then I moved?

-Monster precedence and decision-making. Will the monster attack me, or my allies? What if I run away? Will it attack from range, or close the distance? Will it walk through or around shallow water? Can/will it walk through deep water? Will it swap places with another monster in a hallway? Will it walk into clouds/traps/etc? Will it use area-damaging spells with allies within the area of effect?

Technically it has one continuous, increasing stepdown now (it does in fact divide by 8 near max spellpower, but it does so in a continious fashion, rather than in chunks the way it used to)
like this:

This has gotten somewhat better now that monsters list their max attack damage (aka, hit for up to 20, and again up to 10), but it was certainly opaque before that and it's still a bit hidden now. I always thought it was very odd that people considered executioners dangerous because I've pretty much never had an issue with them, because I'm usually rolling through extended with at least 40 ac and they can't even scratch you at that point. If you happen to have 20 (or less) ac, and especially if they haste, they can cut through you pretty fast.

Pacify odds. This one is really bad as looking at the source isn't enough if you're not patient and good with probability.

God piety decay, unless you happen to actually go down a *. Even then, it's easy to miss, and it doesn't explain why it happened or how quickly it happens. On a related note, gift timeouts for gods who gift things.

The meaning or interpretation of minmay's dreams. I've been getting descriptions of these off-and-on in PM on irc for months now, but I have no clue what they mean or why I get them.

Ru doesn't behave as described above. Ru intentionally limits the value of offered sacrifices to avoid significant piety overflow. E.g. if you need one more piety, Ru will only offer you trivial sacrifices.

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