The Tavern

Magipi wrote:The whole mutation nonsense is a terrible idea to begin with. Is it a legacy of Nethack?

Nope. It's more like ADoM's corruption (I have no idea if ADoM had any influence here).

DCSS has only ever had about 4 meaningful mutations at a time. If it's not robust/frail, slow/fast movement (rip), or wild/subdued magic, it's either a minor convenience or a minor to moderate annoyance, and the only way it will change the outcome of the game is if you forget you have it - see literally every blurry vision or low device heal related death. And getting mutated involuntarily before any cure mutation is available is very rare; it basically requires early banishment or Xom, especially after monsters with wands of polymorph were changed to not mutate you, and especially since cure mutation's frequency was increased, and especially since new !mutation which is far too good - my characters have good mutation sets for the entire post-Lair game now, thanks to ugly thing spam in late D, Vaults, Depths and plentiful !mutation to refine them.
Ideally temporary mutations would just die and only species/Ds/Ru mutations would be left. My last game had 104 mutation changes and I only briefly worshipped Xom. It's an obnoxious minigame but playing it offers +30 max HP or a huge spellpower bonus so I feel obligated to play it anyway - like how portal vaults are annoying, but they're free items and xp so skipping them is painful.

portal vaults are fun actually

And teleportitis is dangerous.

Yes. I know duvessa does not think so but they've never really explained why they think the possibility of getting teleported anywhere on the current floor where there are monsters, at any time, randomly, is not dangerous

I don't mind the mutation potion in principle, although I did have one game which was very frustrating as I got the random berserk mutation several times (at least 4 times in a row, fairly quickly after removing it) in a game with below average mutation potions, so I was almost entirely out of potions of mutation. I don't think that's a more typical experience, though, I think I was an outlier in terms of bad mutation luck and bad potion drops. But it's possible that maybe spawning a few more mutation potions would be worthwhile.

I don't really miss the wands, they were too strong and it doesn't matter much removing them.

I do, however agree that .20 is harder, but that's primarily no teleport/blinking in Zot, and the escape hatches in tomb. I've only done tomb once, on my OgEE with statue form, a character with over 400 hp who should demolish tomb, and it was extremely hard. I probably should have died. I only escaped because I was able to blink repeatedly (I had about 10 blinking scrolls) to escape exits and leave tomb:3. If someone who's good with the foo tv thing can give me the line to queue up that tomb:3 experience, it should be entertaining to watch. At one point I lost something like 200 hp reading a blink scroll because I had blurry vision...See above about needing more mutation potions. I was able to cure it before going back into tomb:3 and finally getting a teleport to land me somewhere quiet enough to survive and get the rune, though.

Shard1697 wrote:Yes. I know duvessa does not think so but they've never really explained why they think the possibility of getting teleported anywhere on the current floor where there are monsters, at any time, randomly, is not dangerous

This is a basic theorem in tavern logic. Danger does not exist after D:3, so by definition teleportitis isn't dangerous past that point.

Also dude if you are playing for turncount you are playing a vastly different game than the one the developers are thinking about. Removing yellow wands, Orb status, and so on do, of course, make a 15 turn highscore run much more difficult, this goes without saying, since it directly makes the late-game more resource-scarce, and other 0.20 changes have directly and indirectly shit on many builds that were previously good for getting a high score. see: harder to survive a god swap without /teleport, chei statue form is weaker, etc.

I thought the Orb status effect was added to Zot before 0.20, or did they change it to make it even more severe?

tabstorm wrote:Also dude if you are playing for turncount you are playing a vastly different game than the one the developers are thinking about. Removing yellow wands, Orb status, and so on do, of course, make a 15 turn highscore run much more difficult, this goes without saying, since it directly makes the late-game more resource-scarce, and other 0.20 changes have directly and indirectly shit on many builds that were previously good for getting a high score. see: harder to survive a god swap without /teleport, chei statue form is weaker, etc.

I'll agree that removing the wands might hurt turn count speedrunning slightly, but I don't think it's that drastic of a difference, and I don't see how it impacts chei statue form more than anyone else. In particular you were already barred from the best of the three, haste. If you're doing it on a VS (which is arguably the best race for it) you're also already barred from heal wounds, so the only wand you're missing is teleport. There's generally enough teleport in the game for any sort of staying alive purposes, so you're just blocked from being able to try to save turns by repeatedly teleporting near the stairs. That will definitely hurt if you're trying to get 15 runes in 20k turns, but it's relatively unimportant for a 40k run, which is all I'm good enough to do anyways

I could see adding the wand of teleportation back in, if people want. It's generally not abusable and really only important in the above speedrunning case when you're trying to shave a few hundred turns off walking around floors.

tasonir wrote:
tabstorm wrote:Also dude if you are playing for turncount you are playing a vastly different game than the one the developers are thinking about. Removing yellow wands, Orb status, and so on do, of course, make a 15 turn highscore run much more difficult, this goes without saying, since it directly makes the late-game more resource-scarce, and other 0.20 changes have directly and indirectly shit on many builds that were previously good for getting a high score. see: harder to survive a god swap without /teleport, chei statue form is weaker, etc.

I'll agree that removing the wands might hurt turn count speedrunning slightly, but I don't think it's that drastic of a difference, and I don't see how it impacts chei statue form more than anyone else. In particular you were already barred from the best of the three, haste. If you're doing it on a VS (which is arguably the best race for it) you're also already barred from heal wounds, so the only wand you're missing is teleport. There's generally enough teleport in the game for any sort of staying alive purposes, so you're just blocked from being able to try to save turns by repeatedly teleporting near the stairs. That will definitely hurt if you're trying to get 15 runes in 20k turns, but it's relatively unimportant for a 40k run, which is all I'm good enough to do anyways

I could see adding the wand of teleportation back in, if people want. It's generally not abusable and really only important in the above speedrunning case when you're trying to shave a few hundred turns off walking around floors.

You don't really go for haste on a 15 rune speedrun in the first place, just pray for the wand and hope you get enough uses. There isn't enough XP. I actually preferred to use chei for this reason, but then one gets into the "1/100 games drop statue form before Lair" problems that get tiresome after awhile. if only there was a bot that could play pre-Lair for me...
The reason teleport was important was 1. trying to sequence break tomb and 2. surviving a trog swap if you did --Be.

My recent char saw a hippogriff on D:3 ?!?

I don't remember anything similar in any of my games, and I started webtiles with version 0.9.

stoneychips wrote:Removing the yellow wands has also meant that when you're silenced, you're more often just stuck.

I agree. No wand of telep when you are silenced is a problem. Tar:7 comes in mind.

My recent char saw a hippogriff on D:3 ?!?

This isn't unusual, it's just OOD timer:

<chequers> !lg * d:3 killer=hippogriff recent x=avg(turn),avg(xl)
<Sequell> 739 games for * (d:3 killer=hippogriff recent): avg(turn)=2291.59; avg(xl)=4.44

I like the new pots. The simplification away from Mutation, Cure Mutation, Beneficial Mutation is good. Bizarrly, rolling them all into one actually works!

I have never been in new Tomb but I liked spectating it. Now this rune is really optional as it should be IMHO.
I dislike new mutation system though, it's too easy to have good mutations, previously a potion of beneficial mutation was a nice reward to get.

I think the developers definitely did a good job of flattening the difficulty curve a bit. I find it easier to die post-XL3 than before and realize I don't have a good escape option more frequently. These are mostly nice changes.

However, I'm not loving the new mutation system yet. I really liked the sound of it but, in practice, I'm finding that what happens is:
I pick up a bit of contamination, get a nasty mutation, then die from the resulting complications.
Or: I watch as a summoner (or shifter) gives a Nexoqec or Shining Eye rather earlier than I expect to deal with mutators. Ideally this should happen too close to easily break LOS and it should pop up on my escape route. Quaffing 3 of the new mutation potions might result in little horns that remove a heavily enchanted helmet of intelligence but leave a deteriorating body. Not game ending, but I really lose interest.

To me, this seems annoying in the same way that insta-death is annoying, with a one-shot unresistable effect that can cripple an otherwise tough character. Or like monsters that can steal items and then teleport endlessly away from you.

I'm not sure what I'd suggest to change. Possibly I just have to get used to it.

dassem wrote:I think the developers definitely did a good job of flattening the difficulty curve a bit. I find it easier to die post-XL3 than before and realize I don't have a good escape option more frequently. These are mostly nice changes.

However, I'm not loving the new mutation system yet. I really liked the sound of it but, in practice, I'm finding that what happens is:
I pick up a bit of contamination, get a nasty mutation, then die from the resulting complications.
Or: I watch as a summoner (or shifter) gives a Nexoqec or Shining Eye rather earlier than I expect to deal with mutators. Ideally this should happen too close to easily break LOS and it should pop up on my escape route. Quaffing 3 of the new mutation potions might result in little horns that remove a heavily enchanted helmet of intelligence but leave a deteriorating body. Not game ending, but I really lose interest.

To me, this seems annoying in the same way that insta-death is annoying, with a one-shot unresistable effect that can cripple an otherwise tough character. Or like monsters that can steal items and then teleport endlessly away from you.

I'm not sure what I'd suggest to change. Possibly I just have to get used to it.

What did you do in those circumstances under the previous potion set? I mean the current incarnation is actually much more forgiving of being accidentally mutated early than the old one was (as mutation is a much more common potion), i don't see how encountering an early mutatation source changes that .

Siegurt wrote:...What did you do in those circumstances under the previous potion set? I mean the current incarnation is actually much more forgiving of being accidentally mutated early than the old one was (as mutation is a much more common potion), i don't see how encountering an early mutatation source changes that .

Quaff a potion of cure mutation. Or at least hope for one to be generated. :-)

I suppose my version of the mutation-gripe is that one-shot permanent mutation effects are annoying, as they were under the old system, but now the fixes (resist mutation and cure mutation) are removed. Here I quaffed a few new mutation potions and just shuffled annoyances, whereas one cure mutation would have fixed it.

Although I suspect you are right: I'm sure I've had games under the old system where no cure mutation was available before Zot...

If crawl has gotten hard enough... maybe its time to remove food?

And item identification too.

0.20

Removing all the top wands make the extended (and 3-rune) game more challenging. Does anyone actually want to disagree with this statement?

The new mutation system is generally praised but trying for consistent 15-rune winning, its just pain. As mentioned elsewhere, it very much reminds me of ADOMs gameplay, where you are forced to go on with some character drawbacks. The bullshit people tell that you can avoid mutations almost everytime is just making me nauseous. "Oh yes, you do not have to do the Slime. Oh yes, you do not have to deal with Mnoleg's level. You can FUCKING win the game without visiting those places". Guess what, some of us do want to pick all the runes. If someone is telling me the new mutation system is better for 15 rune wins he must have been lucky or else i have been VERY unlucky. Oh and yes Teleportitis mutation IS DANGEROUS. People who say the opposite should remove their accounts here.

Giving Ijyb a guaranteed wand? I guess it can be an "interesting" challenge.

Lightning damage suddenly everywhere. Corrosion damage everywhere. Not necessarily bad additions but.. they raise difficulty!

I do not state here that DCSS is no fun anymore. It certainly is. Turgon having a point this game has become harder is jesusfuckingchrist true.

Ijyb went from having wands of fire and cold and lightning on D:2 to having wands of lightning and acid on D:3. Even though a wand is guaranteed now, I'd say it was a nerf to Ijyb overall. Going down a level is a big deal.

Acid wands have short range and monsters don't even use scattershot or clouds. The wand changes do replace some fire and cold damage with shorter-ranged acid damage, but I find it hard to characterize that as a monster buff. Obviously the removal of the yellow wands in itself is a difficulty increase, I don't see anyone arguing the contrary.

Slime isn't guaranteed to malmutate you and there are things you can do to minimize the risk of taking bad mutations. Nuke shining eyes pre-emptively or block their fire on turn 1. Fighterdudes have it rougher in there since they have to rely on throwing or invocations to do the job, obviously, but you can put it off. Mnoleg's realm is a lot harder to avoid malmutate in because cacodemons are much rougher and between them and the neqoxecs there's a *lot* of it flying around, but it's also only one level.

You can't avoid mutations 100% of the time, but you can minimize the risk a good bit. You also have more undo buttons than before because newmut is more common than curemut was, especially if you save it for extended.

Doesnt wrote:Slime isn't guaranteed to malmutate you and there are things you can do to minimize the risk of taking bad mutations. Nuke shining eyes pre-emptively or block their fire on turn 1. Fighterdudes have it rougher in there since they have to rely on throwing or invocations to do the job, obviously, but you can put it off. Mnoleg's realm is a lot harder to avoid malmutate in because cacodemons are much rougher and between them and the neqoxecs there's a *lot* of it flying around, but it's also only one level.

You can't avoid mutations 100% of the time, but you can minimize the risk a good bit. You also have more undo buttons than before because newmut is more common than curemut was, especially if you save it for extended.

Me being forced to play mutation roulette is just something I do not like. Gather all the potions and start randomizing my game until I get good set. I can see the appeal to it, sure. Lot of people like to gamble with their characters but I do not. Not having mut removal other than Zin worshiping is a difficulty increase in my books (it's not huge increase, that I can admit). I used to like doing extended games. Now a single around-the-corner-snipe-immediately-cacodemon can change the game for good because there is no way of getting back in control of the game. Still I can agree on everything you say here about avoiding those mutations in the first place. One thing needs to be said though. I have seen people comment about how squishy shining eyes are. Well they may not be as tough as cacodemons but I certainly have had trouble one-shotting them.

duvessa wrote:Ijyb went from having wands of fire and cold and lightning on D:2 to having wands of lightning and acid on D:3. Even though a wand is guaranteed now, I'd say it was a nerf to Ijyb overall. Going down a level is a big deal.

This is a very good point.

I would agree that I can't usually one-shot shining eyes. Summons or bolt/penetration attacks through enemies work much better. Without access to those, I would probably avoid places like slime or pan anyway.

Hell and Pan specifically were more fun with more tele in the game.

On myös latest 15 rune run I ran out of tele, heal wounds and haste. And this was with Lugonu who provides plenty of escape optiona.

check out 0.9 or so and see how you feel about d1 kobolds with exploding darts

Although I started playing 0.19 again after the tourney was over I have to admit that it was interesting to have a new challenge in tomb.

Code:: Stats after 16 days (t): 2997 players, 1062 runers, 543 winners, 1685 wins, 73356 games, winrate 2.30%, total player time 4y+187d+2:02:23. Stats after 16 days (0.19): 3033 players, 963 runers, 472 winners, 1155 wins, 69013 games, winrate 1.67%, total player time 3y+274d+1:40:38.

some tournament stats, just for the record

Some explanation would be good to get. The game got harder by an absurd amount, so this increase in winrate is madness.

You see, crawl is losing players, just core players stay and win more due to becoming more experienced personally

99% is "core"?

Magipi wrote:Some explanation would be good to get. The game got harder by an absurd amount, so this increase in winrate is madness.

One possible explanation is that the game really didn't actually get harder.

So the thing about winrate increasing over versions is that people generally get better at things as they practice, and the longer a game is around, the more its metagame develops and the more resources there are for new players to improve at the game. It's like, in 2002 you beat your little brother in Super Smash Bros. Melee just by repeatedly using Fox's forward smash, and you didn't know you could shield by pressing the trigger buttons. And in 2015 you decide to watch some Youtube video about the game and see wavedashing and multishining, and think "wow, this game sure has gotten easier."

Obviously a big enough change to the game, like doubled melee damage or going from 0.5 to 0.6, will cause a noticeable shift in winrate (up and down, respectively), and it's certainly possible there's some wacky hidden thing that makes 0.20 much easier than 0.19, but a persistent, if noisy, increase in winrate is the natural state of things.

I'd like to see what low engagement player tournament numbers have been like, like how many of these players show up, play about 15 games or less, don't win. The smaller, more hardcore player base theory seems on target, but I wonder if the stable total player numbers are helped by greater media engagement recently, e.g. rockpapershotgun spot.

I'm not sure that the game is absolutely harder in 0.20. Generation of certain consumables increased as part of the removal of the big three wands; newmut potions ensure that most players can choose to have a good mut set for all of a 3 rune game; riposte might be powerful. Maybe I'm forgetting other changes that could boost the player.

It's also possible that, ironically, players win more when playing the game if they feel more in danger because they try harder and/or are more engaged. If that's true, then making changes that appear to make the game harder without actually making it significantly harder would have the effective result of making the game easier.

Siegurt wrote:
Magipi wrote:Some explanation would be good to get. The game got harder by an absurd amount, so this increase in winrate is madness.

One possible explanation is that the game really didn't actually get harder.

Well, I can easily see quite a few elements that make the game a lot harder (teleports, haste, Zot), and only maybe one factor that helps (better attack wands). Also, my personal experience is that the game is absurdly hard even with the strongest combos, and borderline unplayable with weak combos.

I can think of a lot more than one factor that helps.
- More consumables
- More guardian spirit and repel missiles
- Poisonous Vapours
- Electric eel transporter vault (remarkably common, free xp and loot)
- Lightning rod
- Higher wand power
- Massively better mutation sets
- No hill giants with nets
- No D:2 Ijyb
- No monsters with wands of fire/cold (they can't zap clouds or scattershot, and acid has bad range so it's easily avoided)
- No draconian ghost breath
- Easier access to Airstrike
- Melee and missile damage is slightly better

This is all very vague, again. There are a few points where I guess I know what you're talking about, and most of those are controversial at best. Ijyb is much-much more dangerous than before, D:2 or not. Acid wand is easy to avoid? More repel missiles? More consumables? (Surely you mean "less".)

I have no idea what "Poisonous Vapours", "Electric eel transporter vault", or "Higher wand power" means.

Magipi wrote:Ijyb is much-much more dangerous than before, D:2 or not.

Not at all. Spawning a whole floor later make Ijyb much more survivable.

Magipi wrote:I have no idea what "Poisonous Vapours", "Electric eel transporter vault", or "Higher wand power" means.

Poisonous Vapours is a spell which is very good early on. Higher wand power means exactly what it sounds like.

I'm not familiar with the transporter vault in question.

duvessa wrote:- Poisonous Vapours

I was considering making a post for this but since you mentioned it here I'll just tag along: poisonous vapours is seriously impressive. It has inherent limitations in that it doesn't affect 1/4 or so of early game monsters so you have to hybridize, but it sure as hell kills anything that doesn't resist poison. Especially things that are hard to kill in general, like orc warriors wearing chain mail or plate armor. Poison cuts right through that.

I only gave it a chance because VSVM was a nemelex choice combo. Boy am I glad I tried it. 15 runes later, the orb of zot and I are going on a cruise

honestly it seems like fewer people are playing but maybe I'm just delusional

tabstorm wrote:honestly it seems like fewer people are playing but maybe I'm just delusional

Can some query guru provide data on average evocations training in 0.20 and 0.19? As mibe420 wrote in their thread, evocations are much stronger in 0.20. It would explain difference for me as I refuse to use evocations mostly

Why would you refuse to use evocations?

I consider them OP even before 0.20

Thanks to johnstein for the chart above.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:You see, crawl is losing players, just core players stay and win more due to becoming more experienced personally

What's your source for this assertion?

The Tavern

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