CSDC Week 10 - VpAE, CLOSED

[Moanerette]

I've just crashed two of these fuckers without reaching XL4. A quick peek at my stats reveals that vampires are indeed my worst race (unless you count Djinn) and AE my worst 'primary caster' background. Let's have another go.

[Sandman25]

So, speaking of that VpAE loss I mentioned before, I recreated the situation in wizard mode, except I didn't bother to set any resistances or my +acc boots or Makhleb. I created deep elf master archers one after another, woke them up, let them equip a weapon and take the first shot, and then killed them.

I killed 12 of them in a row without healing or using anything other than tab before dying. Several had branded weapons or arrows. I think I'm ready to say that losing this character was an extraordinarily bad streak of luck.

Well, when dealing with dangerous monsters the safest approach is to assume they will get really lucky actions (like 3 smites in a row from Orc Priest or 2 Torments and final conventional attack from Ice Fiend). So yes, you were extremely unlucky but IMHO still it was your fault for being in an optional place without invisibility or reliable escape option like cBlink or Death's Door.

[XuaXua]

If I learned one thing from this experience, you need to practice offline.

[Lasty]

Well, when dealing with dangerous monsters the safest approach is to assume they will get really lucky actions (like 3 smites in a row from Orc Priest or 2 Torments and final conventional attack from Ice Fiend). So yes, you were extremely unlucky but IMHO still it was your fault for being in an optional place without invisibility or reliable escape option like cBlink or Death's Door.

I agree that when dealing with dangerous monsters you should assume that they will be very lucky. This isn't like three smites in a row from an orc priest or multiple torments from an ice fiend, though, and this monster was not actually particularly dangerous: to reiterate, I was able to kill 12 in a row giving each one the first shot (or more), not healing, with worse stats than my character. This wasn't underestimating a dangerous monster; this was using decent positioning to properly handle a relatively popcorn enemy who happened to roll amazing hit rolls and do max damage while my armour prevented min damage and my attack rolls were all misses for about 20 turns. If getting smited by an orc priest three times in a row is a 1/15 (or even 1/100) chance, this is something closer to 1/1,000,000, since it required extreme outliers on several different roles consistently over a large number of turns.

It's true that the Elven Halls were optional, and there probably were some easier places I still could have gone (as I acknowledged before), and it's true that I could have remembered to restock my consumables slightly, and it's true that I didn't panic fast enough. However, with a run of rolls like that, almost any monster or situation could have killed me. The only reason I could have conceivably escaped from this situation given the rolls that were happening is that the monster genuinely was popcorn for my character. With rolls like those, I could conceivably have been killed upon entering LOS of a well-armed yaktaur pack.

Edit: Controlled Blink isn't a reliable escape method on cTele- floors, and Death's Door is an absurdly high requirement. Further, if the chance of failure on DD was > 0%, then having it fail to cast at least twice would have been no less probable than what actually happened.

[Sandman25]

As I recently learned from Sphara 3 smites in a row is 1/216 (1/6 chance for a single smite).
-cTele was very important indeed, I suspect the character would survive on a floor without -cTele. Don't get me wrong, you played very well and I can repeat that the elf was extremely lucky. Elves hit/shoot really hard, even at characters with really great defenses, even 1 vs 1. Don't enter Elf (especially last level) with Vp unless you have Invisibility AND Silence, that's what I am trying to say in my usual offensive way , the possible death will be player's fault.
If a character without those tools entered Elf, he can die more easily than in other branches because the corridors are very narrow and it's easy to get blocked by some popcorn while Torment, Hellfire or even Bolt of Draining and Smiting happens. In one of my most recent games I almost died to a single Blade Master when I violated my own recommendation above, I did a "smart" trick of digging a killing zone and had no room to escape when the monster started to become lucky.

[Magipi]

Still no wins after 10 days!

Is VpAE so bad?

[A spy]

Yes (it is in my hands at least)

[Lasty]

VpAE is a bit tricky to get off the ground, particularly for people unfamiliar with AE, but it's not weak by any means. In my case, there was no reason I couldn't have logged a win, but for a small amount of bad planning and a huge amount of bad luck.

[ackack]

Still no wins after 10 days!

Is VpAE so bad?

It's not great, but I think I would rather try to streak VpAE than TeSk or NaEn. EDIT: Well, solely from a chance of winning perspective. VpAE was almost certainly my least favorite thing to play in the tournament, as I'm not a big fan of Vp or AE separately.

My death was really dumb; this tournament gave me two of my worst splats in a long time.