God advice for Formicids (splitted from GDD)

[whitmo]

What are people choosing for Formicid gods? I've been enjoying TSO (one-handed blessed triple sword + large shield is a nice combo ) and I'm finding that Okawaru and Trog are surprisingly strong, even without the use of Finesse/Berserk.

[tompliss]

Chei !
But i was said it is suicidal :/

[dck]

Fedhas and it was really cool.
Though fedhas is always really cool.

[Igxfl]

Formicid Venom Mage of Zin is pretty entertaining.

[Hirsch I]

Lugonu. best escape options, and you can even blink!
of course, lugonu is awesome with any species.

[Igxfl]

Nice, I didn't know Lugonu blink bypassed stasis. It'd be pretty exciting to use a GSC of distortion, too, though a shield and a bardiche might be a better option.

[nordetsa]

I really liked playing as Formicid of Zin since you can imprison dangerous enemies (i.e. fiends, mummies, tormentor). Combined with sanctuary you get two escape tools that this race dearly needs.

Of course to get the goodies starting with Okawaru seems good for me, even if you can't use finesse.

[rchandra]

Zin's vitalisation also grants rP, doesn't it? Might be worth taking Zin right away.

[crate]

Vitalisation does not give rPois. It prevents you from getting poisoned. You still take full damage from things like venom bolt though.
edit ok well thats what I get for assuming crawl makes sense i should know better by now

[Siegurt]

Vitalisation does not give rPois. It prevents you from getting poisoned. You still take full damage from things like venom bolt though.

Actually you don't, I source dove for it. It is actually better than rPois for reducing damage from those spells.

Relavant code:

  Code:

case BEAM_POISON:
        if (doEffects)
        {
            resist = poison_player(coinflip() ? 2 : 1, source, kaux) ? 0 : 1;

            hurted = resist_adjust_damage(&you, flavour, resist,
                                          hurted, true);
            if (resist > 0)
                canned_msg(MSG_YOU_RESIST);
        }
        else
        {
            hurted = resist_adjust_damage(&you, flavour, player_res_poison(),
                                          hurted, true);
        }
        break;


There's the resistance for Venom bolt, it attempts to randomly apply 1 or 2 levels of poison, if you succeed in resisting all the applied poison, 'resist' is set to 1, and that's used to reduce damage done.

Vitalisation provides 100% resistance to being poisoned:

  Code:

bool poison_player(int amount, string source, string source_aux, bool force)
{
    ASSERT(!crawl_state.game_is_arena());

    if (player_res_poison() > 0)
        maybe_id_resist(BEAM_POISON);

    if (you.duration[DUR_DIVINE_STAMINA] > 0)
    {
        mpr("Your divine stamina protects you from poison!");
        return false;
    }



rPois gives 90% protection:

  Code:

    if (!force && !(amount = _maybe_reduce_poison(amount)))
        return false;
...
tatic int _maybe_reduce_poison(int amount)
{
    int rp = player_res_poison(true, true, true);

    if (rp <= 0)
        return amount;

    int reduction = binomial_generator(amount, 90);
    int new_amount = amount - reduction;

    if (amount != new_amount)
        dprf("Poison reduced (%d -> %d)", amount, new_amount);
    else
        dprf("Poison not reduced (%d)", amount);

    return new_amount;
}


Poison arrow works similarly:

  Code:

 case BEAM_POISON_ARROW:
        // [dshaligram] NOT importing uber-poison arrow from 4.1. Giving no
        // bonus to poison resistant players seems strange and unnecessarily
        // arbitrary.

        resist = player_res_poison();

        if (doEffects)
        {
            int poison_amount = 2 + random2(3);
            poison_amount += (resist ? 0 : 2);
            poison_player(poison_amount, source, kaux, true);
        }

        hurted = resist_adjust_damage(&you, flavour, resist, hurted);
        if (hurted < original && doEffects)
            canned_msg(MSG_YOU_PARTIALLY_RESIST);
        break;


In this case it uses the "Player resists poison" function to see if you have poison resistance:

  Code:

int player_res_poison(bool calc_unid, bool temp, bool items)
{
    if (you.is_undead == US_SEMI_UNDEAD ? you.hunger_state == HS_STARVING
            : you.is_undead && (temp || you.form != TRAN_LICH)
        || you.is_artificial()
        || you.duration[DUR_DIVINE_STAMINA])
    {
        return 3;
    }

    int rp = 0;

    if (items)
    {
        // rings of poison resistance
...


Which uses "Poison resistance 3" as the value for divine stamina (Which doesn't reduce the damage any more than level 1, but it does give 100% prevention of the poison status.)

[dck]

This is completely ridiculous btw.

[and into]

I'm sure there are lots of surprisingly inconsistent things throughout the code, which lead to misleading special-casing and asymmetries. On the other hand, it would also be pretty silly to pretend that these minor things in the code really matter strategically. Don't get me wrong, it is nice that Siegurt and some others have the patience to source dive for the edification of all, but in terms of actual game play—is it actually the case that anyone has chosen Zin specifically based on whether his ability provided rPois, or just blocked poison status, or (as it turns out) provides some weird, opaque super-rPois? If not then this seems to me like GDR. It isn't something you actually need to know about in detail, and it would probably only be more confusing than helpful for it to be documented and explained in the game.

In any case, I haven't tried a formicid of Zin, but what nordetsa said about imprison and sanctuary filling in the gap in terms of escape options sounds like a much, much better reason for going Zin (even right off the bat).

[crate]

well the reason that it is dumb that vitalisation actually provides rpois is because the game specifically says it doesnt

since when you look at % while vitalised you don't get rpois

[pubby]

since when you look at % while vitalised you don't get rpois

It does now. See http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... da58739331

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend Okawaru since Trog is better. Also, Yred hasn't been mentioned and yet he's quite decent for Fo.

[Lasty]

I second nordetsa about Zin being an excellent choice for formicids:
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9884