D:4 two-headed ogre, not OOD timer

[Leszczynek]

http://i.imgur.com/CkoPjzK.png

How is this possible again? I spent a total of less than 30 turns on D:4, so don't tell me about OOD timers please.

  Code:

{  8, 17,  300, SEMI, MONS_TWO_HEADED_OGRE }

Doesn't this mean they should start spawning on level generation from D:8?

[ion_frigate]

Because not all OOD spawns are due to the timer. If its normal spawn range starts at D:8, seeing it on D:4 is quite possible.

Also, that's not even that nasty a monster. They get two attacks, sure, but they have barely more HP than a standard ogre, and it's not exactly like their attacks are especially accurate (1 more HD than a standard ogre, no fighter flag). Use a couple consumables and kill it.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Also, that's not even that nasty a monster. They get two attacks, sure, but they have barely more HP than a standard ogre, and it's not exactly like their attacks are especially accurate (1 more HD than a standard ogre, no fighter flag). Use a couple consumables and kill it.

From deadliest monster per floor thread:

D8 two-headed ogre
D9 two-headed ogre

70 damage per attack with GC (17+20+13+20) and even more with GSC.

[ion_frigate]

Yeah, assuming both attacks hit, do full damage, and your AC does nothing.

Admittedly I didn't notice the 5EV (I tend to sort of assume 10-12EV for an early-ish character like that). Each attack has an ~85% chance of hitting, so yeah actually that is pretty nasty. But even 12EV reduces its chance of hitting to like 55%, which are odds I'd take. With Might and that flail, that ogre will go down in something like three hits.

For the sticklers here: I know this is "bad advice" in that it has a decent chance of death. But it's also "good advice" in that it's really freaking aggravating to have to play around a nasty OOD spawn, and perhaps it's better for your sanity to just try and kill it. It's not like you have much investment in your character at this point (yet another reason why the early game is not the Best Part Of The Game).

[VeryAngryFelid]

I wonder how a player is expected to know that the ogre has 55% or 85% chance to hit...
You can basically ignore AC vs 2headed ogre, single-digit AC cannot do much vs 37 and 33 attack.
With 37 HP I would avoid an ordinary ogre, meleeing a 2headed ogre is a suicide.

[Leszczynek]

Hm, I thought the initial monster generation respects the data in pop arrays, I guess I was wrong then. I was wondering if I should report this as a bug, but decided against it in the end.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Given that it's a speed 10 monster, it's fairly avoidable, although I wouldn't want bump into it as a Na.

[Plantissue]

Because not all OOD spawns are due to the timer. If its normal spawn range starts at D:8, seeing it on D:4 is quite possible.

Also, that's not even that nasty a monster. They get two attacks, sure, but they have barely more HP than a standard ogre, and it's not exactly like their attacks are especially accurate (1 more HD than a standard ogre, no fighter flag). Use a couple consumables and kill it.

Even on D:8 it's time to pop a consumable and run away as a melee character that isn't optimal. On D:4 where you may not even have an identified consumable, I can only take such advice as an attempt to get as many players killed as possible.

[PowerOfKaishin]

I have had this very problem and only even considered it because I was playing a SpEn at the time.

If I recall correctly, I may have went with it because I'm adventurous and then ran away when a stab failed to kill.

Trying to fight a D:4 2-headed ogre as the average character is a complete joke.

[Shtopit]

Dive away from that floor and return with a wand of acid or lightning. Double Ogres have a lot in common with Grinder, like HD and XP given, but I think they are a lot worse at this level, even for high survivability meleers: the damage is too big to be outdone, and having a double attack makes shields less effective.

[njvack]

Mod note: moved to Advice

Non-mod note: Don't melee it. Don't melee anything that can kill you in one turn. This can totally kill you in one turn.

[Leszczynek]

This topic was created because I was asking what is the point of a two-headed ogre on D:4 and hinting at a possible bug with monster generation. I don't need an advice on walking away from it, so please either move it back to GDD or, if this is Crawl working as intended, close the topic. Thanks.

[njvack]

I suspect it is not a bug. Someone here probably knows how monster placement works well enough to answer for sure.

[ion_frigate]

Yes, that was the non-subjective part of my first answer. OOD spawns are not all due to the anti-scumming timer. They can just happen randomly, with a potential difference of nine levels (or five for D:1). If I'm reading that correctly (and this is from the learndb), that makes a D:4 two-headed ogre well within the realm of possibility.

[Lasty]

I wonder how a player is expected to know that the ogre has 55% or 85% chance to hit...
You can basically ignore AC vs 2headed ogre, single-digit AC cannot do much vs 37 and 33 attack.
With 37 HP I would avoid an ordinary ogre, meleeing a 2headed ogre is a suicide.

Does this imply that you had no idea ogres had low accuracy until you fsimmed it? My experience was that it was trivially easy to determine that through observation.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Does this imply that you had no idea ogres had low accuracy until you fsimmed it? My experience was that it was trivially easy to determine that through observation.

How can I estimate monster accuracy if I am not writing down hundreds of results when fighting them and crawl's mechanic is too random to provide reliable estimation based on fewer experiments? For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if all monsters had their melee accuracy depend just on floor they were generated on because that would still allow to get what I typically see. Or do you mean you count "misses", "barely misses" and "close misses" when fighting Yak, Black Mamba and Hydra?

Edit. I still don't have an idea if ogre has low accuracy, I wasn't interested enough to fsim it, I just trusted the person who mentioned it in this thread.

Edit2. Crawl is really great to discourage thinking "I can kill this monster because it has just 55% chance to hit me instead of normal 85% chance most monsters have" because you will eventually die with this thinking.

[stoneychips]

I wonder how a player is expected to know that the ogre has 55% or 85% chance to hit...
You can basically ignore AC vs 2headed ogre, single-digit AC cannot do much vs 37 and 33 attack.
With 37 HP I would avoid an ordinary ogre, meleeing a 2headed ogre is a suicide.

Does this imply that you had no idea ogres had low accuracy until you fsimmed it? My experience was that it was trivially easy to determine that through observation.

Ha, I dunno quite what to make of this either. I suppose after a few months, I'd fought enough ogres to guess... And I hoped from the start that they might be clumsy because "looks big and dumb like stereotypical ogre"... Then again, I used to assume that about a cyclops throwing rocks too! (Not good for survival at all.)

It's all very nice until the big and dumb thing gets a hit in and just totally smashes you. I still often use Confusion and the like on ogres and go for a stab, but I'm also aware (from experience!) that even a confused ogre (especially with two heads) can get lucky and possibly end it all.

[Lasty]

Does this imply that you had no idea ogres had low accuracy until you fsimmed it? My experience was that it was trivially easy to determine that through observation.

How can I estimate monster accuracy if I am not writing down hundreds of results when fighting them and crawl's mechanic is too random to provide reliable estimation based on fewer experiments? For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if all monsters had their melee accuracy depend just on floor they were generated on because that would still allow to get what I typically see. Or do you mean you count "misses", "barely misses" and "close misses" when fighting Yak, Black Mamba and Hydra?

Edit. I still don't have an idea if ogre has low accuracy, I wasn't interested enough to fsim it, I just trusted the person who mentioned it in this thread.

Edit2. Crawl is really great to discourage thinking "I can kill this monster because it has just 55% chance to hit me instead of normal 85% chance most monsters have" because you will eventually die with this thinking.

It sounds like what you're saying is that you won't be comfortable thinking anything about an ogre's accuracy until you have a number to put on it. What I'm talking about isn't coming up with a specific number, but rather realizing that it is either "high", "average", or "low" -- broad categorizations.

Think of it this way: if someone told you that you're either observing a 2/5 or 4/5 condition, observation of a small number of iterations would be sufficient to come up with a working hypothesis about which one it was. If you were very unlucky, you might need to revise your hypothesis eventually.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Think of it this way: if someone told you that you're either observing a 2/5 or 4/5 condition, observation of a small number of iterations would be sufficient to come up with a working hypothesis about which one it was. If you were very unlucky, you might need to revise your hypothesis eventually.

Actually I didn't even consider that monsters have different accuracy. Why should I care and do manual calculations? Does it affect my decisions that much with the way crawl combat works where it can take 17 attacks to kill a monster when fsim shows you are expected to kill it in 2 attacks?
I am especially worried that you used Low/Average/High terms for accuracy while it is pure linear scale. I mean, if we have 99 numbers from 1 to 99, do you split them into 1-33, 34-66 and 67-99 and then deal with "low" 33 in a different way than the way you deal with "average" 34?

Edit. I would be happy to see "This monster has 55% chance to hit you in melee" like we already have "This monster can hit you up to 43 damage in melee", then at least I would consider fighting an ogre after quaffing potion of agility (and even see how much the potion helps!)

[njvack]

Does this imply that you had no idea ogres had low accuracy until you fsimmed it? My experience was that it was trivially easy to determine that through observation.

Knowing what I know about Crawl I would guess accuracy depends on HD and probably some other things, but I've never noticed that ogres have lower accuracy than anything else; I just know that if I can't tank some hits from their club I need to not melee them.

I've never had even a broad sense of monster accuracy after playing crawl for eight years. I have a good sense of damage now that I can xv it (well, the wiki was mostly correct about that before).

[Siegurt]

I am just not sure if accuracy helps you decide if you should engage a high damage source like 2headed ogres.

After all with those, it isn't the normal case that is a problem, it is the high side outliers that kill you, it doesn't really matter when they have a 5% chance to kill you outright, whether that 5% chance triggers 85% or 55% of the time i am still not going to risk it.

When dealing with something that can't kill you outright, and has to whittle down your hps, obviously accuracy plays a large part in how threatening they are.