Short blades/weapon damage

[Siegurt]

Its not like its difficult to tweak, either. Add a better scaling factor so that all weapons get somewhat appreciably better with skill, keeping shortblades still at the bottom of the list. The capstone idea is a cool one as well, if interesting rewards can found.

It's actually more difficult than you'd think it'd be, viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10671, keeping everything balanced, relevant, with some progression and differentiation between different types of weapon and skill level is a somewhat complex balancing act. But it is is being worked on FWIW.

[crate]

Additionally, I don't really see anything wrong with how short blades in general work right now. They are a weapon type you choose for stabbing, by and large (though qblade has a few other niches). This makes them actually distinct from the other melee weapons in crawl. Axes, maces, polearms, long blades, and qstaff/lajatang are pretty much interchangeable. If anything this would suggest that short blades are in a better place than other weapons, not a worse one.

(You can quibble over how much skill you want for short blades but there are few skills in crawl where going all the way to 27 is worthwhile, and I personally don't see anything wrong with that either.)

[and into]

Additionally, I don't really see anything wrong with how short blades in general work right now. They are a weapon type you choose for stabbing, by and large (though qblade has a few other niches). This makes them actually distinct from the other melee weapons in crawl. Axes, maces, polearms, long blades, and qstaff/lajatang are pretty much interchangeable. If anything this would suggest that short blades are in a better place than other weapons, not a worse one.

(You can quibble over how much skill you want for short blades but there are few skills in crawl where going all the way to 27 is worthwhile, and I personally don't see anything wrong with that either.)

Well said. I agree about short blades and also about the skill training, though for the latter I think there is a problem in that it is counter-intuitive. I think it is very difficult to discover via direct experience that training skills above a certain point is often giving you *really* steep diminishing returns. Training short blades over 8 when you have a quick blade and it is your best weapon—that is probably the most extreme example, but it is true to a lesser extent in many other situations.

Aside from this lack of transparency, though, that system, in itself, is not wrong or bad. It often makes strategic decisions a bit deeper, as (aside from a few specific cases) you are highly encouraged to branch out at various points in the game, rather than double down on your specialization. And that's one thing I like about Crawl, that there is a high degree of fluidity amongst different ways to play your character, which are *not* like "classes" in most games.

[Bomanz]

regarding the transparency/intuitiveness, I think it would be pretty easy to make a generic message for when a weapon reaches its standard minimum delay "You feel as if you have maximized the speed with which you can swing Short Swords"

Might help some new folks with short swords soft capping early, and be generally useful for lazy players like me who forget the min delay formula occasionally

[Amnesiac]

They are a weapon type you choose for stabbing, by and large (though qblade has a few other niches).

A short blade of electrocution works as good as any other melee weapon of a higher caliber, though. And you can take one from Nicola somewhere in the first Lair branch

[Kate]

The last one of these was locked and the reasons there seem likely to apply here too. Small threads to ask a simple question are fine. Renamed the thread rather than locking it since this one seems to mostly only have one topic so far.

[Amnesiac]

For some people it might be easier to ask here rather than on ##crawl(I don't even know what it is). And they will still create a thread for every small question witch I don't find better than just throwing it all together if they consist of a one sentence question. There are a lot of people who look at bumped threads and answer in them, so I don't see any problem here.

[Siegurt]

For some people it might be easier to ask here rather than on ##crawl(I don't even know what it is). And they will still create a thread for every small question witch I don't find better than just throwing it all together if they consist of a one sentence question. There are a lot of people who look at bumped threads and answer in them, so I don't see any problem here.

It's easier for people wanting to search for answers that have already been given if one question and it's answer are in a single thread, if you ask a question in a thread like this, and there are 15 answers to other questions that happened before or after, the original questioner might find an answer to the question they asked, if they are really active and follow the forum regularly, but someone who just pops in once in a while won't be able to glean any information from a thread where there's a ton of information all jumbled together, without reading it in it's entirety top to bottom, which becomes a prodigious task once the amount of questions and answers start piling up. And certainly won't be able to find the answer to a specific question easily.

[Amnesiac]

Whatever suits you, guys. I just thought it's a good idea

Also, info gets old with new verions coming out, so it might be a good idea to ask some questions again. Most still ask before even searching, it seems. A lot of questions are also tricky, not some rtfm-basic stuff.

[Frostball]

Hello, this is my first post, although I've been reading crawl tavern, and playing crawl for some time now. I had a question about something that was mentioned briefly, and that's about skills that are worth getting to max. So I see that getting weapon skills to max is not generally optimal, especially for short blades. Are there any skills that are good to get to max? How do defensive skills compare to weapon skills as far as maxing? Magic skills?

[Amnesiac]

Maxing defensive skills will always get you more defense, whereas training weapons more than mindelay doesn't give you much. In magic skills, I think only spellcasting is worth maxing, since it always gives you more spell levels, MP and is useful for any other schools, particularly for those, on which you don't want to waste more exp than what will make spells like haste and controlled blink castable. For magic shools you can always get much more from enhancers.

[duvessa]

Are there any skills that are good to get to max?

Not really, no. Training a skill to 27 means either you wanted a title or you ran completely out of good places to put experience (which does happen on many characters!).

[Sar]

I can hardly imagine myself maxing Spellcasting. I think the skill I end up maxing most often (without pursuing skill mastery titles) is Fighting. But maxing it is never a priority for my characters.