The Tavern

I noticed that there have been some attempts at collecting good general advice for new players and that these attempts were unsuccessful. Instead, how about some bad advice you would give to your enemies if they started playing crawl? Possibly I can compile all of them and add "don't" to the front of each.

Huff gasoline.

Kill everything,
Just get frustrated and quit already.
Make sure to only wear armour who has an evasion rating less than half of your strength.
Always raise strength.
It's best to train everything you can turn on, that way you won't miss any skills, make sure you spread your points out evenly, so that nothing gets too far left behind.
Never train fighting if you select any of the "Mage" types, after all, it doesn't help your spells
Always pay attention to the bonus damage the weapon does, the +5 is the most important part, the base type of the weapon is unimportant.
Make sure you run directly at anything you want to kill, if you use spells make sure to use your highest-power-level spell the moment anything comes into view, kill them before the creature has a chance to react!
Open space is the best terrain, that way you can see your enemies coming!
You can never get a good EV score or cast spells in platemail
Ranged combat is overrated.
Make sure you figure out what end game stuff you want first thing when you start your character, read up on what end-game spells are available for each type of mage, and make sure you train for it exclusively so you have the skills ready the moment you find that spell. It's particularly important to train for abilities you don't have yet, if you're coming from a background that doesn't use the skills at all
Make sure you find a good character guide and follow it religiously
Conserve your food.
Conserve your mana.
Conserve all your potions and scrolls.
Its important to only enchant your end-game weapon and armour, so don't use them until you're in your "final" set.
Stats are the most important thing for your character, make sure that you get as many stat bumps as you need
Walking around with rF- or rC- is not a big deal, don't worry about it.

mikee wrote:I noticed that there have been some attempts at collecting good general advice for new players and that these attempts were unsuccessful. Instead, how about some bad advice you would give to your enemies if they started playing crawl? Possibly I can compile all of them and add "don't" to the front of each.

- Read the Wiki as if it were the gospel but only the advice parts.
- Ignore the information listed in the wiki and learndb.
- Forget to ask for help from IRC, and on the forums.
- Rest only when your hp are at 10% or less.
- Make as much noise as you can. It scares away the goblins and fiends.
- Try to kill every monster you find.
- Eat food as soon as possible.
- Forget corners.
- Run only when faced with ranged or mage type enemies. Especially those green clothed orcs.
- Run into large groups of monsters and melee them, particularly when there is a really nasty one.
- Use x v only when totally bored.
- Drink potions as soon as you find them.
- Only read id scrolls only as a last resort. Particularly, wait until the very late game.
- Pick up weapons that aren't even remotely likely to be useful to you.
- Worship Cheibraidos if you want to run around and dodge everything.
- Use (a)bilities sparingly. Particularly if they duplicate a consumable you could find.
- Save good consumables for later.
- Kill every unique you find.
- Only run from uniques when you are at 10% or less of your hp.
- Quaff flying potions and then fly heedlessly over deep water.
- Ignore messages warning you of danger.
- Complete every single part of every map and branch you can.
- Do elf 3 as quickly as you can.
- Do orc 4 as quickly as you can.
- Dive as deep as possible and then fight your way out.
- Use unidentified wands on yourself first.
- Wear id unided weapons and armor as soon as oyu find them, even if you don't have any scrolls.
that's all I've got at the moment.

Now I halfway want to play a challenge game where you have to turn on all of your available skills at the beginning of the game in manual mode, and have to leave them all on and unfocused until you win.

Never go into Lair until you're at least XP level 18.

Search every floor for secret doors to treasure loot rooms.

Farm abyss because it never runs out of items and monsters.

Your char is incredible strong now.

Don't train stealth, it's useless.

Exclusively train your weapon skill until you hit min delay (you are using an executioner axe, right?!).

Siegurt wrote:Now I halfway want to play a challenge game where you have to turn on all of your available skills at the beginning of the game in manual mode, and have to leave them all on and unfocused until you win.

Easy: FeXX

Fuck antimagic brand. It does NOT do extra damage.

Play MiBe and alternately hit tab and autoexplore. The faster and harder you press the keys, the more damage you do!

mikee: whoa, how reverse psychology suddenly makes this thread one of the best advice source for a long while

Since rule -1 and rule 0 are the best rules for winning the game, I would come up with an anti rule -1 and an anti rule 0. Something like:
Anti Rule -1: It doesn't matter if you play Crawl while tired or low energy. It's a turn based game so it doesn't matter if your reflexes are slow, for example.
Anti Rule 0: If you don't kill everything on every floor before moving on, you won't have enough experience to beat the game, so make sure to always clear.

Play NetHack

Don't bother with the pain brand because demons and undead fully resist it.
Necromancy is also the weakest spell school for this reason.
When fighting blinking enemies, always berserk for extra speed to chase them down.
As a general rule, spread your XP across skills in the beginning. Specialize once you're getting more XP in the mid/late game.

Vamp doesn't trigger on every hit (and even if it does it only heals for 1dDamage), so don't bother with it unless you don't have anything better.

Worship Xom, he is the most reliable god.

He will provide gifts much earlier than the weaker gods. If you are especially lucky
you will get an early banana {god gift} for usage in several ways:

Throw it into the face of your enemies to blind them (like throwing pies).
Wield it like a gun. Xom will give you branded banana peels as ammunition.
Wield it as weapon and put on scimitar skill. It will slimify your foes.
Wear it on your head to get rConf.
Wear it on your feet to get rSlippery.
Evoke it. With high evo skill you will turn enemies into mud.

Ingredients (makes 12 servings)
1 pound sweet Italian sausage
3/4 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup minced onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
2 (6.5 ounce) cans canned tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
12 lasagna noodles
16 ounces ricotta cheese
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
1. In a Dutch oven, cook sausage, ground beef, onion, and garlic over medium heat until well browned. Stir in crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and water. Season with sugar, basil, fennel seeds, Italian seasoning, 1 tablespoon salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons parsley. Simmer, covered, for about 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.
2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook lasagna noodles in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain noodles, and rinse with cold water. In a mixing bowl, combine ricotta cheese with egg, remaining parsley, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
4. To assemble, spread 1 1/2 cups of meat sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish. Arrange 6 noodles lengthwise over meat sauce. Spread with one half of the ricotta cheese mixture. Top with a third of mozzarella cheese slices. Spoon 1 1/2 cups meat sauce over mozzarella, and sprinkle with 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Repeat layers, and top with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil: to prevent sticking, either spray foil with cooking spray, or make sure the foil does not touch the cheese.
5. Turn on the waffle iron and put your dick in it.

duvessa wrote:Ingredients (makes 12 servings)
[...]
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil leaves

Sorry for asking - but will fresh basil leaves do it as well?

Why would I need a list of bad advice if I can just read the character guides on the wiki?

Turukano wrote:Sorry for asking - but will fresh basil leaves do it as well?

If you substitute enough fresh ingredients for dried ingredients, you'll end up with more moisture than you wanted, but you can compensate by reducing the amount of moisture you add elsewhere. In this case, you're only talking about 3/2 teaspoons of a spice, so you can basically ignore the slight difference. You'll want to shred the fresh basil finely, though.

Never use autoexplore, it wastes turns.

When a caster, always focus Spellcasting so as to never have spell hunger issues.
Ash forces you to wear cursed crap, and you should never worship her.

It's really important to hit 't' twice right before you hit '5'.

Getting level 9 spells castable early is the only way you can be powerful enough to win as a caster.

duvessa wrote:Ingredients (makes 12 servings)
...
5. Turn on the waffle iron and put your dick in it.

Sorry for asking - but will fresh basil leaves do it as well?

duvessa wrote:...
5. Turn on the waffle iron and put your dick in it.

You people never consider that girls might be playing Crawl. It's chauvinistic to not consider them.

I forgot that on this forum, sarcasm is often the only way people will listen to you consistently. I feel like that should have been obvious when I made the thread, but oh well, my apologies.

It wouldn't be the tavern without sarcasm, its like having a nazi death camp without mustard gas. Its just not the same without it for some reason.

Tiktacy wrote:Godwin'd

I havent' been paying enough attention to determine if you were the first, but if so, I am surprised it took this long.

Tiktacy wrote:I forgot that on this forum, sarcasm is often the only way people will listen to you consistently. I feel like that should have been obvious when I made the thread, but oh well, my apologies.

It wouldn't be the tavern without sarcasm, its like having a nazi death camp without mustard gas. Its just not the same without it for some reason.

I think you are taking this wrong. Mikee was clearly inspired by your thread and decided that it wasn't working as written so he helped it a long. Seems like a win/win. Well that's my 2.5 cents.

XuaXua wrote:
duvessa wrote:...
5. Turn on the waffle iron and put your dick in it.

You people never consider that girls might be playing Crawl. It's chauvinistic to not consider them.

Maybe I only hate people with dicks!

Hopeless wrote:
Tiktacy wrote:I forgot that on this forum, sarcasm is often the only way people will listen to you consistently. I feel like that should have been obvious when I made the thread, but oh well, my apologies.

It wouldn't be the tavern without sarcasm, its like having a nazi death camp without mustard gas. Its just not the same without it for some reason.

I think you are taking this wrong. Mikee was clearly inspired by your thread and decided that it wasn't working as written so he helped it a long. Seems like a win/win. Well that's my 2.5 cents.

I just wanted to make a stupid joke about how people on the forum love sarcasm, I actually like the thread a lot.

Tiktacy wrote:I forgot that on this forum, sarcasm is often the only way people will listen to you consistently. I feel like that should have been obvious when I made the thread, but oh well, my apologies.

It wouldn't be the tavern without sarcasm, its like having a nazi death camp without mustard gas. Its just not the same without it for some reason.

There have been many threads that attempted to collect good advice, at various points, some more successful than others. I don't think this thread is meant as a mean-spirited attack on you (or anyone) in particular, or anything, just a joke that provides an opportunity to post some funny examples of really bad advice. And since posting examples of bad advice could potentially be helpful I think having this in DCA rather than CYC is fine.

Also FYI the Nazi gas chambers generally used hydrogen cyanide in the form of pesticides (most famously Zyklon B) and, in some cases, car exhaust, ultimately to kill millions of jews as well as many hundreds of thousands other "undesirables" (those with various congenital diseases, Romani folks, Communists and other dissidents, homosexuals, etc.); mustard gas was used in combat by Germany in WWI, and by others subsequently, but was not used (at least not widely, afaik) in WWII.

Anyway so even if this thread was intended in a mean spirit (which I don't think it was) I don't think it merits a comparison to concentration camps, that's just my opinion though.

and into wrote:Also FYI the Nazi gas chambers generally used hydrogen cyanide in the form of pesticides (most famously Zyklon B) and, in some cases, car exhaust, ultimately to kill millions of jews as well as many hundreds of thousands other "undesirables" (those with various congenital diseases, Romani folks, Communists and other dissidents, homosexuals, etc.); mustard gas was used in combat by Germany in WWI, and by others subsequently, but was not used (at least not widely, afaik) in WWII.

Also, part of their series of human experimentation involved exposing prisoners to mustard gas and then seeing what best treated the wounds, though I agree this isn't what Ticktacy meant.

duvessa wrote:1. In a Dutch oven...

worship chei

don't worship chei

Avoid races with negative aptitudes

EV and AC's benefits are mutually exclusive, always focus one and completely ignore the other

There are three types of characters: melee, casters, and stabbers. Melee characters wear the heaviest armour they can, put all stats into strength, and never train spells. Casters wear robes of the Archmagi, only put points into int, and only train magic skills. Stabbers wear robes, put all points into Dex, and start by training Stealth to 27 -- you should aim to kill every monster while it is sleeping!

Every character has to beat Zot to win, so you should only train skills and use items that will help you against Zot's most dangerous enemy, the Orb of Fire. It resists fire, cold, lightning, negative energy, poison, and hexes, so don't use those. It also sees invisible, so there's no point to invisibility.

It's generally best to focus on one skill until you max it before moving on to another skill. That takes a lot of XP, so smart players stay on each floor as long as possible to make sure they kill everything -- and also to take advantage of the high-XP out of depth spawns that eventually appear!

Because it takes a long time to generate these out of depth monsters, you'll want to avoid doing anything that increases hunger, which includes casting spells that aren't hungerless, most god abilities, melee combat, haste, and invisibility.

Lasty wrote:There are three types of characters: melee, casters, and stabbers. Melee characters wear the heaviest armour they can, put all stats into strength, and never train spells. Casters wear robes of the Archmagi, only put points into int, and only train magic skills. Stabbers wear robes, put all points into Int, and start by training Stealth to 27 -- you should aim to kill every monster while it is sleeping!

This is actually a pretty accurate description of how most players play.

Magipi wrote:
Lasty wrote:There are three types of characters: melee, casters, and stabbers. Melee characters wear the heaviest armour they can, put all stats into strength, and never train spells. Casters wear robes of the Archmagi, only put points into int, and only train magic skills. Stabbers wear robes, put all points into Int, and start by training Stealth to 27 -- you should aim to kill every monster while it is sleeping!

This is actually a pretty accurate description of how most players play.

Pretty sure that's why Lasty wrote it like that. :p Actual bad advice, practiced by actual bad players. Just as what I wrote in my section was stuff I either did at one time or had someone tell me to do and actually considered it before discarding it. Lots of my deaths are directly attributable to stuff like that.

Magipi wrote:
Lasty wrote:There are three types of characters: melee, casters, and stabbers. Melee characters wear the heaviest armour they can, put all stats into strength, and never train spells. Casters wear robes of the Archmagi, only put points into int, and only train magic skills. Stabbers wear robes, put all points into Int, and start by training Stealth to 27 -- you should aim to kill every monster while it is sleeping!

This is actually a pretty accurate description of how most players play.

The best bad advice is believable/practiceable bad advice, yes.

Cheibrodos wrote:worship chei

Arrhythmia wrote:don't worship chei

Gotta love Chei.

And hey, Xom is great. Really.

Lasty wrote:There are three types of characters: melee, casters, and stabbers.

rpg stereoypes

if you're worshipping dithmenos and get into a tight spot, you can use a scroll of torment as a quick way to get out of danger with your fog clouds

Quaff identify all potions
Read ID all scrolls
It's safe to start IDing jewelery without remove curse

When you see mara, do the following:

Type 'tt'
Put on two rings of ice
Go berserk

Afterwards, complain in tavern about the unfair game, start a remove mara thread, begin a new game and repeat steps 1. - 3. when you see mara again.

"I'd take the Shield anyday on an Ogre [over a vampiric giant spiked club]".

Nemora wrote:Getting level 9 spells castable early is the only way you can be powerful enough to win as a caster.

I tried rushing to firestorm as soon as I got it (except for 3 levels in air and ice for Fcloud), then I won a 5-runner DECj!

Turukano wrote:When you see mara, do the following:

Type 'tt'
Put on two rings of ice
Go berserk
Afterwards, complain in tavern about the unfair game, start a remove mara thread, begin a new game and repeat steps 1. - 3. when you see mara again.

This is not much worse than fighting Mara with a loaf of bread, and THAT was meant to be serious advice by some.

Pfff, you didn't fight mara with the bread, you just kited mara with bread in your hand until he cloned you...DUH!

(not a great idea since he has bolt of fire, you know)

The Tavern

What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?

Re:

Re: What bad advice would you give to people you don't like?