Spell accuracy


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Temple Termagant

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 00:45

Spell accuracy

I just found out that each attack spell has its own accuracy rating, but I can't seem to find any information on what those accuracy ratings are. Would someone please point me to a resource that lists the various spell accuracies? I'd also like to know what the "to hit" formula is for spells.

In my particular case, I'm considering whether to learn Shock to use in place of Magic Dart (I've been training as a pure conjurer so far and could cast either at max power); the wiki says that Shock has slightly higher damage (1d9 instead of 1d8 and ignores AC), but also lower accuracy to some unclear degree.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:14

Re: Spell accuracy

Magic dart always hits, that's it's shtick.
Most spells hit 75-90% of the time, really the difference isn't large enough to make any value judgements on.

Shock can also bounce, if you use it properly, you can hit things twice with it, it also zaps through things so you can hit multiple things in a row.

Shock's the better spell (but takes twice the training)

If you can cast either one at max power, you've probably outgrown both (I realize that 1 MP spells are cheap enough that you sometimes want one anyway)

To hit something twice, you should do something like this:
  Code:
@##
 r
#X#

Where X is a wall you should target when casting shock.
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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:16

Re: Spell accuracy

edit: Beat to the punch and wasn't notified :(
Last edited by Greyr on Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:36, edited 1 time in total.
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Temple Termagant

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:30

Re: Spell accuracy

I left Shock unlearned, and Vehumet eventually withdrew his offer and offered me Flame Tongue instead. I took it.

I would agree that I've outgrown the 1 MP spells, except the only higher-level attack spell I've found is Venom Bolt, and I'm trying to wind up as a fire elementalist (I started as a wizard). Well, I suppose I'll memorize that, then. Though, between Sting and Mephitic Cloud, I really only have trouble with poison-resistant enemies anyway.
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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:37

Re: Spell accuracy

Brilliand wrote:I left Shock unlearned, and Vehumet eventually withdrew his offer and offered me Flame Tongue instead. I took it.

I would agree that I've outgrown the 1 MP spells, except the only higher-level attack spell I've found is Venom Bolt, and I'm trying to wind up as a fire elementalist (I started as a wizard). Well, I suppose I'll memorize that, then. Though, between Sting and Mephitic Cloud, I really only have trouble with poison-resistant enemies anyway.


Of the lv1 conjurations, flame tongue is the worst.
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Temple Termagant

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Joined: Saturday, 20th September 2014, 00:36

Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:42

Re: Spell accuracy

Greyr wrote:
Brilliand wrote:I left Shock unlearned, and Vehumet eventually withdrew his offer and offered me Flame Tongue instead. I took it.

I would agree that I've outgrown the 1 MP spells, except the only higher-level attack spell I've found is Venom Bolt, and I'm trying to wind up as a fire elementalist (I started as a wizard). Well, I suppose I'll memorize that, then. Though, between Sting and Mephitic Cloud, I really only have trouble with poison-resistant enemies anyway.


Of the lv1 conjurations, flame tongue is the worst.


How's that? It appears to hit quite hard (1d14), and I haven't seen very many things that resist both poison and fire in the Lair, so it makes a pretty good alternative to Sting (I'm just entering the Lair now).
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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:51

Re: Spell accuracy

It doesn't have poison status of sting (very handy pre-lair) it doesn't hit as hard as shock (when accounting for bouncing) and doesn't have the accuracy reliability of magic dart. Really though, a lv1 conjuration won't help you all that much in the lair anyway, so it doesn't matter at this point.

edit I will include sandblast and freeze in here as well, though they aren't 'conjurations', technically. Freeze is great assuming you don't mind being in melee. And sandblast while wielding rocks does a hefty 2d20 at max power. I will point out though that sandblast has a triple AC reduction.

edit edit sting has a range limit
Last edited by Greyr on Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:57, edited 2 times in total.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 01:56

Re: Spell accuracy

sting has a range limit...

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 02:00

Re: Spell accuracy

Mostly it's "in between" it's not long range (shock/magic missile/pain/sting) and it's not super reliable (freeze/magic missile/pain) It's not high damage (Freeze/sandblast withrocks/sting)

It's kinda middling damage, middling range, and not super accurate (It's not *inaccurate* but it's not super accurate either.)
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Temple Termagant

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 02:08

Re: Spell accuracy

Greyr wrote:It doesn't have poison status of sting (very handy pre-lair) it doesn't hit as hard as shock (when accounting for bouncing) and doesn't have the accuracy reliability of magic dart. Really though, a lv1 conjuration won't help you all that much in the lair anyway, so it doesn't matter at this point.


I've cleared Lair with just Sting, Flame Tongue, Conjure Flame and Mephitic cloud before, so I'm kind of in familiar territory now. Once I've pinned down a few poison-resistant enemies behind flame clouds, Magic Dart has problems with not being able to finish them off before I run out of MP, but Flame Tongue usually can. I don't think I've seen many opportunities for bouncing, but I'll keep an eye out in case I come across Shock in another playthrough.

It helps that the more durable things such as Hydras will try to charge right through my flame clouds, so they're more "kill them with flame clouds" than "pin them down and kill them with my most efficient spell".

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 20th September 2014, 08:43

Re: Spell accuracy

In general: spells are good (especially with conjurations there are few exceptions here); if you ignore xp considerations (for xp-expenditure reasons the "best" spells in actual crawl gameplay end up being around level 6, probably) the "goodness" (power level) of a particular spell is directly correlated with how difficult it is to cast (harder-to-cast: more powerful) (again this is especially true with conjurations). Since a dual-school spell is harder to cast than a single-school one it will be more powerful (throw icicle is more powerful than IMB).

Things that reduce effectiveness in some circumstances (being elemental, for instance) are compensated for by increasing effectiveness in other circumstances (increasing base damage; so a level 6 fire/conj spell is going to be noticeably better vs non-fire-resistant things than a level 6 earth/conj spell); and vice-versa (multi-target means less damage to each target)

There are some exceptions (poison arrow is much stronger than you would expect from it being a level 6 dual-school conjuration, for instance) but they're not common. So really if you just follow these guidelines you can figure out pretty much how good conjurations are.

re: accuracy:

It also turns out that in general in crawl you don't actually want to change your method of attack against monsters based on monster EV, except in the case where you are switching from "can miss" to "literally cannot miss ever". High accuracy is not as much better against high-EV monsters as you might expect. So while you definitely would prefer something like fireball against spriggans (it never misses), the accuracy difference between, say, iron shot and LCS is not really more important against spriggans than it is against stone giants. Similarly except in very extreme cases (pretty much if you have any fighting skill or weapon skill at all these go away) you don't want to do something like switch from a halberd to a spear just based on accuracy concerns.

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Temple Termagant

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 01:49

Re: Spell accuracy

crate wrote:re: accuracy:

It also turns out that in general in crawl you don't actually want to change your method of attack against monsters based on monster EV, except in the case where you are switching from "can miss" to "literally cannot miss ever". High accuracy is not as much better against high-EV monsters as you might expect. So while you definitely would prefer something like fireball against spriggans (it never misses), the accuracy difference between, say, iron shot and LCS is not really more important against spriggans than it is against stone giants. Similarly except in very extreme cases (pretty much if you have any fighting skill or weapon skill at all these go away) you don't want to do something like switch from a halberd to a spear just based on accuracy concerns.


Oh, okay; I was wondering about that. I'm guessing Bolt of Inaccuracy is one of the few exceptions? Any others come to mind?

Is the to-hit of each spell fixed, or can I affect it by training the same skills that affect spell power/failure? Or possibly by raising INT/DEX?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 01:55

Re: Spell accuracy

Spell power directly effects accuracy according to a spell-specific formula.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 21st September 2014, 05:55

Re: Spell accuracy

I'm actually not really even sure about bolt of inaccuracy except against things like spriggans (and against some spriggans it would be a waste anyway since it deals so much more damage than they have HP). Up to about 10 EV or so it still deals really good damage on average, since though you miss a lot when you hit it's so ridiculously strong.

But realistically the damage from bolt of inaccuracy is unreliable enough above 8 or so EV that you can't just look at averages and are probably better off using a different attack.

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