The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' thread

[BlackSheep]

Is there any sort of "autopray" type deal where you automatically sacrifice corpses when autoexploring? If not, it sounds useful.

Short answer: No. There have been discussions here about reducing the tedium of walking over to every corpse and pressing p. Suggestions include yours, having p sacrifice every corpse in sight, and removing corpse sacrifice entirely.

Does the amulet of faith makes Beogh to promote/bless followers more often?

Not directly. The chance of blessing a follower is based on your piety, which grows faster while wearing an amulet of faith.

[One-Eyed Jack]

If a felid loses a life in dragon form and you butcher the corpse, can you get a hide?

[Jabberwocky]

If a felid loses a life in dragon form and you butcher the corpse, can you get a hide?

Yes. I'm not sure why you want a dragon hide as a felid though.

[One-Eyed Jack]

If a felid loses a life in dragon form and you butcher the corpse, can you get a hide?

Yes. I'm not sure why you want a dragon hide as a felid though.

Just wanted to verify that there's more than one way to skin a cat.

[beikul]

Just found this shield:

  Code:

the +15 shield "Bullseye" {EV-5}

Assuming my shields skill is high enough (15?) then do the benefits of the +15 generally outweigh the EV-5 or not?

[Blade]

They do not. If you must wear a shield with big +, wear a large shield. Really, though, the main purpose of shields is to have another slot for resists. The EV-5 is almost certainly not worth it.

[beikul]

They do not. If you must wear a shield with big +, wear a large shield. Really, though, the main purpose of shields is to have another slot for resists. The EV-5 is almost certainly not worth it.

Interesting, thanks.

[KoboldLord]

Just found this shield:

  Code:

the +15 shield "Bullseye" {EV-5}

Assuming my shields skill is high enough (15?) then do the benefits of the +15 generally outweigh the EV-5 or not?

It's very nice early on if you're going to dump-stat EV anyway, for instance a heavy armor build. Most monsters in the early game attack only with SH-blockable projectiles and melee attacks, and if you can avoid getting swarmed most monsters will have a very time breaching your SH.

Later on, though, +15SH isn't actually all that impressive. Large shields naturally give MUCH more SH than regular shields, so Bullseye ends up providing less SH than you'd get from skilling up a decent large shield. More monsters start using attacks that bypass or mitigate your shield, and EV starts becoming more valuable. Then there's the options of using a shield with a good brand, or a two-handed weapon.

[Xion350]

For monks, or really any unarmed user. Is it better to wield the first weapon you see, or is it better to let your fists deal the damage untill you find a nice runed/unrand?

[mageykun]

For monks, or really any unarmed user. Is it better to wield the first weapon you see, or is it better to let your fists deal the damage untill you find a nice runed/unrand?

It's a perfectly legitimate choice to stay unarmed all game, actually. Certain builds and races lend quite naturally to it (transmuters for instance. Nagas, centaurs, ghouls, and trolls are all very effective unarmed). It's arguably overpowered versus weapons in terms of damage, and that's before you even bring blade hands and statue form into the discussion! Biggest trade off is you lose the weapon slot for potential artefact resists, bonuses, etc.

[Blade]

With transmutations, yes, UC becomes very good. Until then ... well, it deals good enough damage, but it's nothing incredible. It works well enough, though. I've won more games using UC than using any other weapon type, just because it's more convenient.

[Confidence Interval]

How much of a risk is there in using this:

the +11 Crystal Plate Mail of the Lair of Beasts (Int-4)

on my XL17 MiFi, who has Int 6 (so this takes it down to 2)? I already have a +5 crystal plate mail that I've been wearing but in the absence of six scrolls of enchant armour is it going to present me with problems to wear this? (I do have a +5 ring of intelligence but don't really want to use up a slot on it.)

[Grimm]

On the one hand keeping SustAb and !restore on hand should reduce the risk to a pretty low level. On the other, if you get jumped by some shining eyes or orbs of fire and get mutated down to 0, you might be forced to use the ring. Also consider that it takes quite a while to shimmy out of heavy armour.

If your Armour is high enough the difference between +5 and +11 might not be so crucial, especially with some nice pieces of secondary armour.

If it were me I'd use it through the regular dungeon but switch to the other set for mutation-risk areas like slime or zot.

[Blade]

Grimm is correct. Because your int will be so low, though, I would recommend carrying a ring of sustab and switching to it when you see a brain worm or neqoxec (or any other int-draining monster). Carry a pot of restab at all times, and in general be very careful. If you do reach 0 int, just pop your +5 int ring on until you get to a place where you can change armour. Now that statdeath is delayed, it shouldn't be a huge danger. Just stay aware of it.

[pratamawirya]

!restore isn't cold-proof, but royal jelly is. Carry one too if you have it.

[Southpaw]

!restore isn't cold-proof, but royal jelly is. Carry one too if you have it.

First thing I pictured was him carrying around TRJ instead of the permafood

[TehDruid]

Isn't royal jelly eligible to be devoured by harpies? Of course they're much more rare than cold damage.

[pratamawirya]

Yeah they are. That's why I usually bring only one.

[mattlistener]

Does a Vampire's "bottle blood" ability produce the same number of bottles as butchering would have produced chunks?

How many turns do chunks and potions of blood last before they turn rotten/coagulated? (Assuming a corpse that had just died the turn before.)

When one consumes a potion of blood (whether by quaffing or by sublimation), does the game always take the oldest one off the stack? (I know crawl tracks the age of PoB individually even though they stack in one inventory slot.)

[BlackSheep]

Does a Vampire's "bottle blood" ability produce the same number of bottles as butchering would have produced chunks?

How many turns do chunks and potions of blood last before they turn rotten/coagulated? (Assuming a corpse that had just died the turn before.)

When one consumes a potion of blood (whether by quaffing or by sublimation), does the game always take the oldest one off the stack? (I know crawl tracks the age of PoB individually even though they stack in one inventory slot.)

Bottle blood gets about a third of the maximum number of chunks a corpse would provide. That number is halved for contaminated corpses.

Chunks from a corpse use the same rotting timer as the corpse itself. The older the corpse, the older the chunks it creates. Bottled blood subtracts a fixed value from the corpse freshness, then multiplies that number by 20, then adds 500. I don't know if that number is actual turns (10 aut) or some multiple of the number of turns, but he upshot is that blood lasts longer than chunks.

Blood potions are consumed oldest to newest.

Edit: It looks like the default freshness value for a new corpse is 210. Again, I'm not positive if that's actual turns.

[nicolae]

DDEE. I have an option of weapons:

+0, +0 orcish vampiric hand axe
orcish battleaxe of unknown enchantment but it's not glowing

I only ask because of the vampiricism on the hand axe, though I did just join up with Makhleb.

[KoboldLord]

Vampiric won't help on a hand axe because it heals you a percentage of the damage you deal, and hand axes won't deal much damage past the early game. Go for the heaviest axe you can find.

[Jeremiah]

Does the illusion of the player created by Mara now use a good weapon even if you don't, thus removing the "wielding a bread ration" bug/exploit?

[rchandra]

I can't answer that, but I can tell you that I've been killed trying to use that exploit (suddenly his bolts of fire started damaging me, got killed on the staircase, then learned how GDR doesn't work on those) when I probably could have just tabbed him.

[mageykun]

Does the illusion of the player created by Mara now use a good weapon even if you don't, thus removing the "wielding a bread ration" bug/exploit?

Still works in stable. Not sure about trunk, but I don't see anything about Mara or illusions in the 0.11 change logs.

[Jeremiah]

I just wondered because in 0.10 tiles, the tile for the illusion is shown wielding the character's favoured melee weapon even if the character is wielding something else. I assume that if there have been no changes then this is just graphical and not related to the illusion's actual power. (Has this always been the case? I'm pretty sure I haven't noticed it before...)

[lucy_ferre]

When I fought my illusion it's tile looked like it was wielding a giant club, despite me wielding chunks for sublimation.

[ClefAria]

I did this, but apparently it undid itself when I updated the game.

There was a setting that took the game straight to the main menu after loading, without having to press a button. Help me find it again? :T

[BlackSheep]

You don't want to look at the lovely artwork??
It's "tile_skip_title = true"

[Jeremiah]

Does GDR work against constriction?

[BlackSheep]

It does not appear so. It looks like constriction damage is just reduced by random((AC/2) + 1)

[nicolae]

Two questions:

I have a lvl 12 DEFE of Vehumet, in Lair. Just found a staff of wizardry and a staff of channeling. I'm currently wielding a +4, +2 short sword of electrocution, which has served me well, but I'm guessing I should upgrade to a magic staff. My spell failures are all at 1%, and I get MP-for-kills from Veh, so I'm not sure which is best.

Also, what skills should I be training? I haven't found a single other spellbook besides my starter, all six spells are at 1%, and only Fireball has any hunger cost still (Strawberry). I'm currently dumping it around in Fighting, T&D, Stealth, Dodging, and Spellcasting.

[cerebovssquire]

Two questions:

I have a lvl 12 DEFE of Vehumet, in Lair. Just found a staff of wizardry and a staff of channeling. I'm currently wielding a +4, +2 short sword of electrocution, which has served me well, but I'm guessing I should upgrade to a magic staff. My spell failures are all at 1%, and I get MP-for-kills from Veh, so I'm not sure which is best.

Also, what skills should I be training? I haven't found a single other spellbook besides my starter, all six spells are at 1%, and only Fireball has any hunger cost still (Strawberry). I'm currently dumping it around in Fighting, T&D, Stealth, Dodging, and Spellcasting.

What do you mean "upgrade"? Use wizardry if you need success, channeling if you need to channel, short sword if you want to melee. Swapping takes less than a turn. You're not with Ashenzari or anything. These three items do completely different things, it isn't an upgrade like falchion > scimitar would be.
Hungerless 4 MP fireball is very good, so I would get the couple levels of Spellcasting required for that first. Then, if you feel your Fireball/Bolt of Magma spellpower is high enough, get some Dodging, if it isn't, train Conj/Fire. Training 5 skills more-or-less at once is bad in every situation. You probably don't want any Stealth on DEFE because you will be making tons of noise, and even though it isn't completely useless (wandering monsters) Dodging and Fighting are more useful defensive skills in my opinion.

[nicolae]

What do you mean "upgrade"? Use wizardry if you need success, channeling if you need to channel, short sword if you want to melee. Swapping takes less than a turn. You're not with Ashenzari or anything. These three items do completely different things, it isn't an upgrade like falchion > scimitar would be.

I was reluctant to carry all those weapons around, since I'm low on carrying capacity (Str 6, no strength boost items yet).

Hungerless 4 MP fireball is very good, so I would get the couple levels of Spellcasting required for that first. Then, if you feel your Fireball/Bolt of Magma spellpower is high enough, get some Dodging, if it isn't, train Conj/Fire.

I have a ring of fire, so my Fireball is going quite all right, and FEs don't have Bolt of Magma anymore. I'll go for Spellcasting until Fireball is hunger-free, then.

Edit: Oh, lol. Just after I posted this, saying I hadn't found another spellbook, I go back to playing, turn a corner, and there's a spellbook of Minor Magic. I guess I should pick up Blink and maybe Repel Missiles - would Mephitic Cloud be worthwhile?

[Blade]

There's no reason to grab meph at this point; definitely get rMsl, though.

[sir_laser]

Blink is worth picking up too. If you're constricted (although there's no reason this should happen, as you're a DeFe) or put next to some powerful monster blink will get you out in one turn.

[Southpaw]

Blink is always useful, and RMsl is quite good too. I can imagine you'd need much else from the book of minor magic at this point though.

[Jeremiah]

Do player ghosts of Lugonu worshippers retain their god abilities (ie banishment?)

[Blade]

no; gods stop caring about dead followers. No ghosts have any god powers.

[KoboldLord]

They're still likely to have distortion-branded weapons, though, so watch out for that.

[Kirbypowered]

As a DDW at XLV: 3, do I have any chance of escaping the Abyss? I lack good defense, but I have some nice weapons (+2, +0 whip of distortion, elven short sword of electrocution, and quarterstaff of chaos) for how long I've been playing.

[rchandra]

sure, an exit can appear anywhere. certainly your chances are not great though, a speedy character like Spriggan or Centaur can escape much more before finding the exit.

Don't forget that an altar to Lugonu is also available - but as a deep dwarf that might not help as much as it would other races. You'd likely have to abandon Lugonu later, leading to more abyss trips.

[Blade]

hint: worshipping Lugonu as a DD is a fate worse than death.

At that point, you're pretty much doomed. Just sigh and start a new char after you die.

[Kirbypowered]

Well, did better than I expected. "Accidentally" killed a small abomination when I thought I was choosing a location for blink, gaining two levels, but ended up murdered by three electric eels. Couldn't stop and hide, lest the Iron Imp would catch me.

[tormodpwns]

How are post endgame Vampires supposed to heal? I know there's some methods, like stabbing, Vampiric Draining, etc. but besides these very few methods, is there no way? I remember I was getting stuck fairly early on (Swamp, level 17) with an extremely powerful Vampire who couldn't advance further because there was just no way to heal HP.

[cerebovssquire]

Kiku corpses, Makhleb healing, not taking any damage behind walls of summons, bringing enough blood, Trog's Hand
(preferably the first two)

[mazanaka]

Greetings,people.

I'm very bad with my english so I am apologizing in advance =)

I'm also noob at Crawl(used to play Nethack,and Crawl was recomended to me as "more complex game"),and didn't advance so far,(but killed around 100 charasters already)) )

To the point:Started as Spriggan Assasin,and found a vampiric dagger in a few steps from upstairs.I tried to wield it,but was given a warning:"Do you really wish?".Why wouldn't I?and then,I attacked two bats,and died very quickly,as each blow I landed on them REDUCED my Hp.

Why it is that way?Isn't vampiric weapons supposed to HEAL it's user???

[Jabberwocky]

The bats were hitting you.

[Southpaw]

Jabberwocky is correct.

Also, the Vampiric brand heals you based on a percentage of how much damage you actually dealt. Daggers deal a rather small amount of damage outside stabbing and so you don't see much in the way of healing from them

[sir_laser]

Also, Vampiric weapons reduces your satiation by about 5000 on wield, which is why the game asked whether you are sure you wanted to wield it.