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

[sir_laser]

The thing is, I know slaying is calculated differently for melee and ranged, and that it was altered, IIRC, between 0.9 and 0.10. How is it different between versions and between melee and ranged?

Is my thinking correct here?

Yes.
I recall that on at least one thread there has been talk of changing sustenance to 'halving' hunger rate (so on a troll one ring would bring metabolism from 9 to 5, a second one from 5 to 3, for example). Regardless of the formula, the end result is the same: 1 food/turn.

[BlackSheep]

The new sustenance formula multiplies hunger by 3/5 for each such ring you're wearing. This is done after all other modifiers are handled (i.e. rings of hunger, regeneration, troll-ness, artefacts, etc.).

[Grimm]

Therefore:

[3 (base hunger) + 1 (fastmetab 1)] x 3/5 (sust) x 3/5 (other sust) = 1.44 rounded down to 1

In short: sustenance stacks if you've got extra hungering.

[sir_laser]

Strength of Wand of Heal Wounds seem to not depend on Evocations at all. Therefore, is Greater Healing @ 27 Invocations the best way to pacify monsters?

[crate]

Strength of Wand of Heal Wounds seem to not depend on Evocations at all. Therefore, is Greater Healing @ 27 Invocations the best way to pacify monsters?

For pacification and for pacification only, the heal wounds wand gets stronger with evocations. At max evo, the wand is stronger than max invo greater healing.

[sir_laser]

What are the chances for the three good gods to protect one from a mortal wound?

[Confidence Interval]

Slain by a troll (10 damage)
... led by an orc warlord

What does this mean? It implies the orc warlord was in charge of the troll - what other monsters could be led by on orc in this way (aside from, I presume, other orcs)?

[sir_laser]

I've seen that before too...best guess is that they spawned in the same "pack".

[cerebovssquire]

What are the chances for the three good gods to protect one from a mortal wound?

Elyvilon is 100% at full piety with divine protection, and divine protection at high piety is generally something one can rely on more than other options in an emergency. I don't know about the others.

[BlackSheep]

Slain by a troll (10 damage)
... led by an orc warlord

What does this mean? It implies the orc warlord was in charge of the troll - what other monsters could be led by on orc in this way (aside from, I presume, other orcs)?

That's a flag generated by the code that creates monster "bands". Orc warlords/knights/high priests can lead bands with the various types of lesser orcs plus wargs, ogres and trolls.

[sir_laser]

Is wild magic considered a good or bad mutation?

[hxy]

Good I think... on the "A" screen it's not listed in red.

[jejorda2]

For an enchanter or conjurer, it's pretty good. For a skald, transmuter, or necromancer, it's mostly bad. Mixed blessing for summoners. If you have a ring of wizardry and a spare slot for it, it's like having a ring of the archmagi.

It'd be neat to see a race with the same effect built-in, or the reverse. Wizardry with a spellcasting penalty would make a heavy armour caster easy at lower levels.

[Blade]

It's considered good; most good players that I've heard talking about it consider it bad, though; it's like a ring of anti-wizardry and the power boost is usually not worth the extra couple of levels needed to cast key spells (e.g. Haste)

[Kate]

Double-edged mutations (although there aren't that many good examples yet - just strong+stiff, flexible+weak, evolution, wild magic I guess) generally aren't marked as bad, yeah.

[Tiber]

Wild magic can also be good for earth and air magic, since enhancers for those are a bit harder to come by than fire and ice. I used it + brilliance + staff of earth to LRD my way through a metal wall with no investment in earth magic (I accidentally lead an ancient champion down the stairs and killed it, so I couldn't finish that vault).

[rchandra]

What exactly does Kikubaaqudgha do for your Necromancy spells? Increased power (or success?) and reduced miscast severity?

[Kate]

Except not the Revivification one, that works as normal under Kiku. But other than that, yeah.

[Denniz]

How useful is Tiamat's Dragonskin Cloak?

[pratamawirya]

How useful is Tiamat's Dragonskin Cloak?

Not too useful, unless you have very few sources of elemental resistance.

[Blade]

On the other hand, it gives pretty good AC and probably looks awesome. Unless I have a really good cloak (preservation, good randart/unrand) and sometimes even when I do, I wear it.

[Jeremiah]

Does using draconian breath weapons make noise?

[sir_laser]

Does Haste not increase the attack speed for ranged weapons?

[BlackSheep]

Does Haste not increase the attack speed for ranged weapons?

Haste does increase ranged attack speed. To get a better sense of the amount of time different actions take, set "show_game_turns = true" in your init.txt or rcfile. Next to the turn counter you'll see a number in parentheses that indicates the amount of time your last action took. Experimentation in wizard mode on a HuHu shows bow shots taking 1 turn per shot normally, and 0.7 turns with Haste active.

Does using draconian breath weapons make noise?

Yes, though it varies by breath type. Sticky flame is pretty quiet, Acid and Frost are about as loud as the spell Bolt of Fire, Flame breath is slightly louder than that. Poison Gas and Steam are silent but the explosion at the target is noisy.

[Blade]

Haste speeds everything. That is what makes it so unbelievably good.

[mattlistener]

Someone recently posted a tip regarding how to change one's config file so that in the offline-tiles version, the Monsters tab is on top, and hence expanded, giving you another way of being mindful of what's currently in LOS. I decided to give that a try and now I can't find it anywhere. Tried various searches. :-/ Can someone post a pointer please? Thanks.

[BlackSheep]

Someone recently posted a tip regarding how to change one's config file so that in the offline-tiles version, the Monsters tab is on top, and hence expanded, giving you another way of being mindful of what's currently in LOS. I decided to give that a try and now I can't find it anywhere. Tried various searches. :-/ Can someone post a pointer please? Thanks.

The relevant option is "tile_layout_priority" in tiles_options.txt. For details, search for tile_layout_priority in options_guide.txt in the docs folder.

[mattlistener]

Someone recently posted a tip regarding how to change one's config file so that in the offline-tiles version, the Monsters tab is on top, and hence expanded, giving you another way of being mindful of what's currently in LOS. I decided to give that a try and now I can't find it anywhere. Tried various searches. :-/ Can someone post a pointer please? Thanks.

The relevant option is "tile_layout_priority" in tiles_options.txt. For details, search for tile_layout_priority in options_guide.txt in the docs folder.

Thanks! That did the trick once I remembered to also uncomment the relevant line.

[Fedman]

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

[hermbot]

How many turns (roughly) do I really have before OOD monsters appear? I'm not interested in hanging out on a level too long, but I find myself descending somewhat quickly to avoid an OOD encounter. Perhaps I've read too many warnings about scumming and have an irrational fear, so if I had a handle on what is considered "too long" to stay on a level, that would be helpful.

[mageykun]

How many turns (roughly) do I really have before OOD monsters appear? I'm not interested in hanging out on a level too long, but I find myself descending somewhat quickly to avoid an OOD encounter. Perhaps I've read too many warnings about scumming and have an irrational fear, so if I had a handle on what is considered "too long" to stay on a level, that would be helpful.

Crawl sometimes generates unusally hard monsters to keep you on your toes. The maximum possible is a 9 level difference, or 5 on D:1; add 12 as a special farmer penalty which only triggers after ~1k turns and is quite rare even then.

In practical terms, it takes a long time to trigger the out of depth scumming retaliation. Will almost never happen in normal play. I've only seen it happen if you take waaay too long clearing a floor- like being forced to lure, kite, column dance, full mp restore wait, and /or stair dance every single monster / group of monsters on an entire floor (normal floors at least. This doesn't seem apply to scary branch ends where this style of play is the norm anyways).

So unless you're playing something fragile and underpowered with no choice but to drag things out, or you're purposely taking your time on a mummy, it shouldn't happen.

One measure you can take though- go upstairs to wait and do your healing. This is generally safer (provided the stairs are close by and safe to reach), and you increase the timer on a floor you're done with anyways.

[Grimm]

Is the OOD timer reset every time you go up or down a staircase, or is does it tick constantly?

[nicolae]

This might be a real dumb question: I usually play trunk, and update relatively frequently. I download the Tiles version, and then remove my old trunk directory, which kills my old high scores and saves. The only record of good games is morgue files I copy to another directory. Is there an easier way to do this, where I can keep saves and a high score?

[BlackSheep]

Saves and high score files are stored in the Saves folder, along with the bones files for your ghosts.

[mageykun]

Is the OOD timer reset every time you go up or down a staircase, or is does it tick constantly?

I think there's a separate timer per floor, and they only advance when you're on a given floor.

I'm reasonably certain however that stairs don't reset the count as that would be scum-able.

[nicolae]

Saves and high score files are stored in the Saves folder, along with the bones files for your ghosts.

Aha, so I can just copy that (and my morgue, why not) to the new directory.

[XuaXua]

From this thread.

Does rPOIS work against Alistair's Intoxication?

I suggested it for use on Snake : 5, but was told it's not the case, but another came back to say it would work.

[Kate]

Alistair's intoxication

This spell works by converting a small portion of brain matter into alcohol,
confusing all intelligent humanoids within the caster's view (although
poison-resistant creatures will suffer no negative effects). It is strongly
focused on the caster, however, and so poison resistance will not protect them.
It is frequently used as an icebreaker at wizard parties.

It's never affected poison resistant monsters, as far as I know.

[TehDruid]

Been playing a crazy Naga staves Gladiator of Okawaru and he gifted me Olgreb's staff around Lair. I know the staff's pluses = Poison Skill/3. I've always been wondering though, does Radiance and the bolt from the staff become more powerful with more poison magic skill or invocations? Also, does the spellpower of these get halved like that's the case with rods when you have a shield equipped (unless this isn't the case, I just believe I've read it somewhere). The knowledge bots say Invocations determine chance of successfully using it and the extra chance to get venom bolt.

[Deimos]

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

[Nelagend]

I have an unusually good non-Giant Club weapon on an Ogre Berserker - a +5/+4 whip of electrocution.
At what M&F skill is it worth changing over to a GSC if I don't have enchant weapon scrolls in pack? I'm in the 14-16 range where said +0 GSC would be about a 10 speed.

[CommanderC]

Been playing a crazy Naga staves Gladiator of Okawaru and he gifted me Olgreb's staff around Lair. I know the staff's pluses = Poison Skill/3. I've always been wondering though, does Radiance and the bolt from the staff become more powerful with more poison magic skill or invocations? Also, does the spellpower of these get halved like that's the case with rods when you have a shield equipped (unless this isn't the case, I just believe I've read it somewhere). The knowledge bots say Invocations determine chance of successfully using it and the extra chance to get venom bolt.

The success chance is (1 + Evocations)/6 and the spellpower is 10+8*Evocations (which is excellent: rods only have 5+3*Evoc)

I have an unusually good non-Giant Club weapon on an Ogre Berserker - a +5/+4 whip of electrocution.
At what M&F skill is it worth changing over to a GSC if I don't have enchant weapon scrolls in pack? I'm in the 14-16 range where said +0 GSC would be about a 10 speed.

I did this test against a death yak (Maces@15 and Fighting@5):

  Code:

_You are now empty-handed.
 You hear the crackle of electricity.
_h - a +5,+4 whip of electrocution (weapon)
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvEffDam
 Attacking:      7.7 |     36 |      86% |   6.6 |    0.5 |     13.2
 Defending:     14.2 |     30 |      97% |  13.8 |    1.0 |     13.8
 Your +5,+4 whip of electrocution stops crackling.
 g - a +0,+0 giant spiked club (weapon)
_The death yak gores you for 27!
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     12.5 |     46 |      78% |   9.8 |    1.0 |      9.4
 Defending:     14.2 |     30 |      97% |  13.9 |    1.0 |     13.9


Now Maces@20 and Fighting@12

  Code:

 You hear the crackle of electricity.
_h - a +5,+4 whip of electrocution (weapon)
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvEffDam
 Attacking:      8.3 |     38 |      85% |   7.1 |    0.5 |     14.2
 Defending:     13.8 |     30 |      97% |  13.5 |    1.0 |     13.5
 Your +5,+4 whip of electrocution stops crackling.
 g - a +0,+0 giant spiked club (weapon)
_The death yak gores you for 8!
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvEffDam
 Attacking:     15.6 |     57 |      81% |  12.7 |    0.8 |     15.9
 Defending:     14.0 |     30 |      97% |  13.6 |    1.0 |     13.6


AvEffDam is the parameter you should care about.

[Blade]

A gsc is far better for an ogre than a whip of electrocution. It does more consistent damage, isn't neutralized by flight, and gets comparatively better and better at higher skill levels (and enchantments). You may as well enchant the GSC, but it doesn't matter much since Trog will gift you an incredible stream of artefact gsc/gc (he can't give branded gsc/gc, so he gives artefacts instead)

[pratamawirya]

You may as well enchant the GSC, but it doesn't matter much since Trog will gift you an incredible stream of artefact gsc/gc (he can't give branded gsc/gc, so he gives artefacts instead)

He gave my OgBe a non-artefact anti-magic GSC once.

[Blade]

How long ago? I'm pretty sure (although not certain) that he can't do it any more.

[pratamawirya]

0.10.

[TehDruid]

Been playing a crazy Naga staves Gladiator of Okawaru and he gifted me Olgreb's staff around Lair. I know the staff's pluses = Poison Skill/3. I've always been wondering though, does Radiance and the bolt from the staff become more powerful with more poison magic skill or invocations? Also, does the spellpower of these get halved like that's the case with rods when you have a shield equipped (unless this isn't the case, I just believe I've read it somewhere). The knowledge bots say Invocations determine chance of successfully using it and the extra chance to get venom bolt.

The success chance is (1 + Evocations)/6 and the spellpower is 10+8*Evocations (which is excellent: rods only have 5+3*Evoc)

Ah I said Invocations instead of Evocations. TWICE. :facepalm: Thanks for your answer about Spell Power.

[mageykun]

Can you raise Sif piety training just spellcasting? Or do only the spell schools count?

(I'm in the somewhat odd situation of having my only spell memorized in a school I have no interest in training).