The Tavern

dmurray wrote:Apart from the mutations that block armour slots on Demonspawns, the mutations they get will only be *good* (as in positive ones and not negative ones)?

Yes, although many are double edged and can be negative to your playstyle, thus forcing you to change it and adapt. Examples are demonic guardian if you worship oka, and nightstalker on a conjurer. You won't get purely bad mutations like teleportitis or frail.

Yes, all Demonspawn mutations are "good".

Although certain mutations aren't the best for some builds. For example, the "regain MP when you're damaged" one is useless if you're a Demonspawn Berserker, or the Nightspawn (stealth) mutation if you're playing an armor-user. But other than cases like that, it's all good.

EDIT: Damn, ninja'd.

galehar wrote:The gourmand mutation doesn't protect from contaminated chunks. Only saprovore and the amulet do. Trolls have intrinsic gourmand, but they also have saprovore 2. You have only one chance in 45 to get sick with saprovore 2, instead of 1 in 3. The fact that you didn't get sick before putting on the amulet is just a coincidence. Also, troll's diet haven't changed in 0.9. It's been like that for a while.

Thanks for clarifying.

It's funny that troll have the gourmand instrinsic but can benefit from the amulet of the gourmand. A bit off, but that's OK. What is odd is that the % screen is seems to me to be the same with and without the amulet on. That means that the "cannot get sick from chunks" status is not recorded anywhere.

Does the "of electrocution" brand make noise? Will it hinder my stealth/stabbing successes if I wield it?

MonorailCat wrote:Does the "of electrocution" brand make noise? Will it hinder my stealth/stabbing successes if I wield it?

It doesn't hinder your stealth and stabbing, but when you hit a monster and get the shock effect, it makes a lot of noise which can wake the nearby monsters. So you won't be able to sneak upon and stab them.

galehar wrote:
MonorailCat wrote:Does the "of electrocution" brand make noise? Will it hinder my stealth/stabbing successes if I wield it?

It doesn't hinder your stealth and stabbing, but when you hit a monster and get the shock effect, it makes a lot of noise which can wake the nearby monsters. So you won't be able to sneak upon and stab them.

Thanks. Does it work the same on flame and cold weapons?
Draining, Venom and Pain are silent I guess.

MonorailCat wrote:Thanks. Does it work the same on flame and cold weapons?

No. Only electrocution is noisy.

I have a small question:
Does Makhleb give both HP and MP in the current trunk version, and if yes, how much?
I've checked the changelog textefile and it mentions a commit where MP were removed, and a later one where TSO and Makhleb HP/MP per kill were nerfed, so i am officially confused.

The HP gain was removed but then added again (and reduced to be lower than it was in 0.8).

Happy Corner wrote:If you have might or berserk running, does the bonus damage also apply to your auxiliary attacks? (Horns, hooves, UC skill, whatever.)

So does anyone know the answer to this or not?

MarvinPA wrote:The HP gain was removed but then added again (and reduced to be lower than it was in 0.8).

Wasn't that the MP gain?

Well, for the first time I've found a bazaar. I understand they usually have timers on them, but this one apparently doesn't, because it's still there. It's blocked by stone walls and a statue, so it was inaccessible to me for a while, but now I've found a wand of disintegration which should be sufficient to get to the portal.

Don't have much money, though, because the bottom of the orc mines had a bookstore, and I used up all my gold on books. (That reminds me of my life in the real world.) I've been slowly replenishing, but I'm currently working my way through the swamp, which doesn't seem to have that much gold; I've almost got 300 now. Since a bazaar is a one-time-only shopping spree, what's a reasonable amount of money to save up before I look inside to see what's for sale there?

Cool artifacts in a bazaar can be worth thousands gold. I'd say you should bring at least 2k with you.

If you have one scroll of acquirement (or more), you can bring those to the bazaar. In case you see something nifty, you may opt to blow the scroll on gold.

galehar wrote:
MarvinPA wrote:The HP gain was removed but then added again (and reduced to be lower than it was in 0.8).

Wasn't that the MP gain?

Yes, it was the MP gain. Where can I look up how much it is?

Oops yes, i meant MP. The amount lives in mon-stuff.cc: MP is 1 + random2(mons->hit_dice / 2) for Vehumet, random2(2 + mons->hit_dice / 3) for TSO and Makhleb. HP is random2(1 + 2 * mons->hit_dice).

As a ghoul, if I use unarmed combat wearing gloves, will that allow me to safely fight hydras, even if it reduces the amount of damage?

wow, that's quite a nerf. from HD - 1 + 1d(HD) HP and MP to 1d(2+HD/3) MP and d(1+2*HD) HP.
I tried it in wizmode with a caster, and not really a difference when it comes to mana. still, vehument is also more of a drop on a hot stone, but at least he/she adds some other perks as well.

i hit a pan level with the demonic rune under a draining eye encased in translucent stone walls. there's a bunch of them throughout the level. the thing is, i cannot get to the rune (there's no secret doors that i can see). is there a trick to it? if i skip the level, will the rune be regenerated elsewhere? with all those rune changes in the past few days i'm not sure anymore.

i don't have ctele (nor a plain blink, for that matter). i don't think ctele would work anyway, as there is only one space within the walls and it's occupied by a hostile creature, which i can't smite.
thanks, i'll check again and skip it otherwise.

how does the damage of the elemental staffs compare to ordinary weapons? i did not find them in the weapon spreadsheet.

The Bots speak thusly:

Enhancer staves (fire, cold, air, earth, death) have (Evoc + 1)/15 chance of doing 1d(1.25 * (Evoc + skill)) extra damage that ignores AC (except earth), but checks the appropriate resistance. Air also needs to pass a (damage dealt + air + 1)/20 chance, and death a (necro + 1)/8 chance. The staff of poison is handled differently.

Poison Staff:
Melee effect improved in 0.8: if it passes the (Evoc + 1)/15 check, it inflicts poison on a coinflip or (poison skill / 8) times, and bypasses poison resistance like poison arrow (poison skill / 16) times.

Basically, get Evoc to 14 to trigger the effect on every hit. More Evoc and appropriate Magic skill further increases damage. Min Delay (6) for Staves is Skill 12.

Just had an awesome string of luck, getting a +9,+0 katana (first I've ever seen!) from an acquirement scroll and then Oka gifted me a randart +9, -1 triple sword shortly after (slicing, str -2, stealth++). Which is better for my lvl 12 High Elf Crusader?

Also, should I go ahead and start pumping scrolls into the katana? Seems unlikely I'll find a better use for them.

I think the katana would rock the house. Keep it unbranded, so you can temp-brand it with any cool brand (Excruciating Wound, Warp Weapon, etc).

Happy Corner wrote:
Happy Corner wrote:If you have might or berserk running, does the bonus damage also apply to your auxiliary attacks? (Horns, hooves, UC skill, whatever.)

So does anyone know the answer to this or not?

Yes, the damage bonus does apply to auxiliary attacks.

Hambone wrote:Just had an awesome string of luck, getting a +9,+0 katana (first I've ever seen!) from an acquirement scroll and then Oka gifted me a randart +9, -1 triple sword shortly after (slicing, str -2, stealth++). Which is better for my lvl 12 High Elf Crusader?

Also, should I go ahead and start pumping scrolls into the katana? Seems unlikely I'll find a better use for them.

While you did get a cool katana, you're an Okawaru worshipper and used an acquirement scroll for it.

Don't waste acquirement on weapons when you worship a god who hands them out to you.

XuaXua wrote:
Hambone wrote:Just had an awesome string of luck, getting a +9,+0 katana (first I've ever seen!) from an acquirement scroll and then Oka gifted me a randart +9, -1 triple sword shortly after (slicing, str -2, stealth++). Which is better for my lvl 12 High Elf Crusader?

Also, should I go ahead and start pumping scrolls into the katana? Seems unlikely I'll find a better use for them.

While you did get a cool katana, you're an Okawaru worshipper and used an acquirement scroll for it.

Don't waste acquirement on weapons when you worship a god who hands them out to you.

Funny you say that, as Okawaru gifted me an even better katana shortly after (+14, +2). Really, I was just feeling impatient with my plain great sword and my last several Okie worshipers died before getting any gifts, but another spellbook would be pretty useful right about now.

The wiki says that eating a rotted mutagenic chunk makes it much more likely to get a bad mutation. Is that still true?

While we're on the subject, how do mutagenic chunks (non-rotten ones) compare to mutation potions? I know the chunks only give one mutation at a time, but are they more likely to grant bad mutations than the potions?

First time I got Tornado castable and now I have a question:
Does Tornado Damage stack? So is it useful to cast it more than 1 time, when it is still active?
Or do I wait until the Tornadoanimation is gone until I recast?

Happy Corner wrote:While we're on the subject, how do mutagenic chunks (non-rotten ones) compare to mutation potions? I know the chunks only give one mutation at a time, but are they more likely to grant bad mutations than the potions?

Quaffing a mutation potion is exactly equivalent to eating three non-rotting mutagenic chunks in rapid succession. You can't stop partway through the three chunks if you're quaffing, so if you get fast movement 1 from the first mutation you're forced to continue with berserkitis 1 and teleportitis 1 for the second and third, but on the other hand you can save your mutation potions until an enemy spriggan unloads a whole wand of polymorph on you, hopefully letting you patch your protoplasm back together in a rough semblance of mortal form afterward.

MonorailCat wrote:First time I got Tornado castable and now I have a question:
Does Tornado Damage stack? So is it useful to cast it more than 1 time, when it is still active?
Or do I wait until the Tornadoanimation is gone until I recast?

No stacking. Recasting it starts the duration again from the beginning. Which is useful, since you won't lose out on a turn of damage, but not game-breakingly crazy like nesting multiple Tornados on top of each other would be.

Happy Corner wrote:The wiki says that eating a rotted mutagenic chunk makes it much more likely to get a bad mutation. Is that still true?

While we're on the subject, how do mutagenic chunks (non-rotten ones) compare to mutation potions? I know the chunks only give one mutation at a time, but are they more likely to grant bad mutations than the potions?

I swear I asked this earlier today.

XuaXua wrote:I swear I asked this earlier today.

Looks like you certainly did. If it gets asked 100 more times this week, it'll almost be caught up to questions answered regarding the secret door in the Hell Portal ending of Lair, or the Temple entry surrounded by transparent rock walls. It's certainly an appropriate question for this thread, and I wouldn't expect a person with a question to comb through ten pages of unrelated forum threads to see if anybody else has asked a similar question.

XuaXua wrote:I swear I asked this earlier today.

Yep, I was just considering the pertinence of this thread. Making new thread is free, even if the question is small. Shoving them all into the same thread just make the answers harder to find and the questions to come back again. it also gives work for mods to split the post in a new thread when the question wasn't as small as expected. If nobody comes up with a decent reason to keep this going, I'll lock it and we'll go back to creating new (and free) threads for every questions.

There are enough questions out there that they'll stack up either way. Do we want the undifferentiated noise to be confined to a single thread, or do we need fifty pages of two-post threads in the same forum covering minor questions? I don't really expect people to comb through the first twelve pages of random noise in this thread before they ask their question here, and by clicking on this thread I make a tacit agreement not to complain about people asking the same questions all the time, because that's exactly the kind of thread I clicked on. If there's no specific thread for this, then we'll instead have people simply not bother to comb through pages and pages of individual threads before they ask the question they want answered, and the clutter will spill onto the main floor of the forum.

If we want answers to be easy to find and prevent questions from ever coming up, I suppose we need some volunteers to start keeping the wiki updated.

I agree with KoboldLord. The ideal solution would be to have the game wiki in a good state. That is effort; I reckon that one pile-type thread on the forum is better than a pile of threads when it comes to the second best solution.

Galehar: I can understand that is too taxing for you to answer the questions in this thead (recently players got also more pushing). Just stop reading it!

I'd be happy to volunteer. I've edited the wiki in minor ways in the past, but I could do more. I wouldn't mind compiling the questions (and answers) in this thread into a FAQ (or whatever) page on the wiki.

Happy Corner wrote:I'd be happy to volunteer. I've edited the wiki in minor ways in the past, but I could do more. I wouldn't mind compiling the questions (and answers) in this thread into a FAQ (or whatever) page on the wiki.

Rather than a FAQ, I think the answers would be better belonging on the appropriate page relating to the question asked.

There's no reason it can't be both, for maximum convenience - a searcher could find their answer by going either to the FAQ or to the topic page in question. I've already started updating the FAQ page on the wiki and sorting the questions from this thread (with the most authoritative answers) into categories. I should be done in a little while...

Hello, I have a question.

When I auto travel, the game switches from my bow of evasion in slot 'a' to a normal axe in slot 'b'. Why is it doing this, and is there a way to turn it off?

KoboldLord wrote:
MonorailCat wrote:First time I got Tornado castable and now I have a question:
Does Tornado Damage stack? So is it useful to cast it more than 1 time, when it is still active?
Or do I wait until the Tornadoanimation is gone until I recast?

No stacking. Recasting it starts the duration again from the beginning. Which is useful, since you won't lose out on a turn of damage, but not game-breakingly crazy like nesting multiple Tornados on top of each other would be.

It's actually slightly more useful than that, because Tornado damage is linearly proportional to the number of turns remaining in the Tornado. So the last turn of Tornado hits very softly compared to the first turn of a newly cast Tornado.

KoboldLord wrote:we'll instead have people simply not bother to comb through pages and pages of individual threads before they ask the question they want answered

What about using the search? I know the feature is lacking a bit, but my point is that this thread is not helping at all.

Happy Corner wrote:There's no reason it can't be both, for maximum convenience - a searcher could find their answer by going either to the FAQ or to the topic page in question. I've already started updating the FAQ page on the wiki and sorting the questions from this thread (with the most authoritative answers) into categories. I should be done in a little while...

That's really great, thanks a lot for doing that!

glyphic wrote:When I auto travel, the game switches from my bow of evasion in slot 'a' to a normal axe in slot 'b'. Why is it doing this, and is there a way to turn it off?

Looks like a bug in the new auto_switch feature. Please, report it on mantis.

Caethan wrote:It's actually slightly more useful than that, because Tornado damage is linearly proportional to the number of turns remaining in the Tornado. So the last turn of Tornado hits very softly compared to the first turn of a newly cast Tornado.

This isn't true. Tornado's damage just scale with the turn duration, so that total damage is the same regardless of your speed. The very last turn can have lower damage if tornado expires mid-turn, but all the previous turns should deal equal damage as long as they are of equal duration.

that's rather spoilery, isn't it?

absolutego wrote:that's rather spoilery, isn't it?

Sorry what?

glyphic wrote:When I auto travel, the game switches from my bow of evasion in slot 'a' to a normal axe in slot 'b'. Why is it doing this, and is there a way to turn it off?

I can't reproduce this bug, so you'll have to be more specific on your bug report. Try disabling the auto_switch option to see if it helps.

galehar wrote:Sorry what?

sorry galehar, i was replying to caethan's message. the forums let you know if there's a new post when you hit submit, and this time either it didn't work or i just didn't notice.

recapping: decreasing damage in tornado felt wrong (and indeed spoilery), but you already cleared that up.

galehar wrote:
Happy Corner wrote:There's no reason it can't be both, for maximum convenience - a searcher could find their answer by going either to the FAQ or to the topic page in question. I've already started updating the FAQ page on the wiki and sorting the questions from this thread (with the most authoritative answers) into categories. I should be done in a little while...

That's really great, thanks a lot for doing that!

My pleasure. I've gotten so much enjoyment from this game (and for free!), it's the least I could do.

It took longer than I expected, but I think I've gotten most of the questions from this thread onto the now-revamped FAQ page. Enjoy!

Unfortunately, I can't say I'm 100% satisfied with what I've done yet. I knew I wasn't going to win any awards for formatting/layout, but I'm more concerned about the wicked monstrous size of the page now. I tried to keep related questions grouped together, but maybe the categories could be even more narrow (or more thoughtful than what I went with). The section on spell questions feels particularly unwieldy, for example. And I think it could really use a beginner's section at the top, dedicated only to those early-game questions noobs are particularly likely to run afoul of. I'll think it over and return to it later. (If someone more organized than me doesn't take it up first!)

Happy Corner wrote:Unfortunately, I can't say I'm 100% satisfied with what I've done yet.

Well, you know not every question from this thread deserves to be in a FAQ. It's only for Frequently Asked Questions. I haven't looked at what you've done, but I suggest that you trim the page of all the questions which have been asked only once or twice and put the information on the relevant wiki page.

The Tavern

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

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa

Re: The 'Questions too small to need their own thread' threa