Beginner opinion: Melee too easy, Casters too hard

[Ketaro-lakk]

Hi Guys, first of all sorry for my bad english, im Argentinian.

I'm relatively new in the game, i really love it. Me and my friends are fascinated with it

There's only one problem, and i think it is an early balance thing.

I found that playing melee (e.g. Minotaur Fighter) i can close my eyes, press O and Ctrl-I, and destroy every monster till D15 in 40 min, and if I die is my mistake
I created 3 warriors, all lvl +11, one died drowned, other renouncing a religion, and other entering the Dephs lvl 12.

Instead I created about 150 magicians who died at the first cockroach that crossed me, and even with any other creature in the game. The max lvl was 9 (playing meticulously) It's pure disadvantages, spellhunger, mana issues, low life, ghost resistances.

I think the right balance is the Caster difficult, makes you experience all stages of the game and have to exploit the weaknesses of all the boss. In melee mode just kill them without knowing what they do.

This was discussed before? someone else sees the same thing?
later in the game, casters become strong as melee ?

[Sar]

Try playing a HuFi and a HuIE.

[MainiacJoe]

I've had a similar learning experience. I've won two games: one a Minotaur Berserker, and one a Gargoyle Earth Elementalist. Both of these are high AC characters; one is melee-oriented and one is conjurations-oriented. I am playing more fragile characters nowadays and am indeed dying more. Here though is one piece of advice that I received when I was at your stage and have seen since offered many times to other beginners. It did not make much sense to me at the time, and even now I can't really explain why it works, but it does:

Almost never move towards an enemy in line of sight.

If all of my playing and dying nowadays serves to reinforce this rule, then apparently it's time well spent to judge by what the better players write. I figure I can learn how to play stabbers, which seem to me to have to disobey this rule again and again, after I truly learn why the rule works for all the other character archetypes.

[Ketaro-lakk]

Thx for the advice!! , I think I'm in the wrong section of the forum, since it is not so much a tip about playing wizards , which seek, but rather to know why there is so much difference in difficulty between these two types of games (Melee, Caster)

if we could move it to Game Design discucion , I would be grateful

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

I think conjurer is the easiest background for casters. For pure spellcasting experience, try DECj and train Conj to 10 while picking up Searing Ray, Dazzling Spray, and IMB along the way and enough Spellcasting for Battlesphere. Then train Charms until Battlesphere is reliably castable. After that, sphere + either Magic Dart or IMB dispatches just about every monster. Later on you'll want some elemental magic for AOE damage.

And always rest in safe places, preferably on stairs, to keep MP near maximum.

[MainiacJoe]

Thx for the advice!! , I think I'm in the wrong section of the forum, since it is not so much a tip about playing wizards , which seek, but rather to know why there is so much difference in difficulty between these two types of games (Melee, Caster)

if we could move it to Game Design discucion , I would be grateful

Actually, I think that the devs are aware that casters need to be balanced with melee types, and that they have done so to their satisfaction. If you don't think they are balanced with each other, then I think this means that you are inexperienced, not that the developers blew it. Therefore the advice forum is the best place for this thread, so you can learn how they are, in fact, balanced.

[Sar]

Game Design Discussion isn't actually for discussing game design, but rather for discussing some very concrete and detailed proposals, like "thing X should be removed because it's bad because of reasons" or "thing Y should be added because it's good because of reasons and here is how it should work" (and even then the end result is nothing most of the time). This is described in one of the stickied GDD topics.

I recommended you playing HuFi and HuIE because they both belong to one race (so you compare casters to fighters, not, say, Minotaurs to Deep Elves), they have similar aptitudes and HuIE is much stronger than HuFi. So is HuFE/HuNe/HuCj etc. HuIE is just the strongest, so I thought it would illustrate my point better.

Also Berserkers are stupidly strong but Berserkers are special.

[tasonir]

Thx for the advice!! , I think I'm in the wrong section of the forum, since it is not so much a tip about playing wizards , which seek, but rather to know why there is so much difference in difficulty between these two types of games (Melee, Caster)

if we could move it to Game Design discucion , I would be grateful

A lot of preferences between casters and melee comes down to player preference. Melee tends to be a bit faster/more straightforward, and a lot of player prefer it for that reason (myself included), but if you're looking for high winrates/streaks, mages tend to be more reliable/safe.

I'd say there isn't as much of a difference as you currently think there is, and if you get more experience and win a few of each type, you'll have a better picture of it. In any case, game design discussion topics need to be a lot more narrowly focused about specific proposals, with reasoning for why the change is needed, and with few or no negative side effects. This topic would basically be "should we rebalance the entire game?" which wouldn't work well. Most people would likely argue that casters/melee are well balanced, even if they personally prefer one type.

[dowan]

Initially, most players probably see it the same way you do. Then you'll find experienced players often say the opposite is true.

My observation is that melee is simple, and casters are more complicated. Therefore, a caster has a lot more room to make errors.

A well built, well played caster, like an IE, most likely has a higher chance to win than a well built, well played melee fighter, because the caster typically has more options. But if you don't know how or when to use these options, you're most likely going to have a harder time.

It's easy to screw up making a spellcasting character, you've got a lot more skills to juggle. It's easy to neglect your defenses, for example. Then while playing it's quite easy to make mistakes like using loud spells at the wrong time, or to let yourself run out of MP in a bad situation.

A melee character still has room to screw up, but not nearly as much. Spend some XP on your weapon, fighting, and defenses, and with a little luck and decent play you'll do just fine.

My first win was a Deep Elf Fire elementalist of Sif Muna. Early on, I hid behind conjured flames, and shot flame tongues at enemies. Later on, I hid behind conjured flames, and stuck enemies with sticky flames if they walked through. Seriously, try playing a FE, and hide behind conjured flames all the time. You'll start to see the utility that spellcasters have that typical melee fighters don't.

[Magipi]

Try playing a HuFi and a HuIE.

I guess it is pretty obvious that IE is NOT what people have in mind when they say "caster" (which is a pretty clumsy category in Crawl). They think of more like a blaster mage type dude, while a typical IE is more like a "melee dude with some magical buffs".
(And berserker is very much like an IE, only it is a "melee dude with some divine buffs" instead of magical buffs.)

[KoboldLord]

When I started, I found conjurations builds to be a whole lot easier than melee builds, so it isn't like your experience is universal.

You see, the think about conjurations builds is that you don't have to stand next to the other guy. If you don't know how dangerous particular monsters are yet, and you realize you're in a fight that you cannot win… you just kind of walk away. 90% of the monsters in the game are the same speed as the player species that don't have special movement speed as their schtick, and only a tiny minority of monsters in the difficult parts of the game actually have ranged attacks. It doesn't matter if you have limited ammo if you can always retreat to restock it at zero risk to yourself.

Meanwhile, a melee brute generally ends up right in the monsters' faces, and if I made a dumb call based on incomplete information it is actually pretty hard to recover. It became a lot easier once I had enough experience to judge which monsters were too dangerous to melee before I was already committed to melee, but that's a requirement that my conjurations characters never really needed to care about. They only ever cared about 'Is it faster than me?' and 'Can it hurt me from way over there?', both of which are also concerns shared by melee builds anyway.

Probably you could improve your success rate with both builds if you started playing a whole lot more skittishly. You might be able to roulette your way down to D15 with a melee build before dying, but you could have won outright if you treated your melee build like the fragile and precious little glass vessel that it is.

[Sar]

a typical IE is more like a "melee dude with some magical buffs"

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Dagger            |    34 |    25 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    59
       Whip              |       |    48 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    48
       Short sword       |       |    60 |   153 |   159 |       |       |       |       |       ||   372
       Giant spiked club |       |       |       |   289 |  1412 |  1226 |  1151 |  1095 |  9612 || 14785
Throw: Stone             |     4 |     9 |    12 |     4 |     2 |    21 |       |       |       ||    52
       Throwing net      |       |       |       |     2 |       |       |       |       |     3 ||     5
       Large rock        |       |       |       |       |       |       |     6 |    17 |   401 ||   424
 Cast: Freeze            |    44 |   174 |   343 |   350 |     5 |       |       |       |       ||   916

Edit: here's the rest of this char's casts (OgIE, which should be obvious by its GSC use):

  Code:

       Ozocubu's Armour  |     2 |    24 |    50 |    72 |    92 |    91 |    51 |    70 |    77 ||   529
       Throw Frost       |       |     1 |       |     2 |     3 |       |       |       |       ||     6
       Summon Ice Beast  |       |       |    34 |   165 |    46 |       |       |       |       ||   245
       Throw Icicle      |       |       |       |    40 |    44 |    29 |     4 |     1 |    23 ||   141

Edit#2: here's more (spoilered because tl;dr):

Spoiler: show

DsIE:

  Code:

 Cast: Freeze            |    46 |    79 |    24 |    74 |     8 |       |       |       |       ||   231
       Ozocubu's Armour  |       |    15 |    29 |    77 |    79 |    55 |    33 |    22 |       ||   310
       Summon Ice Beast  |       |       |    41 |   135 |    69 |       |       |       |       ||   245
       Throw Icicle      |       |       |       |       |    14 |    17 |       |     1 |       ||    32

NaIE:

  Code:

 Cast: Freeze            |    25 |    81 |    93 |   285 |    54 |     4 |       |       |       ||   542
       Ozocubu's Armour  |       |     4 |    18 |    56 |    72 |    48 |    39 |    48 |    73 ||   358
       Summon Ice Beast  |       |       |    49 |    99 |    62 |     1 |     7 |     1 |       ||   219
       Throw Frost       |       |       |     4 |     7 |     4 |       |       |       |       ||    15

MfIE:

  Code:

 Cast: Freeze            |    32 |    23 |    63 |    28 |     1 |       |       |       |       ||   147
       Ozocubu's Armour  |       |    18 |    31 |    48 |    86 |    78 |    62 |    66 |    72 ||   461
       Throw Frost       |       |     4 |    29 |    17 |     2 |       |       |       |       ||    52
       Summon Ice Beast  |       |       |    51 |    63 |    94 |     3 |       |       |       ||   211
       Throw Icicle      |       |       |       |       |    21 |   120 |   144 |   118 |    39 ||   442

More NaIE:

  Code:

 Cast: Freeze            |    13 |    30 |    64 |    45 |    31 |    12 |       |     2 |       ||   197
       Ozocubu's Armour  |       |     4 |    33 |    66 |   119 |    50 |    30 |    60 |    42 ||   404
       Summon Ice Beast  |       |       |    13 |    66 |    66 |    12 |       |       |       ||   157
       Throw Frost       |       |       |     1 |     1 |    37 |     2 |       |       |       ||    41
       Throw Icicle      |       |       |       |     9 |    96 |    93 |    82 |   272 |   150 ||   702

Last edit: yes, all of these chars used melee; however, I can post action logs of my Cj/FE and I think you will find these characters didn't go full blaster either. Because you never go full blaster.

[Ketaro-lakk]

Really appreciate the answers, I understand that I need to play and try more variations before drawing conclusions , not only backgrounds , but also species.

I was so hard to survive , not only for being a caster but because I mostly chose Naga, which is very difficult at early stages, for being slow.

Anyway I still think the straight melee characters like minotaur fighter , are too easy for the early stages of the game.
But this post served me to know That is not something as drastic as I thought

[tasonir]

I think what you're primarily noticing is that minotaur is one of the absolute strongest races in the game. It's set up to do everything melee considerably better than the average melee character, and the only downside is bad magic, which you can completely ignore if you want to. Trog even encourages it - MiBe is a very, very easy combo.

There are strong races for magic - I happen to like deep elves, but it isn't quite the same. You have -10% hp, which hurts. Other people suggest draconian casters for this reason - they get +10% hp, as well as scales, but with lower aptitudes for magic. They're both fine choices - the point is that neither of them is the magic equivalent of minotaur.

Imho the 4 strongest races are Minotaur, Gargoyle, VS, and Centaur (this is, of course, widely debatable). All are more suited towards melee characters. Do we need a massively powerful magic-oriented race? I don't know. Maybe. It'd probably just be deep elves with more strength and +10% hp Gargoyles and VS both make fine casters, by the way, I just consider them to be somewhat more suited to melee. This may be more subjective than objective.

[duvessa]

Do we need a massively powerful magic-oriented race?

DD, Sp

[tasonir]

Granted both of those races are very strong, I guess what I meant is a race stronger than human in magic, with no downsides compared to human. DD's non healing makes them odd and different (even if it is powerful), and spriggans have -30% hp. The speed is worth it, of course, but the goal of this hypothetical magic race would be to only add buffs, with no downsides.

Something like "SUPERHumans": +2 all spell schools, +1 fighting dodging, +0 physical skills. +10 hp +30% mana (why not) + 5 MR per level, etc. Just straight up better. Also some ability that is like retaliate - you automatically strike back at things that hit you with an IMB. You could give them -2 to weapon skills if you want to give them bad weapon skills like minotaurs have bad magic, the difference there is mages use weapons, and not all fighters use magic, so it's not quite 1:1.

Again I don't think we'd need this race, but that would basically be the magic equivalent of minotaurs.

[KoboldLord]

I was so hard to survive , not only for being a caster but because I mostly chose Naga, which is very difficult at early stages, for being slow.

Naga is one of the hardest species in the game. Move speed is really, really important.

[duvessa]

Granted both of those races are very strong, I guess what I meant is a race stronger than human in magic, with no downsides compared to human.

Dr

[basil]

Granted both of those races are very strong, I guess what I meant is a race stronger than human in magic, with no downsides compared to human. DD's non healing makes them odd and different (even if it is powerful), and spriggans have -30% hp. The speed is worth it, of course, but the goal of this hypothetical magic race would be to only add buffs, with no downsides.

VS, Ce, Gr are odd and different. And VS and especially Gr have noticeable drawbacks.

[Magipi]

Sar: I have a hard time figuring out what are you trying to say with those statistics, so would you please write it down?

[Sar]

IE get a very strong level 1 spell (probably the best level 1 damage spell, actually), a decent level 2 ranged Conjuration (that has its uses, though it doesn't compare to Freeze), and a very strong summon (enough to clean Lair and Orc) and a very strong conjuration at level 4. Calling IE "melee with buffs" background just because they happen to have Ozo (and because Ozo happens to be absurdly strong) is not fair.

Edit: statistics were mostly there to compare the amount of times my various IE cast Freeze/Beasts and the amount of times they used melee.

[Hurkyl]

IE get a very strong level 1 spell (probably the best level 1 damage spell, actually),

Calling IE "melee with buffs" background just because they happen to have Ozo (and because Ozo happens to be absurdly strong) is not fair.

IMO, relying on Freeze for damage feels a lot like playing a melee character. The book doesn't really let you play like a blaster or a summoner until you unlock level 4 spells (because you don't really have the mana early on to do much with Throw Frost), so you're stuck playing like a melee character for quite a while.

Admittedly, these impressions have come from playing only a few IE; I get bored with the early game since I usually pick a melee class when I'm in the mood to play a melee character.

[Sar]

I wish my melee characters ignored monster AC and EV too.

Edit: Freeze positioning is akin to melee positioning, I admit that. Still, it never felt like melee for me. Probably because you can't tab.

[duvessa]

I wish my melee characters ignored monster AC and EV too.

And made the monster lose 40% of their actions.

[Sar]

...wow.

Edit: how does it work? Does it reduce monster's energy?

[Siegurt]

...wow.

Edit: how does it work? Does it reduce monster's energy?

Freeze slows cold blooded creatures (So it doesn't work on every one of them, but adders are one of the nastier D1-2 threats)

[Sar]

I think minmay is talking about this:

2. Non-cold-resistant creatures are stunned for random2(2 + power/5) tenths of a turn; power caps at 25 for a maximum of 0.6 turns. The duration is doubled for cold-vulnerable creatures.

[Siegurt]

I think minmay is talking about this:

2. Non-cold-resistant creatures are stunned for random2(2 + power/5) tenths of a turn; power caps at 25 for a maximum of 0.6 turns. The duration is doubled for cold-vulnerable creatures.

Ah, right, I forgot about that...

[tasonir]

yes, the mini-stun lowers monster energy. What I didn't realize is that you can apparently perma-stunlock anything vulnerable to fire. Optimal strategy for fighting a single fire dragon is now spam freeze and even if it takes 30 turns to kill it, you'll never be attacked! Okay, since you don't always roll max, you will probably take a few hits, but still.

If you did reliably roll the max of .6, aka 1.2 on a fire dragon, is it possible to make a monster accumulate negative energy?

[Sar]

Ah, right, I forgot about that...

Same here, but apparently it's absurdly strong. Gotta love IE.

[mps]

I think the general opinion is that building characters that do nothing but cast spells is suboptimal. There's basically melee-only/almost only, with Trog worshippers (where Trog is pretty clearly the most straightforward and consistent way to win) or just very heavily armored, few spells types and then a spectrum of melee + support spells to melee + conjurations or summons (or replace melee with ranged weapons) with light armor. That's not to say pure conjurations and/or summoning doesn't work, but it's harder than melee + conjurations, summons, or support magic because you're imposing an artificial restriction on the way you build/play the character.

[Steve]

If a new player plays the game, they'll be recommended MiBe or MiFi, and then they'll 3 rune within a week or even less. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

For general knowledge, it's probably a good thing. For decision making? I wouldn't say so. It makes you learn bad habits.

There is a reason why get out of jail free cards are limited and have risks. When they are too plentiful, it removes a lot of challenge.

[rchandra]

If a new player is that good they deserve the win. It took me many months to get my first (not playing only melee types, but mostly those and SpEn).

[Hurkyl]

That's not to say pure conjurations and/or summoning doesn't work, but it's harder than melee + conjurations, summons, or support magic because you're imposing an artificial restriction on the way you build/play the character.

You can impose it artificially, but it also arises naturally: if a character already has a very good way to kill enemies, it takes a lot of investment before training up a completely new way to kill enemies becomes useful -- and often you'd be better off making your good way even better or improving your ability to avoid / endure enemy attacks.

I think the greater difficulty of a blaster-focused character is not because it's an intrinsically inferior build, but because the approach suffers more from mistakes.

(I can't speak for a summon-focused character as I haven't really played them much, although my little experience with it is that melee complements summoning much moreso than it does blasting, so the the above observations are much less pronounced as compared to a blaster-focused character)

[Sar]

t takes a lot of investment before training up a completely new way to kill enemies becomes useful

Unless you believe that a blaster doesn't need HP or defenses, you already have some Fighting and Dodging, maybe Armour and Shields as well. Now all you need is a weapon skill - and Crawl has plenty of cheap and strong weapon options, especially if you haven't invested in any melee skill yet and can choose any class you wish. You don't even need to get to min delay - just pick some good one-hander, enchant it, sink a bit of XP into it and suddenly you can kill most things without wasting your mana - so when you need to kill something tougher, you're at full or next to full MP. It's faster, too!

I think the greater difficulty of a blaster-focused character is not because it's an intrinsically inferior build, but because the approach suffers more from mistakes.

Considering player mistakes are responsible for well over 90% deaths in Crawl, isn't a build that suffers more from these mistakes a bad one?

[Hurkyl]

I think the greater difficulty of a blaster-focused character is not because it's an intrinsically inferior build, but because the approach suffers more from mistakes.

Considering player mistakes are responsible for well over 90% deaths in Crawl, isn't a build that suffers more from these mistakes a bad one?

It depends on where it fits in the grand scheme of things, which I'm not clear; note that the same line of thought says that Axes are clearly the best weapon type, but we know the usual arguments regarding that.

I can't be sure about typical experiences, but unfortunately most of my mistakes are intentional -- I tend to be too impatient so I bite off what I can chew, rather than go through the extra effort to take little bites of danger, which puts me in a bad position if I get surprised by a lot more danger joining in.

[zxc23]

Patience is definitely an enormous part of playing 'good' Crawl i.e. maximising chances of winning each game. Running away from everything, excluding sleeping enemies, avoiding uniques till later, pillar dancing for regen, manually exploring early D, and so on. It can get tiring playing like this but it's necessary if you want to do something like streaking. There is also a direct association between how much patience you need to play safely and how weak your char is, which is why it might not always be best for beginners to constantly play MiBe and so on.

[dirtywick]

What you do when you fight a dangerous monster is the distinction that matters when separating a caster from a melee oriented character. A caster and a melee dude can both tab through orc, but it doesn't play the same when you're character is actually in danger. Picking up a weapon and investing the bare minimum amount of XP to efficiently tab through popcorn doesn't really change that.

[Sar]

note that the same line of thought says that Axes are clearly the best weapon type

Well, there's a reason bots use Axes exclusively. I guess they're a good weapon for a new player who doesn't really want to learn the intricacies of Crawl melee positioning ("go for the corridors and corners") and just wants to get that damn orb. I wanted to say how good axes are all rare but battleaxes are very common and also good enough to win.

I guess the worst thing about axes is the message spam.

[Kate]

Split off the character-in-progress discussion to here.

[mps]

That's not to say pure conjurations and/or summoning doesn't work, but it's harder than melee + conjurations, summons, or support magic because you're imposing an artificial restriction on the way you build/play the character.

[...]

I think the greater difficulty of a blaster-focused character is not because it's an intrinsically inferior build, but because the approach suffers more from mistakes.

(I can't speak for a summon-focused character as I haven't really played them much, although my little experience with it is that melee complements summoning much moreso than it does blasting, so the the above observations are much less pronounced as compared to a blaster-focused character)

I think the number of games in which the pure blasting character is going to come together more cleanly and with greater capability throughout the game than a meleer with support magic is small. Relying on high level spells means you need good books, which are not always available, or you need spells from god gifts, which restricts your god options. Your paths to a strong "hybrid" character are much more numerous and collectively make you less susceptible to bad luck.

It also seems to me that summoning is the stronger option than conjurations/direct damage in any case, particularly in those stages of the game before level 9 conjurations/tornado/singularity are available. Maybe not the more fun option.

[WingedEspeon]

If a new player is that good they deserve the win. It took me many months to get my first (not playing only melee types, but mostly those and SpEn).

It took me 3-4 weeks to get my first win (FoFi^Chei) but I was playing like 8 hr a day for that time.

[Rast]

My first 50+ games of crawl were MuWz, attempting to follow this wonderful blueprint:
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/CapnCrunch% ... zard_guide

[Greyr]

My first 50+ games of crawl were MuWz, attempting to follow this wonderful blueprint:
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/CapnCrunch% ... zard_guide

Lol, I'm pretty sure I read that very same guide when I was out starting too. I became a much better player after I stopped reading guides and stuck to what I saw (with my own damn eyes) what was working and what wasn't. Also thanks to the wiki, for the longest time I thought mummies were this OP power-streaking race... Yeah, no.