The Tavern

Title pretty much. I love the game, but keep getting frustrated by the stupid deaths I manage to pull off...

Also, how many runs do people usually do until they win for the first time?

Try to remember these situations and recognize them next time they approach. Don't play when really tired or intoxicated. Don't play when distracted.

Anything from 3-5 to hundreds. There are people with thousand games and zero wins.

Watching other people die can cut down the number of times you have to die yourself before you win. Just a thought.

You need to do 2 pushups for each 1000 turns you played before you can play again. Dying makes you stronger!

Rave and curse in IRC.

Truly unavoidable deaths are really in the minority. For almost all of my deaths, I can point to some specific mistake I made where I didn't react early enough or correctly. So, just figure out where it all started going wrong and resolve not to do that next time.

Yes, we know that. It's what's so frustrating. An actual unavoidable death is mostly just amusing, like buying a non-winning lottery ticket.

I wrote a command "!gamesuntilwin" in the IRC chat that tells you how many games were played before a certain player got their first win.

A lot of the good players have numbers less than 100, but 200-400 is common too. Mine is 237.

avoid them

My two number one tips that have contributed to actually netting me a win are the following:

1. Do use the IRC. It's already so damn useful just as a database for monster information and stats, but it really shines when you ask for help. I've had up to 8 people watching one of my games/helping at the same time. Nothing can quite compare to having someone like Tabstorm help you through a difficult situation.

2. Don't play a character you care about when tired. I lost my first character with real win potential my falling asleep on my TAB key.

And just as a general rule, when encountering a new monster/unique, read up about it. If you don't want to be spoiled, then just approach as you would approach a vagina the night (or day) you lost your virginity: with great trepidation and care. Not sure if the analogy works but oh well...

Also, as far as game count, it took me around 80 games, online and offline, for a win.

Torax wrote:How do you deal with stupid avoidable deaths?

In my opinion it's very important to play a char you like, so it is recommended that you start with the species / class / god you like most. If you just take - let's say - MiBe "because it is strong" but you don't like minos and hate Trog then there will be a good chance to die with this char.

Curse fervently, scold myself a little bit, fire up the next character a few days later (often the same combination). Try to remember to replace that very mistake by a newer, better one, but often forget anyway.

Here's my 2 cents worth: 5 tips to avoid YASD

Basically: Don't get cocky, don't panic, know your enemy, learn from your mistakes and play very carefully

Turukano wrote:
Torax wrote:How do you deal with stupid avoidable deaths?

In my opinion it's very important to play a char you like, so it is recommended that you start with the species / class / god you like most. If you just take - let's say - MiBe "because it is strong" but you don't like minos and hate Trog then there will be a good chance to die with this char.

I agree entirely. My first win was a MfCK where I stayed with Xom the whole time. I may have gotten lucky or whatnot, but the main reason I was playing it is cuz I wanted a fun combination that would relax me after 20 or so SpEn...

I...

I weep.

cry under my desk

works pretty well

I usually consider making a thread here with claim that it was caused not by my stupidity but by inherent crawl problem.
Like this:
1) there should be a message when monster comes into view again
2) there should be a way to make screen flash when a monster with distortion comes into view
3) there should be a confirmation when you are about to cast Animate Dead instead of Flight after getting "careful, you are losing your buoyancy" over lava
4) there should be a confirmation when you are casting revivification or death's door
5) there should be a confirmation when you are attacking a hydra with weapon that adds heads
6) there should be a confirmation when you forgot to switch to your weapon after trying a rod and are attacking Death Yaks with 0 UC.

My latest idea was "there should be a warning when you are moving 3 tiles as Naga with 15 Greater Mummies, Mummy Priests etc. in range", not sure why I didn't post it

It would be nice if there was a warning "Are you sure you want to charge headlong toward that orc with the elec weapon on D1, even though you're a crossbow user?"
Or, more concisely, "Continue being stupid? (Y/N)"

YASD Stree Kor the MiAM. He certainly didn't live up to his name.

dowan wrote:It would be nice if there was a warning "Are you sure you want to charge headlong toward that orc with the elec weapon on D1, even though you're a crossbow user?"

This is another inherent crawl problem, the death would not happen if melee attacks were not free and thus mindless. Crossbows users save ammo, casters save MP... Melee users should start with a dagger in addition to main weapon and the main weapon should be impossible to use more than 7 times in a row because it is OP.

Oh god, if I had to switch weapons or disengage every 7 hits I would never play crawl again. Sometimes you need to TABTABTABTABTAB.

Uhh... but back on topic, to me the best way to avoid stupid deaths is to play as if your character is really underpowered. I notice I tend to actually do better on somewhat weaker characters, because I never feel safe, and thus I never end up in a situation where I did something dangerous because I figured I could easily handle it.

Yes, overconfidence is one of the main death reasons in crawl. When players decides to fight a monster instead of escaping.

Sandman25 wrote:3) there should be a confirmation when you are about to cast Animate Dead instead of Flight after getting "careful, you are losing your buoyancy" over lava

This, at least, is fixed now.

Torax wrote:How do you deal with stupid avoidable deaths?

I try to think in the fun I get when I play powerful characters and remind myself I have to be patient with weaker ones. It's only a matter of time (and surviving) before a weak character turns strong.

njvack wrote:
Sandman25 wrote:3) there should be a confirmation when you are about to cast Animate Dead instead of Flight after getting "careful, you are losing your buoyancy" over lava

This, at least, is fixed now.

There are a couple vaults with REALLY long stretches of deep water, Of those, I'm pretty sure at least one of those can't be reached without some source of perma-flight (or perhaps digging if you are spoiled or use magic mapping and know where to look)

Do we consider those to be a problem in a no-flight-spell world?

Would it be bad if evokable flight (from a ring) could be refreshed before it expires? The commit says "[...]can be renewed infinitely unlike more interesting ones, and can be kept up permanently at little cost but with an annoying interface". With a ring, you would have to sacrifice a ring slot to keep flight active. (Flight from other equipment should not be renewable in any case I guess.)

I remember at least one vault where there are stretches of deep water and lava and there are monsters on the other side so that you probably can't get to land until you've killed those monsters. It's a bit annoying if you have to do several teleports to finish that kind of a vault.

Plus Coccy 7 with a ring, man that sucks

celem wrote:Plus Coccy 7 with a ring, man that sucks

Yeah, of all the sources of flight in the game the devs really think it's the spell that's broken?? I just don't see how it is interesting to sometimes need go out over deep water / lava with something that expires randomly and then basically insta-kills you if you aren't extremely careful. But maybe I'm just too risk averse, or missing something about the goals here. Can someone expand on what "interesting" is supposed to mean?

I agree that the ring's ability to land you in the drink is kind of a problem, and honestly I'd like to see it just give permaflight (not sure whether I'd make the artefact property give permaflight as well, stay the same, or be removed). I don't think making it simply renewable would be a good idea, though, since that would have the same problem as the spell -- if you have enough MP/MP regen, you can essentially keep it up forever but you have to mess around with the ability menu every so often (and if you forget to, you die!).

wheals: This is not the correct place to discuss this (wrong thread and everything) but since we're discussing flight anyway, by two bits:

I believe that flight is in generally in a pretty bad place in Crawl. (This is due to the presence of water and lava, but I don't adovcate remove those: too much work for not enough gain.) I agree with flight-spell removal. But moreover, I don't think that flight is an interesting evocable property: while the mundane ring might be acceptable, keeping randarts for their flight seems questionable. As usual, the consumable fares best (mummies be damned, twice and forever).

So I'd suggest to keep the plain flight ring, remove +flight on artefacts, increase number of flight potions somewhat and make the actual flight experience slightly more amenable: earlier, and reliable (no randomisation) announcement of expiry, and this should state the number of remaining turns/moves. In particular, the announcement should be early enough that teleport can kick in reliably.

crate wrote:If water is going to be a thing in crawl I don't really see why there should be a spell that makes it into not-water. I mean really, think about that for a little bit, and try to convince yourself it's a good idea. To me everything about flight is a mess to begin with.

And yeah, since there are monsters that punish you for flying (seriously why is this a thing too) this proposal doesn't actually do much, since it's really ideal to never be flying unless you have to cross water/lava or are in los of Jorgrun.

The Tavern

How do you deal with stupid avoidable deaths?

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