Why is Regeneration good?

[MainiacJoe]

This might seem like a stupid question, but I can't figure out why Regeneration is so highly thought of. For instance, when I play Berserker's I use Trog's Hand for the MR++ but view it as a waste of piety to use it for the regen.

Which of these is incorrect?

1. During a fight, it doesn't bring HP back to you quickly enough to make a difference.
2. Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.
3. If you have disengaged from a threat and need to heal but can't rest yet, then the fight isn't over, see 1.

Situation 3 looks like the niche Regeneration is made for, but it still doesn't seem fast enough to be preferable to a potion or wand of heal wounds. Sure, it doesn't cost an item, but this dire situation calls for consumables not conservation. Please help me understand this spell, thank you.

[bel]

Hunger is rarely important, so faster regen is essentially free. Also, you can't always rest and heal in a safe place, for instance, if you have random-teled on an uncleared floor to escape some monster.
Also, there are some cases where regeneration during fighting or exploring does make some difference. It is also useful in many other situations, like in Hell (you can't rest so easily because of hell effects) or speedrunning.

[Eyesburn]

2. Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.

get your character hurt, cast regen, press o
get your character hurt, don't cast regen, press o
guess you'll see the difference

[Berder]

Regeneration is excellent for extended fights where there is no safe territory and you keep getting attacked while trying to rest. Vaults:5 and abyss are prime examples.

Also, regen gives you 1 hp/time unit. If a fight lasts 15 turns you've gained 15 hp (that's about how long regen lasts). And that's good. If you have 100 hp that's a 15% increase in your combat capability, similar to having 3-5 more AC.

[dowan]

Imagine if you could quaff a healing potion for free every 20 turns. That's essentially what this spell is doing.

But to answer your questions:
1. During a fight, it doesn't bring HP back to you quickly enough to make a difference.
This is not true, if a fight lasts 30 turns, it's better to have 30 HP more than you would have had without regen.

2.Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.
If you are sure you can rest safely, and for some reason you have food concerns, it makes sense not to cast regen. However it's pretty rare to actually have food concerns.

3. If you have disengaged from a threat and need to heal but can't rest yet, then the fight isn't over, see 1.
I think you've made a mistaken assumption that pressing 5 makes you heal faster. It doesn't, it's the same as walking around, or taking any other action during those turns. So regen makes it so those turns give you more HP back than you would have gotten without it.

However, you're talking about trog's hand, rather than the regen spell. Trog's hand has a significant cost, which is piety. The regen spell has no significant cost. So you wouldn't use trog's hand just to rest faster most of the time, but it would be useful before or during a long fight, where those regenerated HPs are going to add up.

[Sandman25]

Regeneration is especially useful in Hell and extended in general where you can lose 50% HP to a single monster in a single turn and dangerous monsters can enter your LoS every turn. It is not rare for me to end necromutation just to cast Regeneration.

[bel]

Regeneration is especially useful in Hell and extended in general where you can lose 50% HP to a single monster in a single turn and dangerous monsters can enter your LoS every turn. It is not rare for me to end necromutation just to cast Regeneration.

When I end necromutation in Hell to cast regen, I get tormented immediately

[MainiacJoe]

2. Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.

get your character hurt, cast regen, press o
get your character hurt, don't cast regen, press o
guess you'll see the difference

I would never press 'o' while hurt, I'd get to a place of safety, upstairs if necessary, and press '5' first. Sure, if I'm exploring and might meet a new threat any moment, healing quicker is exactly what I'd want. But I don't do that because it seems insanely risky, much less risky than discovering that your safe resting spot isn't so safe after all. Once in a safe place, the difference between 5 and 5+regen is trading in-game food for real-world clock-time.

[MainiacJoe]

Imagine if you could quaff a healing potion for free every 20 turns. That's essentially what this spell is doing.

But to answer your questions:
1. During a fight, it doesn't bring HP back to you quickly enough to make a difference.
This is not true, if a fight lasts 30 turns, it's better to have 30 HP more than you would have had without regen.

Thank you. This is where I was underappreciating it. The wiki strikes again "This helps you recover between battles quickly, but don't expect it to make you invincible during combat; it only marginally increases your chance of survival in most dangerous encounters." +30 HP is not a "marginal" increase in survivability!

2.Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.
If you are sure you can rest safely, and for some reason you have food concerns, it makes sense not to cast regen. However it's pretty rare to actually have food concerns.

Spriggans. Base hunger 1, regen +4, the spell quintuples their hunger rate! I don't have a good sense yet of Spriggan hunger clocks anyway, so I tend to be conservative.

3. If you have disengaged from a threat and need to heal but can't rest yet, then the fight isn't over, see 1.
I think you've made a mistaken assumption that pressing 5 makes you heal faster. It doesn't, it's the same as walking around, or taking any other action during those turns. So regen makes it so those turns give you more HP back than you would have gotten without it.

Actually I realized that there is't a time savings. Instead, as I alluded to in another reply above, I view 5 as safety: "I'm finished that challenge, it's time to get ready for the next one." I see now though that getting free HP while you are trying to get to safety is a good thing.

However, you're talking about trog's hand, rather than the regen spell. Trog's hand has a significant cost, which is piety. The regen spell has no significant cost. So you wouldn't use trog's hand just to rest faster most of the time, but it would be useful before or during a long fight, where those regenerated HPs are going to add up.

Yeah this has been most of my expereince with it. Lately I've had non-Trog characters that could have learned the spell, but I was defaulting to the OP's evaluation of it.

[Eyesburn]

Ok,
cast regen and move to a safe place,
don't cast regen and move to a safe place,
notice the difference? You will have more HP in the first case when you get to a safe spot. Also you will spend less turns while resting with regen on.
Have you tried Hell branches (as Sandman pointed)? I like to do it with regen turned on all the time while in there.

[MainiacJoe]

Have you tried Hell branches (as Sandman pointed)? I like to do it with regen turned on all the time while in there.

I'm sorry, I am still trying to make it past XL 10 consistently. I've won only twice, 3-rune games, and they were those notorious challenge builds MiBe and GrEE.

[Sandman25]

Regeneration usefulness depends on spell power (it has too short duration at low spell power).

[MainiacJoe]

However it's pretty rare to actually have food concerns.

Spriggans. Base hunger 1, regen +4, the spell quintuples their hunger rate!

Upon further review: this 5 hunger/turn cost is roughly one twelfth of one percent of a bread ration for a Spriggan. So don't worry about the food, use Regen when you need to.

[njvack]

Also, on Sp, if you're doing high-hunger things and are running out of food, do fewer high-hunger things. But the hunger cost of regen is very small; I actually don't even know why it's a thing.

[Rast]

We haven't even gotten into worn sources of Regen+, which don't require player action to provide benefit..

TLDR: They are really really good.

[Hurkyl]

Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.

In every situation I've thought to consider it (except the case where you're resting to refill your MP rather than to refill your HP), resting without regeneration costs more food than resting with regeneration.

[Elystan]

Regeneration usefulness depends on spell power (it has too short duration at low spell power).

Yeah, I thought it was worthless at first because of this, once I got it on casty characters I changed my mind.

Slightly on topic, regen as an item property is fantastic and I try to get it on every character I play. If you've got a normal speed monster adjacent to you, and it hits you, and barring consumables your only options are move away into the same situation you're already in or die, it makes running round a pillar until you can try doing something else far less tedious - takes a minute or two instead of ten.

[celem]

Its also key to remember that Regen+ stacks. So you can have Regen++++ (and should, its awesome).
On its own, a single pip of it behaves more or less as the wiki says, little survivability in combat, less resting down-time. Once you start to stack a few then its genuinely powerful. It might only be 1-2HP per turn, but when a certain % of blows miss entirely, and most of the remainder are then padded by your AC...suddenly 1-2 a turn is significant healing.

Some of my most 'comfortable' characters have been powered by stacked Regen intrinsics, it gives quite the appearence of power (though much like a sky-high EV character you can get blindisded by a string of poor rolls and big spikes).

The amulet of regeneration is one of the best non-art neckslots, other than clarity/rmut/rcorr its probably all im going to carry. If you can then get a few more pips off your other slots then you have troll-regen. If you were already troll/VS you are now insanely regenerative. (my favorite thus far is a max-lvl vinestalker with the spell and 4 pips Regen on gearslots. Its almost like a permanent ambrosia.

The other place Regen shines is where every turn is critical. Lets say zot 5, you are at 100hp and pulling back, ALich and OoF behind you suddenly. This is an emergency, you are porbably busy fogging/hasting, all that good stuff. If you can get a regen cast off at the beginning when threat is low then it will tick away and give you the buff you need through the critical turns, where you probably cant afford to be casting a spell that returns 1HP (since thats the immediate result of Regen)

[dowan]

Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.

In every situation I've thought to consider it (except the case where you're resting to refill your MP rather than to refill your HP), resting without regeneration costs more food than resting with regeneration.

I don't think that's true. You realize regen costs extra nutrition when you're regenerating HPs, and not just the initial casting nutrition cost, right? At least, my experience leads me to believe that healing with regen costs significantly more nutrition, although it's still worth using all the time.

[Rast]

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 <WalkerBoh> if you ever are making a decision based on hunger, and you are not currently starving, then you're doing it wrong

[Berder]

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 <WalkerBoh> if you ever are making a decision based on hunger, and you are not currently starving, then you're doing it wrong

That's an exaggeration. Hunger is really significant for many chars and can drive you to train more spellcasting because you're becoming starving midway through fights. Spriggan blaster casters in particular need absolutely tons of spellcasting, in part to handle the long term hunger. Then there's gozag, that stinker.

[Sandman25]

I wonder if someone is crazy enough to play pure caster with Gozag (not Mu or Sp of course).

[tasonir]

I wonder if someone is crazy enough to play pure caster with Gozag (not Mu or Sp of course).

Doesn't seem like it would be that hard to me, although I haven't ever tried, so maybe I'm wrong.

As for regeneration, I'd say assumption #1 is wrong. Large, tough fights (which you should be avoiding, but let's say you didn't) can easily last 30-50 turns, and regen becomes worth 1-2 heal wounds potions, which is huge. As others have mentioned, having high spell power on regen is pretty important, you don't want to recast it 5 times mid fight (in this case, it probably isn't worth it).

[dirtywick]

I think spell casting reducing hunger costs scales pretty well by just keeping up spell slots for useful spells.

[Turukano]

[Regen] is also useful in many other situations, like in Hell (you can't rest so easily because of hell effects) or speedrunning.

The other place Regen shines is where every turn is critical.

Yes, and for some speedrunners this starts at turn 1!

When you speedrun you either want to get as little damage as possible (relying on heavy armour e.g.) or otherwise use regeneration spell frequently. That's why skalds and necromancers were on the toplist of my preferred starting classes for a while as they begin with the book of Battle / Necromancy.

I saw that in one my games, a 15-rune DsFi from this year, I've cast regeneration more than any other spell!

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Regeneration      |       |       |       |       |       |     9 |   105 |    87 |   108 ||   309


[Sandman25]

I wonder if someone is crazy enough to play pure caster with Gozag (not Mu or Sp of course).

Doesn't seem like it would be that hard to me, although I haven't ever tried, so maybe I'm wrong.

As "pure caster" I meant you cannot use weapon at all

[xentronium]

I wonder if someone is crazy enough to play pure caster with Gozag (not Mu or Sp of course).

Doesn't seem like it would be that hard to me, although I haven't ever tried, so maybe I'm wrong.

As "pure caster" I meant you cannot use weapon at all

You could probably get by with food shops. Maybe.

[partial]

Thank you. This is where I was underappreciating it. The wiki strikes again "This helps you recover between battles quickly, but don't expect it to make you invincible during combat; it only marginally increases your chance of survival in most dangerous encounters." +30 HP is not a "marginal" increase in survivability!

the wiki strikes again

[Lasty]

Keep in mind also that wasting time healing does have a cost, and it's not hunger. It's piety. For most gods, piety decays over time, and the less time you spend resting, the less piety you decay.

[duvessa]

regeneration is good because it gives you hp

[Sandman25]

Thank you. This is where I was underappreciating it. The wiki strikes again "This helps you recover between battles quickly, but don't expect it to make you invincible during combat; it only marginally increases your chance of survival in most dangerous encounters." +30 HP is not a "marginal" increase in survivability!

the wiki strikes again

I cannot agree. Wiki is correct here, it does not make you invincible and most dangerous encounters don't last 30 turns. Also when you spend 30 turns in a dangerous fight +30 HP is not a big deal. Useful but nothing to write home about

[dowan]

Maybe the wiki writer was writing it with the assumption that you already would have rushed firestorm, so fights only last 2 or 3 turns.

[Sandman25]

Or maybe it was a guide for blaster caster. I often find myself not using Phase Shift or Regeneration to have more mana.

[and into]

The quote from the wiki is in the page on the spell regeneration, not in a guide.

[Sandman25]

I still think wiki is correct, sorry Characters don't die getting 1 damage N times from a monster.

[and into]

No, they usually die from getting an unexpectedly bad roll. But quite a lot of my characters that die, died with -5 or -6 HP or more, and in cases where the one extra turn from not dying at that point might have saved them, and the encounter leading to their death lasted at least 5 or 6 turns.

If you have a turn to prepare before combat, it is almost always good to cast regeneration. It is also almost always good to cast it after combat, to speed up recovery. So it is a very good spell.

I'd say the wiki page is misleading. I'm not actually sure how "marginal" the chance is, or not, but even a "marginal chance to increase survival" that is easy to apply in the majority of your encounters (since it can be usefully cast before/outside of combat and it directly buffs your HP) is pretty good for a level three spell!

Also the wiki page talks about sickness and other things that no longer exist.

[MainiacJoe]

Thank you. This is where I was underappreciating it. The wiki strikes again "This helps you recover between battles quickly, but don't expect it to make you invincible during combat; it only marginally increases your chance of survival in most dangerous encounters." +30 HP is not a "marginal" increase in survivability!

the wiki strikes again

I cannot agree. Wiki is correct here, it does not make you invincible and most dangerous encounters don't last 30 turns. Also when you spend 30 turns in a dangerous fight +30 HP is not a big deal. Useful but nothing to write home about

I agree with Sandman. The wiki is precisely correct that Regeneration doesn't make you "invincible" during combat. It is my fault that I inferred from this that it is useless during combat, and I am thankful to the contributors on this thread that helped me see past that. So when I first said, "The wiki strikes again" I was, in retrospect, blaming the wiki for how I interpreted its correct information. Perhaps though the word, 'marginally" could stand to be tweaked.

[Sandman25]

Wiki does not advice to avoid the spell or whatever, it just warns that the spell does not make you invincible and that its effect is not that great in most dangerous encounters.

PS. I am not sure why we are still arguing

[tasonir]

But we aren't arguing, we're all agreeing! Discussion of regeneration is like a fine wine, it gets better with age (except that wines don't actually get better with age, but I digress).

I often like to think about regeneration not as +20 hp over the course of a battle, but rather about the rate of incoming damage vs regeneration over the same time period. If your defenses are high enough that fighting a pack of yaks results in 10 damage a turn, then regeneration reduces that incoming damage by 10%. After you kill one of the yaks, your damage per turn drops to 6, and now regeneration is reducing that damage by ~17%. This is usually more easy to do in games without huge variance, as crawl tends to be 0 damage, 0 damage, 0 damage, 3 damage, 26 damage, but it still applies as long as you aren't sitting at 100% health and regeneration is having an effect. So regeneration is more useful on heavily armored characters, than a high EV low AC character. You want to have been hit for some damage, but not much.

The higher your defenses are, the larger the chunk of incoming damage that regeneration will be able to negate. It's a bit of a tautology to say that some effect works best on high defenses, high spellpower, high hp characters, but that's the case with regen. This isn't meant to imply that you shouldn't learn regeneration if you have high EV, it works well for anyone really. The only time I would say you could possibly skip it is on very very low int characters - I've been unimpressed with it on centaurs with 11 int*, but that's fairly extreme.

*That game: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 104317.txt 10 charms, 14 necro, regeneration still had only 4# spellpower. 6# is usually where it starts to be extremely powerful, 5# is okay, <=4 is somewhat weak. YMMV, these are just guidelines, but they're approximately correct. I still cast it 304 times that game anyways No matter how low your int is, regeneration amulets/randarts are always worth it.

[Sar]

I thought Regen spellpower only affected the duration?

[dowan]

I'm pretty sure that's correct Sar. Although if it only lasts like 10 turns it's really annoying to cast, and you can't actually keep it up constantly due to the MP cost. So spellpower isn't completely unimportant, but once you can cast it with a pale blue rather than a dark blue indicator, it's generally good enough.

[tasonir]

Regen is always 1 hp per turn, yes. Did I imply otherwise? You want high duration so you don't have to recast during combat. If I have high enough spellpower, I will recast it during combat, because I know it'll last 20+ turns, and I'll probably take less than 20 damage on the turn I cast it, and come out ahead. Usually after killing half of a pack, I'm now facing less incoming damage, and starting to think about coming out of the fight in the best health I can. Or, if I'm fighting in a hallway, after going through a high damage mob, some popcorn steps up to be the next monster in line, now you can refresh regeneration as the popcorn mob won't hurt you.

[Hurkyl]

Between fights, you can rest and regain your HP without extra hunger cost.

In every situation I've thought to consider it (except the case where you're resting to refill your MP rather than to refill your HP), resting without regeneration costs more food than resting with regeneration.

I don't think that's true. You realize regen costs extra nutrition when you're regenerating HPs, and not just the initial casting nutrition cost, right? At least, my experience leads me to believe that healing with regen costs significantly more nutrition, although it's still worth using all the time.

Yep! Some examples:

• The regeneration spell costs 4 hunger per HP restored. (4 hunger per turn, and grants 1 HP per turn)
• An amulet of regeneration costs 5 hunger per HP restored. (2 hunger per turn, grants 0.4 HP per turns)
• The metabolism of a spriggan with 60 HP costs 5 hunger per HP restored. (1 hunger per turn, grants 0.2 HP per turn)
• The metabolism of a human with 180 HP costs 7.5 hunger per HP restored. (3 hunger per turn, grants 0.4 HP per turn)

This sort of comparison is really hard to make through casual observation. Although your observation might actually be accurate if you're usually casting regeneration with low spellcasting * int, so that the spell hunger costs outweighs the food efficiency of the buff.

Or, I suppose the figures on the wiki could be dramatically wrong. But I believe I've checked them out at least once.

[WingedEspeon]

I wonder if someone is crazy enough to play pure caster with Gozag (not Mu or Sp of course).

I tried playing a HEIE of gozag and it was fine until I died to to a tatical miskake that had nothing to do with hunger (20 AC with a robe is 20 AC with no GDR and I didn't relize that skelital warrior max damage was 25. Got taken from 20 to 0 hp in one attack.)

Regen when fighting a horde in a hallway is amazing.

[dirtywick]

Regen is especially important in extended areas like Abyss, Pan, Hells, Tomb, and the Orb run. Recovering any missing hp during combat is good when new enemies spawn into your LOS all the time. It's also really nice to be recovering hp a lot when being tormented multiple times and your hp is dipping low. Doubly so when enemies that torment are spawning into your LOS frequently.

[Kolbur]

What hasn't been mentioned here yet is that regeneration completely stops poison damage most of the time (depending on the poison strength). It makes it much easier to do poison branches without rpois.