Are OOFs good enemies?

[njvack]

Do we need to learn "ALich can have Banishment" from one death, "ALich can have Paralysis" from another death, "ALich can have Conjure Lignting Balls" from third etc. Really???

Monster descriptions could reduce spoileriness but leave some room for randomness:

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An ancient lich.

A lich who, having existed for countless centuries, has grown almost unimaginably powerful through the study of dark magic.

It looks extremely dangerous.

This monster knows 1-2 of the following spells:

Summon Greater Demon
Orb of Destruction
...

Additionally, this monster knows one of the following spells:

Banishment (X%)
Haste
Invisibility

Additionally, this monster knows 3-4 of the following spells:

Agony (X%)
...



[byrel]

Monster descriptions could reduce spoileriness but leave some room for randomness:

I like it. Though I'm personally not sure we even need the 1-2 of, 4 of, whatever categories. I'm completely fine with:

  Code:

An ancient lich.

A lich who, having existed for countless centuries, has grown almost unimaginably powerful through the study of dark magic.

It looks extremely dangerous.

This monster knows at least some of the following spells:

Summon Greater Demon
Orb of Destruction
Banishment (X%)
Haste
Invisibility
Agony (X%)
...



That would tell me what I really need to know.

[all before]

It's accepted crawl design at this point that a player should be able to know what spells a monster is capable of casting. I don't know why new aliches are an exception.

[byrel]

I suspect it's because of how many spells there are... but that's not a good reason.

[and into]

Or are we expected to learn from deaths this late in the game?

Yes!

I guess you are right. Otherwise we would have some early unique with unknown spells.

I like the idea of an early-ish unique generating with random lower level spells, or something. Maybe this could be a way to make Jessica more interesting? In general I think it is better for tricky or nasty features to be introduced in a less extreme form, and/or under less extreme circumstances, earlier in the game.

Do we need to learn "ALich can have Banishment" from one death, "ALich can have Paralysis" from another death, "ALich can have Conjure Lignting Balls" from third etc.

Just learning, "liches can do all sorts of nasty stuff" is sufficient, no? I suppose it is tricky that they can cast a few obscure spells that player cannot learn or see in spell books, and which aren't used by many other enemies. Nonetheless, most of the measures that work very well against other tough spell casters work very well against liches, despite the randomness of the spell set. It isn't like you haven't fought enemies similar to liches. They just have an extra feature, in addition to high HD, that makes their danger level more variable.

Anyway, more on topic: OoFs are good Zot/Zig enemies. I think it is okay to learn that rElec and rF are very helpful in Zot, just as it is okay to learn that MR becomes way more important starting around Vaults. These are things people can discover through their experiences, and won't necessarily lead to deaths, much less unavoidable ones. Yes, the existence of tough enemies and certain tough effects do give an edge to people who have advance warning, but to some degree that will always be true. But Crawl is pretty good about ramping up the usefulness of resistances. rF is pretty helpful in Vaults, really helpful in Depths, and extremely helpful in Zot. Even unspoilered players will almost surely be carrying around jewelry with rF+, if such jewelry has generated, well before Zot.

[Sar]

If anything, new players tend to overvalue resistances, not undervalue them.

[byrel]

If anything, new players tend to overvalue resistances, not undervalue them.

I'm not sure that's true... I was always drawn to the stat buffs myself. Like, +3 Str seemed about even with rF+ to me.

[Rast]

Allow me to expand on that. Pretend you're playing Nethack. Now get your ascension kit together. Now ascend.

• gray dragon scale mail
• cloak of displacement
• shield of reflection
• amulet of free action
• boots of speed
• helm of brilliance
• gauntlets of strength
• blessed unicorn horn
• blessed luckstone
• blessed back of holding
• wand of death
• 4 scrolls of gold detection
• a lizard corpse
• wand of digging
• ring of levitation
• blessed potions of full healing

I probably forgot something but damn I'm already having trouble finding some of these things!

Terrible job.

Correct version:

  Code:

[*] silver dragon scale mail
[*] robe
[*] shields are for pussies
[*] amulet of life saving
[*] Eye of the Aethiopica or other slotless MR artifact
[*] boots of jumping
[*] helm of brilliance
[*] plain gloves
[*] blessed unicorn horn
[*] blessed luckstone
[*] blessed bag of holding
[*] a lizard corpse
[*] any source of levitation
[*] blessed potions of full healing

[Sprucery]

As I was a Nethack veteran when I started with Linley's Dungeon Crawl, dying and learning has never been a problem for me personally, even after hours of play. Now Crawl has come a long way towards eliminating deaths by surprise, and that's ok too. I wouldn't mind if even Pan lord spell lists were displayed.

But I also have a real life example. I had a few year's break from Crawl and after starting again I had a character killed by an enormous slime creature. Slime creatures didn't use to merge in the past and even though I saw them merging I really didn't expect them to hit so hard. This death was completely ok by me, I definitely learned something from it.

[Sprucery]

  Code:

[*] amulets of life saving are for pussies


FTFY

[Sandman25]

Do we need to learn "ALich can have Banishment" from one death, "ALich can have Paralysis" from another death, "ALich can have Conjure Lignting Balls" from third etc.

Just learning, "liches can do all sorts of nasty stuff" is sufficient, no?

No. With low MR I can use stasis instead of haste vs Sphinx, clarity instead of artefact amulet with +slaying vs Merfolk Avatars, also corrosion vs Caustic Shrikes, warding vs summoners etc. I even quaff potion of resistance vs Nikola
Hiding spells means it's a gamble, not decision-making.

[Hurkyl]

Or are we expected to learn from deaths this late in the game?

Do you think there's any point in Crawl where players shouldn't be expected to die, and learn from those deaths?

Yes.

Or to be more precise, at some point, deaths should happen because people didn't learn their lessons; it's fine to expect players who haven't learned their lessons to die, and to learn from those deaths, and it's fine to ratchet up the difficulty to make sure they've learned their lessons well.

The problem -- with the philosophy is that spoilers shouldn't be necessary -- is when the end of the game is still expecting to kill players with new lessons that their previous lessons haven't adequately prepared them for.

(I won't speak as to whether or not I think crawl has that problem or not)

(the above should be taken in the context of similar games, and can be different if the circumstances were a lot different -- e.g. having brand new killer challenges every floor would make more sense if you had a save point after clearing each floor and the game was about figuring them out)

[bel]

I've never used amulet of life saving. I have used helm of opposite alignment though.

[Lasty]

Do we need to learn "ALich can have Banishment" from one death, "ALich can have Paralysis" from another death, "ALich can have Conjure Lignting Balls" from third etc. Really???

No, of course not. If you die to an ancient lich banishing you, you can take comfort in knowing that the ancient lich was far more dangerous than whatever was in the abyss that killed you and that banishing you was the kindest thing it could have done. If you die to conjure ball lightning, you know that you had at least one turn to drink !resistance or blink or use a god power or otherwise handle the situation, and that you either didn't or couldn't do so was your own stupid fault. If you die to paralysis -- well, paralysis is kind of a problem in any case.

More generally, if you see a monster can use a wide variety of unknown and scary spells and you're unspoiled, you should assume that the spell set will be the absolute worst possible one for you. You should treat that creature with the topmost level of caution, only dialing back the caution if you learn that doing so is appropriate.

Just learning, "liches can do all sorts of nasty stuff" is sufficient, no?

No. With low MR I can use stasis instead of haste vs Sphinx, clarity instead of artefact amulet with +slaying vs Merfolk Avatars, also corrosion vs Caustic Shrikes, warding vs summoners etc. I even quaff potion of resistance vs Nikola
Hiding spells means it's a gamble, not decision-making.

It sounds like you are saying that "decision-making" means wearing an item that prevents the monster you're fighting from effectively using its gimmick. It's entirely possible to fight all these monsters safely (except Nikola most of the time) without stifling their signature mechanics at all.

Further, ancient liches do have a way to completely stifle their signature mechanics. In fact, they have a few ways, and all of them also work on every similar monster you encounter before. You just don't equip them in an equipment slot.

[bel]

The spell list of ancient lich is for all practical purposes, not "hidden". Just assume it can cast any spell in the game, and you won't be far off in your threat assessment from the full knowledge case.

[byrel]

OK, so I just went through the list of A-lich spells on the wiki, looking to see how predictable I'd find those spells in practice. (I've honestly never looked up their spells, and just killed them with great prejudice. Lasty has a point that 'great prejudice' doesn't have too much variance in it.) Annnd... the only real offender is LRD. I had no clue any nonearth-themed monster had it, and it actually takes markedly different tactics than most spells to deal with.

Other than that it's just a passel of standard order summonings, conjurations and hexes.

[Sandman25]

It sounds like you are saying that "decision-making" means wearing an item that prevents the monster you're fighting from effectively using its gimmick. It's entirely possible to fight all these monsters safely (except Nikola most of the time) without stifling their signature mechanics at all.

For me decision-making means that I can fight the monster in a different way than I fight other monsters. As in my example where I didn't haste vs Sphinx or didn't use +slaying vs Merfolk Avatar. I got your point, you want players to fight ALiches the same way players fight all other monsters except switch to MR (even if ALich does not have hexes), quaff resistance (even if ALich does not have elemental attacks) and haste (even if ALich has irresistable paralysis). What about amulet? Should I switch to stasis/clarity/rMut/warding? Isn't it stupid to switch to rMut by the way? Probably not, new players have no idea if it has malmutate.

[Sandman25]

The spell list of ancient lich is for all practical purposes, not "hidden". Just assume it can cast any spell in the game, and you won't be far off in your threat assessment from the full knowledge case.

It cannot cast malmutate/shatter/torment/hellfire as far as I know. So quaffing flight, equipping rMut, warding (for rN+) or vitality is a serious mistake which I suppose is expected to be "learned" from dying to Airstrike and Paralysis.

[Sprucery]

What do you mean by "un-resistable paralysis"?

[Sandman25]

What do you mean by "un-resistable paralysis"?

Paralyze ability of giant eyeballs.

[Sprucery]

Can aliches summon eyeballs now (I don't think they do in 0.16)?

If they do, I don't think they should be able to.

[byrel]

No, they can't. That's just mnoleg and the semi-boss in slime IIRC.

[Jeremiah]

Is Aliches casting ball lightning a new thing? I'm sure I've never encountered that.

[byrel]

Based on the list I have on badwiki: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Ancient_lich

They don't and can't. I think they started being used as a hypothetical in the thread, and never got removed because nobody has a clue what ancient liches do.

[bel]

The spell list of ancient lich is for all practical purposes, not "hidden". Just assume it can cast any spell in the game, and you won't be far off in your threat assessment from the full knowledge case.

It cannot cast malmutate/shatter/torment/hellfire as far as I know. So quaffing flight, equipping rMut, warding (for rN+) or vitality is a serious mistake which I suppose is expected to be "learned" from dying to Airstrike and Paralysis.

If I knew that ancient lich can cast paralysis, and I am paralyzable with some decent chance, I can't imagine any situation when I would swap a stasis amulet for rMut or warding. If I did, I deserve to die.

If I can die to an airstrike in one shot, I would certainly not cast flight. If I did, I deserve to die.

Anyway, thread has meandered, it was about OoF, but this is all offtopic.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Allow me to expand on that. Pretend you're playing Nethack. Now get your ascension kit together. Now ascend.

Snipped a list of an ascension kit

You forgot your sack with some holy water and ?SoRCs in case the main bag gets cursed. Otherwise it looks fine in my meager 5-6 ascension experience. The tourist was the most fun of them. Slash'EM can be fun too if you don't go and get practically unlimited wishes from gypsies.

[byrel]

If I can die to an airstrike in one shot, I would certainly not cast flight. If I did, I deserve to die.

What if you can die to shatter in one hit? (not that A-liches can cast shatter or airstrike, but hypothetically you wouldn't know this.)

Anyway, thread has meandered, it was about OoF, but this is all offtopic.

This thread has really morphed into 'the boss-level of a 3-rune game is somewhat unsatisfying. It feels spoilery and formulaic. How fix Kemosabe?'

Edit: Oh, and a side dish of comparing our Nethack ascension kits for spice.

[Hurkyl]

Edit: Oh, and a side dish of comparing our Nethack ascension kits for spice.

On that note, my second or third ascension I wound up blowing up most of an ascension kit (no, I didn't mean to put everything in the bag of holding. More. More. More. Boom!), blowing up a second kit in roughly the same way, and then making do with what I could scrounge up afterwards (didn't even have a bag of holding!). To add to the comedy of errors, I think that was even the one where I accidentally blanked all of my scrolls and fully diluted my stack of potions of full healing while I was bored on the plane of water and did some questionable things to speed it up.

[Lasty]

It sounds like you are saying that "decision-making" means wearing an item that prevents the monster you're fighting from effectively using its gimmick. It's entirely possible to fight all these monsters safely (except Nikola most of the time) without stifling their signature mechanics at all.

For me decision-making means that I can fight the monster in a different way than I fight other monsters. As in my example where I didn't haste vs Sphinx or didn't use +slaying vs Merfolk Avatar. I got your point, you want players to fight ALiches the same way players fight all other monsters except switch to MR (even if ALich does not have hexes), quaff resistance (even if ALich does not have elemental attacks) and haste (even if ALich has un-resistable paralysis). What about amulet? Should I switch to stasis/clarity/rMut/warding? Isn't it stupid to switch to rMut by the way? Probably not, new players have no idea if it has malmutate.

I don't see wearing the same gear as being "fighting the same way" or wearing different gear as being "fighting in a different way". I see them as gear choices that have relatively little to say about the tactics you use to fight, though as you point out a stasis amulet does prevent you from making use of Haste, and also cblink/blink/teleport, of course.

What I expect from a player fighting an ancient lich without knowing what spells it will cast is 1) they will keep it no closer than at edge of LoS if they don't feel that it's reasonable to take a chance on engaging it, and if it gets away from edge of LoS they'll take drastic steps to correct the situation. 2) If they do choose to fight it, they'll use all the resources they can to stack the fight in their favor. 3) They'll make use of tactical options that they would expect to work based on other similar monsters, such as silence, dispel undead, scroll of holy word, anti-magic weapons, etc. 4) If the ancient lich does something terrifying that forces them to reconsider their plan of attack, they will GTFO immediately, burning whatever resources they need to in order to do so.

That might mean that the player drinks brilliance and haste and resistance and then lobs things like orbs of destruction from the edge of the screen, or it might mean ambushing the lich with silence and/or anti-magic weapons, or it might mean summoning a huge army and keeping a cblink in their back pocket. It might also mean doing everything in their power to avoid ever fighting the lich in the first place. All of those are reasonable plans to expect to try out and probably survive, and most of them will in fact work most of the time, or, if they don't work, allow the user to escape and regroup.

[Sphara]

Ancient lich banishing you is in most cases, a lifesaver.

[Sandman25]

Lasty,

I see, then it makes sense to hide spells indeed.

[tasonir]

OK, so I just went through the list of A-lich spells on the wiki, looking to see how predictable I'd find those spells in practice. (I've honestly never looked up their spells, and just killed them with great prejudice. Lasty has a point that 'great prejudice' doesn't have too much variance in it.) Annnd... the only real offender is LRD. I had no clue any nonearth-themed monster had it, and it actually takes markedly different tactics than most spells to deal with.

Other than that it's just a passel of standard order summonings, conjurations and hexes.

Imho the standout spell of A.Liches is acid bolt. You won't be wearing rCorr on 95% of characters, so you have no resistance for it, the damage is very high, and it removes some armor afterwards. I'm always surprised by how much it hurts when I'm hit by it. As far as I know they're the only monsters that cast it outside of acid blobs where you're almost certainly wearing rCorr; zot also has yellow draconian breath, but it seems like it's a bit lower damage than lich acid bolt.

Certainly banish/summon ice fiend/LCS are arguably more dangerous (or just tedious in the case of banish), but I'm expecting those, acid has surprised me several times.

[Sprucery]

As far as I know they're the only monsters that cast it outside of acid blobs

Also deep elf sorcerers (unless that's very recently changed) and regular liches.

[Hurkyl]

Imho the standout spell of A.Liches is acid bolt. You won't be wearing rCorr on 95% of characters, so you have no resistance for it, the damage is very high, and it removes some armor afterwards. I'm always surprised by how much it hurts when I'm hit by it.

IIRC, acid damage does extra damage if you have unfilled armor slots... which means it is extra painful for species like Trolls, Spriggans, and Felids.

[Sprucery]

Did you know that acid damage is reduced by 20/40/60% for each level of the fur mutation? I didn't.

[duvessa]

Did you know that acid damage is reduced by 20/40/60% for each level of the fur mutation? I didn't.

Did you know that was removed?

[Sprucery]

OK, so equipped slots don't matter anymore either. Good to know.