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Do these spawn in packs? Or did some sick fuck think it'd be fun to fill a vault full of these on Depths:2? Way, way, WAY OP for a monster. Might as well spawn 5 aliches at a time. You see a dark red monster name. You see several more of them. Hahaha, you're fucked!

I survived, at the cost of a ridiculous number of consumables, but the dungeon is a literal dead end now. These should not be resistant to elemental damage, given their deadliness, IMO.

Yeah they do spawn in packs, like bees.

Yes, there is also a vault I believe. Have run into it two times. (or it was coincidence that they found me in a vault.) Really really nasty.

Just like bees. Almost exactly like bees.

:'(

fr: new branch - Caustic Hive/Nest

So how is causing something far more dangerous than golden dragons to spawn in packs considered anything other than viciously unfair? These should either be made to spawn singly at their current levels, or be made to spawn only at the deepest levels. Or do the devs really want there to be even more unwinnable situations in this game? (Not a rhetorical question, if the current placement/standing of these creatures is considered appropriate.)

Well you haven't died yet. What kind of a character are you playing, can you show your dump?

IMO caustic shrikes would be more appropriate for Zot than Depths, considering that they are more dangerous than almost anything pre-extended

Yeah, if there is one thing all those moths of wrath need, its caustic shrike buddies to berserk.

oh god berserking shrikes

amazing

Aule wrote:These should not be resistant to elemental damage, given their deadliness, IMO.

To be fair, the resist melee attacks pretty well too (EV 18 AC 10; spriggans have EV 18!).

To be fair I think they're one of the few not unique monsters which aren't tab fodder past lair.
They certainly have over buffed stats everywhere and insane speed but that's a big requisite to not be another xp bag

Hurkyl wrote:To be fair, the resist melee attacks pretty well too (EV 18 AC 10; spriggans have EV 18!).

That's a pretty perverse definition of fair, but hmm-kay.

thevogonpoet wrote:Yeah, if there is one thing all those moths of wrath need, its caustic shrike buddies to berserk.

Sar wrote:oh god berserking shrikes

amazing

Great. Watch that get implemented before 0.17 becomes final.

Jeremiah wrote:IMO caustic shrikes would be more appropriate for Zot than Depths, considering that they are more dangerous than almost anything pre-extended

Exactly. The only things more dangerous are certain uniques, and they're uniques fergoshsakes.

Sar wrote:Well you haven't died yet. What kind of a character are you playing, can you show your dump?

Haha, I'm not falling for that. Nice try.

Anyway, that's an unwinnable argument. If he died, he made some crucial mistake, and if he didn't die, then he was able to "beat" them. Either result can be used to support the position that these spawnings are perfectly okay.

Lasty wrote:Just like bees. Almost exactly like bees.

:'(

Well, there you go. Might as well make a queen shrike, with increased speed, deadlier acid, and that spawns a new shrike every 20 aut. Fuck it, let's just eradicate hope.

Aule wrote:Haha, I'm not falling for that.

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Aule wrote:Fuck it, let's just eradicate hope.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

I have no idea why caustic shrikes exist.They are very rare, require a rare resistance, very hard to kill for a normal character, and very hard to escape from. Also, I have no idea why they come in packs. No other monsters in Depths have these problems, which make them a very bad monster. Closest are spriggans, but at least they are pretty fragile and don't resist elements.

Their basic purpose seems to be to force you to randomly teleport in a Depths level. Make it a forced teleport trap then.

Yeah, I don't get why an actually threatening monster is allowed to exist past D:5 either.

If that was addressed to me, there are plenty of threatening monsters in Depths, without being ridiculously OP. I do not think a monster which has no weaknesses at all, comes in packs, has huge MR, EV, HP, AC, resistances, is super fast and who will screw you super fast if you don't have a rare resistance is good design.

I generally don't mind shrikes since they are very rare and I either avoid them or teleport/run to stairs if they see me. One in a while, the terrain is advantageous and I kill one of them.

there are no threatening monsters in depths

Shrikes are crawl's way of telling you your character sucks.

Sar wrote:Yeah, I don't get why an actually threatening monster is allowed to exist past D:5 either.

Bel has more than sufficiently addressed that red herring, but I just want to add that if these monsters are indeed at least as dangerous as the most powerful uniques (I'm thinking they're more dangerous, like Mara *times* Saint Roka), then it's enough to consider that those uniques are only allowed to appear once.

Just admit they're over-powered for their placement, and let's move on.

(Also, if this thread should have been posted elsewhere, then feel free to move it, please.)

nago wrote:To be fair I think they're one of the few not unique monsters which aren't tab fodder past lair.
They certainly have over buffed stats everywhere and insane speed but that's a big requisite to not be another xp bag

This I don't understand. Doesn't this assume that all characters encountering them must be melee tabbers to begin with? Are you saying that to expect to win in Crawl, you must play this kind of character? That doesn't strike me as balanced, either.

I'm playing a caster (OgWz, XL21), and I don't tab through anything but the lightest fluff. I have to choose what to do tactically in every situation. In this case, the sudden appearance of a group of caustic shrikes can turn tactical choices into crapshoot gambles that might only pan out with an abundance of good luck, and, fortunately, this time they did.

mps wrote:Shrikes are crawl's way of telling you your character sucks.

I would have to concur that, in crawl, wizards do suck. Which kinda sucks, really.

I've never been in danger from a caustic shrike. Depths should be trivial unless you intentionally build a bad character to make it not so. Since you're playing an ogre caster that uses minimal melee, it sounds like you did exactly that. What do you expect?

tabstorm wrote:I've never been in danger from a caustic shrike. Depths should be trivial unless you intentionally build a bad character to make it not so.

First off, the irony of your name in the context of this is simply hilarious.

If melee "tabstorming" is too brainless and easy, then you nerf tabstorming. You don't just keep placing harder and harder things that are beyond all but the most simplistic and hardy tabstorm builds. That's what balance is about. The devs know this, I hope.

Since you're playing an ogre caster that uses minimal melee, it sounds like you did exactly that. What do you expect?

Let me 'splain something to you.

This very same character encountered ten different uniques in his first trip to get a rune, through the Shoals branch. Donald, Louise, Maud and Sonja were all there on level 1, and he never ran away or retreated up the stairs. He took them on and took them out as they came. Polyphemus was hiding on level 2, ambushing my character with hard-hitting boulders from afar, and while my tactic was retreat leaving ice behind him, I never read teleport or detached from the battle, though it got real dicey after a few solid hits. Level 3 was clear of uniques, somehow. I didn't know that was because they were waiting in ambush on the descent to level 4. Immediately descending the stairs, there were both other stairs in LoS, along with Wiglaf and Agnes, both alert. Did I go back up the stairs? No, not me. Again without running or retreat, I committed and won. Kirke, Snorg and Ilsuiw on 5 met the same fate of determination, and my OgWz got his first rune for this game.

Now, safer players would have played an easier character. Safer players would have retreated and regrouped. Safer players would have done a lot of things differently than I do them, but I think that's just because safer players have tiny, little balls.

That's right, You can play this game with your tiny little acorn balls, and you can squirrel away all your little acorn balls wins, but there's another aspect to the game that you cannot comprehend, because you simply don't have big enough balls, and would find it impossible to squirrel them away if you did discover some. I know you must have these tiny little acorn balls because you said your characters have never been in danger from such things, meaning you only play the safest characters - the ones that make Depths appear "trivial".

So, to answer your question of what do I expect, the answer is, not a thing.

I do not expect you to understand that answer, though.

If you die in depths, its either because you seriously botched your build, or far more likely, you made major tactical mistakes, in which case its just as likely to be anything other than a shrike that kills you (and probably a pack of things).

I've never had any real trouble with shrikes, and was surprised they had garnered that reputation here on the forums when I did first meet them.

I've faced shrikes as short blade SpEn, demon blade mostly melee and hexes SpEn, a significantly melee GrVM, and a melee OpWn. Needless to say they weren't easy.

I think you have to agree they're harder than the other depths monsters assuming you have a pip of each common resistence. But I think this is more of a problem with the other monsters.

If you think about it, death yaks, hydras, mambas, and ogres all have similar problems for various types of characters. We need more dangers late.

safer players would have retreated and regrouped. Safer players would have done a lot of things differently than I do them, but I think that's just because safer players have tiny, little balls.

So you justify playing suboptimally for roleplay and questionable misogynist biology. Great. Play however you want. Shrikes are a good part of the game design exactly because they punish your foolish 'ballsy' play.

They kill people who make mistakes like you do. That is good design.

hahahahaha

Have you tried playing better?

If caustic shrikes are a lot more dangerous than other monsters (that's an 'if', I never faced them) and they come in packs, then something is wrong. Doesn't mean they should be nerfed, maybe a few other monsters should be buffed.

byrel wrote:So you justify playing suboptimally for roleplay and questionable misogynist biology. Great. Play however you want. Shrikes are a good part of the game design exactly because they punish your foolish 'ballsy' play.

They kill people who make mistakes like you do. That is good design.

To be clear, I'm no misogynist. Balls are a metaphor in common use by all genders. You are aware that women have gonads, too, right? It just seemed like an appealing way to blow off the condescending arrogance of a small person, really. Don't read too much into it.

As to your sneer at roleplay, in the context of a roleplaying game, what is there to say?

But most to the point, you're saying that there is but one focused and true path (namely, optimal), in a game of many, varied paths, and that any deviation from this accepted path is deserving of death. And you think that is the basis for a good game design.

To wit:

Sar wrote:hahahahaha

I couldn't have said it better.

Caustic shrikes are a symptom, not a solution. The problem is that kind of single-minded, algorithmic approach to playing that breeds optimality. What that means is that eventually Crawl will become like Pac Man, completely beatable by performing exact, memorized sequences, and the only fun being in finding those sequences, and maybe making slight shaves of modifications to them. That is the ultimate end result of optimal play. A bot will be able to do it, and the game will have been designed that way to encourage it, despite any stated best intentions otherwise. Not sure I agree that this is really what the designers have in mind, but if it is, then I accept total defeat.

well if all you wabt to do is pretend you have the biggest balls in the world you could just play diablo 3

Aule wrote:Balls are a metaphor in common use by all genders.

And crass either way.

The problem is that kind of single-minded, algorithmic approach to playing that breeds optimality. What that means is that eventually Crawl will become like Pac Man, completely beatable by performing exact, memorized sequences, and the only fun being in finding those sequences, and maybe making slight shaves of modifications to them. That is the ultimate end result of optimal play.

To play devil's advocate, if you're too accommodating to alternative strategies, then ultimately you're creating a sandbox game rather than involving any sort of strategy.

Hurkyl wrote:
Aule wrote:Balls are a metaphor in common use by all genders.

And crass either way.

The problem is that kind of single-minded, algorithmic approach to playing that breeds optimality. What that means is that eventually Crawl will become like Pac Man, completely beatable by performing exact, memorized sequences, and the only fun being in finding those sequences, and maybe making slight shaves of modifications to them. That is the ultimate end result of optimal play.

To play devil's advocate, if you're too accommodating to alternative strategies, then ultimately you're creating a sandbox game rather than involving any sort of strategy.

Exactly. What Aule is discovering is that RPGs kind of suck when you get really good at them and you care about doing really well all the time.

Getting caught in a pack of shrikes is one of the only times that I can think of where I would feel the need to teleport in Depths. They are a legitimately dangerous encounter. But even then, you can almost always isolate/handle them like any other pack using common tactics. They certainly should never cause "no-win" situations, not with the variety of survival options high-level characters should have available. I can understand being upset that a good character died because you aren't familiar with a tough enemy the first time you see it, but... you're overreacting.

Also, intentionally choosing to play "sub-optimally" (whatever that means) just means you lack patience. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that I don't find playing Crawl super carefully to be very much fun - I'm not a patient player in any way, shape, or form. But to go around claiming that patient players who try very hard to win are somehow cowardly or weak (or whatever "small balls" is supposed to mean) is tenuous at best. It shouldn't really be possible for poor sportsmanship to exist in a single player game, but somehow you are managing it.

I don't agree with the comment about balls and stuff, for reasons of random sexism and inaccuracy.

duvessa wrote:there are no threatening monsters in depths

If you claim that there are no threatening monsters in Depths, there are bigger problems than caustic shrikes. The solution of "how about we add a rare monster who has everything" is not a good one.

You know what would be really evil? Placing Caustic Shrikes with the Executioners in Gloorx Vloq's realm of pandemonium. Hell, putting Entropy Weavers in there would be evil enough.

If you want to see something really funny where I barely survived...mummy on Depths: 3 ran into a pack...teleported to rust devils, which I was too corroded to harm...teleported to a different pack...kept teleporting and spamming potion petition and barely escaped. Between a pack of Rust Devils and two packs of Shrikes I got down to -40 or so Corrosion.

Wahaha wrote:If caustic shrikes are a lot more dangerous than other monsters (that's an 'if', I never faced them) and they come in packs, then something is wrong. Doesn't mean they should be nerfed, maybe a few other monsters should be buffed.

Individually, caustic shrikes aren't more potent than other top-tier threats (Tentacled Monstrosities, anything you're weak to, etc.) They tend to favor spellcasters, since they corrode gear and have EV18, AC10, but have rF+ and rC+ so the impact of fireball is a bit low. They're a bit hexable, though you'll fail a lot. Airstrike does rather well if you happen to have it, as does summon lightning spire. They aren't resistant to poison at all, so OTR would probably do well. Rod of shadows is great high Evo too. There's no build I've run that simply ignores them as tabfodder, but I've also never been entirely at a loss to deal with them. That's really good.

The hardest way to deal with them is weak melee withour rCorr. But even if that's your only option (ie, you've made a build mistake), I've never run into more than 2 packs in all of Depths; treat them like a hydra for a naga or chei player, just TP and leave the level.

bcadren wrote:You know what would be really evil? Placing Caustic Shrikes with the Executioners in Gloorx Vloq's realm of pandemonium.

FR: do this.

Gloorx Vloq could use the buff.

just give Gloorx corrosive melee

Aule just single handedly made me not mind caustic shrikes as much.

FR: Unique Shrike named Elua that casts OOD and claims that your orbs are smaller than his.

But actually on-topic, I do think it is an issue that there's such a massive disparity between shrikes and the average enemy in depths. I think to make depths more interesting we need more vaults like the one with elementals, gargoyles, and those crystal dudes that provide a unique set of challenges that can catch you off guard but don't feel like they are coming out of nowhere.

The idea that caustic shrikes "have no weaknesses" because they resist fire and cold is really strange. They don't resist negative energy (bolt of draining, pain weapons, agony), they don't resist elec (lightning bolt, chain lightning, elec weapons, disc of storms, lightning rod, even static discharge), they don't resist poison (bolt of venom, poison arrow, pcloud, curare, rod of the swarm). They resist fire and cold, but that doesn't actually prevent you from nuking them with fire/cold bolts. They have relatively low MR, making them weak to hexes and ?fear. And of course every source of unbranded damage works, though they do have good defenses.

I have to assume that people who say they have "no weaknesses" and are impossible to kill really just haven't tried much.

I agree that there's a problem with how far shrikes exceed other depths monsters, but I think the solution is to increase the scariness of other depths monsters.

I also don't actually get how a shrike pack makes the dungeon a literal dead end, even if you can't kill them. Probably you have some methods of escape (maybe a source of tele?), and there are likely stairs to U:3 somewhere on U:2.

Yes, we're pretty used to "no big risks are needed after D:5" but I actually think Crawl is better if you sometimes need to do something risky after the early game.

Lasty wrote:I agree that there's a problem with how far shrikes exceed other depths monsters, but I think the solution is to increase the scariness of other depths monsters.

TeshiAlair wrote:I do think it is an issue that there's such a massive disparity between shrikes and the average enemy in depths.

So, after all condescension, sneering and finally a board warning for my fed-up response, it turns out that there is general agreement with my initial remarks.

Hilarious.

WalkerBoh wrote:It shouldn't really be possible for poor sportsmanship to exist in a single player game, but somehow you are managing it.

Good thing I'm the only one with this problem, then, huh?

But seriously, though, sportsmanship goes both ways, mate. Don't kid yourself that this is just a single-player game. Crawl/Tavern/##crawl/##crawl-dev is clearly a team sport, and you're either on the winning team, or you're an outsider subject to different rules of interaction and conduct.

/truth

As I read it, your initial remarks were that shrikes are OP. The general agreement you've cited are that other depths monsters are too weak.

I'm confused, I guess. You posted a message in Advice saying shrikes are too strong and seemed to get upset at offers of advice, and at other folks saying they'd handled them OK. What were you looking for, exactly?

Lasty wrote:The idea that caustic shrikes "have no weaknesses" because they resist fire and cold is really strange. They don't resist negative energy (bolt of draining, pain weapons, agony), they don't resist elec (lightning bolt, chain lightning, elec weapons, disc of storms, lightning rod, even static discharge), they don't resist poison (bolt of venom, poison arrow, pcloud, curare, rod of the swarm). They resist fire and cold, but that doesn't actually prevent you from nuking them with fire/cold bolts. They have relatively low MR, making them weak to hexes and ?fear. And of course every source of unbranded damage works, though they do have good defenses.

I have to assume that people who say they have "no weaknesses" and are impossible to kill really just haven't tried much.

Of course, I exaggerated a bit that they have "no weaknesses", but I gave almost the whole list once and was not in the mood to list it again, so took a shortcut.

The huge EV means that it is very hard for to hit them with bolt spells (lightning or draining), though I have used ball lightning with good success. P. Cloud spells are problematic because they move very fast, and so don't stay in the clouds easily, unless you are prepared to drop a cloud right next to you and suffer a large amounts of rounds in melee.

Perhaps you and I have different idea of what "relatively low MR" means. In Wizmode, I tried a VpEn with 16 hexes, 15 spellcasting and 22 int, and the confuse success rate was barely 30%. With 15 Evo, a wand of confusion has about a 22% chance. This is nowhere near reliable.

The rest of the methods listed are too specialized or too rare.

I have on many occasions tried to kill them with bolt spells. I remember a few times where I emptied literally my whole MP trying to hit them, and didn't manage to kill even one. Once I was a SpEn of Nemelex and dealt 4 two destruction decks against a single shrike, and didn't manage to kill it. Now, I usually avoid them, lumping them together with uniques which are too hard to be bothered to kill.

Lasty wrote:I agree that there's a problem with how far shrikes exceed other depths monsters, but I think the solution is to increase the scariness of other depths monsters.

Of course, this is the whole problem, about which the OP was complaining in the first place. The solution to "Depths is too easy" (is it? I don't know), is not to have a very rare monster which is hugely overpowered. I go many games without seeing a shrike at all.

Apparently I wasn't very clear about the problem I see. The problem isn't shrikes in any sense -- IMO they're good how they are, or maybe could be slightly nastier. The problem is that the vast majority of monsters in Depths aren't scary at all -- they're more or less harmless to all but the weakest characters. So yes, the solution is to have a very rare monster which is dangerous, but also to have a lot more common monsters that are also dangerous. This is a direction I want to see things move in, but it's not going to happen over night. In short, shrikes are a step in the right direction, but we need more steps in that direction.

I am firmly of the mind that the following points are nonsense and have already been addressed in this thread:
* shrikes have no weaknesses and/or cannot be killed
* it's bad to have to run away from a monster in depths
* shrikes can't be dealt with by a large number of achetypes and/or the dev team wants to force players into a narrow range of archetypes
* monsters shouldn't resist both cold and fire

njvack wrote:As I read it, your initial remarks were that shrikes are OP. The general agreement you've cited are that other depths monsters are too weak.

I'm confused, I guess. You posted a message in Advice saying shrikes are too strong and seemed to get upset at offers of advice, and at other folks saying they'd handled them OK. What were you looking for, exactly?

Man...

Aule wrote:These should either be made to spawn singly at their current levels, or be made to spawn only at the deepest levels.

Aule wrote:Just admit they're over-powered for their placement, and let's move on.

They're out of sync in their current placement. That's what I said, and what the quoted posters agreed with. If the intent is to make the entire region more like those placements, then fine. The issue was and is the striking disparity, that is all.

The rest is just pile-on. Take from it what you will.

Aule wrote:The issue was and is the striking disparity, that is all.

More like shriking disparity, right? Haha! Get it?

bel wrote:The huge EV means that it is very hard for to hit them with bolt spells (lightning or draining), though I have used ball lightning with good success. P. Cloud spells are problematic because they move very fast, and so don't stay in the clouds easily, unless you are prepared to drop a cloud right next to you and suffer a large amounts of rounds in melee. The rest of the methods listed are too specialized or too rare.

Have you tried using summons to hold them in the cloud? That might help. In any event, OTR is a great choice because it's not dodgable and moves with you as you retreat, for way less skill investment. Fireball (including from the wand with some Evo) should soften them up somewhat. Haste is recommended, of course, which makes you almost as fast as them. Airstrike (they're flying), chain lightning, static discharge, etc. all work well. You'll probably have to tank some, and there aren't a lot of packs in the dungeon, so I usually blow a !resist before engaging.

Also, I don't think necromancy is as rare or specialized as all that. Agony is a good spell. So is excruciating wounds. Either of which will let you kill them substantially. Get them into a narrow corridor and fire bolt spells/zap wands down it to soften them. (if you can't pull them off one at a time, which should be the goal.) Use conjure flame. Almost any rod works really well at decent spell power. Fan of Gales is rather good. Sack of spiders isn't terrible, though they will die fast. Use a weapon of venom, draining or elec. Use a scroll of torment (depending). Use battlesphere/magic dart even if you need to. Use summons. Even mephitic cloud has a 10% chance per turn of confusing them. Stack the odds in your favor, burn a !resist and haste (maybe with agi or might or brilliance if so inclined), and just kill them with whatever tools you have.

Or don't, and dodge them and go to the next floor.

When do you typically do depths? Maybe you're doing them too early... you should probably clear V1-4 first, and have the non-slime lair runes under your belt.

I see people just getting 20 EV and 10 AC on their only remaining paw to get more AC (armour class) it will tell you the real game: the Tavern is full of ichor-dripping fangs. Do you see that again since thats always my choice based on aptitudes? I don't care, and I dislike tabbing through waves of enemies. Crawl still has the perfect balance of variety and simplicity square los provides. The rest is nice - or flat out tired. That's a net win for safety.

very easy math: HP*1. Math about a 15% difference in HP under a single orc signifies a possibility for causing unavoidable deaths can occur. An exception was my preferred method of getting the hang of it is generally a bad thing in current crawl had a level 6 spell, but its removal, still, is a much tighter control on the other gods, could even be lumped in with ONE Shadow Fiend where I said misogyny, I was returning to Crawl at ##crawl on irc.

For the record, I do know that many people play Wz for the Dispel Undead Check. I would love to frolic and cast mischievous spells. Listen, Lasty, I appreciate your attempt to attack an opponent two squares to the early game. Unfortunately, mid-to-late game is going to be eliminated at range, so good at winning the elvish mini-campaign.

I had been removed.

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