How does attack spell success work? Can you improve?

[Lawndart Jedi]

Can someone break down how attack spell success really works? Is there any real way to improve it. What is shown in game is totally bogus and worthless. Is there any way to really improve the success rate with attack spells?

I cast and cast spells at monster and they almost never work. For me success rate is under 10% no mater what I do. The failure rate shown in game is 1% but I find it near impossible to damage anything.

[Sprucery]

What spells are you casting, against what monsters? You really should provide a character dump. The spell success display is not "totally bogus and worthless". If you make claims like that, it's hard to take you seriously.

[WingedEspeon]

Spell success rate is simply the chance of casting the spell and not the chance of the spell hitting the target.

[MainiacJoe]

The formulas for spell accuracy as a function of spell power are found in LearnDB under each spell's entry, but not in the wiki.

[edgefigaro]

I really recommend watching other players start casters to learn tricks. Each book has different tricks you need to leverage, frequently the starting book has nearly everything you need to clear lair.

[Rast]

It's almost like showing spell to-hit in game would benefit newbies....

[kuniqs]

It's almost like showing weapon to-hit and to-damage in game would benefit newbies, too. It's not like showing EV & AC & SH & HP & MP & action speed in auts spoils people.

[Reptisaurus]

First level conjuration spells just aren't super effective, except for freeze which has a range of 1.

[Lawndart Jedi]

The formulas for spell accuracy as a function of spell power are found in LearnDB under each spell's entry, but not in the wiki.

How do you use it? It just shows a a random jumble of quotes for me. I do a search for spell and get zero results.

I really recommend watching other players start casters to learn tricks. Each book has different tricks you need to leverage, frequently the starting book has nearly everything you need to clear lair.

Is there some way to watch other players games or see what hey did? Is there a history of winners or something? I just don't understand how this works.

[MainiacJoe]

The formulas for spell accuracy as a function of spell power are found in LearnDB under each spell's entry, but not in the wiki.

How do you use it? It just shows a a random jumble of quotes for me. I do a search for spell and get zero results.

Follow this link it takes you to an entry with links to nearly every spell: https://crawl.develz.org/learndb/#list_ ... _by_school. In general, /#entry_with_spaces_turned_into_underscores is the pattern of URLs.

Let's compare Stone Arrow and Sandblast, which you had on your most recent game:

  Code:

stone arrow
A level 3 earth/conjuration spell. Found in the book of Geomancy, starting book for EEs. Does 3d11 dmg at max power. Does massive damage from ghosts for some reason. To-hit: 8+power/10.


  Code:

sandblast
Wield stones (sling bullets don't count) to do more damage and increase range from 2 to 3 with this spell. Sandblast with stones maxes out at 2d20 damage, although damage reduction from enemy AC is applied three times instead of once. Og and Tr can use large rocks, with damage maxing out at 3d20. To-hit: 13+power/10 with ammo, 8+power/5 otherwise.

So sandblast is more accurate than stone arrow at any power level, even using just dust. You have to check the wiki for some reason to get damage formulas: 3d(5+Power/8) for Stone Arrow, 1d(8+Power/4) for Sandblast with dust and 2d(4+Power/3) with stones.

[Siegurt]

The formulas for spell accuracy as a function of spell power are found in LearnDB under each spell's entry, but not in the wiki.

How do you use it? It just shows a a random jumble of quotes for me. I do a search for spell and get zero results.

Follow this link it takes you to an entry with links to nearly every spell: https://crawl.develz.org/learndb/#list_ ... _by_school. In general, /#entry_with_spaces_turned_into_underscores is the pattern of URLs.

Let's compare Stone Arrow and Sandblast, which you had on your most recent game:

  Code:

stone arrow
A level 3 earth/conjuration spell. Found in the book of Geomancy, starting book for EEs. Does 3d11 dmg at max power. Does massive damage from ghosts for some reason. To-hit: 8+power/10.


  Code:

sandblast
Wield stones (sling bullets don't count) to do more damage and increase range from 2 to 3 with this spell. Sandblast with stones maxes out at 2d20 damage, although damage reduction from enemy AC is applied three times instead of once. Og and Tr can use large rocks, with damage maxing out at 3d20. To-hit: 13+power/10 with ammo, 8+power/5 otherwise.

So sandblast is more accurate than stone arrow at any power level, even using just dust. You have to check the wiki for some reason to get damage formulas: 3d(5+Power/8) for Stone Arrow, 1d(8+Power/4) for Sandblast with dust and 2d(4+Power/3) with stones.

Note that this doesn't factor in the power cap for each spell (Which happens to be the same for stone arrow and sandblast, but generally speaking, it's something to be aware of.)