Suggest easy combos


Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 15th June 2016, 23:49

Re: Suggest easy combos

Hellmonk wrote:Just chiming in to say that demigods aren't weak and don't need fixing. To keep this on topic, DgIE or another elementalist start is pretty easy if you know how to use the book at all.


They are objectively worse than other "not bad" species as soon as those species get a god. Of course the choice of a god matters but for conjurers, Vehumet is standard and will be a vast improvement over any Dg.

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Post Wednesday, 15th June 2016, 23:56

Re: Suggest easy combos

They are also objectively better than most species before those species get a god. Which, coincidentally, is the part of the game where the power of your species matters most.

also vehumet is bad

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Wednesday, 15th June 2016, 23:57

Re: Suggest easy combos

all before wrote:Crawl's species, backgrounds, and gods are its difficulty levels. Devs have said they have no interest in balancing them with one another.

Sidenote: This is also why having altars appear on different levels is a bad idea. A difficulty-level choice shouldn't be a strategic choice.


I don't think they need balance, but I would think that species designed for a different time should get an update, because the game itself has changed. The philosophy behind the game today isn't the same as the philosophy behind the game ten years ago. Mummy was a popular species back when Summoners and Necromancers were all the rage and running out of food was the main difficulty before Zot. Today food simply isn't that important except for Ghouls, Trolls, and Spriggans and you are much more likely to die due to not having enough experience. Species that were introduced in the past for different game states should, over time, be updated, just as any other feature in the game is. Developers change monsters, items, areas, etc. all the time. Why not species?

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:03

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:Mummy was a popular species back when Summoners and Necromancers were all the rage and running out of food was the main difficulty before Zot.
This is some Dan Brown levels of historical inaccuracy here

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:07

Re: Suggest easy combos

duvessa wrote:They are also objectively better than most species before those species get a god.


At dungeon level 1, maybe.

As soon as the experience penalty kicks in, you start becoming worse than other species. Any advantage they have in the early game due to higher health, magic, and intelligence ends up being neutralized by 1) lower casting success due to lower casting skills 2) lower spell power due to lower casting skills 3) lower spells memorized due to lower casting skills & level. And the fact that you can't worship a god means you can't reliably get any higher level spells online. You could start as an ice elementalist and have to switch your entire school during Lair because you couldn't find another book with ice spells. Simply painful.

also vehumet is bad


But still better than Dg for pure conjurers. And if we're talking hybrids then Dg is even worse because then you have access to gods much better than Vehumet.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:08

Re: Suggest easy combos

duvessa wrote:
Azarkon wrote:Mummy was a popular species back when Summoners and Necromancers were all the rage and running out of food was the main difficulty before Zot.
This is some Dan Brown levels of historical inaccuracy here


That's how I remembered it 10 years ago. But then again there wasn't much of a "community" back then. Just people requesting a species with no food clock.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:12

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:1) lower casting success due to lower casting skills 2) lower spell power due to lower casting skills.
A demigod always has better spell success and power than a human with equal xp invested in spell skills, because of the increased int.

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:22

Re: Suggest easy combos

duvessa wrote:
Azarkon wrote:1) lower casting success due to lower casting skills 2) lower spell power due to lower casting skills.
A demigod always has better spell success and power than a human with equal xp invested in spell skills, because of the increased int.


Yes, which is why I said that their advantage is neutralized by the combination of those three factors, not that they simply have lower casing success and spell power. A Dg will have slightly higher success and spell power than other book races, but due to lower skills it's not as dramatic as people think it is based on looking at the raw stats. So even though the start, before a god, is slightly easier, the advantage isn't big enough to make up for the penalty later. The main challenge for most book starts isn't the first six dungeon levels anyhow. It's the middle game, which is when Dg struggle.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:26

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:
duvessa wrote:
Azarkon wrote:1) lower casting success due to lower casting skills 2) lower spell power due to lower casting skills.
A demigod always has better spell success and power than a human with equal xp invested in spell skills, because of the increased int.


Yes, which is why I said that their advantage is neutralized by the combination of those three factors, not that they simply have lower casing success and spell power. A Dg will have slightly higher success and spell power than other book races, but due to lower skills it's not as dramatic as people think it is based on looking at the raw stats. So even though the start, before a god, is slightly easier, the advantage isn't big enough to make up for the penalty later. The main challenge for most book starts isn't the first six dungeon levels anyhow. It's the middle game, which is when Dg struggle.

Elementalist starts don't struggle with the middle game at all though.

Also, the challenge for most book starts is the earlygame just like for every other start, because the earlygame is the hardest part of the game.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:35

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:Yes, which is why I said that their advantage is neutralized by the combination of those three factors, not that they simply have lower casing success and spell power.
Two of the three factors you gave are wrong. They don't exist.

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nago

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:45

Re: Suggest easy combos

If you're struggling in Lair with a book start, that means you either don't understand the book or you picked VM/Sk/Wr (do Sk/Wr even count as book starts?).

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 00:51

Re: Suggest easy combos

Fighting with duvessa on optimal play is a losing battle.
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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:00

Re: Suggest easy combos

Tiktacy wrote:Fighting with duvessa on optimal play is a losing battle.


It's because he's fighting optimally.
take it easy

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:05

Re: Suggest easy combos

Well, I have just quaffed 2 potions of XP as XL 1 DgFE and 2 potions of XP as XL 1 DEFE and the latter has higher spell power (38 vs 32) for Flame Tongue. I put 20% XP into Spellcasting and 40% each in Fire/Conj. Both got to XL 3 which is in favor of Dg because of worse XP aptitude. So it looks like Deep Elf is better offensively indeed.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:13

Re: Suggest easy combos

Hellmonk wrote:Elementalist starts don't struggle with the middle game at all though.

Also, the challenge for most book starts is the earlygame just like for every other start, because the earlygame is the hardest part of the game.


I played about a week's worth of straight book start Dg just a few weeks ago. Early game was average - I could survive a bad draw at level 1, but I still couldn't brute force through uniques, for example, or laugh at snakes - but getting past middle and late game was difficult, because you could not get high level spells online soon enough, and you had no gods to back you up so you had to hope to find the books you need yourself, or else you were screwed. The characters started well enough, but fell off fast and became frustrating to play because of it.

I then played about a week's worth of straight DE, a "bad" early game species. Early game was harder, but still not that hard because despite a slug being able to one shot a DE on level 1, that rarely happened and you usually got your options fast enough to survive the first few dungeon levels. And despite Dg having much higher health, you ended up being able to kill almost anything with a DE that you could with a Dg due to the nature of book starts. So I was able to get past the early game with only slightly less frequency than I did with Dg. And the middle game was a lot easier, because you had a god, and you had your spells online, and you could hit effective power levels before the ramp up in difficulty with Vault and Elf.

So which would you rather have? A species that does "well" in the early game only to become more dependent on luck middle game, or a species that is more dependent on luck in the early game, but becomes less dependent on it in the middle game? I know which wastes less time, and after all, the ultimate goal is to win, not to survive the early game.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:14

Re: Suggest easy combos

duvessa wrote:
Azarkon wrote:Yes, which is why I said that their advantage is neutralized by the combination of those three factors, not that they simply have lower casing success and spell power.
Two of the three factors you gave are wrong. They don't exist.


Lower spellcasting for Dg is a fact. They have -2. Lower <insert magic school> for Dg is also a fact. They have -1.

Why does this matter when they have higher intelligence to make up for it? Because then much of that higher intelligence is spent making up for worse skill.

So in the end, Dg barely comes out ahead of other species - and behind DE - when it comes to magic. And still they have all their disadvantages later on.

Basically the only advantage that really matters for Dg is their higher health.

But higher health doesn't make up for the lack of a god.
Last edited by Azarkon on Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:18

Re: Suggest easy combos

Sandman25 wrote:Well, I have just quaffed 2 potions of XP as XL 1 DgFE and 2 potions of XP as XL 1 DEFE and the latter has higher spell power (38 vs 32) for Flame Tongue. I put 20% XP into Spellcasting and 40% each in Fire/Conj. Both got to XL 3 which is in favor of Dg because of worse XP aptitude. So it looks like Deep Elf is better offensively indeed.


I see your point here, duvessa commonly uses hyperbole to the extent that it makes his argument technically incorrect, but he is still correct in the context of realistic scenarios. DE have horrible HP aptitudes and are a weak race in general largely because of that, but demigods are just the opposite.

I guess you could call it "truthful hyperbole."
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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:20

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:
Hellmonk wrote:Elementalist starts don't struggle with the middle game at all though.

Also, the challenge for most book starts is the earlygame just like for every other start, because the earlygame is the hardest part of the game.


I played about a week's worth of straight book start Dg just a few weeks ago. Early game was average - I could survive a bad draw at level 1, but I still couldn't brute force through uniques, for example, or laugh at snakes - but getting past middle and late game was difficult, because you could not get high level spells online soon enough, and you had no gods to back you up so you had to hope to find the books you need yourself, or else you were screwed. The characters started well enough, but fell off fast and became frustrating to play because of it.

I then played about a week's worth of straight DE, a "bad" early game species. Early game was harder, but still not that hard because despite a slug being able to one shot a DE on level 1, that rarely happened and you usually got your options fast enough to survive the first few dungeon levels. And despite Dg having much higher health, you ended up being able to kill almost anything with a DE that you could with a Dg due to the nature of book starts. So I was able to get past the early game with only slightly less frequency than I did with Dg. And the middle game was a lot easier, because you had a god, and you had your spells online, and you could hit effective power levels before the ramp up in difficulty with Vault and Elf.

So which would you rather have? A species that does "well" in the early game only to become more dependent on luck middle game, or a species that is more dependent on luck in the early game, but becomes less dependent on it in the middle game? I know which wastes less time, and after all, the ultimate goal is to win, not to survive the early game.

I would rather have the good earlygame species, because no combo is actually luck dependent in the midgame if you know how to play it. I'm not even parroting the "optimal" meme, if you're dying in vaults as a demigod elementalist you're doing something wrong.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:27

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:So which would you rather have? A species that does "well" in the early game only to become more dependent on luck middle game, or a species that is more dependent on luck in the early game, but becomes less dependent on it in the middle game? I know which wastes less time, and after all, the ultimate goal is to win, not to survive the early game.

.
The following assumption is usually implicit in these arguments about how good races are: The mid and late game are so trivial that they don't count. Put another way, no character gets weaker as time goes on. So all that matters is D:1-8.
remove food

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Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:31

Re: Suggest easy combos

Hellmonk wrote:
Azarkon wrote:
Hellmonk wrote:Elementalist starts don't struggle with the middle game at all though.

Also, the challenge for most book starts is the earlygame just like for every other start, because the earlygame is the hardest part of the game.


I played about a week's worth of straight book start Dg just a few weeks ago. Early game was average - I could survive a bad draw at level 1, but I still couldn't brute force through uniques, for example, or laugh at snakes - but getting past middle and late game was difficult, because you could not get high level spells online soon enough, and you had no gods to back you up so you had to hope to find the books you need yourself, or else you were screwed. The characters started well enough, but fell off fast and became frustrating to play because of it.

I then played about a week's worth of straight DE, a "bad" early game species. Early game was harder, but still not that hard because despite a slug being able to one shot a DE on level 1, that rarely happened and you usually got your options fast enough to survive the first few dungeon levels. And despite Dg having much higher health, you ended up being able to kill almost anything with a DE that you could with a Dg due to the nature of book starts. So I was able to get past the early game with only slightly less frequency than I did with Dg. And the middle game was a lot easier, because you had a god, and you had your spells online, and you could hit effective power levels before the ramp up in difficulty with Vault and Elf.

So which would you rather have? A species that does "well" in the early game only to become more dependent on luck middle game, or a species that is more dependent on luck in the early game, but becomes less dependent on it in the middle game? I know which wastes less time, and after all, the ultimate goal is to win, not to survive the early game.

I would rather have the good earlygame species, because no combo is actually luck dependent in the midgame if you know how to play it. I'm not even parroting the "optimal" meme, if you're dying in vaults as a demigod elementalist you're doing something wrong.


The problem is not even Vaults, it's your first rune branch for getting the rune to enter Vaults, for example Swamp/Snake/Spider/Shoal. And the problem is damage, not survival. An emperor scorpion can easily run you out of magic just killing it by itself with level 4 spells. But since so much of the Lair branches consist of monsters that are either faster than you or can prevent you from retreating, running out of magic in the middle of a fight is deadly. With Lair being shortened in trunk and the experience squeeze is even harder to deal with as a Dg. By contrast, a DE can get level 5-6 spells up by this time and that makes it a lot easier to shoot and run.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:34

Re: Suggest easy combos

tabstorm wrote:
Azarkon wrote:So which would you rather have? A species that does "well" in the early game only to become more dependent on luck middle game, or a species that is more dependent on luck in the early game, but becomes less dependent on it in the middle game? I know which wastes less time, and after all, the ultimate goal is to win, not to survive the early game.

.
The following assumption is usually implicit in these arguments about how good races are: The mid and late game are so trivial that they don't count. Put another way, no character gets weaker as time goes on. So all that matters is D:1-8.


Which is false.

Most characters die in the early game, yes, but that doesn't make the middle and late game trivial. Otherwise every Trog start should be an easy win, yet clearly, judging by win rates, it isn't.

There is such a concept as an early game character who falls off *too fast*. Which is why we don't see many people playing Demigods on the servers, that and the fact that gods are so much more interesting today.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:44

Re: Suggest easy combos

I mentioned vaults because you mentioned it as a difficulty spike in your post. Demigod elementalists don't have any problem in lair branches either.

Also, winrate is a horrible judge of power level since it doesn't account for biases like popularity (Trog is played by a lot of new players who aren't very good yet). Power level should be judged under the assumption that the player knows what they're doing and is trying to win.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:50

Re: Suggest easy combos

Most characters die in the early game, yes, but that doesn't make the middle and late game trivial. Otherwise every Trog start should be an easy win, yet clearly, judging by win rates, it isn't.


I don't think it's useful to look at win rate when talking about optimal play -- almost nobody plays optimally.

You can see the result of more-optimal-than-nearly-anyone-else play by looking at the record of a player like zzxc, who is currently on a 33-game win streak. Approximately 2/3 of his deaths are before D:9.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 01:58

Re: Suggest easy combos

chequers wrote:
Most characters die in the early game, yes, but that doesn't make the middle and late game trivial. Otherwise every Trog start should be an easy win, yet clearly, judging by win rates, it isn't.


I don't think it's useful to look at win rate when talking about optimal play -- almost nobody plays optimally.

You can see the result of more-optimal-than-nearly-anyone-else play by looking at the record of a player like zzxc, who is currently on a 33-game win streak. Approximately 2/3 of his deaths are before D:9.


And 1/3 of them are after, so it doesn't exactly make the middle and late game trivial, does it?

It's definitely the case that the early game is more reliant on luck, which is why the best players have their highest death rate in the early game - because optimal play can't change luck.

But we should also be able to talk about species past the early game, which is, again, *more* dependent on luck than skill.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 02:03

Re: Suggest easy combos

Tiktacy wrote:
Sandman25 wrote:Well, I have just quaffed 2 potions of XP as XL 1 DgFE and 2 potions of XP as XL 1 DEFE and the latter has higher spell power (38 vs 32) for Flame Tongue. I put 20% XP into Spellcasting and 40% each in Fire/Conj. Both got to XL 3 which is in favor of Dg because of worse XP aptitude. So it looks like Deep Elf is better offensively indeed.


I see your point here, duvessa commonly uses hyperbole to the extent that it makes his argument technically incorrect, but he is still correct in the context of realistic scenarios. DE have horrible HP aptitudes and are a weak race in general largely because of that, but demigods are just the opposite.

I guess you could call it "truthful hyperbole."
The comparison was to Hu, not DE. I don't deliberately make claims that are false, unlike some people here. And the XP aptitude doesn't affect anything in Sandman25's test; potion of experience always gives 750*(new XL) skill experience.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 02:05

Re: Suggest easy combos

Please explain why you think luck is more important than skill past the early game. When I die past the early game, it's always because I did something really dumb or stopped thinking for a while and tabbed into some stuff or got greedy and tried to fight something I shouldn't have.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 02:07

Re: Suggest easy combos

Hellmonk wrote:Please explain why you think luck is more important than skill past the early game.
I'm pretty sure you already know why

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 04:36

Re: Suggest easy combos

Only thing I don't like about DG is that chei beats them in stats. I mean, that was THE thing about DG nobody could beat. Hardest school start for DG is Wizard because the spells are spread out in schools. Sure the fire could kill a Giant in three turns at 5#, but boy are you taking a beating.

Should remove Chei and give DG +15 to all stats.
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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 07:04

Re: Suggest easy combos

Azarkon wrote:You could start as an ice elementalist and have to switch your entire school during Lair because you couldn't find another book with ice spells. Simply painful.

I just wanted to note that the book of Frost alone carries you far beyond Lair.
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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 07:51

Re: Suggest easy combos

tabstorm wrote:
Azarkon wrote:So which would you rather have? A species that does "well" in the early game only to become more dependent on luck middle game, or a species that is more dependent on luck in the early game, but becomes less dependent on it in the middle game? I know which wastes less time, and after all, the ultimate goal is to win, not to survive the early game.

.
The following assumption is usually implicit in these arguments about how good races are: The mid and late game are so trivial that they don't count. Put another way, no character gets weaker as time goes on. So all that matters is D:1-8.


This is a popular argument, and a pretty bad one. It is bad, because Crawl players are human (mostly) and thus they make mistakes, even pretty big ones. Even Garry Kasparov has made big mistakes.

I've just found a pretty neat example: imagine the world's best player, on a world record 43-win streak, already in Depths. This game is already won, right? Or maybe not? Maybe he might die? Maybe?
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/streaks.html

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 07:55

Re: Suggest easy combos

The point is that the power of a species matters most in early D. Afterwards, it's not so much the species as the ability of the player to pay attention. What helps a player pay attention varies from person to person, and I've heard many players claim that having a powerful mid-game character makes them more likely to lose than having a weak one.

Just because a character is strong mid-game doesn't mean you're more likely to win since the main mid-game killer is inattention, not being too weak.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 14:54

Re: Suggest easy combos

I guess both camps are correct in the discussion. Pure Dg casters are much worse than pure casters with god because they don't have guaranteed spells (so they can have no choice but to branch into other schools) and don't have a guaranteed way to restore mana. Optimal Dg casters are better than optimal casters with god because it means you are a hybrid who has a good weapon at min delay and excellent defenses.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:00

Re: Suggest easy combos

duvessa wrote:And the XP aptitude doesn't affect anything in Sandman25's test; potion of experience always gives 750*(new XL) skill experience.


I meant that in real game DE (-1 XP) would reach XL 3 slightly faster than Dg (-2 XP) and would get +1 Int from the level up (assuming player picks Int which is optimal for DEFE)

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:04

Re: Suggest easy combos

Hellmonk wrote:Please explain why you think luck is more important than skill past the early game. When I die past the early game, it's always because I did something really dumb or stopped thinking for a while and tabbed into some stuff or got greedy and tried to fight something I shouldn't have.

Or you encounter a perfect storm of lethality that you didn't know existed because you haven't gotten that far enough times. Sheer ignorance has killed more of my ~XL20 characters than anything else.
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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:08

Re: Suggest easy combos

Again, I'd like to mention a fun detail about the linear nature of time.

If you take a bunch of games played by bad players or with bad characters, knowing they're going to die at some point in the game, with an equal % chance on each floor to die, those statistics will look like the early game is more dangerous. Why? Because if you die on D1 you can't die in zot. If you die in lair you can't die in zot. The fact that you had a 10% chance to die on each floor means in fact, the game was equally difficult the whole time, yet the statistics will clearly show more early game deaths, because you get a lot more chances to die early game than you do late game.

Boring list of basic math stuff here:

Out of 100 games by this theoretical player, with a 10% chance to die on each floor:
Spoiler: show
10 games end on d1 (10% of 100 is 10, now there are 90 games left)
9 games end on d2(10% of 90 is 9, now there are 81 games left)
8 games end on d3(73 games left)
7 games end on d4 (66 left)
7 games end on d5 (rounding has to happen eventually, 57 games left
6 games end on d6 (51 games left)
5 games end on d7 (46 remain)
5 games end on d8 (41)
4 games on d9 (37)
4 games on d10 (33)
3 games on l1 (30)
3 games on l2 (27
3 on l3 (24)
2 on l4 (22)
2 on l5 (20)
2 on l6 (18)
2 on l7 (wow, so few deaths here, the game must be easier, right? 16 games left)
2 on l8 (14)
1 game on d11 (13)
1 on d12 (12)
1 on d13 (11)
1 on d14 (10)
1 on d15 (9)
1 in snake1 (8)
1 in snake2(7)
1 in snake 3 (6)
1 in snake 4 (5)
1 in snake 5 (4)
1 in swamp 1 (3)
1 in swamp 2 (2)
1 in swamp 3 (1)
Just for fun lets say the last try beats the odds and wins. Lets give the poor guy a break, huh?


Ok, so lets look at the statistics. out of 100 games, 65 ended before lair. OMG! So early game is harder! But no, of course that's not true, we know we set this up so every single floor is equally hard. But since you have to not die a lot of times to get a chance to die in late game, obviously your deaths are going to be concentrated in early game. Note that this remains true even if we set pre lair death chance at 10%, and post lair death chance at 99%! More characters will die pre lair than post lair, even though post lair is almost impossible to win! Yet 65% of people would die in pre-lair, and only 34% in post lair.

So obviously the fact that more people die in the early game is not in any way a supporting argument for the fact that it's harder. It's actually quite obvious if you think about it. The early game would have to be quite dramatically easier than the late game for more people to die late than early.

Going by that line of thinking, very few people die over the age of 110. Lots and lots and lots of people die under the age of 110. But, a person over age 110 is a lot more likely to die than a younger person (It's actually guaranteed, as people are not immortal). The reason less people die over 110 years old is that they never get the chance! The reason less people die in late game is because they never get the chance!

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:14

Re: Suggest easy combos

In order to make a statistics based judgement of difficulty we'd have to actually look at the proportion of deaths on each floor. Then we could test how well the data fits a few models, including the 'every floor is equally difficult' model.

Hand-waving is not an appropriate substitution for analysis.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:26

Re: Suggest easy combos

I think it is worth noting that while dg/magic classes have a high chance of winning in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, they are not always easier for a new player, just because they have a lot of strategic options and skilling decisions to make. (Whereas Trog/a fighter with some other generically powerful god allows for a more linear playstyle)

Sar

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:29

Re: Suggest easy combos

Wrt early game difficulty: You can also try playing the game and realize that a fresh outta D:1 character has very few consumables, most of which are not identified and none of which are guaranteed to be useful, no god (unless you picked Be in which case grats on your win!) and bad defences. A few bad rolls, and a battle with a single adder can go very poorly. Comparatively, midgame characters have a bunch of consumables, evocables, piety and hopefully non-useless skills. Monsters get tougher too, sure, but it's doable.
Last edited by Sar on Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:35, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:31

Re: Suggest easy combos

With careful play by a semi-decent player the later game is much less deadly though. For example, in 0.17.1 I've played 38 games (offline so you'll have to take my word for it). I won 23 times, died once in elf (with 2 runes), died 3 times on D5-D9, and died 11 times on D1-D4. So my overall win rate is 60.5%, but my win rate after reaching lair is 95.8%. Looked at another way, I have a 63.2% chance of getting to lair, but once I'm at lair I have a 95.8% chance of going on to win. I think I'm a useful data point in this because unlike many better players I don't get bored and I always play very carefully.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:35

Re: Suggest easy combos

Sar wrote:Wrt early game difficulty: You can also try playing the game and realize that a fresh outta D:1 character has very few consumables, most of which are not identified and none of which is guaranteed to be useful, no god (unless you picked Be in which case grats on your win!) and bad defences. A few bad rolls, and a battle with a single adder can go very poorly. Comparatively, midgame characters have a bunch of consumables, evocables, piety and hopefully non-useless skills. Monsters get tougher too, sure, but it's doable.


Also, in the early game you can die in two hits from full health no problem at all.

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Post Thursday, 16th June 2016, 15:58

Re: Suggest easy combos

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:In order to make a statistics based judgement of difficulty we'd have to actually look at the proportion of deaths on each floor. Then we could test how well the data fits a few models, including the 'every floor is equally difficult' model.

Hand-waving is not an appropriate substitution for analysis.

I'm not the one making the "indisputable" claim here. I'm pointing out the commonly accepted claim is backed up by extremely faulty evidence. The ones making the claim are the ones handwaving. In fact I used rigorous and accurate math to prove my point that more characters die in early game even when you set the difficulty to be harder later in the game. No handwaving there.

Note there is a difference between "Early game is more luck based" and "If you get past early game you should always win". I certainly agree very early game is more luck based.

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 00:06

Re: Suggest easy combos

So this thread took off while I wasn't checking it, but let's respond to page 1:

duvessa wrote:
tasonir wrote:I'm not sure about the exact math but I'd wager that at a full +15 stats, that's worth more damage/accuracy than heroism is. For the record, I'm assuming that you already have your weapon at min delay, because if you're taking a weapon from .75 speed to .5 speed (assuming the best case scenario with a quick weapon) then that's a huge increase. But if the weapon's not getting faster, I'd say chei's a lot more damage/accuracy.

I'll certainly concede that heroism is helpful a lot earlier on, as it kicks in at 1* and at that point you probably aren't at min delay, but by the time 5/6* rolls around, heroism probably isn't giving you much of a speed increase anymore, unless you have bad weapon aptitudes.
Yeah, this is a really compelling argument if you completely ignore that haste and finesse exist, and you train your skills 5 levels higher than you should with heroism...

I was responding to this exact quote, from the post right above mine:
The damage bonus from 10 Str is a thing, but, say, Okawaru's Heroism damage bonus would be more significant. Dex gives bonus to accuracy (again, Hero is better) and EV (I dunno if Hero is better, but it's comparable).

It was a simple comparison of just strength vs heroism. And while I'm not terribly sure about the 10 strength point, I think by the time you ramp up to 15 the 5 additional stats, plus your higher skill levels outweigh the flat 5 skill levels. I wasn't claiming Chei > Okawaru - although that's also true, it's just not what I was saying! :P I merely wanted to say that having the +15 stats is similar to having heroism on at all times, in the case where you have enough weapon skill for min delay. Certainly you could undertrain your skills, but most people train skills they rely on fairly high with or without heroism. And of course heroism is more useful right at the * piety level, when you probably have 6 skill in your weapon, suddenly going up to 11 is a massive increase.

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 00:19

Re: Suggest easy combos

tasonir wrote:I merely wanted to say that having the +15 stats is similar to having heroism on at all times, in the case where you have enough weapon skill for min delay.
Which is a case that doesn't make any sense! Why would you train your weapon skill to min delay if you have Heroism? You should train it to 5 levels below min delay instead. You are trying to compare something to Heroism while completely ignoring one of the biggest effects of Heroism: saving lots of xp.

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 06:47

Re: Suggest easy combos

I find the easiest way to reduce deaths due to simple slips is to simply stop movement when a monster is encountered. Depending on play style you will stay put, engage in explored areas or head to a wall or confined passage.

I mostly find myself dying from monsters that pop into existence while holding down cntrl+i. Or holding down cntrl+i to fight something while not leaving that tile and getting hit hard. I noticed moving after getting hit hard tends to help. I think it is based on nothing more than my musings.

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 07:31

Re: Suggest easy combos

dowan wrote:In fact I used rigorous and accurate math to prove my point that more characters die in early game even when you set the difficulty to be harder later in the game. No handwaving there.

Sure. However a model in which the early floors are more difficult would also have more characters die in the early game. The question is, what is the actual proportion?

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 09:53

Re: Suggest easy combos

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:
dowan wrote:In fact I used rigorous and accurate math to prove my point that more characters die in early game even when you set the difficulty to be harder later in the game. No handwaving there.

Sure. However a model in which the early floors are more difficult would also have more characters die in the early game. The question is, what is the actual proportion?

Even this doesn't give you what you want because the data is polluted by the large number of bad players. A typical bad player might get to lair 20 times out of 100 games, and die 19 times after getting to lair. So it looks like pre-lair kills 80% of characters, and post lair kills 95% of characters that have made it that far. To get a good picture of which parts of the game are intrinsically harder you'd want to look at good players actually playing well (not drunk, not following weird conducts etc.). This is easier said than done.

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 12:01

Re: Suggest easy combos

I'm on undecided whether it's useful or not to decouple difficulty from 'bad' play. Isn't the fact that 'optimal play' doesn't seem obvious to many players part of the difficulty?

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Sar

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 12:24

Re: Suggest easy combos

Yeah, trying to determine the actual difficulty of each portion of the game is a lot harder than compiling some statistics. As well, like you point out, people are doing different things which mess up results. I know I'm a lot more careful with a character who makes it past a certain point in the game, which seems to be the opposite of what some other people say.

The simple model I used only shows that you can have more people die in early game with even game difficulty, or even higher late game difficulty. All it proves is a high % of early game deaths proves nothing. Someone with a much better understanding of statistics, and a much better ability to explain themselves would be needed to have any hope at trying to come up with a meaningful definition of difficulty at each portion of the game, although the human factor may well make it impossible to define.

Also, there is a fundamental question of what people even mean when they say "difficult' or "easy". To an experienced surgeon, removing someone's appendix might be "easy". But the average person would certainly call that a difficult task! To duvessa, getting the vaults 5 rune is easy, to the average player that's an extremely hard part of the game.

Anyway, I've been wildly off topic as usual. I should probably recommend some easy combos, using some definitions of easy:
Simple powerful combos: MiBe, MiGl, GrFi, HoFi... Just pick a weapon, train your weapon, dodging, fighting, later on some armor, maybe some throwing. Take trog, oka, maybe Ru. Simple, lots of tabbing. Mi and HO get more HP than most, Gr doesn't but gets awesome AC, which is nice too.
Less simple powerful combos: HuIE, DrIE. Humans don't seem impressive, but levelling up extra fast makes a big difference. Draconians get free AC, and extra HP. If you're lucky, maybe you'll get a good color, but if not, you're still good.
Also, a CeHu is quite powerful, although I can't actually recommend playing them, as their bad aptitudes tend to make them kind of unfun to play for me. The fact that you have tons of HP and can run from almost anything makes the game pretty easy though.

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Post Friday, 17th June 2016, 18:36

Re: Suggest easy combos

In order to make a statistics based judgement of difficulty we'd have to actually look at the proportion of deaths on each floor.

This is very easy but I'm too lazy to do much of it.

18% of players die on d1 (I used all !boring recent games); 21% of players who didn't die on d:1 die on d:2, etc. IIRC last I checked the most deadly floors were d:2-d:4 or something, but I'm too lazy to do it again.

For me personally I die on d:4 15% of the time I reach d:4, on d:3 13% of the time I reach d:3. Nowhere later than that is anywhere close to as deadly for me.

The problem is this still does have a selection bias; weak characters don't survive to later in the game to possibly die on (say) v:5.

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Post Saturday, 18th June 2016, 21:11

Re: Suggest easy combos

I have no proof, but it seems intuitively quite possible that floor difficulty is a function of combo. I would expect different combos (played 'optimally') to have different power curves.
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