The Tavern

(Keep in mind that, my strongest character was Minotaur under Trog who only reached level 14, so I am no expert at this game. Most of my judgement is likely to be based on numbers. Please feel free to show how certain statistics can be swayed by the gameplay.)

To me, the Demigod Species is by no means weak, and I often pick it if I don't want to have the dilemma of choosing a god. Their ability to have double stat gain is very useful, allowing them to have very good attributes early in the game.

However, I don't like how while they have much better, health, stats, and mana, they pay by basically being humans that advance 5/6 as fast in skills and lose the ability to have a god. This is a trade-off that I find a little unfair, as the same humans, while lacking 13 attribute points, so having 75% of the attributes of a Demigod, make up for it somewhat with 20% more skill xp, and make up for it a lot by having a god that can greatly increase their capabilities. This no-god problem applies especially to good gods like TSO and Zin, who, from what I have read on their god descriptions, are quite useful when the character wants to go to the lower levels of the dungeon. I feel like this discourages demigods' chances of acquiring 15 runes (it is possible that I'm not looking at the big picture in this case), creating a direct choice scenario that is, from what I have seen of the dcss design policy, not a good thing (again, I might not be looking at the big picture; I only started playing this game 2 weeks ago).

I think Demigods should be more resistant to mutation (antithesis to Demonspawn logic), and have their sustain attributes ability be nerfed instead of removed.

Another change, although I don't know if it is logical, is for Demigods to have increased aptitudes based the background they choose, so that a Fire elementalist might be related to some obscure deity of fire, and be more attuned to fire and magic, and a Fighter could be related to some obscure deity of battle, and would be more attuned to weaponry and physical prowess. The gods that can be worshipped are probably too prideful or looked up to too much to consider banging "A MEEUH MOHTAL". I kind of thought of not writing this paragraph, since it might have already been suggested and the change would mean that the demigod's game would be a little too planned out from the start, but I still thought it was a pretty cool idea that also added to the implication that a demigod is of divine origin.

Another alternative to this is to just give me some advice as to how to play a demigod, and certain classes that . I find them quite fun as conjurers and fighters, but I often end up dying when they are at experience level 6-10.

Mod edit: moved from GDD to advice.

To properly leverage a demigod's big stats, you'll most likely want to play a mage, a conjurer most likely. They're fairly easy to play, train conjurations until you can memorise searing ray(at XL2) then train conjurations/spellcasting 50/50 until you can memorise battlesphere. Then do Conjurations/Charms 50/50 until battlesphere is below, or around, 10% fail rate and then battlesphere + magic dart should carry you through lair,orc,dungeon and beyond.

Although, casters are a little trickier to play than melee, so I would really just recommend playing Minotaur berserker to get a grip of the game before anything. Demise AU's videos are pretty good like his Hill Orc Berserker playthrough (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkFpSmjkeY)

Paperbell wrote:However, I don't like how while they have much better, health, stats, and mana, they pay by basically being humans that advance 5/6 as fast in skills and lose the ability to have a god. This is a trade-off that I find a little unfair, as the same humans, while lacking 13 attribute points, so having 75% of the attributes of a Demigod, make up for it somewhat with 20% more skill xp

if you play any caster start with hu/dg you'll notice demigods are better at every stage in the early game with better success rates/spellpower despite the -1 aptitude

Races are not meant to be fully balanced against each other. So, it's not really productive to compare Dg to Hu,

For Dg, the main idea is that you can't worship a god and you gain all XP/skills slowly. To compensate for this, they are given higher stats/HP/MP. That's it.

As for advice about how to play Dg, since you say that you are new to this game: firstly, it would probably be better to play with normal races, because gods are very strong. One can always come back to Dg once you get a hang of the game, its tactics, the strategy and the various backgrounds.

For a Dg, all the recommended backgrounds on the character selection screen are decent. Typically a "mage" is good to use their high stats, but Dg should try to become hybrids as one goes into the middle game, because they're good at melee as well. For a more "fighter" type starting character, DgTm is good because high stats help unarmed combat with forms. Tm is relatively hard though.

Dg is already stronger than Hu for every non-zealot background. HP and attributes are good.

duvessa wrote:Dg is already stronger than Hu for every non-zealot background. HP and attributes are good.

This is bad advice for a player who has never won.

Being unable to worship TSO/Zin for extended is a good thing IMHO, we need more species like Dg, Mu, Vp, Gh.

Rast wrote:
duvessa wrote:Dg is already stronger than Hu for every non-zealot background. HP and attributes are good.

This is bad advice for a player who has never won.

Why? It is true not matter how scarce experience the player has. A new player could just try to understand the reasons why it is true, improve and get better in gameplay and in playing Dg (or other species, generally speaking) - or just whine. To be clear, I'm not addressing to the OP who wrote a very polite and detailed post.

That said, I don't agree 100% with Duvessa statement, as I think a Dg is weaker than a better than average race like Hu with a good god in two moment of the game, specifically during mid-game (from Lair-ish to Vault) and in post-end, both moments where god powers give an extremely strong boost to char strengths (moreover, during mid-game Dg's low exp curve tends to offset high attributes bonuses)

@OP: Regarding your suggestion: mutations resistance could maybe kinda fit with Dg theme, but it's totally useless in a 3 runes game and just a convenience in post end; I think it wouldn't be absolutely worth the loss of their high attributes characteristics, both lore and balance wise.

The 2nd suggestion on the paper looks like cool, but has the major drawback that it would influence all the game, while backgrounds (barring zealots) have the strict concept of being something that help\influence only early game - aka up temple\1st rune depending on the background\floor lot\god etc, so I don't think it could be ever accepted into DCSS.

Regarding "how to play Dg": as suggested by other players, best way is to choose a book backgrounds, as those benefits most from Dg strengths (high attributes). This because you can get easier and faster spells online, very high spellpower, while having higher AC\EV\HP\MP than average. My suggestion is to choose a book background whose starting spells , in order: are useful for long time (so you can offeset the major drawback of not having guaranteed spell drop by a God), have good single school\lv5 or so spells (so you can cast in heavy armor easily) and eventually enjoy high spellpower (because of high int).

Some suggestions would be, in not particular order: IE, Su, Ne, EE

If Dg could happen upon better random artifacts in lieu with their Demigod nature I would be Hype because my sense of balance is based on Cool, Puns and Jokes.

Vajrapani wrote:To properly leverage a demigod's big stats, you'll most likely want to play a mage, a conjurer most likely. They're fairly easy to play, train conjurations until you can memorise searing ray(at XL2) then train conjurations/spellcasting 50/50 until you can memorise battlesphere. Then do Conjurations/Charms 50/50 until battlesphere is below, or around, 10% fail rate and then battlesphere + magic dart should carry you through lair,orc,dungeon and beyond.

This works very nicely. I died in lair 3 as a level 11 demigod. I underestimated the spiny frogs, probably because as my furthest run (minotaur berserker), I was able to cut them down quite easily and block their attacks with a shield, making them seem harmless to me.

nago wrote:@OP: Regarding your suggestion: mutations resistance could maybe kinda fit with Dg theme, but it's totally useless in a 3 runes game and just a convenience in post end; I think it wouldn't be absolutely worth the loss of their high attributes characteristics, both lore and balance wise.

Sorry, I forgot to clarify that I wanted the higher attributes and attribute gain to stay, although it would probably make demigod overpowered.

My theory is that DG's got a stat nerf to make Chei look awesome. DG was fine when they had more stat ups.

The biggest weakness of Demigod is that Dg is not fun.

Dg is a good human until like D:6 when a human can gain access to god abilities. Then it starts to become a bad to slightly better human depending on what god the hypothetical human chose (assuming it took one that isn't negative). it depends on where you declare the game over and the remainder an utter triviality. If this happens before D:6 or so then Dg is better. If not Hu is better, imo. This point seems to have moved upwards over the years, so who knows. But, I would recommend trying to leverage the excessive starting intelligence by playing an elementalist background, but this can become a pain when you fail to find book drops that are congruent with your skills, forcing you to become some kind of crappy hybrid. Demigod warriors are alright, but again suffer from the lack of a god to improve their gear or improve their fighting capabilities.

Having played a DgTm they don't seem to fall off or become weak at any point.

Also, OP, Demigods have Sustain Attributes so that they always have access to their racial.

PowerOfKaishin wrote:DgTm they don't seem to fall off or become weak at any point.

That's more of the Transmuter part being broken as always that needs a serious damage nerf sometime soon. UC+Tmut isn't supposed to be so strong that you can 1v1 a Hell Sentinel by level 10 with a D:4 investment bladehands. Anyone with a working pair of eyeballs will realize that something is clearly wrong with that.

It seems like some people don't realize how powerful high stats can make a character. Some key milestones that are really easy for DG to reach and early are 20str, 25Int, 20dex.

With those stats you can wear full plate and dragon armours without an issue. You should be able to reach max spell power with one enhancer with 25int, when spellcasting/schools max. And, 20 dex gives solid returns on dodge when you train it.

DG can get these stats in early game. Then you have a choices. Aim for 35 INT if you don't want to use any enhancers at all for near max spellpower. Raise STR to recover lost dodge due to heavy armour, and increase damage. Or raise Dex to maximize dodge. Maybe shields I don't remember at the moment.

With high stats alone you can breeze through the game. This is why you need no god with DG.

ONIchinchin wrote:
PowerOfKaishin wrote:DgTm they don't seem to fall off or become weak at any point.

That's more of the Transmuter part being broken as always that needs a serious damage nerf sometime soon. UC+Tmut isn't supposed to be so strong that you can 1v1 a Hell Sentinel by level 10 with a D:4 investment bladehands. Anyone with a working pair of eyeballs will realize that something is clearly wrong with that.

Considering that Blade Hands is pretty much the only thing keeping most transmuters from getting turned into a fine paste somewhere between Lair and Vaults, I'm fairly OK with its damage output. And I think the only way an XL 10 transmuter, even a Dg, is not getting mulched by a Hell Sentinel is either killholing + lucky rolls or "not fighting it."

Blade hands sacrafices defenses and spell success rates for extreme damage in melee. It also takes a massive XP investment to get online.

PowerOfKaishin wrote:Also, OP, Demigods have Sustain Attributes so that they always have access to their racial.

But wasn't sustain attributes as a whole removed in the most recent update?

ONIchinchin wrote:That's more of the Transmuter part being broken as always that needs a serious damage nerf sometime soon.

Huh, that's the first time I've heard that Tm is too strong a background. It's pretty a pretty XP-heavy background -- you get to to train up tmut and maybe poison and ice while also getting UC and some defenses running. Dg stats help mitigate that but I'd recon Tm is far from the strongest book start.

I think people have different things in mind when talking about Tm being easy or hard. Transformed UC allows to kill orb of fire in 2 attacks, for example.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I think people have different things in mind when talking about Tm being easy or hard. Transformed UC allows to kill orb of fire in 2 attacks, for example.

So they mean that it's easy for about 1 out of every 100 characters?

Good players can streak Tm. Sticks to snakes is OP spell.

If you use UC and get Statue Form castable, you should reliably fetch 15 runes.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Good players can streak Tm. Sticks to snakes is OP spell.

The amount of arrows in the early D is limited enough so that the early game is still hard for Tm (according to my experience).

Good players can streak mummies of Chei so that says nothing about combos :)

UC+Statue Form+(Chei or not) combo is ludicrously overpowered, but IMO, Tm is not a strong background.

The strength of background should be judged with heavily weighting early gameplay.
Early Tm play is hard. StS is OP but you should raise too many skills at once - Unarmed, Fighting, Dodging, Transmutation, Spellcasting, possibly Stealth, 1~2Lv Poison, Ice.

For UC+Statue Form gameplay, I'd rather pick OpFi over OpTm, and FeEn over FeTm.

Thankfully you don't have to use your opinion to determine if Tm is bad. It comes dead last for win rate among all currently playable classes (0.45%). Narrow that to players that have at least one win of every background (Sequell's greaterplayers) and it is still in last place (3.71%). It doesn't get much better if you just look at the same measures for the last few weeks, where Tm is second last (0.45%) ahead of only AK for all players, and third last (5.22%) ahead of only chaos knight and AK for greaterplayers.

RBrandon wrote:Thankfully you don't have to use your opinion to determine if Tm is bad. It comes dead last for win rate among all currently playable classes (0.45%). Narrow that to players that have at least one win of every background (Sequell's greaterplayers) and it is still in last place (3.71%). It doesn't get much better if you just look at the same measures for the last few weeks, where Tm is second last (0.45%) ahead of only AK for all players, and third last (5.22%) ahead of only chaos knight and AK for greaterplayers.

This is a substantially worse measure than personal opinion is

papilio wrote:For UC+Statue Form gameplay, I'd rather pick OpFi over OpTm, and FeEn over FeTm.

For completeness I've also used EE as a background, the earth magic gets reused when you eventually find statue form, and if you have statue form castable you can do high damage with very low UC, so it's safe to pick that up later on.

I've also done Hu starts, with slings, because they have a lot of ammo early on and are very strong early on, and you're planning on switching to melee later anyways, so them being weak later on doesn't matter to you.

In short, there's lots of options, find one you like

Statue Form and Necromutation, of course, are the best spells ever. There is really little reason to train anything but TMut, Necro, and Earth.

prozacelf wrote:Statue Form and Necromutation, of course, are the best spells ever. There is really little reason to train anything but TMut, Necro, and Earth.

I am not sure if it was intended as sarcasm/joke but it is literally true for UC character who goes for 15 runes. As Tm you even train them in this order (Ice Form/Blade Hands -> Animate Dead -> Statue Form)

duvessa wrote:
RBrandon wrote:Thankfully you don't have to use your opinion to determine if Tm is bad. It comes dead last for win rate among all currently playable classes (0.45%). Narrow that to players that have at least one win of every background (Sequell's greaterplayers) and it is still in last place (3.71%). It doesn't get much better if you just look at the same measures for the last few weeks, where Tm is second last (0.45%) ahead of only AK for all players, and third last (5.22%) ahead of only chaos knight and AK for greaterplayers.
This is a substantially worse measure than personal opinion is

I don't know, I don't really trust personal opinion much. I agree that the statistics have a lot of noise in them and it's hard to control for skill/how much effort people are playing with, but I'd still trust it over one person's opinion.

For example, I think Chei is the strongest god. Do you believe me?

Technically Chei is the strongest god, lol. +15 STR les' go

OP: I know Sustain Abilities got removed as a ring but I'm fairly certain Dg still has it. That would be weird to take it away. You mentioned this removal as though it were a recent change. I don't know if SA has been messed with recently.

Oh, and I would hardly call statue form UC OP for its ability to trivialize something that attempts at balance do not generally include: extended.

It does polarize Op though. They lose no slots nor body armour and incur only the small DEX malus and the slow movement speed. Trivializing a race that would otherwise be fairly difficult the entire game seems like it could use some looking in to.

tasonir wrote:For example, I think Chei is the strongest god. Do you believe me?

No but I also don't believe Tm is the worst background

tasonir wrote:I don't know, I don't really trust personal opinion much. I agree that the statistics have a lot of noise in them and it's hard to control for skill/how much effort people are playing with, but I'd still trust it over one person's opinion.

personal opinion from players who are capable of 65%+ hyper winrate is the closest thing you can get to objective truth about relative crawl balance assessment; there's too much noise in the data from players doing terrible things (intentionally and otherwise) to pull meaningful information from sequell without tempering both your queries and the subsequent analysis with a very healthy dose of preexisting game knowledge

just remember that the opinions of something like 99.95% of players are more misleading than the data

Implojin wrote:
tasonir wrote:I don't know, I don't really trust personal opinion much. I agree that the statistics have a lot of noise in them and it's hard to control for skill/how much effort people are playing with, but I'd still trust it over one person's opinion.

personal opinion from players who are capable of 65%+ hyper winrate is the closest thing you can get to objective truth about relative crawl balance assessment; there's too much noise in the data from players doing terrible things (intentionally and otherwise) to pull meaningful analysis from sequell without tempering it with a very healthy dose of preexisting game knowledge

just remember to mentally filter out opinions from 99.9% of players because they're more misleading than the data

So, my viewpoint is that game balance should not be based entirely on optimal play. In that sense, using the best players as a gauge of balance is not, in fact, the best plan. Remember, crawl isn't meant to be a competitive game. It's not like a fighting game.

I think this thread was finished when it was moved to advice and then nago gave the advice. Not intended as a slight, but if you've only been playing for two weeks and haven't gotten past lair you're not in any position to effectively evaluate demigods. There are people who have played crawl for (I guess) years who can't do that, and their ideas of what to focus on as important are all over the place. You can see some of that in this thread, in fact.

Because of some emphasis I read on the importance of backgrounds, I'd like to suggest not thinking about those as static or definitive. I know the whole 'fighter'; 'caster' lexicon is never going to go away but it just doesn't mean anything. Unlike in a lot of rpgs, character development in crawl is sort of a sandbox. So when you think like, I'm a caster, so I'm going to play like this and this, it's a lot like roleplaying your way through a game of GTA as a soldier because the first car you stole was a jeep. A background's just some stuff you start the game with - it's your first car, so use it to drive somewhere and get another car.

mikee wrote:So when you think like, I'm a caster, so I'm going to play like this and this, it's a lot like roleplaying your way through a game of GTA as a soldier because the first car you stole was a jeep. A background's just some stuff you start the game with - it's your first car, so use it to drive somewhere and get another car.

It depends on player goal. If players are going for greatertroll, they join Trog as TrFE. If players want to play a troll with fire storm, their TrFE's join Vehumet. Both ways are ok and we cannot argue which one is better or supposed by devs. Depending on my mood I play one way or another.

The Tavern

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