Amulet of Harm drain


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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 00:21

Amulet of Harm drain

I equip-ID'ed an Amulet of Harm at XL2. I'm a Summoner and so took it off.

The drain nearly dropped me to all-zeroes skill-wise. I only just now finished working it off at the high end of XL6. I'm amazed I made it.

Is it intended that Harm is that punishing at XL2??
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 00:24

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Yes. You can always just leave it on.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 00:27

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

This is why I always identify scroll all amulets until I have Harm and Faith identified, then I wear ID them afterward. Maybe even identify them still if Inaccuracy is still not known, depending on the amount of remove curse scrolls I get (the game likes to be a dick and give zero remove curse scrolls as soon as I put on something cursed...) You can check what is identified and unidentified with backslash ('\').

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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 00:42

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

It would be good for "Harm to not exist, but since that won't ever happen, can we change the penalty to some temporary status (call it whatever you want) on removal that keeps the increased incoming damage without increasing outgoing damage? That would remove the annoying id minigame behavior and actually prevent tactical swapping like *drain is supposed to.

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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 01:43

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

mattlistener wrote:I equip-ID'ed an Amulet of Harm at XL2. I'm a Summoner and so took it off.

The drain nearly dropped me to all-zeroes skill-wise. I only just now finished working it off at the high end of XL6. I'm amazed I made it.

Is it intended that Harm is that punishing at XL2??

Yes. Harm was added to the game to make it suboptimal to use amulets before about lair. That is the only reason for harm to exist.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 04:29

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

WingedEspeon wrote:
mattlistener wrote:I equip-ID'ed an Amulet of Harm at XL2. I'm a Summoner and so took it off.

The drain nearly dropped me to all-zeroes skill-wise. I only just now finished working it off at the high end of XL6. I'm amazed I made it.

Is it intended that Harm is that punishing at XL2??

Yes. Harm was added to the game to make it suboptimal to use amulets before about lair. That is the only reason for harm to exist.

I actually use ?id on amulets now, there are less critical-to-id potions now so it balances out.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 07:36

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

If you think it is suboptimal to wearID amulets because of harm, then you don't understand the statistics involved and you vastly underrate the utility of the harm amulet.

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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 08:15

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:If you think it is suboptimal to wearID amulets because of harm, then you don't understand the statistics involved and you vastly underrate the utility of the harm amulet.


Statistics depends on player. Some players don't need any amulet for killing/escaping from monsters, they just want to live when autoexplore finds a Centaur in the open.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 10:22

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

If your character is so OP that the improvement gained by having an amulet makes no realistic difference to your survivability, then arguments about optimisation are already beside the point, arent they?

All characters can be improved by wearing an amulet. Harm is only one of many amulets. Statistically, all characters are likely to be improved on average by wear IDing the first amulet they find. And if it is harm, and if you really don't want to wear it, the drain effect is overrated anyhow.

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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 11:36

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:If your character is so OP that the improvement gained by having an amulet makes no realistic difference to your survivability, then arguments about optimisation are already beside the point, arent they?


There is a wrong premise here. I am not saying I play OP characters, I am saying some players play well enough to have higher chance to win when they don't receive 120% damage.
If you want an example, let's assume there are 3 early Centaurs on average. Without amulet of harm, I can kill 2 of them without any consumables (just tanking damage or luring them around a corner depending on terrain). With amulet of harm, I can kill just 1 of them without any consumables so here harm made me spend an extra consumable and I would be dead if I didn't have the extra consumable. Note this is not OP character, just a character who uses consumables in emergencies, not in typical fights. If you are playing a very weak character who uses consumables in most fights, you still should not use harm as you are very likely to lose the character before having a chance to use a consumable.

All characters can be improved by wearing an amulet. Harm is only one of many amulets. Statistically, all characters are likely to be improved on average by wear IDing the first amulet they find. And if it is harm, and if you really don't want to wear it, the drain effect is overrated anyhow.


Let's measure improvements here, conversation about quality without numbers is meaningless. All characters can be improved by 3-5% by an amulet. All characters can be deteriorated by 20% by amulet of harm. Is it still a good idea to wear-id amulets?

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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 12:31

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:If your character is so OP that the improvement gained by having an amulet makes no realistic difference to your survivability, then arguments about optimisation are already beside the point, arent they?

All characters can be improved by wearing an amulet. Harm is only one of many amulets. Statistically, all characters are likely to be improved on average by wear IDing the first amulet they find. And if it is harm, and if you really don't want to wear it, the drain effect is overrated anyhow.


There is survivability gained through increased defence and survivability gained through increased attack. Not all playstyles see an increase in attack as worth a decrease in defense. I have played a bit with harm after wear-iding it. It was an interesting change for a conjurer, and gave some fun, but it's the kind of thing that only is advantageous in 1vs1 situations, until you get some mass damage spells.

I mean, let's suppose that you are fighting a group of orcs in a corridor, and one has a trident. So you are fighting two orcs at the same time. You inflict 30% more damage, and you suffer 20% more damage. Let's assume you need 3 turns to kill the front orc, and 3 turns to kill the trident orc (they can wear armour, after all, and you can miss, and so on). The following numbers are percentages; 100% is the equivalent of the damage caused during a turn without wearing harm).

So you have 3 turns in which you suffer 120% damage by two orcs while causing 130% damage to the front orc. 120*3*2 = 720% (instead of 600%). You inflict 130*3 = 390% damage (instead of 300%).
Then the front orc drops. Now you are facing a single orc, which inflicts just 120*3 = 360% damage before he dies (instead of 300). You still inflict your 390% damage.

In the end, the orcs caused 120+60 = 180% more damage, and you inflicted 90+90=180% more damage. It merely evened out.

And this is just 2 enemies. Add in an orc wizard blinking to your side of the corridor. Now you are being hit by 3 orcs.
So we start out with you being hit by the orcs, each orc lasts 3 turns. 120*3*3 = 1080% (instead of 900). You hit one orc three times. 130*3 = 360 % (instead of 300).
Now we are again at two orcs. Let's repeat the numbers as before.
So you have 3 turns in which you suffer 120% damage by two orcs while causing 130% damage to the front orc. 120*3*2 = 720% (instead of 600%). You inflict 130*3 = 390% damage (instead of 300%).
Then the front orc drops. Now you are facing a single orc, which inflicts just 120*3 = 360% damage before he dies (instead of 300). You still inflict your 390% damage.

In the end, you suffered 1080+720+360 = 2160% damage, instead of 1800. You inflicted 390 x 3 = 1170 damage, instead of 900. So the orcs inflicted you the equivalent of 360% more of their turns, while you only inflicted the equivalent of 270% more of your turns. The amulet of harm caused you a net loss.

I won't pretend I'm a mathematician, and I am sure that a lot of people here can make far better or more in-depth and accurate calculations, but these are those on which I choose what amulets to wear. Since you can't always choose where you will fight, I think amulet of harm has too many drawbacks. To be used well, it would need to be swappable, because its utility is highly situational. But then it would be boring. So I don't use it.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 12:39

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

What the .... hell?
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 13:00

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Harm is not dangerous in a lot of situations, but then a lot of situations just aren't dangerous. However, when enemies have ranged attacks with good accuracy (centaurs are a good example) then the amulet hurts a lot.

When there are multiple enemies the extra danger inflicted by Harm goes up exponentially.

In some ways Harm rewards behaviour that is already good (one enemy at a time, kill at range, avoid taking damage). Players who already play well are more able to deal with the effect, but then they are usually more able to deal with any effect.

I don't wear-ID early amulets with most characters. You are more likely to get a useful amulet than a bad one, but the bad one could be lethal in the early game. In my view it's not worth the trade-off. A bit later in the game the drain becomes much easier to deal with and more consumables make it possible to deal with bad fights. Having remove curse is also nice, because Inaccuracy is annoying.

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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 14:12

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:A bit later in the game the drain becomes much easier to deal with and more consumables make it possible to deal with bad fights.
Thank you. I know it's obvious, but I hadn't actually realized that having ID'd consumables makes "Harm or its *Drain less dangerous. I'll not wear-ID amulets anymore.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 16:05

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Centaurs are mentioned but there are much earlier threats:
Orc Wizard
Orc Priest
Grinder
Natasha
someone with sling/tomahawks
slug
etc..

All of them have ranged attacks and will come very early.
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Post Wednesday, 13th September 2017, 16:13

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Nebukadnezar wrote:Centaurs are mentioned but there are much earlier threats:
Orc Wizard
Orc Priest
Grinder
Natasha
someone with sling/tomahawks
slug
etc..

All of them have ranged attacks and will come very early.



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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 01:40

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

The question is not if I will improve my charater more often than not by wear IDing an amulet. The question is will I die because of skill drain from harm when I would have lived more of less often than the power increase from another amulet will let me live when I would have died.
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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 07:19

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Yes, and for a skilled player the answer is no. The skill drain is overrated. You don't need min-delay to survive. You don't need the highest level spells available to you to survive. And here's the kicker : if you can consistently get low hp species to lair, you dont need 20% of your HP to survive.

If I was running a streak, or playing an exceptionally weak character combination, I might reconsider. The funny thing about this is I think inaccuracy is a much worse amulet to find in the early game, given that it could be a long time before you find a remove curse scroll, the malus is quite bad, and the amulet has zero benefits, and of course its parked in your amulet slot now. But the focus is on harm (well its at least a question of whether it is good or not unlike inaccuracy) and the consensus is surprisingly that harm is overwhelmingly bad.

But if you ask me, that consensus is wrong.

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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 08:36

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:Yes, and for a skilled player the answer is no. The skill drain is overrated. You don't need min-delay to survive. You don't need the highest level spells available to you to survive. And here's the kicker : if you can consistently get low hp species to lair, you dont need 20% of your HP to survive.

I think this is a flawed argument. Just because something can be achieved with handicaps, that doesn't mean handicapping oneself is irrelevant, let alone good. It is possible to abandon Trog on turn 1 and win. Is it irrelevant for good players? No. Is it recommended? Haha...

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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 08:51

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:Yes, and for a skilled player the answer is no. The skill drain is overrated. You don't need min-delay to survive.


Have you tried it with casters when all your spells become barely castable? Have you tried it with starting weapon when your weapon skill becomes 0?

You don't need the highest level spells available to you to survive. And here's the kicker : if you can consistently get low hp species to lair, you dont need 20% of your HP to survive.


Exactly and you know what? Amulet of regeneration/faith/rage/reflection is not a big deal either, especially before Lair when you cannot fight long battles/have top divine abilities/high Evo/high SH.

If I was running a streak, or playing an exceptionally weak character combination, I might reconsider. The funny thing about this is I think inaccuracy is a much worse amulet to find in the early game, given that it could be a long time before you find a remove curse scroll, the malus is quite bad, and the amulet has zero benefits, and of course its parked in your amulet slot now. But the focus is on harm (well its at least a question of whether it is good or not unlike inaccuracy) and the consensus is surprisingly that harm is overwhelmingly bad.


That's because there is an easy way to deal with inaccuracy: don't wear-id amulets before you have a scroll of remove curse.

But if you ask me, that consensus is wrong.


There is no consensus, otherwise you wouldn't be arguing :)
Personally I wear-id all amulets even without scroll of remove curse but that's because I am lazy to think, I just hope to read-id scroll of remove curse for inaccuracy or plan to remove harm at XL 7-8. If pillar-dancing didn't exist, I might have to manage amulets smarter.
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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 15:18

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

It's a risk reward thing for me, most amulets don't help much, and harm hurts allot. If there where amulets that helped a character as much as harm hurt them i might take the risk more, but i don't feel like there is. When i wear id amulets i never think of what good one it might be i'm always thinking "just please don't be harm and destroy my run" so i end up scrolling them usually or wear id them before an easy part like swamp where i can work off the drain if i am low on scrolls.
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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 15:30

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

braveplatypus wrote:If there where amulets that helped a character as much as harm hurt them i might take the risk more, but i don't feel like there is.


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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 18:52

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

If you have a useful god with normal piety gain mechanics (so: normally), faith is very powerful. Use those god powers! It's not like you can stockpile endless piety.

I also don't get the hate for harm. Normally I'd probably not wear it, but it's not, like, a death sentence.
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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 19:50

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

The problem with harm is that the times when you would be saved by it is outweighed by the times you would die from it for most of the game for most players and almost certainly for melee focused characters.
If you wear one before you are say lvl8 and you take it off, it's possible to have such low skills you will basically die to what would be no trouble at all. Drain is a bit strange in that it doesn't do too much when you are high exp level but deadly when you are low exp level.

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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 19:58

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Yeah, I'm just saying "if you wear-ID an amulet and it's harm, maybe it's not optimal but you don't need to take it off and die to the next adder you see, you can just wear it for a while"
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Post Thursday, 14th September 2017, 21:10

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

It's similar to the distortion question for me. Do you keep on an item that, while situationally useful for some characters, is mostly dangerous to use in combat in order to try and build up your power level to the point where yanking it off can't outright end you? Or do you take it on the nose and risk it because you can't deal with blinking orc highpriests around while they spam smite and summon demons, or in harms case, can't deal with a significant increase to the damage numbers almost every threat in the game.

Faith is extremely good under some gods, with Trog or Makhleb it really is the jackpot. But there are also gods who don't gain as much effectiveness (dith, ash), or any at all (ru, gozag) and for their followers the amulet slot high notes are significantly muffled.

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Post Friday, 15th September 2017, 00:30

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Drain isnt a deal-breaker at any XL.

At high level, you have a ton of options and consumables, and have probably diversified your skillset as well. Monsters are worth more xp, too, so a bit of careful play and you can quickly get back up to optimal levels. If you absolutely need your highest level spells to kill something, then you are not thinking about how to change your tactics while you are under the effects. Truth is tho, at least with Harm, that you rarely cannot cast some solid midlevel spells at least. And that is all you need to win the game. Same thing with melee, really. Not at min-delay? Big whoop. You still have all your gear and potions etc, you probably have decent defenses, kill a few baddies and it just gets better and better. I swear, packs of shadow dragons are more of a concern than the amulet, and frankly they aren't that much of a concern.

At low level, it simply doesn't matter. You don't need high skills to kill a hobgoblin. You can cast a lvl 1 spell with hardly any training, and if for some reason you honestly cant, you can kill it with a +0 spear and 0 skill. Sure if you are exceptionally weak to start with, then maybe reconsider wear-ID, but for most playthroughs its not going to matter much. By the time you have advanced a floor or two, you are already getting back into shape, again you do not need to be 100% out of drain to be survivable as the monsters get tougher.

Mid-level is in the middle. If lair is honestly giving you trouble, go wipe the floor with some orcs and make it up some.

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Post Friday, 15th September 2017, 00:45

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

It is really funny to me that optimal use of "harm involves tactically swapping it off if you end up in a bad situation. Amulet reform was supposed to remove the incentives for tactically swapping amulets, so it seems like "harm is a pretty big design failure if that is the case. Given that *drain also extends the obnoxious tumor that is the crawl id minigame, I would suggest that further reform of the amulet is in order regardless of whether or not it is theoretically optimal to wear-id. Like really, I don't give a shit if it's sometimes optimal to wear, interacting with this item is annoying and it's badly designed.
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Post Friday, 15th September 2017, 00:50

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:Drain isnt a deal-breaker at any XL.

At high level, you have a ton of options and consumables, and have probably diversified your skillset as well. Monsters are worth more xp, too, so a bit of careful play and you can quickly get back up to optimal levels. If you absolutely need your highest level spells to kill something, then you are not thinking about how to change your tactics while you are under the effects. Truth is tho, at least with Harm, that you rarely cannot cast some solid midlevel spells at least. And that is all you need to win the game. Same thing with melee, really. Not at min-delay? Big whoop. You still have all your gear and potions etc, you probably have decent defenses, kill a few baddies and it just gets better and better. I swear, packs of shadow dragons are more of a concern than the amulet, and frankly they aren't that much of a concern.

At low level, it simply doesn't matter. You don't need high skills to kill a hobgoblin. You can cast a lvl 1 spell with hardly any training, and if for some reason you honestly cant, you can kill it with a +0 spear and 0 skill. Sure if you are exceptionally weak to start with, then maybe reconsider wear-ID, but for most playthroughs its not going to matter much. By the time you have advanced a floor or two, you are already getting back into shape, again you do not need to be 100% out of drain to be survivable as the monsters get tougher.

Mid-level is in the middle. If lair is honestly giving you trouble, go wipe the floor with some orcs and make it up some.


The point is not that drain isn't survivable. The point is that good amulets don't actually help that much early game anyway, and as well as harm, there is also innacc, gormad, and MP regen for melee characters (I am assuming RC is available meaning innacc does nothing here). Faith is also pretty useless before you have a god. For melee character (most of what I play) the only real huge positive power swing amulet is GS. I can reliably get a charater to lair with no amulet, so I shouldn't take the unnecessary risk of wearing an amulet.

Furthermore, most of the time using ID on a potion will provide more average benefit than getting an amulet, so I normally wait until mid lair when I can deal with the drain just fine, or be suboptimal and just try it on because I want to know what it is.
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Post Friday, 15th September 2017, 00:59

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

WingedEspeon wrote:The point is not that drain isn't survivable. The point is that good amulets don't actually help that much early game anyway, and as well as harm, there is also innacc, gormad, and MP regen for melee characters (I am assuming RC is available meaning innacc does nothing here). Faith is also pretty useless before you have a god. For melee character (most of what I play) the only real huge positive power swing amulet is GS. I can reliably get a charater to lair with no amulet, so I shouldn't take the unnecessary risk of wearing an amulet.

Furthermore, most of the time using ID on a potion will provide more average benefit than getting an amulet, so I normally wait until mid lair when I can deal with the drain just fine, or be suboptimal and just try it on because I want to know what it is.


Wait, what? Faith or Rage or Guardian Spirit are pretty much a godsend most of the time (and with Faith you definitely want to know you have it before you pick a God), HP regen is great and even a decent reflection amulet is nothing to sneeze at. MP regen can come in real handy if you are a caster and have a bad run with the RNG, and if you are a melee character with no god then just take it off? Nothing stopping you, same goes with Gourmand. So it's not like those are a reason not to wearID.

As for your latter argument, that is also a good reason to wearID. As you say, a potion or scroll is better ID'd than not (or wasted by randomly using it). WearID'ing some gear relieves some pressure on that resource and opens up potentially important power increases.

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Post Friday, 15th September 2017, 02:02

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

crawlnoob wrote:
WingedEspeon wrote:The point is not that drain isn't survivable. The point is that good amulets don't actually help that much early game anyway, and as well as harm, there is also innacc, gormad, and MP regen for melee characters (I am assuming RC is available meaning innacc does nothing here). Faith is also pretty useless before you have a god. For melee character (most of what I play) the only real huge positive power swing amulet is GS. I can reliably get a charater to lair with no amulet, so I shouldn't take the unnecessary risk of wearing an amulet.

Furthermore, most of the time using ID on a potion will provide more average benefit than getting an amulet, so I normally wait until mid lair when I can deal with the drain just fine, or be suboptimal and just try it on because I want to know what it is.


Wait, what? Faith or Rage or Guardian Spirit are pretty much a godsend most of the time (and with Faith you definitely want to know you have it before you pick a God), HP regen is great and even a decent reflection amulet is nothing to sneeze at. MP regen can come in real handy if you are a caster and have a bad run with the RNG, and if you are a melee character with no god then just take it off? Nothing stopping you, same goes with Gourmand. So it's not like those are a reason not to wearID.

As for your latter argument, that is also a good reason to wearID. As you say, a potion or scroll is better ID'd than not (or wasted by randomly using it). WearID'ing some gear relieves some pressure on that resource and opens up potentially important power increases.


I almost always Wear ID amulets. I just don't ID amulets at all until about lair if I am playing solely to win.

You missed the point about the mediocre amulets. The point is that their existance means that the chance of getting a meaningful amulet is lower. If I am looking for GS, Rage, and reflection and don't want harm I have a 25% chance of harm if I get an amulet that actualy does somthing. If faith is also useful that puts harm at 20% of the meaningful amulets. A 75-80% chance of making my charater better normaly isn't worth a 20-25% chance of making it a lot worse.
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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 10:28

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

I think it's best to wear amulets as soon as possible, even if you cannot ID them, at least until the point where you've found one that suits you.

* The worst is if you get stuck with inaccuracy early on, but all that means is that you need to then ID your scrolls a bit sooner to find remove curse.

* The second worst amulet imo is faith, because I typically would prefer a different amulet, and it lowers piety to get rid of it. I wear amulets early in hopes of identifying and tossing faith out before I've found a god.

* The third worst amulet is Harm, but I find that playing drained awhile is a lesser annoyance than the other two. The only case where I don't mind harm is if I'm playing a glass cannon spell caster that can't afford to take damage anyhow, so in this case the extra damage can be useful for nuke everything before you get hit strategies. I feel that an experienced player can deal with the drain effect from ditching harm with less overall danger than inaccuracy and less loss of character development (via piety permanetly lost) than faith.

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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 10:34

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

svendre wrote:I feel that an experienced player can deal with the drain effect from ditching harm with less overall danger than inaccuracy and less loss of character development (via piety permanetly lost) than faith.


I am not sure why you used "permanently" here. I am always happy when I see piety trove (unless I am with Ru obviously) and I have yet to see a character who got killed by losing some piety while it's pretty easy to die to draining from harm. If you dislike extra piety with your current god, I don't understand why you feel so bad about losing some piety.
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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 10:44

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
svendre wrote:I feel that an experienced player can deal with the drain effect from ditching harm with less overall danger than inaccuracy and less loss of character development (via piety permanetly lost) than faith.


I am not sure why you used "permanently" here. I am always happy when I see piety trove (unless I am with Ru obviously) and I have yet to see a character who got killed by losing some piety while it's pretty easy to die to draining from harm. If you dislike extra piety with your current god, I don't understand why you feel so bad about losing some piety.


You wouldn't see a character dying from loss of piety, what you would see is a character dying from falling behind the curve in a scenario of increasing difficulty and limited XP until difficulty increases. Losing a big chunk of piety, especially early on, means it will take that much longer to gain the benefits of the maximum level piety with your god. While draining does make your life more difficult temporarily, its overall effect amounts to essentially the loss of some turns in the form of longer recovery times, longer fights. The piety lost by those extra turns isn't equal to the piety lost by removing faith. Sure it increases your chance of losing fights, I'm not going so far as to say that it doesn't pose risk, it does. But, my main point here is that I feel an experienced player can still relatively easily overcome the effect, and then afterwards they haven't lost anything "permanent." Why do I say permanent? Because the piety you lose when taking the faith amulet off is generally gained only by killing monsters, which are a limited resource (at least until you could scum abyss/hell/pan, later on) when you go back to considering the difficulty curve previously mentioned.

Other amulets such as regeneration, mana regeneration, reflection all make you stronger and save you from needing to spend turns resting. So, they make you stronger and conserve your existing piety by reducing the amount it will get wasted between fights. The exception being Gozag, but then he doesn't care about faith amulets anyways. About the only times I use faith is if I'm playing an Okawaru character that gets so powerful early on that it has no down-time between fights and I'm just fishing to make it even more powerful.

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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 10:54

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Do you know how amulet of faith works? It's linear decrease: the less piety you have, the less piety you lose, that's why I like to id faith early too.

Edit. I still don't understand: if you value piety so high, just wear faith, it will be much easier to reach max piety then.

Edit2. I believe amulet of faith is strictly superior to amulet of regeneration and amulet of mana regeneration for the purpose of saving piety. If it's not so, it should be buffed.
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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 15:15

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

svendre wrote:But, my main point here is that I feel an experienced player can still relatively easily overcome the effect, and then afterwards they haven't lost anything "permanent." Why do I say permanent? Because the piety you lose when taking the faith amulet off is generally gained only by killing monsters, which are a limited resource (at least until you could scum abyss/hell/pan, later on) when you go back to considering the difficulty curve previously mentioned.
This is like saying putting on guardian spirit makes you permanently lose MP because MP is generally gained only by using turns, which are a limited resource.

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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 15:29

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Perhaps hijacking the thread a little, but whihc are the situations in which you would want to wear "Harm? What comes to mind are high-AC characters with fast weapons.
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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 15:48

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

A ranged user with strong defenses who has a reliable way to bail out of dangerous situation and somehow has the need to increase the damage of an usually OP form of attack.

I don't know, maybe a **Hu^Ru who has only mediocre fustibalus? Or a miserable CeHu who has only a shortbow?
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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 15:59

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

MainiacJoe wrote:Perhaps hijacking the thread a little, but whihc are the situations in which you would want to wear "Harm? What comes to mind are high-AC characters with fast weapons.

Personally i only really find it appearing to be a net benefit on characters who do are doing damage at long range and who have high ac and possibly a larger than average pool of hps. Note that i wouldn't frequently *choose* to wear it in such a situation, only that i might stick with it if i wore-id one at that point.
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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 18:46

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

duvessa wrote:
svendre wrote:But, my main point here is that I feel an experienced player can still relatively easily overcome the effect, and then afterwards they haven't lost anything "permanent." Why do I say permanent? Because the piety you lose when taking the faith amulet off is generally gained only by killing monsters, which are a limited resource (at least until you could scum abyss/hell/pan, later on) when you go back to considering the difficulty curve previously mentioned.
This is like saying putting on guardian spirit makes you permanently lose MP because MP is generally gained only by using turns, which are a limited resource.


It's not the same at all because you're saying the food clock is equal in importance as XP in a difficulty curve. While it's possible to run your food clock down so much that you run out of food and starve, that's a much more unlikely death than falling behind in character development. To put it another way: I rarely, if ever run out of food but more likely could run out of monsters in branches I can access to kill (which I'm able to handle with reasonable safety.) either due to the fact that I've already cleared all the early dungeon areas, or my gear and/or spell set only lent itself to fewer locations.

You can sit a long time, waiting to regenerate mana, or health but doing so still won't replace piety. To replace piety, you have to find new thing you can kill.

To elaborate further, I would say that the best case for faith to help character development is to reach maximum piety as quickly as possible to gain (primarily the passive) benefits the god has, and in particular when you are planning to ditch the god after reaching max piety (Kiku or Vehumet for instance.) Designing a character to use a lot of piety costing abilities early on means you'll take much longer to reach maximum piety, if you ever do. Invocations is still a skill investment, but it does not leverage what should be ever-increasing stats. But, here's the kicker- if you've used faith to reach maximum piety more quickly, at that point you reach max piety, unless you already dumped a lot into invocations getting there (and gimping your development in other ways) it won't be that high, and your stats should be higher. Of course you won't leave it at zero, why not pick up relatively low cost skill levels, but the active invocation skills won't be a constant weapon or defense but more of a supplement or oh-sht button. So at that moment when you've reached max piety, unless you're built to dump piety at a rate it comes in (TSO blasts are one decent reason) the faith amulet now becomes a drag. If you take it off then, it costs you the most dearly in piety, otherwise it hogs your amulet slot.

Yes, I'm aware that it costs more piety the further along you are to take it off. Rewinding all this explanation will show that I'm a proponent of early wear-ID'ing, and I'd usually like to ditch faith if I happen to wear it sooner than later.

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Post Monday, 9th October 2017, 22:02

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

You are completely missing my point. Piety has a cap. Once you're at 200 you're not going to build up any more. If one character reaches 200 piety on Lair:2 and another reaches it on Lair:5, both characters are still going to have 200 piety from Lair:6 onwards; there was no permanent penalty, unless you are worshipping one of the few gods that gives unlimited gifts. That's why I made the comparison to MP, another thing that has a cap.

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Post Tuesday, 10th October 2017, 04:30

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

This thread made me want to add "piety is overrated" to my signature.
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Post Tuesday, 10th October 2017, 08:19

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Harm is definitely nerve-wracking with a squishy caster early on, but I generally don't take it off.

Early game often feels like a contest to see who kills who first anyways. Start losing your swings? You can probably kite. For the D:2 centaurs you find without an immediate attack/hex answer, cover, potions, or scrolls, you might just be done for regardless of a harm amulet.

Also the only time I'm disappointed by an early faith is while playing Dg's. I will change my game plan in a heartbeat for an early faith and the closest god.

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Post Tuesday, 10th October 2017, 09:22

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

VeryAngryFelid wrote:This thread made me want to add "piety is overrated" to my signature.

It may be overrated, but it is certainly underused.

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Post Tuesday, 10th October 2017, 09:23

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

Charmandara wrote:For the D:2 centaurs you find without an immediate attack/hex answer, cover, potions, or scrolls, you might just be done for regardless of a harm amulet.

How many D:2 centaurs do you come across? I've never seen one as far as I can remember.

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Post Tuesday, 10th October 2017, 14:57

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

duvessa wrote:You are completely missing my point. Piety has a cap. Once you're at 200 you're not going to build up any more. If one character reaches 200 piety on Lair:2 and another reaches it on Lair:5, both characters are still going to have 200 piety from Lair:6 onwards; there was no permanent penalty, unless you are worshipping one of the few gods that gives unlimited gifts. That's why I made the comparison to MP, another thing that has a cap.


It's not a permanent loss of your "maximum piety attainable", nor did I ever even say that. It's a permanent loss of a quantity of a resource "piety", which is a limited resource until you are able to scum a level with infinite XP (as stated before.) The comparison was that it draws more away from long term development/momentum than overcoming the drain effect from harm amulet, which, may just cause you to spend a few extra turns killing stuff and resting more.

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Post Wednesday, 11th October 2017, 12:47

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

WingedEspeon wrote:
mattlistener wrote:I equip-ID'ed an Amulet of Harm at XL2. I'm a Summoner and so took it off.

The drain nearly dropped me to all-zeroes skill-wise. I only just now finished working it off at the high end of XL6. I'm amazed I made it.

Is it intended that Harm is that punishing at XL2??

Yes. Harm was added to the game to make it suboptimal to use amulets before about lair. That is the only reason for harm to exist.


I would argue Harm is fine for blaster casters or Axe-wielders; who can deal large amounts of damage to multiple targets.

It's also probobly not bad on Ranged characters [Archer/Slinger/XBow/Throwers]

I wouldn't use Harm on something like a Polearms user; a Transmuter; ect who are melee single target.

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Post Thursday, 12th October 2017, 04:17

Re: Amulet of Harm drain

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:How many D:2 centaurs do you come across? I've never seen one as far as I can remember.


I can't remember how to query my own games for this information as much as I'd love to provide it. I know it has occurred at least once, but that's hardly significant. I was attempting to say an early harm amulet probably isn't the sole cause of death for too many characters.

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