The Tavern

How do peoply play so fast?
I'm not talking about speed running, I just mean in normal games.

A basic 3-runer on a melee dude with heavy use of o and tab takes me 8-10 hours.
A 3-runer with a caster takes me 15-20 hours.

Most people seem to be able to win in 4-5 hours.

How many games have you won? The first couple wins take that long for everyone. By the time you are on your 10th-ish win you should be faster too.

Lots of little things that add up: Not having to look up enemies. Not having to spend time evaluating items. Seeing at a single glance the situation on the screen - dangerous situations take time, but tabbing+retreating are fast. Muscle memory for *everything*. Not fighting the interface. Generally not a lot of time spent thinking.

You can also train to play faster. First take note how long milestones like lair+first rune take you. Run MiBe quick+sloppy until you improve on those. Playing faster this way means you drink more potions and use more Trog abilities. Just be a little reckless to go *faster*.

Stop seeing things as words and sentences. For example, it's a waste of time to read the full message "You are feeling very hungry", when all the information can be gleaned by just seeing that "very hung" appeared in yellow. It's even worse if you read by sounding things out with your inner voice. If you play games with messages a lot, eventually you become able to pick out the relevant information while not reading 90% of message content, based on the shape of the message, the context of the actions you're doing, particular characters and colours being in the message, and so on.
The same goes for items and monsters.

Being able to intuit the target that autofight will choose, and the default target that 'f' or a spell targeter will choose, is also helpful.

Turn off animations. Set travel_delay and rest_delay to -1. Set explore_delay to -1 if playing tiles (you can discern the path autoexplore took by glancing the minimap). In console it may be faster to set it to a positive value than it is to open the map all the time, but the default is like 20 which is really slow.

le_nerd wrote:How many games have you won? The first couple wins take that long for everyone. By the time you are on your 10th-ish win you should be faster too. .

That's what I thought, but I'm actually getting slower. Some of my early melee dude wins were 7.5 hours. Now 10 hours is more usual for the same combo.

duvessa wrote:Stop seeing things as words and sentences. For example, it's a waste of time to read the full message "You are feeling very hungry", when all the information can be gleaned by just seeing that "very hung" appeared in yellow. It's even worse if you read by sounding things out with your inner voice. If you play games with messages a lot, eventually you become able to pick out the relevant information while not reading 90% of message content, based on the shape of the message, the context of the actions you're doing, particular characters and colours being in the message, and so on.
The same goes for items and monsters.

I mostly don't read the text at all. I just look at the pretty pictures. Lol.
I have force_more set to flag important stuff.

duvessa wrote:Set travel_delay and rest_delay to -1. Set explore_delay to -1 if playing tiles (you can discern the path autoexplore took by glancing the minimap).

Thanks. I'll try that.
I've tried it before and found it pretty disorienting because you suddenly appear in another place, but I'll give it another go.

MrDizzy wrote:Thanks. I'll try that.
I've tried it before and found it pretty disorienting because you suddenly appear in another place, but I'll give it another go.

In titles "show_travel_trail = true" shows footprints marking your autoexplore path. It helps a lot to understand with a glance the path taken and avoiding to be "disoriented" by instant travel, without delays.
However it should be enabled by default on webservers. Are you playing offline?

Another suggestion:

autofight_throw = true
autofight_throw_nomove = true

That will prevent "tab" to move forwards the nearest monster but instead throw things to him (set also autopick for stones to have something to throw anytime).
This helps me a lot to save time because most of time I just avoid to positioning - it is not so important when fighting "not so dangerous" monsters near explored terriritory. So most of the game with a melee dude becomes o-tab-o-tab which is much faster.

nago wrote:In titles "show_travel_trail = true" shows footprints marking your autoexplore path. It helps a lot to understand with a glance the path taken and avoiding to be "disoriented" by instant travel, without delays.
However it should be enabled by default on webservers. Are you playing offline?

I play webtiles. And yes, those trails show.

nago wrote:Another suggestion:

autofight_throw = true
autofight_throw_nomove = true

That will prevent "tab" to move forwards the nearest monster but instead throw things to him (set also autopick for stones to have something to throw anytime).
This helps me a lot to save time because most of time I just avoid to positioning - it is not so important when fighting "not so dangerous" monsters near explored terriritory. So most of the game with a melee dude becomes o-tab-o-tab which is much faster.

Thanks. I had the first one, but not the 2nd, which meant my character would start moving once he ran out of missiles.

Out of curiosity, are you actually interested in playing faster? If so, why?

I don't know about OP, but I value playing more rapidly in games generally for the following reasons:

- Choice density: the faster the player gets through the game, the more interesting choices are presented per time spent

- More games: very relevant in times like the tournament, but it can also let you say win 2-3 games of crawl a week and still have time for playing other games entirely

- Avoiding tedium: if players don't *need* to spend 10 hours, there must be something going on in games during those 10 hours that is not strictly part of the gameplay. Sometimes that is unfamiliarity with the game. Sometimes it is unfamiliarity with UI tricks to go faster. Sometimes it's because the player is doing laundry, cooking food, and leaving the game on. Alas, not all tedium can be avoided, but might as well iron it out when possible.

4Hooves2Appendages wrote:Out of curiosity, are you actually interested in playing faster? If so, why?

Yes. Pretty much for the reasons that TheMelnTeam listed. Reduce tedium. Try more combos.

TheMeInTeam wrote:if players don't *need* to spend 10 hours, there must be something going on in games during those 10 hours that is not strictly part of the gameplay. Sometimes that is unfamiliarity with the game. Sometimes it is unfamiliarity with UI tricks to go faster. Sometimes it's because the player is doing laundry, cooking food, and leaving the game on. Alas, not all tedium can be avoided, but might as well iron it out when possible.

I think I'm probably playing too conservatively because I'm afraid of dying. Ironically, I think it actually gets me killed sometimes.

MrDizzy wrote:I think I'm probaby playing too conservatively because I'm afraid of dying. Ironically, I think it actually gets me killed sometimes.

I have the same problem! I either take a long time agonizing about what decision to take or I get bored and stupidly rush through a series of bad decisions and commit suicide by stupidity.

MrDizzy wrote:I think I'm probably playing too conservatively because I'm afraid of dying.

Well, this suggests that your priorities have evolved, and you now care more about winning a lot of games than starting a lot of games

It is logical to expect that putting more time into a character results in a higher chance of winning. Personally, I like to play at a slow pace and a high winrate.

MrDizzy wrote:Ironically, I think it actually gets me killed sometimes.

This suggests that you are putting time into the wrong places. Tactics matter much more than strategy. For example, a great use of time is to take a deep breath and look through your inventory whenever you see a dangerous enemy (early centaur or killer bee, later lich or shrike, etc), get shafted/teleported, or find yourself at 2/3 HP. Deciding whether to use a cloak or a scarf (for example) matters very, very little in comparison; you can settle those kinds of questions by coinflip with little impact on your winrate. In fact spending time on those little decisions can hurt your winrate, as you may be experiencing, by fatiguing you as a player, leading to sloppier play.

If you care about winrate but also about win speed, I suggest trying to improve your ability to identify "critical moments" (threat evaluation and using consumables pre-emptively, and emergency recognition and reacting correctly) and spend time thinking in those situations. At the same time, when you catch yourself thinking about other decisions (which lair branch first? buckler, or train for a shield? what's the most efficient way to kill this popcorn?), limit yourself to one minute and then remind yourself that you might just be fatiguing yourself.

Personally, a large amount of my time is spent on spellcasters. I never know what spell to use.
Your advice of taking a deep breath is key here. Most of my stupid deaths have to do with this.
I've often wondered if I should just play simple combinations like MiBe until I have high streaks and then focus on other combinations.

Me too. Just a note, perhaps a twist on TheMeInTeam's comment regarding tedium: A signigicant part of our culture is the high value that instrumental reason plays, and insofar that we are at least in some part influenced by our culture there is a part of us that values "efficiency" highly, and this might play a role in interpreting being "faster" as something inherently worthwhile, and thus as something that actually reduces tedium -- but an equally rational explanation could be that making choices and puzzling over small bits, even the strategic bits that have been correctly identified as time sinks, is inherently pleasing or inherently "fun" and thus less tedious. Perhaps it is not coincidental that everyone here is enjoying a turn-based game, which should at least implicitly encourage the possibility of taking one's time. Bend the knee at Chei for a bit and smell the flowers, for travelling the path is itself inherently enjoyable (and not merely a means to some goal).

My opinion is that I take a long amount of time without having a good win percentage to show for it. For instance, I only won 3 games in the tournament. And had some high level splats. So I am clearly not using all that time for taking good decisions.

Beating yourself up doesn't help you, let alone anyone else.

And when your "monkey mind" is trying to criticise you, remember that one's mind is called "your mind" and not "you". If you are finding you are spending a lot of time playing games that don't result in a win, why not take a break, save the game and do something else that you enjoy while being "in" the moment? When in self-criticism mode you are focusing on the past or the future but the present is the "gift", right now. Even if you don't believe in anything else, you can't effect/affect anything if you are focusing on something other than the present moment and the opportunities it offers.

When in a dangerous game situation, write a few notes (on paper if this is not available in game) then save the game and come back later.

Regardless of anything else, here now on Earth, time and energy is limited relative to possible choices, so it is always better to do something enjoyable than to make a snap decision in a turn-based game if you have "lost" games that way in the past.

I'm enjoying Hellcrawl at the moment.

It has a casual mode that is a lot easier, and this DCSS fork is a lot more focused on the current level since there are no upstairs. Also, I know there are no hatch traps, and AFAIK no unavoidable traps at all in Hellcrawl.

Best regards,
Steven.

The Tavern

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