Crypt Cleanser
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Joined: Saturday, 12th December 2015, 23:54
Definitive explanation of gozag gold distraction
Here is how Gozag gold distraction works as of 0.27 trunk. There's some math in this post but you can skip to the end if you just want the highlights.
First, here are some things that do not matter for gold distraction:
When a monster corpse is turned into a pile of gold by gozag, a base_gold value for the monster is determined based on the number of chunks monsters of that size provide (yes, this is still tracked internally after food removal). Giant monsters are 12 chunks, big are 10, large are 9, and everything else doesn't matter for gold aura because everything human size or less is treated the same. base_gold is equal to 7 + (chunks -4)*2 for monsters bigger than human and 7 otherwise. The amount of gold generated in place of the corpse is base_gold / 2 + random2avg(base_gold, 2). After calculating that, crawl doubles that value and compares it to the duration of your gold distraction aura, then sets the duration of your gold distraction aura to whichever is higher.
Example: you have no gold aura and kill a stone giant. Base gold is 23, gold generated is 11 + random2avg(23, 2) = 11-33, biased toward 22. Gold aura will get a duration somewhere between 22 and 66 (220-660 aut).
After duration is set, crawl checks the current strength of your gold aura. On a (strength) in (strength +9) chance it stays the same, otherwise it increases by 1. So if you had no gold aura it will always increase to 1, but if you're at 9 already it only has a 50% chance to go up and if you got to 90 it'd have less than a 10% chance to increase. When the gold aura duration times out, gold aura strength resets to 0, but otherwise it does not decrease over time.
Once you have some gold aura, monsters have a chance to get distracted every time they act, provided that you can see their location, they are not asleep, they are not a battlesphere, fulminant prism, or orb of destruction, they are not a tentacle or tentacle segment, they are not firewood, and they are hostile. The odds of distracting a monster are calculated as follows: do a number of trials equal to the strength of your gold aura. Each trial has a 3% chance to succeed. If any of the trials succeed, the monster gets horny for gold (ENCH_GOLD_LUST is applied) for a random duration between 1 and 5 turns (10-50 aut), ending immediately if you attack them. Example probabilities: if your gold aura strength is 1, then monsters have a 3% chance to get enchanted. If your gold aura strength is 5, they have just over 13%. If your gold aura strength is 10, they have not quite 23%.
Tl;dr for explanation dislikers:
Gold distraction does not care about piles of gold or amount of gold you're carrying. Its duration gets set based on the amount of gold each new thing you kill is worth and its strength increases based on how many things you can kill without its duration timing out in between, but with diminishing returns as its power gets higher. As a result, it's very good at locking down monsters if you can continuously kill stuff. This is part of the reason that gozag is so good in zigs.
First, here are some things that do not matter for gold distraction:
- Amount of gold you are carrying
- Anything to do with number of gold piles onscreen / in the monster's los / on the level / generated by killing monsters
When a monster corpse is turned into a pile of gold by gozag, a base_gold value for the monster is determined based on the number of chunks monsters of that size provide (yes, this is still tracked internally after food removal). Giant monsters are 12 chunks, big are 10, large are 9, and everything else doesn't matter for gold aura because everything human size or less is treated the same. base_gold is equal to 7 + (chunks -4)*2 for monsters bigger than human and 7 otherwise. The amount of gold generated in place of the corpse is base_gold / 2 + random2avg(base_gold, 2). After calculating that, crawl doubles that value and compares it to the duration of your gold distraction aura, then sets the duration of your gold distraction aura to whichever is higher.
Example: you have no gold aura and kill a stone giant. Base gold is 23, gold generated is 11 + random2avg(23, 2) = 11-33, biased toward 22. Gold aura will get a duration somewhere between 22 and 66 (220-660 aut).
After duration is set, crawl checks the current strength of your gold aura. On a (strength) in (strength +9) chance it stays the same, otherwise it increases by 1. So if you had no gold aura it will always increase to 1, but if you're at 9 already it only has a 50% chance to go up and if you got to 90 it'd have less than a 10% chance to increase. When the gold aura duration times out, gold aura strength resets to 0, but otherwise it does not decrease over time.
Once you have some gold aura, monsters have a chance to get distracted every time they act, provided that you can see their location, they are not asleep, they are not a battlesphere, fulminant prism, or orb of destruction, they are not a tentacle or tentacle segment, they are not firewood, and they are hostile. The odds of distracting a monster are calculated as follows: do a number of trials equal to the strength of your gold aura. Each trial has a 3% chance to succeed. If any of the trials succeed, the monster gets horny for gold (ENCH_GOLD_LUST is applied) for a random duration between 1 and 5 turns (10-50 aut), ending immediately if you attack them. Example probabilities: if your gold aura strength is 1, then monsters have a 3% chance to get enchanted. If your gold aura strength is 5, they have just over 13%. If your gold aura strength is 10, they have not quite 23%.
Tl;dr for explanation dislikers:
Gold distraction does not care about piles of gold or amount of gold you're carrying. Its duration gets set based on the amount of gold each new thing you kill is worth and its strength increases based on how many things you can kill without its duration timing out in between, but with diminishing returns as its power gets higher. As a result, it's very good at locking down monsters if you can continuously kill stuff. This is part of the reason that gozag is so good in zigs.
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