Listing species by difficulty of play

[tasonir]

The wiki once upon a time listed how difficult it was to play each race, I think this was done around .5 or .6; in any case it's been a long time. I wanted to update this and start grouping the race strategy articles by how difficult they are. While I realize this is a judgement call, and not everyone will agree, I thought I'd take a stab at listing an order, and taking feedback/corrections and then posting it.

I'm going by difficulty of getting a 3 rune victory using the most viable background/build.

Really, it's time we get cracking on updating the wiki

Beginner Species

Spriggan strategy (huge speed)
Minotaur strategy (lol easy melee)
Deep Dwarf strategy (damage resistance makes all encounters easier to survive)
Merfolk strategy
Kobold strategy (easy berserker race)

Novice Species


Hill Orc strategy (it's melee with free charmies)
Draconian strategy (caster with actually good ac)


Moderate Species

Naga strategy (constriction and powerful melee or casters)
Tengu strategy (I've never played this)
Human strategy (average at everything, good at nothing)
Deep Elf strategy (excellent casters but too low hp to be easy)
Troll strategy (excellent early game but you have to beat the zot before you win)
Vampire strategy

Expert Species

Mummy strategy (hungerless, undead immunities, but no potions)
Centaur strategy (terrible defenses)
High Elf strategy (slow leveling)
Sludge Elf strategy (tricky playstyle)
Halfling strategy (never played, seems frail)
Ghoul strategy (tough to get started)

Master Species

Ogre strategy (don't seem played much, maybe they aren't too hard, but they aren't too popular?)
Demigod strategy (no gods)
Demonspawn strategy (random mutations make them unpredictable)
Felid strategy (no items ever )
Octopode strategy (terrible survival until you have 8 good rings)

I'm open to reordering these, this is why I'm asking for feedback I'm trying to get the wiki up to date but the newbie in me doesn't want to put bad advice in there

[Jabberwocky]

I would list kobolds as a beginner race, they have no problems with food and are quite versatile. High elves I wouldn't list as a expert species, while they level slowly they have very good attributes, maybe list them as a moderate difficulty species? Nagas should be bumped up a level, because of slow movement.

[Blade]

Centaurs, high elves, and sludge elves are all quite powerful. Centaurs in particular are insanely good. Demonspawn muts make them rather good. You've also left merfolk off entirely, and they're among the very easiest (stronger melee than minotaurs imo, coupled with good casting). Halflings are not frail at all. Deep elves are too busy blasting everything to pieces to worry about frailty. Ogres have +3 m&f and +3 fighting; almost nothing can approach the sheer raw power of an ogbe. Vampires are also missing from your list; not sure what I'd say about them except that bat form makes escaping very easy.

The thing is, one could make a case for every species except maybe felids and octopodes being very easy. Even with felids, one could point to autorobin (a bot that can sometimes get febe past lair) as an example of strength. Hence, there is little point of ranking them by difficulty. Any list will be at best misleading and likely just wrong.

[Jabberwocky]

Centaurs, high elves, and sludge elves are all quite powerful. Centaurs in particular are insanely good. Demonspawn muts make them rather good. You've also left merfolk off entirely, and they're among the very easiest (stronger melee than minotaurs imo, coupled with good casting). Halflings are not frail at all. Deep elves are too busy blasting everything to pieces to worry about frailty. Ogres have +3 m&f and +3 fighting; almost nothing can approach the sheer raw power of an ogbe. Vampires are also missing from your list; not sure what I'd say about them except that bat form makes escaping very easy.

The thing is, one could make a case for every species except maybe felids and octopodes being very easy. Even with felids, one could point to autorobin (a bot that can sometimes get febe past lair) as an example of strength. Hence, there is little point of ranking them by difficulty. Any list will be at best misleading and likely just wrong.

Power and ease of play are not the same thing. Ogres are powerful but are not at all easy to play.

[KoboldLord]

I don't think it's useful to group bizarre species like deep dwarves or felids in with the rest of them on the difficulty scale. Playing a deep dwarf following Makhleb may technically be one of the easiest 3-Rune games to be had, but much of what you learn from playing one doesn't apply usefully to any race other than more deep dwarves. A complete novice player who starts with deep dwarves will pick up bad habits from leaning on their unique superpowers and will incorrectly undervalue all the valuable resources that deep dwarves can't make good use of. Therefore, I do not think it is a good idea to recommend deep dwarves to newbies, even though they might get to that first win slightly earlier.

I'd probably classify minotaur, merfolk, high elf, and kobold as the basic species for absolute beginners. The first three are utterly vanilla species where at least one of them will do well in any of the basic early-game builds, and kobold is there to represent the quirky species. Kobolds have some weirdness, but it's all fairly intuitive weirdness that you have to adapt to in a fairly sensible way. None of them have any game-warping superpowers, and none of them have any crippling weaknesses.

[galehar]

First, thanks for doing this. Now, I think it's really important to define criteria. You're suggesting a classification based on how easy it is to win a 3 runes game. But before of thinking of winning the game, one must first learn to play it. So I second KoboldLord's suggestion. Since the wiki is the first thing newbies turn to, it should be aim at helping them learn the game. The ranking should be based on how easy they are to play, not on how easy their are to win.
Also, it will probably be less subjective and complicated than a "raw power ranking".

[Jabberwocky]

A very easy 3 runer, (not that I've ever won one but I've gotten the orb with the combo) is a unarmed/maces & flails TrBe. Great survivability, great damage, good panic buttons.

[tasonir]

yeah that's the problem with the list, it's extremely subjective...should we recommend only learning races that are good for perhaps clearing lair? I feel like telling someone to practice something that clears lair (troll anything) which then becomes harder to actually win with is bad, because they're going to want to take their 'best' race all the way.

Maybe only having 3 categories for newbie friendly, average, expert would be easier?

in any case, I made some of the recommended moves and added merfolk/vampires.

[Dustbin]

Centaur is way easier than anything in moderate.
Fast movement (this alone makes them easy for beginners.)
High hp.
Best UC attack.
Ok apts.


Also KoBe is no way easier than HaBe, if anything HaBe is probably easier thanks to crazy slings, better shields, rmut and higher hp. Whereas Ko has stuffing their face and marginally better fighting and stabbing.

[mikee]

ce, dd, tr, dg, sp, ha, ho, mi, mf, dr, ko, he, se, ds, gh, na, vp, de, og, fe, te, op, mu

This is my personal order of preferences for races to streak, which does not assume a particular class, matches playstyles I am comfortable with, and uses ability to survive the early game as its main criterion. This list is probably at least slightly different from anyone else's, and that is because difficulty is subjective. What is easy for one person is difficult for another, and vice versa. So I don't see much point in wikifying a list like this, except maybe for races that were designed as 'challenge races', like mummies and ogres.

[That Other Guy]

I find nagas an extremely amateur friendly race to play. They have see invisible, Resist poison, an intrinsic boost to AC right off the bat, they're extremely versatile with their aptitudes, and a pseudo-poison ability in constrict. Even at level one they have a powerful poison spit attack; essentially a free sting spell. Slow movement isn't too big of a deal with heavy armor fighters, as they have the high health to spare as the drag themselves to the nearest corridor. I'm a noob at crawl, never ascended, but I have no problem with starting as a Naga fighter of either Chei or Oka, and making it to Zot with little trouble.

[cerebovssquire]

I find nagas an extremely amateur friendly race to play. They have see invisible, Resist poison, an intrinsic boost to AC right off the bat, they're extremely versatile with their aptitudes, and a pseudo-poison ability in constrict. Even at level one they have a powerful poison spit attack; essentially a free sting spell. Slow movement isn't too big of a deal with heavy armor fighters, as they have the high health to spare as the drag themselves to the nearest corridor. I'm a noob at crawl, never ascended, but I have no problem with starting as a Naga fighter of either Chei or Oka, and making it to Zot with little trouble.

-intristic AC comes at the cost of armour AC, which will still result in loss of AC at least before double-digit levels as opposed to other races playing Fi or the like
-constrict was shifted to XL 13 (13, I think?) in .11 which makes it a lot worse
-slow movement is a huge deal because especially early on you want to be running from tons of dudes, like ogres, certain uniques - you might want to stair-dance certain speed 10 enemies that come in packs, too
-sInv is unimportant
-rPois is sort of useful before D:3 if you don't find !curing on D:1 somehow but useless after it, until Snake:5 and maybe Spider.
-versatility isn't as important as the ability to get your basic offensive/defensive abilities going fast (for instance, Mi and HO win here against Na)

Their biggest early game boon, spit poison, is a considerable bonus, but that alone isn't enough to compensate for the weaknesses of barely any AC, EV, or speed on the first levels.

NaIE or so maybe. Still NaFi, even after considering these? They were really easy with constriction, but don't they lose against many others without it?

Na is a strong species, but in particular a strong late-game species, and while it doesn't have a horrible early game it can't hold up to dd ce he ho mi sp etc.


Lists like this are the biggest problem the chaosforge wiki has; and they're bad out of principle for the reason mikee stated; their problem isn't just that the list on the chaosforge wiki is particularily weirdly arranged. Not too much is objective here. So I'd be grateful to anyone who kicks the list from the wiki but don't really see much sense in replacing it anyway.

[rebthor]

When you have mikee and minmay saying that Og, Te, Mu and Op are hard, I think that's fair to put them in the "hard" category. Similarly, they have Ce, DD and Sp in their top 5, I think it's easy to agree that they are easier. Everything else should go into the average category, with possibly an exception made for very easy combos that might not necessarily be "easy" races, like Mi/Mf/KoBe

[Blade]

Mi, Mf, and Ko are all strong almost regardless of class. For mf, in particular, berserker isn't even their strongest class.

[rebthor]

Mi, Mf, and Ko are all strong almost regardless of class. For mf, in particular, berserker isn't even their strongest class.

Oh, I agree that they are on the easier side, but its telling that neither mikee or minmay listed any of them in their top 3 and only Mf made it into minmay's top 5.

MfIE and MfGl are both super easy combos, so I agree with you 100%. As an extra bonus, Mf makes Swamp and Shoals much less annoying.

From the looks of their lists, I'm going to have to try more Ce . Anyone with access to irc want to post what the Ce class win rates are?

[cerebovssquire]

First of all "mikee and minmay say it" is not an argument. mikee himself said difficulty is subjective. For instance, I would prefer to streak Og over DE simply because I am horrible at coping with low HP while most others will prefer DE - and I have never been good at HE, while others recommend HEWz as a "newbie combo". This doesn't make me a bad/weird player in any way because many others will have similar preferences or preferences for different species.

I can only repeat what I said about these lists not doing more than indicating a few things (noone will think DD is harder than Mu), but that few of these things are objective. They're useful if you're trying to analyse your individual strengths to streak, but not wiki-compatible or neccesarily compatible with many of your individual strengths.

Here are your Ce stats.

<Sequell> * (ce) has won 182 times in 14779 games (1.23%): 20xCeHe 18xCeMo 15xCeFi 15xCeHu 9xCeBe 8xCeGl 8xCePa 6xCeCK 6xCeEE 6xCeNe 6xCeWz 5xCeAM 5xCeAs 5xCeDK 5xCePr 5xCeTm 5xCeWn 4xCeAE 3xCeCr 3xCeEn 3xCeFE 3xCeSu 3xCeVM 2xCeAK 2xCeAr 2xCeCj 2xCeIE 2xCeRe 2xCeSt 2xCeWr 1xCeSk 1xCeTh

<Sequell> * (cefi) has won 15 times in 1067 games (1.41%): 15xCeFi

<Sequell> * (cegl) has won 8 times in 404 games (1.98%): 8xCeGl

<Sequell> * (cemo) has won 18 times in 999 games (1.80%): 18xCeMo

<Sequell> * (cehu) has won 15 times in 3157 games (0.48%): 15xCeHu

<Sequell> * (ceas) has won 5 times in 100 games (5.00%): 5xCeAs

<Sequell> * (cear) has won twice in 183 games (1.09%): 2xCeAr

<Sequell> * (cewn) has won 5 times in 748 games (0.67%): 5xCeWn

<Sequell> * (cebe) has won 9 times in 645 games (1.40%): 9xCeBe

<Sequell> * (ceak) has won twice in 409 games (0.49%): 2xCeAK

<Sequell> * (ceck) has won 6 times in 948 games (0.63%): 6xCeCK

<Sequell> * (cedk) has won 5 times in 398 games (1.26%): 5xCeDK

<Sequell> * (cepr) has won 5 times in 310 games (1.61%): 5xCePr

<Sequell> * (cehe) has won 20 times in 882 games (2.27%): 20xCeHe

<Sequell> * (cesk) has won once in 54 games (1.85%): 1xCeSk

<Sequell> * (cetm) has won 5 times in 531 games (0.94%): 5xCeTm

<Sequell> * (cewr) has won twice in 148 games (1.35%): 2xCeWr

<Sequell> * (ceam) has won 5 times in 315 games (1.59%): 5xCeAM

<Sequell> * (ceen) has won 3 times in 179 games (1.68%): 3xCeEn

<Sequell> * (cest) has won twice in 143 games (1.40%): 2xCeSt

<Sequell> * (cewz) has won 6 times in 360 games (1.67%): 6xCeWz

<Sequell> * (cecj) has won twice in 179 games (1.12%): 2xCeCj

<Sequell> * (cesu) has won 3 times in 135 games (2.22%): 3xCeSu

<Sequell> * (cene) has won 6 times in 200 games (3.00%): 6xCeNe

<Sequell> * (cefe) has won 3 times in 311 games (0.96%): 3xCeFE

<Sequell> * (ceie) has won twice in 152 games (1.32%): 2xCeIE

<Sequell> * (ceae) has won 4 times in 435 games (0.92%): 4xCeAE

<Sequell> * (ceee) has won 6 times in 374 games (1.60%): 6xCeEE

<Sequell> * (cevm) has won 3 times in 147 games (2.04%): 3xCeVM

[rebthor]

Thanks cerebovsquire. Interesting that a race with alleged hunger issues has ascended most often as a He. I know I was watching someone run one a little while ago.

I agree that the rankings are going to be generally subjective, but at the same time if you've got many top players (in which I am most definitely not including myself) agreeing that DD and Sp are easier classes and Op and Mu are harder classes, it's certainly valid to recommend to new players that races X, Y, Z are considered to be easier, especially when paired with classes 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

The one problem, if you can even call it that, is DD and Sp play very differently from many of the other species due to their inherent quirks which is probably why the tutorial leads off with Mi and DE.

[tasonir]

Alright I'm going to go ahead and simplify the listing by making only 3 categories of difficulty, that way we can basically have the races people agree a pretty easy (minotaurs, DD, etc) and then a "everyone else" and then "experts only" (felids, octopodes)...it should be somewhat clearer, at least.

My only misgivings about centaur is the -3 defenses, but then again I love nagas who are -2, so I guess the speed increase makes up for that I'll put them in the easier category.

[tasonir]

List entered into the wiki and reduced to 3 difficulties...most races only moved up/down by 1, going from the 5 difficulty to 3 difficulty and updated rankings. Races that moved two were Spriggan and Centaur, both going from moderate to beginner, and Ogre going from Moderate to Master.

Should I reconsider ogres? Keep them as medium? and of course any other alterations can still be made. If someone wants to help create some of the strategy pages which aren't created yet that would be great

Also, the table of all aptitudes on the species page needs to be updated, and we should probably double check them on the species page, although I believe some of those have been updated.

[mumra]

I would add notes against particularly variable races. So put them in the category that most of their combos apply to, and add a note saying "The [x,y,z] backgrounds are considered 'Medium' for this race".

[TwilightPhoenix]

Honestly, a comparison of background would be far easier to do than species.

Anyway, I would note that while they are quite tricky, Felids aren't a bad idea for an absolute newbie. By having almost no items, they can focus on learning other mechanics and will probably get to make a fatal mistake or two before they lose the character. Of course, if they want to learn the game, they'll need to play a different species as well, but Felids aren't bad for training wheels.

They are still hard to win with though.

[KoboldLord]

Felids are not playing with training wheels. Felids are playing while handcuffed and in a straightjacket. Advising newbies to start with felids isn't helping anybody, because they won't learn to use basic emergency items and they won't learn to manage their defenses. Because they can't. Instead, they're going to learn to frantically abuse fast movement, which only two other species get, and extra lives, which nobody gets.

If we're giving advice to newbies, there's no point in even putting spriggans, deep dwarves, centaurs, naga, mummies, vampires, ghouls, or felids on the difficulty scale. If you pick one of those, you're playing practically an entirely different game. Even though some of these lead to pretty easy games, it doesn't make any more sense to point newbies here than advising those newbies to start with Dungeon Sprint or Zot Defense.

[mikee]

Thanks cerebovsquire. Interesting that a race with alleged hunger issues has ascended most often as a He. I know I was watching someone run one a little while ago.

Most of those cehe wins are probably from either before pacification existed or before it was as big a part of playing healer. Prior to 0.6, cehe was a centaur that started with a base damage 9 quarterstaff, some healing (curing) potions, and the lesser self healing invocation. It was effective at killing and almost impossible to kill.

[crate]

If you kill most of the dudes cehe still does not have hunger problems. If you pacify all the dudes you will probably starve.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Felids are not playing with training wheels. Felids are playing while handcuffed and in a straightjacket. Advising newbies to start with felids isn't helping anybody, because they won't learn to use basic emergency items and they won't learn to manage their defenses. Because they can't. Instead, they're going to learn to frantically abuse fast movement, which only two other species get, and extra lives, which nobody gets.

If we're giving advice to newbies, there's no point in even putting spriggans, deep dwarves, centaurs, naga, mummies, vampires, ghouls, or felids on the difficulty scale. If you pick one of those, you're playing practically an entirely different game. Even though some of these lead to pretty easy games, it doesn't make any more sense to point newbies here than advising those newbies to start with Dungeon Sprint or Zot Defense.

I'm talking about learning various mechanics. The extreme basics. You know, on the level a noob won't recognize an emergency until after they've died to it. When they're thinking "Holy crap, there's magic, inventory, gods, gold, monsters, exploration, hunger, piety, skills, melee, ranged, traps, stairs, and all these other 40 thousand things! So overwhelming!" Playing a Felid, a FeBe especially, significantly reduces the amount of mechanics in play, allowing a noob of this level get the hang of a few things. Once they have a faint idea of what they're doing, playing a more normal species to learn how to descend past D:2 would be ideal.

There are, of course, the tutorials, but those are a pretty hefty information dump. And there's hints mode to help too. But a practical, simplified learning experience for mechanics never hurts. Would have certainly helped me when I was just starting for the first time and found something as simple as the MiBe in hints mode a lot to take in at once. Let alone the CeHu or the caster, both of who died before leaving D:1.

[KoboldLord]

Eliminating the most important mechanics in the game and teaching the relatively unimportant ones isn't going to help. Most of your list is fairly unimportant, and most new players actually get the mash-arrow-keys-to-attack mechanic fairly quickly. Playing a felid teaches new players that it's a good idea to find out if a monster is dangerous by slamming headfirst into it, because you'll just respawn elsewhere in the level. Playing a felid teaches new players that if you get in over your head, you can just run away because 90% of the monsters are slower than you. Neither lesson is going to be helpful when that new players tries any other species.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Playing a felid teaches new players that it's a good idea to find out if a monster is dangerous by slamming headfirst into it,

Ummm, you have to earn your extra lives. You'll only have one or two, maybe three if you're lucky, by Lair. It'll quickly become obvious that spending lives to find "Hey, is this dangerous?" is a bad idea. Now if they started with all nine lives I could maybe see your point.

Playing a felid teaches new players that if you get in over your head, you can just run away

Doesn't every other species in the game try to do that? Some are just better at it than others.


Anyway, proper inventory use and management comes after a pretty large number of deaths for those who are playing Crawl as their first Rogue-like. Many games have items as "too awesome to use so must be conserved for emergencies" or "you can easily have 40 billion of them, so go ahead and use them every time the situation pops up" or "not useful at all". With the way Crawl works, if you wait until an emergency, you're likely die, items or not. If you use them all the time, you'll not have them when you really need them. And if you regard them as not useful? Well... yeah. A lot of people I know who started with Crawl for rogue-likes tended to either die with 15 potions of heal wounds or having used all their consumables on non-threats (myself included in the former). Breaking that habit takes a long time, regardless of what species you play. I think I died roughly 100-150 times before I finally broke the habit.

Besides, what better way to treat someone the importance of items by denying them access to them at first and then letting them have them later? "Oh hey, if only my Felid could have used this wand of lightning I wouldn't have died to that Centaur. I should definitely carry these around because that's pretty darn useful!"

[KoboldLord]

Doesn't every other species in the game try to do that? Some are just better at it than others.

Most species cannot successfully escape from 90% of the enemies of the game purely by moving away until space opens up. They either need to use clever tactical movement, which felid players never needed to learn, or use an escape tool, which felid players either can't use at all or needed to save for entirely different situations.

Besides, what better way to treat someone the importance of items by denying them access to them at first and then letting them have them later? "Oh hey, if only my Felid could have used this wand of lightning I wouldn't have died to that Centaur. I should definitely carry these around because that's pretty darn useful!"

"What's a wand of lightning? Must be crap, because I've gotten by without it before."

"A wand of confusion! I bet that's awesome! I never got to use these when I played felids, so I'm going to pump evocations and use it on everything!"

Nope. You learn about the importance of items by using them. Items that have no use have no value and no importance.

[Moose]

I wouldn't list Deep Dwarves as easy. Though experienced players may find them easy, beginners don't. Unless you're a necro, berserker, or worship Makhleb, DD's are very very hard to play. Even under the three aforementioned circumstances, I cant seem to get a DD to the Lair, and I've got more than 10 wins under my belt (a bad player, but not a terrible one).

[XuaXua]

Deep Dwarf strategy (damage resistance makes all encounters easier to survive)

The only problem I've had with Deep Dwarves is the no regeneration / no stat recovery is a bit of a learning curve, even with the wand of healing.

[XuaXua]

Na is a strong species, but in particular a strong late-game species, and while it doesn't have a horrible early game

It does now that constriction has been moved to a level-based ability. Well, it's not that easy is all...

[XuaXua]

Playing a felid teaches new players that it's a good idea to find out if a monster is dangerous by slamming headfirst into it,

Ummm, you have to earn your extra lives. You'll only have one or two, maybe three if you're lucky, by Lair.

Cap is two at a time.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Most species cannot successfully escape from 90% of the enemies of the game purely by moving away until space opens up. They either need to use clever tactical movement, which felid players never needed to learn, or use an escape tool, which felid players either can't use at all or needed to save for entirely different situations.

Most enemies in the extreme early game can simply be walked away from, Jackals and the occasional adder side (OODs and uniques notwithstanding). If you're consistently getting past that, you have the mechanics down to at least some degree and are no longer an extreme noob, so in that instance my advice wouldn't apply.

"What's a wand of lightning? Must be crap, because I've gotten by without it before."

"A wand of confusion! I bet that's awesome! I never got to use these when I played felids, so I'm going to pump evocations and use it on everything!"

Nope. You learn about the importance of items by using them. Items that have no use have no value and no importance.

Those quotes could also be brought up by people learning the game playing a human or whatever else. Of course, at that stage they'll probably not be living long enough to pump Evo at all. Or even think that it's a good idea to raise only a couple of skills at a time.


But really, why so much hate on Felids here? If their speed and such is too problematic for them to recommend to a very new player, then why is it okay to recommend Trolls, Spriggans, Deep Dwarves, Kobolds, and other species that have very strong quirks that can cause a development of bad habits? Why not always recommend human Skalds, Enchanters, or other hybrids so they're forced to learn about and juggle just about every single mechanic all at once so they don't develop bad habits then?

Besides, you seem to be talking more from the point of players who are at least standing on their two feet and aren't asking "Oh, what's a Hobgoblin? I've never seen it before." I'm talking about maybe the first five or ten games where they're fresh out of the tutorial and hints mode, if they even bothered with those, and are trying to check things out for the very first time (and are very likely getting splattered very fast). Players who may not even know the Ecumenical Temple even exists yet.

Of course, if they're reading the Wiki, they're probably well past that stage, so it'd probably be advice mostly reserved for someone I'm introducing the game to in person.

[KoboldLord]

Most enemies in the extreme early game can simply be walked away from, Jackals and the occasional adder side (OODs and uniques notwithstanding). If you're consistently getting past that, you have the mechanics down to at least some degree and are no longer an extreme noob, so in that instance my advice wouldn't apply.

If you're running from a scary ogre with a normal species, it will keep pace with you almost every step along the way. If you can't beat it, you have to learn some sort of trick to handle it, like baiting a nearby orc into getting in its way. Felids don't care about that nonsense; mash the arrow keys to escape.

But really, why so much hate on Felids here? If their speed and such is too problematic for them to recommend to a very new player, then why is it okay to recommend Trolls, Spriggans, Deep Dwarves, Kobolds, and other species that have very strong quirks that can cause a development of bad habits? Why not always recommend human Skalds, Enchanters, or other hybrids so they're forced to learn about and juggle just about every single mechanic all at once so they don't develop bad habits then?

First off, felids are kind of terrible. Not only are you recommending new players start with a non-representative experience as their first character, you're also selecting one that's really bloody hard for newbies to actually handle effectively. Ever notice the hit point pool on those things? Felids don't get many of them.

For the record, I didn't suggest spriggans or deep dwarves for new players, either. Those are at least pretty strong, even though their freakish superpowers and limitations tend to straightjacket them into particular builds.

And seriously, a new player is excited about trying out this Crawl game they've heard of, and you push them into playing a cat because you think they're too pants-on-head stupid to figure out how to pick the biggest axe and wield it, or how to evoke a wand and select a monster? Odds are pretty good they aren't trying Crawl as their very first roguelike specifically because they heard this one has non-anthropomorphic cats in it, and if they did they probably aren't going to stick around long anyway. A typical new player wants to be an orc rocking out with a giant axe, or an elf shooting fireballs, or a hobbit shanking fools in the kidney. Telling them to wear the fur suit because they're too dumb to handle the hard stuff isn't going to encourage them to stick with the hobby.

Naturally, if they specifically express an interest in playing a non-anthropomorphic cat, I'd tell them where to find it, but also clarify that it's one of the harder species for most players.

[ebarrett]

Ogres are one of the easiest races. Statistics might not tell you that because for a long time ogres sucked royally and were an obvious challenge race, and giant spiked clubs were nothing really interesting. Same thing with halflings which are crazy overpowered now, after spending ages being a joke race. Centaur has already been covered extensively by other people.

Demonspawn are certainly no worse than humans (-1 is nothing and you get demonic benefits starting at xl2, some of which can even be actually useful at that point), high elves aren't really worse than deep elves (they even have a better start on some caster classes, even if they are closer to merfolk in intended style), a demigod with a good starting book (that's how you play them!) is pretty much unstoppable (and boring), and tengu are bloody hard (and people think ogres are glass cannons! that's why the average win% is below 0.5%, I guess).

Hardest race is octopode. Jesus goddamn octopodes.

[KoboldLord]

I'm not sure 'Every race is the easiest race' is necessarily a helpful thing to tell new players, either.

[ebarrett]

There's one undeniably bad race which is "bad player who refuses to learn", then octopodes, some others are also rather hard but in general all of the misinformation and scaremongering that gets thrown around all the time is completely uncalled for. Not sure how going against that interferes with your self-appointed status of #1 crawl guru enough for you to be annoyed at me.

[Larald]

Having recently won for the first time with a Spriggan, I'm not sure I buy the 'bad habits' argument. Getting deep into the game teaches you a lot about it no matter what special abiltities your character has. And if you can get to Zot with any race you are definitely smart enough to figure out how another race ought to be played. It might take many, many deaths before you figure it out, but that's the fun of this game.

From the perspective of a beginner this game is insanely difficult. I'll bet the average first game lasts 15 seconds. I would recommend an optimal character to start out unless you just love mummies or something.

By the way I personally like the idea of a list. If nothing else, people love to read lists. A list is a format people understand, even if they tend to be overly simplistic.

[sir_laser]

If we're giving advice to newbies, there's no point in even putting spriggans, deep dwarves, centaurs, naga, mummies, vampires, ghouls, or felids on the difficulty scale. If you pick one of those, you're playing practically an entirely different game. Even though some of these lead to pretty easy games, it doesn't make any more sense to point newbies here than advising those newbies to start with Dungeon Sprint or Zot Defense.

Thanks for bringing this particular point up, because it's also something I've noticed with these races, even though my conclusion somewhat differs from yours. Basically, by playing one of these races you can ignore an aspect(s) of the game (food clock/pois/draining w/ Mummy, Invis/Pois w/ Naga, etc.). Which, combined w/ Ashenzari and the lack of need to ID, reduces the # of things that a player has to worry about. So these races are very good for the purpose below:

I'm talking about learning various mechanics. The extreme basics. You know, on the level a noob won't recognize an emergency until after they've died to it. When they're thinking "Holy crap, there's magic, inventory, gods, gold, monsters, exploration, hunger, piety, skills, melee, ranged, traps, stairs, and all these other 40 thousand things! So overwhelming!" Playing a Felid, a FeBe especially, significantly reduces the amount of mechanics in play, allowing a noob of this level get the hang of a few things. Once they have a faint idea of what they're doing, playing a more normal species to learn how to descend past D:2 would be ideal.

Perhaps it makes the game more difficult, (again, Mummy and Naga comes into mind) but in my personal experience I was forced to learn the fundamentals/basics while not being forced to worry about whether the ring I picked up will allow me to do the Snake Pit or not, because I already know what it is/has intrinsic rPois. I was also forced to learn how to be patient, because a Mummy can't just walk in w/ a short blade and expect things to die, all the while skipping learning the intricacies of ID-ing items 'cause Ash took care of that for me (not saying I didn't learn later, but in my infant Crawl experience it was one less thing to remember, so it helped ease me in to the whole game).

[TehDruid]

I'd say Felids are harder than Octopodes... Sure you have extra movement speed and carnivore, but... They are very difficult, assuming you don't go the summoning route or Trog for berserk spam (even that's not exactly great though, you'll notice how squishy you get deeper in the game). Worse apts in offensive spellcasting, can't use wands or rods or ranged weapons to compensate for their squishiness by not going into melee, much lower potential to get some decent AC because they have less gear slots. Although yes, they both lack body armour. But Octopodes have constriction.

Ghouls (of Kiku or not) are moderately easy (at least as melee that I've played them). Perhaps very easy. What's your take on them?

[pratamawirya]

Ogres are one of the easiest races. Statistics might not tell you that because for a long time ogres sucked royally and were an obvious challenge race, and giant spiked clubs were nothing really interesting.

Pick one wrong strategy, and your Ogre is toast. I'm not sure if new players would find such race to be easy.

[rebthor]

Ogres are one of the easiest races. Statistics might not tell you that because for a long time ogres sucked royally and were an obvious challenge race, and giant spiked clubs were nothing really interesting.

Pick one wrong strategy, and your Ogre is toast. I'm not sure if new players would find such race to be easy.

Exactly. Ogre's are easy enough for a reasonably spoiled player, but for someone who's just starting out I'm not sure they'd be so easy.

[Petro]

Coincidentally we are having a parallel discussion about this on the wiki you can find here. I know only noobs and loser edit the wiki, but any help would be appreciated.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Perhaps it makes the game more difficult, (again, Mummy and Naga comes into mind) but in my personal experience I was forced to learn the fundamentals/basics while not being forced to worry about whether the ring I picked up will allow me to do the Snake Pit or not, because I already know what it is/has intrinsic rPois. I was also forced to learn how to be patient, because a Mummy can't just walk in w/ a short blade and expect things to die, all the while skipping learning the intricacies of ID-ing items 'cause Ash took care of that for me (not saying I didn't learn later, but in my infant Crawl experience it was one less thing to remember, so it helped ease me in to the whole game).

That's basically been my point with the Felid recommendation. But the idea of using them merely to get some of the basics down without having to keep track of the others (yet) seems to be flying way over a few heads. It's not a "Hey, pick a Felid, they're easy and you'll win", but rather "Hey, pick a Felid, it'll help ease you into the game."



And for the record, I've introduced Crawl to roughly ten or so people. Only one of them had ever played a Roguelike before and even then only for a tiny amount of time. So assuming all new players have roguelike-experience coming in is a very flawed assumption (also for the record, Crawl's my first). And if they don't want to play a cat, well fine. It doesn't make the recommendation any less valid. Playing Minotaurs, Centaurs, or Cave Elves were not what I wanted to try coming into Crawl, but that's all I had to work with for Hints mode.

[cerebovssquire]

Ogres are one of the easiest races. Statistics might not tell you that because for a long time ogres sucked royally and were an obvious challenge race, and giant spiked clubs were nothing really interesting.

Pick one wrong strategy, and your Ogre is toast. I'm not sure if new players would find such race to be easy.

Exactly. Ogre's are easy enough for a reasonably spoiled player, but for someone who's just starting out I'm not sure they'd be so easy.

How on earth do you need spoilers if the "fighting +3" "maces&flails+3" stare out at you the moment you look at your aptitude screen, Hu and Be are in the recommended combos list and you find your potential endgame weapon on D:4?

I have a much easier time winning Og than HO or HE and definitely an easier time playing Og than Op, just saying.
Also, my ogre wins so far were DK, Wr and IE and none of them were particularily hard (I was a newbie with the IE, too). Ogres are a lot more versatile than you think, mainly because of their Spellcasting +2, high HP and ability to gain very powerful melee very quickly, allowing you to use future experience to branch out.

[rebthor]

How on earth do you need spoilers if the "fighting +3" "maces&flails+3" stare out at you the moment you look at your aptitude screen, Hu and Be are in the recommended combos list and you find your potential endgame weapon on D:4?

I have a much easier time winning Og than HO or HE and definitely an easier time playing Og than Op, just saying.
Also, my ogre wins so far were DK, Wr and IE and none of them were particularily hard (I was a newbie with the IE, too). Ogres are a lot more versatile than you think, mainly because of their Spellcasting +2, high HP and ability to gain very powerful melee very quickly, allowing you to use future experience to branch out.

Considering how many people we see here on a daily basis that have character dumps that look like
+Short Blades 6.4
+Long Blades 5.3
*M&F 8.6
+Axes 4.7
*Staves 8.2

And are actually fighting unarmed, I think you're overestimating how much people understand crawl's XP system.

[Fungus]

IMO Draconians should be moved to Moderate. As fighters, they lose body armour, but as spellcasters, they get a nice AC bonus which helps in the early game and becomes AC+13 at XL27.

Reference thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4043

[cerebovssquire]

How on earth do you need spoilers if the "fighting +3" "maces&flails+3" stare out at you the moment you look at your aptitude screen, Hu and Be are in the recommended combos list and you find your potential endgame weapon on D:4?

I have a much easier time winning Og than HO or HE and definitely an easier time playing Og than Op, just saying.
Also, my ogre wins so far were DK, Wr and IE and none of them were particularily hard (I was a newbie with the IE, too). Ogres are a lot more versatile than you think, mainly because of their Spellcasting +2, high HP and ability to gain very powerful melee very quickly, allowing you to use future experience to branch out.

Considering how many people we see here on a daily basis that have character dumps that look like
+Short Blades 6.4
+Long Blades 5.3
*M&F 8.6
+Axes 4.7
*Staves 8.2

And are actually fighting unarmed, I think you're overestimating how much people understand crawl's XP system.

touche