Summon Dragons, shedu, Elemental damage

[Sandman25]

Hi.
Sorry for so many questions but I am not sure if it is a good idea to create a separate thread per question since it is my first post here. Sorry about my bad English.
Could you please try to answer the questions below?

1) Is it common opinion that Summon Dragon + Staff of Wucad Mu is overpowered? I had a DEFE who was lucky to find both items in first Ziggurat and it looks like this combination is the safest way to clear everything so I had to play just like a Summoner from that point. I Summon Dragon until I am almost out of mana, then 't'ell them 'w'ait and then use the staff to channel some mana and repeat until I stop getting messages about increased experience. It forced me to always wear 2 restore abilities rings + Clarity despite I have about 5 artefact rings and about 5 artefact amulets because I do not want to waste time on the swap.
Being in lichform makes it even more straightforward because I do not care about Int anymore so even having 23(30) Int is acceptable .
This works so great that I even didn't notice when the dragons killed Cerebov and Mnoleg...

2) Is it possible to kill 4 shedu + phoenix + Silver star + Angel without having Animate Skeleton/Dead? I made a mistake of using 't'ell 'w'ait for my dragons to start wandering and killing everything without me investigating which floor of a Ziggurat I am against. It was the only fight which dragons could not win for me so far. I was barely able to leave the floor by Death's Door and CBlink after trying to butcher a shedu which results in my next question...

3) Is it possible to continue butchering when there are hostile monsters around? The game asks something like "Switch to your main weapon?" and it looks like butchering stops no matter what I choose.

4) Is monster's AC applied when player deals Fire/Ice damage? I know that Fireball cannot be avoided by evasion but I am not sure about AC. I read somewhere that AC is applied for player but is not applied for monsters but I am not sure it is true for 0.11 or 0.12.

5) Lich form is displayed to provide Rot resistance and I believe that Mutation is converted into Rot while in Lich form. Does it mean Lich form is resistant to Mutation also? I have See Invisible as a mutation (mutation roulette after having 13 Cure Mutation from first Ziggurat) and do not want to lose it

6) Does game care about Troove condition being possible to satisfy? I have a troove which asks for Wand of Healing but I failed to find it despite clearing 2 Ziggurats and everything else except 3 branches of Hell.

Thank you.

[sanka]

I'm not 100% sure about my answers, maybe others can give more accurate ones, but this is according to my best knowledge.

1) Is it common opinion that Summon Dragon + Staff of Wucad Mu is overpowered?

Summoning is absolutely overpowered up to version 0.11, even without Wucad Mu. Wucad Mu just makes it even more ridiculous. The next version (already available for download but not stable yet: 0.12) nerfs summoning: the dragons (and other summons) will only attack an enemy if you can see both the dragon and the enemy. You can no longer wait for the "feel more experienced" messages. Summoning is still strong tough.

Wucad Mu is strong but fine, and it will be a very good item for summoners in 0.12 also.

2) Is it possible to kill 4 shedu + phoenix + Silver star + Angel without having Animate Skeleton/Dead?

There are also gods who let you sacrifice a corpse.

Ziggurats are special, but outside a Ziggurat you may simply try to separate them and defeat them one by one. They are not very common outside tough - I think only 1 Pan floor can spam them, or some vaults maybe.

3) Is it possible to continue butchering when there are hostile monsters around? The game asks something like "Switch to your main weapon?" and it looks like butchering stops no matter what I choose.

If you start butchering it again, you will continue where you were stopped, not start from the begining, so just keep pressing "c" and eventualy you can butcher the corpse.

5) Lich form is displayed to provide Rot resistance and I believe that Mutation is converted into Rot while in Lich form. Does it mean Lich form is resistant to Mutation also? I have See Invisible as a mutation (mutation roulette after having 13 Cure Mutation from first Ziggurat) and do not want to lose it

Lich form is resistant to rotting, but this resistance is not applied to rotting caused by the fact that you cannot be mutated while in lichform, but the mutation attempts are transformed to rotting. I think you cannot gain/loose mutations while in lichform (maybe if you worship Xom/Jivya you can, I'm not sure).

[Sandman25]

The next version (already available for download but not stable yet: 0.12) nerfs summoning: the dragons (and other summons) will only attack an enemy if you can see both the dragon and the enemy.

I considered loading 0.12 but I am scared by possible bugs. I do not want to use Ctrl+S every 5 minutes or so to be able to recover from frozed application. OTOH I see many players use 0.12 so maybe it is not that buggy, I will give it a try.

There are also gods who let you sacrifice a corpse.

Yes, it looks like the problem is related to neutral gods only (Sif Muna, Vehumet, Chei), good gods can make the monsters neutral while evil gods are usually used along with Animate. I was with Vehumet.

If you start butchering it again, you will continue where you were stopped, not start from the begining, so just keep pressing "c" and eventualy you can butcher the corpse.

I wish I knew it earlier. I could try to win that battle by careful manoeuvring...

Lich form is resistant to rotting, but this resistance is not applied to rotting caused by the fact that you cannot be mutated while in lichform, but the mutation attempts are transformed to rotting. I think you cannot gain/loose mutations while in lichform (maybe if you worship Xom/Jivya you can, I'm not sure).

Great that I did not throw away my amulet of rMut, it is still useful

[Psieye]

4) Is monster's AC applied when player deals Fire/Ice damage? I know that Fireball cannot be avoided by evasion but I am not sure about AC. I read somewhere that AC is applied for player but is not applied for monsters but I am not sure it is true for 0.11 or 0.12.

AC is irrelevant for pure fire/ice damage. You are probably thinking of fire/ice-BRANDED attacks - melee (and I think missiles as well) attacks add a percentage of their post-AC damage as fire/ice damage which then further gets reduced by rF/rC. Also note that some spells do mixed damage, e.g. Throw Icicle has a physical component.

6) Does game care about Troove condition being possible to satisfy? I have a troove which asks for Wand of Healing but I failed to find it despite clearing 2 Ziggurats and everything else except 3 branches of Hell.

That's still 'possible to satisfy' - Pan/Abyss/Zigs are infinite afterall. The game doesn't care that you're unlucky.

[Kate]

4) Is monster's AC applied when player deals Fire/Ice damage? I know that Fireball cannot be avoided by evasion but I am not sure about AC. I read somewhere that AC is applied for player but is not applied for monsters but I am not sure it is true for 0.11 or 0.12.

AC is irrelevant for pure fire/ice damage. You are probably thinking of fire/ice-BRANDED attacks - melee (and I think missiles as well) attacks add a percentage of their post-AC damage as fire/ice damage which then further gets reduced by rF/rC. Also note that some spells do mixed damage, e.g. Throw Icicle has a physical component.

This is a common misconception that's gotten fairly out of control somehow. AC reduces damage from almost everything, and elemental damage is very definitely included, and always has been.

[Jeremiah]

Is there a list somewhere of the things that don't get reduced by AC?
Hellfire
Torment
Dispel Undead
Distortion branded weapons (the extra damage from space twisting around you?)
Sticky Flame?
White draconian breath?
Bolts of draining?
Ozo's Refrigeration?

[Sandman25]

AC is irrelevant for pure fire/ice damage. You are probably thinking of fire/ice-BRANDED attacks - melee (and I think missiles as well) attacks add a percentage of their post-AC damage as fire/ice damage which then further gets reduced by rF/rC. Also note that some spells do mixed damage, e.g. Throw Icicle has a physical component.

Fire Storm uses 45% Fire and 55% physical. It means every monster without rF+ will get 45% damage no matter what AC it has and then 55% of Fire Storm damage is subject to AC reduction, correct?
I don't quite understand "percentage of their post-AC damage as fire/ice damage". My understanding was that fire/ice bonus was based on pre-AC damage so if my flaming axe (d20) was unlucky to get damage 10 vs AC reduction 30, then physical damage is 0 but I still can cause 1-5 damage of fire (1%-50% of actual dice result). Do you mean ice/fire damage will always be 0 if physical damage is 0 after AC reduction for a weapon?

Is info from https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... symmetries still applied to 0.11/0.12?
It describes Brand damage on 0 damage attacks

[Sandman25]

Removed

[byrel]

The bots give an incomplete list:

ac
1. Armour Class; the last line of defence against damage. The vast majority of sources of damage are subject to reduction by a random number between 0 and your AC; this is applied after resistances.
2. Torment, smite, and hellfire, and a handful of other abilities/effects ignore AC. The only player-castable damage spells that ignore AC are freeze, refrigeration, sticky flame, static discharge, pain, vampiric draining, and agony. Note that all of these spells also ignore EV.

[Psieye]

Do you mean ice/fire damage will always be 0 if physical damage is 0 after AC reduction for a weapon?

That is what I meant, yes. To my awareness, there has not been any commit log that changed what's described on that devwiki page. Of course, I may have misunderstood the knowledge bot entry that I picked this up from: I haven't looked at the source code itself on this issue.

[BlackSheep]

Fire Storm uses 45% Fire and 55% physical. It means every monster without rF+ will get 45% damage no matter what AC it has and then 55% of Fire Storm damage is subject to AC reduction, correct?

http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=fire%20storm
Firestorm deals 55% fire damage, which can be reduced by fire resistance. The other 45% is not fire damage, and can damage even fire immune monsters. Both parts of the damage are subject to AC, I believe.

I don't quite understand "percentage of their post-AC damage as fire/ice damage". My understanding was that fire/ice bonus was based on pre-AC damage so if my flaming axe (d20) was unlucky to get damage 10 vs AC reduction 30, then physical damage is 0 but I still can cause 1-5 damage of fire (1%-50% of actual dice result). Do you mean ice/fire damage will always be 0 if physical damage is 0 after AC reduction for a weapon?

Elemental brand damage is calculated after AC has been applied for melee attacks. Ranged damage functions differently.

[Psieye]

The next version (already available for download but not stable yet: 0.12) nerfs summoning: the dragons (and other summons) will only attack an enemy if you can see both the dragon and the enemy.

I considered loading 0.12 but I am scared by possible bugs. I do not want to use Ctrl+S every 5 minutes or so to be able to recover from frozed application. OTOH I see many players use 0.12 so maybe it is not that buggy, I will give it a try.

Uh, you are aware the game saves every time you visit a new floor right? You can also assume crash-bugs just outright don't happen in trunk builds, as they are not at the cutting edge. It's a flawed assumption but a lot closer to the truth than your paranoia.

[Galefury]

I have had lots of crashes in trunk. Especially if you play the local tiles version you should expect occasional crashes. It's not really a problem, though. The autosave on stair use is good enough. Also trunk has enough new awesome features over stable that playing it is worth enduring any bugs. Plus by reporting those bugs you can help make crawl a better game for everyone!

[BlackSheep]

By contrast, I hardly ever have a crash and I rebuild almost every night. More frequent were tiles issues when tiles were added or removed from the game. I don't experience that anymore because I do full compiles when I see tile additions, but if you're downloading builds I'm not sure how to avoid that.

[Galefury]

I looked at my mantis history, I reported seven crashes (since August of 2011). Probably there were a few more that had already been reported by other people, and some of these bugs led to several crashes. It was really bad for a while when mimics were changed. But usually trunk does not have a lot of major bugs, and if it does they don't survive long.

[Baldu]

I'm sure the guys in orange and blue know what's up yet I consistently damage heavy armor guys with flame/ice clouds, throw flame/frost, fireball, and ice/fire/drain/lightning bolt. For the bolts I could believe the damage is high enough that I don't notice the AC but when I just learned throw flame/frost or use shock/flametongue and use it to kill my first plate mail orcs like they had no armor, or when i kill everything not immune with flame/freeze clouds, it's hard to believe AC is reducing that damage.

[njvack]

Most monsters don't have nearly as much AC as players. Hell Sentinels have 25 and Cerebov has 30. An orc warrior in vanilla plate has 10(?); an unarmoured one has 0.

[Baldu]

I guess i`ll chuck this as seeing what i wanna see but it always felt like magic darting a plate mail orc was pointless while shocking it was painless.

[KoboldLord]

I guess i`ll chuck this as seeing what i wanna see but it always felt like magic darting a plate mail orc was pointless while shocking it was painless.

This happens because Magic Dart is a remarkably low-damage spell. At max power, Magic Dart deals 1d8 damage, for an average of 4.5, while a plate armour orc soaks (1d11)-1 damage through AC, for an average of 5. Magic Dart is more likely to be completely negated than not, and even if not completely negated you are probably still losing out on most of the damage.

For comparison, a max power Flame Tongue deals 1d14 damage, for an average of 7.5. Your average damage roll is nearly as good as Magic Dart guy's maximum possible result. More often than not, you will do at least some damage, and orcs don't actually have that many hit points. Sometimes you will deal quite a lot of damage.

The lesson to take home here is that your damage against AC goes to absolute crap very fast if your average damage doesn't keep up with the average reduction, and your damage will spike very fast even with only a modest boost as long as you've gotten past that threshold where things average out.

[BountyHunterSAx]

As somebody who attempted zig-clearing with just mana-channel spam + summon dragon in v0.11, let me tell you what will happen.

It'll go great for 15-20 floors. . . .
. . . and then you'll get mass-abjured. And with 4-8 pan lords or just a genereic massive swathe of enemies at less than 8 tiles away from you and backed against the wall, you'll watch your WHOLE army of dragons just disappear. And you'll have nothing to fall back on.

You've gotta try firestorm with dragon-backup to get the full joy of a zig clear. Maybe cBlink + Death's Door for security.

-AHMAD

[BountyHunterSAx]

Also, Shedu don't need to be butchered post-kill; only Phoenixes. I'd recommend using your mass-damage spell to wipe out the "riff-raff" and then worry about butchery. Of course, I also find animate dead a nice utility spell to have handy since it gives me a bunch of cannon-fodder to continue firestorming from behind.

-AHMAD

[Psieye]

Also, Shedu don't need to be butchered post-kill; only Phoenixes. I'd recommend using your mass-damage spell to wipe out the "riff-raff" and then worry about butchery. Of course, I also find animate dead a nice utility spell to have handy since it gives me a bunch of cannon-fodder to continue firestorming from behind.

-AHMAD

Only if you kill both Shedu in a pair. Otherwise they will rez each other. Having said that, it's probably easier to just kill the other Shedu instead of trying to butcher the corpse mid-combat (especially in Zig combat).

[Sandman25]

As somebody who attempted zig-clearing with just mana-channel spam + summon dragon in v0.11, let me tell you what will happen.

It'll go great for 15-20 floors. . . .
. . . and then you'll get mass-abjured. And with 4-8 pan lords or just a genereic massive swathe of enemies at less than 8 tiles away from you and backed against the wall, you'll watch your WHOLE army of dragons just disappear. And you'll have nothing to fall back on.

You've gotta try firestorm with dragon-backup to get the full joy of a zig clear. Maybe cBlink + Death's Door for security.

-AHMAD

Well, I was a DEFE so I had Fire Storm (at max power after swapping to Staff of Fire and ring of Fire) so I had something to fall back on. Yes, I had cBlink + Death's Door indeed

[Galefury]

I'm pretty sure you need 3 enhancers for max power. Full bars means you have at least 150. The cap is 200.

[Psieye]

Let's see... to hit 200 actual spell power you need 50 + 100 + 200 + 400 = 750 raw power (step down functions).

Assuming 27 Spc and 27 magic skills, the formula looks: 67.5 * INT/10 * (1.5^[numEnhancers])

Let's say 40 Int, which gets us to 270 * (1.5 ^ numEnhancers)

=> 1.5 ^ numEnhancers = 750/270 = 25/9 ~= 3

1.5 ^ 2 = 2.25
1.5 ^ 3 = 3.375

So yeah, you need 3 enhancers for 200 spell power.