Discussion about Mara

[nordetsa]

I don't think I've seen people saying not to avoid Mara. Him alone poses enough threat with bolt of fire. Add two summoning spells and you have the game's possibly most unwanted unique. Is there any better way to deal with Mara rather than avoiding him altogether? You're almost guaranteed to fight multiple monsters while dealing with him and one of the monster happens to be able to use every single spells that you can cast. Why would anyone want to fight him in the first place?

For me, I don't see the point of him existing because the danger he comes with doesn't really match with the reward for killing him. He leaves no special loot and gives only exp. There is also the benefit of freely roaming the place where he used to be, but that applies to every other unique as well.

What are other people's thought? Personally, I would like to see him removed from the game because you'd always want to avoid him.

[mikee]

Mara actually is guaranteed to spawn with good items, and he isn't that hard to kill. It's also kind of cool that Mara can be threatening no matter how strong you are. I do think he shouldn't have teleport, though, as it's rather obnoxious.

[Lasty]

I like Mara. He provides a unique and interesting challenge, and he always has a demon whip (right?). I usually do kill Mara during games where he spawns, but rarely right after I first encounter him.

The two best ways I've found to kill him are 1) sleep stab and 2) demonspawn's hellfire mutation. Of course, those aren't options most of the time. High level ice and earth conjurations can take him out pretty fast (Bolt of Cold, for example). Strong melee characters can take him with haste/might, ideally after limiting his LOS to prevent him from summoning help before you get into melee range, but you have to be ready to get out of there if things go south. Minions do decent work against him, so summoners and followers of Fedhas, Yred, and Nemelex can usually take him out.

Really, the main thing is to resist fire and avoid getting into a fight with your double.

[spudwalt]

I've managed to kill Mara a couple of times, and I've been killed by him a couple more. IIRC, both those times involved me getting up close and personal as quickly as possible in an attempt to stop him from summoning copies of stuff. Once Mara's dead, just teleport away and avoid your clone until it despawns (or Abjure it, if you're a summoner).

What sets Mara apart from other dangerous uniques like Sigmund or Mennas is that you can't just go down a couple more floors and come back in order to wipe the floor with him; his danger level scales with your character, which is kinda neat, in my opinion.

As for loot, think I've seen Mara with a demon blade before, and I've definitely seen him with a demon whip. It was a pretty good one, too, IIRC (though I wasn't using Maces & Flails at the time).

[MoogleDan]

While he does scale with you in the sense that his ghost summons match you, he himself doesn't get any less squishy. I find that Mara's best avoided until you know you can pound him quickly, and since you get a potential end-game weapon off him, I'd say that's a fair delay to force on the player unless they're feeling lucky.

[Klown]

I've only seen him once. I summoned two brothers in arms, and they made quick work of him.

[Siegurt]

Indeed I usually kill Mara when I see him, sometimes that's "right away" and sometimes it's "when I can come back for him later" I don't die to him often.

I did a grep of my current morgue folder on this computer, out of 10 times seen, I killed him 7 times and was killed by him once (Avoided him twice)
Turncounts from first "Noticed" to last "Killed" (She shows up more than once when she clones herself sometimes):
30
17
25
5
97
1048
5

So it looks like out of those 7 I returned to kill him 'later' once, and had at least once where I needed to take more than one run at him.
This is a small enough sample size that it's probably not anything resembling "scientific", but he doesn't seem to be in the 'Always avoid' category for me at least.

[Sandman25]

Mara is easy to kill with anti-magic weapon also. Though you could need a Blink scroll to get adjacent to him if you are not a DD with high AC.

[tasonir]

While mara has killed me at least once and probably more than that, in general I find him reasonably easy to kill provided I do two things:

1) Wield a meat ration. I generally play melee, and this basically makes the ghost worthless. This is fairly spoilerish/scummy behavior, but I like winning.
2) Have fire resistance.

Really, with those two things, fighting mara isn't too terribly hard. You can come back later if you want to do it at a higher level, but overall, he isn't too bad. If you're worshipping Chei, slouch is also fairly effective as it will hit all 3 clones at once....

[Kate]

A surprising fact about meat rations is that you don't do any damage while you're wielding them either.

Edit: also, moved to Advice.

[Azrael]

A surprising fact about meat rations is that you don't do any damage while you're wielding them either.

Just wield your real weapon as soon as Mara makes a ghost of you, which usually doesn't take too long. If you have fire resistance, you can afford to wait.

[njvack]

I don't think I've seen people saying not to avoid Mara. Him alone poses enough threat with bolt of fire.

No, Bolt of Fire is pretty manageable with rF, AC, and EV.

He and Mennas are probably my favorite uniques. I don't always fight them (some characters really never have a good answer to Mara) but they always induce a little anal pucker.

My one quibble with Mara is one with player ghosts in particular -- I just with they would summon fewer !@#$ butterflies if they have the spell.

[daggaz]

Mara's ghost spell should have some exceptions to avoid that kind of behavior.

If weapon_skill > spellcasting or magic_school
1) Ghost is spawned with the most powerful weapon in your inventory.
2) If power level of that weapon is less than the strength of Mara's weapon, ghost spawns with an equivalent strength weapon from a type matching players highest weapon_skill

Wielding meat rations is just scummy.

[savageorange]

^ Excellent point. How do you define "strength"?

[daggaz]

I dont know crawl's code, but I'd be very surprised if some kind of tier system isnt already implemented. You could base it on, for example, average damage over time, thus taking into account accuracy, base damage + bonuses, and weapon speed. Obviously this would not be perfect by any means and would ignore more strategic considerations, but still, its doable and would give a rough approach.

And rough approach >>> ghost wielding a loaf of bread

Another go-around approach to this stupidity is to have Mara gain significant power bonuses and go nuke-crazy instead of making a ghost if the player is wielding something retarded like a wet sack of kittens. I think the first approach is better, tho. Im sure some casters would complain if they were caught by Mara with their pants down while casting sublimination, for example..

[savageorange]

^ I take it that you are now experiencing extreme surprise, then?

(I agree that your heuristic is reasonable)

[dpeg]

I guess (well, hope) that it's only a matter of time till the leaf of bread abuse of Mara is done with. It's a neat little trick and nothing to be ashamed of, but it does get old. On the other hand, you can tell your grandchildren how you defeated the mighty Mara on an apple or a snoozcumber.

[XuaXua]

When faced with multiple Mara or a mirror, if killing a Mara gives you an XP dump, you got him.
Gtfo of there.

[daggaz]

Well, given that in D1-3 hand axes are quite common, war axes less so, and executioner's axes are exceedingly rare, and that this metric seems to slide towards heavier axes as you get deeper, its hard to argue that crawl code doesn't have some kind of ability to weight drops with regards to branch depth.

Doubly so when you look at vaults and the propensity for multi-ego'd artifacts.

[tasonir]

It can be bad if he doesn't duplicate you quickly, but he generally does, and I'm not going to be able to melee him from 6 tiles away, so I might as well wield a ration while walking towards him/casting buff spells. If he doesn't duplicate me and I manage to lose too much health from fire I'd just run away anyways, holding a ration won't impede that.

[daggaz]

Thats inconceivable! If you even think about gaming Mara, which is obviously a really bad strategy, then you are obviously a really bad player. And everybody knows, really bad players would only try to actually melee mara to death with a bread ration and not use it in any kind of intelligent way, which is what makes it such a really bad strategy! And anybody who uses such a really bad strategy, must be a stupendously bad player!!! DO YOU SEE WHERE I AM GOING WITH THIS!!! NEVER START A LAND WAR IN ASIA!!!

[Confidence Interval]

DO YOU SEE WHERE I AM GOING WITH THIS!!!

No.

[daggaz]

Calling a strategy a "terrible fucking idea" and immediately in the next sentence generalizing anybody who even discusses it as "really bad at crawl" who "cant see it is useless", without giving any rationale and indeed by ignoring any possibility of intelligent aspects or use of the strategy is not just rude and baseless, it borders on circular logic. And how can you argue with somebody who backs themselves up with their own unbacked opinions? The strategy is dumb because I say so and you are dumb because you use the strategy and that is true because I say so. Very cool.

For the record, Ive killed Mara every time except once that Ive seen him (where I forgot about the ghost ability) and I generally go for a kill-as-fast-as-possible strategy, which never involves bread sticks. But curiously enough, it was my ghost wielding a supercharged executioners axe which killed me that one anecdotal time. Bread-sticking mara might not be my strategy of choice, but I can see the advantage of at least unwielding your prime weapon as you approach Mara, if as in either example, you don't yet have a strong range attack and you are saving your blink scroll for escaping rather than approaching the fight. I mean, I can probably find at least a dozen threads where people mention the cheap cost of unwielding/wielding a weapon. It is one of the quickest actions in the game, is it not?

[Amnesiac]

So what's the problem with avoiding a unique? I think it's cool that you can't just rush through the game no matter how strong your character is. I would like to have more of these kind of uniques, because, frankly speaking, most of them are weak no matter what character you are playing, you just need to confront him N on 1, maybe have some tricks or buff(and some or a lot of them are easy to come by, usually).

[Volteccer_Jack]

"avoidance" is a good idea for almost any unique, mara is not special in this regard

[tasonir]

Minmay was either trolling, or perhaps making a subtle stab at the fact that I never explicitly mentioned you should put your real weapon back on after the player ghost is created. I guess I just assumed that was understood. Either way, I don't mind trolling, I'm at work, and this is more interesting than working

[Sphara]

You need the right tactics with Mara. You need the right tactics against Sigmund or the elven twins Duvessa and Dowan. Otherwise you AVOID them. That's the part of the game, learning when situation gets bad. Mara can make a situation bad with his summons, thats true. But so can Eustachio or an orc high priest. Don't tell me guys you're running melee towards a summoned sun demon on Orc:4 without +rF when that nasty orc high priest is still there. No, you flee!
Removing Mara is not an issue to be discussed seriously if the only point is that player 'does not want to deal with his illusion'.

[mikee]

The longtime advice to wield food items in front of mara is so unquestionably regarded as bad in ##crawl that people often say it as a joke, followed by 'just kidding' and the real advice. So it's surreal to see someone say it with such a straight face and defend it so stoutly.

Tactically speaking, even in the best case scenario, this 'trick' is unnecessary. You can simply kill mara before he summons (I would also assume so if your weapon is so good!). You can reset the fight a million times if you'd like to. You can kill mara even if he summons and not fight the clone at all.

More commonly, i.e., not the best case scenario for this 'trick', it is worse than doing nothing. You are standing around for a random number of turns doing nothing. You're wielding bread for christ's sake in the hopes that mara will clone you and you can then unwield the bread and start fighting.

In many cases, wielding bread does not reduce your clone's damage at all, or if so, very little, due to the fact that it has a damage cap.

Overall, it is the sort of advice that is popular not because it is good but because people keep repeating it and believing it just because someone said it. It's wielding bread. As a weapon. Why does this sound good?

[Hurkyl]

It's wielding bread. As a weapon. Why does this sound good?

It sounds good because it sounds like a disable.

The advertised effect, whether real or not, is that you invest some amount of time doing things to reduce the enemy's ability to damage you relative to your ability to damage the enemy as the fight progresses. It's no different in that regard than spending time switching your weapon/jewelry, casting slow or mephitic cloud or repel missiles. Or for that matter, casting haste.

The disable runes on unusual mechanics. The enemy resists by choosing an action other than Summon Illusion rather than rolling against MR or HD. 'Casting' the disable works by wielding an item rather than spending actions and other resources. These facts don't make it any less of a disable.

The only part of your post that looks like its actually a relevant argument rather than "point and make fun at people who do use this tactic I think sounds stupid" is your claim that the trick doesn't actually have the advertised effect.

It may very well be that it costs too much to stick the disable (but then the same can be said for any disable -- and as you mention, you can just reset the fight if it doesn't stick right away). It may well be that reducing your clone's damage has a negligible effect on one's ability to survive a battle. It may well be that you don't even noticeably affect the threat your clone represents. If so, then say those things. It's much more useful than making a big deal than pretending you don't see the motivation behind the trick, or suggesting that the fact wielding bread sounds silly is tactically relevant, or making an argument that looks like "anyone who doesn't agree with me is an idiot".

(the silliness would be relevant if you were talking about game design rather than tactics, of course)

[mikee]

Sigh.

[Wahaha]

You know what else disables Mara's damage? Killing him.

[Sphara]

1) Wield a meat ration. I generally play melee, and this basically makes the ghost worthless. This is fairly spoilerish/scummy behavior, but I like winning.

Hi tasonir. Are you actually using this trick when worshipping Cheibriados?

[Mankeli]

The only part of your post that looks like its actually a relevant argument rather than "point and make fun at people who do use this tactic I think sounds stupid" is your claim that the trick doesn't actually have the advertised effect.

I'd say that explaining why the trick doesn't work is pretty god damn relevant in a thread where people are claiming it does work.

I personally didn't know about the damage cap (although maybe I had a hunch) but I still don't wield bread rations (maybe I've done it once). That is because as the humane guy that I am, I don't want to see my character getting blasted with 3d27 fire bolt and demon weapon damage for too many turns in a row in the midgame by Mara and his clones!

[Sar]

Yeah, I remember using "the bread trick" once or twice (thank you, Crawl wiki!) but then I realized that Mara's bolts of fire hurt, and that just attacking means you give him less chance to show his tricks (and if you get cloned and don't want to deal with the clone you can just walk away), so now I don't do that anymore and wouldn't recommend that.

[and into]

I think Mikee's post was reasonable and not impolite, for what it's worth.

Here's why wielding a bread ration is a bad idea, I'll go into the details so (hopefully) we can rid ourselves of the idea this strategy is reasonable, once and for all.

First, obviously you are only even considering this if you are a melee dude.

Mara is capable of double cloning himself, and every version of himself can throw 3d27 bolts of fire at you, or hit you for generally more than his 30 damage base amount, thanks to the fact that (as mentioned earlier) he spawns with a good weapon.

So, for wielding a bread ration to be... er... rational, your melee dude has to be SO damn strong, that the prospect of facing yourself in combat—*even though your clone will have the terrible Crawl AI and lack all the consumables you have*—is so terrifying, that it is worth it for you DEFINITELY to gimp yourself completely, in order to avoid the CHANCE that Mara will clone you. While all this is happening, up to three Mara's may be wailing on you with demon weapons and/or spamming bolt of fire at your melee dude, who, bread in fist, cannot fight Mara. This is literally what you are suggesting, by offering the bread-wielding strategy.

I submit that if your character is so staggeringly powerful in melee that the above is a viable strategy, then you are powerful enough to kill Mara damn near instantly, like with a single swing, and you should just do that rather than wielding food.

If there is a damage cap on what your clone can do in melee, then wielding food is an even worse idea. With or without the cap, though, it is a very, very poor strategy. Which is probably why Mikee did not bother digging around in the source code to get the exact numbers on the damage cap.

EDIT: Some people swear by the bread-wielding strategy, by the way, not because it is effective, but because they like to feel as though they've "tricked" the game. CrawlWiki (and to a much lesser extent, these very forums) demonstrate this tendency, and it leads to bad advice. There's a place in Crawl for off-the-wall tactics, some of them do work, but generally those are only optimal in dire circumstances when other options are not available.

[Hurkyl]

While all this is happening, up to three Mara's may be wailing on you with demon weapons and/or spamming bolt of fire at your melee dude, who, bread in fist, cannot fight Mara. This is literally what you are suggesting, by offering the bread-wielding strategy.

This is the part that I find unreasonable.

We could say the same thing about my strategy for my SpEn to spam EH at Nikola. I'm doing nothing all of those turns he resists, while he's spamming lightning spells. A terrible strategy.

Or my strategy to spam EH at Orc Priests when low level? I'm doing nothing for all of those turns that it resists while the priest is spamming smite at me. But this one is usually an excellent strategy. (unless I'm so weak I should be running away instead and are in a position to do so)

The only differences here are that you "know" bread is a poor way to tackle Mara, you "know" EH-stab is a poor way to tackle Nikola, and you "know" that EH-stab is a good way to kill orc priests. This argument only works if you already agree with the conclusion, which means it is not a reasonable argument to make to someone who doesn't already agree with you.

As I read your post, the quoted section is more or less the climax of your argument, and it boils down to little more than "Mara is dangerous. X might not work. If you're doing X, you're not doing Y". People right dismiss such an argument. Doubly so when X is presented in an inferior way (this thread has already mentioned two significant improvements over actually hitting Mara with a loaf of bread).

Sure, more enterprising readers might still be inclined pick out the informative bits from the rest of the argument, and might even come to the conclusion were supporting. Or they might do more research on their own to come up with the reasons you didn't supply for the argument. But it's not particularly reasonable to expect that in general.

This is getting fairly meta, so it's probably the last I'll say on the thread.

[stickyfingers]

The trick will actually work for a melee-evoker hybrid. Your evocations won't be gimped, and the ghost will get quite harmless.

[Bloax]

I'm not 100% on the bread tactic, but as far as I know it's an approach strategy for melee guys. You know, for actually getting into melee range with Mara.
That time when he might make a clone of you while you're waltzing helplessly towards him.

Preferably you'd spot Mara, break LOS, wield bread - approach, if cloned - switch weapon - otherwise if adjacent, switch to weapon.
You'd waste a full turn on the two swaps if you do it without breaking LOS, 0.5 with the LOS break.
All for the benefit of a chance of not getting a strong clone on your ass along with 3x Mara.

Which doesn't seem too bad.

Actually standing and waiting for him to clone you, bread in hand sounds like a terrible, terrible idea though.

[Galefury]

Or you could walk to a corner. Seems like a good approach strategy, right?

Even in the open, wielding and unwielding bread takes a turn, so it's probably not worth it.

[Amnesiac]

What if you wield a -cast weapon when playing a mage? I'd never do this, though. My mages don't have any problem killing him when they meet him. Most of my stabbers,too. As for other classes, they just avoid him, usually, but is that a problem?

[and into]

The only differences here are that you "know" bread is a poor way to tackle Mara, you "know" EH-stab is a poor way to tackle Nikola, and you "know" that EH-stab is a good way to kill orc priests. This argument only works if you already agree with the conclusion, which means it is not a reasonable argument to make to someone who doesn't already agree with you.

I think wielding bread (or -cast with spellcasters!) is itself meta-gamey, period, but since people do it, it is worth discussing in Dungeon Crawling Advice.

The actual argument I made began with, "I submit to you..." For this "disable" to be worth it, your character has to be so strong that it (ironically) is not worth doing, because wasting even one total turn switching to and from wielding a ration has a very high opportunity cost for powerful characters, who probably could be doing powerful things with that turn.

For the record, I was responding to the idea of the *strategy* that was being offered, of people wielding a bread ration and *waiting* for Mara to clone you. However I am still very skeptical of the idea that wielding a ration is worthwhile, even in (as Bloax put it) "the approach."

At any rate, I'm sure that it is possible to construct some particular scenario in which it is a reasonable choice to wield bread while Mara is on screen. I'd even admit that, in all the games of Crawl that have been played, a few such scenarios have likely happened. But those were very situation-specific scenarios, in which case off-the-wall tactics (as I said) might be justified. I would not consider it a strategy, though, by which I mean it is not something to plan on doing, anymore than intentionally casting a high-failure spell hoping for a summon butterflies miscast. You *can* do it, it may work, in certain very specific situations it might be a good tactical move, but it is not the sort of thing you should actively plan to do.

The real problem, of course, is that telling people who are already earnestly having trouble killing (or even just surviving an encounter with) Mara to "wield a bread ration," like it is some kind of silver bullet pro-tip, is advice that will very likely get their character killed.

[tasonir]

1) Wield a meat ration. I generally play melee, and this basically makes the ghost worthless. This is fairly spoilerish/scummy behavior, but I like winning.

Hi tasonir. Are you actually using this trick when worshipping Cheibriados?

generally yes. As Bloax said, it's only for approaching mara - I'd never wield a ration while in melee range with mara, as then it's killing time. It's just that if you're in an open area, you can spend .8 turns (not 1 turn, see if you know me well enough to know why) to reduce your clone's damage to 0 for the ~10 turns or so before you kill mara. if mara blinks away, you get unlucky and attack the real mara last, it could be 20+ turns. that could be a lot of damage prevented, for .8 turns of firebolts. You might be lucky and only take .8 turns of firebolts from one mara, if he clones you before he clones himself, but you may take .8 turns of possibly 3 firebolts.

The need for rations is greatly reduced if you have a nice corridor and can get the clone of you on the far side of mara clones. Still, I generally don't drag ranged casters who can blink any reasonable distance, so for me to fight mara in a corridor I'd have to be very, very close to one.

Maybe I should do some wizmode testing, it's been a long time since I let my clone hit me, so honestly I don't have a good idea of how dangerous their melee is.

[Volteccer_Jack]

to reduce your clone's damage to 0

that is not even remotely similar to what wielding bread does to your clone

Maybe I should do some wizmode testing, it's been a long time since I let my clone hit me, so honestly I don't have a good idea of how dangerous their melee is.

Then the entire tactic is a pointless waste of turns and effort that doesn't even matter in the first place. Which is what people in this thread are trying to tell you.

[tasonir]

to reduce your clone's damage to 0

that is not even remotely similar to what wielding bread does to your clone

Maybe I should do some wizmode testing, it's been a long time since I let my clone hit me, so honestly I don't have a good idea of how dangerous their melee is.

Then the entire tactic is a pointless waste of turns and effort that doesn't even matter in the first place. Which is what people in this thread are trying to tell you.

By let it hit me, I mean hit me for damage, ie, it was hitting and dealing 0 damage because it was cloned with a ration. I am aware of what people in the thread are trying to say, and I intend to check it, they are probably right as it's definitely a popular opinion.

Edit: Also, you didn't specify what is wrong about a ration making the clone deal 0 damage. Implicitly in this claim is that your ghost is a melee ghost, that you don't have any damage spells, which would be an obvious exception. How can a clone hit for damage with a ration?

[and into]

it's wrong because wielding a ration doesn't make the clone deal 0 damage

Indeed, but it does make the clone do *less* damage. Many superstitions have some tiny rational kernal to them, after all.

Personally, I have my character throw a snozzcumber over his right shoulder whenever I run into Boris.

We could say the same thing about my strategy for my SpEn to spam EH at Nikola. I'm doing nothing all of those turns he resists, while he's spamming lightning spells. A terrible strategy.

Obviously, if you don't have rElec (or a potion of resistance to give you rElec), you get the hell away from Nikola ASAP. Assuming you do have it, spamming EH at Nikola is a terrible strategy, because he is extremely resistant to hexes. The game tells you this, in fact, if you examine Nikola. It is possible to get EH to stick, but it is extremely unlikely.

Likewise, the game also does not show your food when you hit "w" to bring up things you can wield. This is the game telling you that wielding bread is not a good idea.

[Amnesiac]

Many superstitions have some tiny rational kernal to them, after all.

Personally, I have my character throw a snozzcumber over his right shoulder whenever I run into Boris.

And what "tiny rational kernel" does this one have?

[Siegurt]

Just so everyone's clear with a little actual data:

Wielding a weapon causes the Mara's clone's damage to be set to your weapon's damage with your weapon skill (and any branding appropriate) with your fighting and it adds damage of your strength/4, so a pretty rough translation of the amount of damage you do with your weapon.

Wielding bread (or any non-weapon, a potion, a scroll) will cause the damage stat of the illusion to be 4, modified by your fighting plus your strength divided by 4 (Or roughly what your character would do with a dagger and no short blade skill)

So while it doesn't reduce the damage done to 0, it does usually reduce the damage done(a creature doing 1d6 or 1d8 damage is certainly much less scary than one doing 1d60 damage)

Now whether that's worth it ever is still very very questionable, mostly because she doesn't always summon an illusion, and one extra turn of weapon swapping (or potentially half a turn if you wield the bread ration out of her LOS and swap to your real weapon when you've closed the gap with her) might not save you any net damage taken at all, And might get you an extra attack spell to the face. And finally creatures like her with a nasty ranged ability should usually be lured around a corner or something so you can hit them up close and personal as soon as they come into your LOS.

[XuaXua]

I thought Mara was male.