.14 Trunk Question

[The Magic King]

I wondered if someone could tell me whether the line "Items on the ground are no longer subject to item destruction." applies to jellies slurping items. If it did apply that would assuage my fears of stash destruction. Though I realise that fearing it to begin with actually amounts to paranoia 99% of the time, but that 1% haunts me you know

PS Hello, this is my first post.

PPS Please don't tell me it does so that I will get over my bad play with stashing, as I am already stashing far less. Also, yes, I realise that this is likely the most paranoid first post many might have ever seen. I tend to type my thoughts as they come to me, and I speak the same way. Sorry if it seems untrusting, that was not my intention.

[Kate]

It refers to fire and cold beams/explosions/clouds (and shatter, and giant spore explosions), not jellies.

[The Magic King]

Thanks for the answer. That is what I suspected, after all jellies slurping is one of their distinct features.

[duvessa]

Monsters also still eat food off the ground.

[Sar]

Harpies?

Why does food destruction even exist, btw? I sort of can understand reasons for destroying your tactical consumables. Food isn't a tactical consumable, it's a anti-scumming feature. I know only harpies it food but awkwardly throwing my rations around when I meet a pack of them is not very engaging gameplay. Am I missing something here? And if I don't, can this pointless feature be removed, please?

[Azrael]

It's basically the only thing making harpies interesting right now. Like hydras and jellies, you have to deal with them in an alternative way to get optimal play, which is a good thing. Monsters that make the player think, "Oh, look, more tabbing" are boring, and if you try tabbing harpies you're gonna have a bad time.

[Sar]

Harpies are speed 25 and pack a nasty punch if you encounter them early. That is interesting. Throwing around bread or dropping it while entering Shoals and running back if you are near starving and have no corpses around is a chore.
Note that Crawl has plenty of monsters that make you think about tabbing them, at least for some time. They achieve that by killing you. This is good design.

[Azrael]

Harpies are speed 25 and pack a nasty punch if you encounter them early. That is interesting. Throwing around bread or dropping it while entering Shoals and running back if you are near starving and have no corpses around is a chore.
Note that Crawl has plenty of monsters that make you think about tabbing them, at least for some time. They achieve that by killing you. This is good design.

Dev who thinks this: "Hmm, I wonder how we could make ogres/hill giants/stone giants more interesting. I know! Let's increase their damage, so they can kill more characters!"

Sorry, no. Monsters who are interesting because they have higher stats are not really interesting at all. Harpies eating food may be annoying, but the reason for it-- the addition of unique mechanics to increase flavor-- is one that is core to interesting roguelikes.

[dck]

You know what kind of monster there isn't in crawl? A mutant bubbleman who makes your food mutagenic by hitting you.
It'd be annoying and the unique mechanic behind it would increase flavor, why does it not exist?
Because it would be fucking awful.

Harpies are good enemies that deal a lot of damage and are very fast (but have other weaknesses like shit MR) and they don't need the annoying bit food destruction is.

[Sar]

Ogres, hill giants and stone giants are already interesting.

[siprus]

Only reason to lose food to harpies is to not care enough to bother. Which is almost always the case for me.

[Sprucery]

Harpies are currently the most annoying feature in Crawl, in my opinion. I could live with them stealing food if they weren't so fast. Now I have to drop all permafood before descending to a new level in Shoals, which only adds tedium.

[Tiber]

Suggestion: Harpies no longer steal food from your pack. However, they still steal food from the ground and if for whatever reason you try to eat in front of them they can snatch it out of your hands. Keep the flavor, remove the tedium.

[daggaz]

Playing a lot of kobolds, I never really cared much about permafood and never bothered to drop my rations to fight harpies. Its just, 'oh look, another monster. tab.' Switching to other characters, the habit remained. Which is interesting, because whether I am swinging a quickblade or an executioners axe, the amount of food they steal is negligible to the amount of food i can find and need.

Harpies' food stealing is almost completely pointless. Harpies hitting hard and moving fast? Thats at least somewhat interesting if you meet them early, but the same can be said about any OOD monster.