Orbs of Fire Malmutes

[DocEon]

The removal of rMut amulets has been a good change overall, I think. It forces characters to be more mindful of LoS and target priority when dealing with mobs who can malmute, most of whom are pretty squishy and can be dispatched without too much trouble.

But the clever positioning stuff that the removal of rMut makes us do doesn't apply to Orbs of fire. Because they're so big, you pretty much have to stand and deliver when fighting them as a melee character. This means (at least for me) that a character ends up with a pile of malmutes that more clever play can't really deal with. By the time you're at the end of Zot, it admittedly doesn't make a huge difference - malmutes on the ascension aren't usually a big deal, and players usually have enough cMut pots to fix whatever happens. But if you've been carefully husbanding your mutations throughout the game - and potions of benemut encourage that kind of play - it's pretty frustrating to have to clear the slate at the end of the game.

The main advantage I see to holding onto the malmuts is that it encourages clearing Z5 before rather than after extended. I can understand this for flavor's sake, but I don't think it outweighs the disappointment one gets from losing all of their good mutations without any real strategic alternatives.

Possible alternatives:
1) Give OoFs Wretched Star-style temporary malmutes: This makes them more rather than less dangerous, but also doesn't blow a character's feel permanently.
2) Remove OoFs malmutes entirely: Orbs are already dangerous enough.
3) Tie OoF malmutes to MR more tightly, so there's some way to prepare oneself against them.

[Siegurt]

2) Remove OoFs malmutes entirely: Orbs are already dangerous enough.

This would acutally make more dangerous, not less, malmutate is to an oof what a cantrip (no action) is to an early orc priest, aka a chance for them not to do damage to you for an action.

You can't die directly from malmutate, and the negatives, as you pointed out, have little impact on your ascent.
Every time you get a bad mutation from an Oof you should be saying "yay he didn't kill me this turn! "

[dynast]

This type of proposal highlights the problem i have with this game. Its all about grinding, even at the end of the game you want to make your character become stronger and any enemy that may handcap you becomes problematic because of that.
Sorry for being harsh but its not the first time i see this reasoning here.

[Sharkman1231]

OOFs are found in 3 places, at least I'm pretty sure:
1. Zot 5
2. Occasionally in the rest of Zot
3. Zigs

If you're in Zot5, you're trying to end the game. Zigs don't matter, they are 1000% optional. And OOFs in Zot 1-4 are pretty rare.

At this point the malmutations help you not die to massive amounts of fire damage. Yeah, your amazing mutation suite got ruined, but you're not dead, so that's a plus.

[ontoclasm]

This type of proposal highlights the problem i have with this game. Its all about grinding, even at the end of the game you want to make your character become stronger and any enemy that may handcap you becomes problematic because of that.
Sorry for being harsh but its not the first time i see this reasoning here.

You realize this is a proposal, right? As in, something that is currently not true in Crawl, that some person on the internet wants? If you disagree with the reasoning behind it, how does that reflect badly on Crawl?

Regardless, Crawl isn't all about grinding. Sorry. Grinding in Crawl is generally a huge waste of time and accomplishes almost nothing, especially at the end of the game; you have to go out of your way to reach Zot 5 below like XL22, and that's more than enough power to win. So if you feel like you should grind, that's all on you. Crawl shouldn't encourage you.

Case in point: OoFs have malmutate. OoFs aren't problematic, and the reason is specifically that grinding Zot is silly -- if they mutate you a lot, that's them telling you that you should stop twiddling your thumbs and just go freaking win already. It's very unlikely that a handful of bad mutations will matter on the orbrun, so the only reason it will bother you is if you choose to continue grinding.

So just... don't grind. Stop it, it's bad.

(this is where someone smugly brings up some aspect of Crawl that supports grinding and I wearily circle the word "shouldn't" in the above post)

[HardboiledGargoyle]

The only place you say "shouldn't" is "Crawl shouldn't encourage you [to grind]."

But it's true that most of the game is a grind, if not in the sense of scumming respawns or the Abyss. Lair:8, orc, depths: all grinding in that you're not striving for an objective at any personal cost, but taking a detour to make your character more powerful. The XP monsters give you rises five-fold at most from Lair:1 to Extended, so the XP you end up with is almost linearly proportional to the length of the game. You have to go out of your way to reach Zot 5 below level 22 because the game pushes you to grind/explore/conquer its relatively safe branches. IE you're doing those optional areas for long-term character improvement, at the cost of short-term risk; monsters respect that and only threaten your life, except malmutators (and, historically, corroders) who don't give you any respect and try to reverse the grinding process. Thought experiment: if Zot:5 could be accessed from D:1, and had no rune lock, how much of the game would it be optimal to grind through to have the highest chance of winning?

I don't understand this part:

The main advantage I see to holding onto the malmuts is that it encourages clearing Z5 before rather than after extended.

[ydeve]

This is similar to the motivation behind cutting dungeon levels. They provide lots of xp with mostly minimal risk to your character. This is also related to the whole "DCSS doesn't have a clock" discussion.

However, I don't see it being particularly bad as long as those optional areas have interesting monsters. Shoals is a better example. People regard it as rather dangerous, and I find it's combination of terrain and monsters interesting to play. Tomb is a bad example, as has already been discussed to death.

Some of the optional non-rune areas that I don't like as much:
Many of the Lair endings are rather uninteresting for various reasons. The Death Yak / Catoblepi centered ones suffer from luring making them rather easy. And the Dire Elephant temple isn't (imo) dangerous enough because the elephants are speed 10. If you add some snake statues or even fire crab or rime drake statues it would be more interesting.

Getting through Elf 3 tends to be a grind when I'm playing a caster.

[dynast]

This type of proposal highlights the problem i have with this game. Its all about grinding, even at the end of the game you want to make your character become stronger and any enemy that may handcap you becomes problematic because of that.
Sorry for being harsh but its not the first time i see this reasoning here.

You realize this is a proposal, right? As in, something that is currently not true in Crawl, that some person on the internet wants? If you disagree with the reasoning behind it, how does that reflect badly on Crawl?

Regardless, Crawl isn't all about grinding. Sorry. Grinding in Crawl is generally a huge waste of time and accomplishes almost nothing, especially at the end of the game; you have to go out of your way to reach Zot 5 below like XL22, and that's more than enough power to win. So if you feel like you should grind, that's all on you. Crawl shouldn't encourage you.

Case in point: OoFs have malmutate. OoFs aren't problematic, and the reason is specifically that grinding Zot is silly -- if they mutate you a lot, that's them telling you that you should stop twiddling your thumbs and just go freaking win already. It's very unlikely that a handful of bad mutations will matter on the orbrun, so the only reason it will bother you is if you choose to continue grinding.

So just... don't grind. Stop it, it's bad.

(this is where someone smugly brings up some aspect of Crawl that supports grinding and I wearily circle the word "shouldn't" in the above post)

You turned everything i said against me and somehow made the point that i was trying to make and i agree with you except for the "Crawl isnt all about grinding" part. Whenever im playing or watching someone play i say something like "why are you exploring depths instead of winning?" "why would i explore depths instead of winning already?" and the answer is always the same "there is good exp in there". They didnt come with this mindset from somewhere else, it was from crawl. I stopped grinding in crawl a longtime ago and i dont even do 15 rune runs anymore because of that and i can feel the negative impact it have on my runs. The best way to avoid it is to not play species with bad aptitudes. I shouldnt have said grinding is a bad thing though, its good to have grinding on a game to some extent.

[Sar]

Playing the game the way it's supposed to be played, progressing from one area to another, killing monsters and collecting loot and grinding are different things. You can grind in Crawl - go into Abyss at high level, kill respawning stuff. You can also grind Lair spawns since Lair OOD spawns are non-threatening (supposedly, I never actually tried that because I don't hate myself nearly enough to do something like that).

It's fine if you hate Crawl to the point where you want to minimize your exposure to it, but still want to win (for whatever reason). That's what speedrunning is for.

[dynast]

I dont hate crawl, yet.

[dpeg]

The word "grind" is used with different meanings in this thread. I wish it rested safely with skaters, butchers and noisy music.

Everybody here knows what grinding is in Crawl's philosophy, and that we're actually trying to make it not-optimal. It's a different thing to prevent is completely; for us, it suffices, if tedious, low-risk activities even with marginal gains are not the best thing to do. Pan will stay. Ideally, stuff that is tedious *or* low-risk gets culled already... it is a long way.

[DocEon]

I don't understand this part:

The main advantage I see to holding onto the malmuts is that it encourages clearing Z5 before rather than after extended.

Oops! I mixed it up - it encourages clearing Z5 after rather than before extended.

It sounds like people don't agree that this is a problem, though. I just get frustrated when the character with which I ascend is markedly different than the character I've been using all game. I'm not really sure how grinding factors into the proposal I listed, to be honest!

[duvessa]

It's a different thing to prevent is completely; for us, it suffices, if tedious, low-risk activities even with marginal gains are not the best thing to do.

So lair and labyrinths get removed when?

[Wahaha]

I'm not really sure how grinding factors into the proposal I listed, to be honest!

Yeah I don't know either. Grinding Pan for potions of cure mut?? I don't think grinding is relevant to this thread.

I am also slightly disappointed when my character gets mutated in Zot 5 before winning and it's not really the character I played most of the game with. But I don't mind it that much. I do like orbs of fire having malmutate. Makes them fun enemies.

[dowan]

Getting teleportitis or berserkitis in zot can be a lot worse than eating a fireball. Str - 2, not so much, but some of those mutations are serious, especially in zot5! Also, berserking and being paralyzed for 4 turns afterward in Zot 5 is generally regarded as a Very Bad Thing. Both of those mutations can also be quite problematic during the orb run.

If you gave them wretched star style mutations I think they'd be far scarier though. At least malmutate requires a clear shot.

I don't love the mechanic, but in all the games I've played the mutations I've gotten in Zot haven't killed me, because I do have a few cure muts in case of the really bad ones.

I really don't like OOFs, I think they're a really stupid enemy, and I'd love to have them replaced (just replacing all OOFs with ALiches would be fine with me). I find having to have a specific plan for one specific enemy annoying in a game that generally allows so much freedom.

I also fail to see what any of this has to do with grinding.

[Sar]

Being Very Hungry or below prevents berserking completely.

[dynast]

The implications of "getting malmutated by a OOF before you win the game being bad" is that you want to kill them for the exp, if thats not the case then theres no reason to change them to become more dangerous, as dowan pointed out.
The implications of "wanting OOF to be more dangerous while not having malmutate" is that you dont care if they do because by the time you get there you are already steamrolling them anyways.
Correct me if i made the wrong assumptions.