Dungeon Master
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Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Dungeon Master
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Abyss Ambulator
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Halls Hopper
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byrel wrote:I'd rather be a wizard in almost any tight situation than a newCj.
Ziggurat Zagger
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siggboy wrote:It's really astonishing how differently I seem to be playing the Conjurer compared to most people here. Dazzling Spray, Force Lance, I don't even bother to learn these. Pillar dancing? Blinding monsters to wear them down? Why take the easy way while there's a hard one...
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KoboldLord wrote:siggboy wrote:It's really astonishing how differently I seem to be playing the Conjurer compared to most people here. Dazzling Spray, Force Lance, I don't even bother to learn these. Pillar dancing? Blinding monsters to wear them down? Why take the easy way while there's a hard one...
Some of us seriously try to win every character we start, rather than throwing a whole squad to their deaths until one lucks out well enough to get to Mystic Blast and Battlesphere.
Ziggurat Zagger
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Halls Hopper
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byrel wrote:It might well be more reliable on weaker races to learn the intermediate ones, but it's still a long ways from "throwing a whole squad to their deaths until one lucks out well enough to get to Mystic Blast and Battlesphere." The early game is usually not THAT bad if you just play really careful; I mean, you can do that well most runs on Wanderers on most races.
Halls Hopper
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crate wrote:Magic dart is pretty bad. I mean sure you can get HuCj to lair reliably but it's a lot of work and not terribly fun for a while because your first ~5 xls are painful.
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siggboy wrote:Thanks for your support. I concur. Even weaker races (Kobold?) don't need the intermediate spells, however. You basically need to survive D:1 through D:3 with Magic Dart and the weapons you find; then it rapidly gets easier because your nukes come online. That does not have a high fatality rate if you have the basics of the game down.byrel wrote:It might well be more reliable on weaker races to learn the intermediate ones, but it's still a long ways from "throwing a whole squad to their deaths until one lucks out well enough to get to Mystic Blast and Battlesphere." The early game is usually not THAT bad if you just play really careful; I mean, you can do that well most runs on Wanderers on most races.
Some people should actually try the newCj instead of making wild assertions about survivability.
Vestibule Violator
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DracoOmega wrote:-Battlesphere mistakenly was missing a fail_check() in its casting routine, so it was impossible to miscast it. This has been fixed.
Halls Hopper
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byrel wrote:On a weaker race, I really doubt you'll have even IMB castable on D:3; maybe 25% for IMB, or 33ish for battlesphere, but nothing you want to be casting all the time. (Unless you LIKE dying from miscasts...
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.12-a0-2147-g3c97e80 (tiles) character file.
323 Sigla the Ruinous (level 5, -1/35 HPs)
Began as a Human Conjurer on Feb 15, 2013.
Slain by a gnoll
... wielding a +0,+0 flail
(4 damage)
... while paralysed by Grinder
... on Level 4 of the Dungeon.
The game lasted 00:19:15 (3216 turns).
Sigla the Ruinous (Human Conjurer) Turns: 3216, Time: 00:19:15
HP -1/35 AC 9 Str 9 XL: 5 Next: 76%
MP 1/11 EV 2 Int 16 God:
Gold 157 SH 0 Dex 13 Spells: 3 memorised, 1 level left
Res.Fire : . . . See Invis. : . a - +0,+1 whip (reach)
Res.Cold : . . . Warding : . F - +2 leather armour
Life Prot.: . . . Conserve : . (no shield)
Res.Poison: . Res.Corr. : . g - +2 helmet
Res.Elec. : . Clarity : . (no cloak)
Sust.Abil.: . . Spirit.Shd : . z - +0 pair of elf gloves
Res.Mut. : . Stasis : . (no boots)
Res.Rott. : . Ctrl.Telep.: . (no amulet)
Saprovore : . . . Flight : . (no ring)
(no ring)
@: paralysed, slightly resistant to hostile enchantments, fairly stealthy
A: no striking features
a: no special abilities
You were on level 4 of the Dungeon.
You were hungry.
You visited 1 branch of the dungeon, and saw 4 of its levels.
You collected 137 gold pieces.
Inventory:
Hand weapons
a - a +0,+1 whip of reaching (weapon)
b - a +0,+0 sling
f - a +0,+1 orcish club
i - a +1,+0 elven dagger
k - a +0,+0 club
o - a +0,+0 club
q - a +0,+2 mace
w - a +0,+1 orcish dagger
Missiles
e - 70 stones
l - 14 darts (quivered)
A - 14 poisoned needles
G - 6 curare-tipped needles
Armour
g - a +2 helmet (worn)
t - a +0 robe
z - a +0 pair of elven gloves (worn)
F - a +2 leather armour (worn)
Comestibles
p - 3 bread rations
s - 2 pears
Scrolls
d - a scroll of remove curse {unknown}
n - a scroll of identify
r - a scroll of blinking {unknown}
v - 3 scrolls of fear {unknown}
y - 2 scrolls of curse jewellery {unknown}
C - a scroll of enchant weapon I {unknown}
D - a scroll of recharging {unknown}
E - a scroll of amnesia {unknown}
Potions
h - a potion of agility {unknown}
j - a potion of flight {unknown}
m - 2 potions of curing
u - a potion of cure mutation {unknown}
x - a potion of heal wounds {unknown}
B - a potion of paralysis {unknown}
K - a potion of invisibility {unknown}
Books
c - a book of Conjurations
Spells Type Level
*Magic Dart Conjuration 1
Force Lance Conjuration 2
Dazzling Spray Conjuration/Hexes 3
*Iskenderun's Mystic Blast Conjuration 4
*Iskenderun's Battlesphere Conjuration/Charms 4
Fulminant Prism Conjuration/Hexes 5
Skills:
- Level 2.0 Dodging
- Level 2.0 Stealth
- Level 3.2 Spellcasting
- Level 4.0 Conjurations
+ Level 3.5 Charms
You had one spell level left.
You knew the following spells:
Your Spells Type Power Failure Level Hunger
a - Magic Dart Conj ####. 6% 1 None
b - Iskenderun's Battles Conj/Chrm ###...... 47% 4 ####...
c - Iskenderun's Mystic Conj ####..... 47% 4 ####...
Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations
Branches:
Dungeon (4/27)
Temple: D:4-7
Altars:
Xom
the Shining One
Annotations
D:2 Sigmund
D:4 Grinder
Message History
A gnoll comes into view. It is wielding a spear.
Grinder gestures at you.
You resist. The gnoll hits you but does no damage.
You can move again.
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
Grinder gestures at you.
You suddenly lose the ability to move! The gnoll unwields an uncursed spear. The gnoll drops an uncursed spear. The gnoll picks up a flail. The gnoll wields a flail.
Grinder gestures.
Grinder blinks! The gnoll hits you with a flail. The gnoll picks up an uncursed spear.
The gnoll shouts!
Grinder hits you. You writhe in agony. The gnoll hits you with a flail! The gnoll throws an uncursed spear.
Helpless, you fail to dodge the uncursed spear.
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
Grinder gestures at you.
Pain shoots through your body!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
The gnoll hits you but does no damage.
Grinder gestures at you.
You resist. The gnoll hits you with a flail.
You die...
#####
.......#######
........)....#
#.#.#[....5..#
........g@..#
...#........#
....)g......#
=.#%######.#
... .#
#. .#
#
You could see Grinder and 2 gnolls.
Vanquished Creatures
An orc wizard (D:3)
A worker ant (D:3)
A gnoll (D:4)
3 adders (D:3)
A worm (D:3)
A giant gecko (D:2)
7 orcs
A ball python (D:1)
10 bats
A giant cockroach (D:1)
12 goblins
6 hobgoblins
5 giant newts
11 kobolds
2 quokkas (D:3)
9 rats
72 creatures vanquished.
Vanquished Creatures (others)
A rat (D:2)
1 creature vanquished.
Grand Total: 73 creatures vanquished
Notes
Turn | Place | Note
--------------------------------------------------------------
0 | D:1 | Sigla, the Human Conjurer, began the quest for the Orb.
0 | D:1 | Reached XP level 1. HP: 13/13 MP: 3/3
161 | D:1 | Reached XP level 2. HP: 8/19 MP: 0/4
1117 | D:2 | Reached XP level 3. HP: 24/24 MP: 6/6
1226 | D:2 | Found a glowing golden altar of the Shining One.
1825 | D:2 | Noticed Sigmund
1943 | D:2 | Reached XP level 4. HP: 30/30 MP: 9/9
1949 | D:2 | Learned a level 4 spell: Iskenderun's Battlesphere
1954 | D:2 | Learned a level 4 spell: Iskenderun's Mystic Blast
2169 | D:3 | Reached skill level 1 in Charms
2463 | D:3 | Found a shimmering altar of Xom.
2827 | D:3 | Reached XP level 5. HP: 35/35 MP: 3/11
3204 | D:4 | Noticed Grinder
3209 | D:4 | Paralysed by Grinder for 2 turns
3212 | D:4 | Paralysed by Grinder for 5 turns
3216 | D:4 | Slain by a gnoll
MD is a very weak spell. It's just that good tactics can make up for a weak offense till you start running into lots of ranged (orc priests and centaurs) and armoured (orc warriors, beetles, etc.) threats.
it's true that not grabbing one of the middle ones will decrease the number that make it to the nukes.
It's easy to construct early-game situations unrecoverable with only MD. Come around the corner on D:2 and find yourself face-to-face with Edmund? You won't scratch his armour with MD, but you might push him away or blind him with force lance/dazzling spray.
Galefury wrote:An upcoming fix to battlesphere, quoted from mantis (not in trunk yet):DracoOmega wrote:-Battlesphere mistakenly was missing a fail_check() in its casting routine, so it was impossible to miscast it. This has been fixed.
This may explain why a lot of people don't seem to mind that Battlesphere is harder to cast than IMB...
-Monster battlesphere targeting and behavior is improved. The current version is generally fairly broken, often fleeing for no obvious reason or refusing to fire when open paths exist. This should at least fix most of those cases
Ziggurat Zagger
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siggboy wrote:[Yeah, of course it's always possible to imagine those situations, but let's be honest, how often do they actually happen. And, furthermore, you can construct these scenarios for almost any species/class combination in the game. An unlucky adder bite can kill any char without it being the player's fault.
siggboy wrote:By that point, both IMB and IB were totally usable (NB I'm wearing leather, with a robe it would have been even easier to cast). For IB, 50% is OK at this point in the game. Not walking away from Grinder was stupid, but I could have even killed him if I had concentrated fire 100% on Grinder (I wasted 1 MD on that Gnoll, so I had to leave Grinder at about 15% HP; 1 additional MD would have killed him, as the Battlesphere was still alive).
siggboy wrote:That's of course hilarious. I'll try the new version tonight, or when it's merged. It must be quite annoying that one apparently has to remember to call fail_check() in every single function that does implement a spell cast. That should be refactored.
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Halls Hopper
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BlackSheep wrote:Edit: I just tried your HuCj experiment. Battlesphere does great damage to targets the way I'd expect a 4th level conjuration to do. When I tried switching over to IMB, I killed more things with miscast effects than I did with the spell. (Seriously, I got hit with a giant explosion that took off 31 HP and took out a nearby adder, goblin and quokka.) At such low power level, the battlesphere didn't last long enough to recharge the MP required to cast it. In actual practice, you need to find a target first, create a sphere, then take it down. If it fails the way it's supposed to, you'll find it takes a lot longer to bring online than level 5.
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siggboy wrote:By that point, both IMB and IB were totally usable (NB I'm wearing leather, with a robe it would have been even easier to cast). For IB, 50% is OK at this point in the game.
Halls Hopper
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KoboldLord wrote:It's funny how people post dead characters as evidence that their strategy is totally awesome and a good idea.
Sweet Cerebov, 50% failure means conjuration miscasts alone can deal up to 60hp damage to you. Leaving aside the bug, how can you write "50% is OK" without realizing something is horribly wrong with what you're saying?siggboy wrote:By that point, both IMB and IB were totally usable (NB I'm wearing leather, with a robe it would have been even easier to cast). For IB, 50% is OK at this point in the game.
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siggboy wrote:Yeah, of course it's always possible to imagine those situations, but let's be honest, how often do they actually happen. And, furthermore, you can construct these scenarios for almost any species/class combination in the game. An unlucky adder bite can kill any char without it being the player's fault.It's easy to construct early-game situations unrecoverable with only MD. Come around the corner on D:2 and find yourself face-to-face with Edmund? You won't scratch his armour with MD, but you might push him away or blind him with force lance/dazzling spray.
Ziggurat Zagger
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byrel wrote:I rarely play humans (tough AND boring?) so it'll give me an opportunity to gauge the race as well.
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crate wrote:byrel wrote:I rarely play humans (tough AND boring?) so it'll give me an opportunity to gauge the race as well.
I think you misspelled "easy" there.
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Dungeon Master
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Jeremiah wrote:It could make for a kind of pseudo Projected Noise if you cast the prism in a place you want to attract monsters to then move away quickly.
Halls Hopper
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siggboy wrote:Even at 49% failure, the worst that can happen is it blowing up into your face for at most 25 HP and it happens rarely. I would only ever cast it in dire emergencies at that point, but you'll have it down to 30% in no time, and the game becomes a cakewalk from there on for the next few XLs.
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Halls Hopper
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KoboldLord wrote: if you're attempting coin flips like that on a regular basis without that sort of assistance, then the odds will catch up to you eventually.
Halls Hopper
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byrel wrote:But I found that I got Battlesphere emergency-castable (30%) around D:5, and properly spammable early D:7, with a complete focus on Cj and Charms. IMB was properly spammable significantly sooner than Battlesphere; the single-schooledness of it is very noticible. And I definitely wouldn't want to try getting a HuCj to IB on Magic Dart alone; that becomes insanely painful before I'm willing to spam IB.
Dungeon Master
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Halls Hopper
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galehar wrote:Battlesphere is indeed a good spell. It's a new spell, so balance isn't final, it may be overpowered or not. But even if it is, I strongly doubt that it's optimal play to skip force lance and dazzling spray to learn it asap. Which is the point your trying to make I guess.
Maybe it's optimal for your playstyle, but I'm pretty sure better players learn and use force lance and dazzling spray, even if it delays access to battlesphere by a few dungeon levels.
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Tartarus Sorceror
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crate wrote:I have yet to see a situation where I actually want to cast force lance honestly.
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Cocytus Succeeder
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graffen69 wrote:I seem to miss out a lot of his spell-offers, anyone know a good way to make the Vehumet-spell-offerenings a bit more obvious (init file changes)?
crate wrote:As a higher-level spell it could be much more useful since it wouldn't have to be so awful at low power, and the knockback would cost more MP....
crate wrote:Force lance is just kind of bad as a low-level spell. Knockback is a really strong effect, so if it's a level 2 spell that has both knockback and damage then the damage has to be bad. But then the way that force lance works means that because the damage is bad the knockback on a lot of things isn't good either (since that depends on the damage). It's particularly bad at low spellpower, since not only does it do less damage-per-mp than magic dart when it hits (and magic dart already isn't the pinnacle of efficiency...) it also misses a lot and has awful range.
As a higher-level spell it could be much more useful since it wouldn't have to be so awful at low power, and the knockback would cost more MP....
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