Early spellbooks

[Berder]

Suggestion: let there be a high chance of spawning one or more artifact spellbooks on D1-3, each containing a few low-level spells (level 4 or lower, not necessarily in the same school). This would allow characters such as Wn/Ar/CK/AK to get going with magic dart or throw frost, instead of nearly always having to do a melee start.

It's easy to do a melee start with any background since starting weapons are all over the place. It's almost never possible to do a magic start unless your background came with a book, because starting spellbooks are exceedingly rare. Let's balance that up and add more variety to the early game.

[Pollen_Golem]

How about making some early uniques such as Jessica carry a random book?

[TeshiAlair]

I always enjoy the 1-spell mini books you see in some altar vaults. Jessica's spell list is a bit wonky, but maybe she could drop one with slow?

[PleasingFungus]

Wait, since when is it 'almost never possible' for Wn to do a 'magic start'?

[Berder]

Wait, since when is it 'almost never possible' for Wn to do a 'magic start'?

In my experience, Wn very rarely starts with enough useful spells to rely on magic primarily. It's a melee start 90% of the time.

[Pollen_Golem]

about the same chance as a non-monstrous demonspawn, huh?

[le_nerd]

Wn get exceedingly often minor magic, which is considered to be an okay starter book. Altough wether to make a magic start from that with ST 17 INT 9 ...

[celem]

I quite like this idea. You just need to look at say, the recommended starts for a Demigod, to see how important an early book of some description is. De can run any build with pretty even results, but the only recommended starts are those with books. (Presumably because De needs every resource they can get to compensate for the lack of divine powers, I certainly find DeMelee a tough start)

There are a lot of times I start as some oddball book background just because I need a book, not even any specific spell. (i.e. I like to start my Ds with a book so they have something to do while I see whether Claws are forthcoming. Or you want to take Sif but not cast until later, you need a starter book to ensure you can worship when the altar appears)

[PleasingFungus]

In my experience, Wn very rarely starts with enough useful spells to rely on magic primarily. It's a melee start 90% of the time.

I apologize; I still disagree strongly but this is distracting from the actual topic of the thread.

[Sandman25]

Why should there be a guaranteed book? Will we also guarantee weapons for book backgrounds? I am playing a DDAr and I literally failed to find any axes before D6, this is good IMHO.

[celem]

Thats apples and oranges though. We dont have guarenteed weapons, but as close as makes little difference. I dont really check but i'd bet I've found a D:1 weapon every game ever.

You wanted an Axe, thats like wanting Sting or Magic Dart, especially if you then say i want a war/broad/battle. We are talking about something random, a reasonable shot at 1 or 2 random spells. You might not have found your axe, but there were a shit ton of weapons on the floor before D:6 for sure, I regularly run halfway through Lair before finding any spells whatsoever on a Fi.

Not finding an axe of some description might equate to 'not finding a conjuration'.

edi: like you I think its a good thing, but I think spells are infinitely rarer.

[duvessa]

how about just allowing books, artefacts, etc. to generate on d:1 normally, like they do on every other level in the game

[Sandman25]

Thats apples and oranges though. We dont have guarenteed weapons, but as close as makes little difference. I dont really check but i'd bet I've found a D:1 weapon every game ever.

You wanted an Axe, thats like wanting Sting or Magic Dart, especially if you then say i want a war/broad/battle. We are talking about something random, a reasonable shot at 1 or 2 random spells. You might not have found your axe, but there were a shit ton of weapons on the floor before D:6 for sure, I regularly run halfway through Lair before finding any spells whatsoever on a Fi.

Not finding an axe of some description might equate to 'not finding a conjuration'.

edi: like you I think its a good thing, but I think spells are infinitely rarer.

I still don't understand why there should be a guaranteed (ok, almost guaranteed) book for fighters? My previous caster (VM) failed to find any books before Lair. Should we guarantee books with some level 5-6 spells also? Next step would be "let's guarantee plate armour on D1, my Gl want to switch to heavy armour" and "let's guarantee a rod on D1, my Wn wants to branch into Evocations"?

[KoboldLord]

I still don't understand why there should be a guaranteed (ok, almost guaranteed) book for fighters? My previous caster (VM) failed to find any books before Lair. Should we guarantee books with some level 5-6 spells also? Next step would be "let's guarantee plate armour on D1, my Gl want to switch to heavy armour" and "let's guarantee a rod on D1, my Wn wants to branch into Evocations"?

Plate armour is already virtually guaranteed to spawn in the early game. You are also virtually guaranteed to spawn a winnable melee weapon of most weapon classes in the early game. Every background can transition into a melee style and reliably get what it needs to do so.

Meanwhile, a non-magic start has next to no incentive to pick up magic. You can't plan for a magic build without a starting book, and once you've sunk xp into your initial plan there aren't very many possible books appealing enough to consider changing your plan. Once you've already cleared the difficult parts of the game, you might as well pick up whatever charms or translocations have dropped since those don't care about spell power, but with everything else you might as well just take invocations or evocations instead of hoping for a spellbook drop.

Some people don't like the idea that picking up offensive magic is always a bad idea. The one real notable exception to this rule is Kiku, who already implements the OP's request by providing guaranteed early spellbooks that allow a melee build to transition into a magic hybrid while reinforcing that melee ability with ludicrously powerful abilities to keep the hybrid character from falling behind. I would hazard a guess that the OP wants a conjurations Kiku, but Vehumet doesn't work for the purpose even with the guaranteed spells because she doesn't provide hybrids with any equivalent of Kiku's active abilities or pain brand.

[hannobal]

There are plenty of backgrounds that start with a book, so I don't see any problem.

[Sandman25]

Melee backgrounds are already stronger than book backgrounds and the latter depend on books for "normal" play. Good weapons (great mace/great sword/halberd/glaive etc.) are virtually guaranteed and we even have weapon crosstraining in case melee character is unlucky (but no magic crosstraining, we even had antitraining for a while). So I believe if we really want to add more books, we need to buff book backgrounds first, not melee backgrounds who are already OP.

[Wahaha]

Magic is better than melee in early game, except for some book bgs that are weaker on D:1. Don't think book backgrounds need to be stronger. I would maybe like buffs to magic usability later in the game, but that doesn't concern starting book backgrounds.

[Lasty]

Book backgrounds tend to be quite strong. For one thing, they start with a book, and books are rare in the early game.

[Sandman25]

Most book backgrounds need other books or they become weaker than melee backgrounds in Lair branches.

[dowan]

I just won an excruciatingly painful DEVM game, because the only non-poison spell that generated before lair 8 was magic dart... luckily I was following sif, so I could afford to spam venom bolt at black mambas and those other rpois snakes, but I still ended up needing to burn a couple consumables until I found the book of the dragon (I was actually able to make do with flame tongue against rpois stuff until I got BOF castable)

Obviously if I was still stuck with just the VM spells I would have been utterly screwed in snake and swamp.

FR: Put poison arrow in the VM spellbook, they really need it...

[Sar]

well you could've gone Veh or Kiku if you actually wanted good spells

[Sandman25]

Good, problem is solved. We don't want to have higher chance for Vehumet/Kiku altars on D1-3 just to buff those melee classes, right?

[tasonir]

A few randart spellbooks with 2-3 spells on early uniques doesn't seem like a terrible idea to me. It makes it likely you'll run into one or two of them, without really changing spell distribution later on. It could be capped at level 4 or 5 spells, and apply to any/all/some of these early game casters:

Jessica
Dowan
Natasha
Grinder
Eustachio
Edit: I completely forgot about sigmund, king of uniques. Wow.

Slightly later but still earlyish uniques:

Blork
Erica
Erolcha
Fannar
Gastronok
Josephine
Nergalle
Sonja (translocations only?)

I guess the point is there's plenty of early game spellcasters who could work with this. If your average game only generates half, you're still looking at 2 books in the early game, and ~3 in the later early game section. They could be given only a 50% chance of dropping a book if you wanted to limit it somewhat further.

This all depends on if having more early game low level spells is desired, but if it is, this is a pretty easy way to do it and limit the impact to exactly where you'd want it.

[Sandman25]

How about Rollsanne, an early unique statue with guaranteed book beneath it?

[dowan]

Well I also could have picked not VM if i wanted good spells, but I wanted to win a VM.
Veh could possibly have helped, and probably would have been decent throughout the game, although sif channeling was super helpful throughout the game.
Kiku would have required me branching into necromancy, of course as a DE I could afford it.

Maybe you're right that as a VM I should have picked my god based on getting an early useful conjuration. I kind of think VMs should be moved to warrior-mages, and given a tier 1 melee weapon, or even just a dagger, along with necros.

[njvack]

Obviously if I was still stuck with just the VM spells I would have been utterly screwed in snake and swamp.

No, because the thing Crawl is suggesting to do in this case is pick up a stick and hit things with the stick. Or a bow and shoot things with the bow.

Yes, DE^Sif is pretty bad at hitting things with sticks, but Sif will eventually give you more useful conjurations. And other gods will often give you different backup to a lackluster array of conjurations.

[dowan]

Well, really the thing crawl is constantly suggesting is "Lol dummy why didn't you pick Be".

But yes, if I weren't pig-headedly stubborn about using conjurations I would have just used the lajatang of speed that dropped early on, trained staves, and never looked back. Of course, if I was just trying to win without some stupid self appointed challenge, I would have just played as a ??Gl of some sort, and not had to worry about the dungeon remembering to give me some kind of offensive option.

I do wish pure, or at least mainly spellcasters were a little more supported in crawl. It's pretty clear that the game is intended to be played with a melee weapon doing most of the work, with magic as a (sometimes powerful) backup. Either you play as a melee start, and train your melee and defenses to be able to kill things, or you play as a book start, and train your melee and defenses to be able to kill things, because you can't actually depend on your magic to do it anyway.

Of course, you CAN win playing in a wildly suboptimal fashion, like trying to primarily use conjurations, or only using a spear of freezing, but it's pretty obvious that it's not the best way to go about things.

[Arrhythmia]

how about just allowing books, artefacts, etc. to generate on d:1 normally, like they do on every other level in the game

well, it's pretty cool that my post responding to this post was also deleted for some reason. maybe i shouldn't have phrased it as a joke, but i did actually have a salient point inside of it. namely, we already have special levels in crawl, which play and are treated differently than other levels of crawl. why shouldn't d:1 be one of them?

[duvessa]

how about just allowing books, artefacts, etc. to generate on d:1 normally, like they do on every other level in the game

well, it's pretty cool that my post responding to this post was also deleted for some reason. maybe i shouldn't have phrased it as a joke, but i did actually have a salient point inside of it. namely, we already have special levels in crawl, which play and are treated differently than other levels of crawl. why shouldn't d:1 be one of them?

d:1 is certainly special in a lot of other ways (monster generation, arrival vaults), but item generation restrictions strike me as needless and spoilery - what would D:1 books break that D:1 GDA/CPA don't? If monsters using wands, potions, and rods are broken, it seems like the best solution would be to, you know, not have monsters use wands, potions, and rods, rather than stop players from using them too and fuck up the identification minigame in the process.

I do wish pure, or at least mainly spellcasters were a little more supported in crawl. It's pretty clear that the game is intended to be played with a melee weapon doing most of the work, with magic as a (sometimes powerful) backup. Either you play as a melee start, and train your melee and defenses to be able to kill things, or you play as a book start, and train your melee and defenses to be able to kill things, because you can't actually depend on your magic to do it anyway.

This opinion is popular recently, but I actually think that melee is the weakest offense in the game. My experience is that using mostly or entirely conjurations, summons, or missiles to kill monsters is much more effective than using melee. Of course the former two require specific backgrounds, and the latter requires Trog if you actually want to use it exclusively. I posit that training melee skills at all on these characters is generally suboptimal and is usually done for convenience rather than power.

This is confounded by Be existing, starting you with the second best god, and forcing you into melee early game, of course. But like, IE is about as good and doesn't even have a god, lol.

[Sandman25]

I think D1 is special to prevent start-scumming.

[PleasingFungus]

d:1 is certainly special in a lot of other ways (monster generation, arrival vaults), but item generation restrictions strike me as needless and spoilery - what would D:1 books break that D:1 GDA/CPA don't? If monsters using wands, potions, and rods are broken, it seems like the best solution would be to, you know, not have monsters use wands, potions, and rods, rather than stop players from using them too and fuck up the identification minigame in the process.

pretty sure that an absence of d:1 spellbooks neither breaks the ID game nor has anything to do with monster item use. it seems like it would make more sense to stick to one argument at a time, since it's very hard to respond when you're arguing about three things at once

I think D1 is special to prevent start-scumming.

it doesn't, of course. a better term would be 'discourage' or 'render less practical'.

[duvessa]

d:1 is certainly special in a lot of other ways (monster generation, arrival vaults), but item generation restrictions strike me as needless and spoilery - what would D:1 books break that D:1 GDA/CPA don't? If monsters using wands, potions, and rods are broken, it seems like the best solution would be to, you know, not have monsters use wands, potions, and rods, rather than stop players from using them too and fuck up the identification minigame in the process.

pretty sure that an absence of d:1 spellbooks neither breaks the ID game nor has anything to do with monster item use. it seems like it would make more sense to stick to one argument at a time, since it's very hard to respond when you're arguing about three things at once

I'm arguing that d:1 item generation shouldn't be special, and addressing the only two counterarguments I've ever heard: that some items would be brokenly powerful for players if they generated on D:1, and that some items would be brokenly powerful for monsters if they generated on D:1.

[XuaXua]

I've found Dragon Armour on D1. I think I even found CPA once. No spellbooks is crap.

[XuaXua]

I think D1 is special to prevent start-scumming.

Then just make the exclusion zone a rectangular area that isn't the size of the whole floor.

[and into]

I'm not sure special casing D1 item generation is necessary as a scumming deterrent.

DCSS is designed to make scumming and grinding unnecessary, and to actively discourage them, but then (wisely, IMO) makes a few concessions that can be enjoyable for people who do happen to be into "grindy" things. Wanderers exist, Mummies exist, Pan/Abyss provide for infinite post-endgame play, there are ziggurats, and so on. However, these are cordoned off from the rest of the game and are thus very much optional content, which is also basically never "optimal" to grind, so these things do not seriously violate Crawl's design goals.

So the question is, "Would normal generation of items on D1 actually undermine the anti-scumming goals of Crawl?" I don't think so.

D1 is dangerous, and if you manage to clear it with a character, you should almost certainly just continue playing with that character, rather than starting a new game because you didn't find particularly strong loot. That is to say, the first floor is sufficiently dangerous in Crawl, and even good loot is usually not *so* powerfully unbalancing, that the current inconsistencies in item generation are not needed. Even without the special cases for item generation, start-scumming would be non-optimal and nonsensical, basically as it is now. If people want to do it, fine, let them. They can do it already (and dive to D2 or D3 or whatever). The only problem is if it becomes advantageous to do it, and I really don't think that having normal D1 spawns would make it advantageous.

However, having more variety in D1 drops would make the early game more variable and diverse, which I think would be a non-trivial improvement. Aside from that, you would be removing unnecessary complexities and hidden special cases, which is also to the good.

As for early game book drops... I would be fine with a unique who drops a randart book with a couple of low-level spells. I don't think one should give that to Jessica (because she's such a pushover), but I think it would be fine if, say, Dowan, Sigmund or Grinder had a chance to drop a randart book. That is potentially valuable enough (at least for some characters) that you might be tempted to take them on a bit earlier than you otherwise would, as opposed to just eluding them.

[dpeg]

and into: I agree!

This is slightly distracting, but I believe that uniques would benefit from having a higher chance to have slightly improved loot. By this I mean that e.g. Gastronok's hat should generally be enchanted (so that it appears as special instead of mundane). Likewise, rings of AC+1 etc. would make decent unique prizes.

[Berder]

As for early game book drops... I would be fine with a unique who drops a randart book with a couple of low-level spells. I don't think one should give that to Jessica (because she's such a pushover), but I think it would be fine if, say, Dowan, Sigmund or Grinder had a chance to drop a randart book. That is potentially valuable enough (at least for some characters) that you might be tempted to take them on a bit earlier than you otherwise would, as opposed to just eluding them.

Remember, the purpose of having an early book would be so that you could get going with magic instead of melee. If you're already xl6 or 7 by the time you're able to kill the unique that drops it, then you already must have done a melee start and it's too late. That's why the book or books should be just on the floor on D1-3.

(it's reckless to fight Sigmund or Grinder, and Dowan shows up too late)

[nago]

Xl6 is usually d:3-6 with most char, depending on the race and the span.
How is too late, considering you've gathered like the 1% of the experience in a 3 runes game? And you most probably you won't have yet a endgame well enchanted body armour?

[Sprucery]

I would say the only way that a useful book by xl 6 or 7 comes too late is if I already picked Trog. All my mages are hybrids anyway.

[Berder]

Xl6 is usually d:3-6 with most char, depending on the race and the span.

It's sensible to be nervous about Grinder or Sigmund even at xl6. And indeed, Dowan usually shows up on D:4-6.

How is too late, considering you've gathered like the 1% of the experience in a 3 runes game? And you most probably you won't have yet a endgame well enchanted body armour?

Because how you start playing influences how you're going to keep playing. If you already have 8 weapon skill and that's working fine, and now you find a nice spellbook with conjurations, it's not going to make sense to do conjurations. You should get more weapon skill or fighting skill, and then dodging skill, and by the time it makes sense to stop doing that, you're already on like lair:5 and the early game is over, and you're primarily a melee char probably for the rest of the game. Plus by that time (xl12) you've already spent almost half your available stat points on str/dex and have likely taken a god that doesn't support magic.

The point of the early spellbook is to influence how you skill in the early game - whether you must train melee at first or whether you have the choice to take magic instead as your main attack. Even if you're xl3 and find a spellbook, it may already be too late unless the spellbook is really good.

[and into]

Even if you find a spell book with flame tongue (let's say) near the end of D1 when you started as an AK with maces, it is almost certainly still going to weaken your character to suddenly switch away from training maces and instead try to get flame tongue online. Basically it is the same problem you talk about when you find a book at char level 5 or 6. The game is pretty tough right from D1, and you would usually be putting yourself at a significant disadvantage by choosing not to develop the primary method of killing that is provided by your background. (Obviously some backgrounds play a bit differently here, and species choice can influence it, but in general.)

Because further skill levels get more expensive, it might actually make sense for non-book backgrounds to get a useful low level spell somewhat early (say around character level 8 or 9), sometimes. Apportation, animate skeleton, maybe even repel missiles. But I can't think of any time a non-book background would want to pick up spells earlier than that, even if they were readily available. (Okay, old animate skeleton would be worth it. Not sure if new animate skeleton would.)

So, in effect, guaranteed books spawning on D1 to D3 would introduce another weird special case that would primarily serve to give book backgrounds access to more spells, right off the bat. I don't think book backgrounds need that buff, and it would seem to diminish the impact of one's choice of background and (later) god. Your background gives your character its starting point. Why should there be guaranteed drops that are basically like, "well, here's a less powerful version of stuff you would have gotten if you had chosen a different background"? Should a blowgun and a few poisoned needles be a guaranteed drop on D1 to D3? Or a wand of random effects? A single throwing net? A -2 quarterstaff?

It's easy to do a melee start with any background since starting weapons are all over the place.

Yes, with any background you can pick up the first weapon you come across and start using that as your primary method to kill stuff, but that's very rarely what you should do.

The "warrior" backgrounds (Fi, Gl, Mo if you are Ghoul or Troll, and Hu) all start with better weapons than you are likely to find in the early game, and the "mage" backgrounds should be killing with spells. The "adventurer" and "warrior-mage" backgrounds are a bit special, and obviously some species can play differently—troll wizard will mostly kill with its claws. But yeah, you basically want to be using your background "kit" to kill stuff in the early game. For all backgrounds. That's why background choice matters, even though it doesn't dictate how your character is going to end up, which I think is a good place for backgrounds to be, in terms of design.

[njvack]

Even if you find a spell book with flame tongue (let's say) near the end of D1 when you started as an AK with maces, it is almost certainly still going to weaken your character to suddenly switch away from training maces and instead try to get flame tongue online.

Well, Flame Tongue might not be great, but I might learn Magic Dart or Sting or Pain pretty early, especially if I didn't already have a god. And depending on my aptitudes. Having a way to damage things at range is nice and gives you a thing to do with your MP. And even if your success is poor, low-level spell miscasts are OK.

[and into]

Even if you find a spell book with flame tongue (let's say) near the end of D1 when you started as an AK with maces, it is almost certainly still going to weaken your character to suddenly switch away from training maces and instead try to get flame tongue online.

Well, Flame Tongue might not be great, but I might learn Magic Dart or Sting or Pain pretty early, especially if I didn't already have a god. And depending on my aptitudes. Having a way to damage things at range is nice and gives you a thing to do with your MP. And even if your success is poor, low-level spell miscasts are OK.

Maybe. I still rather doubt I would want to get these spells early enough on a character with a non-book background that getting a book with those spells on D1 vs. D7 would make any difference.

I'm all for removing the special cases and letting books spawn early, even on D1, wherever, not because they would often be [edit: immediately] useful, but because I think it is good to remove unnecessary (IMO) special exemptions, and also because I think it would be cool to see things that you might make use of and incorporate later on, as your character develops. I also think randart books with low level spells could be a neat way to encourage people to kill uniques, when provided as a possible (non-guaranteed) reward.

In any event, I fail to see how the game would be improved by guaranteeing that some randart books with low level spells will spawn in the very early game, in every game.

[Sandman25]

Well, Flame Tongue might not be great, but I might learn Magic Dart or Sting or Pain pretty early, especially if I didn't already have a god. And depending on my aptitudes. Having a way to damage things at range is nice and gives you a thing to do with your MP. And even if your success is poor, low-level spell miscasts are OK.

It is still better to equip plate armour as soon as you get it with most melee species so you will use that magic dart only for a couple of levels and I think it will be wasted XP. You don't want to use low spell power magic dart vs Orc Wizards/Priests/Centaur etc., it is useful vs pure melee monsters like gnolls/ogres only.

[Sandman25]

I'm all for removing the special cases and letting books spawn early, even on D1, wherever, not because they would often be useful, but because I think it is good to remove unnecessary (IMO) special exemptions, and also because I think it would be cool to see things that you might make use of and incorporate later on, as your character develops. I also think randart books with low level spells could be a neat way to encourage people to kill uniques, when provided as a possible (non-guaranteed) reward.

It would be interesting to start as elementalist and find a starting book of another elementalist on D1 indeed.

[archaeo]

It would be interesting to start as elementalist and find a starting book of another elementalist on D1 indeed.

With the possible exception of AE, which I would drop for the FE/IE/EE book in a heartbeat, I can't really imagine ever doing this.

[Sandman25]

With the possible exception of AE, which I would drop for the FE/IE/EE book in a heartbeat, I can't really imagine ever doing this.

There is no need to drop anything. I would train more Conjurations from the very beginning and would use spells from different books. Conjure Flame, Sticky Flame, Ozocubu's Armour/Stoneskin, Repel Missiles would be learned with most casters... Add Blink and Call Imp from Wz or Animate Skeleton from Ne, so much room for decisions, I like it.

[and into]

It would be interesting to start as elementalist and find a starting book of another elementalist on D1 indeed.

With the possible exception of AE, which I would drop for the FE/IE/EE book in a heartbeat, I can't really imagine ever doing this.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting something, but I don't think Sandman is saying that he would necessarily immediately change gears entirely and start training a different elemental school, just that it might be interesting to incorporate some of the spells. Basically, I think the upshot of allowing spell books to spawn early would be to increase diversity of options, and thus diversity of character builds, around the time you are doing Lair.

[archaeo]

Oh, I see. Well, sure. I'm not really opposed to allowing more things to spawn earlier in the dungeon, in any case. I don't see it as a massive design flaw or anything, and I think crawl plays fine as-is, but allowing the occasional book to spawn earlier in the game won't see me complaining, either.

[Siegurt]

Well, I for example, would memorize OA on just about any character that was going to use leather or lighter armour for any significant length of time, likewise with Repel missiles, and certainly shroud of Golubria on level 1 I would take (although it's usefulness diminishes much more quickly than the other two) I wouldn't be very likely to switch training elemental schools for damage doing unless I found a *higher level* spellbook which still had some decent low level spells in it. But OA is good on D:1 just like it is everywhere else.

Magic missile isn't very good, although the minimal investment it takes to get it going and the automatic hits make better than untrained throwing stones, if I could cast it with a melee user on the strength of my int and any spellcasting investment I'd already made, and I didn't have any ranged attack more powerful than untrained stone-throwing, I might memorize it for a while (Let's say on an early transmuter or something) magic missile is an ok as a ranged attack when you're < level 4 and fighting non-specialized orcs and gnolls and wimpier.

I would like to see spellcasting uniques have spellbooks, but I would probably mostly make them the bad, one-spell variant of book, to make floor books still be an attractive thing to find.