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Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellbooks)

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 06:42
by PleasingFungus
Sprucery wrote:That's what I thought before my current GhGl had to go and buy one from a shop after doing D:15, Lair and Orc. Randomness makes games interesting.

My opinion: remove restrictions from item generation, don't make any guaranteed spawns.

what's your opinion of the guaranteed food vault in early D?

Re: Early spellbooks

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 09:47
by Sprucery
PleasingFungus wrote:what's your opinion of the guaranteed food vault in early D?

Excellent question! My instant reaction would be that it should be removed as well. I remember sometimes being happy to find it, but then again I wouldn't mind if running out of food sometimes made me rush forward faster. I also haven't played spriggans lately.

Now that I think of it, the guaranteed food vault might be better as a guaranteed food shop, if guaranteed food is necessary.

Re: Early spellbooks

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 15:11
by PleasingFungus
Sprucery wrote:Now that I think of it, the guaranteed food vault might be better as a guaranteed food shop, if guaranteed food is necessary.

Why?

Re: Early spellbooks

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 16:05
by Sprucery
PleasingFungus wrote:
Sprucery wrote:Now that I think of it, the guaranteed food vault might be better as a guaranteed food shop, if guaranteed food is necessary.

Why?

Because then you wouldn't get the food for free but would have to make a decision whether you want it. Spend money on food or rush forward while low on food, an interesting decision.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 16:51
by duvessa
food vault is a great idea. there should be a guaranteed potion of curing vault and a guaranteed weapon vault and a guaranteed book vault too. after all, the whole point of randomly generated items is that you get the same stuff every game!

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:11
by johlstei
What about the guaranteed altar vaults, should those go as well? (serious question even if it reads like sarcasm - I'm undecided on the right answer)

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:13
by Sandman25
Yes, having no access to some gods in a game could be fun (not for DD though).

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:15
by PleasingFungus
duvessa wrote:food vault is a great idea. there should be a guaranteed potion of curing vault and a guaranteed weapon vault and a guaranteed book vault too. after all, the whole point of randomly generated items is that you get the same stuff every game!

agreed. it's also really annoying that lair shows up every game. imagine how much more exciting it would be if sometimes your game had no lair at all?

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:17
by Sandman25
PleasingFungus wrote:agreed. it's also really annoying that lair shows up every game. imagine how much more exciting it would be if sometimes your game had no lair at all?



Also some games might require 4-6 runes to enter Zot.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:20
by njvack
Some guaranteed food is actually quite different than a weapon or !curing.

Yeah, roguelikes are "random," but it's definitely a tweaked and weighted randomness. Having monsters from anywhere in the game spawn on D:1 would be more random than things are now, but probably not an improvement.

Edit: WRT the OP: I don't have strong feelings either way. I don't know that guaranteed food is important, but it's food so it doesn't break things, either.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:25
by dowan
duvessa wrote:food vault is a great idea. there should be a guaranteed potion of curing vault and a guaranteed weapon vault and a guaranteed book vault too. after all, the whole point of randomly generated items is that you get the same stuff every game!


Guaranteed weapon vault, let me see... I guess I'd put it somewhere in elf... maybe elf 2. But behind a rune door. I guess the weapons would probably have to start out animated though. But you're right, something like that wouldn't fit in crawl...

It would be more fun if sometimes there just wasn't any food, so you were guaranteed to starve from turn 1. Now THAT'S what I call random! Now the only way to streak is to play mummies!

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:29
by Sprucery
We had Hive as a guaranteed food vault. I don't know if it was removed because of the guaranteed food or because it was just annoying to wade through hordes of bees.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 17:55
by Sandman25
dowan wrote:It would be more fun if sometimes there just wasn't any food, so you were guaranteed to starve from turn 1. Now THAT'S what I call random! Now the only way to streak is to play mummies!


Well, I don't see why it would be bad. It would trigger changes to Starving status and it would be impossible to die to starvation, you would just get huge penalties to AC/EV/slaying/spell power instead which would make game more fun. Stat death was removed as far as I know.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 18:01
by XuaXua
Guaranteed early food (D1-3); not guaranteed D1 food.

Everything else shouldn't be a guarantee. I'm of a mind that all altars shouldn't be guaranteed; we have more than enough gods to go around. In fact, I've been forsaking the Temple (which I used to use as a cache) for some time now; probably since item weights were removed. Perhaps have all altars available strewn throughout D (at least 1 altar/floor), and remove the temple. Still do the L2 downstairs tile (closest to D) cache because that's when I start to get a full inventory. Maybe it's different based on the background style being played (caster vs. melee) or race.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 18:58
by Rast
PleasingFungus wrote:
Sprucery wrote:That's what I thought before my current GhGl had to go and buy one from a shop after doing D:15, Lair and Orc. Randomness makes games interesting.

My opinion: remove restrictions from item generation, don't make any guaranteed spawns.

what's your opinion of the guaranteed food vault in early D?


My opinion is that I've played over 1000 games and never realized it existed.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Wednesday, 3rd June 2015, 20:24
by PleasingFungus
I wouldn't know about it either, if I hadn't looked at the code.

This suggests, to me, that any damage it's dealing to gameplay variety is minimal.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 04:37
by and into
I don't think there should be a guaranteed food vault. Wasn't the guaranteed food vault added back when Hive was removed as a way to "compensate"? In any event, it feels very vestigial and unnecessary.

Obviously the vaults themselves can be retained for random generation, same as other vaults.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 05:36
by Quazifuji
If we want players to be guaranteed a moderate supply of food in the early game, why not have them start with more food instead of a guaranteed vault?

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 15:56
by dowan
If guaranteed food vaults are so unnoticeable, couldn't it be because the strategic food mechanic itself has almost no relevance to crawl anymore (If it ever did)?
Sorry... I had to be that guy.

Notice I did say strategic, I think food still has a lot of relevance tactically, for blasty spellcasters, and the occasional early hungry ghost.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 16:15
by dpeg
That food vault is only relevant for food-handicapped characters. These would be Spriggans or Gozag followers, and the former have slow metabolism, and the latter can get food through payment. So any feedback about the food vaults should be restricted to these -- it is natural and expected that other characters rarely need the guaranteed food. And for what it's worth, my Gozag characters are very happy about them. (It'd be possible to win without them, of course.)

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 16:21
by PleasingFungus
Quazifuji wrote:If we want players to be guaranteed a moderate supply of food in the early game, why not have them start with more food instead of a guaranteed vault?

To encourage players to keep pressing forward rather than doing some kind of half-assed mummyscumming of d:1, probably.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 16:44
by Sandman25
PleasingFungus wrote:To encourage players to keep pressing forward rather than doing some kind of half-assed mummyscumming of d:1, probably.


This is a reason to start with food IMHO. Starving to death on D6 after half-assed mummyscumming of d:1 would be fun/useful for teaching. Nothing prevents player from returning to D:1 after getting food from the vault anyway.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 17:30
by dowan
Or just scumming the floor that the vault appeared in for that matter. Or scumming any floor with a food shop.

Hell, is mummyscumming actually even considered a problem? It seems like OOD spawns kind of take care of that one. I mean.... mummies can still do it, after all this time.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 17:32
by and into
dpeg wrote:That food vault is only relevant for food-handicapped characters. These would be Spriggans or Gozag followers, and the former have slow metabolism, and the latter can get food through payment. So any feedback about the food vaults should be restricted to these -- it is natural and expected that other characters rarely need the guaranteed food. And for what it's worth, my Gozag characters are very happy about them. (It'd be possible to win without them, of course.)


If part of the drawback of Spriggans as well as Gozag devotees is that they may actually run into food problems, at least in the early-ish portions of the game, then it seems weird to retain a guaranteed food vault for their benefit, when that directly contradicts what is supposed to be a cause of difficulty for them. It would be a bit like guaranteeing a ring of protection from fire and/or amulet of clarity vault, for the benefit of mummies. Also, the food vault can spawn fairly late (possibly after you have already done Lair and Orc), at which point it is likely moot, and some of the vaults only contain food that spriggans cannot eat (the jerky vault, for instance).

I don't think it makes sense to retain the guaranteed food vaults just because of Gozag and Spriggans. If it is felt that those particular characters might have *too* harsh of a food game, there are other things that can be done which would more directly address that issue and would not inundate other characters in food they do not need. For instance, Gozag charges an initial price for initiating worship; why not have Gozag give you a few bread rations upon joining up, in exchange? You can flavor this so it doesn't feel too awkward. "According to custom, if we are to engage in commerce, we must break bread together." Spriggans can simply start with a bit of extra food that they "foraged" or something.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 17:33
by Sandman25
Also if mummyscumming cannot be prevented, call it a feature and officially announce Mu as easy species, we have Tr/Mi/Gr/etc. anyway.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 18:00
by duvessa
dpeg wrote:That food vault is only relevant for food-handicapped characters. These would be Spriggans or Gozag followers, and the former have slow metabolism, and the latter can get food through payment. So any feedback about the food vaults should be restricted to these -- it is natural and expected that other characters rarely need the guaranteed food. And for what it's worth, my Gozag characters are very happy about them. (It'd be possible to win without them, of course.)
Just because these characters are "food-handicapped" doesn't mean that they can actually run out of food, even without the vault (they can't)

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 18:41
by dowan
Hah! Is that a challenge? I thought nobody could run out of food either, then my brother told me he regularly starves when he plays spellcasters. I don't understand how the hell he manages to do that, but some players do manage to starve to death in this game.

Back when I first started playing in version 0.12, when centaurs had fast metabolism and vegetarianism, I had one run very low on food, which made me play recklessly and get killed. That's the closest I've come to starving from running out of food.

I did pass out from hunger in a game recently because I was autotraveling while starving, but that was due to not paying attention, I did have plenty of food. I was quite lucky to pass out rather than just die...

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 20:23
by le_nerd
Mh, I tend to dive to gozaq altars to get the sweet spot of 800$ before entering d:7, and I have nearly starved pre-lair (down to zero or one ration). Thats on Ops, lots of resting, lots of autoexplore; afterwards the curve is not too bad anymore and its possible to get ahead by a lot. These were the games were I had not found the early food vault but instead got a late one and did not find it.

I also remember someone on reddit/r/dcss who had to abandon by Orc to not starve. So yeah, it might be good to have some sort of additional food supply. Maybe have gozaq offer a guaratueed first food shop? Almost always you'd want that to be weapon/armour, but if one is nearly starving it'd be a good choice.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 21:26
by archaeo
dowan wrote:Hah! Is that a challenge? I thought nobody could run out of food either, then my brother told me he regularly starves when he plays spellcasters. I don't understand how the hell he manages to do that, but some players do manage to starve to death in this game.

Well, you not understanding how he does it comes from the fact that, in order to starve, you have to either a) berserk too often or b) never put skill levels into SC. Crawl has plenty of ways to kill players who aren't playing well; I'm not sure why starvation needs to be another way, but I know I'm just a broken record on this topic. For the subject at hand, I just agree with duvessa and Rast: not only have I never really noticed that a food vault was guaranteed, I doubt very much that removing it would serve to seriously nerf any character combo at all.

I did pass out from hunger in a game recently because I was autotraveling while starving, but that was due to not paying attention, I did have plenty of food. I was quite lucky to pass out rather than just die...

Why does the game let you (G)o or autoexplore once you've hit starving? I guess it's convenient if you're trying to ctrl-f a food source, because you somehow don't have a fat stack of bread or something in your inventory?

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 23:16
by duvessa
The game doesn't allow autoexplore while starving. It allows autotravel because autotravel typically takes the shortest path anyway. It would be nice if it weren't so easy to kill yourself with it though I guess.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 23:43
by Sandman25
archaeo wrote:Well, you not understanding how he does it comes from the fact that, in order to starve, you have to either a) berserk too often or b) never put skill levels into SC.


c) mana channeling (staff/Sif Muna, I still remember how I was afraid to use staff of energy on pure caster SpVM of Kiku)
d) rods (I created a thread "rod hunger" after getting near starving and starving from satiated in every fight when I tried to play rods-based character),
e) amulet of regeneration (current character has -4 aptitude in Spellcasting and Int 11, after casting Haste/Phase Shift/Stoneskin I get to near starving in long fights because I use vampiric weapon and it does not kill that fast, 10.5 Spellcasting in Zot 5).
f) Tr of Gozag, it's really painful, I changed god

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Thursday, 4th June 2015, 23:57
by archaeo
I was speaking more to the "starve to death" thing, Sandman, though I concede that "overuse of regen/channeling/rods" and "using Gozag" are some of the other ways you could theoretically die of starvation.

Re: Early food vault & guaranteed items: (was early spellboo

PostPosted: Friday, 5th June 2015, 00:23
by Sandman25
I don't see why berserk can kill by starvation and haste cannot, archaeo. Haste can be casted below satiated by the way.