Ziggurat Zagger
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Suggestion: No distortion weapon gifts from Okawaru
I got it just the other day in 0.8.
Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Ziggurat Zagger
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mageykun wrote:If I play Trog all game, I pretty much assume he's going to send me to the abyss for fun at least once.
I don't know that this is necessarily a bad thing. It forces players to be a little more cautious even with good items- and it seems to me that wondering if you should really test ID all your god gifts, or wondering whether it's worth keeping that distortion blade stuck to your hand till you feel ready to risk the abyss are interesting choices.
Then there's the fact that not everyone will consider a distortion gift bad! The brand does have it's useful points. And if you were looking to do pan and hadn't found one otherwise...
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Galefury wrote:Distortion is fine like it is. Nothing is forcing you to unwield it (except the food clock if it's a blunt weapon).
Jeremiah wrote:Maybe you could get a warning before you wield it, like you do with vampiric weapons.
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galehar wrote:Train throwing instead.
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jejorda2 wrote:Is there any reason god gifts couldn't be fully identified on arrival? Maybe just gifts from Okawaru, and not from Trog.
jejorda2 wrote:Does Beogh still give weapon gifts?
Ziggurat Zagger
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Ziggurat Zagger
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Grimm wrote:What I object to is Okawaru gifting a weapon that puts a severe dent in your (read: my) strategy and survival chances. Un-ID'd distortion weapons are the only ones that do this. It would be like a DS getting berserkitis or teleportitis as a standard mutation.
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Shoals Surfer
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galehar wrote:The distortion (and vampiric) brands are never generated on blunt weapons, except for artefact. So this is extremely rare.
Ziggurat Zagger
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Ziggurat Zagger
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galehar wrote:Galefury wrote:Distortion is fine like it is. Nothing is forcing you to unwield it (except the food clock if it's a blunt weapon).
The distortion (and vampiric) brands are never generated on blunt weapons, except for artefact. So this is extremely rare.
Ziggurat Zagger
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minmay wrote:Okay, but...why Okawaru specifically? Shouldn't distortion weapons also be removed from Trog and acquirement?
Shoals Surfer
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minmay wrote:Okay, but...why Okawaru specifically? Shouldn't distortion weapons also be removed from Trog and acquirement?
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Grimm wrote:Distortion is the only brand that is directly harmful to the player.
All god gifts and abilities benefit the player, with the single exception of distortion weapons.
Ziggurat Zagger
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Ziggurat Zagger
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Ziggurat Zagger
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Also, what crazy kind of character gets a gifted weapon at XL 8?
Shoals Surfer
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Grimm wrote:Point taken. But in terms of harm to the player distortion is a galaxy ahead of vampiric. Vampiric will merely temporarily inconvenience you whereas a trip to the abyss at XL 8 is a death sentence.
Ziggurat Zagger
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minmay wrote:I'm pretty sure god gifts aren't supposed to be strictly good, either. I am under the impression that it's not supposed to be optimal to wield/wear every gift you receive; this is why you occasionally receive cursed gifts.
Ziggurat Zagger
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Ziggurat Zagger
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minmay wrote:The devs are against having things that are "just bonuses," in general - this is why potions of gain stat were changed to mutations (previously there was no disadvantage to quaffing them, and no advantage to waiting until later to quaff them).
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Barkeep
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Grimm wrote:Drinking a potion of healing when poisoned is always good.
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Grimm wrote:I understand and appreciate the design philosophy, but "no 'just bonuses'" is not an iron rule. Some things are, have to be, "just bonuses". Drinking a potion of healing when poisoned is always good.
God benefits are sometimes less than 100% beneficial, but in no other case than the distortion gift does something a god does for you put you at serious risk of unavoidable death. (Xom excepted, naturally.) The player's god should be his friend, not yet another treacherous unknown.
The rarity of distortion gifts - I've had two in hundreds of games with Oka - means that one will waste most of one's ID scrolls because 99.44 times out of a hundred the weapon won't be distortion and could have been wield-ID'd. So then one forgets and goes back to wield IDing until BAM, you're in the Abyss again.
Consider once more that distortion does not (to my knowledge) appear on artefacts, ever.
I would also like to see an example of a cursed Oka gift. If they exist, the argument for keeping distortion gifts is strengthened; if they are prevented, then the argument against distortion gifts gains enormous weight.
Ziggurat Zagger
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minmay wrote:This is where the part about choices comes in. You can use the potion of healing now, or you can save it for later. With Okawaru gifts, you don't get that at all.
minmay wrote:Wielding a weapon is not unavoidable. Neither is unwielding a weapon.
And while blinking an orc wizard usually sucks, 1. it probably won't kill you
2. nobody's forcing you to hit the orc wizard with your melee weapon.
dassem wrote:Not if you were going to get better without drinking the healing potion. Then you wasted the potion.
Seriously: Getting a distortion weapon from a god is really annoying and may change your strategy significantly, but it's not a death sentence. Don't unwield it until you're ready to risk a trip to the abyss.
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Grimm wrote:The point is that when Okawaru presents you with a gift, it should not be something that could kill you when you wield it.
Ziggurat Zagger
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Grimm wrote:I don't randomly wield ID floor weapons because I know that some of them will be harmful to me. If some of Okawaru's gifts will be harmful to me, I am then forced to scroll ID every one of them, because the one time that his gift is distortion, it means almost certainly game over.
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Ziggurat Zagger
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galehar wrote:Maybe you think that playing with distortion is annoying, and you prefer risking death than trying it, but using a distortion weapon isn't a death sentence. It is a powerful brand but you really have to adapt your tactics and strategy. Train throwing or conjuration, use wands, run. Adapt.
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MarvinPA wrote:I wouldn't mind Oka not gifting distortion, holy wrath, pain or antimagic for the sake of better theme, and for the fact that those brands should be somewhat rare and hard to obtain.
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