Death Cobs in .17

[suldrek]

I'll throw down the character dump, and then hopefully explain why I feel this shouldn't have happened.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/suldrek/mor ... 020222.txt

First of all, I've been having issues with these new Death Cobs in every single game I've made it to Zot since I started playing again. I understand they were basically xp fodder before - I really do - and I appreciate their threat level being changed. But I think it has been taken a little too far.

Even while hasted, I can go from very hungry, eat a meat ration, up to full/normal satiation, and then back to very hungry or even starving in combat with one of these things (over the course of eating.) In this example, I died because of the starvation. Nothing I could do - I waited 1 turn to see what would come out after I came down the stairwell, got shifted, moved back to the stairwell to go up, got shifted again, surrounded (death cob adjacent) one round follows, starvation/unconscious, dead. I didn't really have the turns to do anything to save myself here, which makes it feel like a very hollow death.

Is it too much to ask that there might've been some counterplay here? Or that against ONE DEATH COB a player shouldn't EVER face immediate, one turn starvation when they are satiated or full? I will admit that in a one on one situation this wouldn't have been the same, but in this very same game, one level up in zot, that very situation happened - you can see because I ate 21 meat rations between xl25-27. I did not save that particular buffer, but I will tell you this - I went to starving at the very least 10 times. Every time I ate a meat ration, I'd return to starving or nearly, EVEN AFTER HASTING and using an agility potion. It took at least thirty turns just to kill him because I had to keep eating rather than fighting, and that feels wrong to me. I'm sure someone will tell me why it isn't, though.

[duvessa]

you can't melee death cobs anymore, that's the counterplay

[rchandra]

Eating non-ration permafood helps a lot. You can also melee while Starving - when you get to Fainting, eat again.

[Sar]

You can also melee while Starving

I did it once on a CeSk in 0.17 stable (haha stable) and died in like 3 turns or so, probably would not recommend it. Or is "Feinting" a new status in trunk? Basically, cob attacks continue to drain satiation even when you're starving. Maybe they shouldn't do that? It was a pretty funny death though, I didn't mind it.

[Arrhythmia]

Nothing I could do

d - 4 scrolls of holy word
h - a lamp of fire
q - a fan of gales
w - a phial of floods
O - a disc of storms

[prozacelf]

Eating non-ration permafood helps a lot. You can also melee while Starving - when you get to Fainting, eat again.

By "non-ration" he means pizza, jerky or fruit. Those only take 1 turn to eat, while the rations and royal jelly take something like 3 turns. I primarily use melee-based guys and haven't had too many problems with death cobs as long as I bring enough of that type of food. As a side effect, of course, I try to save all of that type of food for death cob encounters (or potentially hungry ghost encounters earlier, but their hunger attack is less debilitating, so you can often get away with eating a chunk or a ration while fighting them).

[rchandra]

I did it once on a CeSk in 0.17 stable (haha stable) and died in like 3 turns or so, probably would not recommend it. Or is "Feinting" a new status in trunk?

it's in stable - Fainting is the point at which you can actually para/die (500 nutrition?). Before it was added you were more rewarded for manually tracking your nutrition :).

And yes I continually forget that jelly is slow, so don't use that as your backup. Someday that'll kill me.

[jejorda2]

Does it take more than one turn to eat a royal jelly? I've been playing as if those were a jerky/pizza substitute.

[Sar]

Well, that must mean I just missed it. Gotta tab fast!

[suldrek]

Nothing I could do

d - 4 scrolls of holy word
h - a lamp of fire
q - a fan of gales
w - a phial of floods
O - a disc of storms

Not relevant, because I was paralyzed from starvation so quickly that even if I had used those one of those evocables (in the turn I had alloted to me) I would have still fainted - I just wouldn't have been heroed.

In my opinion, the only thing I could've done is read a teleportation scroll after the first shift instead of trying to get back to the stairwell. Except nothing that was visible at that time was incredibly scary, and I saw no reason to do so. Not a good policy to read a teleport scroll every time you see draconians in Zot, right? I think you'd run out of scrolls fairly quickly.

[MrPlanck]

I find that nets are the best way to deal with cobs.

[Bart]

We already had a lengthy discussion in Tavern about Death Cobs design, but I don't recall any dev taking a stance on them.

Spoiler: show

My guess is that none of them wants to admit that popcorn got screwed up

In any case, if Death Cobs shall (for unknown to me reasons) stay in the game, they could be at least somewhat balanced for AC and EV characters. At the moment it is completely unobvious that 70AC character which can breeze through the whole game will be in an extreme danger when he meets a single death cob.

I also believe that additional, default confirmation request during starving for actions other than eating would help players to avoid accidental feinting and deaths from starvation.

[nago]

Why? Isn't good design to discover, after 5+ hours, various branches cleared and uncountable murders that both your main form of offense and defense are suddenly totally worthless against a single enemy?
Or even better, that it attacks a second hidden hp bar which isn't ever used earlier, that goes down unpredictably and incredibly faster than the other?
Or that with a high AC high HP low EV char you can extremely easily be locked down in a situation where you can't die from hp loss, but you can't do any other action than keeping eating otherwise you die? And suddenly your hp is the number of food you have?
Not mentioning that is the same to eat a chunk, a fruit or a ration as you can't die until you eat something - and that eating a ration takes so long that often is totally useless to escape this lockdown.
I do wonder why no dev has still evaluated the magnificent balance of this.

[bananaken]

Death cobs feel like a cheap shortcut to creating a tense deadly situation, because instead of using the mechanics and abilities that are well established up until that point, it takes shortcuts by using an invisible HP bar and a unintuitive satiation drain mechanic (much safer for balanced or high-EV characters because ???). Hungry ghosts aren't really a good "introduction" either because it's much easier to mow them down with DPS or evoked items or simply dealing with them by running away.

The worst part is that even if it's wildly inefficient and tedious, eating until very full/engorged gives you more room for error during unexpected run-ins with death cobs, so I find myself balancing my willingness to put up with babysitting my satiation health bar with potentially dying to death cobs. It's a trade-off situation that feels utterly unfun.

[asdu]

Does it take more than one turn to eat a royal jelly? I've been playing as if those were a jerky/pizza substitute.

Don't you love how much depth the new death cobs have added to the game? Suddenly this incredibly obscure piece of knowledge has become crucially important.

edit: I just checked and royal jellies do take 3 turns to eat, btw.

[Tiktacy]

I like death cobs personally. If a player runs into a new enemy they should probably read its description, and if I recall death cobs mention that they can quickly drain satiation.

I personally have never had an issue with death cobs. I normally start using all the food I have stock piled in zot(since the game is basically over) to make sure death cobs don't kill me unexpectedly. I guess I don't see the issue with them, dying to an enemy once because you didn't know about it is just part of crawl, you learn from your mistakes and adjust your gameplay accordingly.

Maybe I am missing something, could somebody please explain in more detail what EXACTLY is wrong with them other than that they are very dangerous? Because I haven't seen any real explanations for what makes this bad design.

[ydeve]

Nothing I could do

d - 4 scrolls of holy word
h - a lamp of fire
q - a fan of gales
w - a phial of floods
O - a disc of storms

Not relevant, because I was paralyzed from starvation so quickly that even if I had used those one of those evocables (in the turn I had alloted to me) I would have still fainted - I just wouldn't have been heroed.

In my opinion, the only thing I could've done is read a teleportation scroll after the first shift instead of trying to get back to the stairwell. Except nothing that was visible at that time was incredibly scary, and I saw no reason to do so. Not a good policy to read a teleport scroll every time you see draconians in Zot, right? I think you'd run out of scrolls fairly quickly.

I think death cobs are horrible as well, but I have to agree with Arrhy. Draconians themselves may not be a reason to tele away, but being surrounded by a draconian shifter pack with death cobs present is very different from just a pack of draconians. They key difference being the death cob. It's much safer to face dangerous enemies one on one.

Also, it takes a few turns for the cob to get you from satiated to fainting, so you should have had time to act: read tele scroll, eat some food, etc. If you're having trouble with them, don't wander around Zot hungry. If you have tons of rations you might as well walk around full or engorged if they really worry you.

[WalrusKing]

Does it take more than one turn to eat a royal jelly? I've been playing as if those were a jerky/pizza substitute.

Don't you love how much depth the new death cobs have added to the game? Suddenly this incredibly obscure piece of knowledge has become crucially important.

edit: I just checked and royal jellies do take 3 turns to eat, btw.

I could have sworn pizza was a 3turner too. From what I remember, arent Jerky and Fruit the only single turn eat action rations?

My strategy currently is to carry a large ration like bread, chunks, and a fast ration like fruit. In theory jerky would work for fast too, but in practice there will nearly always be more fruit than jerky thanks to lair

[RBrandon]

The best way to look at it is a matter of simplicity. You die when your hp reaches 0. That's it. It's easy to understand and all the ways the game tries to kill you revolve around it. Satiation drain subverts this dogma, and doesn't add anything interesting in return.

I would further argue that the entire food system present in DCSS is very unfun to interact with while adding very little depth, but that is only tangential to the problem with death cobs.

[asdu]

Maybe I am missing something, could somebody please explain in more detail what EXACTLY is wrong with them other than that they are very dangerous? Because I haven't seen any real explanations for what makes this bad design.

A big part of Crawl gameplay concerns gathering feedback about how strong your character is relative to various kind of threats. That's how you make a informed decisions regarding both strategy and tactics.
Death cobs (and hungry ghost. Let's not forget those obnoxious motherfuckers please) use completely different mechanics than literally anything else in the game, so everythign you've learned about your character's strenght doesn't apply here. And, since those mechanics were meant for a completely different purpose, they're so obfuscated that by fighting one death cob you can't even gather any meaningful feedback to help you fight the next one, or in fact even use the feedback you got from the last few turns of the fight to predict how the next few turns will go (it doesn't help that high EV enemies, which both death cobs and hungry ghosts are, already suffer from this issue to some extent).
It also doesn't help that hunger and food are widely despised even when used for their intended purpose.

[amaril]

I personally have never had an issue with death cobs. I normally start using all the food I have stock piled in zot(since the game is basically over) to make sure death cobs don't kill me unexpectedly. I guess I don't see the issue with them, dying to an enemy once because you didn't know about it is just part of crawl, you learn from your mistakes and adjust your gameplay accordingly.

Maybe I am missing something, could somebody please explain in more detail what EXACTLY is wrong with them other than that they are very dangerous? Because I haven't seen any real explanations for what makes this bad design.

In-game, the player can learn that death cobs "may attack to cause hungering," which is a pretty blatant understatement, especially to an unspoiled player.

even if it's wildly inefficient and tedious, eating until very full/engorged gives you more room for error during unexpected run-ins with death cobs, so I find myself balancing my willingness to put up with babysitting my satiation health bar with potentially dying to death cobs.

By "non-ration" he means pizza, jerky or fruit. Those only take 1 turn to eat, while the rations and royal jelly take something like 3 turns... I try to save all of that type of food for death cob encounters (or potentially hungry ghost encounters earlier, but their hunger attack is less debilitating, so you can often get away with eating a chunk or a ration while fighting them)

Death cobs are bad because they force 'counterplay' to a degree that no other monster does. They expect the player to know ahead of time how dangerous they are (which their description doesn't accurately convey), and once they close into melee range the player is caught in an absurd mini-game of eating/taking actions to escape. Their speed and the speed at which they drain satiation makes figuring out this minigame in time to survive extremely difficult, especially if you aren't familiar with new dcob mechanics. If you die to this minigame, it feels like the cheapest possible death, even if it was technically avoidable--ie. a player could 'figure out' how to take on the entire rest of the game and build a character to combat every other threat (including orbs of fire, shard shrikes, tormentors, hellions) and be killed by this strange, rare monster in Zot that essentially works by its own set of rules (if anything, hungry ghosts teach you that "may attack to cause hungering" isn't something to be concerned about). All of this has been said before, of course--there have been a lot of 'complaints' about death cobs.

Ultimately, if your definition of 'good monster'='dangerous monster,' then dcobs are good monsters. However, if you believe that there can be dangerous, poorly designed monsters, then death cobs almost certainly fall into this category--they practically require spoilers to prepare for effectively.

[byrel]

Uhhhh... My first run-in with deathcobs (2 at once!) I was unprepared. Quickly got to fainting, and had only rations. I ate them until I happened to be only starving, then read teleport. Then ate up, and engaged much more carefully.

It's not like we don't have 'Fuck! this is way more dangerous that I expected!' buttons by Zot.

[Sprucery]

I like death cobs personally. If a player runs into a new enemy they should probably read its description, and if I recall death cobs mention that they can quickly drain satiation.

Besides the fact that the description isn't probably emphatic enough, death cob is not a new enemy to anyone who has played an earlier version of Crawl. It is a very very old enemy, and the main problem imho is that it got changed from completely harmless to extremely dangerous in one go.

(Just playing my first 0.17 game, haven't seen death cobs yet.)

[Tiktacy]

Maybe I am missing something, could somebody please explain in more detail what EXACTLY is wrong with them other than that they are very dangerous? Because I haven't seen any real explanations for what makes this bad design.

A big part of Crawl gameplay concerns gathering feedback about how strong your character is relative to various kind of threats. That's how you make a informed decisions regarding both strategy and tactics.
Death cobs (and hungry ghost. Let's not forget those obnoxious motherfuckers please) use completely different mechanics than literally anything else in the game, so everythign you've learned about your character's strenght doesn't apply here. And, since those mechanics were meant for a completely different purpose, they're so obfuscated that by fighting one death cob you can't even gather any meaningful feedback to help you fight the next one, or in fact even use the feedback you got from the last few turns of the fight to predict how the next few turns will go (it doesn't help that high EV enemies, which both death cobs and hungry ghosts are, already suffer from this issue to some extent).
It also doesn't help that hunger and food are widely despised even when used for their intended purpose.

Thank you for making the reasoning a bit more clear.

While your points may have validity, I don't quite understand what the intention of making these points is. So far, all I've seen is people say there is something wrong with them, but what is the solution? From what I can tell, the purpose of death cobs in zot is to have a monster that, no matter what the power level of your character is, are extremely dangerous(unless you have necromutation I guess). If you don't like the way they are currently going about this goal, what are some alternatives? From my perspective, the design of these reworked death cobs is perfectly fine and accomplished several goals without creating any new issues in the game.

To me, this just seems like another one of those changes where people are upset because the devs added something new to the game that you have to account for(which in my mind is exactly what I want to be seeing with each new update, but perhaps I'm a minority here).

[duvessa]

the thing is, death cobs aren't dangerous if you know how they work

[all before]

Imagine if devs added a monster to the endgame that could easily kill you in a few turns if you didn't have 4 pips of stealth. No matter how well explained this mechanic would be, or what workarounds were possible, it'd still be dumb because it's different than how stealth works the rest of the game and there'd have been no indication up to this point that you need to build stealth for this reason. That's the situation with deathcobs currently. It's bad design.

Also, that devs can only find ways to make food interesting by making it do things completely different than its purpose is indicative of how purposeless food currently is.

[Tiktacy]

the thing is, death cobs aren't dangerous if you know how they work

How is this different than orbs of fire exactly? If you didn't know they existed you could easily enter zot without fire resistance and die. This idea is consistent with a lot of monsters actually.

[lethediver]

Death cobs are the most dangerous thing in all of zot right now, if you're a melee char. I'd rather fight two OOFs than two cobs. Better malmutated than fainting-locked and soon to be dead.

Imo: Make the hunger effect like half of what it presently is.

Also, royal jellies should be better. Like 1 turn to eat, go from fainting to engorged, and make them much rarer. They're supposed to be a wonder food, making them take 3 turns to eat is just... bad.

[ydeve]

By the time any character gets to Zot, it shouldn't be a "melee character" anymore, but should have some decent ranged option.

Tiktaky, because if you know how death cobs work, there is almost 0% chance that you'll die to one, as opposed to orbs of fire being an actual threat. Death cobs can't kill you one on one (if you know how they work), and if you come across a couple at a time you can always reset the fight.

[milski]

the thing is, death cobs aren't dangerous if you know how they work

How is this different than orbs of fire exactly? If you didn't know they existed you could easily enter zot without fire resistance and die. This idea is consistent with a lot of monsters actually.

You're not being serious, are you?

Orbs of fire:

Are killable without rF. Not safely, but not "you are guaranteed to die.
[*]Attack the same resource every other enemy in the game attacks.
Have the word "fire" in the name, making what resistance you need pretty guessable even if you don't read their description, which is better than Cobs.
Do not force you to take an incredibly specific action each turn or suffer death.
Are actually far less lethal than death cobs (provided the cob is actually hitting you).
Aren't equally deadly no matter how strong your character is!

Death Cobs are totally unique in that they're one of the most quickly lethal monsters in the game, attacking a resource that isn't attacked meaningfully by anything else in the game, and no matter how strong your character is they kill you in (nearly) the same rapid timespan. Comparing cobs to Orbs of Fire just because both are difficult Zot monsters is really dumb.

[rchandra]

I will always have dozens of anti-deathcob consumables while only a handful (or even zero) haste and might potions that I'm likely to want for safe orb of fire melee.

[Tiktacy]

the thing is, death cobs aren't dangerous if you know how they work

How is this different than orbs of fire exactly? If you didn't know they existed you could easily enter zot without fire resistance and die. This idea is consistent with a lot of monsters actually.

You're not being serious, are you?

Orbs of fire:

Are killable without rF. Not safely, but not "you are guaranteed to die.
[*]Attack the same resource every other enemy in the game attacks.
Have the word "fire" in the name, making what resistance you need pretty guessable even if you don't read their description, which is better than Cobs.
Do not force you to take an incredibly specific action each turn or suffer death.
Are actually far less lethal than death cobs (provided the cob is actually hitting you).
Aren't equally deadly no matter how strong your character is!

Death Cobs are totally unique in that they're one of the most quickly lethal monsters in the game, attacking a resource that isn't attacked meaningfully by anything else in the game, and no matter how strong your character is they kill you in (nearly) the same rapid timespan. Comparing cobs to Orbs of Fire just because both are difficult Zot monsters is really dumb.

I'm sorry for disappointing you, because you clearly worked hard in creating a detailed response and I thank you for that. However, none of what you said besides the part about being less deadly(sort of) is relevant to what I was saying. All I said was that claiming death cobs are bad design just because they become a lot easier once you know how they work is not a good argument. A lot of monsters are significantly easier once you know how they work(some even more so than with death cobs). That being said, that's not to say your statement about death cobs don't hold any value in the discussion as a whole, but they are not relevant to duvessa's response and I am confused as to why you felt the need to respond the way you did. If you were responding to something I had previously stated in the thread, you should quote that instead, otherwise it gets confusing.

Also, I have confronted death cobs before and I can confirm they are in fact NOT guaranteed to kill you.

[Tiktacy]

Imagine if devs added a monster to the endgame that could easily kill you in a few turns if you didn't have 4 pips of stealth. No matter how well explained this mechanic would be, or what workarounds were possible, it'd still be dumb because it's different than how stealth works the rest of the game and there'd have been no indication up to this point that you need to build stealth for this reason. That's the situation with deathcobs currently. It's bad design.

Also, that devs can only find ways to make food interesting by making it do things completely different than its purpose is indicative of how purposeless food currently is.

I really feel like people are overestimating the effect death cobs have on the game. They honestly aren't that bad, they aren't exactly pushovers but they really aren't as bad as people are making them out to be.

If the argument is that they aren't intuitive, then the solution is pretty simple. The devs could change hunger ghosts into something like "Hungry Cob" and make it look similar to death cobs so the player can make the connection.

[lethediver]

By the time any character gets to Zot, it shouldn't be a "melee character" anymore, but should have some decent ranged option.

Tiktaky, because if you know how death cobs work, there is almost 0% chance that you'll die to one, as opposed to orbs of fire being an actual threat. Death cobs can't kill you one on one (if you know how they work), and if you come across a couple at a time you can always reset the fight.

A "decent" ranged option isn't going to do much vs an enemy with good hp and one of the highest speeds in the game. You have to be a nuker or have 27 skill in a ranged skill to take them out before they reach you.

Whatever, It's fine if they don't adjust cobs, I'll just shift zot to later in my branch order and grind abyss or pan more. Little more tedium in all my runs, but that's what happens when devs throw in a monster that forces you to have 10 or 20 skill levels you wouldn't have previously needed to safely clear zot.

Going down there intending to risk your life vs those two cobs or cob + support and/or burn consumables like some of you are mentioning, yeah no thanks. That might be "interesting" play to some, it's dumb/risky/unnecessary to me, so yeah, my play is just going to have to be more boring and methodical than before now.... Or maybe just go jivya and slime them (as if he wasn't already a top tier late game god) .... Thanks death cobs.

[Tiktacy]

my play is just going to have to be more boring and methodical than before now

I really don't think this is relevant. While this argument may hold water in other circumstances, against a specific enemy that is relatively easy to deal with and is at the very end of the game you really have nobody else to blame but yourself for making the game boring. If every time the devs add a monster that is hard to deal with at the end of the game, you feel the need to grind pandemonium to make it just popcorn, thats a problem with your attitude towards the game not a problem with the design of the creature.

[Tiktacy]

Tiktaky, because if you know how death cobs work, there is almost 0% chance that you'll die to one, as opposed to orbs of fire being an actual threat. Death cobs can't kill you one on one (if you know how they work), and if you come across a couple at a time you can always reset the fight.

Well, you may not die to them if you know how they work, but they still seriously increase the difficulty of a fight if you are already facing a powerful onslaught of monsters. I've actually never even come close to dying from an orb of fire, but I've come close to dying as a result of a death cob(not directly from the cob, but as a result of their draining satiation). They aren't going to kill you on there own normally(nearly no enemy can at this point in the game) but when you add them to the front lines of a dangerous encounter they become a force to be reckoned with.

[edgefigaro]

Yeah, people talk about food as solves to death cobs, and that is a solve, but really, what is happening is a misallocation of threats to death cobs. They should be treated like they are serious threats. You used to just tab them. Now you have to use a god ability, or quaff a potion, or use an evokable, or cast powerful spells.

[prozacelf]

Yeah, people talk about food as solves to death cobs, and that is a solve, but really, what is happening is a misallocation of threats to death cobs. They should be treated like they are serious threats. You used to just tab them. Now you have to use a god ability, or quaff a potion, or use an evokable, or cast powerful spells.

If you don't have food, or other consumables, or piety, or mp, or the ability to just shoot/smash a death cob by the time you're in Zot, then I don't know what to tell you.

[Shard1697]

They should be treated like they are serious threats.

They shouldn't, actually, because the whole point of death cobs was that they're a goofy "popcorn" enemy design. Hence their old "we're sorry about this one" description. Making them actually dangerous ruins the joke.

At the very least, they shouldn't be dangerous in a way that is more annoying than every other enemy in the whole game, and incredibly unintuitive if you're not already familiar with it.

[Sar]

Orbs of fire ... Are killable without rF. Not safely, but not "you are guaranteed to die

the only ways to kill oofs "safely" without rF I can think of are summons... which would make an easy work of cobs as well

if you have no rF and try to bash an oof and don't die, it's a bug and you should mantis it imo

[WingedEspeon]

Orbs of fire ... Are killable without rF. Not safely, but not "you are guaranteed to die

the only ways to kill oofs "safely" without rF I can think of are summons... which would make an easy work of cobs as well

if you have no rF and try to bash an oof and don't die, it's a bug and you should mantis it imo

I was able to clear zot (killing like 5 OOFs or something) with like 27 throwing and 27 fighing and dith without actually getting hit with a single OOF attack (I think I may also have had +5 slaying). Good thing too because I wasn't wearing rF. One of them managed to get off a single bolt of fire but high EV FTW.

[Sar]

reported

[Ceann]

People...

The only time I have ever almost died to Death Cob's is when I went down into the Zot entrance and there was three of them all within 1 tile of the stairs and I was GrFi. I had to pull them up, I had to use two blink scrolls and haste to kill them and countless food items.

But you know what? It was okay.

But Ceann! Why was it okay?

Because this is Zot at the end of the game, I had built a powerful character and make good choices, making good choices means we have... 4 scrolls of Holy Word, or Blink Scrolls, or a holy weapon/Dispel Undead or Firestorm or any other number of things that can blast a Death Cob to pieces.

But Ceann! the Death Cobs are scary and they killed me/almost killed me and its unfair!

You are in Zot, not D:5, or O:1, Zot. Surprise surprise there are things in Zot that are trying to kill you. You don't go into E:3 vault with only MR+ and expect to not get banished, just like you don't go into the last floor of Orc with NO MR and expect not to get paralyzed. Just like we don't try to clear all of Spider without SInv and rPois.

If you are dying to these Death Cobs it is probably your own fault.

[Shard1697]

I've never died to a death cob, but I am still going to complain because I think as a melee dude having to eat to get off starving, take a swing, eat to get off starving, take a swing, eat to get off starving, take a swing, etc., is fucking ridiculous and annoying.

[WingedEspeon]

I think they should be removed because:
a) they are a spoilery noob trap.
b) they are trivial to deal with as a spoiled player.

Nethack is full of things that meet both a) and b) which is why I now play crawl and not nethack.

[Ceann]

The reason you need to eat so much is because you have 5 skill in dodging and you are wearing GDA. If you were wearing medium armor and had 20-30 EV you wouldn't have to sit in your armor and cram your face every turn. Like wtf is this foolishness of "I built my character a certain way so they should be able to deal with every threat" that is a bunch of crap.

When I play a caster I have to use different spell sets for most of the branches and at some point you do a spell overhaul where you dump spells you won't use in the late game to get different ones. If you want to wear +12 GDA and lay your elbow on the tab key while lamenting how terrible Death Cobs are then you might want to adjust your strategy to account for them when you are in Zot.

[Ceann]

By the time any character gets to Zot, it shouldn't be a "melee character" anymore, but should have some decent ranged option.

Tiktaky, because if you know how death cobs work, there is almost 0% chance that you'll die to one, as opposed to orbs of fire being an actual threat. Death cobs can't kill you one on one (if you know how they work), and if you come across a couple at a time you can always reset the fight.

A "decent" ranged option isn't going to do much vs an enemy with good hp and one of the highest speeds in the game. You have to be a nuker or have 27 skill in a ranged skill to take them out before they reach you.

Whatever, It's fine if they don't adjust cobs, I'll just shift zot to later in my branch order and grind abyss or pan more. Little more tedium in all my runs, but that's what happens when devs throw in a monster that forces you to have 10 or 20 skill levels you wouldn't have previously needed to safely clear zot.

Going down there intending to risk your life vs those two cobs or cob + support and/or burn consumables like some of you are mentioning, yeah no thanks. That might be "interesting" play to some, it's dumb/risky/unnecessary to me, so yeah, my play is just going to have to be more boring and methodical than before now.... Or maybe just go jivya and slime them (as if he wasn't already a top tier late game god) .... Thanks death cobs.

I really don't understand what you are talking about.
Like at all.

I played a FELID you hear? A FELID and had Glaciate online by the time I did V:5 which was 2 Lair runes cleared and up to U:4 cleared when I went there. How in the world you are thinking that you need to be scumming Abyss and Pan to deal with Deathcobs is beyond my comprehension. Lets also TOTALLY disregard the fact that you can 2-3 shot Death Cobs with Dispel Undead at ######.. power and Dispel Undead is irresistible and 100% accurate or the fact that you can also use Holy Word on them as well. I could have immediately went and got the Orb after I cleared vaults and got my 3rd rune. If you are having such an extreme problem with Death Cobs you might want to think about maybe looking at your strategy in regards to how you are playing the game. I have only ever seen 3 Death Cobs at once out of every time I have been in Zot, MOST of them time you only see 1 and occasionally 2. If you can't deal with them maybe you shouldn't be in Zot.

Plus the fact that you can easily stay at Very Full-Engorged before you even see a Cob.

[Hurkyl]

The reason you need to eat so much is because you have 5 skill in dodging and you are wearing GDA. If you were wearing medium armor and had 20-30 EV you wouldn't have to sit in your armor and cram your face every turn.

You're talking about the morgue in the OP? He had 22.5 dodging skill (with Heroism). He also quaffed a potion of agility.

[Ceann]

The reason you need to eat so much is because you have 5 skill in dodging and you are wearing GDA. If you were wearing medium armor and had 20-30 EV you wouldn't have to sit in your armor and cram your face every turn.

You're talking about the morgue in the OP? He had 22.5 dodging skill (with Heroism). He also quaffed a potion of agility.

I was being facetious... my point is that he had 2 EV.

This guy also didn't train his Axes to Min delay forcing him to use a turn to pop heroism, if his Armour skill was higher it would reduce his EV penalty. He has quick, which if I recall correctly is from his Boots of Running, meaning he did not use the Wand of Haste in his inventory, or the 2 Blink Scrolls or the scrolls of Holy Word etc etc.

Look at his skill allocations, 20 in Spellcasting and 19 in Cj? He has no spells of note to an XL 27 Fighter for that investment and we aren't even talking about all the other XP dumped there as well.

If he had maxed his Axes, Armor,Dodging instead he would have had at least 10-12 EV which would have been substantially better than 70 AC 2 EV, this all really boils down to a death by either lack of experience or tactical decisions and is not inherently the fault of a Death Cob, which in this case is the straw that broke the camels back, not the cause of events that culminated in it. With 2 EV the Cob is going to hit you, every single attack, yes all of them. I don't think that its unfair, it is not anymore unfair than when you get blink surrounded by a Guardian Serpent and immediately constricted or banished to the Abyss in E:3 because you didn't have MR++/+++. He is carrying NO other rings or amulets, there is no reason to have rNNN in Zot, even a basic ring of dexterity,slaying,evasion +1 would have been better. He also has no contam on his death so we know he didn't Haste,Blink,Invis etc.

Sure it is a bad beats story and it sucks to die in this manner because you feel like you didn't have any control. But if you look at the morgue he had a ton of options that were not used and hasting probably should have been the first thing he did the reason he died was because of the things he didn't do that he could have done. Death Cob is just doing what monsters are suppose to do when you don't account for their existence.

[Tiktacy]

The reason you need to eat so much is because you have 5 skill in dodging and you are wearing GDA. If you were wearing medium armor and had 20-30 EV you wouldn't have to sit in your armor and cram your face every turn.

You're talking about the morgue in the OP? He had 22.5 dodging skill (with Heroism). He also quaffed a potion of agility.

He literally has 2 EV in the OP, it doesn't matter what his dodging skill is if his evasion is still complete shit anyway. Your point is totally moot.

Edit: Ninjad, that morgue file made my sides hurt from laughing. That, and they what Ceann said about the elbow on the tab key. Fucking dead on m8.