The Tavern

I increased the base HP by +3 for everyone. Don't take it for granted though. Let's test it and see how it plays out.

minmay wrote:While we're tweaking early game, can we move a few monsters? In particular, I'd very much like to see kobold demonologists moved to orc wizard depth, but with Summon Demon removed from them (so they only summon imps).

Make sense. Is it on the wiki already? Red Sonja might need some adjustment if we do that.

Great idea, will definitely help even stuff out, especially for the uber fragile races which many beginners can't get past the first few levels.
Moving demonologists sounds good, but one or two imps at a time can be pretty difficult as it is for some players, perhaps as a rarity (like centaurs/maybe even rarer than centaurs?) would be good? I don't like the thought of constantly battling against hordes of white/black imps!

Maybe balance the shafts too. In my recent game: Fell in a shaft during autoexplore .. D:3 to D:7 .. that was a death sentence, landing right next to an icebeast and sky beast.
Later on 4 levels do not make such a big difference .. plus you have enough escape scrolls and spells.
But early on a 4 level drop is just .. mean

shafts cannot drop you by 4 levels. It's either 1, 2 or 3.

galehar wrote:shafts cannot drop you by 4 levels. It's either 1, 2 or 3.

just looked into the morguefile and indeed, i fell from 4 to 7.
my bad.

It doesn't happen very often though, and it's often not a death sentence - just a moment of great tension (with a small 't'). I don't mind the shafts.

Shafts are one of my favourite features. It's like involuntary gambling, or forced dice.

It's like involuntary gambling, or forced dice.

hahaha, there should be more involuntary gambling in the world!

I've got to say I do love the shafts, especially when monsters fall down them, I remember I was getting cornered by two ice beasts and one just blundered into a shaft and the other into a teleport trap. RNG FOR THE WIN!

Slightly off topic (but within early game balance) are there any plans to put in a lesser bow/crossbow in at an earlier stage? I feel like it's nearly impossible to switch to a bow (and more especially crossbow) until you start seeing a few centaurs about. Not that it's a massive problem, I'd just like to see a 'crude bow' or something so that it would be easier to start on that path before the early mid game.

Bim wrote:hahaha, there should be more involuntary gambling in the world!

ARE YOU MAD

ARE YOU MAD

You'll have to play me at the obscure Uzbekistanian gambling game I invented if you want to find out.

[dumb comment deleted]

minmay wrote:I put it on the wiki before: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... monologist

It would mess with Sprint, I didn't think of that.

Call them a different monster. Problem solved.

Bim wrote:
It's like involuntary gambling, or forced dice.

hahaha, there should be more involuntary gambling in the world!

I've got to say I do love the shafts, especially when monsters fall down them, I remember I was getting cornered by two ice beasts and one just blundered into a shaft and the other into a teleport trap. RNG FOR THE WIN!

I recently shafted a 6-headed hydra on L:2. Found that area of, like, 10 random shafts and danced around it till he fell in.

Killed him later.

Bim wrote:are there any plans to put in a lesser bow/crossbow in at an earlier stage?

Some kobolds have crossbows.

Many bailey maps will give you all the crossbows and bolts you can carry, if you survive. You'll see them before yaktaurs or orcs spawning with crossbows in the main branch.

Anyone in favor of nerfing early Playerghost Transmuter/Wizards? If you dont have Poison resistance when you meet them, you just die.
They chainspam Mephclouds/potion of confusion .. and even if you are lucky enough to slurp a healing potion in a break, they just spam you again.
The last ghost decided to throw about 6 confusion potions before he finally decided to kill me.

And yes, I could just delete them, but it feels like cheating.
Just let them use the Clouds every 10-15 turns or something like that would be my idea.

MonorailCat wrote:Anyone in favor of nerfing early Playerghost Transmuter/Wizards? If you dont have Poison resistance when you meet them, you just die.
They chainspam Mephclouds/potion of confusion .. and even if you are lucky enough to slurp a healing potion in a break, they just spam you again.
The last ghost decided to throw about 6 confusion potions before he finally decided to kill me.

And yes, I could just delete them, but it feels like cheating.
Just let them use the Clouds every 10-15 turns or something like that would be my idea.

The resolution to this would be to finding a way to constrain non-players to their own mana pools and adjust the AI.

XuaXua wrote:
MonorailCat wrote:Anyone in favor of nerfing early Playerghost Transmuter/Wizards? If you dont have Poison resistance when you meet them, you just die.
They chainspam Mephclouds/potion of confusion .. and even if you are lucky enough to slurp a healing potion in a break, they just spam you again.
The last ghost decided to throw about 6 confusion potions before he finally decided to kill me.

And yes, I could just delete them, but it feels like cheating.
Just let them use the Clouds every 10-15 turns or something like that would be my idea.

The resolution to this would be to finding a way to constrain non-players to their own mana pools and adjust the AI.

Or simply reduce the chance that they cast evap/meph.

I can see very well how giving MP to monsters can create plenty of abusable new tactics to make monster casters waste their MP (on summons for example), and then kill them when they run out. I also see how hard it would be to make the AI manage the pool efficiently. I fail to see what problem it solves or what it's good for. I find the current system to be working pretty well.

Definitely have player ghosts not cast evap/meph as much, as XuaXua said, they absolutely destroy early chars without proper resistances, with no real way of avoiding it. I end up just downloading the latest trunk when I build up to many player ghosts, although going through with a DDNe sorts them out pretty quick either.

galehar wrote: I fail to see what problem it solves or what it's good for. I find the current system to be working pretty well.

You know me, I'm always trying to neuter the multi-smite.

Bim wrote:Definitely have player ghosts not cast evap/meph as much, as XuaXua said, they absolutely destroy early chars without proper resistances, with no real way of avoiding it. I end up just downloading the latest trunk when I build up to many player ghosts, although going through with a DDNe sorts them out pretty quick either.

You can always just delete your ghost files.

XuaXua wrote:
Bim wrote:Definitely have player ghosts not cast evap/meph as much, as XuaXua said, they absolutely destroy early chars without proper resistances, with no real way of avoiding it. I end up just downloading the latest trunk when I build up to many player ghosts, although going through with a DDNe sorts them out pretty quick either.

You can always just delete your ghost files.

If that's not scumtastic I don't know what is.

XuaXua wrote:
Bim wrote:Definitely have player ghosts not cast evap/meph as much, as XuaXua said, they absolutely destroy early chars without proper resistances, with no real way of avoiding it. I end up just downloading the latest trunk when I build up to many player ghosts, although going through with a DDNe sorts them out pretty quick either.

You can always just delete your ghost files.

Unless you're playing online.

Yeah, I'm going on the assumption that you're not deleting ghost files, I mainly said that in terms of, I never let there be toooo many ghosts as I always swap to the new trunk every week or so, although sometimes after a stream of bad ghosts I move on just to stop it annoying me.

I think after you're level 10 you should be able to deal with ghosts and avoid them if you can't, but earlier than that and having mephitic cloud/evap can be a death sentence, one that feels OOD compared to other stuff you're fighting.

ElectricAlbatross wrote:
XuaXua wrote:
Bim wrote:Definitely have player ghosts not cast evap/meph as much, as XuaXua said, they absolutely destroy early chars without proper resistances, with no real way of avoiding it. I end up just downloading the latest trunk when I build up to many player ghosts, although going through with a DDNe sorts them out pretty quick either.

You can always just delete your ghost files.

If that's not scumtastic I don't know what is.

Copying your .cs file out and putting it back after you die.

Bim wrote:Definitely have player ghosts not cast evap/meph as much, as XuaXua said, they absolutely destroy early chars without proper resistances, with no real way of avoiding it.

I don't think I agree with this second part of the sentence... player ghosts are a major threat and should be treated the same way as running into Sigmund: stop. Think. Think very hard about running away. Mephitic Cloud is a bastard, but it has limited range.

About early game balance, in current trunk (1334, includes faster skill cost level raise, although that should hardly matter for early game): my DSTm is having a harder time than before the new skill costs were introduced. Even going from skill level 3 to level 4 takes ages. The main reason I find myself going to the skill screen more often is not the new training, but the new skill cost. I just need to check if really nothing is happening or if I'm just imagining my skills are not progressing. Leveling skills takes forever. Even with just three active skills (UC, Spc, Tmut) training is very very slow.

Playing a Tm is still not hard once you get past level 1, but it used to be much easier. Level 1 actually got quite a bit easier due to the +3 base HP. They let me handle some tougher situations and helped a lot with the D:1 hobgoblins. Also DSTm probably got hit hard by the skill cost change, with the many spell schools and -1 apts for most skills. But from this first impression I think this change was too much. Rewarding specialization is fine, but specialization is not blindly focusing on one single skill. Leveling three skills at a decent pace early on should be possible, even for a demonspawn. Most backgrounds have three main skills, and they should be able to leave those on and make some progress.

yeah i noticed the same with a DSTm
I actually had to disable UC and dodging and even fighting for half of my game to get the forms castable.
But Lair was still quite easy with Iceform and 2 Unarmed with 2 Dodging.

Hybrid characters generally got harder, but hybrids with bad to average aptitudes got A LOT harder.

The Tavern

Early game balance

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