What in Crawl isn't fun?

[danr]

Combining this with the discussion about hives / nests, what if there were just a few more of those (but small, just a single cave) around the dungeon? Players could ignore them if they want because they have no significant loot / piety, but those who want to use them as stash locations can clear them out.

Another approach would be to give players a way of protecting a pile on the floor - setting traps around it, some special charm.

Here's another idea - make monsters refuse to step on a square with a rune of Zot. Once you have a rune, you can create a safe stash anywhere.

Yet another idea: if monsters would not open closed doors unless they were chasing the player. So you could leave a room closed and it would protect a stash, but it would not protect you from pursuing monsters that are capable of opening doors.

Autotravel is okay but there are always those pointless little annoyances, and it can take a while and there is real food cost for longer trips.

[szanth]

I'll repeat it; storage in stores. It gets me kind of excited to think about, and I can't think of any way that this would break the game.

[Stormlock]

Here's another idea - make monsters refuse to step on a square with a rune of Zot. Once you have a rune, you can create a safe stash anywhere.

And once you have a rune, you can stop monsters from hitting you in melee anywhere, not to mention a bunch of other possibilities (trapping monsters in rooms).

Would it be possible just to disable them fiddling with items on squares with a rune on them? That would be ideal, imo.

[Curio]

I'll repeat it; storage in stores. It gets me kind of excited to think about, and I can't think of any way that this would break the game.

Maybe, it's better to create special-purposed facility. "Banker" for example. And you must pay one-time fee for using his services.

Or different variant from me:
Randomly generated every 2-3 levels "hidden stash" that can be found only using T&D skill. Monster's can't access it - and you can use it freely (or with a limit of items placed)

[dpeg]

The latest batch of messages about stashing show you spoiled all of you have become
I vividly recall luring all of Ludios's loot to the only altar in Minetown.
Enough of sad old stories... There's a reason why I don't like these proposals particularly: stashing is not necessary and, from what I've gathered, far from optimal. (I have to admit that I am also a stasher.) By the way, locks are absolutely out of the question. No chests, no containers, no locks, no bags... I think you get it

[Stormlock]

How is stashing not optimal (Or necessary for that matter)? Am I supposed to run around with no scrolls or potions because I burned them all up before I got resists or let jellies eat all my wands? Or wander around overburdened the whole game? Enchant whatever equipment I have and end up at the gates of zot with +2 armor and weapons of mud because I upgraded a hatchet with all my scrolls to lower weight?

Stashing may not be necessary when you have 25 Str, but it certainly is when you have 5.

If you care to recall, Nethack gave you a bag of holding for hauling your stash around and getting 18/00 str + 18 Con with every single character was pretty much a given. I can't mix potions of might and potions of levitate to make potions of gain strength in Crawl.

[dpeg]

Stormlock: I said that stashing is not necessary, not that dropping is not necessary.
Do they hand out bags of holding at game start in Nethack 3.5.0?

[Stormlock]

No they're in Sokoban, you gotta play for around 30 minutes to get them =) Fortunately they don't hand out 500 stones worth of wands at the beginning either, so you don't need one until then.

If stashing isn't necessary, what do you do when the whole 2 teleport scrolls and 3 healing potions you were carrying run out and you got trouble in every branch and the main dungeon in front of you? Hope enemies miss a lot?

And if you tell me to just search levels for items left behind, that's the same as stashing, just slower to gather (More tedious) and less likely to still be there (Less optimal).

[Curio]

I thought, one of main goals was to eliminate tediousness in Crawl. As of now - everybody run back and forth between lair, hive and vestibule. That's quite boring.

Also, stashing is crucial in survival - it's not some kind of "scumming", it's in human nature. Back in the day, If you don't conserve enough resources for the winter - you die.
In Crawl, if you don't conserve enough back-up scrolls/potions etc. you most likely die.

[dpeg]

Sokoban prize is Bag of Holding only with 50% chance.
Players better than me drop items instead of carrying them to some location. If they need something, Ctrl-F shows the way. That is neither the same as stashing (no location needed) nor more tedious. It saves time and food, rather.

[szanth]

As I understand it, there's a chance an enemy will just pick up something you've dropped. That's why most people stash in hive and lair, because there's no enemies with opposable thumbs there.

[dolphin]

That wandering mechanic is certainly part of why I park my stuff in the hands-free zones. The first couple of times came back to my stash, only to have it scattered all over the level in hands of popcorn monsters, that was just annoying. I had it ORGANIZED for pete's sake (also watching an orc guzzle potions or using fire spells and burning MY scrolls that a centaur picked up, that was just annoying). I understand monsters with hands picking up weapons and armor and wands. I think the scroll/potion/jewelry/misc. item-wandering should go away.

Stashes are kind of boring, but they could either be discouraged or made easier, so as to minimize the time spent managing items. Discouraging stashes would annoy players, so what's the good part of discouraging stashes? (I'm seriously asking, not being flippant)

[Stormlock]

Using Ctrl F to find a dozen potions and scrolls in a dozen different places saves time and food and is LESS tedious? How is traveling to Orc 1, Dungeon 3, Dungeon 12, Dungeon 5, Hive 2, Dungeon 18, Lair 2, then back to the vaults to use the stuff faster? Unless you Ctrl-F every item you want and then calculate the shortest possible route, which still might be horrible, and is certainly incredibly tedious and consumes a lot of real time and effort. And this is assuming it's even where you left it.

[galehar]

You don't have to bring back every piece of loot you find back to the lair. Only stash valuable things. There are plenty of items monsters won't pick up. You can leave lots of utility scrolls and potions, books, misc items. Usually, I set up intermediate stashes. If I'm exploring level 20, then I dump scrolls of id, rc, excess of potions etc on the downstairs of level 19. I don't have to worry about monsters picking my stuff, because when I'll be back on L19, I will be right on the stash. I can explore a few levels down, and have to go back to my main stash much less often.

[Stormlock]

But what if you need to go above DL:19 then? Say, back to the lair to do Slime pits. Or to the vaults to do the crypts. Just hope your stash is there when you return, or move it all up/down stairs bit by bit? Never mind if you need to use a different set of stairs for some reason. It's possible to safely stash stuff this way, but it's a pain in the ass compared to having a nice room you can lay things out in and organize. I don't see why such a room shouldn't be available between the vaults and hell.

And what do you consider 'valuable'? Spellbooks? Scrolls of enchant weapon? Permafood? Jewelry? Potions of cure mutation? What about Potions of mutation?
Lots of things gain or lose their value based on the situation you are in. Maybe that potion of levitation will be vital for clearing the shoals or a volcano level. Not to mention bazaars and their need to acquire 15 scrolls of junk you didn't bother to save. The only sensible thing to do is ensure that everything you might find necessary to win is safely stored. Unless you have a list of exactly what monsters will and will not abscond with, and that list certainly isn't in the help files.

[szanth]

-Or-... storage in stores.

[TwilightPhoenix]

A few things that bother me...

Repeated early game deaths before I can properly react. Some characters have this easy, but throwing hordes of the Class X Species Y combo, even if the combo is "viable", until one makes it past the first few levels of the dungeon isn't very fun. This is especially aggravating in the early game when you start four fighters and they all get beaten down by the first Goblin they meet (or if they run, something else appears to kill them before you find anything that lets you do more than fight or run).

Low mana on some spell caster backgrounds sucks too. Starting with 2-3 MP and burning it all on not managing to kill the first monster is awful.

Electric and Poison resistance is too binary and not fun. You're either totally vulnerable or totally invulnerable, barring a few special cases. The effects are too strong between making things like Snake Pits, Hive, and Nikola uber deadly or utterly trivial. It'd be nice if each had three pips of resistance, making getting such resistance a bit more meaningful. It'd also be nice for someone wanting to make a rather poison or electric focused character not be forced to branch to traditional fire or cold to hurt stuff at all later on. Of course, branching is generally a good idea anyway, but why can't Air and Poison get away with some sort of (not necessarily direct) equivalent to Ice/Fire Storm. I do hear good things about a trunk spell called Tornado though...

Also, trying to build up a staff fighter without starting with a god. You either have to be a Priest, which means taking a god you may or may not want, or start off a background with your starting skills dumped somewhere else. Sometimes I just want to grab a solid piece of oak and bash people with it without having to worry about worshipping someone or finding the piece of oak to begin with.

[Zchris13]

Also, for air elementalists, there is a spell called Airstrike? Maybe you've heard of it?

[Sjohara]

This has only ever been a factor for one character of mine, but when you explode a monster with Orb of Destruction, all of its chunks are marked for auto-pickup. Even if they're contaminated and you're engorged. It's extremely tedious needing to pick up (and immediately drop) six chunks strewn about the room every time you kill something if you want to use autotravel ever again. Would it possible to special-case chunks generated by OoD so that doesn't happen?

[seth]

That happens with wands of disintegration and animate skeleton, too. pretty annoying.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Also, for air elementalists, there is a spell called Airstrike? Maybe you've heard of it?

Why yes, I have. However, as nice of a spell as it is, it doesn't make up for the fact that anything with electric resistance will be completely and totally immune to your higher level spells or lower level spells. A spell level 1 or 2 non-electric damage air spell and something around 6 would fix things if electricity resistance isn't ever expanded into three pips instead of either "totally invulnerable" or "totally immune".

[psyshvl]

Branch off into another spell school. Air should not be able to deal with all the problems you face. As it is, it is already way too strong with some of the top buffs in the game, and great offensive spells like Mephetic, Airstrike, and Tornado. And really, all you need is to learn Mystic Blast/IOOD/Throw Icicle/Iron Shot/a good summon. Or use wands until you get Tornado.

[Kate]

electricity resistance isn't ever expanded into three pips instead of either "totally invulnerable" or "totally immune".

It actually does have three pips for monsters. One is 1/3 damage (like player rElec), two is 1/6 damage, and three is no damage. However, I can't think of any monster that uses the first.

Exactly zero monsters have only one level of electricity resistance, which is pretty unfortunate since 1/6 damage may as well be invulnerability. In any case where a monster's given just one level of rElec, it's set to rElec++ elsewhere.

[XuaXua]

I hate, HATE portals that disappear over TIME or if you leave the level.

Look, I get it, you want the player to address the level at or around the time it appears, but this can be more challenging than you think.

In order to address this problem, here is the solution I propose:

Make a portal disappear based on experience gained after it is discovered (possibly not including experience gained by using a Deck of Wonders or a potion of experience).
The amount of experience gain should be a percentage based on the current experience / level of the player character.
If the player character gains maybe 2 levels (that might be stretching it) after the portal is discovered, it disappears (solving a problem where a player might fight a bunch of monsters around a portal and gain a level; 2 levels addresses if a character is on the verge of level-gain).

[XuaXua]

This has only ever been a factor for one character of mine, but when you explode a monster with Orb of Destruction, all of its chunks are marked for auto-pickup. Even if they're contaminated and you're engorged. It's extremely tedious needing to pick up (and immediately drop) six chunks strewn about the room every time you kill something if you want to use autotravel ever again. Would it possible to special-case chunks generated by OoD so that doesn't happen?

Why am I always auto-picking-up needles of curare?

[XuaXua]

Poison resistance is too binary and not fun. You're either totally vulnerable or totally invulnerable, barring a few special cases.

Especially considering that you have potions of poison and potions of STRONG poison, which last longer, etc.

[Grimm]

Why am I always auto-picking-up needles of curare?

Because curare is so dangerous that you want to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Keep them and drop them in the temple or chuck them in lava. I do this with distortion weapons and any other particularly hazardous item that could be used against me.

[XuaXua]

I understand monsters with hands picking up weapons and armor and wands. I think the scroll/potion/jewelry/misc. item-wandering should go away.

And yet, how many times have you encountered a goblin armed with a +0 +0 dagger sleeping next to an unused +X +X Branded Artifact sabre ?

This is the thing that always bugged me about D&D and treasure hoards - if the monster is guarding something he could just as easily be using (in addition to whatever he's guarding), shouldn't he be using it to protect himself?

[XuaXua]

I'll repeat it; storage in stores. It gets me kind of excited to think about, and I can't think of any way that this would break the game.

Storage in tesseracts. We ARE talking about a game with magic, right?

[szanth]

I'll repeat it; storage in stores. It gets me kind of excited to think about, and I can't think of any way that this would break the game.

Storage in tesseracts. We ARE talking about a game with magic, right?

... I don't understand. o_O

[szanth]

I understand monsters with hands picking up weapons and armor and wands. I think the scroll/potion/jewelry/misc. item-wandering should go away.

And yet, how many times have you encountered a goblin armed with a +0 +0 dagger sleeping next to an unused +X +X Branded Artifact sabre ?

This is the thing that always bugged me about D&D and treasure hoards - if the monster is guarding something he could just as easily be using (in addition to whatever he's guarding), shouldn't he be using it to protect himself?

In terms of D&D, dragons generally don't have the opposable thumbs or general hand/arm structure required to swing a sword. And why would they want to when they could just breathe fire on you or bite down for 5d6 damage?

In terms of Crawl, it's the same. And if the monster's asleep, that means he might not know it's there. :p

[KoboldLord]

I hate, HATE portals that disappear over TIME or if you leave the level.

Look, I get it, you want the player to address the level at or around the time it appears, but this can be more challenging than you think.

Unfortunately, that's exactly the point. The portals aren't supposed to be treasure piñatas that you can loot at your leisure. They are there specifically to force you out of your comfort zone and make a dash into enemy territory. It is not interesting to be able to pull one monster at a time away from the pack for EVERY challenge from Dungeon 1 to Zot 5, but this is always going to be optimal play if the devteam doesn't specifically put in some sort of situation where it has a down side.

All you're really missing out on is a few potions and scrolls, at least for the early portals. Those consumables aren't going to make or break your game. They are a desirable convenience if you judge them safe enough to grab, but you can survive without them.

[Gogozmozgom]

Using chunks to power Sublimation of Blood requires an oppressive number of commands. It's so intolerable to wield chunk after chunk that I don't do it, despite it being generally good practice in corpse-rich branches. Should be made much more straightforward somehow - maybe a prompt on cast that can autowield a chunk stack (taking the normal half turn wielding delay) out of inventory if you have one but aren't wielding it? I guess it would have to be optional somehow for character that normally carry chunks around like ghouls.

Edit - Whoops, I see thins in the Wiki, I misspelled "sumblimation of blood" looking for it before

On stashes: Just want to counterbalance the stashophiles here by saying a lot of people hardly stash at all. I only leave enchant X scrolls that I don't use right away lying around at the top of branch staircases to pick them up as needed, everything else just gets left where I toss or ignore it. Never lost anything notable.

[lucy_ferre]

Why am I always auto-picking-up needles of curare?

Because curare is so dangerous that you want to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Keep them and drop them in the temple or chuck them in lava. I do this with distortion weapons and any other particularly hazardous item that could be used against me.

Curare is wonderful. Irresistible slow on any living, non-poison resistant enemies is great. And it paralyzes insects too, iirc. I think it's overpowered to be honest, unless it was nerfed recently.

Back on-topic, I think the Vaults is a bland branch. It feels like the main dungeon, but with sparsely populated floors and no real flavor.

[Cybermg]

Regarding stashes, I've taken to just leaving extra stuff in neat piles arbitrarily placed in the dungeon. It's sort of bullshit though that a 1/1000 unlucky jelly spawn can destroy everything, so maybe disallowing additional jelly spawns in the main dungeon (spawns when you first enter a level are fine) would help, and make people generally less anal about stash placement.

[KoboldLord]

A humanoid picking up a wand of polymorph other is much worse than a jelly scooping up a small pile of maginally useful consumables.

[XuaXua]

I hate, HATE portals that disappear over TIME or if you leave the level.

Look, I get it, you want the player to address the level at or around the time it appears, but this can be more challenging than you think.

Unfortunately, that's exactly the point. The portals aren't supposed to be treasure piñatas that you can loot at your leisure.

I didn't say they were; I noted immediately after that they could use an alternate timer for them, one based on experience gained after discovery of the portal rather than units of time.

[Cybermg]

A humanoid picking up a wand of polymorph other is much worse than a jelly scooping up a small pile of maginally useful consumables.

I'd much rather have the former happen, as I could just teleport away or otherwise kill it quickly since I'm likely to be much, much stronger than it by the time I'm returning to my stash, than lose my stack of 15 spare healing potions I need to finish the tomb, or every spare enchant scroll or cure mut potion I've found in the dungeon so far.

[KoboldLord]

I didn't say they were; I noted immediately after that they could use an alternate timer for them, one based on experience gained after discovery of the portal rather than units of time.

That change would nullify the entire point of them existing in the first place.

If an xp clock was used, standard play would be to slowly tease a single monster away from the portal at a time until it was completely clear. This process is every bit as xp-efficient as simply charging straight in and slaughtering them all without stopping to breathe. The purpose of portals is to be discourage this mode of standard play and make viable *any* alternatives.

[galehar]

Electric and Poison resistance is too binary and not fun. You're either totally vulnerable or totally invulnerable, barring a few special cases.

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... ect:poison

[XuaXua]

I'll repeat it; storage in stores. It gets me kind of excited to think about, and I can't think of any way that this would break the game.

Storage in tesseracts. We ARE talking about a game with magic, right?

... I don't understand. o_O

A tesseract is generally used in pop culture (read: comic books) as a single extra-dimensional space that you can store stuff in, and access from any point (or several access points). When you consider the original proposal of Resident Evil-like stores where you put an item in at the start of the board, go to another board conceptually a quarter mile away in distance and unrealistically (for the "world" of Resident Evil) can access the item in a completely different store, that is the concept of a tesseract as defined by comic book physics.

A "pocket dimension" if you will. This would be the sort of thing "magic" could achieve and would be viable in a game such as this (as opposed to Resident Evil where it is just used as a convenience mechanic).

[dolphin]

It isn't fun that single puff of flame can burn through a DS Icemail (10 AC), Ozu's Armor (13 AC), Cond Shield (31 SH) with maxed skills in one go.

I'm not the only one (see:Duration-based spells)

[mageykun]

It isn't fun that single puff of flame can burn through a DS Icemail (10 AC), Ozu's Armor (13 AC), Cond Shield (31 SH) with maxed skills in one go.

I'm not the only one (see:Duration-based spells)

I second this. It's especially frustrating if you play a MfTm. You have to choose between evaporate and all the natural ice buffs Mf are so good at.

[TwilightPhoenix]

It was mentioned earlier, but I'm going to second the status effect inducing chunks. Pretty much, you find yourself only eating clean chunks, poison chunks if you have resist poison, and sickness chunks because they seem to be the most common and don't always make you sick. All other chunks except mutagenic meat is pointless. Sickness chunks are annoying because they either feed you or make you sick. You'll usually just go somewhere safe, chomp them all, and then rest off any sickness before it has any negative effects. Sickness is rarely a problem and is mostly just an inconvenience. The only time getting sick from meat is a threat is when you're starving, but then you'll probably just suck it up and eat perma-food, so it's not that much of a threat. It's not an interesting decision, it's just "eat until I can't or I'm out of meat, rest sickness, and go back to killing". Poison chunks are boring because they're binary. If you don't have resist poison, you ignore them because they poison you with no nutrition. If you do, then they're just clean chunks. Rotting chunks are worse since they rot you without nutrition, meaning you'll never touch them. Maybe Ghouls like them, but I've never gotten a Ghoul far enough to munch a rot inducing chunk. And finally, while mutagenic chunks do provide mutations, they never provide nutrition. So, they're interesting and fun if you want mutations, but if you don't, then they serve no purpose.

Also, why do Merfolk lose all Transmutations when in water? I can understand most forms, but Ice Beasts can swim and Blade Hands affects only your hands, not your tail. Kind of annoying you cannot combine Merfolk's great transmutation aptitude with their swimming ability.

[coyo7e]

I hate, HATE portals that disappear over TIME or if you leave the level.

Look, I get it, you want the player to address the level at or around the time it appears, but this can be more challenging than you think.

Unfortunately, that's exactly the point. The portals aren't supposed to be treasure piñatas that you can loot at your leisure. They are there specifically to force you out of your comfort zone and make a dash into enemy territory. It is not interesting to be able to pull one monster at a time away from the pack for EVERY challenge from Dungeon 1 to Zot 5, but this is always going to be optimal play if the devteam doesn't specifically put in some sort of situation where it has a down side.

All you're really missing out on is a few potions and scrolls, at least for the early portals. Those consumables aren't going to make or break your game. They are a desirable convenience if you judge them safe enough to grab, but you can survive without them.

I would like to see some slight balancing done to portal despawns based on where they appear, maybe.. I had a Bazaar on Elf 2 or 3 the other day and I had to roll around the entire level clearing elves and demons and shit, and the portal crumbled about 50 turns before I found it, since I'd gone looking in the wrong corner to begin (mottled dragon stickied up all my mapping scrolls). I was rolling around the level at half hps and mps the entire time, desperately trying to find it, but simply was not able to. And I was definitely not on the level for 1000 turns.

[Grimm]

I agree with KL above. Missing spawned portals is just tough luck, and part of the game.