Improve the early game

[bobross419]

I don't know about Sigmund, I rarely have a problem with him. When he comes up on auto-explore one of three things just happened:

1) I find him at long range and he is awake/wakes up.
2) I find him at short range and he is awake/wakes up.
3) I find him and he is asleep.

Autotravel will stop when he comes in range. In case 1 you can just run away. Use corner to bring him into melee, hit him with a confusion type spell, or simply dive down to the next level. In case 2 you should be able to close to melee range. In case 3 you can just put an exception on his spot, scout around the area to find the best approach for attack later or just skip the level.

Sigmund is a great way to learn that you don't have to kill every monster you come across.. the fact that he can sometimes spawn early means a quicker learning curve and fewer late deaths that involve significant time investments.

[bobross419]

What are some thoughts on making the exp availability more standardized from D:1-D:4. I've had some games where I can get almost to XL4 on D:1 and others where I leave D:2 at XL2 with the same exact character build (not dealing with summons). It seems that the former character (who ended up XL6 by the end of D:2) is far more prepared for the crazy stuff that might just happen than the latter. I haven't pulled any hard data, but it seems that I average about XL2.5-XL3 by the time I leave D:1 with 120% races - Like above though that could range anywhere from XL2-XL3.9 or so.

I'm not sure that I would really like a standardization of potential exp on D:1/2, but it was an idea that came to me. The idea is that at those low levels you would have a better idea of what to expect your char to be able to handle... Gear would still be a factor, but it could help make the early game smoother.

[evilmike]

I'm not sure that I would really like a standardization of potential exp on D:1/2, but it was an idea that came to me. The idea is that at those low levels you would have a better idea of what to expect your char to be able to handle... Gear would still be a factor, but it could help make the early game smoother.

I think this would probably contribute to making the early game more monotonous. Variation is good, especially in the part of the game which most players spend most of their time in. I think it's good if stuff isn't smoothed out - not knowing what to expect contributes to making every game different.

On another note (and this isn't a reply to bobross419), I would suggest to all people who feel the early game is too luck based or too arbitrary to adjust your tactics before making claims like this. It is very much possible to survive the early game on the majority of your characters, with any combo. The trick is, basically, to avoid melee with most enemies (especially hobgoblins, kobolds and ogres) and always use ranged attacks on them. Even if you are a melee character, use ranged as the monster approaches you. If you do this well, and combine it with other good tactics (retreat often, fight in corridors, try to pull enemies one at a time if they are in packs, skip levels if they are too hard, etc), I guarantee you will suddenly find the early game a lot easier. Not right away, of course... applying all of this takes a fair amount of skill. But once you start on the right track, things should become easier.

[thenewflesh]

There's only one thing that's objectively wrong (i.e. doesn't fit with crawl philosophy in my humble opinion) with early game: tedious and spoiler-heavy id-minigame. Once I figured out (and spoiled myself a bit...) as to how efficiently identify things, my early game survivability skyrocketed. I don't think this meta game belongs in the DCSS. Hope it'll join victory dancing eventually.

Also, for people who advise to play sneaky character to get used to avoiding dangerous foes (I've seen this advise over and over on different forums, including this one): that's pretty misleading. Sneaky characters are actually good at running, they have stealth, they actually have an upper-hand in the early game being able to notice most early game reapers before they notice them. You'll learn nothing about how to take MdFi to the Lair playing as, say, KoAs (not to mention SpAnything). To learn how to play melee characters, you have to play melee characters

Oh by the way new level annotations in trunk is pretty cool.

[smock]

I'm not sure that I would really like a standardization of potential exp on D:1/2, but it was an idea that came to me. The idea is that at those low levels you would have a better idea of what to expect your char to be able to handle... Gear would still be a factor, but it could help make the early game smoother.

I think this would probably contribute to making the early game more monotonous. Variation is good, especially in the part of the game which most players spend most of their time in. I think it's good if stuff isn't smoothed out - not knowing what to expect contributes to making every game different.

I like this idea, especially if it could be done without making the early game monotonous. Do level designers calculate the average XP on their levels? Perhaps setting a miminum expected XP for levels 1-4 would help.

I would suggest to all people who feel the early game is too luck based or too arbitrary to adjust your tactics before making claims like this. It is very much possible to survive the early game on the majority of your characters, with any combo. The trick is, basically, to avoid melee with most enemies (especially hobgoblins, kobolds and ogres) and always use ranged attacks on them. Even if you are a melee character, use ranged as the monster approaches you. If you do this well, and combine it with other good tactics (retreat often, fight in corridors, try to pull enemies one at a time if they are in packs, skip levels if they are too hard, etc), I guarantee you will suddenly find the early game a lot easier. Not right away, of course... applying all of this takes a fair amount of skill. But once you start on the right track, things should become easier.

That really is great advice!

There's only one thing that's objectively wrong (i.e. doesn't fit with crawl philosophy in my humble opinion) with early game: tedious and spoiler-heavy id-minigame. Once I figured out (and spoiled myself a bit...) as to how efficiently identify things, my early game survivability skyrocketed. I don't think this meta game belongs in the DCSS. Hope it'll join victory dancing eventually.

I'm still surprised to hear that people like the ID mini-game! I've always disliked it in all RLs I've played. I guess I'm just boring. I do think that there are many other ways to test skills and make the game interesting. If the ID minigame is remains, I hope that it becomes more overtly consequential -- like cursed items other than non-blade weapons actually being bad, or items aside from potions of mutation actually being dangerous. As is, it's more about IDs things without wasting a blinking scroll on a read-ID than some interesting "oops I summoned a hostile X" or "oops my cursed armour makes me ponderous" or whatnot.

[dpeg]

What would a game without item identification be? All items are found identified? This makes the game A LOT easier, I honestly cannot see that ever in the game. (However, good news to some: Crawl Light has exactly this on the agenda.)

Crawl's id minigame is not very deep (I can only compare with Nethack, though) but it does contain a few choices. If there are ideas how to make it better, we'll always listen since free id is not an option.

[KoboldLord]

The trick is, basically, to avoid melee with most enemies (especially hobgoblins, kobolds and ogres) and always use ranged attacks on them. Even if you are a melee character, use ranged as the monster approaches you. If you do this well, and combine it with other good tactics (retreat often, fight in corridors, try to pull enemies one at a time if they are in packs, skip levels if they are too hard, etc), I guarantee you will suddenly find the early game a lot easier.

I personally consider the practice of picking up rubbish clubs and stones to throw at everything to be an unfortunate artifact of the system, and not a desirable play style. I do not think it is newbie-friendly to call a background a 'fighter' and have it almost entirely incapable of fighting, such that throwing useless debris is the only way you can reliably deal with a large percentage of enemies.

This is not an easy problem to fix, but it's a bug and not a feature. I can think of several possible ways to mitigate it. One would be to give characters like the fighter some starting consumables, not necessarily the best but something that can be used early on to have the edge in some early confrontation. Another would be to give the fighter a ranged option to start, like a stack of darts and a couple levels of throwing skill. Another option would be to significantly increase the fighter's starting skills across the board, making them notably more damaging and durable compared to hybrid-types.

[ElectricAlbatross]

I personally consider the practice of picking up rubbish clubs and stones to throw at everything to be an unfortunate artifact of the system, and not a desirable play style. I do not think it is newbie-friendly to call a background a 'fighter' and have it almost entirely incapable of fighting, such that throwing useless debris is the only way you can reliably deal with a large percentage of enemies.

Quoted for truth. Fighters are not even the best at throwing random dungeon crap, so they definitely need a change.

[dpeg]

minmay: I agree that the problem you mention is real and your solution is simple. However, I think it is too simple.

Zapping wands, for example, suffers from trying to align a wounded trivial monster with a rock wall, while having distance>1. There is no wand to make this situation dangerous, so perhaps we need one? If the first shot of a polymorph wand could polymorph out of proportion (I am brainstorming loudly here), then this might affect zapping. There could be wands that affect lowly monsters in other, dangerous ways, like massive glow. All of this is speculation, but it is clear that wand id currently lacks from bad (or ambivalent) items. (The same goes for scrolls, it seems.)

Having everything id on use is only one step beyond immediate id on sight (still quite a bit better in tactical situations, of course, where you have no idea what that wand next to the ogre is). Still, I feel that it throws out the baby with the water.

[galehar]

So, no berserk potions and no high-tier wands before D:3?

This is in.

I personally consider the practice of picking up rubbish clubs and stones to throw at everything to be an unfortunate artifact of the system, and not a desirable play style. I do not think it is newbie-friendly to call a background a 'fighter' and have it almost entirely incapable of fighting, such that throwing useless debris is the only way you can reliably deal with a large percentage of enemies.

People always complain about the lack of early game options for fighters. If you don't start with it, then you have to pick it up from the ground. And the first floors are littered with missiles. Why dismiss them as useless junk and ask for consumables? This is a resource, and you are supposed to use the resources you find.
If fighters need to be boosted, I'd rather upgrade their starting equipment rather than give them consumables.

[KoboldLord]

People always complain about the lack of early game options for fighters. If you don't start with it, then you have to pick it up from the ground. And the first floors are littered with missiles. Why dismiss them as useless junk and ask for consumables? This is a resource, and you are supposed to use the resources you find.

I consider its proper role to be useless junk for the same reason that you don't add the ability for players to sell it in shops. It is one of the design goals to refrain from encouraging the player to scrounge for low-value crap that has marginal incremental value but adds up over time. Picking up the eight clubs that spawn on D1 in case you see an ogre on D2 isn't all that much different than picking up those same eight clubs in hopes of selling them in a shop for a pittance each.

Giving the fighter a starting stack of 12-15 darts and a couple levels of throwing skill is markedly different than picking a stack of darts off the ground on that same character, because having the darts and basic skill in the starting loadout serves as a subtle cue to a new player that throwing is part of the character concept and they should look for more darts like these. Encouraging new players to pick up dungeon rubbish in case it turns out to be valuable doesn't really work very well, since for any given character the vast majority of the rubbish will in fact be worthless or harmful.

[dpeg]

KL: There is a huge difference. You could keep selling items throughout the game (and in Nethack, players did that, even yours truly). Picking up missiles on D:1, or also stairdancing, are relevant only for a short time. Matters could surely be improved, but the faults are on very different levels.

[KoboldLord]

KL: There is a huge difference. You could keep selling items throughout the game (and in Nethack, players did that, even yours truly). Picking up missiles on D:1, or also stairdancing, are relevant only for a short time. Matters could surely be improved, but the faults are on very different levels.

No, you couldn't keep selling items throughout the game. Nethack shopkeepers have a finite supply of gold, and it's eventually faster just to kill them for it. There's no incentive to scrounge the dungeon for trash when you can just tame a pet and sell the same high-value item over and over until you have all their money.

The value of selling items in Nethack falls to roughly zero around the time you reach Minetown. This is probably roughly equivalent to reaching Lair in Crawl, or possibly Orc if you're the kind who does Sokoban first. Those eight clubs you picked up on D1 stay relevant until around Temple, give or take a little depending on the availability of launchers or superior throwing weapons. Lugging around those eight clubs is, in my opinion, a bad thing, and I wouldn't particularly mind if clubs in general went the same way as the knife.

[dpeg]

My point is that the annoyance of picking up stones or darts (I never use clubs for some reason) and throwing that at everything is useful for only a short while. Removing clubs is surely not a solution, but if there are ideas how to improve the situation, we'll listen. I don't think the situation is unbearably bad (talking about Fighters here), and the background can be boosted in a number of ways, so I don't expect urgent activities, but still....

[galehar]

It is one of the design goals to refrain from encouraging the player to scrounge for low-value crap that has marginal incremental value but adds up over time.

It's not a low-value crap as long as it's a throwable weapon that can help you survive. The value doesn't add up over time, quite the contrary. At some point, they are not worth their inventory space anymore and you dump them. The early game is about gathering resources, I don't understand why you refuse to consider it as such. And I don't think it has anything to do with selling to shops. Throwable weapons have a tactical value, selling to shop is giving a strategical value (gold) to all useless loot.
That said, I don't like throwable clubs much and wouldn't mind changing them. Darts and stones are enough to wear done enemies before meleeing them.

[dpeg]

Making certain weapons "throws awkwardly" would be an option, I agree. Apart from clubs, books spring to mind. (I like Troggies dropping books much better than them using the books as grenades.)

[RFHolloway]

clubs are functionally similar, but weaker than handaxes and spears. Given that their damage is only equivalent to darts iirc (and weight and space is worse) they have a very short window of usefullness. it might be more interesting if they had the following relationships

stone<dart<dagger<club for damage

stones stack and can be used in a launcher
darts stack
daggers don't stack
clubs don't stack and are heavier than daggers

then for that early thrown weapons there are actual choices to be made.

My point is that the annoyance of picking up stones or darts (I never use clubs for some reason) and throwing that at everything is useful for only a short while. Removing clubs is surely not a solution, but if there are ideas how to improve the situation, we'll listen. I don't think the situation is unbearably bad (talking about Fighters here), and the background can be boosted in a number of ways, so I don't expect urgent activities, but still....

This could be addressed if we could adjust autopickup in game - and have at least stones and darts start on autopickup by default. That would also give the first time fighters a clue that they are actually supposed to use that stuff.

Then you would leave it on for the first few levels, and then shut it off once you hit space or weight limits.

Making certain weapons "throws awkwardly" would be an option, I agree. Apart from clubs, books spring to mind. (I like Troggies dropping books much better than them using the books as grenades.)

How about troggies suffer an int penalty for each book they carry. "don't like all those letters just makes me feel dumb"

[KoboldLord]

clubs are functionally similar, but weaker than handaxes and spears. Given that their damage is only equivalent to darts iirc (and weight and space is worse) they have a very short window of usefullness. it might be more interesting if they had the following relationships

stone<dart<dagger<club for damage

stones stack and can be used in a launcher
darts stack
daggers don't stack
clubs don't stack and are heavier than daggers

then for that early thrown weapons there are actual choices to be made.

Clubs are base damage 5, darts are base damage 3. Hand axes and spears are both 7 and daggers 4. Also, darts mulch and none of the others ever do. So actually, the dedicated-purpose ranged weapon is uniquely inferior to every alternative until you start enchanting stacks of them, at which point you should have some other form of stackable ammo that has more than 3 base damage.

You are better carrying around 8 clubs rather than that stack of +1 darts, because the clubs do more damage, won't break, and your target will close into melee before you run out of them. Don't waste your enchant weapon scrolls on either one, though, because sooner or later you'll find a sling or stack of javelins.

That said, I don't like throwable clubs much and wouldn't mind changing them. Darts and stones are enough to wear done enemies before meleeing them.

Clubs are definitely the worst, because it's immensely counterintuitive to think that a random stick off the ground is going to be a vital ranged weapon that you should stockpile. Sticks are the primordial weapon upon which ever single other weapon ever invented is an improvement. Spears, hand axes, and daggers are at least intuitively throwable, although their strict superiority to darts for the only part of the game where non-dispersal darts are relevant would still be a minor problem.

[molari]

Crawl's id minigame is not very deep (I can only compare with Nethack, though) but it does contain a few choices. If there are ideas how to make it better, we'll always listen since free id is not an option.

Definitely keep the ID game - it forms a key part of the 'spirit of discovery' needed in any adventure game, though it's true that at present it's a little tepid.

The main reason for this is that discovery by testing (as opposed to ID scroll) is mostly a minor waste/inconvenience rather than a serious choice with real pros and cons. At worst you waste a useful scroll or potion, but once potions of healing and scrolls of remove curse are identified this is the limit of the drawbacks for drinking/reading/putting on everything you see with few exceptions. Therefore instead of being thrilling, the leap into the unknown becomes irrelevent. I would suggest the following to make the ID game richer and more meaningful with regard to choices:

1. Change weighting of consumables. Having 8-10 remove curse scrolls by lair makes the whole armour/jewellery curse mechanic pointless. A curse should be something to be feared. These should be much rarer. Or if potions of mutation were much more common, players would be less likely to quaff-ID the biggest stack of potions and be fairly safe they are only getting healing. If a (potentially) early scroll was 'Summon Hostile Demon' I would think twice before reading everything I come across. There are other consumables that should be more/less common I'm sure, but the point is to create a more effective risk/reward system than is currently present, and make the player a little frightened when trying something they jsut picked up from a dungeon floor - as they should be!

2. Have some really dastardly curses/potion effects/scrolls. Especially curses are mostly triviliased by being limited to 'can't take off'. What if their effects were more random - existing effects like glow, stat loss, god wrath etc. or something completely new (but hidden!) like the next time you encounter a snake you become paralysed or all zombies in LoS get sped up. These kind of things seem more flavourful but also create challenge and variety.

Keep up the good work!

[KoboldLord]

Increasing the incidence of character-destroying identifiables isn't particularly workable for Crawl. Nethack can get away with being able to kill your characters in dozens of ways involving scrolls alone, but Nethack has a sophisticated network of complicated ways to soft-identify things before you start taking risks, meaning the choice to defer identification has a meaningful upside in that you can eliminate or mitigate the worst risks. In Crawl, you can use-identify, scroll-identify, or shop-identify. The last is fairly rare at the point at the game when identification is urgent, and the second will not be in sufficient supply and requires blind use-identification in the first place.

If we threw in a Shuffle scroll, it would certainly pointlessly ruin some characters when it cropped up, but it wouldn't make identification of teleportation and blinking any more interesting. You NEED your basic utilities, and must identify scrolls of identify before you can use them on other consumables even if you do have a surplus. Occasionally getting screwed over by something you can't reasonably prevent is about as interesting as occasionally spawning the Vaults 8 Welcoming Committee on D1.

[molari]

In Crawl, you can use-identify, scroll-identify, or shop-identify.

I tend to 'soft' identify potions drunk by monsters and potions/scrolls which are noticably moer numerous in my inventory than others.

If we threw in a Shuffle scroll, it would certainly pointlessly ruin some characters when it cropped up, but it wouldn't make identification of teleportation and blinking any more interesting.

Absolutely, that's why having a shuffle scroll is a bad idea. Having jewellery/scrolls/potions which do something unexpected without completely shafting the characters means choosing effects carefully. For example drinking a potion which temporarily transformed you into a cockroach would be potentially hazardous, but no more fatal than rounding a corner and finding Sigmund with a wand of draining.

[hayenne]

From a standpoint of an average player, I see current early game as a vast and solid improvement, well done!

[XuaXua]

I just had the best early game ever. Let me explain.

I have a SENe. I plan to worship Ashenzari.

On D1, the 3 stairs are generated right in front of me, I take one down (I don't want to spoil/explore D1 without ash!) and get to D2. I kill some creatures, get to XL2 and dive to D3 to look for an altar. I kill a few more creatures and run from some and take down a kobold carrying a blowgun and an uncursed elven sword. Stupid me, I wield the blowgun, but it's not cursed. 15 ammo. I take down Jessica. Am training throwing and spellcasting and swapping in/out the sword. I go to D3 and spot 4 slaves and run back to D2 and explore more (dammit) and find another stairs to D3 which are safer.

I have animate dead, pain and regenerate memorized (LOVE REGENERATE).

I get to D4 as soon as possible and spot... an ossuary. Rounding the corner with 3 skeletons I brought down from upstairs (always bring some bodies down, necromancer!) I spot some orcs and some gnolls; we start taking them down, I poison the crap out of Eustashio who joined the party, then as soon as I gain a level (enough to learn dispel undead), I run for the ossuary while carrying two corpses, with two orcs, 2 summoned white imps and a zombie rat in chase, and I dive into the entrance.

I immediately memorize dispel undead and raise the skeletons I brought. It is a two-room ossuary and I'm throwing rocks left and right, taking down zombies. I gain some stuff and have some crap cursed, but its ok, its just junk I brought along. I heal up, come back out and tackle the orc and the zombie rat. Then I head down to D5 and spot an Ash altar! WORSHIP. Tells me about a portal nearby. I go explore; it's the sewers, but an easy one with a potion of gain strength. No jewellery or anything, but I go explore and take down pikel with poison and Eustachio's Vorpal falchion and judicious use of Vampiric Drain. Scored an electric whip.

So far, it's good. I think having the portals show up in the early game made it more fun, and knowing the portals were timed forced me to rush them for treasure. I still hate timers though.

[XuaXua]

Also, no shuffle. I hate Shuffle the card, which I think needs to be scaled to the power of the deck, so shuffle the scroll against items I would have to quit.

[KoboldLord]

I tend to 'soft' identify potions drunk by monsters and potions/scrolls which are noticably moer numerous in my inventory than others.

Because you don't expect to care whether you have a heal wounds potion that cures more hit points or a healing potion that cures status effects?

Absolutely, that's why having a shuffle scroll is a bad idea. Having jewellery/scrolls/potions which do something unexpected without completely shafting the characters means choosing effects carefully.

All right, then you're going to have to be a whole lot more explicit. Because it sounded like you were suggesting genuinely dangerous effects.

For example drinking a potion which temporarily transformed you into a cockroach would be potentially hazardous, but no more fatal than rounding a corner and finding Sigmund with a wand of draining.

We have enough potions that do something tactically annoying that you quaff-test on a cleared level and then mash 5 until they go away. Adding more of them to the eight or so we already have of that kind isn't going to improve the identification sub-game.

Currently, mutation and cure mutation are the only disadvantages to use-testing your consumables as soon as you have two of a kind. You would need to have consequences at least this severe in the new consumables to change the status quo, and I don't think it would necessarily be a good change either.

[Yet Another Stupid Noob]

If you want to increase the effect of the id mini-game these are some things you could add.

Create potions that mutate you with -1 to a stat, a lose-foo potion. These effects last as long as any other mutation, but a single stat point, while annoying does not normally cripple; call it stings without being a stomp.

I would also not mind finding scrolls of "summon foe". When cast it summons a random unique that is level appropriate and has not spawned. Much like immolation (and torment?) it would range from fatal to useful. This one feeds into the “only read on a cleared level in front of a rat” style of IDing.

How about a scroll of wishing? A genie creates a magical store where you immediately have the option to purchase level appropriate items. You can only look in the store once (when you read the scroll) and you have to have to have the gold to make the purchase. This is a variant of an acquirement scroll in that you can pick what you want, but you have to pay for it with limited gold. Perhaps you can use the acquirement code, “a genie offers to take you to a magical store, what kind of store do you want him take you to?” Its value in relation to acquirement would greatly depend on your gold situation.

[bobross419]

Genie: "What kind of store do you want me to take you to?"
Me: "A store that sells nothing but scrolls of wishing, of course..."

I've gotta say though that the ID minigame is one of the more annoying but funny aspects of the game. Can't help but laugh when you are praying for a big stack to be healing but its brilliance or something.

[jwj442]

Hi, delurking here.

Perhaps you could spawn more monsters carrying potions and scrolls more often to make the ID game more interesting? You could have uniques with teleport and blink scrolls, ogres and orc casters with heal wounds or agility, etc. I don't think a monster drinking a potion IDs it right now and I know they can't read scrolls, but that could be changed (though I don't know how much work the latter would be). On the other hand, this might make the early game too hard.

What about a monster, probably a unique, that can copy and use unIDed items from your inventory? That might be too scummable though.

What if immolation scrolls had their noise reduced and/or scroll burning chance removed? It might become a more attractive option to read-ID scrolls when there's a lot of enemies around.

Maybe this is too nethack, but what about throwing potions as weapons? It would be a significantly weaker effect than evaporate, of course. Thrown negative potions would have a stronger effect than positive ones so you have more to gain than to lose (throwing a poison potion at an orc priest would help you significantly more than throwing a potion of might at it would hurt you).

[Konebred]

I dunno, I kinda like seeing an early centaur. It's nice to get a bow on level 3, especially a flaming one. I know it sounds noobish, but a lot of my builds start with raising stealth up to 4 or 5 depending on stealth bonus. It helps a ton when you first come up on enemies so they don't wake up or become aware the first time you see them. You also get a lot of stabbing chances when you come around a corner on a sleeping creature. This keeps the panic down and lets you stalk certain monsters or take advantage of potions of invisibility or even blink. Blinking next to centaurs is my favorite new move, I feel like Scorpion and shit. I guess it's just taking advantage of what you have, not pining for what you don't. I also don't identify any potions or scrolls unless I have 2 of them. Maybe it's just me but I don't feel like I wasted a scroll of teleport or blinking as much I guess. I use wands as soon as I find them just to see what they are. I guess there is so much random shit in the game that can screw you over you need to control as much of the game as possible, that is what I like about it. Hell in the past week I have gone from struggling to make it to the temple to having 4 or 5 characters make it to lair, with a couple clearing it out to 7 and a DEFE cleared 8 except for one last hydra that followed me up a stairs after I killed everything else, poor bastard.

[thenewflesh]

It's nice to get a bow on level 3, especially a flaming one.

Yeah, but getting a full load of burning arrows up your rear end isn't very nice at all. D:3 is too early for centaurs. And centaurs is an extremely poor choice for OOD monster because of speed and strong ranged attack.

[pratamawirya]

I've gotta say though that the ID minigame is one of the more annoying but funny aspects of the game. Can't help but laugh when you are praying for a big stack to be healing but its brilliance or something.

Read my signature, plz.

[bobross419]

lol prata, I was actually thinking of your sig when I wrote it

[dpeg]

The days when ?immolation burnt your scrolls are long gone. I doubt many of you remember them It took some lobbying but removing the scroll destruction was unfortunately necessary, since it'd just force players to drop all scrolls, pick up a single scrolls, move a few steps, read, repeat.

Those who are calling for id-minigame abolishment: Imagine the game would tell you the identity of everything for free. Would this make the game more fun for you? (Question is not rhetorical.)

[KoboldLord]

Those who are calling for id-minigame abolishment: Imagine the game would tell you the identity of everything for free. Would this make the game more fun for you? (Question is not rhetorical.)

I would argue that the id-minigame is already functionally abolished, particularly for scrolls. I expect gameplay with all scrolls identified from the start would be nearly identical to current gameplay, except you end up with one free copy of each scroll since you didn't read-identify it. Blindly using unidentified consumables in an emergency is statistically worse than useless, and you can't reasonably wait for identify scrolls to start showing up in numbers because the emergencies will start before that point. There's no real *need* for change, but there's no reason to abstain from changing the status quo either.

Potions are a bit trickier, since mutation and cure mutation exist. Potion identification strategy revolves around identifying as many of the useful ones as possible without hitting one of these two. I do not know that this corner case is important enough to protect, and something like eight potions have no reason to exist other than to be annoying during the potion identification minigame.

Wand type identification is basically pointless. It isn't difficult to find a rat (or other low-MR target) and shoot it, so most wands could simply spawn with one less charge for exactly the same in-game results. The exact number of charges is useful information, though, and the question of whether and when to use an identify scroll on that information is a relevant one for high-tier wands.

Jewelry identification is mostly fine, but if consumables were pre-identified the number of identify scrolls would have to be reduced significantly. Jewelry identification is most interesting when there's not quite enough identify scrolls to go around.

I don't think there's any reason to spend valuable developer time on this project. The minigame is mostly useless, but it's also mostly harmless.

[XuaXua]

Potion id strategy is opposite if using id scrolls - my goal is to id mutation / cure mutation and then quaff all the rest.

[bobross419]

I'd have to second Kobold's opinions on the ID minigame.

[joellercoaster]

I realise I'm late to this particular party, but:

I like the early game.

I think it's pretty well balanced.

Occasionally I die. Mostly I don't (I do that plenty, later). I'm nobody's idea of a great player, but the streakers' existence and the fact that even a mediocre player like myself has most of his troubles in the midgame should suggest it's not so harsh.

I have my complete playing logs since the beginning. 1% of my deaths are to Sigmund, and I have been killed by Grinder once, ever. Little dudes with wands are responsible for a couple.

It ain't broke.

[Grimm]

Having unknown consumables is flavourful. You're entering a mysterious dungeon, you don't know what's in there. Having known consumables would take a little of the fun out.

Blindly using unidentified consumables in an emergency is statistically worse than useless

Sometimes the game forces you to do just this. The times when it works are very sweet. Known consumables would eliminate this opportunity for drama.

I enjoy ID-ing things.

[TwilightPhoenix]

My only complaint with the ID mini-game is that Rings of Fire/Ice don't ID when you get hit by the opposing element. That and, for most games, the majority of bad items are totally pointless after you've IDed them. The major exception to this are the Scrolls of Immolation and Scrolls of Torment. They're bad and harmful to the reader, but they're worth carrying around because they're useful in situations. I've been known to carry Immolation around with me as a "Get out of being surrounded in exchange for HP" card. Scrolls of Curse X are lesser exceptions since they're handy for Ash worshippers, but pointless for anyone who has Spellcasting 1+. All the other useless items have either far to niche of a use or no use whatsoever. It would be nice if all the bad stuff had some risky uses, such as the Scroll of Noise causing long-term deafness.

[Kate]

Noise is vaguely useful in a couple of places (it breaks mesmerisation, for example). And sometimes creating a lot of noise in one spot is actually a desirable effect itself, anyway.

[Sjohara]

So, no berserk potions and no high-tier wands before D:3?

This is in.

I personally consider the practice of picking up rubbish clubs and stones to throw at everything to be an unfortunate artifact of the system, and not a desirable play style. I do not think it is newbie-friendly to call a background a 'fighter' and have it almost entirely incapable of fighting, such that throwing useless debris is the only way you can reliably deal with a large percentage of enemies.

People always complain about the lack of early game options for fighters. If you don't start with it, then you have to pick it up from the ground. And the first floors are littered with missiles. Why dismiss them as useless junk and ask for consumables? This is a resource, and you are supposed to use the resources you find.
If fighters need to be boosted, I'd rather upgrade their starting equipment rather than give them consumables.

I don't really agree with any of this. I'm not sure if making the whole early game flat-out less varied and interesting is desirable, and I don't think it solves the main problem anyway.

The issue is less that the early game is brutally unfair to everyone, and more that different backgrounds are wildly inconsistent in terms of what they can handle. If a strong background like a Berserker or practically any caster goes down really early on, odds are good that either the player screwed up really badly or something incredibly unlikely happened (which isn't really that big of a deal if it only happens once in a while). It doesn't become serious until you work your way down to the weaker starting backgrounds, especially the likes of Fighters and Monks.

Playing Fighters in the early game isn't awful because sometimes Sigmund happens, or sometimes an enemy grabs a Wand of Disintegration (in fact, finding a good wand early on yourself is one of the few things that can really help to reliably get you through the early game). It's awful because there exists literally no enemy which does not have a non-trivial chance of killing you outright for reasons which are entirely out of your control. A lot of the time you'll find something as utterly mundane as a snake on D2 and your game just ends right there. If it's noticed you, you probably can't run from it, because it's faster than you. Even if it hasn't you can't avoid them forever, because D2 and 3 are filled to the brim with them. You can't always kill it from range, because even if you have darts they tend to miss or not deal much damage. You can't use your special spells or abilities to give you an edge because you don't have any. And then the snake only has to fail to miss you a couple of times in inevitable melee combat and you find yourself losing the entire last third of your health to poison when none of the four single-stacked unidentified potions in your inventory are healing, nor are they anything that would have helped you kill or avoid the snake even if you'd known what they were.

Backgrounds like Fighters are 100% dependent on consumables to survive any situation that their stats and damage rolls don't let them plow through (which, due to the nature of the RNG, could be absolutely anything), and the game is more than happy to slaughter them before any of said consumables have been physically generated, let alone identified. Giving the weakest starts a couple of good consumable items would go a long way to solving this problem, because it means you have actual tactical options that can potentially keep you alive when your only other capabilities (namely "throw darts", "push towards monster", and "push away from monster") fail due to the nature of the situation or random chance. Delaying the generation of Sigmund and nasty wands or whatever doesn't do much of anything, because "out-of-depth things are hard" is not the root of the issue. Better equipment doesn't really help because lousy rolls can and will happen no matter how many pluses you have on your gear.

EDIT: Okay, some of this might be a bit of an overstatement. After forcing myself to play a few fighters, they don't seem to have serious trouble with snakes and common orcs very often, at least in the current patch. It's still hell trying to so much as reach the temple, though.

[galehar]

The issue is less that the early game is brutally unfair to everyone, and more that different backgrounds are wildly inconsistent in terms of what they can handle.

Having backgrounds of varying difficulty is a design choice, we're fine with that. However, fighter being one of them is not good in my opinion. This is the default background, and the one most beginners will try first. Fighter should be a simple AND strong background, especially in the early game. But it should be strong because the fighter is good at fighting, not because he starts with a bunch of healing potions. That's why I'm pushing for better equipment.
Also, casters' book carry them to the mid-game, sometimes even more. That's why I think a better base type is better than just an enchanted weapon. But better weapons also come with higher delay so it's not so simple. And there's too much variance in the second weapon among weapon types. So maybe this will be taken care of along some more general fighting rebalance (formulas and weapon stats).

[TwilightPhoenix]

Noise is vaguely useful in a couple of places (it breaks mesmerisation, for example). And sometimes creating a lot of noise in one spot is actually a desirable effect itself, anyway.

I know, but just being handy in Shoals (barring a rare, random spawn of a Siren elsewhere) is what I considered too niche. Using it to generate noise is pretty much the same as just shouting (though the scroll might be louder, I've never consider comparing and I have no idea how I would). The bad potions being useful for Evaporate and nothing else is another thing I'd consider too niche, even though Evaporate is a good spell.

Maybe potions of (strong) poison can be used to temporarily brand weapons with the Venom brand by pouring it on the blade/ammo/whatever? Using an unID poison potion would still drink it. Using IDed with no rPois would apply it to the weapon and with rPois it'd prompt between the two options, just in case you wanted that tiny amount of satiation instead. I think this would make the two potions more interesting without impacting the ID mini-game or being too overpowered as Venom isn't the strongest brand around, you wouldn't be able to poison a branded weapon, and if you learned Poison Weapon then the potions would become largely obsolete.

[dpeg]

The point of useless items is not to have a use (although it is okay if they have a niche use) but to make the id minigame work.

[alastair]

Without IDing there wouldn't be much point to curses? Or Ashenzari. Which are pretty cool.

[Stormfox]

The fact that Fighter can be one of the more challenging starting melee backgrounds is a side effect of game mechanics. Fighters start with two pieces of equipment -- armour with a non-trivial EVP and a medium shield -- that hamper melee at low skill levels. This was a very strong starting kit in pre-Stone Soup Crawl and even the early versions of SS. But now the Fighter's defensive kit can get in its way as much as it helps, if the RNG is being nasty. And being able to survive one more attack than other backgrounds because of defense doesn't help if you can't reliably use that extra turn to kill your opponent.

That being said, it has been worse. Look at DCSS 0.6 and the mass player exodus away from any background that started with anything heavier than a robe.

Fighter : Crawl :: Knight : Nethack. Looks good on paper, but there are some hidden gotchas that are only obvious after you try and die a few times. Crawl is slightly less forgiving in that regard because the hidden gotchas get in the way of what the character needs to do to gain experience.

[dolphin]

Having backgrounds of varying difficulty is a design choice, we're fine with that. However, fighter being one of them is not good in my opinion. This is the default background, and the one most beginners will try first. Fighter should be a simple AND strong background, especially in the early game. But it should be strong because the fighter is good at fighting, not because he starts with a bunch of healing potions. That's why I'm pushing for better equipment.
Also, casters' book carry them to the mid-game, sometimes even more. That's why I think a better base type is better than just an enchanted weapon. But better weapons also come with higher delay so it's not so simple. And there's too much variance in the second weapon among weapon types. So maybe this will be taken care of along some more general fighting rebalance (formulas and weapon stats).

Using Armour/Armour slots would avoid the weapon skill/delay issue of getting a better weapon, and seems to me like it might be easier to balance, though it would more tailoring to the species. For example, a HuFi might get gauntlets and boots while an OgFi might get a magical hide (troll? mottled?). What to do with Nagas and Centaurs and bardings is beyond me, though.

In light of Stormfox's post, perhaps the standard armour should be reduced to a ringmail, in order to reduce the whiffing caused by low armour skill and low shield skill. This is one of the things that makes gladiators better, their equipment is more suited to a starting character's skills.

Or, heck, you could even get rid of the Fighter and adjust the Gladiator to fit.