Thoughts on some trunk (0.26) mechanics

[bt]

In no particular order:

1. Willpower/Will (former MR)

It would be nice to have a two letter abbreviation for search purposes only, like WP or WL. Typing "Will" is worse than "MR", and "Wi" is too common a combination for a good narrow search.

Seeing as a lot of numbers got despoilered in trunk (which is very welcome), it makes sense to put a number next to the Will pips in character % screen.
Two good reasons for that:
- ++ can mean anything from 100 to 149, no way for unspoiled player to know;
- new players often don't know that you get automatic Will increase as you level up and that different species get different increases (like Sp gets an extra + over a Hu by XL 12). Even worse - there's no easy way to look up these values in game.
I think it's good to keep '+++' notation as well, since Will comes on items only in '+50' form.

2. Spectral brand

For how rare it is, it's a bit of noob trap at the moment, IMO. Seeing as you can't control when to summon a weapon, the damage sharing mechanic really cuts into your hp, especially in places like Zot, where a lot of enemies have AoE attacks. For example the character with 45/22/32 in defenses and 200+ hp was feeling paper-thin against normal draconian packs, and I had to rebrand the weapon (to unexciting vorpal of all things) to finish Zot comfortably. Considering the brand is most common on two-handed staves (even less defenses) it's not an ideal situation, especially when we compare it to other rare brands like vampiric or speed. Basically I think spectral brand damage sharing can be halved and it'll still be weak-ish comparatively, since brand's extra damage is often conditional on "bad" positioning (unless you luck out on a spectral polearm).

3. Potion of Attraction

It has the same problem as the potion of stabbing, in that it's a very niche offensive potion, and from my experience people are generally not great at using those (see brilliance as well). Unlike !stabbing, !attraction is not great on stabbers, since in case of a failed stab what you really-really don't want is a status that makes walking/blinking away impossible.

What I think currently lacks in DCSS in terms of consumables is a way of getting emergency Will (MR). So my take on a potion design would be something like this:
Potion of Peace(fullness): Gives Will+, +5EV (in honor of !agility), -Attack and -Cast for like 100-200 auts (10-20 turns). Still lets you move, use abilities, god powers, evocables and other consumables and do damage from summons or poison and other DoT effects. Useful for dealing with early banishers, paralysers etc. Similar to !lig in that drawback is harsh enough to not make it a no-brainer to carry in the late game.

4. Not really trunk mechanics

- I know halberd gnolls on D:1 are a proud crawl tradition, but I'm not sure what design goals these "ogres with reach" are trying to achieve that spear gnolls or war axe gnolls can't. Losing XL1 char to them feels very unsatisfying, since for melee starts counterplay involves random energy lottery and hoping you can fog them for long enough, which is very unlikely for a melee start, and margin for error is super narrow, since they can comfortably oneshot most XL1 characters from a tile away. (XL1 adders are probably more lethal on average, but at least you can close doors on them, also a bit easier to lose in a fog, being animals and all).

- When worshiping Gozag you don't get a death message for flying weapons at all. Should be something at least, since there's occasionally a need to make sure you killed that cheeky distortion trident and checking the message log is a way to do it.

5. Not really mechanics

Encountered a weird buggy interaction in my current game (version 0.26-a0-1132-ge9770dfcb6 on CXC). Playing TrAM of Fedhas in Ice Cave I used ?immolation on frost giant, heavily poisoned it with darts, and started to walk away. At some point I got the message that "Fedhas accepts your kill" and frost giant tile disappeared revealing the battleaxe it drops, but there was no actual death message and no immolation explosion. I got both the death message and the explosion after I made my next move (explosion was centered on the battleaxe tile). There was no lag, and I think I kept the giant in LoS at all times. Got hit by that explosion as well, since I moved towards the battleaxe tile. Could've been a funny death (I was wearing ring of ice at the moment). I know I should report bugs elsewhere, but ...yeah, sorry about that.

Here's the morgue link: https://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/P ... perRat.txt (game's not finished yet).

[andrew]

I like !attraction. What was wrong (in my eyes) with !stabbing was that distraction stabs, for most builds, are a rather random uncommon event; so !stabbing wasn't very useful; it was a niche potion without much of a niche (again, for most builds). But at least any melee character has circumstances where s/he would rather the enemies be at range 1. (e.g. an early orc priest or centaur pack --- or perhaps an orb of fire in Z:5).

[Majang]

I second your Potion of Peace. Good idea!

[andrew]

You could add !peace without deleting !attraction; nothing says there can't be one more potion; wasn't too long ago that there were 20 of them.

[bt]

I like !attraction. What was wrong (in my eyes) with !stabbing was that distraction stabs, for most builds, are a rather random uncommon event; so !stabbing wasn't very useful; it was a niche potion without much of a niche (again, for most builds). But at least any melee character has circumstances where s/he would rather the enemies be at range 1. (e.g. an early orc priest or centaur pack --- or perhaps an orb of fire in Z:5).

Early orc priest doesn't come alone and also is normal speed, so walking to a corridor in the open or walking around the corner in corridors is better than !attraction. Also you can get orc warriors in orc packs as early as D:4, I think, so you can get from "fairly safe" to "pretty much dead" in one !attraction quaff. For OOF you get a wealth of options like haste, might, resistance, fog, blink, acid wand, box of beast, summoning scroll etc., wasting a turn on !attraction is not a very good play, IMO. Centaur packs don't come that early and again it's better to reposition to a corridor than fighting multiple centaurs at once.

That's generally my problem with !attraction, while the effects itself is fun (it would fit Xom quite well for example), its niche is positioning, where you already have a number of better options by the midgame, nevermind the quite significant downside. It's possible that I just didn't think laterally enough about its uses (don't play lots of melees as well), but in about a dozen won games since its introduction I haven't quaffed it once.

As for !stabbing, crucial difference is that while it was niche, it had no competition in its niche, and effect was very strong, like having half a spriggan's knife in a bottle.

All that said, I doubt it'll be removed before giving it a chance in .26 release (if ever), so you don't have to worry yet .

Unrelated: alternative name for potion of peace - potion of tranquility.

[Majang]

!attraction is very nice for melee Chei worshippers, who have less options to reposition themselves. But there will never be enough potions in the game, so they are forced to learn beckoning, which works just as fine and can be spammed.

[Siegurt]

A few random uses I've found for !attraction (some have been mentioned above):

0. Stab stuff
1. Drag slow allies along into fights (Good when you move faster than they are, you can drag your cloud of fodder along with, particularly good for death channel users)
2. Really mess up merfolk siren/avatar's schtick,
3. Centaurs, satyrs, fauns, javeleneers, (You'll notice that with above !attract is pretty good in shoals)
4. Axe^vamp
5. Dragging lesser nasties in to block LoF from bigger ones, also can make area-effect attacks not as attractive for ranged monstercasters, so they pelt you with it less (this is similar to dragging in ranged threats, but it works by dragging things that the ranged ppl don't want to hit with friendly fire)
6. Boulder beetles (boulder beetles can only start rolling when they aren't adjacent to you, that's why they blink away)
7. Combine with !lig when an unexpected polearm user comes into view. (Makes !lig a little safer, which is nice)
8. Good with Ramparts/Ozocubu's Armour
9. Chei
10. Summoners who like to hang out behind their summons

I sometimes wish I could use it to occasionally drag my lightning spire along with me, or pull the odd oklob plant out of annoying locations, but that would probably be broken.

[andrew]

0. Stab stuff

Wait being attracted doesn't wake a monster up? That's not a use I'd have thought of.