Draining in Hells


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Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 747

Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 12:30

Post Thursday, 23rd December 2021, 02:01

Draining in Hells

The draining is too much. I very quickly end up with -30% max hp, or even 100 max hp missing. Often within 200 turns. If the goal is to put time pressure on the player, it's achieving the exact opposite. Because I'm forced to leave and kill garbage in Abyss or Pan for 10 minutes to get my hp back. There is practically no cost associated with grinding hp back, it only wastes time.

If the answer is "go faster and kill things on the way to the rune to get your hp back" then I'm sorry to say that I'm already going pretty damn fast (I'm with Chei though), and the draining is happening faster than the speed at which I recover hp even when I try to play "properly" by continuing downwards through Hell (even though the optimal play is to leave and grind hp back).

I don't know what was wrong with previous Hell effects that summoned a bunch of stuff on you but that mechanic worked much better than the current one, in many ways, and I can't think of any reason to change it.
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Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Monday, 24th April 2017, 11:46

Post Thursday, 23rd December 2021, 10:31

Re: Draining in Hells

I understand that it is frustrating to get a character up to the end game to then find out that it is not suitable for clearing out the new hells - particularly if it was a character that was able to do so before. And it even pains me to hear that Cheibriados no longer seems to be a god that makes it possible (I haven't tried it yet, though). But I can assure you that there are character builds that can handle the new hells with relative ease, meaning that they reduce drain faster than the hells generate new drain - I did try that.

The bottom line is that nowadays there are fewer character builds that should attempt to take on the hells, and I think, if I understand it correctly, that that was one of the design criteria for the overhaul: players should understand that the hells (and the other extended-game branches) are entirely optional game content that should only be tried by the strongest characters. Too many players took each Spriggan Conjurer and its brother into the hells and could hope to get away with it with some grindy behaviour. Now people are waking up to the reality that this is no longer the case, and 15-rune victories should become much less common than before. Your report here therefore tells me that the new design works. Or at least it would work if you couldn't finish the hells by grinding your lost max HP up to shape in other places - so any tweak to the new system would somehow have to address this weak spot.
Maɟaŋ

Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 12:30

Post Thursday, 23rd December 2021, 17:59

Re: Draining in Hells

If the goal is to make Hells harder I have a suggestion: replace or alternate the existing Hell effects with an effect that randomly summons groups of powerful monsters on top of the player. It will make Hell effects more deadly and it also solves the grinding problem.

Abyss Ambulator

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Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Friday, 24th December 2021, 21:59

Re: Draining in Hells

I personally never understood the purpose of these hell effects like draining. If your character is strong enough so that you can clear draining inside Hells, then it will not result in any interesting gameplay, you just play normally. If your character is not strong enough, then you leave and grind Pan. Also not a very interesting outcome. To me it seems these draining effects are contrary to the game philosophy, regardless how hard are they. It is just that once they are mild enough nobody complains anymore (but at that point the effect is pointless). I think the permanent hell effects are more interesting, and we should drop these draining etc. and focus on those.

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Majang

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Saturday, 25th December 2021, 01:32

Re: Draining in Hells

I just finished a 15 rune game with a minotaur of Zin with a +9 holy executioner's axe, >50 AC and ~25 EV (over 30 EV with Vitalize for hard fights), all resists, amulet of regen. Zin has a chance to block Hell effects, for those who don't know. Plus he always blocks mutation hell effects.

I hope that this character is considered "strong enough" to be "allowed" to do Hells. Well, I still had to go grind in Abyss 3 times, and if I was playing optimally it would've been more than 3 times. And that's with Zin who blocks some of the Hell effects!

The Hells were challenging. The challenge arose entirely from fighting strong enemies, and not from the draining effects. In some ways the Hells were LESS challenging than when summon Hell effects existed, because the summon hell effects can actually kill you while draining can't.

Nevertheless, the Hells were more challenging than before they had the modifiers like no scrolls, etc. The addition of new enemies increased the difficulty too. I think Hells are currently hard enough without the need for max hp draining effects. It feels good to be challenged by dangerous enemies and not by an arbitrary rapid decrease of max hp that has judged your build "not fast enough" even though you're deleting all enemies in Hells in a couple swings (I say this but it was still hard, especially Dis for this character).

Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2022, 12:05

Re: Draining in Hells

Wahaha wrote:I just finished a 15 rune game with a minotaur of Zin with a +9 holy executioner's axe, >50 AC and ~25 EV (over 30 EV with Vitalize for hard fights), all resists, amulet of regen. Zin has a chance to block Hell effects, for those who don't know. Plus he always blocks mutation hell effects.

I hope that this character is considered "strong enough" to be "allowed" to do Hells. Well, I still had to go grind in Abyss 3 times, and if I was playing optimally it would've been more than 3 times. And that's with Zin who blocks some of the Hell effects!

The player you're referring to has a terrible win%, even less so with 15 runes and those are>100k, so you shouldn't take him seriously.

Wahaha wrote:The Hells were challenging. The challenge arose entirely from fighting strong enemies, and not from the draining effects. In some ways the Hells were LESS challenging than when summon Hell effects existed, because the summon hell effects can actually kill you while draining can't.

Nevertheless, the Hells were more challenging than before they had the modifiers like no scrolls, etc. The addition of new enemies increased the difficulty too. I think Hells are currently hard enough without the need for max hp draining effects. It feels good to be challenged by dangerous enemies and not by an arbitrary rapid decrease of max hp that has judged your build "not fast enough" even though you're deleting all enemies in Hells in a couple swings (I say this but it was still hard, especially Dis for this character).

Dis has -8 to AC but also -8 to weapon.
Your Char has an exec. axe so you can still kill something but with any weapon like a broad axe (+shield) you would notice the effect soon: you can't kill anything unless you have slaying from items you've found.
Dis will give almost no piety for the 'good' gods.
This means grinding (Pand.) for removing drain + stat drain + piety recovering is the new norm for melee fighters going into Dis.

I've completed several 15-rune runs in 0.28 and my experience is horrible.

Stat drain can indirectly kill you. I wouldn't advise anyone going into Hell with any stat<11 and to get out asap if you come close to this. This will leave you some chance to get out when a stat drain brings you into danger territory. I've died to stat-drain once and survived the other one barely.
Go into Pand. for grinding lessons.

For casters (I mean: lvl9-spells) )the new Hells are less scary.
If you already have screen-wide attacks you can more or less ignore whatever is filling the screen.
It doesn't really matter.
Just nuke them.
Stand on an exit, cast loud spells.
Get up.
Recover mana/hp.
Down again.
It can be that brain-dead, tedious and boring.
Also takes a lot of turns (unless chei/ash) to develop this type of char.
For this type of playing the smaller lvls (Hell 1-6) are easier.

Some additional notes on DIS:
Stabbing can be pretty much excellent (with max stealth). You have rooms/doors to manage noise. You need a back-up plan when monster wake up (I used polar vortex with some success. Takes several casts to take out the heavies with 28 INT and Ice=27)
Caustic shrikes come in groups most often.
This is a good chance to use scrolls of vuln. and hex them.
Dis used to be a lvl where everything is slow. Caustic shrikes changed that. Get hit by them once and you'll be left with a -3 weapon (unless slaying).

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