Remove Harpy Food Steal

[greepish]

Simply: Food is a strategic resources, harpies destroy it, so this needs to be removed.

Specifically, harpies are problematic in shoals. There tends to be a group or two on every level, so I always leave nearly all my food on the lair level before shoals. Spellcasters, while taking far less hits from harpies, have a particularly annoying time due to lack of strength. They can't carry much food, but if they're playing optimally they always need a bit extra in case of banishment, so frequently a bout harpies means taking a trip back to lair. Every single time you run in to them. Melee players have a similar problem, but they can carry more food, and who really cares if you lose 20 pieces of bread (outside of trunk).

Furthermore, removal of food stealing removes no uniquness. Harpies already are the dangerous "heavy bats", and hungry ghosts already deal damage to satiation, in a more tactical, interesting way for players who have a hard time killing them.

Alternatively, one could simply reduce the prevalance of them in shoals so that the optimal strategy doesn't involve 3-4 food trips.

[KoboldLord]

Food is more frequently a tactical resource than a strategic resource. Sure, there are strategic concerns with not running out in Crypt, Hell, and Tomb, but for most of the game you're trying to stabilize food coming in with food going out. Generally speaking, I haul around 3 rations and a small stack of fruit. I try to manage my chunks to avoid using them, so I often go for very long stretches of game without using any, but every so often I blow a lot of nutrition on big spells and need to use one as a 'potion of nutrition' to finish off a particularly troublesome enemy.

Harpies are interesting for the same reason popping potions of magic or scrolls of blinking is interesting. That food item that gets destroyed is the equivalent of maybe one Freezing Cloud or Orb of Destruction that would've finished off an impaler or javelineer. If anything, they should be able to steal food more often so I have to make more hard choices with my power spells.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I've never really had issues with harpy thieves, but the concern, of course, is still there. Really, the best strategy to deal with them is to drop all of your food on sight. Anytime that's something that works best to safeguard your stuff, something's wrong.

[KoboldLord]

I've never really had issues with harpy thieves, but the concern, of course, is still there. Really, the best strategy to deal with them is to drop all of your food on sight. Anytime that's something that works best to safeguard your stuff, something's wrong.

That was already fixed, shortly after Shoals was added to the game. Harpies will destroy food on the ground or at your feet, too.

[greepish]

Food is more frequently a tactical resource than a strategic resource. Sure, there are strategic concerns with not running out in Crypt, Hell, and Tomb, but for most of the game you're trying to stabilize food coming in with food going out. Generally speaking, I haul around 3 rations and a small stack of fruit. I try to manage my chunks to avoid using them, so I often go for very long stretches of game without using any, but every so often I blow a lot of nutrition on big spells and need to use one as a 'potion of nutrition' to finish off a particularly troublesome enemy.

Harpies are interesting for the same reason popping potions of magic or scrolls of blinking is interesting. That food item that gets destroyed is the equivalent of maybe one Freezing Cloud or Orb of Destruction that would've finished off an impaler or javelineer. If anything, they should be able to steal food more often so I have to make more hard choices with my power spells.

Like I said, in shoals is where particular they are a problem since the strategy for dealing with them is easy/boring/trivial/tedious. Dump your food at the entrance to shoals, keep going back after harpies strike, go back. Back and forth and back and forth. There is no "interesting choice" here, just tedium. You can even argue the dungeon works this way as well, just go back to hive. Unless you happen to run into a monster on your way to the stash, there is essentially 0 "interesting choices". How can going back to a stash affect whether you cast a freezing cloud or orb of destruction? Hungry ghosts do not have this problem: The interesting choice is because the hunger takes place immediately in battle, forcing you to decide between eating in battle or starving. Unfortunately, this very rarely occurs since HGs are easy as pie past like d4.

Edit: Alternatively, you could carry most of your food with you, in which case you actually would lose out on many potential spells. So here we have a case where tedium clearly wins over the "normal" route. Unlike blink scrolls, it's not like you'll ever die mid-battle from lack of inventory food.

[XuaXua]

I haul around 3 rations and a small stack of fruit.

This is almost my tactic as well; I carry 2 rations, and I make sure the fruit is of the same type to allow for carrying space. After clearing every level before the next, I check my carry space and if I don't have enough, I dash to the stash and drop excess food.

[XuaXua]

Also, Harpies are not just in the Shoals.

[greepish]

Yes I know And yes, what you do is what I do. What I'm saying, though, is it's hardly a good thing.

[KoboldLord]

Like I said, in shoals is where particular they are a problem since the strategy for dealing with them is easy/boring/trivial/tedious. Dump your food at the entrance to shoals, keep going back after harpies strike, go back. Back and forth and back and forth. There is no "interesting choice" here, just tedium. You can even argue the dungeon works this way as well, just go back to hive. Unless you happen to run into a monster on your way to the stash, there is essentially 0 "interesting choices". How can going back to a stash affect whether you cast a freezing cloud or orb of destruction? Hungry ghosts do not have this problem: The interesting choice is because the hunger takes place immediately in battle, forcing you to decide between eating in battle or starving. Unfortunately, this very rarely occurs since HGs are easy as pie past like d4.

Edit: Alternatively, you could carry most of your food with you, in which case you actually would lose out on many potential spells. So here we have a case where tedium clearly wins over the "normal" route. Unlike blink scrolls, it's not like you'll ever die mid-battle from lack of inventory food.

Shoals is filled with monsters that are faster than you, and there is little terrain blocking their detection or approach. The handwave 'unless you happen to run into a monster on your way to the stash' works even less well in Shoals than it does in the main Dungeon, and it doesn't work very well there either. A javelineer that you leave alive now, even assuming you can get to the stairwell in time to outrun it, is going to be at full health and at an unknown location when you return. If you run back to your stash now, it may well pop up at an inconvenient time later since you didn't finish it off when you had it at your mercy.

Granted, lots of people go into Shoals late enough that they can just curbstomp everything regardless of what combination of monsters approaches. In this case, there are no tactical considerations worth worrying about at all, so the harpies' resource drain is a strategic nuisance that you may prefer to make a mini-stash to avoid, at least if you don't have the EV, SH, or conservation required to trivialize even the harpies. I don't think gameplay quirks that are caused by playing branches wildly out of intended order is easy to fix, though, and I'd much rather see a more interesting solution than just taking out everything that inconveniences a high-level character.

Sometime try heading into Shoals just after Lair 8 and Orc 4, before clearing your way down to Vaults. I believe you will find it to be a much more sophisticated design than it seems when you're blitzing through with plans to loot Elf 5 and Vaults 8 next. I believe this dynamic is part of the impetus for the Rune Lock proposal, although I don't know what the current status of that project is.

[greepish]

Well the handwave works for me, since it's just never happened to me. I've never had a case where I ran out of food on my way back to a stash of food.

As for what level you are when you hit shoals, I think it's best to assume the player is doing shoals at whatever is the "smart" time to do it. Consider shoals has krakens, javelineers, and some high level uniques. I think I'm usually about level 16-19. Not sure it matters, though, I don't see what level has to do with it. You're still going to make a stash and keep yo-yoing back to it with little danger in the way, regardless of level.

Perhaps this is just our anecdotal evidence here, I've never had food problems going back to a stash, you seem to, how do other people view harpies?

[dpeg]

What about harpies doing serious damage if they cannot get food from you?

[greepish]

An interesting idea Perhaps stealing food and finding none would result in an extra biting attack or something.

[absolutego]

they are already dangerous, specially to low-ac characters. they are very fast, hard to hit with AOE spells, hit twice, and come in packs (which can be large). i may be biased because i do hate them with a passion, but i don't think they need a boost.

[greepish]

Yeah, after thinking about it me neither, especially with the new food system in trunk (never tried it, though). So I'd rather go with either just lowering their prevalence in shoals or outright removing the food steal.

[dpeg]

You see, this is why we listen to players but have to design ourselves. It is absolutely valid to point out how cumbersome encounters with harpies can be: I have never dropped food for them, but it is reasonable to do so, and obviously quite tedious. In this, it is similar to potion destruction as a mummy curse. However, the only proposal that you came up with is "this needs to be removed". Since food does have tactical value (for casters and berserkers), food stealing is interesting. There are certainly ways how to keep harpies dangerous enemies _with_ the food stealing. I'll discuss this in ##crawl-dev a bit.

Also: honour the classics! Simply dropping the food stealing loses a lot of flavour.

[greepish]

There's no need to get superior about it, this forum is about brainstorming. You admit there's a problem, but the suggestion you give doesn't really work as absolute ego points out, since they're already quite dangerous. Let's just try and work out here what should be done. What do you think about my earlier idea that harpies should just be reduced in shoals? In the dungeon, they're rare enough that you can't do the tactic of dropping food at shoals entrance (in this case previous level). If they were rare in shoals, one wouldn't need to do the same tedious process.

But as I pointed out, dropping the food stealing doesn't lose any flavour. Hungry ghosts are already designed well, if one really wanted one could attach the HG quality to a pack monster like harpies that would make it's extra ability more imposing.

[njvack]

But as I pointed out, dropping the food stealing doesn't lose any flavour.

Phineas, a king of Thrace, had the gift of prophecy. Zeus, angry that Phineas revealed too much, punished him by blinding him and putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat. The harpies always arrived and stole the food out of his hands before he could satisfy his hunger, and befouled the remains of his food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy

[greepish]

Ah, didn't know that

Still gameplay > classics. Polyphemus doesn't need to sheep instead of yaks

[Moose]

I play primarily melee characters, and have never had a serious problem with harpies... I usually carry 3 on me, and only once have I had to leave the shoals to go restock.

Harpies are one of those creatures similar to Hydræ where you need to employ special "emergency" tactics when you find them. Those tactics can be any number of things not limited to:

-- Immediately teleport, stash your food, and return to deal with them
-- Quaff a potion of speed and might and take them out more quickly
-- Start unloading with wands
-- Summon lots of spammy help

[greepish]

Well yeah, but you see how you would do all that without food steal since harpies dish out a lot of damage. Food steal only makes you go out of your way to make the stash.

[smock]

What about harpies doing serious damage if they cannot get food from you?

I like this very much.

Another possibility is for Harpies to give a "hunger curse", a temporary mutation that increases metabolism. The net effect would be similar but they players wouldn't have to be annoyed by item destruction.

BTW, it seems like each food item has an independent chance of being stolen by a Harpy. (Or am I mistaken?) Might stealing food approximately equal to some amount of nutrition be better? For potion destruction, it makes sense that each potion has an independent chance of breaking as to avoid player carrying around junk potions, but I'm not sure it does for food, as there are no "junk" food items.

For what it's worth, harpies killed me via damage once but I rarely have to retreat from Shoals for more food. There are lots of hippogriffs and centaurs and turtles and so forth for food. Maybe certain builds that I avoid have more trouble with harpies.

[evilmike]

I should say that I don't think changes to harpies are necessary. I'd rather keep them as they are. Dropping food in combat isn't the best way to deal with them always (they're fast enough to catch you while you're dropping food) and refusing to carry food also has its own drawbacks (gotta watch your spellcasting, and abyssing could be a lot more dangerous). Overall I'd say the monster works for encouraging you to employ different tactics.

However, if they are to be changes, here's what I mentioned in ##crawl-dev earlier today (this was in response to dpeg's idea):

If a harpy steals food from you, it temporally enters a "satiated" state. The duration of this state depends on the amount of nutrition of the food stolen (overall it would be quite short though). The way it decides what food to steal is random, same as it is now. Thus if it happens to steal high value food, it is satiated for a longer time. When a harpy is satiated it is less dangerous (still flies around and attacks you, but doesn't hit as often). Maybe if you get "unlucky" and it steals a huge amount of food (such as if you're carrying way too much permafood on you) the harpy can get so full it falls asleep.

This way food destruction has a more tactical effect, and we avoid problems like harpies unexplainably doing extra damage to you if you have no food. Although, it also adds new problems (spriggans can carry meat rations to feed to harpies, for example).

Like I said I don't think such a change is needed - I think harpies are fine as they are. But, I think the above would be a suitable solution to the "problem".

[greepish]

Yeah, harpies do indeed deal food damage per piece. I actually really like your suggestion of having it be a set amount of pieces lost per steal, as then there is no need to create a stash. Pure spellcasters would probably have to drop a wand or two so they can carry extra food, but whatever.

For what it's worth, harpies killed me via damage once but I rarely have to retreat from Shoals for more food. There are lots of hippogriffs and centaurs and turtles and so forth for food. Maybe certain builds that I avoid have more trouble with harpies.

It's less of a problem if you aren't playing "optimally". If you run out of food, you can survive with all the edible creatures around, but shoals is about the time uniques with banishment appear, so you really don't want to get caught with your pants down food-wise.

Edit: mleh, ninja. Evilmike's suggestion sounds pretty good too

[Stormfox]

Although, it also adds new problems (spriggans can carry meat rations to feed to harpies, for example).

Spriggans, nothing. Now Mummies will start carrying food and put all the harpies into a food coma for easy kills. It's not like they're using their carrying capacity for potions. (Vampires, too, less the "no potions" part.)

Still a very elegant solution overall, though, and I do like the concept.

[ximxim]

What about harpies running away (fleeing behavior) after stealing a piece of food? Too annoying?

The food could be kept in their inventory, but be removed once they leave LOS, so if you're fast you can catch them with a ranged weapon/spell and get your food back.

[evilmike]

What about harpies running away (fleeing behavior) after stealing a piece of food? Too annoying?

Far too annoying. If there is a problem (and I'm skeptical of that), adding fleeing would just make the problem worse.

[Robsoie]

Would it be possible to have a killed harpy actually dropping the food that was stolen by it ? this way it gives a chance to the player to actually get back his possession if he didn't teleported away (maybe having the harpy actually eating the food after a specific amount of turns to give a sense of urgency too ? )

[KoboldLord]

Getting the food back afterward would be pretty much the same as the harpy never taking it in the first place. Generally speaking, the span of time elapsed in this game between a monster meeting a player and that monster being brutally killed by that player is very short. This gets worse for the monster if the player has any particular reason to focus their diplomatic entreaties on that specific monster.

[smock]

I hope that not too many players would carry 10 rations around just to feed harpies.

"The harpy steal a bread ration! The harpy disappears!" Maybe harpies could banish themselves when they are full. A harpie might be full after 3 chokos or 2 honeycombs or 1 ration; it could be random or not. Self-banishment might be more interesting than if they ran away. But at least if they do you don't have to deal with them anymore. (If you went to the abyss you could get your food back. hehehe.) You still want to kill harpies, if not to retain food then for the XP, but a gang of harpies couldn't decimate your food supply.

[ebarrett]

I have never, ever had trouble with harpies stealing food. Sure, there were a couple freak "where did 8 rations go" incidents, but it's not as if had found all of these in two Shoals levels anyway, or if I didn't have 40 other rations stashed somewhere else, and honestly, for the rare occasion where you will actually need to go back to your stash and restock just to be sure - autotravel makes it a matter of what, less than a dozen keypresses.

On the other hand, I have had problems multiple times with harpies killing me dead, or at least trying their best to. Depending on your char harpy packs are genuinely scary, and escaping from a pack that has decided to swarm you can be extremely hard. These are all good things, mind you - I'm just pointing out that when I see harpies I'm a hundred more times more likely to worry about my HP than about my food.

And as a caster, just consider some food already lost and bring out the nukes - if you really don't want to let harpies take your badly needed wizard food, just spend some of it blowing them up from a mile away.

Spellcasters (...) if they're playing optimally they always need a bit extra in case of banishment

If they're playing optimally, they can cast almost anything they need with zero hunger cost or close to it, and they can most likely deal with the abyss without many problems (and without much actual casting) by the time you're tackling the shoals. Maybe you should rethink your concept of optimal play.

[greepish]

Spellcasters (...) if they're playing optimally they always need a bit extra in case of banishment

If they're playing optimally, they can cast almost anything they need with zero hunger cost or close to it, and they can most likely deal with the abyss without many problems (and without much actual casting) by the time you're tackling the shoals. Maybe you should rethink your concept of optimal play.

Keep in mind, the abyss is very random. While the chance that you could starve to death with a loaf of bread in the abyss isn't common (mainly since banishment itself isn't common), it definitely can happen. I personally just don't take the risk.

[Capslocke]

What about adding a 'Tainted ration', and having harpies spoil food, turning normal rations into tainted rations that have the same problems as any bad meat? I suppose for vegetarian/carnivore reasons you'd have to have two: one for each. I'd be okay with them just stealing smaller foods, but losing half your rations in a go is obnoxious. I suppose one problem with this idea is that it could increase the number of item stacks above maximum, but that's trivial to handle (either drop it in this case, or have the spoiled food be in the harpy's inventory on death).

This way there's still a punishment for not playing 'optimally', but it's less annoying. I mean, losing because of starving in the shoals, albeit rare, wouldn't be a satisfying way to end a game. Losing because you were rushing to kill stuff to get non-spoiled meat seems at least reasonable.

[theclam]

I feel like, by the point in the game where you encounter harpies, you've already stashed enough food so that that aspect isn't a threat, just an annoyance. I would rather harpies be moved to the main dungeon around D:8-ish, but made a little bit weaker and the packs made slightly smaller. I think they are a good monster to have in Shoals, ignoring the food mechanic; we could make a new monster (flying fish?) that are the same as harpies, but without the food stealing.