Farming

[snow]

The Abyss, Pan, Zot, Hells, and other areas with infinite spawns are farmable. You really shouldn't be able to do this though.

First off there's no reason that spawns shouldn't stop after a certain amount of time on any floor. In regards to Pan and the Abyss: if you've spent over 100,000 (or some other unreasonable amount) of turns there then spawns should stop. Monsters from Hell effects should probably count as summons and not give experience.

Realistically if you're able to sit in an area for 100,000 turns with your mummy, vampire, lich, zin worshiper, or whatever and just mow down enemies with no risk of dying then there is a problem.

I have some other suggestions for Pan too (it's a complete mess... similar to Gehennom in NetHack) but I think the first step to making extended less boring is removing/fixing the bits that are so mindlessly easy that you can literally write a short script to farm them.

[reaver]

How is Zot an "area with infinite spawns"? Do you mean Orb run spawns?

Anyway, I think this problem is a bit of a "there are bigger fish to fry" attitude around it. If you can scum those areas you've already won the game basically.

Pan reworking is already being discussed. The two major things are A) Make Pan finite and B) Move the demonic rune to the Crypt/Forest.

Edit: s/in the pipelines/being discussed/ because the former was misleading.

[mikee]

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6770

[galehar]

You really shouldn't be able to do this though.

Why not?

Realistically if you're able to sit in an area for 100,000 turns with your mummy, vampire, lich, zin worshiper, or whatever and just mow down enemies with no risk of dying then there is a problem.

Just go win the game already. What's the point of farming if you already have an überchar?

Pan reworking is already in the pipelines. The two major things are A) Make Pan finite and B) Move the demonic rune to the Crypt/Forest.

Oh really? Where did you get that? Never heard of it and it's not on the dev planning

[Sandman25]

I've been told players should be allowed to do stupid things if they wish to do so. I think it applies to spending time in a Pan corner too.

[Galefury]

Pan reworking is already in the pipelines. The two major things are A) Make Pan finite and B) Move the demonic rune to the Crypt/Forest.

Oh really? Where did you get that? Never heard of it and it's not on the dev planning

Some people talked about it on ##crawl-dev I guess? I wasn't there, just heard it later in a conversation that turned into one about what to do with zigs if Pan was finite.

IIRC the idea roughly was to make Pan finite, no more demonic rune, portals to other areas of Pan mostly inside panlord vaults. Possibly a guaranteed Zig in late D, and an item that takes you to another Zig for free on Zig:27. But as I said, I wasn't there.

[Bim]

I quite like the infinite-ness of Pan to be honest, but I would quite like the 'no-xp after a certain time' to come up.

[galehar]

Some people talked about it on ##crawl-dev I guess?

Some people talked about it isn't the same thing as "thing already is in the pipelines"!

[battaile]

Please don't insinuate that anything is going on that active forum member galehar isn't aware of.

[mumra]

Never heard of it and it's not on the dev planning

In fairness dev planning was completely out of date until I recently updated it, and I'm certainly not aware of every single thing that anyone is actively working on

[rebthor]

Clearly Linley (or whoever added Pan) was cribbing from D&D. The only other mention I see on wikipedia that sort of refers to the way it is in crawl is from Paradise Lost where it sounds much more like the iron city of Dis. Interestingly Dis in the divine comedy has many features of Crawl's Gehenom and Cocytus.

[roctavian]

I think about a year ago when I liked to lurk webtiles games while grading papers, I got a little irritated that the only games with spectators tended to be level 27 dudes scumming pan for zigs in lich form forever, looking for randarts with one better ego than the full set of ridiculous bonuses they already have, as they grinded the last couple skills left up to 27. Or so it felt to me. Then, I realized that this was like self-inflicted punishment and who am I to complain? I figure if you're to the point where you can scum Pan or the Abyss for stuff, you could otherwise just go ahead and progress through/complete a game normally. If you decide to put that off and waste time forever, I don't think it impacts balance unduly.

I do feel that finite-pan wouldn't be a huge loss, all that considered. I do think its fluff could stand to be polished up a bit, we got too many infinite demonic wastelands as it is.

[njvack]

To some people, getting a good winrate with a variety of characters is fun. For others, building a super character is fun. Or maybe sometimes one, sometimes the other.

Since grinding Pan doesn't in any way affect people just trying to win or go for score, it doesn't strike me as a problem.

[dpeg]

I have never understood the obsession with farming, i.e. why players want to do that. Seems to be an itch I don't feel. And it is quite clear that we don't want such behaviour in the part of the game that is relevant for winning. However, Pan lies exactly out of that way.

In another direction, Erik (founding DCSS member) told me earnestly and repeatedly that Crawl should feature things that meet this itch, and he explicitly mentioned mummies and Pan. Thus, I was always inclined to leave those two alone.

[yogaFLAME]

It's the timmy psychographic. It's not about winning, it's about winning big.

[rosstin]

So, I'm a pretty win-focused player who occasionally enjoys "farming". By that I mean that if the next area is a bit dangerous, or just if I want to improve my skills for the fun of it, I'll spend some time in unnecessary branches for a bit. Sometimes I go for some extra runes instead of tackling Zot 5 right away. I think that you don't need to work TOO hard to stop players from farming, especially in the post Zot areas. It's not like maxing out your skills is going to improve your survival odds very much anyway; no matter how strong your character gets, you're never so strong that you can't be killed in a post-game area. Besides, the universe eventually ends if you spend too many turns playing anyway, right?

For me, it depends on how I feel like playing. If I'm feeling impatient and ready to take some risks, I dive. If I just want to have fun and kill things a bit without taking any chances, I'll find an unexplored area that's not too dangerous and clear it out.

I think DCSS does a great job of balancing these different types of play. You're never forced to grind, but it's possible to do a little bit if you feel like it, and get some minor benefits.

[bobross419]

I love having infinite-Pan. I'll leave a beefy melee there and just go rampage whenever I feel the frustration of too many deaths on Pre-Lair characters. Is it tedious? Sure. But its my time to waste and has exactly 0 effect on anyone except maybe my wife.

[Bim]

Agreed - pan grinding has little effect on game balance, however I have used it on occasions to make sure I'm super/needlessly strong before tackling Zigs which I suppose makes it a bit broken.