Remove sustenance and gourmand

[Sphara]

I just think these jewels, ring of sustenance and amulet of gourmand serve very little purpose as the game is pretty much full of food. Especially now when nausea is removed from the trunk version.
My idea would be just removing these jewels and replace them with relatively rare scroll/potion of gluttony (or possibly with a wand of eating), that would give you x amount of time you to act as if you had gourmand. Most of the players don't use these jewels ever. I certainly drop them the second i identify them. I know that those jewel ablilities can be useful when found as a base type of some random artefact, but still... It's no longer a desirable property for a ring or amulet slot.
Thoughts?

[MoogleDan]

Sustenance comes in handy for trolls, and if I remember to I occasionally bring them to Tomb so that recovering between mummy bouts starves me less, but aside from that? Good riddance, especially if it's replaced with something a little more exotic. I was honestly surprised when I realized nausea was gone and they hadn't done away with gourmand.

[dpeg]

I think that's a good idea. While my very first contribution as a developer was the ramp-up period for "Gourmand (before that, we would swap amulets all the time, it was as bad as it sounds), just dispensing with food flow doping is better, in my opinion.

This does constitute a caster nerf, though! There will be shouts of scream and anger

[BlackSheep]

Casters can use their buffed staves of energy and zip it.

Healers on the other hand...

[MoogleDan]

It'd only be a caster nerf if they hadn't just gotten it (more or less) as a free universal intrinsic (unless you're a spriggan).

[evilmike]

I use both items purely for the convenience. Corpse eating is an annoying part of the game for me and those items make the worst parts of it go away. Therefore I don't like this suggestion because it's just going to make a bad part of the game worse. It's not going to fix anything.

The way corpse eating works in this game is fundamentally bad, and attempting to make it more "significant" is not going to have a positive effect. The better approach is to find a way to remove corpse eating (except for ghouls, vampires, trolls, etc) and instead rely on perma food, without completely breaking the game. This would not be easy.

Spriggans pretty much have the best food mechanic in DCSS.

[dpeg]

evilmike: I agree about Spriggans. And I would like to see an attempt at permafood-only Crawl (with the exceptions you listed) although I wouldn't want to come up with the numbers on that one.

[njvack]

evilmike: I agree about Spriggans. And I would like to see an attempt at permafood-only Crawl (with the exceptions you listed) although I wouldn't want to come up with the numbers on that one.

Even if the numbers were wrong, it'd be an interesting experiment. I'm rather of the mind that trunk can be "broken" while something like this gets dialed in and that's OK. (But then again, I haven't been playing much for the last few months.)

[Siegurt]

The way corpse eating works in this game is fundamentally bad, and attempting to make it more "significant" is not going to have a positive effect.

Out of curiosity, what about it is "fundamentally bad"? the additional inventory/command overhead? That it's not usually relevant to the tactics of combat? Something else?

[Amnesiac]

I'm quite used to pressing "c" when I'm hungry or about to be, by this time, but I could have saved a couple of months of my life if I would find out about macros and options in init.txt, though.

[evilmike]

The way corpse eating works in this game is fundamentally bad, and attempting to make it more "significant" is not going to have a positive effect.

Out of curiosity, what about it is "fundamentally bad"? the additional inventory/command overhead? That it's not usually relevant to the tactics of combat? Something else?

For standard races, food serves two purposes in this game. One is to act as a sort of "time limit" that pushes you onwards, the other is to act as a general resource that's consumed by various abilities (spells, evokables, etc).

It's very easy to get around the "time limit" aspect. There are simply so many corpses in the game that you usually don't *need* to resort to permafood with most character builds. You might as well use permafood because it's just more convenient, but in practice it's pretty easy to stockpile it if you want to. And when you're good at crawl, this can happen without trying, anyway.

As a "resource" it works a bit better, but I've never felt pressured by it unless I'm playing a gimmicky character that goes for mid-high level spells early in the game. Otherwise, it's usually sufficient to just chop everything you come across, and eat whenever one of your spells makes you hungry. This tends to apply for berserkers too.

What's worse is that the amount of nutrition you get from chunks tends to depend on how much you care about micro managing that stuff. There's no strategy imo, it's just a matter of pressing c a lot and maybe using some options/macros/scripting to streamline stuff. I like the option that makes you eat chunks on autoexplore.

So basically, I don't like the interface or the gameplay here. I think it makes the game more complex without adding anything. A good "permafood system" does a much better job at both of the things I mentioned at the top of this post. This is something the creators of Rogue already understood 30 years ago.

On the other hand, changing this would be difficult, and I'm not prepared to do any real work on that, so I'm really just complaining here! I'm not even sure if such a change would be appropriate for Crawl even. But it's something to think about when designing new roguelikes.

[dpeg]

evilmike: I absolutely agree! If I had to design a roguelike from scratch, it would definitely not feature corpse-eating (perhaps corpses, and perhaps permafood as a clock) and neither rest-for-heal. I always thought that both of these obstacles are too big for Crawl to conquer, but perhaps I am underestimating the game.

I'll bring this up on ##crawl-dev.

[MoogleDan]

How willing are you guys to treat Final Score as one of the timers a player has to deal with? I've always seen resting as balanced if only because it eats away at your piety and certainly doesn't help your final ranking.

[xzanthius]

Oh please do not remove them. I find both of these effects useful if I plan on doing an extended game and / or making the most out of Nemlex.

[Turukano]

I just think these jewels, ring of sustenance and amulet of gourmand serve very little purpose as the game is pretty much full of food. Especially now when nausea is removed from the trunk version.

This does constitute a caster nerf, though! There will be shouts of scream and anger

No shout of scream and anger but my opinion concerning 0.12:

• For a good caster game like DEFE etc. there are only a few things you'll want for midgame: fire/ice storm, a way to recover MP, wizardry (ring, staff, Veh) and gourmand. Given these things you will able to cast storms in vaults:5.
• In my actual game I was extremely low on food during the midgame. I'm not sure if I could have done it better (bolt of magma instead of fire?). I even acquired some meat rations! I would have paid all my gold to get gourmand.

4thArraOfDagon called gourmand critical for a caster and that's my opinion too.

I'm glad when things will become better in 0.13 but with food management in 0.12 the removal of gourmand would be a heavy caster nerf.

Edit:
Gourmand is especially important if you look for speedruns (as pointed out by Bloax below, thanks for mentioning).

[MrPlanck]

I use both. Have a centaur now and sustenance is on most of the time.

[ackack]

I'm glad when things will become better in 0.13 but with food management in 0.12 the removal of gourmand would be a heavy caster nerf.

Don't worry, I think the discussion is about removing it in 0.9.

[Bloax]

4thArraOfDagon called gourmand critical for a caster and that's my opinion too.

Well for the way he plays his fire elementalists (which is go Sif and dive a lot), the removal of gourmand would certainly be a big nerf since both channeling and casting spells costs food - which is very limited when you're rushing through the game.
And I'm saying this because I've watched him play plenty of times.

It won't be a big nerf to casters, but it will be a big nerf to caster speedruns.

[mikee]

As a castah
Look at my castah
xl 25 with 1.2 dodging; weapon is -4 sling with rpois relec
A plant's in the way - better LCS it. zap zap zap zap
damn, hungry again

[One-Eyed Jack]

4thArraOfDagon called gourmand critical for a caster and that's my opinion too.

Well for the way he plays his fire elementalists (which is go Sif and dive a lot), the removal of gourmand would certainly be a big nerf since both channeling and casting spells costs food - which is very limited when you're rushing through the game.
And I'm saying this because I've watched him play plenty of times.

It won't be a big nerf to casters, but it will be a big nerf to caster speedruns.

Gourmand is pretty rare anyway; if it actually is essential to very high-scoring "caster" games then it's dumb regardless because whether or not one spawns has nothing to do with how good of a player you are

[Sandman25]

Gourmand allows to have Shatter in Vaults 1 without exploring Lair branches/Elf/D20+ and without Vehumet/Sif. Though Staff of Energy seems to be even more overpowered.

[Tarp]

Unless swapping for cons/clarity/rCorr/rMut, I go Gourmand.
I have a hard time choosing between rings of sustenance and regeneration.
This, whether I'm playing a MiFi or a OpWz.

The reason is that the slow, progressive march of hunger is scarier to me than the relatively quick, unexpected death by combat.
(I know it's easy to avoid starvation, it's still stressful.)

By all means, fix/remove food clocks/chunk mechanics, but until that is done, please don't take away gourmand and sustenance. They take a HUGE amount of stress off me as I play.

[Siegurt]

Gourmand is pretty rare anyway; if it actually is essential to very high-scoring "caster" games then it's dumb regardless because whether or not one spawns has nothing to do with how good of a player you are

Gourmand isn't very rare at all, I don't think I recall a game where I didn't have a gourmand amulet somewhere by the time extended was up for consideration, not that I would always use one. Amulets in general aren't terribly common, but as amulets go, Gourmand is one that I see at some point pretty nearly every game.

I also don't think it's essential, but it is a tool that lets you alter how you build and play your character. It certainly has a place in the whole food cost mini game. Now you can argue that the food cost mini game is dumb, and perhaps it is, but I personally happen to like having some sort of resource management as part of my RPG's.

[Amnesiac]

It's not as rare as PDA, but it's rare.

[Matanui3]

evilmike: I absolutely agree! If I had to design a roguelike from scratch, it would definitely not feature corpse-eating (perhaps corpses, and perhaps permafood as a clock) and neither rest-for-heal. I always thought that both of these obstacles are too big for Crawl to conquer, but perhaps I am underestimating the game.

I'll bring this up on ##crawl-dev.

Wait, if you couldn't heal by resting, how would you not die to the third enemy you come across as a melee character (who can easily lose 1/3 or more hp to a single lucky attack on D:1).
What would be healing you then?

For me, the roguelike Hack Slash Loot is very stressful mostly because the only way to heal is usually to find a potion randomly. Many times I die long before I can get to one. And this completely overbalances the weapon brands that actually DO heal you in that game...


Corpse eating IS rather tedious, but as long as it exists, I rather like gourmand for the ability to fill up and not have to worry about eating for a level or three, as well as for easy fill-ups for vampiric weapons. I never used it before to avoid sickness, but to eat more chunks.
Sustenance, OTOH, is pretty much just something I wear when I have nothing better, or want to balance a regen ring or something.

[reaver]

Wait, if you couldn't heal by resting, how would you not die to the third enemy you come across as a melee character (who can easily lose 1/3 or more hp to a single lucky attack on D:1).
What would be healing you then?

You have to design the whole game around it. Incursion forces you to heal by the "resting" action, which causes a bunch of monsters to spawn as you sleep. ADOM has something similar thorough extremely slow health regeneration. Of course, if you want to see a Crawl implementation look at Deep Dwarfs - their no health regeneration manages to works well when you play them right, with the disability being compensated by Damage Shaving. If there was an attempt to remove health by resting - which would be significantly harder to remove than corpse eating - my guess is that getting {arbitrary number} XP would give you a "charge" and you could expend a "charge" outside combat to restore all health, restore all mana, heal some stat damage, etc.

[Arrhythmia]

DooMRL also has no hunger clock and no resting. The (ingenious, in my opinion) way it designs around this is once you leave a level, you cannot return to it. Obviously not a possibility with Crawl.

[ebarrett]

Corpse eating, or even food as a whole, could be removed today with minor adjustments and even smaller implications. If anyone with powers, time and inclination is willing, a viable foodless Crawl is just a matter of finding some other way of restricting pacification spam with Ely; there would be some other things to balance in the future (spriggans, maybe berserkers, certainly spriggan berserkers, maybe high level spell abuse in general since you would just use an enhancer instead of a staff of energy), but outside of a few combos which would be sort of broken initially (and that people would certainly take the opportunity to abuse) a foodless branch would be an interesting experiment.

edit: I forgot to mention that the main reason I imagine a foodless balance is possible is that you don't have to be a very good player to be past the point where you never worry about food; and particularly conservative players finish some games with dozens and dozens of spare rations, which is basically the equivalent of food systems not being there already.