Tartarus Sorceror
Posts: 1774
Joined: Tuesday, 23rd December 2014, 23:39
Guide to Safe Crawling
What to consider before a fight
- Your goal for the whole game is for every fight to be small and easy with a predictable outcome that involves you winning with high HP. If you don't feel like you're in control of all you see before you, retreat and/or use consumables until you are in control.
- Lure lure lure lure lure enemies back into a safe area before fighting. I can't stress this enough. This even applies to trivial enemies, since their noise could attract others, or others might be wandering nearby.
- Fight with enemies in front of you, safety close behind you. If the situation doesn't look like this, retreat until it does.
- Safety can be stairs, a chokepoint, a cloud of summons/allies, or a fully cleared, short, direct path to safety. In the very early dungeon it can be a pillar to dance around.
- Against multiple enemies, fight with a perfect width-1 chokepoint. If you can't get a chokepoint like that, use corners, or a worse chokepoint. If you can't get that, then maybe you can get some allies to block enemies from attacking you at once. If none of these are options, and the enemy is a dangerous pack, then retreat.
- If there's a single enemy that's a worrisome threat and requires buffs to kill safely, you don't want to fight it unless conditions are ideal. That means it should be the only threat in view, you should be at full HP and fully buffed prior to the fight, and you should be in a safe area. If conditions don't look like that, retreat and fight it another time, assuming that's safe to do.
- Before any fight that it's possible you might lose, review your emergency measures. Take a look at your inventory for potions of heal wounds, potions of curing, scrolls of blinking, scrolls of teleportation, etc, and consider which of them you're most willing to use. Glance at the minimap to see where you can retreat and whether you really do have safety at your back.
- If you don't have good emergency measures, you need go all out with consumables to be really certain you can win the fight outright. Or if that's not possible, avoid the fight entirely.
- Prepare for a fight as if reaching 50% hp is death. Try to avoid fights that would result in losing half your hp.
- Can the enemy paralyze you? Perhaps wear stasis, or don't fight it, or fight it only if it's alone. Always check the monster's spell description prior to the fight to see if you have enough MR. Paralysis can very often become instadeath if hard hitters are around.
What to consider during a fight
- If the enemy surprises you by hitting you hard (20% of your HP is a hard hit) then they are probably more dangerous than you thought. At least use a consumable to ease the rest of the fight, if it would help.
- If it looks like you are actually losing the fight and your HP is starting to go down faster than the enemy's, that's immediately an emergency even if your HP is currently high.
- If more enemies come into view - especially if they come from the supposed "safe" area behind you - consider whether you can still kill everything you see with no problem. If not, stop hitting things and get out of there.
- Don't wait until it's too late, to use an emergency measure.
- You need to know how much damage different enemies might deal you. For example, a death yak can deal 30. A yak can deal 18.
- If the enemy could potentially kill you in one hit, you need to use a scroll of blinking, period. Forget the cost.
- If the enemy could potentially kill you in two hits, that's the last possible chance to read a scroll of teleportation, provided the level is fairly safe for tele and you can walk away from the enemy until it kicks in. You shouldn't wait until the last possible chance.
- If bad things happen that you did not expect, such as dropping below 50% hp, this has now become an emergency.
What to consider during an emergency
- Stop. You're potentially dying. Don't make another move.
- Look through your consumables. How many heal wounds, blinks, teleports, cures, hastes, agi, resist, evocables, scrolls of summoning, digging/disint?
- Look at your spells and abilities. Blink, passwall, control teleport, swiftness? Any nice god abilities?
- Look at your equipment. Would a quick weapon or jewelry swap give you the resist or evocable ability you need to survive the next couple turns?
- Consider breaking LOS, if that's possible.
- Think ahead to what would likely happen in several turns, before choosing your course of action.
- After you finally decide and move, stop again. You're probably still dying. Do not immediately make a second move, but look through all your options again based on the changed situation. Your first plan may have to change.
- Repeat until safe or dead.
What to consider after a fight
- If you're hurt much, fully retreat to a nearby safe place such as nearby stairs or a safe chokepoint a good distance from your current location, before resting. This is to minimize the chance of more enemies showing up while you're hurt.
- Rest to full
- Consider: did that fight make you panic? Did you have to use consumables to run away from it? Or alternatively, did you almost die? If so, maybe you should skip the level or dip into another branch. Don't stay in a level that's too dangerous if there's another option available.
Exploration
- When manually exploring, either shift-walk or use force_more_messages to alert you when enemies come into view.
- Autoexplore only if you feel fairly confident about the level.
- Try to explore narrow passages first
- Avoid the middles of large open areas. Go around the edges first.
- Try to reveal as few new squares as possible
- Keep safety to your back. Avoid twisting paths through unexplored territory. You ideally want a straight, cleared path so you can retreat back to the stairs. However, still don't charge into the middle of a wide open area - that's more important than this.
- Mark exclusions on sleeping dangerous things.
- If you meet an awake enemy you don't want to fight even with buffs and that you have to use consumables to escape, skip the level.
- Provided you can do it safely and there isn't anything you can't handle, eventually clear the whole level.
- If you go downstairs and are in an open area being attacked from multiple sides without a nearby chokepoint, try a different stairs. That's much preferable to stairdancing.
251 total wins Berder hyperborean + misc
83/108 recent wins (76%)
guides: safe tactics value of ac/ev/sh forum toxicity