Disrobing (was: 51/52 and 52/52 overload in GDD)

[Pollen_Golem]

I've never decided, for instance, to stop wearing a cloak because I'd rather carry another wand or a backup weapon.

Really? I tend to drop all my +0 cloaks/boots/gloves/hats to make space in the inventory, when I'm at XL 15-20.

[Sprucery]

Really? I tend to drop all my +0 cloaks/boots/gloves/hats to make space in the inventory, when I'm at XL 15-20.

Sorry, but is this a joke? (I hope it is.)

[Pollen_Golem]

Why would I be laughing?
It's a mere 1 AC for a whole inventory slot, which barely makes a difference if you've done Lair+Orc.
A handy wand, even flame, is likelier to save me than +1 AC.

[nago]

What

[dowan]

I've never decided, for instance, to stop wearing a cloak because I'd rather carry another wand or a backup weapon.

Really? I tend to drop all my +0 cloaks/boots/gloves/hats to make space in the inventory, when I'm at XL 15-20.

I very strongly feel that this is an extremely sub-optimal way to play. Although now that I think of it, I suppose it's possible to imagine a game where enough good rods, wands, and evokables dropped that maybe it would be worthwhile to trade a +0 aux armour for it... maybe... but I've never ever seen such a set of loot exist.

Out of curiousity, can you provide an example? Your earlier example of +0 boots for a wand of flame is a very bad trade, but maybe you can provide a character dump showing all these items you'd rather have than +1 ac? Maybe we'll learn something. Maybe you will. Or maybe we'll all yell at each other until a mod locks the topic.

It'll be entertaining, one way or another.

[Sandman25]

I believe no character will use 45 items in a single fight, trading 1 AC for 46th item is a bad thing.
Even if we assume that we have different rings for resistances, it will be trading 1 AC for roughly 35th item.

[dowan]

Yeah, I really can't imagine the circumstance where I would make that choice, I was just curious as to what Pollen had in mind. It's true that 1ac generally isn't going to make much difference, but it is better than 0 ac.

1 point of ac is worth 0.5 damage per hit, on average. In a fight where you get hit for more than 0 damage 30 times, 1 ac is worth 15 hps, sort of. But I don't know how to make any sort of sensible claim based on this data, except "Ac is good".

[Pollen_Golem]

In a fight where you get hit for more than 0 damage 30 times

That's one hell of a fight, though. If you're taking, on average, 5 damage on every nonzero-damage hit (quite low IMO) and you're at that point in the game where you haven't found branded/artifact gloves/boots/cloak, you're probably dead from the 150 total damage.

How about everyone announces the lowest-worth item they'd take with them, if it meant dropping their +0 cloak? My pick is: wand of flaming.

[archaeo]

Why would I ever, in a million years, need to drop a cloak to bring along anything at all?

[Sandman25]

Am I the only player who died with exactly 0 HP? +1 AC can be difference between life and death.

[triorph]

Also worth noting that its not +1 AC, its +1 base AC, which scales with armour skill.

[tasonir]

I'd rather drop a wand of fire than a +0 cloak that I'm wearing. Hell, I'd probably drop a lamp of fire too, but that's probably just because I tend to underuse evocations

[Pollen_Golem]

cloak AC scales with armour skill? What, do you get an extra 1 point of AC from a cloak at 25 armor skill?

[Sandman25]

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/AC_calculations

Ignore the part about Beogh, it was changed in 0.15.

[savageorange]

Am I the only player who died with exactly 0 HP? +1 AC can be difference between life and death.

Yeah, there are a few things I'd give up +1 AC for, but they prevent or mitigate HP loss (?blinking, ?tele, !curing, !HW, /HW, /tele). Otherwise, IMO, it's intelligent to prioritize as follows:

* HP (train fighting. Rarely, find and keep a +HP or +blink/+tele item. ?blinking, ?tele, !curing, !HW, /HW, /tele as noted.)
* Move and/or attack speed (!haste, /haste, Haste, Swiftness, weapon of speed)
* Offensive power (good base weapon types, brands, pluses on weapons, items with +wiz, enhancer staves, evocables. Maybe go for a weapon of distortion if your character is underpowered and can't keep the enemy away effectively yet.)
* AC / EV (whichever's easier to get, but try to keep a fair balance of both. Ordinary armour. +AC weapons are decent in early game but should be discarded after that, +EV and +dex rings and artifacts. Train dodging and armour.)
* SH (well, maybe this is better in places where there are lots of projectiles. I've always found it to be hard to get a strong effect from. Someone who likes shields could comment, hopefully.)

Usually, I am not in a position where it seems optimal to remove any piece of armour. Other things like duplicate/useless wands, ammo, books are usually available for discard, so I discard them.

[mps]

0.0

[savageorange]

0.0

.. ?

[and into]

cloak AC scales with armour skill? What, do you get an extra 1 point of AC from a cloak at 25 armor skill?

The main point is that it is a bad idea to harm your character's survivability (in however small a way) in order to carry an extra doodad that is extremely underpowered relative to all other actions your character could take in any conceivable situation. You can only do one thing at a time. When are you really going to be in a situation where, when you already have at your disposal a good selection of tools, your best is move is going to be evoking... a wand of flame? There's no imaginable situation where that wand is going to be useful in a way that isn't 100% covered by your other stuff. By level 15, in any situation where you would want to use a consumable, you almost certainly have better options than puffing a flame at something, which is essentially little more than just hitting . at that point, given both the strength of other options you should have, and also the average strength of the enemies you are facing.

You are being a pack rat, and it is hurting your AC for no benefit to your survival, at all.

[duvessa]

today i found a broken paperclip on the pavement, so i dropped my wallet so i could carry it

[Sprucery]

cloak AC scales with armour skill? What, do you get an extra 1 point of AC from a cloak at 25 armor skill?

It would be 22 if the cloak was your only piece of armour. But it adds to your base AC from other armour pieces.

If you're wearing nothing but a plate armour, you will get extra AC every 22/10=2.2 levels of Armour. If you are wearing a +0 cloak, boots, gloves and a helmet as well, you will get extra AC every 22/14=1.57 levels of Armour.

The difference is of course larger if your body armour is lighter. With a ring mail alone it's 22/5=4.4, ring mail + cloak 22/6=3.67 etc.

[dowan]

Yeah, at 22 armor skill a +0 cloak/helm/glove/boot is worth exactly 2 ac.

I have yet to come to a situation where I've even come close to considering dropping a piece of equipment to make room. The wand of flame example is a weird one, in that example, are you carrying more than 1 stack of permafood? Any books? Strategic scrolls (Enchant weapon/armour, brand weapon, acquirement)? Multiples of hex wands(I usually carry only 1 hex wand, enslave/paralyze/confuse)? Multiples of any wand for that matter?

I cannot come up with a scenario where I would drop any +0 aux armor I was wearing.

How about this: In what scenario would you drop a -1 aux armor(Obviously not counting a better version of that aux armour). It's not without value, with any armor skill it's slightly better than 0 ac. I could probably imagine myself dropping that, if somehow my inventory were filled with useful stuff.

[mps]

You haven't seen this guy play. A typical pollengolem inventory has a large number of unidentified scrolls and potions, a big stack of ID scrolls, six to eight decks (some of them plain -- I've never seen him use one of these), more wands than a typical player carries, many types of branded ammo, numerous alternate weapons and armors, plus the usual evocables everyone carries.

Also, worth noting that in the AC calculation, whether a +0 cloak nets you +1 or +2 AC depends not just on armor skill, but also on what your base AC is w/o the cloak. Fractional points aren't rounded until the end of the computation.

[Lasty]

If I could sacrifice inventory slots to get +1 AC, my typical inventory would be approximately 10 items.

[celem]

Ok, I probably wouldnt ever swap anything for an aux slot either. I really cant think of an item i'd make that trade for. Even if I find something I must carry I'd drop something else. Chunks is always first, I can eat off the floor, Permafood is another favorite, or the least powerful wand i'm holding, or a scroll stack im building up for later (silence/hw usually). Funnily enough flame/frost wands would be my first choice, im probably done with those by Temple, I really dont rate either and my settings file colours them dark grey (useless). All branded ammo except penetration/return gets dropped usually too (periodically, that way its bunched if I want it later, nothing wrong with carrying for a bit to drop strategically) and I wont normally carry more than 2 melee unless something really crap with really good/niche resist/stats appears.

I also very rarely have +0 aux slots by the time i'm getting anywhere near endgame, I will always ?EA on an aux slot if one is not capped before touching body armour.

Cant say I've watched Pollen_Golem enough to know what his inventory looks like. If mps is being accurate however then you might want to make a mental budget and start thinking about what you carry and the order you drop. Are you actually using the resources you gather? Theres nothing wrong with picking up every single vaguely useful item as long as you are rational and sensible about the order it falls out of the inventory in. With wands; fire/cold/draining/lightning/disintegration. Those are the combat wands I will carry and zap. I'll carry confuse and charm, but not slow/paralysis. Multiples of the 3 good wands get zapped and dropped, you only ever need 1. Elemental evokers I'll drop if Im not already running an evocations build, can go get em when I pick it up later if need be, they are pretty fail below 10 skill. I tend to drop the debuff wands before the attack wands.

[Sandman25]

What is bad about wand of paralysis? It is better than confuse usually.

[celem]

Nothing wrong with it. Yes its probably better than confuse, you get stabbability and the guy holds still. I always used to carry confuse over paralysis because I rather enjoyed making stuff drown with the former, but its probably not optimal and im not sure how that works now that the player-side of 'confused stumbling by water' has changed in trunk.

The other edge-case for confuse is where you want the monster you zapped to be mobile, so he can belt his mates or get out of the chokepoint or whatever, its something I used to do to durable yet non-priority targets if they hit the bottleneck with a real nasty behind it (anything with smite-targetting). I hate being forced to kill summons to reach the summoner because i have no penetrating attacks.

[adozu]

was it changed or do cloacks still protect from acid splashes?

i still remember when having a cloack made it more likely for it to be corroded than the rest of your gear.

[daggaz]

I also very rarely have +0 aux slots by the time i'm getting anywhere near endgame...

This. Those slots aren't just +2 slots, they almost always have some kind of ego as well or you are just doing it wrong. Cloak? That is +MR or +Inv or at least +rPois if you are unlucky. Boots? Running is just pure win, but usually an artifact or two pop up if you dont find running. Stealth can be useful for some builds as well. Gloves? Even +Dex or +Str are useful, but again, almost always find at least 1 artefact pair somewhere along the run. Helmet? Can't go wrong with good old SInv..

OP is a bad joke.

[dowan]

OP was a serious comment. That's the purpose of advice, when someone seriously says they do something that's quite sub-optimal, we try to figure out why, and if they don't have a good reason (as in this case) the OP gets the advice to stop doing that.

having only +0 aux slots aren't that common at xl 15-20, but I've had games where I have no boots in Zot, so it's certainly not impossible.

[Lasty]

I often have egoless and even sub-+2 aux slots at the end of a 3-rune game. I often have my body armour at less than full enchantment too. Sometimes I even have entirely empty aux slots, since the items aren't guaranteed to generate.

[Sprucery]

Among my modern DCSS victories (3 runes unless noted):

  Code:

MuVM: +2 helmet
DrIE: +2 hat
TeAM: +2 hat
KoAK: +2 hat, +2 boots
DDAs: +2 gloves, no boots (old corrosion ate the only pair)
DEHu: +2 boots
HuEE: +2 gloves, +2 boots (6 runes)
VpVM: +2 gauntlets, +2 boots (5 runes)

[dowan]

I often have egoless and even sub-+2 aux slots at the end of a 3-rune game. I often have my body armour at less than full enchantment too. Sometimes I even have entirely empty aux slots, since the items aren't guaranteed to generate.

I can't remember the last time I even had decently enchanted body armour at the end of a 3 rune game. Hell, I'm lucky to get enough EA to even start enchanting my body armour. On the other hand, with the amount of enchant weapon scrolls I find, I usually have a +9 melee and a +9 launcher, with more EW to spare.

I probably 'waste' 2 or 3 EA scrolls in a game on non-ego auxes that get replaced with something with an ego, but even still it seems like there's a lot less EA than EW.

[nago]

Am I extremely lucky? Except a couple of notable exceptions practically all my last dozens of winning chars had full or quasi-full enchanted body and aux armour!

But I tend to hoard my ?ea, not using until I find an end-game armour, and I almost never enchant aux armour, waiting to +2 spawn on his own (the notable exception being boots of winning)

[Sandman25]

But I tend to hoard my ?ea, not using until I find an end-game armour, and I almost never enchant aux armour, waiting to +2 spawn on his own (the notable exception being boots of winning)

This is what usually players advise to never do. The weaker your character is the less likely it is a good idea to wait for another armour.

[nago]

Yeah, maybe I had to specify to don't try this at home to new players!
(Un)fortunately I can manage with most char to go on until I get the armour I want for that char, so I prefer to do so... maybe if I used ?ea during early game I would end with too few to enchant everything in the end..dunno

[Sandman25]

Yes, quite possible. I checked my Mu's of Chei where I always enchanted armour as soon as I could, I had +2 FDA and +5 FDA on some winners, not very impressive indeed.