PSA: Amulet of Clarity => Amulet of Harm

[tedric]

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/9 ... bccbd8b5f9

  Code:

Replace the amulet of clarity with the amulet of [harm]

The problems with the amulet of clarity are similar to the ones with the
amulet of stasis: complete immunity to a range of threats and no influence
when those threats are absent. Unlike stasis, the amulet also had no real
downside to make it interesting, encouraging you to carry it around and swap
it in whenever the set of effects it handles are around and you have
insufficient MR. Also unlike stasis, this amulet had weird corner cases
such that it allowed voluntary berserk but not involuntary berserk, but
never allowed ambrosia.

The one place where amulet of clarity really felt useful was on mummies,
since confusion is everywhere and long-lasting, and has a common cure not
available to mummies. In general, finding MR will resolve this; the exception
is mummies worshipping Xom, since Xomfusion can't be resisted normally. I'd
rather address that situation directly than keep this amulet just to handle
this situation.

Meanwhile, the new amulet of [harm] is an evil amulet that increases damage
dealt to and by the wearer by 25%. If both the attacker and defender have
the amulet, the damage is only increased by 25% total. I expect this
amulet to be strong to characters with great defenses or ranged attacks,
and perhaps speedrunners. Letting this amulet swap freely would encourage
people to use it against monsters that can't fire back and then swap it
when the monster gets into range, so I gave it draining as a swapping
penalty.

This is one of the more experimental designs in the new set of amulets, and
as such I expect it'll get tweaked a few times and it may eventually get
removed or replaced.

[WingedEspeon]

The real use the the clarity amulet was to counteract a bezerkerites mutation or to wear with *RAGE artifacts like sword of jihad.

[Lasty]

So, my bad for poor commit message, but the amulet is actually "amulet of harm". Pain sounded too much like the brand/spell, which would imply that it's powered by Necromancy. I'm changing the thread title to match in an attempt to slightly reduce confusion.

[Croases]

I don't understand why you are replacing amulets with entirely unrelated amulets instead of adding the amulets you want to add and then figuring out which of the existing items need to go (or vice-versa).

I'm also unsure whether MR needs to go from "the single most important resistance in the game" to "the single most important resistance in the game, and then some".

[Sar]

the exception is mummies worshipping Xom, since Xomfusion can't be resisted normally

Actually, some sources of Xomfusion can be resisted by clarity since like 0.14. This is why all the cool people who win MuCK do it in 0.13 or earlier versions!

[duvessa]

I don't understand why you are replacing amulets with entirely unrelated amulets instead of adding the amulets you want to add and then figuring out which of the existing items need to go (or vice-versa).

probably because of some combination of:
1. it's much easier to implement this way
2. they decided clarity needed to go, but are unwilling to actually decrease the number of different amulets because it might slow down the feature creep

[Zooty]

So, mummies who have to do Spider are totally screwed?

[Kaelii]

So, mummies who have to do Spider are totally screwed?

I don't think Ashenzari now suddenly doesn't offer clarity, and instead slams people with +25% damage taken and dealt.
Hilarious as it might be.
So, Ash is probably still an option.

[Sar]

Just give mummies clarity FFS, is there really a situation where a mummy getting confused leads to ~interesting decisions~ now that you can't even control-attack?

[ontoclasm]

feature creep

There were 10 amulet types in 0.2, 12 types in 0.6, and there are 10 now.

But please, come up with a way to move the goalposts so that the above counts as feature creep.

[daggaz]

Why not just call it the amulet of min-maxing and be done with it? Other than in wide open areas with many enemies (which most of Crawl is not, given proper positioning), wearing this amulet should be a no-brainer. Increase my damage at the cost of increasing damage done to me? YES PLEASE. My over-all defenses are already better than most of the opponents I slaughter, and now I can destroy everybody, including the most dangerous opponents even faster before they can use their strategically interesting special attacks which don't necessarily deal direct damage in the first place.

To be clear: You can already wipe the entire game with low hp races like kobolds and spriggans. On high or just normal hp races, this amulet is simply gravy.

[Sprucery]

Well, if the amulet multiplied all damages by 100 instead of 1.25, nobody would wear it. I assume that somewhere between those numbers exists a range of values that would make the amulet sometimes usable but not overpowered.

Or, if the multiplying factors were different for damage in and damage out.

[daggaz]

The point is that any value, so long as it is not so high as to put you in likely near-death scenarios from single shots, is going to be a significant advantage to a good player. The amulet doesn't introduce any interesting choices, it simply shaves off some of your effective hp for the overwhelming benefit of shaving off some of the effective hp for every enemy you will ever encounter. It is even more advantageous for the player, given that many enemies will not take advantage of their benefit, instead wasting turns on stupid things like blinking/summoning/casting a hex/moving/shouting/using a ranged attack that is highly likely to miss you anyways/etc/etc...

[Sar]

Is it really that good? I mean, most player characters already can do a ton of damage - Crawl combat is still swingy as hell and you can miss or do no damage with a mindelayed GSC. I'd be wary of using this item - but I'm not a good player, I guess.

[daggaz]

Is it really that good? I mean, most player characters already can do a ton of damage - Crawl combat is still swingy as hell and you can miss or do no damage with a mindelayed GSC. I'd be wary of using this item - but I'm not a good player, I guess.

If crawl combat wear strictly linear and you were on par with your enemies, then the amulet would increase the variability of fights without bias by reducing effective hps on both sides. But combat is not linear and you generally have far more options (and intelligence) than the enemy, as well as better offense and defense than many, many of those enemies. Net result is a strong benefit for the player here, with a mind on leaving combat a little earlier than usual should things start to swing the wrong way.

[Sar]

I see. Doesn't seem like an item I'd use, then.

[dynast]

The perfect amulet for people who doesnt know how to build their combos, casuls.

Honestly though, this amulet seems pretty bad, it appears like something you would use on a heavily armored shield bearer, which is the only thing i can think off that is not capable of doing "enough" damage, but it doesnt give any slaying bonus, which is half the combat.

Does this amulet increases spell damage? now that would be interesting since the game have spells that cant miss, also you can take some really hard crystal spears on the face.

[Sprucery]

I guess one questionable thing about the amulet is that it increases the value of spoilery information about the maximum damage done by monsters.

[Bart]

It is even more advantageous for the player, given that many enemies will not take advantage of their benefit, instead wasting turns on stupid things like blinking/summoning/casting a hex/moving/shouting/using a ranged attack that is highly likely to miss you anyways/etc/etc...

This is just plainly wrong. This amulet's name precisely explains what it does - it harms its wielder. Nobody (except of speedrunners maybe) should care about average gain in crawl, because average fights are unimportant and not interesting. It is a sudden spike in damage that kills the player and makes any fight dangerous, so I dare you to repeat how good this item is once your enemy suddenly rolls maximum damage.

Both removal of clarity and introduction of Amulet of Harm make Crawl more unpredictable. I guess that the intention is to force player into more interesting situations. Well, if a single winning crawl game was a 30-minute experience, this could be a funny change. For me, losing a character after 5 hours of playing because of randomness of the design makes me reluctant to start once again. 0.17 will be therefore the version I'm going to play, because I am not going to support changes like this one.

[daggaz]

Because it HARMS the enemies too, which you already significantly out-advantage (or how do you kill thousands of them in the course of the game without dying even once), and a good player will use the press the amulets advantages as much as possible, while enemy AI will consistently fail to do so.

25% more damage? BIG DEAL. Your enemies are also dying even faster, and if you can't manage your HP pool (A 200 hp character who generally escapes at 100 hps now finds themselves at ..gasp only 75 hps) then you are playing risky in the first place.

[rchandra]

I used it for Vaults:5 on a 58AC Naga. It felt like a positive effect but was very dangerous and I think regeneration would have been better for me. Especially elemental attacks that I didn't resist - lightning/draining - hit very hard and caused even more resting to be needed.

[Bart]

I can't believe how you completely ignore my argument and continue talking about typical encounters, which are irrelevant to the gameplay. Are you never getting below 25% of HP? Are you telling me that maintaining HPs above 25% will be easier than above 0? Once you figure that you are forced to escape all of the sudden (because it was your enemy who initiated the combat) it will become completely irrelevant that you deal 25% more damage if you won't be attacking at all.

[archaeo]

But please, come up with a way to move the goalposts so that the above counts as feature creep.

Technically, since we still have the clarity mutation, this just adds to the number of effects that can change the character??

Either way, I like it, and I think letting Trunk be marginally harder (or easier?? but I think I agree with Bart over daggaz on this one) for a few weeks while the devs figure out the next step is fine. I've seen a lot of complaints that these amulet changes shouldn't have been made without corresponding changes to mutations/confusion/whatever, and it seems to me like the best way to figure out what really needs to be changed about them is to see how players react to these threats without them.

Of course, if you mostly care about winning, stable's almost always a better bet than Trunk anyway. And 0.17 is a dang good game!

[nago]

Anyway, is Alistair's Intoxication to be reworked or removed? By now is pretty much more useless than before - not mentioning the forty different weird mechanism it haves

[ydeve]

does this mean clarity is no longer found as a randart property? or were those only found on "clarity to begin with?

[Lasty]

I do think that this amulet is one of the more experimental ones in the new set, and as such I expect it to change a few times, and get removed if it doesn't seem to be adding anything good. That said, I'm encouraged to see some experienced players rating it very differently; that suggests to me that it's exploring some new space for those players, and it's not (clearly at this time) over- or under-powered. But we'll continue to keep an eye on it, and on the feedback you all give, and we'll see where it goes.

I'd like to highlight what archaeo said here, which is more or less how I'm approaching these changes so far:

I've seen a lot of complaints that these amulet changes shouldn't have been made without corresponding changes to mutations/confusion/whatever, and it seems to me like the best way to figure out what really needs to be changed about them is to see how players react to these threats without them.

I think it's entirely possible that these changes will be a good way of effectively showing issues with a variety of crawl mechanics. In the cases where these mechanics are problems without the respective amulets, I'd much rather deal with them directly rather than introduce a piece of gear whose only purpose is to prevent players lucky enough to find them from having to deal with that problematic mechanic.

[Lasty]

does this mean clarity is no longer found as a randart property? or were those only found on "clarity to begin with?

Clarity is still a unrand property, but it doesn't spawn randomly on randarts. Those were "clarity amulets that had been turned into randarts.

The amulet of four winds still has Clar, which will actually give it a unique feature for a change.

[WalkerBoh]

I think it's entirely possible that these changes will be a good way of effectively showing issues with a variety of crawl mechanics.

This was my thought exactly. Removing clarity, stasis, and rMut should really be a good impetus for the re-evaluation of the roles of confusion, paralysis, and malmutation in Crawl. Paralysis and confusion in particular are very similar (with confusion being a type of curable paralysis lite), and I wouldn't mind seeing these two hexes combined somehow or modified. This thread is probably not the place for that tangent though.

WIth regards to the amulet of harm, I agree with Bart that it's not something I am likely to ever wear. 90% of my deaths are because of a damage spike that I was not expecting. This amulet as implemented will simultaneously increase the spikiness of damage (larger spikes) while consistently putting the player in lower hp situations where they are more susceptible to death from a damage spike. The extra damage is nice (especially for characters using conjurations or ranged), but I think probably not worth the risk.

I'd also prefer for the amulet to be strictly good if there is to be an equip penalty imposed on the player. Getting punished for putting it on, and then potentially being further punished for leaving it on (by taking extra damage) seems a bit harsh. I do think the idea of a double-sided amulet like this can be interesting, but the positive for the player should significantly outweigh the drawbacks, in my opinion.

[Siegurt]

Indeed if the positive of wearing the amulet doesn't significantly outweigh the negative, then it certainly can't outweigh the opportunity cost of not wearing some other amulet, particularly since the amulet changes seem to be heading towards making amulets into mini gods, and for most of them there is a significant switching cost involved.

[WingedEspeon]

Personally I don't understand this change. It is basically "This amulet is too situational and not good enough under normal circumstances, so I'm going to replace it with an amulet that is more situational and worse under normal circumstances, but now you can't swap it so tedium is reduced." Why not just make clarity not tactically swappable then? A non-swappable clarity is still a lot more useful than this amulet.

[archaeo]

Except clarity's only value for non-mummies (and in a few other corner cases that also should be looked at) is as a swappable resist. The rest of the time, you don't want to be wearing clarity, because it's completely useless. There's no real way to fix that.

Instead, we have an amulet that is either grossly overpowered or completely useless, depending on who you talk to, which is a lot better than some necklace that sits in your inventory taking up space except for the ~100 turns you're in LOS of something with confusion. At least you don't have to carry Harm around with you if you don't think it's useful, whereas I've probably never dropped clarity in my life even when it's objectively dead weight for the vast majority of the game.

[WingedEspeon]

Except clarity's only value for non-mummies (and in a few other corner cases that also should be looked at) is as a swappable resist. The rest of the time, you don't want to be wearing clarity, because it's completely useless. There's no real way to fix that.

Instead, we have an amulet that is either grossly overpowered or completely useless, depending on who you talk to, which is a lot better than some necklace that sits in your inventory taking up space except for the ~100 turns you're in LOS of something with confusion. At least you don't have to carry Harm around with you if you don't think it's useful, whereas I've probably never dropped clarity in my life even when it's objectively dead weight for the vast majority of the game.

Except clarity is still useful as a non swap to manage *RAGE artifacts, which is more useful than the new amulet.

[dynast]

I am gonna be really surprised if this amulet makes it to a stable release, considering we once had a unrand called Crown of Eternal Torment. Also i noticed that eyes now can see invisible, and since stasis and clarity are gone i wonder if there will be a way to deal with them instead of just bearing their effects which may or not lead to unavoidable deaths. I guess golden eyes still check MR but paralyzing eyes sure dont.

[Octopode-monk-of-XOM]

also to use crystal ball of energy which allows a ton of caster builds without the caster gods and does way more for the games diversity than this new amulet?!


i think those changes are bad for extended play, no one will enjoy it anymore with rmut, stasis and clarity all removed but still possible on uber op unrands (orange crystal plate, hat of alchemist, the clarity amu etc)
i played several games of git extended where rmut was already removed, and i actually liked it to run crippled through hell.. but this is maybe too much now. berserkitis will be death sentence prob.

it increases randomness for example mnoleg encounter

just my rant im piss'd but id rather see regeneration amu removed which is a boring mechanic

[archaeo]

Except clarity is still useful as a non swap to manage *RAGE artifacts, which is more useful than the new amulet.

also to use crystal ball of energy which allows a ton of caster builds without the caster gods and does way more for the games diversity than this new amulet?!

Both of these are the kinds of things (e: and dynast's, which I forgot to include, sorry) that Lasty points out he'd "much rather deal with ... directly rather than introduce a piece of gear whose only purpose is to prevent players lucky enough to find them from having to deal with that problematic mechanic."

Of course, imo, *rage should be a property you have to deal with, not an equipment check, and I'd cut CBoE and change |energy to fill the gap left behind.

[tabstorm]

Why would you ever wear this amulet? It's like you're begging the enemy to kill you with a max roll. It wouldn't even be good for a speedrun because you're surrounded pretty often and taking an extra 25% of damage per enemy is going to lead to a lot more resting. I can't see it being useful very often, and there's a swap penalty on it, which makes it even more useless.

[ontoclasm]

also to use crystal ball of energy which allows a ton of caster builds without the caster gods and does way more for the games diversity than this new amulet?!

Yeah, sorry, "it almost completely negates the downside of X and lets me make a ridiculously powerful character who can crush megazigs" doesn't strike me as a terribly good reason to keep something. Casters of all stripes will still work just fine without clarity.

I would use the amulet of harm on lots of characters, personally. I almost never used clarity because it was boring and did very little and curing exists.

[bcadren]

Confusion melee (IE Tarantella) doesn't check MR either.

Nor does Alistair's Intoxication, which goes from bad spell, unless you use clarity to offset the malus; to just plain unusable spell.

This is feeling more and more like you're taking away the best amulets and replacing with BAD THINGS that no one would want to wear, ever.

[archaeo]

This is feeling more and more like you're taking away the best amulets and replacing with BAD THINGS that no one would want to wear, ever.

Honestly, it's feeling more and more like nobody is giving Lasty the benefit of the doubt here, that he's telling the truth about fixing the problems left after removing these amulets. Do people think he's just flat-out lying about wanting to address these issues?

[dynast]

I mean, you still have regen, which is the only "net gain" amulet in the experimental right now. Every other amulet is just a trade off, in a game that staying alive is the main course of action, regeneration is making these new amulets just even more unappealing.

[Lasty]

Confusion melee (IE Tarantella) doesn't check MR either.

But it does check AC/EV/SH.

Nor does Alistair's Intoxication, which goes from bad spell, unless you use clarity to offset the malus; to just plain unusable spell.

If Alistair's Intoxication is a spell that only works while you have clarity, then it's a deeply problematic spell whether or not the amulet of clarity exists.

I mean, you still have regen, which is the only "net gain" amulet in the experimental right now. Every other amulet is just a trade off, in a game that staying alive is the main course of action, regeneration is making these new amulets just even more unappealing.

You know that guardian spirit and faith and rage haven't changed and aren't going to change, right?

[edgefigaro]

My HuFE has an autumn katana, and has been getting feared and put to sleep in shoals. Did clarity get broken with this implementation?

[Sar]

Clarity doesn't stop fear for some reason. I've meant to mantis it, but forgot.

[bcadren]

Nor does Alistair's Intoxication, which goes from bad spell, unless you use clarity to offset the malus; to just plain unusable spell.

If Alistair's Intoxication is a spell that only works while you have clarity, then it's a deeply problematic spell whether or not the amulet of clarity exists.

Well Conjure Ball Lightning and Chain Lightning are unusable without rElec and they certainly aren't bad spells. Ozocubu's Refrigeration is unusable without at least rC++ and it's not bad. Intoxication is...similarly tiered to Meph Cloud, though more expensive, full LoS and higher chance of working on things with higher HD. I haven't used it in a long while, but it's decent in Elf and Vaults...and nowhere else. (Only works on Human Intelligent creatures without rPois). Suppose you could also use it on Sphinxes in Tomb.

Exact effect (40+Power/3%) (Max 73%) chance to confuse each human int or higher natural creature without rPois in LoS. (60-Power/3%) (Min 27%) chance to confuse you [Ignores rPois, but no clarity.] IMHO with clarity it's a decent way to clear ELF (better than Mass Confusion because, lol Elf MR); without clarity it's fairly unusable because of the high chance of needing to burn a curing after casting.

[edgefigaro]

Clarity doesn't stop fear for some reason. I've meant to mantis it, but forgot.

Mantis'd!

[dynast]

You know that guardian spirit and faith and rage haven't changed and aren't going to change, right?

Spirit drain the magic pool of spellcasters faster, is nearly useless to anyone who doesnt train spells because of its low magic pool, rage is a strong effect but also a dangerous one, faith got nerfed(?) but is still ok i guess.
The reflection shielding amulet seems pretty nice and is probably a better source of damage boost than the harm amulet for tanky combos.

[duvessa]

also to use crystal ball of energy which allows a ton of caster builds without the caster gods and does way more for the games diversity than this new amulet?!

Yeah, sorry, "it almost completely negates the downside of X and lets me make a ridiculously powerful character who can crush megazigs" doesn't strike me as a terribly good reason to keep something. Casters of all stripes will still work just fine without clarity.

making you occasionally use one of your 300 potions of curing is not why cboe is bad, lol

[Sar]

do you even play the damn game? any spellcaster worth shit will obviously use cboe in lichform, which prevents quaffing!

[The Ferret]

You know that guardian spirit and faith and rage haven't changed and aren't going to change, right?

Spirit drain the magic pool of spellcasters faster, is nearly useless to anyone who doesnt train spells because of its low magic pool, rage is a strong effect but also a dangerous one, faith got nerfed(?) but is still ok i guess.
The reflection shielding amulet seems pretty nice and is probably a better source of damage boost than the harm amulet for tanky combos.

invocations and evocations both exist

many characters will train one or both of those

[Bart]

I have a feeling that somebody's spicing the soup without tasting it. You really have to get to Zot more than once to understand how many uses clarity has. It is not funny to be chain confused by mushrooms summoned by curse toes. There is hardly any way to protect from (=overcome) random berserks induced by moths of wrath / berserkitis. Not every game provides sufficient MR to deal with packs of golden eyes in slime pits. Merfolk avatars also tend to be annoying for low MR characters with no strong ranged attack.

It's good to hear from Lasty that

In the cases where these mechanics are problems without the respective amulets, I'd much rather deal with them directly rather than introduce a piece of gear whose only purpose is to prevent players lucky enough to find them from having to deal with that problematic mechanic.

I wish though that you could start by fixing the problems, not by removing current solutions/workarounds.

(...) The rest of the time, you don't want to be wearing clarity, because it's completely useless. There's no real way to fix that.

There is at least one thing that could be done - move clarity to ring slot. You already carry around multiple rings which you use occasionally when you need a particular resist. Shall we remove every swappable item which allows to safely deal with otherwise threatening monsters, yet is useless for 95% of remaining game? Because that's what basically rN, (artifact) rElec, rPois and rC rings are.