Food Matters


Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 386

Joined: Thursday, 26th March 2015, 01:22

Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 17:59

Food Matters

note that I don't think food is good overall for the game, however

Food affects the way that I play in a reasonably high % of games. I play a lot of magic starts (on non-magic starts it often feels correct to basically just play a melee/ranged weapon character w/ heavy armor & strength whereas the skilling/character building problem feels more adaptive on magic-starts) and I care a reasonable amount about win %, so I often play carefully--a typical 3-rune game takes about 80-100k turns. If I am casting ~lv. 4-5 spells around lair branches (3/4 of which don't have an abundance of edible corpses) and I am regularly separating packs and retreating to other floors to heal, I tend to find myself short on rations.

Of course, I have basically never died by starvation, but the threat of starvation is often enough to compel me to play hastily (in an aut sense). "If I keep breaking up packs of nagas like this, and the dungeon is stingy w/ food drops, I could starve." This fear is more pronounced on underpowered characters, especially hybrids. Food aside, though, hybridizing often feels 'correct' on magic starts who do not take a magic god.

Most likely, I am more afraid of starvation than I ought to be. In most games enough food drops, and the abundance of xp means that even a hybrid character becomes powerful enough to take on packs of enemies w/o retreating by vaults. However, before it becomes clear that a character has way more food than needed, my play is affected by the food clock. I spend consumables to resolve situations w/o retreating, and I fight in suboptimal terrain or at less than full hp/mp rather than luring every enemy back to the stairs.

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bel

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 18:06

Re: Food Matters

Could you post a few dumps (at least 3) when you felt that food mattered for your play? It will make the discussion more concrete. It's ok if you don't want to, because some people will then belittle your play. I can't promise that I won't comment on your play, but I will keep within reasonable limits of the "dungeon crawling advice" forum.

I'll say one thing though: the "poisonous corpses are inedible" change was meaningless at the time it was introduced and by now has lost any justification it might once have had. I mentioned this a few weeks ago here. Reverting that change alone will fix almost all of your troubles.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 18:12

Re: Food Matters

I don't like spellcasting hunger because if excessive luring of nagas is a bad thing, it should affect melee and ranged characters in the same way. Currently you can kite every monster as Centaur and still be high on food.
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Slime Squisher

Posts: 386

Joined: Thursday, 26th March 2015, 01:22

Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 18:32

Re: Food Matters

current char: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/bazoo/bazoo.txt

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 015640.txt -- in this game I remember feeling pressed by food during the midgame

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 215323.txt -- this is an older game, but it is notable because of how underpowered my character was even in depths. I got sif through a random altar, had to buy food, probably trained spellcasting to lower hunger costs, and ended w/ 5 rations. This was a tournament game and part of a small streak, so I was serious about winning.

edit: vaf I agree w/ most of what you are saying. Food penalizes luring for hybrid characters more than for linear str (or even super high int) characters, who already have a more straightforward, probably easier game. Centaurs are degenerate, but that would still of course be the case if food were nonexistent.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 386

Joined: Thursday, 26th March 2015, 01:22

Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 18:54

Re: Food Matters

Food tilt: it may be irrational, but it's a real thing. it's like the dcss equivalent of a character getting hangry

bel

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Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05

Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 19:17

Re: Food Matters

Thanks for the dumps. Now, let's look at them. First, I will use objstat to see how much permafood is typically generated in your game. Here's the latest version. It gives data for Shoals and Spider, but Shoals and Snake shouldn't be too different (shops can spawn in Snake). I'll then compare this to the permafood you ate.

Spoiler: show
From the spreadsheet, we look at the "TotalNormNutr" (total normal nutrition) column. We see that total nutrition in
D1-15: 110956
Orc: 13259
Lair: 44538
Elf: 28968
Shoals: 24359
Spider: 22192

Now, let's look at your current game. You have cleared D, Orc, Lair, and half of Snake. You ate 7 fruits, 5 royal jellies, 2 meat rations and 13 bread rations. Assuming the Wiki is correct, that is:
7 * 850 + 5 * 5000 + 2 * 5000 + 13 * 4400 = 98150
Your game has generated:
110956 + 13259 + 44538 + (22192 / 2) = 179849

Permafood generated / permafood used = 179849 / 98150 = 1.8

Let's look at the second game:
XL 16-18 seems to be the most food-intensive period. From the notes, I see that at XL 18, you had done the same as above, except that you also completed both the lair branches. At XL 18, you ate: 11 meat rations, 5 pizzas, 3 royal jellies and 5 beef jerkies and 8 bread rations, so
11 * 5000 + 5 * 1500 + 3 * 5000 + 5 * 1500 + 8 * 4400 = 120200
Your game has generated:
110956 + 13259 + 44538 + 22192 + 24359 = 215304

Permafood generated / permafood used = 215304 / 120200 = 1.8

The last morgue is left as an exercise to the reader.

It seems to me that since the expected generated permafood is 80% more than your usage, you are pretty much never in danger of starving, even if you played much more carelessly (but not recklessly).

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amaril, duvessa

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51

Post Sunday, 5th February 2017, 19:20

Re: Food Matters

Also note that 2 of those 3 games were with Fedhas and old Sif Muna who encourage saving fruits and using mana channeling.
Last edited by VeryAngryFelid on Monday, 6th February 2017, 06:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Temple Termagant

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Post Monday, 6th February 2017, 02:24

Re: Food Matters

So you're saying it affects you psychologically, whether it actually matters or not.

I can agree, but by now that feeling is already gone but it felt that way when I started playing. Now it's just an annoyance.

In any case, I think it should matter, or not matter. I personally prefer it to not matter, which is currently true. But it's still in this wishy-washy place for years. The only time it matters is when you cast high level magic too early/too often.

Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Saturday, 5th December 2015, 06:56

Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 05:00

Re: Food Matters

amaril wrote:Food tilt: it may be irrational, but it's a real thing. it's like the dcss equivalent of a character getting hangry


Heard that bro. Yesterday I made my char eat a meat ration purely because I was hungry IRL.

Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Tuesday, 29th November 2011, 11:04

Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 11:13

Re: Food Matters

The only time food matters in crawl is when you want to swap a vampiric weapon or when you're overberserking early-game (middle and late game you're so strong you don't need berserk) or when you're abusing spells with low Spellcasting.

Food is cool, but chunks are tedious and by rune branches I have enough perma that I eat it even when not necessary, especially since it clogs the inventory.

I guess lots of permafood types is a buff to Mummies?
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Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Friday, 19th August 2016, 21:21

Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 12:22

Re: Food Matters

kuniqs wrote:Food is cool, but chunks are tedious and by rune branches I have enough perma that I eat it even when not necessary, especially since it clogs the inventory.


Absolutely. If chunks (other than mutagenic) were made inedible by all except ghouls, and then spell food costs adjusted a bit, the game would clearly change for the better.
make food great again

Slime Squisher

Posts: 386

Joined: Thursday, 26th March 2015, 01:22

Post Tuesday, 7th February 2017, 15:39

Re: Food Matters

Thanks bel--that is very useful analysis. It seems that in many circumstances where food felt critically low I still had a substantial cushion of sustenance. I guess the 'thesis' of my op would be "food matters in a miniscule portion of games, but it affects a slightly larger portion of games in which it is not yet obvious whether or not you are consuming food at such a rate that you will run out before the end of a game."

The moral of the story is that even the second scenario is super rare, and I would probably play better overall if I didn't consider food whatsoever.

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