Do spectral weapon and battlesphere steal xp?

[Squidcat]

I'm trying to find out if spectral weapon and Iskenderun's battlesphere take a cut of your xp the way other allies do. I tried to find an answer with google, but nothing relevant came up.

[crawlnoob]

They're not allies, and no they do not.

Also, you shouldn't worry about losing XP. There is a glut of XP in the game, and if using a given mechanic helps you get some of it easier, it is making your game as a whole easier, not harder.

[Squidcat]

Do you have a source for them not taking xp?

[Vajrapani]

Do you have a source for them not taking xp?

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24369

On the 3rd post, Lasty, a developer, states it in plain terms.

[mattlistener]

you shouldn't worry about losing XP. There is a glut of XP in the game, and if using a given mechanic helps you get some of it easier, it is making your game as a whole easier, not harder.

Summoners are advised to have a non-allies method for dealing with non-threatening enemies, so as to avoid needlessly missing out on XP. If Battlesphere and Spectal Weapon were changed to take an XP cut like allies do, then best player behavior would change similarly. So, the OP's question is a legitimate one to be concerned about.

[crawlnoob]

Summoners are advised to have a non-allies method for dealing with non-threatening enemies

All characters who use magic as their primary kill-dudes are advised to have a non-magic method of killing popcorn, question is why

so as to avoid needlessly missing out on XP.

...and that's not it, no matter what the badwiki probably says. If an enemy is non-threatening, its likely not worth much XP in the first place, and this still doesn't touch on the fact that one of the arguably big problems with crawl is there is too much XP available, period.

If Battlesphere and Spectal Weapon were changed to take an XP cut like allies do, then best player behavior would change similarly.

But they're not, and best player behavior wouldn't change, either. I believe drain ego on weapons used to lower XP gained. The advice then for melee as it is now for allies was that it simply didn't matter in the long run. And if you aren't playing optimally for the long run, being a fraction higher in a given skill at a given point in time isn't going to get you there either way. You're going to die for other reasons (like not wanting to use your most optimal resource because you are saving for later).

So, the OP's question is a legitimate one

Nobody argued otherwise

to be concerned about.

Yeah, no, the answer is literally "This is not on the list of things you need to be concerned about."

Look, it's easy to understand. Why do allies have an XP penalty in the first place? Because they remove a significant portion of the risk of gaining XP (allies are easily one of the most OP mechanics in the game for the obvious reason that they will often be targetted instead of the player character.) So without a penalty, a summoner would have an effective XP bonus, if we think in terms of risk vs character development, which is basically the foundation of the entire game. With a penalty, the idea is that you are now back to some sort of balance, but frankly the penalty is too small to really pinch development in a significant manner AND there is too much XP in the game anyways so you will easily catch up to the breakpoints that matter (getting your important spells and your main defenses online), and you are still summoning. So it just. doesnt. matter.

[nago]

Summoners are advised to have a non-allies method for dealing with non-threatening enemies, so as to avoid needlessly missing out on XP

This is not true. And if it happens someone suggest that, it's a bad advice. A summoner can kill things via only summons from D:1 to Z:5 fine, he will probably be relatively underleveled (like one or two XL less and dunno 10 skill levels in total) in comparison of a guy killing everything alone but that does not matter because a wall of summons kills everything better anyway.

To say a non-allied method is necessary is a reasonable suggestion only:

* To save player sanity
* To help in extended where enemies spamming summons\abjuration and big AoE become quite commons.

@OP: don't worry about summons stealing XP. That is not a problem, as new player focus on learn basic tactics\strategies.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I don't see how losing 50% xp is irrelevant. XL XP is really far from exponential and you will lose a lot of HP/MP/spell slots as "pure" DgSu.

[Majang]

don't worry about summons stealing XP. That is not a problem

This attitude is somewhat inconsistent with the almost anal condemnation of multiple-skill training by optimal players on this forum. How can you be so maniacally worried about missing a breakpoint by a few dozen turns when at the same time you're throwing away heaps of experience to allies and even claim there is too much of it in the game anyway? I'm not questioning your logic of risk vs. reward, which certainly applies to ally-play. It just doesn't align with your behavior elsewhere. Sounds a bit like a chain smoker who maintains an extremely restricted diet to stay healthy...

Playing with tedious allies + skill-micromanaging = a game devoid of fun

[crawlnoob]

Because with a non-summoning character, you don't have anything standing between you and death/advancement. Therefore, your skill level is directly tested in every battle. Combined with breakpoints like the integerisation of AC, it makes it optimal to push one skill at a time. That said, you can certainly put XP into multiple skills and survive, because good tactics are ultimately more important. One of the best tactics available in Crawl is putting an ally between you and an enemy.

[VeryAngryFelid]

People win as pure melee with 0 skill in all weapon skills but it does not mean "weapon skill training does not matter".
XP penalty is very important, there is a huge difference in power level of characters who killed everything with summons and who killed everything without summons, even if both characters have Shadow Creatures now.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Just check
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Xp#Experience_Required
22 420500
27 848000

Do you seriously believe there is no significant difference for HP between being XL 22 and XL 27? That's even ignoring skill difference which I am lazy to find now.

[nago]

don't worry about summons stealing XP. That is not a problem

This attitude is somewhat inconsistent with the almost anal condemnation of multiple-skill training by optimal players on this forum. How can you be so maniacally worried about missing a breakpoint by a few dozen turns when at the same time you're throwing away heaps of experience to allies and even claim there is too much of it in the game anyway? I'm not questioning your logic of risk vs. reward, which certainly applies to ally-play. It just doesn't align with your behavior elsewhere. Sounds a bit like a chain smoker who maintains an extremely restricted diet to stay healthy...

Playing with tedious allies + skill-micromanaging = a game devoid of fun

Well, I'm also pretty positive that past early game - where the experience is scarce and the returns on skill training very very high - micromanaging the skills is pretty much accessory.

I mean, it is convenient to get that specific spell online faster or 1 more AC point instead of nothing of everything at same time, but for most chars getting it two floors later won't change the game in reality, and having 3 skills training at once won't made their game unwinnable. They will be good anyway, because they're already strong enough, it's plenty of consumables, good powers, experience, gear and whatever.

Just check
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Xp#Experience_Required
22 420500
27 848000

Do you seriously believe there is no significant difference for HP between being XL 22 and XL 27? That's even ignoring skill difference which I am lazy to find now.

I don't get how this data strengthen your statement or is relevant at all. Yes, generally speaking a xl22 char is weaker than xl27 especially if assuming both have same summons spells. Yes, most probably that xl22 probably won't be able to kill by himself most of dangerous\strong monsters.

However, a xl 22 with strong summons is good to good to win because strong summons kill everything and are among the best defence and panic buttons in the game (btw a char who killed everything by summons should reach Zot around xl 24ish).

[VeryAngryFelid]

I don't get how this data strengthen your statement or is relevant at all. Yes, generally speaking a xl22 char is weaker than xl27 especially if assuming both have same summons spells. Yes, most probably that xl22 probably won't be able to kill by himself most of dangerous\strong monsters.

However, a xl 22 with strong summons is good to good to win because strong summons kill everything and are among the best defence and panic buttons in the game (btw a char who killed everything by summons should reach Zot around xl 24ish).

I see we have different understanding of phrase "does not matter". For me it means that difference is insignificant, for you it seems like "you will win anyway".
Let me use another example. I can easily win HOBe in heavy armour and I can easily win KoBe in heavy armour but I will never say that HP-aptitude does not matter because there is huge difference between 199 HP and 274 HP.

[nago]

Oh yes, I never meant the difference between a Su who kills everything with summons and a Su who doesn't isn't numerically speaking insignificant - generally speaking the former will be kinda underleveled from Lair or so onwards.

However, I meant, especially for new players, that this difference ins't important and one shouldn't worry about it (focusing on more important things).

The drawbacks (the char on himself is weaker\underleveled in comparison to a not-Su char) is less important than the fact all summons are quite broken, so a Su char with proper play is actually at least of the same strength (usually stronger) than a not-Su char and in any case strong enough to win the game easily.

[bel]

I have no opinion on whether 50% XP matters or not.

But it's funny (and typical of DCA) that the question in the OP was answered in the first sentence of the second post, and the arguments thereafter are all off-topic

[VeryAngryFelid]

Why is it funny? We don't have a special "let's discuss some complicated things" subforum
Also I remember some interesting description when a new person asks help to do A and gets advice "don't do A, do B" instead. It might be not a direct answer but it can be the only valid one.

[duvessa]

don't worry about summons stealing XP. That is not a problem

This attitude is somewhat inconsistent with the almost anal condemnation of multiple-skill training by optimal players on this forum. How can you be so maniacally worried about missing a breakpoint by a few dozen turns

Do you have, like...an example of this happening? Anywhere?

[Majang]

Do you have, like...an example of this happening? Anywhere?

Try this:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20431&view=next - That was mainly you.

There is a lot more of it here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23753&start=0 - mostly by others.

Recently edgefigaro gave a good reason for successive skill training that has nothing to do with breakpoints, so this is expressly excluded from my previous rant...

[edgefigaro]

This conversation has a number of factors that are all pointing in different directions.

Summoners are very strong characters, but they are also very different characters. The summoner minigame is like nothing else in crawl, and plays very slowly*. Personally, I enjoy it from time to time, but after a decent game of a summoner I generally want nothing to do with it for a few months.

Breakpoints matter, but they matter more on weaker characters. Summoners are rarely weak characters.

Paying attention to breakpoints is good habit, good practice, basic instinct. You are paying attention to some of the nuances of the game such that you can make plays on zones.

That recent post of mine majang mentioned is here. In that post I talked about successive skill training that allows you to make plays that would be more difficult to make if you are skilling more broadly. Breakpoints often are the means by which you make those plays.

On Breakpoints
Breakpoints are much more important for spellcasters than it is for physical characters. Physical characters frequently scale rather directly with XP and skill points. Their breakpoints are more related to finding powerful weapons or armor, which is rather disconnected from XP. The player also has no control over when they will get an item upgrade.

Spellcasters, on the other hand will go through droughts where they are getting no value for a given amount of XP, then that spell they have been training becomes castable, and the way they play entirely changes. Old spells become obsolete, a previously difficult zone becomes straightforward. The spellcaster hit a breakpoint, and crawl suddenly changes for them. A dramatic example of this is getting firestorm castable. Most of your old damage are obsolete and you are suddenly just firestorming everything. It feels great.

These kinds of breakpoints are aggregate power breakpoints. The sooner** you hit these breakpoints, the stronger your character immediately feels. Characters will neglect other aspects (generally defenses) to get certain spells online, due to the tremendous power spike having a spell castable represents.

Some Examples:
Freezing Cloud instantly changes the way you play, gives you not only an efficent damage spell but also a tactical spell. It's strength is more dramatic the earlier you pick it up.
Malign Gateway gives you tremendous damage, enough to win the game with, and will instantly turn all earlier summons into utility.
Invis on a stabber pre-endgame, the world opens up.

On Plays
More relevant than the single pip of AC or EV breakpoint is the ability to make a play on a zone*** that you couldn't make before. A few examples that aren't tremendously XP based:

Two hex wands --> evocations to 4 for lair. This works on any garbage character, and requires minimal investment.
Two invis potions --> Hall of Blades. You can make this play after D15 while Elf is still rather scary specifically to try to ninja a good weapon for a physical character that hasn't found a good weapon yet.
!Tree, ?Torment, ?Immolation, !Cancellation, !Resist, (Clever Damage Source) = TRJ

Now for a couple of examples that are more XP reliant

Invis + Silence = Elf.
Summon Forest = Sbranches
Control Undead = Crypt
Shatter = Tomb (There is slightly more to it than this, but shatter is frequently a way a character can set up to take tomb)

Ultimately, zone based breakpoints or item based plays become very important in the following scenario: (1) I have a weak character and I'm worried about an upcoming zone. What do I do?
You can look for a nearby breakpoint or play that gives either gives you an advantage in the upcoming zone or allows you to make a play on a different zone, spend XP to hit that breakpoint, make the play, and then backfill your character to stabilize your aggregate power.

There was a recent CIP that ran into this situation.

On XP Shave and Summoners
Early game (pre lair) XP loss doesn't matter. XP values are so small compared to the game in aggregate as to be irrelevant. Your goal is to stabilize your character as quickly as possible. Barring exceptional drops, the best way to do this is to build through your starting book, which is very strong and stable.

There are 3 big XP zones in the game: Lair, Vaults, Depths. Lair is still early enough to be close to the too-early-to-matter area that is early D. However, its also lair, so (1) untrained weapons may do meaningful damage, mitigating some shave and (2) it is lair, very few encounters are genuinely threatening.

XP shave in lair still kind of doesn't matter in the long run, and can be played around cheaply (without committing XP to a weapon) anyway. That being said, the XP shave may be relevant if you aren't strong enough for sbranches. Sbranches suck on a summoner if you get mobbed at the entrance to a zone.

Vaults, however, is the setup for the endgame zone. XP values here are noticeably more than xp from sbranches. You can reach for an endgame spell with vaults XP and get it reasonably quickly. Conveniently, you probably want a direct damage source by vaults anyway, just to have a diverse kit.

Thus, it may be prudent to acquire some kind of direct damage source sometime before vaults. This is probably good play anyway, regardless of XP shave.

However, it is always more important to be stable in your current zone and to set up to be stable in the next zone than it is to play for more XP.

Avoiding XP shave is a secondary objective. Its not meaningless, but neither is it a primary concern at any point in the game.

On singular skilling and paying attention to breakpoints being good practice
Its important to know if you can get a spell online in time. Can I acquire this spell or ability soon enough such that it will help me in the zone when I want it to help me? Is my plan a good plan? You are able to answer this question by having an excellent sense of how much XP is in a zone. I believe that you get a better sense of how much XP you get in an area if you are training only a few things. Opening up single parts of my kit one at a time on a strong character today still gives me valuable context when I need to make a plan on a weak character tomorrow.

Sometimes, though, I really don't want to pay that much attention, and I'm content to braindead crawl falling asleep on otab. That feels great too.

---

*On the slowness of summoners: There is a lot of information that a player needs to process each turn with a summoner. The predictive movements of all the enemies and allies is frequently important. Terrain is very important and the use of terrain is very different than the rest of crawl. The difference between favorable and unfavorable terrain is often one or two tiles.

Example: A doorway at the mouth of a corridor allows three of your summons to hit an enemy unit standing in the doorway. This allows weaker summons to overpower a strong unit with ease. However, if the first summon to strike kills the unit, a second summon fill file into the doorway to fight the next thing in disadvantageous 1 on 1 combat. The next mob will kill all three of your summons 1v1. Good terrain quickly turns into bad terrain.

That is just one example, I could write many more, some about open fields, about lightning spires, about repositioning summons mid combat. Summoners are full of tactical plays that are rather unique in crawl. They are very strong. But it is a lot to think about, especially over the course of an entire game.

**You can hit your 'breakpoint' too soon. An example is rushing all the way to fireball or lightning bolt immediately. There are multiple reasons why this is bad, one of them is that you don't have the MP pool to support it yet.

***Similar to Breakpoints: Plays on a Zone. These function similar to traditional xp based breakpoints, I speak to them in the same section. You can make an argument that these are not breakpoints and should be categorized as something else, and I have no desire to participate in that argument. Simply put, you are looking for a combination of spells, abilities, and items that allow you to make a play that your aggregate power otherwise would not allow you to make. If you have 2 invis pots you can make a play on Hall of Blades. If you have Invis + silence you can murder all of elf. Invis + Silence has an XP gate that can function as a breakpoint, 2 invis pots do not, but for the moment they are the same idea. Making the play is the relevant piece, how the play is gated is not.