HawkI wrote:I have played this game for over 300 hours now and the furthest I've got is is getting two runes of Zot, I was really hoping to beat this game in order to give an informed opinion about this game and how I feel about it. I am aware that there are speed runs of people who can do it in under two hours and I am aware that you only really need three runes of Zot to beat this game, and I'm also aware that it is, after all, a Rouge like.
I understand that the balancing of this is game is weighted, so for example, if you see a resist poison ring you can bet there's a lot of poisonous things coming your way. So it's random generation is mathematically weighted.
Today it really clicked why a lot of people if not most can only get 0 to 2 runes of Zot, the beginning of the game as it were.
Simply put the player HAS to have a level 4, or powered up level 3, or a certain branding of weapon for certain things, and this game is really, REALLY, bad at giving you them.
I so wanted to beat this game to come across as having an air of authority in these matters but now I can't be bothered anymore. I know no game is perfect and I even listened to a podcast with one of the past designers mention if you fix all the problems with stone soup there is no more stone soup.
This thread is, I guess, a rant about why so many people are stuck at 0 to 2 runes of Zot.
You are incorrect in your perceptions:
The weighting of items is entirely level based, there's no additional weight for "there's poisonous things coming" and the like.
You don't need any particular branding of weapons for anything in particular, there are some brands that are better (or more appropriate to a given area) than others, but there's more than enough drops of what would be considered "good enough" equipment to win the game by a large margin.
The reason why most people get less than 2 runes is because the game requires some skill and is actually decently hard (certainly not as hard as some, but harder than most computer games), and most people aren't excellent at it. You need to be very good to be able to consistently win, and have a decent understanding of what makes someone *good* at crawl. Something like 1/10th of 1% of crawl players get that good, mostly because they have a complete misunderstanding about what it actually takes to win crawl, and never take the time to learn what it is that they should be getting better at to win.
Equipment and levels and skills are all somewhat important (at least that you not have *bad* equipment and skilling) but aren't the most important things for winning. The three most important things for crawl are: understanding positioning; understanding noise; and having good (and early) threat assessment skills (both in terms of individual monsters, and in terms of the current situation).
I suggest you start a game and pause at regular intervals to ask questions on the forums (More useful for equipment questions and skilling questions, but tactical questions can be posed and responded to with some coherence), but also watch some good players play (either live online or on various recorded streams), both of these things will help way more than complaining about how the equipment drops are weighted, the equipment drops are, if anything, overly generous once you are good at winning.
The fault is not in the equipment, it's your lack of (the right) experience and skill.