Sunday, 23rd September 2018, 21:37 by mrbobbyg
This is kind of off topic, and I am kind of hijacking this thread, but it's a partially relevant realization I had during my last win. Also, I know I have a lot to learn, so if you disagree, please understand that I take your disagreement as a gift an an opportunity to learn more. I'm not claiming to be an expert, nor even particularly competent.
The randomness in Crawl's item generation makes it easy to hide the fact that bad players, myself included (trying to get better), will eventually win if we grind enough, because Crawl will toss us a rapier of electricity, an artifact ring of wizardry, and some other insanely above the power curve items early on.
For example, I have ascended a few transmuters who never learned sticks to snakes. This is, under my current understanding, sub-optimal play unless you have options that out-curve sticks to snakes. Given the fact that sticks to snakes is a really powerful spell, this means that I won in spite of my poor strategy.
Playing Gnolls really made me realize this. Since they have access to every skill, Gnolls have to make use of every option the have well because they can't cheese a win powered by a +12 suit of CPA and a Executioners Axe of Frost that they got in Lair. Gnolls are always underpowered in depth; so you have to use breadth to make them viable.
So yeah, Crawl is random. And because it's random the difference in skill level really shows in those games where you get 2 rings and 0 enchant scrolls by Depths.
Last edited by
mrbobbyg on Monday, 24th September 2018, 02:08, edited 1 time in total.