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Not particularly. Necromancer used to be able to trash them with dispel undead but that got removed from their starting book. What a ghost can do varies too wildly for any start to be reliably effective against all of them. That said, wizards and fire elementalists have access to conjure flame which will destroy most early ghosts. Of course if they have rF+ equipped that doesn't work very well
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Dec 18, 2015 01:41
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| # ? May 18, 2024 14:37 |
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I bet a berserker start mashes most early ghosts pretty good, but this is because berserker is just Strong As Hell. Conjurers and fire elementalists probably have good busting records for the same reason as well!
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Dec 18, 2015 01:54
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Yeah, angry MiBe kills ghosts with ease. I die to ghosts way way more as DEFRA, everything else too...
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Dec 18, 2015 01:58
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Casting ghosts are neutered by scroll of silence. Most importantly, all ghosts can be defeated by the pro tactic of 'walking up stairs'
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Dec 18, 2015 02:14
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Some ghosts are weaker than others, too. Some guy's DEGl ghost is going to be much easier to beat than a TrBe or GrEE ghost.
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Dec 18, 2015 02:45
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Hey I haven't played Crawl in like a year, what's this about popcorn enemies no longer being popcorn?
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Dec 18, 2015 03:15
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Mr. Lobe posted:Hey I haven't played Crawl in like a year, what's this about popcorn enemies no longer being popcorn? Death cobs in Zot now have a hungering attack that reduces your satiation by 1/4 each hit. Since it only checks if it landed a hit and doesn't check for damage or AC you go to starving/fainting almost instantly, so you usually need to mow them down before they get in range. This is easier said than done though since they're insanely fast and surprisingly tanky. If they get in your face and you're starving, you get to play the mini-game of "eat until I have enough satiation to use some escape option". They can easily be the most dangerous enemy in Zot depending on your character and equipment but they achieve this in a really lame way. Currently devs are discussing how to change their hungering gimmick though.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:29
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Death Cobs are actual threats now.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:29
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Oh. What a corny joke.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:34
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I'm pretty sure Death Cobs were named that because they were specifically made to be Zot's popcorn enemies.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:39
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Yeah, which sorta makes the joke... not work? Also they're really annoying and attack you in a way that no enemy in the whole rest of the game attacks minus hungry ghosts who are worthless
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Dec 18, 2015 03:56
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We just need to rename them Hungry Hungry Hippos and have their attacks both drain your satiation and do crazy damage. Or have a chance to bite you in half.
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Dec 18, 2015 04:02
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FR: Death cobs have a chance to spawn with fixedart "Vorpal Blade" that has a 5% chance of beheading you per hit. Make eating in front of a death cob even more tense!
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Dec 18, 2015 04:19
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I like ghosts. I think they're a cool custom meanie that you know intimately and it gives some in-game history to your interaction with it rather than just the high scores. I also usually don't have a problem with them unless I'm switching classes, i.e. I had a MiBe that got strong as hell and died and I run into him with a weak as piss Wizard that I'm still learning to play. Just running like a girl for the stairs usually works though.
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Dec 18, 2015 04:25
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The best way to deal with ghosts is to play online so that you never (okay, extremely rarely) have to deal with your own mistakes. The counter is that you have to deal with others, but most of the time it's just a melee, normal speed character you can walk away from.
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Dec 18, 2015 05:19
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I beat four zigs in a row and then I was out of skills I felt like maxing + the zigs were starting to take too long.pre:Goodbye, Ferrinus. 12968175 Ferrinus the Archmage (level 27, 199/199 HPs) Began as a Deep Elf Wizard on Dec 8, 2015. Was the Champion of Vehumet. Escaped with the Orb ... and 15 runes on Dec 18, 2015! The game lasted 1 day 01:00:04 (130157 turns). Best Crawlers - 741.12996943 HilariousD MiPr-27 escaped with the Orb 742.12984994 Cheibrodos OgCK-27 escaped with the Orb 743.12977375 Atomsk MiFi-27 escaped with the Orb 744.12973357 SchwaWarri HOFi-27 escaped with the Orb 745.12970403 Zwobot MuFE-27 escaped with the Orb 746.12968175 Ferrinus DEWz-27 escaped with the Orb 747. 0 ??Fi-00 nibbled to death by software bugs (D:$) 748.12961116 were GrEE-27 escaped with the Orb 749.12955670 Piginabag DrSk-27 escaped with the Orb 750.12952687 heteroy DECj-27 escaped with the Orb 751.12950581 darkli HOBe-27 escaped with the Orb
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Dec 18, 2015 11:27
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I sat down and played a DDNe of Pakellas (and died in a dumb way). Good things about Trunk changes: Pakellas is really fun and cool. Bad things: Somehow, entropy weavers are even MORE obnoxious than they were before, which is really impressive. Ugly things: So I saw the amulet of harm and I assumed it was like, a replacement for the amulet of inaccuracy. At least harm pretends you might ever want to wear it, while you never want to wear inaccuracy. Okay, that's kind of interest-- Oh, it replaces the amulet of clarity. Of course.  Can you guys just at least say "we don't like amulets and intend to replace them all with shittier ones"? I thought the amulet of reflection was at least kind of interesting, but apparently "amulets that give you immunity to poo poo" are overpowered and we'd much rather give people the chance of playing Zot:5 Roulette with permanent teleport traps.
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Dec 18, 2015 12:41
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Ferrinus posted:I beat four zigs in a row and then I was out of skills I felt like maxing + the zigs were starting to take too long. I wonder what happened to 747 that it got sorted that high on the list while still bugging out in an impressive manner.
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Dec 18, 2015 17:36
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To anyone trying to get off the ground with Pakellas, I'd actually suggest a Ghoul Monk. Your claws, good HP, and good Unarmed+Stealth aptitude let you shamble through most of the early game, and total poison immunity and rN+++ turns some of the scariest enemies into exciting XP piñatas. You should be able to reach a Pakellas altar fairly easily, at which point he'll dump a pile of wands on you and you can start training Evocations a little more earnestly while still scratching and eating everything for the most part; this makes building piety quite quick and painless, as the wands and rod will be a valuable Plan B for your angry wall of claws and rotten meat, and you should almost never need to burn piety to survive. Also, the change that made all poison/rotting chunks simply "inedible" seems to be a loving incredible quality-of-life boon for Ghouls since there is literally nothing they cannot eat anymore. If it yields chunks, it's easy healing. I basically never rest anymore, I just devour a shitload of meat like a disgusting goon and then resume murdering and acquiring more meat. It's like playing a Troll except I can actually use equipment and be good at just about anything I want, and also I have a fuckton of incredibly good resists and immunities.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:39
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Secret tech is going Kiku for the fresh corpse delivery service. Exchange piety for HP without having to be "good!"
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Dec 18, 2015 19:12
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm pretty sure Death Cobs were named that because they were specifically made to be Zot's popcorn enemies. It is entirely plausible that death cobs predate the term 'popcorn enemy'. They seem to date to somewhere around 2.90 [13.11.1998], which boasts that "Hell and the Realm of Zot are now much nastier." Their current hunger mechanic is itself a riff on an old console joke, since death cobs look exactly like a piece of food there. I would not be surprised to see the numbers on it tweaked in the near future. In any case, the best and only right way to make death cobs properly match their name is to add a special sticky flame interaction. Pop!
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Dec 18, 2015 19:48
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quote:Polyphemus throws the catoblepas at you!  The new merfolk tiles are kind of cute. They're so brightly-coloured and cheerful looking, and when they go on land they get hilarious little fish legs and look like they're skipping around excitedly. I feel a little bad murdering and eating them 
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Dec 18, 2015 21:09
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Mr. Lobe posted:Hey I haven't played Crawl in like a year, what's this about popcorn enemies no longer being popcorn? I actually intended it to be "Corn enemies no longer popcorn", but I got this instead and decided to pretend it was intentional instead of PMing a mod to ask them to fix it.
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Dec 19, 2015 03:03
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Christ, gently caress centaurs. Every single time I've come across one it's been an instant game over. None of my consumables helped, plus it was way faster than me, and on top of that it does like a fifth of my hp with every arrow even with the awesome +2 dagger of protection I found. It's happened to 4 different characters, none of them could outrun the centaur to the stairs in time even if I managed to drop a conjured flame behind me and get around a corner, it just kept pursuing. How do you get out of a situation like that? Is there some little ai quirk or something I can take advantage of?
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Dec 19, 2015 04:01
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When you get around the corner, wait. When the centaur reaches the corner, step into melee range, then kill it.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:06
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If you drop Imps it might engage one of those instead and you can run or plink it with Magic Dart while it fights the Imp (just killed Sigmund this way myself). If you can run for a single square wide corridor then dropping a flame behind you, there is no way the bastard can follow. If your really getting pounded scroll of teleport will get you outa there, just use it when you're at half health or you'll die before it kicks in.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:09
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Yeah with centaurs the most reliable strategy is to immediately break line of sight, then blitz into melee and go all-out when they pursue. They're nasty but if you have consumables you can most likely take them in melee - they're considerably weaker without their arrow spam.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:11
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:Christ, gently caress centaurs. Every single time I've come across one it's been an instant game over. None of my consumables helped, plus it was way faster than me, and on top of that it does like a fifth of my hp with every arrow even with the awesome +2 dagger of protection I found. It's happened to 4 different characters, none of them could outrun the centaur to the stairs in time even if I managed to drop a conjured flame behind me and get around a corner, it just kept pursuing. If you're playing a wizard, meph cloud that fucker, then finish it off with imps and magic darts. That's the wizard solution to most early game problems: summon a bunch of annoying creatures to distract enemies and then fart on them. Meph cloud's range is short, so you should duck around a corner and lure the centaur closer without letting it shoot you. Controlling line of sight is probably the most important skill in the game and centaurs are one of the biggest tests of your ability to do that. In the early game, you should try to explore carefully so you always have a corner nearby that you can use to escape enemies with scary ranged attacks. Edit: After reading your post again, there's another point to mention: conjure flame isn't working here because it's out of line of sight. Your clouds tend to dissipate much faster when you can't see them, so using it to block enemies then running around a corner won't help to put a lot of distance between you and them. Conjure flame is for orc warriors and ogres in the early game, but it won't help much against centaurs. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 04:30
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:Christ, gently caress centaurs. Every single time I've come across one it's been an instant game over. None of my consumables helped, plus it was way faster than me, and on top of that it does like a fifth of my hp with every arrow even with the awesome +2 dagger of protection I found. It's happened to 4 different characters, none of them could outrun the centaur to the stairs in time even if I managed to drop a conjured flame behind me and get around a corner, it just kept pursuing. Other people have hinted at this but didn't say it explicitly: centaurs don't shoot you when you're adjacent. If you just stand next to them, their danger level drops a lot.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:34
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Centaurs are basically your lesson in "learn to break line of sight or get hosed." Duck around a corner and then ambush them at close range when they come to look for you. Once you get in melee range they swap out the murderbow for a lovely sword and get drastically less dangerous.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:49
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Vehumet just gifted me Mephitic Cloud followed by Ignite Poison. 
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Dec 19, 2015 05:27
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OK, so the issue is that I was trying to outrun them when I should be going all in at melee range. I definitely underuse the imp summon, but it sounds pretty handy. I guess I never saw the use since I was only summoning one at a time to help me fight instead of a small horde. I also haven't used meph cloud much, but it sounds pretty drat useful. Thanks for the tips! It's refreshing playing a game where most of the problems I have with it are due more to my skill level rather than bad design.
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Dec 19, 2015 05:47
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Some people say wizard is a bad start but I think its one of the best if you utilize their starting spells properly. They have something to deal with almost every early game situation. Meph cloud can trivialize tons of monsters. Most of the ones immune to meph cloud will be obliterated by conjure flame, which is so strong you can reliably kill hydras with it. Imp hordes can be used to bog down enemies. Blink lets you escape. Repel missiles is a great spell throughout the entire game. The only spell in their starting book I don't use is slow, just because they are so experience spread that you can't afford to go into hexes early. That's their biggest weakness; so many good spells spread across tons of schools. You won't be able to get all of them reliably castable early on, but you can put enough exp into them that odds will be in your favor when casting them. You just have to be cautious and be ready to bail if you get a bad string of casts.
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Dec 19, 2015 05:54
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Yeah, wizard is a solid contender for strongest start after berserker. For me, only ice elementalist and assassin compare in reliably surviving the early game. You just have to realize two things. First, it's a melee (or ranged) background in disguise. Unless you luck out with spellbooks or follow vehumet, you need to work on getting a weapon usable as soon as you have your spells at a comfortable failure rate. And that relates to the second, which is that for hybrid starts like wizard or skald, a comfortable failure rate is between 20-30%. You can't play like other casters and try to get your spells below 10% ASAP, because by the time you do, you'll find you don't have a way to reliably kill things.Sergeant_Crunch posted:I definitely underuse the imp summon, but it sounds pretty handy. I guess I never saw the use since I was only summoning one at a time to help me fight instead of a small horde. I also haven't used meph cloud much, but it sounds pretty drat useful. Thanks for the tips! Wizard is my favorite background; I've played tons of them and won quite a few, but I still underuse the imps since I'm just not a fan of how summons work in this game. But they really are a key tool of the wizard. Meph cloud is your best spell in the early game since it automatically wins most fights if you get it off (but it's noisy and will attract other monsters, so be careful with it!) and the imps are your second most important spell. They can buy you a lot of time to escape from dangerous stuff and the stronger ones deal good damage on the first few floors. They're also immune to the meph cloud, so the major wizard strategy is to block enemies with imps then meph them and finish everything off with your weapon, retreating through your imps if things go wrong. How much you need the imps depends on your species. With a high elf, I rarely bother since you can get magic dart to max power quite quickly and that will be good enough until you can start to deal damage with a sword or bow. For an ogre, magic dart is pretty useless after d:1 and you need the imps to take out nasty stuff on d:2 and d:3, so I can't imagine playing without them.
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Dec 19, 2015 06:22
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 Well that certainly did the trick. I'm definitely in agreement about wizard being the favorite background. I love having such a huge variety of tools to deal with whatever I come across. You can get off all sorts of fun little spell combos.
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Dec 19, 2015 07:04
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Caught the end of a player doing this challenge. That was an interesting watch...
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Dec 19, 2015 08:25
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I never actually train a weapon skill on my wizard starts and I'm not sure I'd call it a "melee background in disguise". Like, you certainly end up stabbing confused monsters, and spearing monsters from behind pillars of fire, but there's no call to do that with more than 0 weapon skill and however many points of Fighting you would've been able to spare anyway. Your real powerhouses are non-red imps (white imps are killer) and pillars of conjured fire. That said, stumbling onto a random artifact with a +9 enchantment or something never hurts.
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Dec 19, 2015 08:35
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Ferrinus posted:I never actually train a weapon skill on my wizard starts and I'm not sure I'd call it a "melee background in disguise". Like, you certainly end up stabbing confused monsters, and spearing monsters from behind pillars of fire, but there's no call to do that with more than 0 weapon skill and however many points of Fighting you would've been able to spare anyway. Your real powerhouses are non-red imps (white imps are killer) and pillars of conjured fire. That said, stumbling onto a random artifact with a +9 enchantment or something never hurts. There are three reasons to train a weapon on a wizard. First, if you don't follow vehumet and don't get lucky with books, you'll run into serious problems with offense by the time you reach lair. You definitely can kill everything just with your starting spells even through the end of lair, but it will likely make you want to tear your hair out and it's far from ideal. Second, you don't really have anything else to train. Conjurations is of no use past 5-6 for magic dart, and even that is far from necessary. Putting two points into air and a point in poison for lower failure rate on meph cloud is a good idea. If you're a deep elf, going deep into hexes for a high power, long duration slow can be really good, but it's not worth it for most species. Your spells really only need enough investment for them to work in the first place and spell power is only really significant with slow (and maybe repel missiles, but there are far more important ways to use your XP in the early game), so there's no reason to invest heavily in casting. That means you can start training a weapon with only a little more investment into your spells as a skald would make and less than a hybrid ice elementalist. Finally, the book of minor magic is awesome for early game melee characters. Conjure flame significantly boosts your damage in lair, imps interfere and block for you as well as dealing solid damage early, blink is good for everyone, meph cloud is a win button for early game melee characters and slow is also a win button for things you can't meph if you invest in hexes, though that's rarely worth it. Sure, you can play a wizard as a straight caster, but it's one of the best backgrounds for melee and going for melee makes the early-mid game much easier. It's certainly a much stronger melee start than a skald, even if the book of battle is far better in the mid-late game.
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Dec 19, 2015 09:26
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So my MiBe char with high MR just got sent into the abyss by a random orc at the fourth level of the mines. After stumbling around the abyss for about half an hour, wasting all my potions and piety in process, I could only find 2 stairwells leading further into the abyss, but no exits, so I eventually died. Should I have just tried to go on further? I haven't been to the abyss that many times so I'm still unsure on whether the number/location of exits is completely RNG dependant, or if there is something I can try doing in order to get out
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Dec 19, 2015 10:34
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| # ? May 18, 2024 14:37 |
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I'll almost always go deeper - you get more exits, as well as the chance for the rune (on floors 3+), which also increases your exits. Incidentally, MR won't protect you if it was a random orc (with a distortion weapon) - MR will only protect you from the spell (Ogre Mages could have it, in Orc).
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Dec 19, 2015 10:42
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