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Matty posted:I'm still playing on 0.19 because i don't see a single thing or feature i like about 0.20. Frogs are cool.
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Jul 16, 2017 22:35
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Someone oughtta revive Extra Hearty.
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Jul 16, 2017 23:30
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I did it! 15 runes with MuFE^Sif, now to never ever play mummy again. Kidding but MAN was that rough, and extended wasn't the cakewalk the race promises either. Well, a lot of it was significantly easier than normal but it took some time to get used to doing hell on a caster with bad regen. I struggled for several hours and over 10k turns doing Gehenna first, in and out like 30 times, later on once I had a system down (and Spellforged Servitor up) it only took me 10k turns to do all of Pan. I actually poked into Tartarus first because "it's the easiest branch" before remembering that it's also the DISPEL UNDEAD branch, had an extremely close call and got the gently caress out since controlled blink wasn't ready yet. Tomb at least was easy as hell, torment is definitely the scariest thing in there, the ushabti's can dispel undead but are easy to kill and there's usually only 1 or 2 bennu's in the whole place. I suppose Cocytus was easier than normal cuz ice fiends, Geh was mainly hard because I for some reason was dead set on doing it first after getting kicked out of Tar and all the fire immune stuff was a kick in the dick. If I'd come back after getting spellforged servitor it would have been another story, but I had never used it before and didn't realize how good it is. Anyone looking to do 15 runes on a blaster should get Spellforged Servitor. Holy gently caress is it good. And if you've been pumping Conjurations hard it doesn't take that much Summoning to get it usable. Get rid of any lovely low level spells and it will just poo poo damage on everything. For 6 mana it basically kills every trash mob you can't be arsed to deal with and even hard targets if it has time to focus on them. Mine had Bolt of Fire, OoD, Force Lance and LCS, so the worst case scenario was still pushing enemies away and giving us more time to blast. LCS itself I was pleasantly surprised with, sure it can miss but so does bolt of fire and when you need single target damage it's a great upgrade from iron shot which has far worse accuracy. OoD is still probably better overall, though, due to the range, but LCS is definitely better when poo poo gets close. http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Inde/morgue-Inde-20170716-214534.txt I did find the +8 orange crystal plate armour {Archmagi, Int+3 Clar} near the end of the run, which I was sorely tempted to train armor to use, and I perhaps COULD have used it, I think spellforged servitor would have been castable, but firestorm and cblink definitely weren't so I didn't do it.
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Jul 17, 2017 00:38
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Fhqwhgads posted:I'm on a roll with a TrBe who was gifted a +6 Demon Whip of Freezing very early in the game, which I quickly made +9 (because I'm going claws and don't have anything else to spend scrolls on). The thing is, I really wanted to go claws on this run, but how can I say no to a +9 dwhip? It was only skill 12 to max it out, and berserkers don't have much to spend skills on. At what unarmed level will my claws be better than this, if at all? Going maces isn't the worst plan with a troll since you can eventually use giant clubs, but if you really want the claws I'd say just keep training unarmed while using the whip until it starts getting hard to kill poo poo. No idea at what point the damage starts pulling ahead though, probably at 15-20 UC, so by the end of vaults maybe? Good lord I just looked at troll aptitudes and they are a nightmare, poo poo I thought mummies were bad. For the armor I'd probably go acid, when you're spending all your time in melee every AC point is valuable, but when in doubt just check the numbers, if your EV goes down more than your AC goes up then go back. Trolls have garbage dex though so training armor and wearing heavier stuff is going to work out better overall though I think.
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Jul 17, 2017 01:03
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Just worked with gammafunk to get the new version of Gnolls merged to Trunk (since the previous version was disliked by every dev except Brannock, and balancing wasn't fixing the issues). Instead of a scaling skill/aptitude, they just have +3 in every single aptitude. However, they are permanently locked at a statline of 7/7/7 (as in, it cannot be increased or decreased by any means). Feel free to leave feedback/criticism/sarcasm if you do mess around with it!
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Jul 17, 2017 02:00
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That sounds a lot more interesting, since it doesnt matter how fast you get a skill to 13 (or whatever the skill cap was) if you functionally can't train it higher than that. Even with bad aptitudes you'll have your most important skills to 10+ by lair-ish, speeding that up just to slam on the brakes was baffling to say the least. Then again, I never tried it so I can't say with any certainty. edit: yeah I just tried a quick game on CAO since it isn't updated, everything was going great then by lair the skills I was using were at 9 and hit -3 aptitude and it was hell. Capping stats feels better since stats aren't something you actively pay attention to much anyway, sometimes you get gear that increases it and once in a while you get a prompt to raise one but the rest of the time they're just there, but skills are something you are always kinda paying attention to and when they stop going up it feels way worse. This way gnolls can really go all out and train what they want and have the flexibility to pick up a new weapon or something (can you imagine switching weapons after you painstakingly got it up to like +18 or something at -6 apt? NO) but the low stats will keep them from being amazing at anything. Indecisive fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 02:18
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Indecisive posted:Anyone looking to do 15 runes on a blaster should get Spellforged Servitor. Holy gently caress is it good. And if you've been pumping Conjurations hard it doesn't take that much Summoning to get it usable. Get rid of any lovely low level spells and it will just poo poo damage on everything. For 6 mana it basically kills every trash mob you can't be arsed to deal with and even hard targets if it has time to focus on them. Mine had Bolt of Fire, OoD, Force Lance and LCS, so the worst case scenario was still pushing enemies away and giving us more time to blast. LCS itself I was pleasantly surprised with, sure it can miss but so does bolt of fire and when you need single target damage it's a great upgrade from iron shot which has far worse accuracy. OoD is still probably better overall, though, due to the range, but LCS is definitely better when poo poo gets close. I've tried to make servitor work and I've heard lots of praise for it, but I've always been disappointed by it. I guess I play blasters differently because the servitor can't cast most of the spells I use late game and also gets hurt by most of them. Even when I did bother learning LCS it didn't cast nearly quickly enough to justify over firestorm. I guess in the midgame it's pretty good for mana efficiency but a level 7 dual summon spell is a big investment for that.
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Jul 17, 2017 03:08
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LordSloth posted:Overall, I highly suggest more firestorm, screw the noise, interspersed with occasional bouts of just running away. In early abyss, a silent approach may work. When you get deeper, so many monsters spawn that stealth is underwhelming unless you've gone hard into it. Just Firestorm (TM). Alternate Plan A: Sublimation of Blood, Regeneration, care and alternate methods when reserves get too low. Alternate Plan B: Necromutation and a staff of channeling. Alternate Plan C: Amulet of mana regeneration, staff of power, flight/boots of running, stealth, and excess ?teleportation and !ambrosia. Wait, how deep into the Abyss can you go? I always chicken out around 5, is there a cap / depth where it starts to get to Zig levels of difficulty?
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Jul 17, 2017 03:11
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Darox posted:I've tried to make servitor work and I've heard lots of praise for it, but I've always been disappointed by it. I guess I play blasters differently because the servitor can't cast most of the spells I use late game and also gets hurt by most of them. Even when I did bother learning LCS it didn't cast nearly quickly enough to justify over firestorm. I mean sure it can't use the level 9 power spells, it would be busted as hell if it could! But say you are fighting like, a titan, or a juggernaut, or a golden dragon, a hard target that firestorm isn't going to do much to (OK firestorm will still do decent damage but cmon). You could dump your full mana bar on spells nuking it down.. or you could spend 7 mana and then kite the drat thing around while the servitor lays into it. Or keep blasting it yourself and do basically double the amount of casts per turn. In hell or pan you often need the ability to win a fight and keep moving without stopping to rest, or just fight a bunch of stuff that keeps coming at you one or two at a time, where firestorm's mega efficient AOE isn't doing much. It's not a spell you're going to get for midgame (who trains summoning along with conjurations?), it's something you pick up late, when you already have all your spells good to go but you're capped on damage because you can only cast one spell per turn. If you have spellcasting and conjurations both at 20+, then you only need to get summoning up to like 10 maybe to get it castable. Plus, you really don't have to worry about hitting it with firestorm - it can survive one easily. You do have to worry about it occasionally bopping you in the back of the head with a OoD though, because those things are a little wonky. And it's not really a fire and forget thing, it only attacks when you do - so if something wanders in to sight, you either have to hit it with something yourself, or tell it to attack. Once it's fighting though it seems to pick new targets when the old one dies though. It's kind of finnicky I guess. I'd suggest giving it another shot though, it's very good. think of it this way - if it hits even one enemy with an orb of destruction, it just paid for itself.
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Jul 17, 2017 03:31
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It's more a case of "spend 14-18 mp and kill the threat immediately" or "spend 7 mp and run around while a dangerous enemy chases you". When something fast and deadly like a juggernaut shows up you don't want to faff about with kiting, you want it dead now. Similarly something like a fiend is only dangerous if you give it time to make mischief. I'd rather take the 15+ spellslots servitor asks for and get regeneration, sublimate and another level 7-9 spell. It also always gets in the way of chain lightning, shatter, tornado. If the servitor is getting killed by my general-purpose spells (or worse, absorbing them for CL) it's not very helpful. And it definitely is not like having double the casts. Even ignoring the spell limitations it doesn't cast anywhere near once a turn.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:06
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often as soon as something scary shows up you can back around a corner or out of LoS and then cast servitor so you have it from the start of the actual fight without having to spend a turn vulnerable casting it anyways most of every caster game I don't use level 8/9 spells, I use bolt spells and iron shot.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:37
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Suit yourself I guess, I don't think it's fair to say Servitor takes "15+" spell slots like you aren't going to be using those spells yourself anyway. I really doubt you're throwing down nothing but level 9's on everything that walks in sight. And It's far easier to get servitor active than to get a 2nd level 9 spell online. Maybe for a DE you can have firestorm and shatter and cblink and etc etc etc but for a mummy you're looking at a much larger commitment just getting a single spell that high. I had LCS at 2% but I don't think shatter was even close.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:40
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In my typical DSAE game chain lightning would become castable sometime around the first and second runes. Demonspawn apts are pretty so-so and their int isn't anything special, so most races should be able to match it. Similarly a FE should be able to use firestorm around the time I want to collect my third rune. Once I have those spells past the yellow failure/7# hunger mark I definitely do use them for any and everything even slightly threatening. I would still use fireball and so on but anything that dies to 1-2 fireballs doesn't justify a servitor.IronicDongz posted:often as soon as something scary shows up you can back around a corner or out of LoS and then cast servitor so you have it from the start of the actual fight without having to spend a turn vulnerable casting it This is reasonable but when this would be helpful for my casters the skill & slots investment of servitor is pretty prohibitive. I guess it's just not for my playstyle.
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Jul 17, 2017 05:37
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Goffer posted:Wait, how deep into the Abyss can you go? I always chicken out around 5, is there a cap / depth where it starts to get to Zig levels of difficulty? Abyss only goes five deep, and the rune starts showing up on three. Iirc all going deeper does is enable some vaults and make more of everything spawn. By staying on abyss:3 it will take longer to find the rune, and I think that the handmade vaults are most likely to approach early-mid zig difficulty, aside from... I guess the earlier character was a deep elf, so the most dangerous thing was probably executioners, followed by hell sentinels or crystal spear casters depending on line of fire. I'm really more used to assessing the risk with armored formicid, ogre, or draconian casters, so I'm probably missing a dozen lethal possibilities.
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Jul 17, 2017 05:53
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I _think_ I'm ready to take a shot at extended for the first time. I'm playing MiBe (of course) and have two runes, have cleared Elf completely, Vaults through 4 and the first two levels of Depths. My current weapon of choice is a +6 battleaxe with vamp, rN+, Str+4, Int +4. Wearing GDA at the moment, although I havent eenchanted it any. On hot standby I have an executioner's axe of distortion. I also managed to find a eveningstar of holy wrath and a large shield of reflection. I figured the eveningstar and shield might be useful for extended. I guess this is the point where I switch to TSO? I have an amulet of faith in use currently which should help right? Whats the "process" for switching and living through penance? Also I found a trove that wants 6 potions of haste. I have 10 total..yea or nay?
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Jul 18, 2017 16:32
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vulturesrow posted:I _think_ I'm ready to take a shot at extended for the first time. I'm playing MiBe (of course) and have two runes, have cleared Elf completely, Vaults through 4 and the first two levels of Depths. My current weapon of choice is a +6 battleaxe with vamp, rN+, Str+4, Int +4. Wearing GDA at the moment, although I havent eenchanted it any. On hot standby I have an executioner's axe of distortion. I also managed to find a eveningstar of holy wrath and a large shield of reflection. I figured the eveningstar and shield might be useful for extended. I guess this is the point where I switch to TSO? I have an amulet of faith in use currently which should help right? Whats the "process" for switching and living through penance? Also I found a trove that wants 6 potions of haste. I have 10 total..yea or nay? I'm a sucker for trove's but if you've got 10 potions of haste and it only wants six, do it man, roll the dice. Also, what level of enchantment is your executioner's axe? A battleaxe with vampirism is kinda nice and what you've got has carried you decently but it isn't anything incredible. I do not like distortion as a brand for a bunch of reasons but if I were you I'd enchant the gently caress out of your executioner's axe and use any brand weapon scrolls you've found on it to get it to something a little better. I don't know if the math works out but a fully enchanted executioner's should do more than enough damage to negate the need to switch to your eveningstar, even if it's holy. And unless I'm mixing up my good gods, you can always just bless your executioner's axe into a holy one with TSO, right? Just keep in mind mindelays on your weapons. Speaking of switching to TSO: it sounds early to me. You've only got two runes and without looking at your character sheet I think Trog's wrath could end up being far worse than sticking with him until you're tanky enough to make the switch. Extended typically refers to Pan and Hell, and without having cleared V5, Slime, Abyss, Depths... you've got a ways to go but I am a little more paranoid about tackling certain branches for XP/loot. I haven't run one of these characters in a while though so I may be off, but these were my first thoughts.
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Jul 18, 2017 16:49
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Thanks for the advice. I think you were right in saying I wasn't quite ready since I just died. gently caress caustic shrikes forever. 
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Jul 18, 2017 16:53
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Nobody's ready for Caustic Shrikes. Except tornado casters.
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Jul 18, 2017 18:34
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I love this thread, the payoff is so quick. "All right guys I'm thinking of taking my character into... welp dead."
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Jul 18, 2017 19:05
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LordSloth posted:Nobody's ready for Caustic Shrikes. Except tornado casters. It's been a while since I've run in Caustic Shrikes, but don't Scattershot wands absolutely clown them?
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Jul 18, 2017 19:25
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Probably? Shrikes have at least 90 health, and scattershot wands aren't detailed anywhere I can find in the wiki or learndb. i'll have to check that out with my 0 evo dudes and my actual evo training dudes.
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Jul 18, 2017 19:31
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LordSloth posted:Probably? Shrikes have at least 90 health, and scattershot wands aren't detailed anywhere I can find in the wiki or learndb. i'll have to check that out with my 0 evo dudes and my actual evo training dudes. I'm pretty sure scattershot wands are completely identical to iron rods aside from not auto-recharging, back from when rods existed. They were one of the wands added to duplicate unique rod spells and scale well with high Evocations when rods were removed, along with clouds. Personally I would have assumed that they aren't accurate enough for caustic shrikes (don't they have good EV?) but I've never tried - I haven't played the new versions enough to encounter caustic shrikes regularly. If more than one pellet hits, they ought to do enough damage, though. Prism fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jul 18, 2017 |
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Jul 18, 2017 20:46
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So theoretically if someone playing a GrEE ^Veh found a the Wyrmbane lance in a shop (slay drac, rPois, rF+, rC+ AC+3) would you advise they start working toward hybrid polearm user? And if so do you abandon Veh? And if so, do you do immediately (3 pips of piety) or wait? Asking for a friend. pathetic little tramp posted:I love this thread, the payoff is so quick. Literally every time I ask for advice in this thread I'm dead shortly after. I tried to tell my friend that but he wanted me to post anyhow.
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Jul 19, 2017 14:58
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vulturesrow posted:So theoretically if someone playing a GrEE ^Veh found a the Wyrmbane lance in a shop (slay drac, rPois, rF+, rC+ AC+3) would you advise they start working toward hybrid polearm user? And if so do you abandon Veh? And if so, do you do immediately (3 pips of piety) or wait? It depends. If you've got the cash and nothing else has shown up in any shops and you're not using a staff or other artifact that's helping you cast stuff right now then absolutely, go for it. You can be wrecking fools at close range and nuking them at long range. But the issue is splitting the XP into the polearms that you might prefer to have going into spellcasting/conjurations/earth magic instead? Regardless, Wyrmebane is awesome and you should grab it at some point. EDIT: I forget how Wyrmebane works exactly too. Could you just nearly murder a dragon and then switch to the lance to get the kill? FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jul 19, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 15:06
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Ignite blood is really fun and powerful
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Jul 19, 2017 15:13
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This game. 
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Jul 19, 2017 15:25
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I would never abandon Vehumet as an offensive caster who already had her, and instead be appreciative of another way to get on-kill mana that doesn't cost mana to use
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Jul 19, 2017 16:55
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So I just had my first proper peek into extended. Playing as a MiBe of Trog, then switched to TSO, died in Gehenna in a totally survivable situation. I had no idea what magic I should look into, and still don't. Here's my morgue if anyone wants https://underhound.eu:81/crawl/morgue/Gravitas/morgue-Gravitas-20170719-135739.txt. I'm not looking for advice as to how I could have survived in Gehenna, a Hell Fiend took the credit but it was really tedium and a desire to not spend ages going from Vestibule to Gehenna 7 over and over again like I did with Cocytus. When I died I was pretty ambivalent, at that point the game was mostly hammer tab for ages with mild dashes of excitement. I had plenty of consumables and could have run away earlier, there are a billion tactical choices I could have made to easily survive that fight so don't worry about advice for that. What I would like is some advice on what spells a melee character should be aiming for (if you're wondering why I had Bolt of Fire, it was more idle curiosity to see how long it would take / whether it was possible to cast it in plate). I should definitely have spammed more of TSO's angels and blast I guess. The one level of Tomb is because I cleared Crypt before deciding to do end game - next time I'll leave Crypt for the conversion. I found the Snipe unrandart crossbow thing (the one that can't miss) - should I have used that rather than my Fustibalus. Should I have been using an eveningstar and a shield instead of a great mace? I know that my reflection was pretty useless with a SH of 3.
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Jul 19, 2017 17:06
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What are the thoughts on the new gnolls? I'm not a huge fan, but I'm not sure if that's just me - and I haven't had time to play them much, so I'm interested in hearing from people who have and their thoughts on them. For people who haven't seen them yet: they have permanent 7/7/7 stats that cannot be changed by any means whatsoever and +3 in all aptitudes. Prism fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jul 19, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 17:14
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I have a scarf of repulsion and an amulet of reflection. rmsl only shows in the status line when I wear the scarf. Does one work better than the other? Do they stack?
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Jul 19, 2017 17:21
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taqueso posted:I have a scarf of repulsion and an amulet of reflection. rmsl only shows in the status line when I wear the scarf. Does one work better than the other? Do they stack? They don't do the same thing. Reflection bounces ranged projectiles (including spells that can be shield-blocked, like Orb of Destruction or Iron Shot) back at the originator if you can block them with your SH, but doesn't actually help you not get hit by them - though the amulet specifically gives you a little bit of SH and it stacks with a real shield if you're using one. RMsl makes those same attacks, along with penetrating beams, less likely to hit you but doesn't throw them back at the origin point. You can have both and get both effects, but having RMsl won't make you bounce attacks more often; Reflection reflects attacks that are blocked by SH and RMsl doesn't improve your SH. RMsl shows in the status line because it used to have a spell that granted it temporarily. It doesn't anymore so it can probably be sent to the resistances screen IMO. edit: fixed wording for clarity and to note RMsl applies to beams. Prism fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jul 19, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 17:30
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taqueso posted:I have a scarf of repulsion and an amulet of reflection. rmsl only shows in the status line when I wear the scarf. Does one work better than the other? Do they stack? It's two different things. RMSL adds to your chance to dodge missiles including many spells. Reflection gives you a chance to return missiles to their attacker. Greyman posted:What I would like is some advice on what spells a melee character should be aiming for You won't be able to cast anything that requires spellpower effectively so conjurations (basically anything that does damage) are out as are any hexes that have spellpower-based resists. Generally late game the only useful spells are a few from Charms - Regeneration, Song of Slaying, Swiftness, and Spectral Weapon. Most of the good hybrid spells - Deflect Missiles, Phase Shift, Stoneskin, weapon buffs, Insulation - have gone the way of the boulder beetle. Many races can go heavy Air and some hexes and get Silence and Deflect Missiles. Others especially stabbers, can go heavy Hexes and get Darkness/Invisibility, and maybe Mana Vipers/Summon Forest. Statue Form is also Quite Good albeit Quite Expensive. Heavy Necromancy investment can get you Simulacrum and Death Channel and necro is a decent single-school investment if you have ANY int and ANY necro apt. Cowever, your friendly neighborhood minoman has Very Bad Spell Apts and generally wants Very Heavy Armor. Short of getting amazing casting+melee gear investing more into invocations or defensive skills is usually a better bet.
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Jul 19, 2017 17:42
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What if some skills that are duration-based (buffs like invis or silence) were changed to permanent with a spellcasting malus or mana reservation? Temp buffs you have to keep reapplying are really boring.
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Jul 19, 2017 17:51
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The one that went away was the level 2 Air/Charms spell Reflect Missile, to clarify. The one that Araganzar recommends getting is the level 6 big brother and still remains. I've been rather nonplussed by Summon Forest in the late game. Shadow Creatures is your no-brainer Summons pick for 3-rune hybrid games.
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Jul 19, 2017 17:53
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Prism posted:
Having all the stat formulas punish you makes a lot of things surprisingly unfun about them that you'd think would be fun. You basically go "Oh man I can train everything this is awesome" --> "Everything I trained sucks this is terrible". It's supposed to be fun that you can ignore all the passive items with + and - stats, and potion of degeneration does nothing, but with straight 7/7/7 as your stats you're solidly mediocre forever. It doesn't make -stat items suddenly good, they still have a worthless slot, it just makes +stat items bad. I've only splatted 20 or so so far, but so far bleh. The one kinda uniquely good thing they have going for them is crossbows and support casting, but it's still pretty rough.
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Jul 19, 2017 22:39
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Anias posted:Having all the stat formulas punish you makes a lot of things surprisingly unfun about them that you'd think would be fun. I haven't splatted as many as you yet, but that's the way I feel about them so far. They can do everything, but not well enough that I want to do those things. No stat mods is basically entirely a penalty, even if it does protect you from degeneration and a few mutations. I think if they at least got their background's stat bonuses and they just couldn't be changed once the game started, it would help a lot (possibly only getting half the background stat mods, or have 5+background, or something). I probably still wouldn't use them, but at least I could see how they might be an interesting choice. Prism fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jul 19, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 23:00
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Having less than 10 str makes melee attacks incredibly lovely. Having less than 10 int makes offensive casting super lovely. Having less than 10 dex means you can't even try to stab well. I'm not sure what they are supposed to do.
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Jul 20, 2017 08:03
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Anias posted:Having all the stat formulas punish you makes a lot of things surprisingly unfun about them that you'd think would be fun. They're not even mediocre at everything. They're *bad* at everything. Really bad at everything. Bad in a way even mummies don't quite reach. To put it in perspective: 7 STR is tied with a Human Wizard or a Spriggan Warper, among other things. Going lower than this is stuff like DEFE, SpEN, and FeSu, spellcasters where you may not even bother with melee at all. 7 INT is tied with a Ghoul Skald or a Human Berserker, among other things. Going lower than this is stuff like MiFi or TrGl where you may not bother with spellcasting even if you don't worship Trog. 7 DEX is tied with a Ghoul Wizard, an Ogre Wizard, and literally nothing else. Going lower than this is impossible outside of a really weird Wanderer roll. 7 STR is so low that the damage formula is taking that as a penalty rather than as a bonus (100% damage is at 10 STR, for reference), and means wearing anything heavier than scale mail is going to hit you with severe accuracy penalties. And that wearing any armor with a decent AC score means goodbye to spellcasting and stealth. 7 INT doesn't actually impede spell failure that much, and you can actually still get even level 9 spells up and running if you invest deeply enough in them and wear robes. What is ruined is spellpower. You can have 27 in every single spellcasting school + spellcasting and you still won't break 50 spellpower on anything without enhancers. In effect, anything that requires good spellpower to be useful (i.e. almost every offensive spell and several buffs) is complete rubbish as a Gnoll. In addition, spell hunger is an actual issue for the species, in between you needing to cast much more than usual due to lovely spellpower and the fact that int also influences how much spellcasting reduces spell hunger, so you will be starving very quickly after each fight. 7 DEX means that evasion doesn't exist for you. You gain literally just 12 EV going from 0 dodging to 27 dodging, assuming you're using robes. In addition, like with strength, the accuracy formula is being penalized by your garbage DEX stat rather than helped by it (baseline accuracy is 10 DEX, for reference), so your melee damage output is hurt in two separate ways. Combined with armor penalties, the base accuracy of weapon types actually matters with gnolls. The thing is that's at the start of the game. Every other species can, even if they don't get +Stat equipment, have their stats raise as they gain exp. A mummy will gain an additional 14 points in stats while leveling up, 5 chosen randomly and 9 chosen by the player. Most species do better than that one way or another (with Demigods getting a total of 18 of their choice at the other extreme). Gnolls don't get any of that at all. So what is already a serious gap at the start of the game becomes crippling once you hit endgame, especially once you start hitting skill caps (since +3 apts are the only thing that let Gnolls at least pretend to keep up with other species. For an example: I did fightsims between a HuFi that got average level up stat distribution luck and put every point into strength (statline of 26 STR/10 INT/14 DEX) against a GnFi. Both had 27 long blades skill, with the HuFi having 20 fighting skill and the GnFi having 27 (as compensation for the +3 apt), were both using a +9 triple sword of freezing, and were pit against an orb of fire (the hardest to kill enemy you will reliably face in a 3-rune game). The HuFi had an average effective damage of 17.2, while the GnFi had an average effective damage of only 10. The human is doing over time 72% more damage than the gnoll, and against an orb of fire that is a big deal (especially since the human can actually afford to use better armor without ruining their damage output even further and may still have better evasion than the gnoll, so the odds that they end up being blasted to death before the orb of fire dies is going to be lower). And that's still much better than spellcasting, where offensive spells aren't worth using past the very early game at all (if even that). Probably the "best" Gnoll is a Gnoll Summoner, since summons don't really care much about spellpower at all, and the EXP penalty means you aren't training much outside of Spellcasting and Summoning to begin with (so the +3 apts there are really nice). And even that's still done better by most other species one way or another. the Orb of Zot fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Jul 20, 2017 |
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Jul 20, 2017 09:11
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man with non-boostable stats youd still be seeing it as a tradeoff with good starting stats
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Jul 20, 2017 09:32
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| # ? May 14, 2024 10:41 |
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From yesterday, but I don't like new tomb stair gimmick at all. I didn't die in Tomb, mind ya'. I died in Pan acting like a jackass, BUT I went to pan because Tomb was pissing me off.
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Jul 20, 2017 10:00
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