|
every race MUST have a ~~~wacky~~~ drawback or they aren't truly unique and ~~~fun~~~ hell if minotaur was a race they were just adding now it probably wouldnt be able to read scrolls because cows cant read LOL Indecisive fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Aug 1, 2017 |
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 01:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 02:06 |
|
|
Dammit stop giving them ideas on how to gimp things They already can't wear helmets, isn't that punishment enough??
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 14:55
|
|
|
FR: Minotaurs get at least one randart helmet spawn per floor.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 16:18
|
|
|
FR: Quadruple the armor randart spawn rate for Felids.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2017 18:06
|
|
|
I just had a shapeshifter turn into a quicksilver dragon on D15. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 01:39
|
|
|
Interesting drawbacks that significantly change the playstyle and difficulty of a race are cool and shouldn't be discouraged by lame goons that want a homogenous mass of races with slightly different aptitudes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 02:12
|
|
|
tweet my meat posted:Interesting drawbacks that significantly change the playstyle and difficulty of a race are cool and shouldn't be discouraged by lame goons that want a homogenous mass of races with slightly different aptitudes. I'm pretty sure the average goon is all for quirky races with disadvantages. I just don't think they subscribe to the developer philosophy of "the negatives should otuweigh the pros, because if we give you nice things someone might win too easily, and other people winning is a hate crime."
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 02:17
|
|
|
See: Octopodes when they get out of the dire early game they have. It was fun to use all those rings and then have Statue Form to mitigate their lack of body armour slots but I had to kill..83 of them to get to that point. Only Vampires were that bad for me and they get online a lot faster.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:19
|
|
|
My two favorite races are probably ghouls and naga, both of which have thoroughly unique characteristics while being Good and Fun. Even with skeletons no longer having infinite duration for my favorite start, GhNe that immediately turns off necromancy and focuses on punch.  There is nothing good or fun about current gnolls.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 03:40
|
|
|
i subscribe to the philosophy of 'there should be a decent variety of races that can just use all the gear and play the style they want without having to be hugely restricted in how they play' With High Elf removed there are 3 races that I'd kinda classify as 'default' - HO, Hu, Mf. Gargoyle almost counts I guess since their gimmicks are almost entirely positive, MAYBE you can count the frogs but they are slow so that's a pretty harsh downside when 'pillar dancing' is considered standard gameplay. Demonspawn are close but frequently get armor restricting mutations and can't worship good gods - gargoyles cant worship yred I guess but who gives a poo poo. Deep elves don't count because they are SO heavily magic-oriented you'd be a fool or a masochist to do anything else - and minotaurs the opposite. Deep Dwarves have that no healing poo poo that means you have basically no choice for gods. I would give it to demigods if they weren't so loving horrible that they're considered a challenge race worse than mummies, who at least have a good endgame to look forward to after their early game suffering. Formicid are SO CLOSE to counting, but the antennae gently caress it up, with the no haste/tele it's too much. So. Out of 26 races, there are THREE left you can unequivocally say are 'normal' races. I'd say about 8 that are 'pretty normal but with small gameplay alterations' - Ba, Ds, Dr, Fo, Gr, Ha, Ko, Te. And that's being generous. That leaves 15, a sizable majority of the cast that vary from 'significant gameplay restrictions' to 'lovely gimmick race'. That's not a great ratio, IMO. Maybe gnolls will help tip the balance back, depends if they're too far on the 'demigod' side of the scale or not.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 05:06
|
|
|
Demonspawn always get an armor restricting mutation. They can sometimes go monstrous and get more than one. These mutations will never affect the body armour slot, however. This has been your useless Crawl fact for the day. I would have also thrown Trolls and Ogres into the "small gameplay alterations" set, since they are fairly approximate to Draconians in terms of limitations but are otherwise unchanged from the standard race.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 05:19
|
|
|
I've won 3 gnolls and they're easily my favorite race for skalds since I generally like to go super wide when I'm playing them. Nothing's amazing, but you can do enough of everything to get out of a pinch with some trick or another. I can see wanting some of the races to veer back into "close to default but with a gimmick" territory or just having the super gimmicky classes be a little stronger (except in a few challenge races), but I wouldn't want it to go much further than that. Ideally I'd say the majority would be the semi gimmick classes or strong full gimmick classes, with a small amount of purely default classes without many defining characteristics and a slightly larger amount of challenge gimmick classes. tweet my meat fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Aug 5, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 06:23
|
|
|
Indecisive posted:every race MUST have a ~~~wacky~~~ drawback or they aren't truly unique and ~~~fun~~~ I've unironically thought about "Deep Dwarves are blind and thus can't read scrolls" (or even replacing them with a race that has positive/negative benefits centered around blindness) as a replacement for their current "must worship Mahkleb" restriction. When I thought about it, scrolls fall into a few categories: - Would need a workaround that gives the same benefit (identify, remove curse, amnesia) - Bad scrolls (noise, random uselessness, vulnerability) - Smoothing the effects of floorgod (acquirement, brand weapon, ench weapon, ench armour, recharge) - Good but situational (fear, fog, holy word, immolation, silence, summoning, torment) - Holy poo poo not die (blink and teleport) Formicid's stasis gets the same effect while elegantly sidestepping the corner cases. Fo is a similar concept to DD (a strong ability, good stats, and solid defensive apts at the price of a game-changing drawback) implemented in an entirely better way. Even without counting frogs and gnolls I'd say the current races are pretty evenly split between gimmick-free races (Hu, DE, HO, Ha, Ko, Mf, Mi, Te), sort of gimmicky races (Sp, Og, Tr, Ce, Dr, Gr, VS, Dg, Ds, Gh) and undeniably gimmicky races (DD, Na, Fo, Mu, Vp, Fe, Op). The gimmick category has two of Crawls most fun and iconic races (Fo and Op) and it's undeniably worst designed race (DD). That said, I like how uneven aptitudes can shape a race, like how merfolk have great weapons and casting aptitudes but attempting to go pure melee or pure caster is complicated by poor armour and conjurations aptitudes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 07:57
|
|
|
Only tangentially related, but coming from a relative newbie (I've ascended, but only once), it irritates the piss out of me that Xom seems to have been designed in the direction of "just make the game harder" when there are much more interesting directions they could take his tuning and still keep with the theme. I guess they view taking his flavor text literally as a virtue. "Very different, but not necessarily easier or harder than other choices when played correctly" is by far my preferred design paradigm for the various deities. Meh!
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 08:00
|
|
|
Felids are fun
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 10:37
|
|
|
Toadsmash posted:Only tangentially related, but coming from a relative newbie (I've ascended, but only once), it irritates the piss out of me that Xom seems to have been designed in the direction of "just make the game harder" when there are much more interesting directions they could take his tuning and still keep with the theme. I guess they view taking his flavor text literally as a virtue. "Very different, but not necessarily easier or harder than other choices when played correctly" is by far my preferred design paradigm for the various deities. Meh! code:AppleDan posted:Felids are fun 
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 15:20
|
|
|
I'm playing a DrCj of Vehumet and I've got Glaciate online (had been training ice magic for a lot of the game). Previously my goto nuke for a high level caster was Firestorm especially with Vehumet because the range increase lets you hit things outside of LOS. So far Glaciate seems really neat but the lower range is rough - more time spent in enemy LOS. I've heard that they both have their uses, but what do people like about Glaciate? The enemy slowing? So far Firestorm seems like the safer choice for a squishy caster, and I'm wondering if I should be training ice to get better spell power for Glaciate or going hard into fire to get Firestorm online.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 06:36
|
|
|
Glaciate is the weakest level 9 in my opinion. The main advantages it has is being part conj so you can get it alongside firestorm etc easier, and having the best damage against orbs of fire. If you don't have the other big spells it's useful as a melee weapon to supplement firestorm as well. If it's at 1-2% you can stop ice and just get conjurations/other schools. It's not useless but it has the smallest niche and the limited range/damage dropoff really hurts it. Even at max power it won't oneshot a brimstone fiend at the edge of its range 100% of the time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 06:50
|
|
|
So one of the volcano map types literally sums up to, "if you didn't bring flight or the ability to swim so you can use the deep water tiles to dodge the eruptions, you just lose." Sigh, Crawl.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 07:02
|
|
|
Toadsmash posted:So one of the volcano map types literally sums up to, "if you didn't bring flight or the ability to swim so you can use the deep water tiles to dodge the eruptions, you just lose." Was it this map? This is the only one I remember at the moment with guaranteed deep water. If it is, the trick to it is to run from hut to hut and close the door in between eruptions to block the flame clouds. The entrance and exit are also zig zagged to prevent the eruption's flame clouds from reaching too deep. It isn't too much of a problem as a melee character with rF+, because there is also an alarm trap near the entrance to draw the majority of the enemies to the eruption free zone at the entrance. I haven't tried it with a spell or sneak character though, so I'm not sure how much more difficult it becomes. If it isn't, here is the rest of the volcano maps if you want to take a look.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 12:25
|
|
|
Glaciate is kinda nice because you can actually angle the spell around you to reliably hit everything you want to (in range), firestorm is always just that square with unreliable range, sometimes its big sometimes its not, and the vortexes are just a nuisance that get in the way of your other spells. The ice clouds last a lot longer than firestorms flames too (not ALWAYS a good thing), and you can never hit yourself with it. Shatter always seemed like the most disappointing, the damage isn't great (esp vs fliers which are pretty common lategame) and you dont often need the full screen hitting property, and breaking walls is often more hassle than help. I still haven't gotten to use tornado though, from seeing other people use it it seems even worse.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 13:32
|
|
|
Shatter doesn't check elemental resistances which is useful for some enemies (hell sentinels) and hitting everything everywhere is actually very nice, especially in places like depths or tomb. Tornado has by far the most damage per cast and blows everything away for mp efficiency, and does full damage to almost every single monster in the game. A tornado can kill a hell sentinel or orb of fire by itself and you can supplement it while it works. It suffers in tight corridors and isn't fast enough to be your sole killing tool but it also shares a school with chain lightning, the secret 5th level 9 spell. As an added bonus, it makes you immune to airstrike. Tornado is amazing and while shatter isn't as special it still has a bigger niche than glaciate.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 13:44
|
|
|
The devs have done a great job differentiating the high level blasty spells, not just the lvl9 ones. But yea, all four have distinctive pros and cons and for some hypothetical 72 rune char getting all four online is valid
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 13:54
|
|
|
Floodkiller posted:Was it this map? This is the only one I remember at the moment with guaranteed deep water. If it is, the trick to it is to run from hut to hut and close the door in between eruptions to block the flame clouds. The entrance and exit are also zig zagged to prevent the eruption's flame clouds from reaching too deep. It isn't too much of a problem as a melee character with rF+, because there is also an alarm trap near the entrance to draw the majority of the enemies to the eruption free zone at the entrance. I haven't tried it with a spell or sneak character though, so I'm not sure how much more difficult it becomes. The entrance isn't eruption free, but yes, that is (was) the map. How in the world was I supposed to guess that closing the door would block the clouds?
Toadsmash fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Aug 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 15:21
|
|
|
Toadsmash posted:The entrance isn't eruption free, but yes, that is (was) the map. Well the door is still there, for one thing. Doors are great.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:09
|
|
|
I got that map once, it was loving amazing, lava killed most of the enemies and I got free FR+++ from the first room, walked through and killed the rest
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:19
|
|
|
Doors block lava. Totally intuitive!
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:33
|
|
|
Doors have always been ways of dicking with clouds, both in DCSS and roguelikes in general
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:45
|
|
|
Volcanos are dangerous, if I don't have rf+ I'll usually skip them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:46
|
|
|
I had it. Won't save you from the clouds if you can't find any safe ground to recover. It wasn't the monsters that were the problem.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:50
|
|
|
taqueso posted:Volcanos are dangerous, if I don't have rf+ I'll usually skip them. Yeah, volcanoes and ice caves are death traps if you don't have the corresponding resist. I still go into them anyway because I love hubris, but I know it's my fault when I die to an Ice Fiend or molten gargoyle.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 16:51
|
|
|
I think I've died more to the giant then the fiend at this point of time. I laugh like a madman though when it is the necromancer.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 17:06
|
|
|
The one time I got the ice fiend version of that one, they spawned as a pair and both Tormented me on the first turn I saw them. So my welcome to to the end of that ice cave was being reduced to a quarter HP before I even knew what hit me. Survived it, though, after leading them on a merry chase and picking them off piecemeal! Good times.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 17:26
|
|
|
Volcanos are fairly easy in my opinion and I don't think I've ever died in one. Ice Caves are 100% a test to see if I was dumb enough to try it without the right gear. Either one, usually you're okay if you can get to the first batch of treasure because odds are there's a piece of gear lying around with a compatible resist on it which can make the rest of the adventure far less painful. The Frost Giant and Dragon have killed me plenty of times though. I think I'm so worried about the Fiend that I go nuclear with all sorts of buffs beforehand.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 15:05
|
|
|
there's an exit right where you start. if something shows up in an ice cave/volcano that you can't handle, you can always just leave.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 17:51
|
|
|
IronicDongz posted:there's an exit right where you start. if something shows up in an ice cave/volcano that you can't handle, you can always just leave. In theory, but can you really leave.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 17:54
|
|
|
all I want for the crawl community is for everyone to understand the power of walking away from dangerous things sometimes, you don't even have to come back to fight them later!
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 18:10
|
|
|
*tries to kill Maud, gets loving wrecked, runs away up some stairs* *walks back down different set of steps, quaffs might, tries to kill Maud again* repeat ad infinitum
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 18:13
|
|
|
IronicDongz posted:all I want for the crawl community is for everyone to understand the power of walking away from dangerous things If I walked away from dangerous things I wouldn't have to repeatedly replay FOs consistently dying after two runes for well over two months now.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 02:06 |
|
|
In a dark dungeon hallway, hot wind in my hair Warm smell of Toe Nail Golems, rising up through the air Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light My head grew heavy and my sight full of soot I had to stop for the loot There it stood in the portal; I heard the crumbling rock And I was thinking to myself, "This could be Pan... or this could be Hell" Then it lit up an umbra and showed me the way There were voices down the entrance, I thought I heard them say... Welcome to the random Volcano portal Such a dangerous place (Such a dangerous place) Such a dangerous space Plenty of gear in the random Volcano portal Any time it spawns (Any time it spawns) You can find it here
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 18:38
|
|