Crawl .20: Home of the Frog Dog

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Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

meatpath posted:

Where I End and Ru Begins

# TEAMCAPTAIN meatpath

P1: lacuna
P2: cliffracer
P3:
P4:
P5:

Open if anyone needs a team, no specific rules. I won't be able to play much this first weekend, but my goal is 5-10 GrFi wins at least this year.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2016 03:17

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 12:58

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Poison Mushroom posted:

Double-posting to say that I just shafted three floors, (got knocked to 5 HP by an ogre), fell to an ossuary level. Rested, found it at rapid hissing. Walk through the door-

Fall down a shaft three more floors.

Edit Get surrounded by a troll and a player ghost, shaft again. Three more floors.

Shouted "oh god dammit" loud enough that my roomie asked me to quiet down.

Pre-Lair shafting is something of crapshoot due to how hard the early dungeon levels scale. It's better than certain death, but burning consumables or avoiding the situation entirely is almost always the better option.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2016 06:39

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Fhqwhgads posted:

I just found the +4 morningstar of Bufilior {holy, Fragile rF++ rC+++ Dex+3} in the Ice Caves. I'm a FoFi^Oka mainlining Axes, and have a +1 Battleaxe of Venom and am mid-Lair. This thing looks like a lot of fun but fragile ruins it. Is this something I can use for a while before morningstars become too weak? How far could I take this thing?

Not worth it. Being practically immune to fire and ice isn't worth tanking your offense. A +4 morningstar wouldn't be worth respeccing over even if it didn't waste your two-handed bonus, and holy is a specialist brand for the early and mid game.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2016 05:25

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Speleothing posted:

2) On my cell phone I've got a DEFE of Veh and I need advice about what spells to take. LCS or OoD? Firestorm? I've had good luck with Summon Ice Beast paired with Freezing Cloud well into lategame when the Beasts otherwise would fall off, is that & Servitor reliable enough to get into summoning for? I'm lvl 22 and feeling a crunch on available spell levels, but have books of Power, Conjurations, and Annihilations available, and can buy a whole bunch of other ones.

I tend to prefer OoD as it means I can skip earth magic altogether, although in the postgame a DE will have experience to spare.

Firestorm is a no-brainer on a DE of Veh. For what you're getting you can stabilize it very easily and make the hunger cost manageable (if it exists at all). Once you have firestorm slime becomes trivial, so that's an easy rune 3.

Summoning isn't very useful when you're slinging level 9 destruction as all of them pierce resistances to a degree and have incredibly large AoEs.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 04:59

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Knocked 6 races off of greatplayer, 5 backgrounds off of greaterplayer, and 4 gods off of whatever the equivalent for religions is

TeAE^Veh
AE does a lot for your early game survivability, even if it falls off around Lair due to the unreliability of lightning bolt. Fortunately Te have no trouble branching into other conjuration schools as long as they can get the spells.

DgGl
Not quire as awful as mummies, but still pretty awful. Most races tend to even out lategame as you start playing to their strengths. With Dg you feel the -1 apts and no god abilities more and more and the slightly increased stats less and less.

HOMo^Beo
A race with +3 axes, +2 fighting, and +1 armour doesn't need an irresistible smite and the ability to fill the entire screen with orcs.

KoWz^Sif
New Sif is actually a pretty solid competitor with Vehumet. I'd actually rank them higher for 3-rune games. For postgame it's something of a tossup. Sif's channeling doesn't match Vehumet's magic return when fighting crowds but is much better at dealing with single targets like Hell lords.

OpIE^Che
IE is a much stronger start than Tm. You've got freeze to substitute while you're building up UC and Ozucubu's Armour to make you less squishy, while the starting Tm spells are usable at best. For spellcasters/transmuters I wouldn't rank octopode as more difficult than average--you're just trading body slots for ring slots. They're certainly better than demigods, who are going to be awful no matter how you build them.

TrBe^Tro
Somehow the first and only TrBe win of the tournament

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 21:10

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Floodkiller posted:

My only Orc Jesus win was to just be buff enough to beat everything by myself and let my orcs spawn and die around me. Whenever I needed to escape, I used them as meatshields to buy me time to tele or climb the stairs. When some of them got lucky to get names, I gave them my bad randarts (and eventually, Firestarter).

I tried recalling on the entrance while escaping with the Orb, but nobody came. I may not have been a very good Orc Jesus.

Winning with Beogh is about learning to treat perma-allies as disposable chaff. It's useful to have a reserve of powerful units but if you put effort into keeping them alive they're more of a liability than an asset.

And the allies are almost flavor compared to how game-changing smite is.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2016 01:47

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

IronicDongz posted:

this is incorrect

warlords will shred absolutely anything in a 3-rune game and you are hugely incentivized to keep them alive, while smite is useful but even with faith you can't use it all the time and it's mostly just a "once in a while for a problem enemy" thing.
you just have to have the presence of mind to not suicide to keep orcs alive, but that's not hard when you can retreat like normal and then recall to get them out of trouble(and also res them at high piety if need be)

I'm being a bit hyperbolic but I think letting Beogh affect your mentality is a mistake most players make the first few times. There's no god who turns the game into Fire Emblem. A warlord is an immensely powerful consumable (and a consumable that you get to keep if you win or run away early enough), but they're only valuable to the extent that they keep you alive.

Smite is unique in being (to my knowledge) the only 100% unmitigable way of removing a problem enemy. Even if you don't want to think about when to use it you can still trivialize every unique and player ghost in a 3-rune game.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2016 07:45

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

As a relatively new player, can someone explain the appeal of sludge elves? I looked at their apts and I can't tell how they're not just mermaids with an OC donut steel name.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2016 06:05

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

StoryTime posted:

So High Elves bit it, huh? I feel a bit nostalgic, since HEFE was my first 3 rune win. I personally don't mind the change though, I think it's fine that sometimes old stuff is thrown out and new stuff is put in. The only thing I'm wondering is what are we supposed to recommend for new players who want to try out casters? High elf elementalists seemed to be the go-to training wheels caster characters. Should there be a training wheels caster option?

Ogres are not it, I don't care what the new spell aptitudes are. Deep elves aren't it either, they're way too unforgiving. Maybe just human, or kobold? I don't know, I don't play that much straight up blasters.

I found GrEE the easiest way to learn spellcasting. You've got good apts for your main offensive skills (+2 earth/+1 conj/+0 fire/+0 ice) and if you run out of mana you're still a decent melee fighter that gets the the AC/GDR of chain mail and the evasion of a robe.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2016 23:45

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

lazorexplosion posted:

Saying 'we can just replace wands of haste with more haste potions' fundamentally misunderstands an aspect of game design.

Finding a haste potion seven times is less exciting than finding a single wand of haste once.

Finding 0-1 haste wands has more variability than finding n haste potions. The dramatic difference in tool availability gives different runs different advantages and disadvantages which gives them a different flavor each time.

Removing the strong but rare wands literally makes Crawl less exciting and varied. The way that you have a potions with baseline availability and wands with swingy availability is actually a strength not a sign of redundancy that needs to be removed.

Haste is too powerful to be put on a wand, especially one that doesn't require any skill investment to use. The ability to recharge wands means that finding a haste wand gives you near-unlimited use of the most powerful buff in the game. Haste wands remove the resource management aspect that makes haste balanced.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 08:00

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Carcer posted:

Does HW scale at all? I've always invested a little in evocations after finding one to try and squeek some extra benefit out of it.

No. The only big three wand to scale with evo is teleport, and that's only when using it offensively (i.e. when you'd be using a hex wand instead).

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 09:42

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

euphronius posted:

The only way I can gets casters off the ground is by starting as a fighter.
Game so much harder with no AC.

Stealth is consistently on-par with heavy armor pre-lair. Losing those starting two pips means giving up the ability to freely walk away from things you don't want to fight.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2016 16:26

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Ferrinus posted:

I've always liked the idea of renaming "demigod" to "human" and getting rid of the as-is human.

This, but I'd remove human instead. The name makes them sound newbie-friendly when their lack of focus tends to make things more complicated for those unfamiliar with the game's systems.

Maybe bump up Dg's fighting/spellcasting from -1/-2 to 0/-1 to make them a bit more versatile.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 03:09

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Heithinn Grasida posted:

I agree with this but I still don't like demigods. I only have one win with them, so I can't be considered an expert, but I think the lack of religion would actually be an interesting thing to play around if the species by itself were stronger to make up for it. Demigods barely feel stronger than humans without a god until quite late in the game. High HP is overridden by the awful XL growth, so that humans will often have higher or equal HP anyway and high stats are overridden by poor apts.

"But Heithinn Grasida", some will surely say, "don't you know that -1 is actually the baseline, average apt and so demigods don't have poor apts at all? " And I'll reply that for the most part that claim is misleading nonsense. Even if it were true that the actual average aptitude is -1, which if I recall, is not the case, there's a big difference between the average aptitude of all skills over all species and the average aptitude of skills into which players actually invest. Most merfolk will use polearms and ice magic, not axes and fire magic. Many centaurs will use a bow. Tengu will probably cast air magic, and not earth magic. Minotaurs invest in weapons, fighting, dodging and armor and only might dip a little bit into casting. Even though the distinction between species based on aptitudes is growing weaker, it is still very strong. It's reasonably to claim that -1 aptitudes are workable, but it's preposterous to claim that they're average. The average aptitude for skills into which players make deep investment is probably a little under 1, which is much higher than -1.

Demigods really need faster XL growth, there is simply no reason for it to be so low other than flavor, and they really need better apts. As it stands, they're weaker than many species that can follow a god for most of the game. That changes by the very late game when XL growth and aptitudes are not so important, but they're just miserable to play right up until the very end. If you want a game where you're very strong, but have to adapt to what the dungeon gives you, play a human of Chei or Ashenzari. Both experiences will be like playing a demigod, except fun. Making demigods fun won't require making them gimmicky, but it will require making them not suck.

I recommend a slight increase in their base stats, boosting their defensive apts to 0, their fighting to +2 and their spellcasting to +1. This keeps the feeling that it's a little harder for them to master specific skills than humans but that they're naturally good at everything. Reducing the amount that they will spend in XP sinks that every demigod is going to invest in will enable them to more versatile, in spite of slowish growth in specific skills.

I strongly recommend at least a big buff to their spellcasting, if nothing else, because high int and high spellcasting makes for very fun casters that can do a little bit of everything. DE has that but DE never wants to be a hybrid. If Dg had big spellcasting, I think they might be able to assume a similar playstyle to that which was lost with the removal of HE.

I think demigods are in the right general area difficulty wise but I'd agree that they could use a little push to be closer to demonspawn, formicid, and naga (power with a price) than to mummy and felid.

+3/+3 is a huge buff, especially to skills as broadly applicable as fighting and spellcasting. It'd probably be sufficient to give +1 str/dex to even out the current 11/12/11 start and +1/+2 fighting/spellcasting. 0 spellcasting on top of solid stats would put hybrid and wizard builds on the same level as fighters. It also allows the chassis to be easily summarized as "12 in every stat, 0 in fighter, mage, and thief, and -1 in everything else".

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 05:20

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Darox posted:

Yeah a ghost with fireball on d6 is way more likely to kill you than one in vaults 5 with firestorm.

So I've been looking at the code for player ghost generation

code:

void ghost_demon::add_spells(bool actual_ghost)
{
    spells.clear();

    for (int i = 0; i < you.spell_no; i++)
    {
        const int chance = max(0, 50 - failure_rate_to_int(raw_spell_fail(you.spells[i])));
        const spell_type spell = translate_spell(you.spells[i]);
        if (spell != SPELL_NO_SPELL
            && !(get_spell_flags(spell) & SPFLAG_NO_GHOST)
            && is_valid_mon_spell(spell)
            && x_chance_in_y(chance*chance, 50*50))
        {
            spells.emplace_back(spell, 0, MON_SPELL_WIZARD);
        }
    }
...

What appears to be interesting is that while raw_spell_fail doesn't seem to apply the stepdown, it does apply wizardry

code:

int raw_spell_fail(spell_type spell)
{
...
 chance2 = _apply_spellcasting_success_boosts(spell, chance2);
...

And unless there's something going on with brilliance duration, potions of brilliance don't seem to care that you're dead.

code:

static int _apply_spellcasting_success_boosts(spell_type spell, int chance)
{
    int fail_reduce = 100;
    ...
    if (you.duration[DUR_BRILLIANCE])
        fail_reduce = fail_reduce / 2;

The chance of a spell being added to a ghost is ((50-fail%)/50)^2, which unfortunately makes the wizardry failure reduction less useful. If we want a ghost with a 50% chance of getting fireball we need to go from 160 (default failure for a level 5 spell) to 30 (which will become 15 with brilliance).

For int, we take DEFE (+12/+7), with +1 at levels 3 and 4, and brilliance (+5) for a total of 26. This means we need 160 - 30 - 52 = 78 from skills to hit our goal. We get ~12 points per average of conj/fire, so disregarding spellcasting we need an average of just 6.5 between these skills.

So if we find a scroll of amnesia as well we should be able to get a low-level ghost running around as early as D4 with nothing but fireball and sticky flame.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 04:16

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Floodkiller posted:

If anything, the skill cap is more likely to go down over up. I'll leave it at 14 for the next iteration as I don't want to start heavily designing around pro players (there's a recorded winning game with the highest skill being 7.9!), but I'll probably use it as a tweaking number if the species only needs a minor step in one direction or the other to 'feel balanced'. Also, increasing the number to accommodate shields would have the same argument pop up as to why I can't accommodate it for 16 skill weapons, etc.

I dislike the idea of busting the skill cap from a design level. It's incredibly hard to balance; giving the player the ability to break the skill cap on a single skill will likely result in picking whatever their main Kill Dudes skill every time, and they will likely have a lot of opportunity to train it to max (or whatever max they care about) with the excess XP they will have when they don't have any other skills they are interested in training. Even with slightly lower defenses, this basically gives them the same difficulty in the late game as every other species, while still having a much easier early game (since the skill cap doesn't matter until you hit it). I'd have to introduce some downside to doing so, and I haven't been able to think of a downside that sits on the exact edge between 'always do this' and 'never do this' to make it an interesting enough choice. However, if you (or someone else) can come up with a good idea that I feel could balance it, I do have an idea of how to implement it relatively painlessly.

What if the skill cap were tied to the number of runes ~~collected~~ fetched?

The cap starts at 11, is raised by 1 for each of the first three runes, and 1 for every three runes after that. So a standard 3-rune run ends at 14 and a full 15-rune run ends at 18 (These can be tweaked for balance and still look nice as the first three are special and 12 is divisible by 2, 3, and 4). This way the cap is less of a hard stop and the postgame doesn't leave them behind while still favoring hybrid over specialist strategies.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 06:51

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Araganzar posted:

Here are all the spells that are worth casting as a smashman in plate once you get fighting/dodging/armor to 12 or so....

Massively useful, worth the investment on any non-GDA build. Each one of these spells will save your rear end in multiple situations:
Level 1
Summon Butterflies
Level 2
Blink
Repel Missiles
Level 3
Regeneration

Also very useful:
Level 1
Corpse Rot
Animate Skeleton
Level 2
Song of Slaying
Corpse Rot
Level 3
Spectral Weapon

You also should invest in throwing, crossbows, or bows around that time. The purpose of ranged is not to kill monsters but to damage them enough as they come in so the math turns in your favor. You'd be surprised how much difference a hand crossbow at 8-10 skill can make.

I'd put Swiftness on the first list, as it's a lifesaving disengagement tool and is close to free if you're getting Repel Missiles anyway.

Spectral Weapon shines a bit more on hybrid characters (especially polearms) as its damage/defenses scale with spellpower. Lesser beckoning/portal projectile might be more relevant to low-int builds.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 05:28

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

I just saw this on CBRO trunk in a game I started a few hours ago.

What happens to removed spells/items in existing games when they're updated to a new version?

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 05:08

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

apple posted:

I kinda wish armor decisions were easier to make with hybrid characters; it's a big investment as it is to decide to level up strength (following that encumbrance = str rule of thumb), but I also need to know roughly how much armor skill I also need so that spell success chance isn't ruined. Is there "conventional wisdom" for these type of characters beyond matching encumbrance rating with strength, like the amount of armor skill you want?

The reason for this is that strength is less of a decision than skill.

7.6 * (Encumbrance Rating)^2 * (45 - Armour skill Lv) / 45 / (Str + 3)

If we look at this, each point of strength increases the denominator by one, so each subsequent point has less and less effect. This leads to a "sweet spot" which is invoked by the encumbrance = str rule of thumb.

On the other hand, each point of armour skill decreases the penalty by the same amount (1/45th of the total value).

So if we're wearing red dragon scales (11 enc) and have 11 str, the formula becomes

71 * (45 - skill) / 45

So ignoring wizardry abilities, each point of armour skill increases our spell success by about 1.6%. Lighter armours will see lesser effect and heavier armours will see greater, with 0% per level for a robe and ~3.4% per level for GDA (assuming 23 strength for GDA). To compare, for a single school spell spellcasting gives ~3% per level and the school gives ~12% per level.

When choosing whether to invest in armour skill I generally use the fact that each level gives about 4% base AC per level. So you can use the formula

Levels for 1 AC = 1 / (0.4 * base AC)

So if we have 10 base AC (scale mail + boots + gloves + cloak + helmet), it will take 2.5 levels to get a point of AC. A robe wearer (6 base AC) will get one every 4.2 levels and someone in CPA (18 base AC) will get one every 1.4 levels.

Knowing the scale of the effect is generally enough to make a decision.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 03:18

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Darox posted:

I think the armour skill/AC relation is easier to understand if you know that 0 armour skill gives you 1x your total base armour value and 27 skill gives 2x base armour, and everything between is a linear progression.

I checked the source and it looks like the value is

code:

// [ds] effectively: ac_value * (22 + Arm) / 22, where Arm = Armour Skill.
const int AC = base * (440 + skill(SK_ARMOUR, 20)) / 440;

So my rule of thumb would be easier (and more accurate) as

Levels for 1 AC = 22 / base_ac

Which means the robe user would get one every 3.7 levels, the scale mail user would get one every 2.2 levels, and the CPA user would get one every 1.2 levels.

I wouldn't mind the game being more open with numbers like this. As it stands there's no way to know the scale without looking up the numbers, and there's no way to look up the numbers without going directly to the source. It might also be prudent to remove some of the less relevant effects of skills such as missing due to armour.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 04:22

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Carcer posted:

Do the stairs not put you in the "entrance" areas of the different floors like the old stairs would? Can you potentially land directly in the loot vaults on tomb 3 now?

I could actually see this working. Tomb 1 happens normally, then a collapsing shaft takes the player directly to the rune vault. They'd then have to do an Indy run through tomb:3 and tomb:2 to return to the surface. The stairs between 3 and 2 could be similarly 1-way.

It'd require a number of changes to make it viable for the player though. For instance, more enemies would start asleep and less would have shouting, torment would be restricted to priests, and the level geometry would have more corners and pillars to allow greater control over LoS.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 00:18

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

vulturesrow posted:

Thanks for the Vs suggestions a few pages back. In the same vein, how about Octopode? I'm trying to branch out into all the different races I've never tried before so any cool and/or non-obvious combos would be appreciated.

Also, since I'm still basically relearning this game, what is the general strategy for use of enchant weapon/armor and brand scrolls? I know this is going to vary a lot based on the particular circumstances of any particular game but any kind of general strategy with regard to those scrolls would be awesome.

I'm pretty fond of OpIE. You train ice magic (with a bit of charms and summoning) until you can cast everything in the starting manual, get a bit of fighting and dodging, then turn everything off and go hard into UC.

Freeze avoids the weaknesses of low-level UC (slow, inaccurate, low damage), Ozucubu's covers for Op's squishiness, ice beasts clear earlymid threats like hydras, and throw icicle gives a solid ranged option. I use whatever enchanted weapon I find to clear out skeletons/zombies in the early game. I tend to pick Chei but most non-Trog gods work.

Post-lair you'll have pretty much everything you need (high UC, decent fighting/dodging/invo, enough magic to cast spells) to make the build work. Things like transmutations, lesser beckoning, and deflect missiles cover additional weaknesses. With Cheistats and no armour pretty much anything is castable.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2017 03:02

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Indecisive posted:

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 wouldn't be able to read scrolls because cows cant read LOL

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

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

I kinda think the game as it exists is too long to possibly play like this and I also doubt that anyone who plays at present really wants this. Clicking a button for actions you do 100 times/game is fine, but you attack tens of thousands of times per game and you don't want to mouse to the proper directional button each time, trust me. Like yeah, learning a keyboard-based UI has a front-loaded cost but I imagine that most of us paid that cost in like, 2002 with nethack or whatever.

Console mode should really have some degree of mouse support though.

There's a very interesting usability study run by a student group that seems to support this. They ran 4 students who had video game experience (but not roguelike experience) through the Crawl tutorial to observe

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:usability_project:dungeon_olms_report

quote:

First tester was 24 years old experienced on gamer who specially liked online role-playing games. Test had to be stopped by moderators since the laboratory was booked only for hour. At this time tester was playing the third lesson. Otherwise there was no problems on the test. Player was frustrated with multiple control possibilities and had troubles finding suitable combination. This shows on the video where tester uses arrows and numbed for moving, mouse for selecting and other keys for actions.

I had a similar experience transitioning from the download version,which has mouse and clickable menu options, to webtiles, which doesn't. There was an initial learning hump but I realize I would have quit after a game or two if I were using the mouse. It's slightly more familiar but it leads to hunting through the icons instead of learning the button commands with ?, and every use of the mouse takes your hands away from the keyboard.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2017 01:29

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

This is probably the first obviously and unambiguously bad dev decision I've seen. It's not just that eating the purp is a fun but (usually) suboptimal way of providing variety. It's also a valuable comeback mechanism. It means that if you're horribly mutated and out of potions you'll always have a generous but limited number of mulligans. A player with resists, AC, and a supply of mut potions isn't going to use it (if playing optimally) but a character who is weak on the strategic layer is much more likely to be helped.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 04:46

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

pathetic little tramp posted:

When you kill a mutagenic enemy like a sky beast or an ugly thing, it should leave a mutagenic cloud.

There's your time-sensitive 'should i do it?' choice, plus maybe you can hang around in the cloud for a longer time to try getting a bigger set of muts

Plus now there's a way you can gently caress up when you kill things and oh poo poo to get away from this fight I have to walk through mutagens because i hosed up

This seems more like Nethack's design philosophy than Crawl's. It's "did you know you can intentionally stand in mutagenic clouds to re-roll your muts?" instead of a few clear "do you want to mutate yourself? (Y/n)" checks.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 02:55

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 12:58

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Tollymain posted:

what was the point of sludge elves back in the day i don't really remember

# ¿ Dec 21, 2017 03:14

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