Crawl .20: Home of the Frog Dog

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Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

code:

A - the +11 demon blade "Ibrintuo" (weapon) {vamp, Str+3}

Thanks Trog! I don't think I need any more weapons.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 02:11

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 11:41

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Araganzar posted:

It was quite useful for one of the two main caster gods (Vehumet). Spell gifts that time out meant ever keeping spell levels in reserve or placing an insane prioritization on SC. Quite a common situation actually: I'm playing VM, say, I got flame tongue from Veh and I am pushing fire. I want to get Venom Bolt but I don't want to lose a good fire spell. With book ripping, I have a free amnesia of that spell since I want to keep all the others.

Same thing without Vehumet to a lesser degree - in that case it's why not go ahead and mem a lesser-used spell since I can amnesia it without losing a scroll? Or say I find book of flame, I wasn't going to go fire but what the hell, I can mem sticky flame or fireball because I can use the book it came in to un-mem it. Without this mechanic, I leave it on the floor. One of the main joys of this game is picking up things off the floor and using them.

To me, this is a strong argument both for relevance/usefulness. It also encourages branching out, using less "optimal" spells, trying ones you wouldn't ordinarily cast. It's a real bummer to play a caster sometimes when you feel like you have to save levels for "core" spells since you have no innate ones. With this mechanic, I try a lot of new spells, my game has more variety, and I when I find a new book I am encouraged to memorize a spell I have room for rather than feeling frustrated.

The flavor on the mechanic is also wonderful. The problem was it was buried alive. How about exhuming it with a spell list option or notation or something?

DATS MY ARGUMENT DEAL WITH IT EMOTICON OF OGRE PUTTING ON SHADES

In the utopian alternate reality in which crawl features are voted on by SA posters, resulting in an amazing game ~~absolute poo poo show~~, this feature has my vote.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 23:12

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Just got my obligatory MiBe win so I can resume splatting casters in vain. Got a +11 demon blade "Ibrintuo" {vamp, Str+3} on Orc 1 and basically tab-o the rest of the game, even though I got abyssed twice, this was the easiest game I've ever had.

One interesting thing I saw was that in Zot 5, both entrances to the lungs were 1-wide and had a zot trap. I didn't know what to do, eventually I just stepped on to it. Nothing serious happened on the way in, but I got abyssed on the way out with the Orb, came out of the abyss on the wrong side of the trap and stepped on it a third time, this time with no ill effects. Is this something new that happens by design? What are ways around this (other than teleporting)?

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 12:20

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Definitely Lair, also your weapon skill should be much higher than 8.I usually train weapon exclusively until 10, then add other skills but leave weapon on.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 21:36

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

MOVIE MAJICK posted:

What does it do?

It turns you into a crawl Donald Trump, unable to stay away from a fight even at 3am.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2016 22:56

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Sage Grimm posted:

The top 3 were all Spriggans. And I think all three of us were Enchanters too. Ideal!

Meaningful player choice: achieved!

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 22:57

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Hey Floodkiller, if teleportitis and berserkitis are the malmuts you save your pots for and they're what's ruining the whole system (being so much worse than everything else, you just put up with everything else), why not simply remove those two mutations?

Then malmut is meaningful and you have an incentive to play within the system and try and remove other muts according to what you're trying to achieve with your character?

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 20:27

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Shoutits is something you can play with, you still have control of what you're doing, you just have to account for drawing more enemies. Malformed reduces your AC, whatever, there's too much AC anyway for most AC dependent characters.

Quick trip report with the new sandblast. I had so many stones by the end of D1 it was never even remotely a concern. Based on this one game, I'd call it a buff to EE not a nerf. You start out with 30, and it looks like they've upped the spawning for stones on D1. Of course this is based on a single run (that ended badly in the sewers).

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 20:36

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Can Of Worms posted:

Your original complaint was that the removal of the big wands slows down the progress of new players into the game (a claim that is itself debatable since new players should not be seeing those items often anyway), not about its impact on how players improve at the game. Most new players aren't interested in learning how to play well, they just want to see what the game has the offer. And wizmode is one of the best ways to do that! Want to find out how insane Shatter is? Just wizmode a character with 27 Earth and Spellcasting and 50 int and go to Vaults:5!

Wizmode is also a good learning tool for things that need a lot of investment, like spells. You can just fire up a character and experiment to see exactly how Leda's Liquefaction works, or how good Upheaval is at high invocations, or why summoning a bunch of trees is a level 5 spell. And of course, there's the notorious... fsim...

Using wizmode to find out what the L9 killer spells do sounds like the worst thing in the world to me. The excitement I got from casting Shatter for the first time, and it was a real run (and my first caster win), was great. Same for firestorm, glaciate and tornado. No way would I have wanted that ruined by using wizmode. To me, it was almost as good as winning, just getting to the stage of being able to cast them and seeing what they do.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 20:39

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Can Of Worms posted:

This sounds like a pretty good argument to keep the big wands removed.

To be clear, I wasn't opining one way or another on the removal of the wands. Just stating my opinion that trying spells out to see what they do in wizmode is sad.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 22:01

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

So, some more thoughts after another run with EE where I didn't have nearly as many stones and ran out.

Not having to wield stones is a buff of sorts since it allows you to take more chances on picking up a blue weapon and not being afraid of not being able to cast with stones anymore if it's cursed. Not being able to cast sandblast at all without stones is obviously a nerf which really only affects very low level chars since by time you get to L6/D3 or so you both have other options, and likely enough stones anyway.

So, the only ones being really affected are very low level chars who really have few if any other options (a DD or Gr can melee a bit I guess). Now, the HOM in this case is not a strawman IMO, I always used to switch between using my stones or not, saving them for stronger enemies until I had 50 stones or so, so I would definitely be dropping them at first for weaker enemies. However, IMO again, this is not as big a deal as it's made out to be. First of all, you're not just having to do something tedious, dropping stones is also a bit dangerous since you can't control when you'll get them next as much as when you simply unwield the stones, so there's a meaningful choice here. Secondly, it's only something you'd be doing for the first 5 minutes or so of the game anyway. If it were up to me, I'd keep the casting from inventory but allow the casting without stones and let players drop if they want to.

All in all, I don't really care, since even if the change kills my char, it will happen 5 minutes into the game so whatever. I guess if I were good enough to streak and cared about my win rate I'd be more upset. But there is a slight buff here (see above) merged with the nerf so meh.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 22:23

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Darox posted:

I've realised that my favourite gods are acquirement gods. Acquirement gods in this case being any god that gifts you permanent benefits that are not intrinsically linked to their worship. Vehumet, Kiku, Gozag & Trog are usually my first choices for worship. Even the bad gimmick acquirement gods like Jivya feel more attractive than those without.

The only non-acquirement god I really like is Makhleb. I basically never choose Ash, Fedhas, Yred etc

This is a very weird position to me, because not only is sandblast useful well beyond level 6, it remains your best tool for a long time. At level 6 LRD will still have a large failure rate, huge hunger and empty your mp in a couple casts. Stone arrow will do similar or less damage than a single sandblast while draining significantly more mana. Even when you get into lair and level 12+ sandblast is still doing heavy work and can kill yaks, frogs, komodos etc with ease. It's like that guy who says static discharge isn't useful beyond D6, it's just an absurd statement.

Like I said before I'm sure an EE can still survive without running out of stones if they ration themselves and use stone arrow more whenever they can get away with the mana inefficiency (much like noted fun playstyle of rationing arrows/bolts by using melee) but sandblast is very good and the number of times you want to cast it (or any other level 1 spell) outstrips the number of stones any player will find. I usually pick up a stack of stones on d1 and by the end of lair I usually have maybe 300 stones, in that same time my typical blaster character will use their level 1 spell 1000 times.

e: Really, the stone rationing problem has always existed and is one of the reasons that EE are a pain to play (alongside LRDs targeting requirements which are more strategically interesting) but this just adds more weight to the problem. It wouldn't be a huge deal if EE got stone blasts all the time without needing ammo.

I completely agree, sandblast is useful throughout most of Lair even in my experience. I meant that after about L6/D3 you can ration your stones more easily by having access to other spells, you can survive running out of stones because you have other options (wands, weapons, etc), and most importantly you probably won't run out of stones because by D3 you usually have tons of them.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 02:22

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

In what way would it be better?, at worst just ignore him. I rather like having his perspective here even if it's sometimes presented in an annoying manner. At least I know more about what the devs are thinking and how they think.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 07:12

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

The crawl readme has pretty good compilation instructions. I got it running on the Mac quite easily.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 00:10

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

PleasingFungus posted:

I'm told it's more of a pain on Windows.

I guess having a unix toolchain through xcode helps, yeah, but cygwin would probably give you the tools you need, at least it did 10 years ago when I last used windows

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 07:08

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

They can actually save you early on by inserting themselves in the way of the D2 gnoll.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2017 02:10

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

How does the frog not have apportation by tongue? Seriously lacking IMO.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2017 02:19

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

vOv posted:

So what's the new blasty caster race?

Same one it's always been, Deep Elf.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 22:02

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

PleasingFungus posted:

sorry, i didn't give enough context there. i retired a while ago:

after i got pretty stressed out while trying to take responsibility over every part of crawl dev. everything i've been doing since then has been on a purely pro-bono, consultative basis, as a crawl-dev alumnus.

i guess basically the point, aside from repeating old dumb in-jokes that amuse only me, is that crawl dev is a team project. unless i install myself as crawl dictator (which sounds like one of the worst fates imaginable), all i can do to shape the direction of development is to argue my positions as persuasively as i can. sometimes consensus is gonna go against me, and that's just the way things are!

gently caress dude, I thought you got voted off the island or something...

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 06:22

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Janissary Hop posted:

It's time to just say that Crawl is done being developed and release a final version and be done with it. The constant tinkering to things that are only important to the IRC cabal with commit privileges shows that either there's nothing left of consequence to do or there's no willpower to address things people outside the speed run clubhouse actually would like to see changed (e.g. post game). At some point you've got to walk away.

What, didn't you know, Crawl is done being developed. The final release was 0.14, or maybe 0.15, or could it be 0.16, who the gently caress knows. Since it's final release, some arseholes created a branch of Crawl from that final release and basically all the new versions are just a branch by these arseholes. Some other arseholes keep updating the online versions to this branch these other arseholes created. But really the game has been done for a while now.

Basically Crawl is full of arseholes is what I'm trying to say.

~~And also that you can just pick some version, call it final and play it and just ignore the ongoing release you big loving baby.~~

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 06:25

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Reading about this change, and all I can think is Robin becomes terrifying.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 04:33

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

PleasingFungus posted:

the major design hurdle there is, screamitis means you need to have three different verbs for shouting. (e.g. shout/yell/scream, meow/yowl/caterwaul). frogs have... ribbit, croak... croak loudly...?

galumph of course.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 10:14

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Microcline posted:

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.

There could be a whole game within the game here, generating the deadliest player ghosts for the their D level.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 06:03

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Darox posted:

Demonspawn casters are good, much like all demonspawn. A decent number of mutations are great boons to a caster, and most of the remaining ones are universally useful for survival.

They're actually really good for a blaster who isn't doing shoals, the yaktaur vaults, or throwing things like ball lightning around. When your gameplan involves spitting damage at distant enemies using a limited resource an extra +30% damage is amazing. Harm-boosted fireballs tear through everything.

I don't know about that, I keep getting spirit shield on my DsNe attempts

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 01:12

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Darox posted:

Spirit shield by itself is not great but levels two and three are absolutely amazing for casters so it's a win overall.

Oh wow, just read about the mutation, you're right, I did not know this, I assumed it just applied the spirit shield effect more strongly (i.e. I didn't really think about it, because what I just wrote makes no sense).

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 02:53

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Sure, it's a no brainer, but what is the alternative? They didn't change anything about the reason you needed to use rmsl. At the end of the day, like the vast majority of the changes, this makes the game even harder. This thread and Tavern are mostly populated by people whose biggest decision is wether or not to do extended, but I've been playing crawl for 18 months now and I've only got 5 or so wins. Guess I better git gud or keep playing MiBes for my only tourney win every six months.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 03:13

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

IronicDongz posted:

not only do you not ever need to use rmsl, it's also pretty unimportant. it was just "the investment is so low you always ought to despite it being a weak buff", which is quite dull

A couple things here, firstly you're the guy who holds the speed record, so what you consider pretty unimportant and just a crutch is very different for someone not as good at the game as you. Secondly, even your argument that it's a weak buff ignores that it's simply been removed, so it may have made the game only a little bit harder, but it still made the game harder. My point is exactly that players like you have more influence on the game and are making it harder for players like me to enjoy the game. I am bad at crawl, happy to admit it, i got better than when I started, but I now feel I'm stuck at my level. I can count on winning a MiBe or MiFi within the time span of a tourney, but it took me 100s of attempts to win a GrEE and a DrFE and I feel a GrEE has just become harder than when I won it.

Your post further down saying Crawl is easier than other RL is again besides the point that Crawl is bloody hard already and making it harder isn't making it better.

Now don't get me wrong, I love to read your point of view on the game in general, you and the other people who are really good at this game, but you are not the majority and it seems that the devs are, even if they profess not to, taking your point of view as a baseline for the game, and in thus doing, ruining it for the rest of us.

I enjoy sacrificing casters one after another, but sometimes it gets so frustrating I have to put the game away for a while, and the harder it gets the more likely I am eventually to give up. Now you could say I should get better, and that's a legitimate point of view, but it's hard to stay motivated to get better when the target keeps getting moved further away by the devs making the game incrementally harder.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 08:13

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Skull.gif: Seriously, how can you say that removing wands of HW and Tele hasn't made the game harder for crappy players like me? It may have been a crutch, but it was a well used crutch, and the 10% increase to the scrolls/potions has certainly not made up for it. So basically, it's increased the times where I had a character who would have survived after burning through 5 HW charges to one that died. When you're wining 0.5% of your casters, that means you need to play 200 more games to get another win. I haven't won a caster since that change, BTW, because I'm a bad player.

Now, that may be OK, and I'm not saying it isn't. All I'm saying is that crawl has become, TO ME, frustratingly difficult when not playing a MiBe. I don't know how representative I am of the player base, but I have a feeling I'm more representative than the people who regularly 15 rune and hold speed records.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 00:34

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

On the game getting harder or not, winrates don't tell the story because you're not seeing offline. New players play offline more than older players so if their winrate is dropping, your not seeing it. I play offline for the most part because CPO is laggy as gently caress so you're not seeing my lovely winrate.

On Battlespehere being removed, once again, this is making the game harder in the name of an "interesting choice". Can't wait to hear how I'm wrong and this isn't making it harder and is actually a good change. If all the obvious choices get removed, new and bad players will be even more lost than they are already. gently caress this poo poo.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 11:55

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Panic! at Nabisco posted:

I mostly agree with you re: Crawl's general difficulty going up, but removing no-brainers is strictly a change that benefits new players, because they're only no-brainers to people who know what they're doing.

I disagree. Case in point, this change. Until now, you ask for advice here on a good caster combo to get started, hell, it was just a few pages ago. People answer, take a DeCj, bring up conj and charms until you get BS going. Now that's a good basis to learn about how to be a caster. Now, there is no basis so not only has it gotten objectively harder, it's gotten even worse for new players. As good as force lance may be, it's harder to use properly for unskilled players, so basically Cj starts are non viable for newbs or bads. But hey, they added choice, amirite? I think it's time I dropped this point and switched to 0.19 instead of building trunk on my laptop.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2017 12:27

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Random question to PF or other devs. Has the player survey completed? Are you going to publish the data?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 04:25

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Cicadalek posted:

I have a newb question. If you're starting as a conjurer or other class that has no weapon, is there a particular weapon type to look out for? obviously stuff with a good brand is best, but I don't know if a spear or dagger or hand axe is better with 0 weapon skill.

My take (a bad player's take), a dagger is the closest with 0 skill to having mindelay, so I always prefer a dagger. A spear is also useful in being able to attack over 2 spaces (like over a conjured flame).

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 03:28

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

IronicDongz posted:

Yeah but you have no reason to still be wearing robes with low defensive skills as DE by lair

on my latest game(which I was actually recording for demonstration purposes but radeon relive hosed up and the recording is corrupt, agh) I had like 15+ AC, around 20 EV as DE in ring mail slightly before lair, with about 10 fighting and dodging and all my required spells castable. I got a bit lucky with aux armor but it's not been very abnormal, on a more lucky run I could get +Str equipment and wear heavier armor while still casting the same spells or just get higher enchant stuff/prot rings/etc

Holy poo poo, sounds like you're playing DEFE very differently to how I do it, and since I have had no success, I'm very very keen to learn and improve.

Can you please detail a few things?

1. What are the spells you consider required? Is Fireball included in that list? What success percentages?
2. How do you allocate your attributes? Do you not go all INT, what attribute spread should I be looking for by XL11?
3. For this DEFE with the required spells castable with AC 15+ and EV 20, what's your skill spread, what should I be aiming for?

Hope this isn't too demanding, I'm really dying to find some success with a DEFE instead of just dying...

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 04:44

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

IronicDongz posted:

Lots of info about playing as DEFE

Thanks for this, it is much appreciated. Do you have any morgue links I can browse? Especially more recent ones with details about individual skill levels?

In general, if I wanted to look up some of your (and other good players') morgues, what's the best way to go about it? I can find your morgue files but they're just text files and there's no indication what you played in each one (short of clicking into each one).

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 06:42

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

IronicDongz posted:

Well, you can look at people's player pages on akrasiac, which do show info like background/god near the morgue links. Here's mine. You'll notice that my winrate isn't actually very good, though to be fair I mess around a ton most of my games... also it has games from like 2013 shortly after I started playing, I definitely wouldn't look to my earlier games as a model of how to play. Also looking at games by someone like Yermak or zzxc would probably be better anyways!

A better way to find good players than via akrasiac directly is probably to look at the recent scoreboard page, where you can sort highscores by species, time(I'm still #1 ignoring AutoCrawlBot, what's Demise occupied with?), etc., and also look at winstreaks. Kinda nicer in terms of UI and also(for the most part)excluding bots.

Thanks again, suffice it to say, I'd be enjoying the game more if I had your win rate...

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 06:55

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

So I'm trying out this new approach to durable DEFE. So far, it's not bad, I haven't had the usual close calls which is a positive.

Sif's given me quite a few options to branch out and I can't really decide which way to go. I'm thinking Iron Shot is the broadest single target kill spell, Poison Arrow a second choice (due to many rPois enemies), but Freezing Cloud looks tempting too. Would love to hear your thoughts!

http://pastebin.com/raw/8zMFxyB8

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 10:56

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

someone awful. posted:

If spell hunger didn't exist I'd never use gourmand.

Though X of Vehumet with a staff of energy and gourmand casting firestorm is the ultimate comedy option.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 08:55

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

PleasingFungus posted:

*in wizmode webtiles

Huh? I didn't know webtiles had wizmode?

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 06:54

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Well, his base MR isn't dependent on the specific game (i.e. you could look it up outside the game), so the game shows it to you. But his actual MR, taking into account his armour, would be unknown to you at that point. So it shouldn't be shown, unless you somehow knew that he was wearing an MR robe.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 22:54

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 11:41

Unimpressed: Feb 13, 2013

Matty posted:

Getting a 100% crash in my current 0.19.3 save when i attempt to go from (cleared) elf 3 > 2, it crashes every time i try the stairs. No crash log generated. SEND HELP

Surviving Elf is resulting in an Unexpected State error.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 01:47

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