[crawl] YASD

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

I thought that this would be my second win, but that was not to be.

A MfTM is a very powerful combination, and I suppose I got a bit cocky
after clearing most of the dungeon (all branches except the Tomb (too
scary) and the Slime Pits (no teleport control)), Cocytus, Dis, and a
bit of running around in Pandemonium.

The death was certainly avoidable. I was fried by a hellion throwing
hellfire on L6 of Gehennom after being tormented by a tormentor. The
hellion was in a river of lava, so I couldn't close up on it, and
stupidly tried to run away too late instead of either blinking away,
or running away earlier when getting tormented. Especially stupid
since I was planning on just finishing Gehennom and then doing Zot.

A nice game overall. Not much armour (this was the transmuter I
mentioned in the other thread - he more or less had to keep Ozucobu's
armour active all the time in melee), but the ring of the Robust made
up for that, later joined by the ring of Shaolin. Add to that Oz, and
Forescry for the bigger fights, and you have a quite respectable AC
28/EV 36.

Dungeon Crawl version 4.0.0 beta 23 character file.

ivanka the Boxer (Merfolk)
(Level 27 Transmuter)
Experience : 27/1136969
Strength 16 Dexterity 16 Intelligence 20
Hit Points : -24/220 (239) (dead) Magic Points : 34/42
AC : 20 Evasion : 28 Shield : 0
GP : 8751

You are in Gehenna
You worship Makhleb.
Makhleb is exalted by your worship.
You are not hungry.

Inventory:
Hand weapons
a - a +8,+8 knife of slicing
b - the +4,+4 Staff of Dispater
This legendary item can unleash the fury of Hell.

Armour
f - a +2 robe
l - a +2 crested helmet (worn)
t - the +2 leather armour of the Clam (worn)
It affects your intelligence (+2).
It protects you from fire.
It protects you from cold.
It lets you turn invisible.

u - a +2 cloak (worn)
Magical devices
d - a wand of frost (12)
v - a wand of hasting (7)
//should have used this...

z - a wand of fire (3)
N - a wand of digging (5)
Y - a wand of disintegration (4)
Comestibles
c - 7 meat rations
Jewellery
e - a cursed ring of sustenance
r - the ring of Shaolin (left hand)
This ring provides the wearer with great agility and dodging.
It affects your evasion (+8).

y - the ring of robustness (right hand)
This ring provides the wearer with great protection from damage.
It affects your AC (+8).

A - a cursed amulet of conservation
P - an amulet of resist slowing
R - an amulet of the gourmand (around neck)
T - a ring of protection from cold
U - a ring of protection from fire
X - a ring of ice
Magical staves
w - a staff of wizardry

You have 14 experience left.

Skills:
+ Level 17 Fighting
- Level 2 Throwing
+ Level 23 Dodging
+ Level 7 Stealth
+ Level 10 Stabbing
- Level 1 Traps & Doors
* Level 27 Unarmed Combat
+ Level 14 Spellcasting
+ Level 14 Enchantments
- Level 1 Necromancy
+ Level 17 Transmigration
+ Level 12 Divinations
+ Level 12 Ice Magic
+ Level 4 Air Magic
- Level 1 Earth Magic
- Level 1 Poison Magic
- Level 12 Invocations


You have 6 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

Your Spells Type Success
Level
a - Repel Missiles Air/Enchantment Excellent 2
b - Evaporate Fire/Transmigration Excellent 2
c - Forescry Divination Great 5
d - Blade Hands Transmigration Excellent 5
e - Confusing Touch Enchantment Perfect 1
f - Ozocubu's Armour Ice/Enchantment Excellent 3
g - Silence Air/Enchantment Excellent 3
h - Lee's Rapid Deconstruction Earth/Transmigration Great 5
i - Dig Earth/Transmigration Great 4
j - Detect Traps Divination Excellent 2
k - Detect Creatures Divination Excellent 2
l - Magic Mapping Earth/Divination Great 4
t - Alter Self Transmigration Very Good 7
u - Selective Amnesia Enchantment Excellent 3

Mutations & Other Weirdness
//mostly from playing with Alter Self a lot
Your mind is acute (Int +1).
You are protected by plates of bone (AC + 2, dex - 1).
Your flesh is heat resistant.
You have a slow metabolism.
You are resistant to magic.
You can teleport at will.
You can translocate small distances instantaneously.
// could have used this to get away too...

You have a pair of horns on your head.
// nice for an unarmed fighter
You possess an exceptional clarity of mind.
You tend to lose your temper in combat.
// not too bad actually - berserk rage + blade hands + Makhleb doesn't
leave much standing. Made "ResistSlowing necessary though
You have hooves in place of feet.
// nice too for an unarmed fighter

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

bork bork bork Johan Strandell bork 9:08:52 PM bork 3/20/2005 bork
bork:

> I thought that this would be my second win, but that was not to be.

>
> A MfTM

Silly nitpick: MfTm. Or better yet, MfTm (TM).

It's funny how a silly little thing like a tiny, simple, logical system
for
quickly stating combos can grow on you. Recently I was writing to
r.g.r.adom
and wanted to talk about a Grey Elven Wizard and was mildly annoyed
that I
had to spell it out because I knew nobody would understand "GEWi".

> is a very powerful combination, and I suppose I got a bit cocky
> after clearing most of the dungeon (all branches except the Tomb (too
> scary) and the Slime Pits (no teleport control))

Wow -- that's pretty unlucky, although then again, there's usually
something
quite unusual about every game of Crawl; recently I saw a game where my
first
?oRC didn't arrive until the Lair, for example.

> , Cocytus, Dis, and a
> bit of running around in Pandemonium.

I'm confused. Are these things you *did* do or things you *didn't* do?

> The death was certainly avoidable.

As humiliating as it is to say it -- almost all late-game deaths are
avoidable (though some more "abstractly" than others, i.e. things like
"shoulnta been there in the first place").

> I was fried by a hellion throwing
> hellfire on L6 of Gehennom after being tormented by a tormentor. The
> hellion was in a river of lava, so I couldn't close up on it,

All the waterlike tiles in the Hells have brought me to the point where
I
make it a policy to learn Levitation or Fly -- I find it's worth it
(and fits
well with Swiftness and for a short-term boost to unencumbered carrying
capacity e.g. when bringing the end-of-branch treasure out of a hell).

[...]

Not much armour (this was the transmuter I
> mentioned in the other thread - he more or less had to keep Ozucobu's
> armour active all the time in melee),

Funny the different viewpoints -- My YASD'd halflings' AC/EV were
comparable,
if not worse, and I never felt underarmored (since most attacks were
never
hitting home anyway).

[...]

> ivanka the Boxer (Merfolk)

Hmm, a Slavic name?

> (Level 27 Transmuter)
> Experience : 27/1136969
> Strength 16 Dexterity 16 Intelligence 20
> Hit Points : -24/220 (239) (dead)

Who hit you with all that rotting?

> a - a +8,+8 knife of slicing

Hell meets the Butcher Knife from Hell.

[...]

> Magical devices
> d - a wand of [...]

No wand of cold for Gehenna???

> Comestibles
> c - 7 meat rations

Abyssophobia?

[...]

> + Level 10 Stabbing

It's a shame unarmed stabbing isn't rewarded better.

[...]

> + Level 12 Divinations

I've always wondered about the Forescry route... would you say it was
worth
it?

[...]

> You have 6 spell levels left.

Hmm... I can't imagine leaving 6 spell levels lie around, with
Selective
Amnesia available certainly not! Once I have SA, it's rare for me to
have
even 1 level free after hitting the books, and more than 3 or 4 before
then...

[...]

> h - Lee's Rapid Deconstruction Earth/Transmigration Great
5

Any luck with it? I have trouble doing serious damage with it to anyone
but
myself...

> You have a slow metabolism.

Slow Metabolism plus a "otG, and you're still carrying 7 rations??
'Course,
if you're not such a dungeon-cleaner as I am, you can afford the weight
better, but still...

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

"Erik Piper" <erik@sky.cz> wrote in message news:<1111409765.184836.130490@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>...
> bork bork bork Johan Strandell bork 9:08:52 PM bork 3/20/2005 bork
> bork:

> > is a very powerful combination, and I suppose I got a bit cocky
> > after clearing most of the dungeon (all branches except the Tomb (too
> > scary) and the Slime Pits (no teleport control))
>
> Wow -- that's pretty unlucky, although then again, there's usually
> something
> quite unusual about every game of Crawl; recently I saw a game where my
> first ?oRC didn't arrive until the Lair, for example.

Teleport control is pretty rare IME.

> > , Cocytus, Dis, and a
> > bit of running around in Pandemonium.
>
> I'm confused. Are these things you *did* do or things you *didn't* do?

I did those (I've probably programmed too much Lisp - counting
parenthesises is second nature to me (see above (and here too))).

> > The death was certainly avoidable.
>
> As humiliating as it is to say it -- almost all late-game deaths are
> avoidable (though some more "abstractly" than others, i.e. things like
> "shoulnta been there in the first place").

I think Crawl is quite fair - there aren't many special attacks (such
as in Nethack), so late deaths are mostly due to bad playing and not
bad luck.

> All the waterlike tiles in the Hells have brought me to the point where
> I make it a policy to learn Levitation or Fly -- I find it's worth it
> (and fits
> well with Swiftness and for a short-term boost to unencumbered carrying
> capacity e.g. when bringing the end-of-branch treasure out of a hell).

I didn't bother with Levitation of Fly, since I was playing a Merfolk
character. I mostly swam through the water, and since I had the hooves
mutation I didn't even have to put my boots back on.

> Not much armour (this was the transmuter I
> > mentioned in the other thread - he more or less had to keep Ozucobu's
> > armour active all the time in melee),
>
> Funny the different viewpoints -- My YASD'd halflings' AC/EV were
> comparable,
> if not worse, and I never felt underarmored (since most attacks were
> never hitting home anyway).

I didn't really need Oz this late, but it was a nice boost. I was
talking about earlier on, when I had AC 4 or 5 without it. You don't
really want to melee with that.

> > ivanka the Boxer (Merfolk)
>
> Hmm, a Slavic name?

Yup. My real name is Johan, which is the same name as Ivan (and John,
Johann, Johannes, Ewan, and a bunch of other similar names). I have a
parked character that's called Ivan, so I used the diminutive form.

> > (Level 27 Transmuter)
> > Experience : 27/1136969
> > Strength 16 Dexterity 16 Intelligence 20
> > Hit Points : -24/220 (239) (dead)
>
> Who hit you with all that rotting?

Rotting devils and the like. I was planning on curing it. Makhleb and
Berserk Rage meant that I almost always had full HP or 300+ HP though.


> > a - a +8,+8 knife of slicing
>
> Hell meets the Butcher Knife from Hell.

I usually do that with my transmuters and monks - they don't need the
scrolls, so why not keep your carving knife nice and sharp?

> > Magical devices
> > d - a wand of [...]
>
> No wand of cold for Gehenna???

Didn't find any.

> > Comestibles
> > c - 7 meat rations
>
> Abyssophobia?

Berserk rage every other combat went through quite a lot of food, and
using Blade hands and Forescry a lot probably didn't help. I had a
stack with 35+ meat rations, 40+ bread rations and food from the Hive,
so I didn't feel the need to ration it. I wanted to do Gehenna in one
sweep, so I brought a big stack.

> > + Level 12 Divinations
>
> I've always wondered about the Forescry route... would you say it was
> worth it?

It has fairly short duration until you get Divinations up a bit, but
if you can cast it, plan to do melee fighting, and have the experience
to spare I'd say it's worth it.

> > You have 6 spell levels left.
>
> Hmm... I can't imagine leaving 6 spell levels lie around, with
> Selective
> Amnesia available certainly not! Once I have SA, it's rare for me to
> have even 1 level free after hitting the books, and more than 3 or 4 before
> then...

I didn't feel the need for any more spells: Blade Hands and unarmed
combat is a very powerful combination. I tried memorizing Dragon Form,
but didn't succeed.

> > h - Lee's Rapid Deconstruction Earth/Transmigration Great
> 5
>
> Any luck with it? I have trouble doing serious damage with it to anyone
> but myself...

I tried it a bit in Dis, but I suppose you have to be an EE for it to
be really effective.

> > You have a slow metabolism.
>
> Slow Metabolism plus a "otG, and you're still carrying 7 rations??
> 'Course,
> if you're not such a dungeon-cleaner as I am, you can afford the weight
> better, but still...

A transmuter doesn't need to carry all that much, and I left all
scrolls and potions in my stash since they would have gotten destroyed
in Gehenna. The berserk mutation meant I couldn't wear my
"Conservation.

Time to kill of another bunch of AE:s.

/Johan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Johan Strandell wrote:
> I think Crawl is quite fair - there aren't many special attacks (such
> as in Nethack), so late deaths are mostly due to bad playing and not
> bad luck.

You mean it's like Angband in that regard? Hrm.

Early deaths, on the other hand ... (not-so-fond memories of being
instakilled in one hit by OoD centaur on dl 1 right after startup)

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Twisted One wrote:
> Johan Strandell wrote:
> > I think Crawl is quite fair - there aren't many special attacks
(such
> > as in Nethack), so late deaths are mostly due to bad playing and
not
> > bad luck.
>
> You mean it's like Angband in that regard? Hrm.

What about "It breathes, it breathes, you die?" ;-)

(Only stuff on-screen can hurt you in Crawl. In fact, on the contrary,
the PC has in some cases the advantage over the AI of being able to
attack IT from offscreen.)

> Early deaths, on the other hand ... (not-so-fond memories of being
> instakilled in one hit by OoD centaur on dl 1 right after startup)

The monster generation routines include special code for the occasional
insertion of a somewhat OOD foe and hyper-rare insertion of a hyper-OOD
foe. Unfortunately, "somewhat OOD" is IIRC calculated additively, not
as a ratio of your current dungeon level, so it's extra-nasty if it
happens really early.

Hmm. If I weren't in such a hurry I'd go and check to see if I'm
bullshittin' above. The answer should be in dungeon.cc somewhere.

I find excessive concentration of in-depth monsters on excessively
"open" dungeon-level-ones to be a bigger problem, though.

In any case, it's all over so quick in such situations that it can
hardly be considered a loss for the player. It's just that these
situations are really, really bad for the future of the Crawl player
base, since they tend to scare people off before they can discover the
true beauty of Crawl. :-(

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Erik Piper wrote:
>>>I think Crawl is quite fair - there aren't many special attacks
>
> (such
>
>>>as in Nethack), so late deaths are mostly due to bad playing and
>
> not
>
>>>bad luck.
>>
>>You mean it's like Angband in that regard? Hrm.
>
>
> What about "It breathes, it breathes, you die?" ;-)
>
> (Only stuff on-screen can hurt you in Crawl. In fact, on the contrary,
> the PC has in some cases the advantage over the AI of being able to
> attack IT from offscreen.)

In Angband, you can attack offscreen monsters if you have LOS. You just
annoyingly need to scroll when targeting them, and sometimes they catch
you by surprise. If you get breathed on once by an unseen assailant and
don't heal/escape/nuke with your very next move, then get breathed on
again and die, it's your own damn fault. And if you get breathed on
twice without getting a move, either you lacked free action, lacked
resist sound, meleed something you shouldn't, or had too little speed.

>>Early deaths, on the other hand ... (not-so-fond memories of being
>>instakilled in one hit by OoD centaur on dl 1 right after startup)
>
> The monster generation routines include special code for the occasional
> insertion of a somewhat OOD foe and hyper-rare insertion of a hyper-OOD
> foe. Unfortunately, "somewhat OOD" is IIRC calculated additively, not
> as a ratio of your current dungeon level, so it's extra-nasty if it
> happens really early.

Angband special-cases the first 10 or so dungeon levels.

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Darshan Shaligram wrote:
> "Erik Piper" <erik@sky.cz> writes:
> [OOD monsters]
> > In any case, it's all over so quick in such situations that it can
> > hardly be considered a loss for the player. It's just that these
> > situations are really, really bad for the future of the Crawl
player
> > base, since they tend to scare people off before they can discover
> > the true beauty of Crawl. :-(
>
> I don't think we want players that are scared off so easily. If we
fix
> the OOD monsters in the early game, these players'll start
complaining
> about how easy it is to die in the late game, and want *that* fixed
as
> well, and before we know what's happening, Crawl will look like
> diluted NetHack.

I have no choice but to respectfully disagree. The oft-unfair openings
are a misdesign. The oft-deadly endgame, which is deadly in a fair way,
is exceptionally good design among roguelikes. The ONLY connection
between the two is the deadliness.

> these players'll start complaining about how easy it is to die in the

> late game,

Then we tell them to go to Hell. Again and again, until they get it
right.

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

"Erik Piper" <erik@sky.cz> writes:
[OOD monsters]
> In any case, it's all over so quick in such situations that it can
> hardly be considered a loss for the player. It's just that these
> situations are really, really bad for the future of the Crawl player
> base, since they tend to scare people off before they can discover
> the true beauty of Crawl. :-(

I don't think we want players that are scared off so easily. If we fix
the OOD monsters in the early game, these players'll start complaining
about how easy it is to die in the late game, and want *that* fixed as
well, and before we know what's happening, Crawl will look like
diluted NetHack.

--
Darshan Shaligram <scintilla@gmail.com> Deus vult

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Twisted One <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid> wrote in message news:<g_Wdnamhse4XdaLfRVn-rQ@rogers.com>...
> Johan Strandell wrote:

> > I think Crawl is quite fair - there aren't many special attacks (such
> > as in Nethack), so late deaths are mostly due to bad playing and not
> > bad luck.
>
> You mean it's like Angband in that regard? Hrm.

I haven't played any Angband, but Nethack has stoning, sickness, food
poisoning, disintegration, wide angle disintegration beams, touch of
death, death rays, deadly poison, mindlessness, digestion attacks,
exploding drawbridges, drowning, choking on food, bad level
teleporting, stepping into lava, genocidal confusion, and probably a
couple of more ways of
killing an advanced character in one or a couple of turns. Crawl
doesn't really have that - most non-HP deaths take a while. (I have
actually managed to kill a late character in Crawl by stepping into
lava while confused, but that must be one of the few instadeaths
without warning that exist.)

The end result is that you don't have to learn all these special cases
to play Crawl successfully, while you have to be quite spoiled to
ascend in Nethack (or have lots of patience, experience with AD&D and
some RL luck). But part of the charm with Nethack is its depth, so
it's not all bad. (I suppose I have to start playing Angband now to
get another flavour. As if playing Crawl didn't already take enough
time...)

> Early deaths, on the other hand ... (not-so-fond memories of being
> instakilled in one hit by OoD centaur on dl 1 right after startup)

That's one of my annoyances with Crawl.

(I tried to post this earlier, but Google Groups was misbehaving.)

/Johan

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Twisted One wrote:

[a treatise on the anatomy of late-game *band deaths]

Just for comparison -- an anatomy of my Crawl late-game deaths (which
by now is a large enough sample to have some sort of representativeness
-- though representative of *what*, I don't know...):

- You pointlessly take a risk of self-paralyzation in a special place
where monsters can materialize out of thin air next to you. You do get
paralyzed. Something does materialize. That something hits you (x30).
You die.

(Note that universally valid free action does not, AFAIK, exist in
Crawl. However, sources of paralyzation are rare and 98% or so
avoidable.)

- You pointfully (by berserking) take a risk of self-paralyzation
(falling unconscious from exhaustion) in an "ordinary" place (well, the
endgame place -- which is more ordinary than you might expect, though)
because you consider it a calculated risk. The risk doesn't go in your
favor. Lots of stuff that was already there hits you (x30). You die.

- Due to strategic errors over the course of the game, you get so many
negative mutations (think ToME or ADOM Corruptions) that you reach a
point where there is no-where you can go safely and still do something
useful. You go to the least unsafe place you can still think of where
there's a hope of finding potions of cure mutation. It's still too
unsafe. You die.

- You are in Hell (that's the "stuff out of nowhere" place I
mentioned), specifically its cold-based branch. You have an AC-based
(damage-reduction-based) rather than Evasion-basd
(damage-avoidance-based) defense It's been a while since you've been
there, so when you detect creatures and see the boss monster with the
hard-to-avoid (you're not a dodger),
easy-to-absorb-if-only-you-were-healed-up-but-you-AREN'T-healed-up
attack, you mistake it for a bog-standard hill giant and charge ahead,
because it's Hell and anything can happen at any moment and you just
want to get it all over with. You round the corner. It hits you with
lightning for 1/3 of your HP, which is all you had since you tried to
cut corners by not healing up so you could get the hell out of hell.
You die. Well, now it's all over with.

OK, I'm short on time...

One nice thing about Crawl is that you will never die in the endgame
for "not knowing some obscure fact" (Nethack) or "not having repeated
dungeon level level 20 enough dozens of times," (*bands) but simply
"having made a tactical or strategic error." Which is what the fun of
rogueliking is all about, isn't it?

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Johan Strandell wrote:
> Twisted One <twisted0n3@gmail.invalid> wrote in message news:<g_Wdnamhse4XdaLfRVn-rQ@rogers.com>...
>
>>Johan Strandell wrote:
>
>
>>>I think Crawl is quite fair - there aren't many special attacks (such
>>>as in Nethack), so late deaths are mostly due to bad playing and not
>>>bad luck.
>>
>>You mean it's like Angband in that regard? Hrm.
>
> I haven't played any Angband, but Nethack has stoning, sickness, food
> poisoning, disintegration, wide angle disintegration beams, touch of
> death, death rays, deadly poison, mindlessness, digestion attacks,
> exploding drawbridges, drowning, choking on food, bad level
> teleporting, stepping into lava, genocidal confusion, and probably a
> couple of more ways of
> killing an advanced character in one or a couple of turns. Crawl
> doesn't really have that - most non-HP deaths take a while.

Angband and most variants have virtually no non-HP deaths, period. (Some
have "wound points" or "sanity points" you can't run out of, or game
over, and which are harder to recover than HP, but which, like HP, tend
not to go all at once in one shot. Also like HP damage to these comes
from being attacked, and can't just happen spontaneously, unlike, say,
corruption in ADoM which turns your character quite effectively into a
ticking bomb. So, if they are getting dangerously low you can (try to)
avoid combat until you get them healed.)

High level deaths in vanilla Angband in particular usually result from
losing all HPs really fast, generally from facing a too-tough or
too-fast opponent too-soon (taking a gamble in a vault and losing, for
example), too many powerful monsters at once (bad luck teleport
sometimes; more often bad tactics), or doing something dumb (phasing
when the nearest large open area is a half-empty pit of law wyrms,
quaffing an unid'd potion at dungeon level seventy, etc.)... the other
high level deaths (and some all HPs gone in one move ones) involve not
covering a needed resistance or power, either from inexperience or from
making one of those "kicking yourself afterward" mistakes, such as going
down to dungeon level eighty with a kickass new equipment arrangement
that you didn't notice fails to grant free action. And of course the
notorious "one more round, THEN I'll heal" or "Ouch! Only 200 hps. But
it'll be dead next round and the nearby summoned monsters can't make
anything like that damage, even combined ... you miss the monster, you
miss the monster, you miss the monster, you miss the monster, the
monster invokes a nether storm, the weak summon steps on your toe,
another weak summon pokes you gently through your armour, and another
weak summon calls you an unpleasant name ... you die."

My only high level death in vanilla angband *ever* resulted from lacking
needed stuff at the depth I was at, due to inexperience, as a case in point.

Angband has its share of dumbass low level deaths though, until you
reach the point of covering free action, having decent HPs, and having
reliable sources of teleport self and reasonably reliable teleport
other. At mid levels, you can get unlucky with a semi-open vault and
die, or get unlucky in a few other ways and die, until you have lots of
HPs and ESP, and then it's really hard for an experienced player to die
without making a special effort to do so.

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Erik Piper wrote:
> Just for comparison -- an anatomy of my Crawl late-game deaths (which
> by now is a large enough sample to have some sort of representativeness
> -- though representative of *what*, I don't know...):
>
> - You pointlessly take a risk of self-paralyzation in a special place
> where monsters can materialize out of thin air next to you. You do get
> paralyzed. Something does materialize. That something hits you (x30).
> You die.
>
> (Note that universally valid free action does not, AFAIK, exist in
> Crawl. However, sources of paralyzation are rare and 98% or so
> avoidable.)

The technical term is "paralysis", not "paralyzation", though many
roguelikes' docs get it wrong and you're probably just copying from one
of them. Angband has a risk like this too (regardless of free action) --
casting a spell at low mana. There's also a possibility of a stat drain
and of spell failure. If you're near a summoner, there's also a
possibility of something materializing next to you.

Generally avoided in Angband by not running out of mana, and using
scrolls for escape/sanctuary if you do get low.

> - Due to strategic errors over the course of the game, you get so many
> negative mutations (think ToME or ADOM Corruptions) that you reach a
> point where there is no-where you can go safely and still do something
> useful. You go to the least unsafe place you can still think of where
> there's a hope of finding potions of cure mutation. It's still too
> unsafe. You die.

Ouch. Angband equivalent might be: unpleasant encounter with
disenchanters and time breathers leaves you with seriously drained stats
and somewhat less than ideal equipment. You don't decide to recall to
town (maybe your rod was stolen, too?) and try to kill weak monsters to
scum up restore stat potions. Something stronger comes along, your con's
still drained, and you don't have adequate HP. It hits you, you die.

> - You are in Hell (that's the "stuff out of nowhere" place I
> mentioned), specifically its cold-based branch. You have an AC-based
> (damage-reduction-based) rather than Evasion-basd
> (damage-avoidance-based) defense It's been a while since you've been
> there, so when you detect creatures and see the boss monster with the
> hard-to-avoid (you're not a dodger),
> easy-to-absorb-if-only-you-were-healed-up-but-you-AREN'T-healed-up
> attack, you mistake it for a bog-standard hill giant and charge ahead,
> because it's Hell and anything can happen at any moment and you just
> want to get it all over with. You round the corner. It hits you with
> lightning for 1/3 of your HP, which is all you had since you tried to
> cut corners by not healing up so you could get the hell out of hell.
> You die. Well, now it's all over with.

Angband equivalent: You go to run over a novice speedbump, er, mage in
the late game -- no buffs cast, and under full health. The Mouth of
Sauron invokes a mana storm. You die. (Recent vanilla versions make
dangerous named monsters visually distinct most of the time from
ordinary monsters, but it still happens from time to time. My current
character decided to light into a fire elemental with a nether bolt, a
nearly certain one shot kill. "Vargo, Tyrant of Fire grunts in pain.
Vargo, Tyrant of Fire casts a plasma bolt." Ouch! I survived, and indeed
destroyed the monster, but still... if I'd been on reduced HPs and
without speed and other buffs cast, I might have been in serious trouble.

> One nice thing about Crawl is that you will never die in the endgame
> for "not knowing some obscure fact" (Nethack) or "not having repeated
> dungeon level level 20 enough dozens of times," (*bands) but simply
> "having made a tactical or strategic error." Which is what the fun of
> rogueliking is all about, isn't it?

What, there's no endless scumming for needed resists in crawl?

--
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Palladium? Trusted Computing? DRM? Microsoft? Sauron.
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Darshan Shaligram wrote:
> "Erik Piper" <erik@sky.cz> writes:
> [OOD monsters]
>> In any case, it's all over so quick in such situations that it can
>> hardly be considered a loss for the player. It's just that these
>> situations are really, really bad for the future of the Crawl player
>> base, since they tend to scare people off before they can discover
>> the true beauty of Crawl. :-(
>
> I don't think we want players that are scared off so easily. If we fix
> the OOD monsters in the early game, these players'll start complaining
> about how easy it is to die in the late game, and want *that* fixed as
> well, and before we know what's happening, Crawl will look like
> diluted NetHack.

I'm absolutely with you here.
It's true, Crawl very often is plain unfair in the early game. In this
respect Crawl is like a fat, ugly, stinking and a bit too strong cigar
and you know it will make you ill (and also all passive smokers).
But pleeease, Erik, don't touch my cigar. I like it the way it is! ;-)

Rubinstein

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

On 24 Mar 2005 06:40:20 -0800, "Erik Piper" <erik@sky.cz> wrote:

>I have no choice but to respectfully disagree. The oft-unfair openings
>are a misdesign. The oft-deadly endgame, which is deadly in a fair way,
>is exceptionally good design among roguelikes. The ONLY connection
>between the two is the deadliness.

Right. I like that once I get a character that can do something, the
game keeps challenging me, but there really isn't any challenge in a
lot of killer starts. My favorite example remains when I enter the
dungeon with a *yaktaur* (which I had never seen before, although I'd
been deep enough to know that seeing something I'd never seen was a
very bad thing, especially as I *had* met centaurs and yaks, either of
which could mop the floor with most 1st level characters without
breaking a sweat) and no cover within several spaces. I ran for cover
anyway, as my only option except "go up stairs and forget this hero
stuff". One step, yaktaur shoots, end of game.

But even being pinned in with a group of gnolls is a death sentence
for most starting characters.

I've said before I would be happy with just preventing monsters being
generated in sight of starting characters. If the yaktaur had been
elsewhere on the level I'd at least have had some chance of spotting
it, getting away, and hitting the stairs down before being slaughtered
and I could have died to an orc with a battle axe of chopping or
something instead.

R. Dan Henry
danhenry@inreach.com

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Twisted One wrote:
> Erik Piper wrote:

[snipped plenty of cool stuff -- I'm posting at work, blah blah etc.]

> > One nice thing about Crawl is that you will never die in the
endgame
> > for "not knowing some obscure fact" (Nethack) or "not having
repeated
> > dungeon level level 20 enough dozens of times," (*bands) but simply
> > "having made a tactical or strategic error." Which is what the fun
of
> > rogueliking is all about, isn't it?
>
> What, there's no endless scumming for needed resists in crawl?

That's the cool part: there really isn't. In fact, it's awfully hard
*to* scum in Crawl. Most characters can't afford the cost in terms of
food -- generally speaking, you can only generate more food than you
eat by visiting new territory. (Don't let this psych you out, though;
it's typical to have enough food to fill your stomach 10-20 times over
by the endgame, if your metabolism and your pace are normal.) Even
those that can afford it face the dilema of where TO scum, because
there are only two infinirealms in Crawl, with one of them (the Abyss)
being generally viewed by players as "punishment" or even "a death
sentence," and the other one (Pandemonium) being even worse than that.
Visiting them is something to do *because* you're tricked out, not *in
order to be* tricked out. (You might indeed get cool stuff there, don't
get me wrong. You might also get blasted to smithereens or mutated into
wish-you-were-deadness.)

Thus it's only natural that the game is designed to let characters with
missing resists live, if they're skillful enough, and for missing
resists to be rare anyway. There are only IIRC five in total, after
all.

Take my character who died to lightning: rLightning would have helped
him tremendously and eased the resolution of the problem if I had known
what it was (if I had remember that the Cocytus boss is a "C" and
throws lightning), but simply resting up or, more likely, pestering my
god for healing would have sufficed as well.

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

"Erik Piper" <erik@sky.cz> writes:
> Darshan Shaligram wrote:
[...]
>> I don't think we want players that are scared off so easily. If we
>> fix the OOD monsters in the early game, these players'll start
>> complaining about how easy it is to die in the late game, and want
>> *that* fixed as well, and before we know what's happening, Crawl
>> will look like diluted NetHack.

> I have no choice but to respectfully disagree. The oft-unfair
> openings are a misdesign.

I think we need to distinguish between landing up in the middle of a
gang of uglies on turn 1 and the occasional (what, 1 in 50 games?) OOD
monster on D:1. If you want to fix it so that monsters aren't
generated in the player's LOS on turn 1, that's fine by me. Just don't
take away my D:1 stone giants and dragons.

> The oft-deadly endgame, which is deadly in a fair way, is
> exceptionally good design among roguelikes.

Agreed here.

> The ONLY connection between the two is the deadliness.

Does there need to be a connection? I love sneaking past horribly
OOD monsters. It makes me feel my character is charmed, right up until
the next hobgoblin comes along and bashes in his skull, anyway.

--
Darshan Shaligram <scintilla@gmail.com> Deus vult