The great battle for Snake. Not pictured: another whole room full of naga zombies.
Also
TROG NO THROW, TROG SMASH!
Have to agree. I don't train any throwing or ranged weapons as a MiBe, just evocations to blast orb spiders with wands, and some up-close axe work for everything else.
Here's a fun one: got the Ascetic tier 2 (no potions or scrolls before Lair:6) Brute Force tier 1 (reach Lair:6 with no God) and Ruthless Efficiency tier 1 (reach Lair:6 before XL12) banners all in the same character, a SpEn. Stealth is very powerful.
What Gods work well with SpEns now? What does the end game look like?
What Gods work well with SpEns now? What does the end game look like?
[I've never gotten a SpEn win so take this with a few grains of salt, but] I've virtually always used Dithmenos for my SpEns. I feel like it fits most thematically, and it certainly makes the SpEn stronger.
I've heard folks say that it's better to pick a complementary god, though, rather than a supplementary god (i.e. a god that provides something that the character doesn't have naturally). Gozag is crazy powerful in the end-game, and since Spriggans already have low hunger needs and can't eat corpses anyway, the lack of corpse chunks is irrelevant.
Well, that bites. Escape two close calls with a ghost moth and die to a snapping turtle on Shoals:1.
What Gods work well with SpEns now? What does the end game look like?
I've never won with a SpEn, but I usually pick Gozag. He's a nice all-around powerful god and nicely complements Spriggan's vegetarianism.
In other news, the tourney ends today at 4pm EST. Get those last crawls in, folks!
Still on a binge with this game lately, and I've finally reached Zot for the third time ever. Running a Hill Orc fighter of Okawaru specializing in shields while alternating between 1h axes and hand crossbows. It's been going pretty well even though there have been a lot of touch and go moments throughout the game. I've also trained up evocations a respectable amount. Unlike my usual tunnel vision self, I keep forcing myself to remember to use wands when suitable and trying to always keep a clear path to an exit with a fighting retreat.
I am not overly confident that I will finally get a win -- Depths were pretty rough and this first floor of Zot has been tough too. Lots of enemies with high resistances to my wands and roving in packs without many bottlenecks I can put to use. Heroism sure is getting invoked a lot too!
Still on a binge with this game lately, and I've finally reached Zot for the third time ever. Running a Hill Orc fighter of Okawaru specializing in shields while alternating between 1h axes and hand crossbows. It's been going pretty well even though there have been a lot of touch and go moments throughout the game. I've also trained up evocations a respectable amount. Unlike my usual tunnel vision self, I keep forcing myself to remember to use wands when suitable and trying to always keep a clear path to an exit with a fighting retreat.
I am not overly confident that I will finally get a win -- Depths were pretty rough and this first floor of Zot has been tough too. Lots of enemies with high resistances to my wands and roving in packs without many bottlenecks I can put to use. Heroism sure is getting invoked a lot too!
Can you use wands of digging to make kill holes in Zot?
Still on a binge with this game lately, and I've finally reached Zot for the third time ever. Running a Hill Orc fighter of Okawaru specializing in shields while alternating between 1h axes and hand crossbows. It's been going pretty well even though there have been a lot of touch and go moments throughout the game. I've also trained up evocations a respectable amount. Unlike my usual tunnel vision self, I keep forcing myself to remember to use wands when suitable and trying to always keep a clear path to an exit with a fighting retreat.
I am not overly confident that I will finally get a win -- Depths were pretty rough and this first floor of Zot has been tough too. Lots of enemies with high resistances to my wands and roving in packs without many bottlenecks I can put to use. Heroism sure is getting invoked a lot too!
Can you post a chardump?
Well, I pressed on last night and got further than I have before -- within view of the orb itself. However, I made one crucial, stupid mistake that got me killed: before moving into the "lungs" I forgot to switch to my slightly less effective shield, leaving on my tower shield with -Tele.
You can imagine what ended up happening.
But hey, I've only ever gotten into the lungs once, and was wiped out by a pair of orbs of fire that time. This time I was very methodical and careful and it wasn't until I pulled a bit more than I expected and took a couple nasty hits that I figured "ok, time to read a tele scroll and get out of here" and then "...crap".
Can you post a chardump?
Here, my testament to hubris and lack of skill! I know I should've won, it's entirely on my own flawed play that I didn't. I'm actually still happy that I did as well as I did throughout that game even though I ultimately didn't make it.
Here, my testament to hubris and lack of skill! I know I should've won, it's entirely on my own flawed play that I didn't. I'm actually still happy that I did as well as I did throughout that game even though I ultimately didn't make it.
Looks like you did very well! Would you be opposed to a bit of post-mortem analysis?
Ouch, rough ending!
Here, my testament to hubris and lack of skill! I know I should've won, it's entirely on my own flawed play that I didn't. I'm actually still happy that I did as well as I did throughout that game even though I ultimately didn't make it.
Comments if you want them:
- I'd have stopped xbows at mindelay (10 iirc) and trained dodge instead.
- Not having rElec probably made black draconians hurt you significantly.
- Why were you using the war axe still? That broad axe is much, much better in all situations. Even vs invisibles, I'd take the broad axe.
- That kite shield is better than the tower, in my opinion. rF and rC and regen with no -Tele? Yes please. Sure the tower has great SH, but, as you learned, -Tele is really good at screwing you.
- You're probably not using Finesse enough. Endgame, my rule is that if it's dangerous enough for Heroism then it's dangerous enough for Finesse.
Spell Hunger has been removed from DCSS trunk. Also removed chunk-eating for most species.
Spell Hunger has been removed from DCSS trunk. Also removed chunk-eating for most species.
Good riddance, imo, since those two mechanics effectively cancelled each other out for all caster characters except Spriggans and Gozag worshippers.
Farscry wrote:Here, my testament to hubris and lack of skill! I know I should've won, it's entirely on my own flawed play that I didn't. I'm actually still happy that I did as well as I did throughout that game even though I ultimately didn't make it.
Looks like you did very well! Would you be opposed to a bit of post-mortem analysis?
Not at all, analyze away! I'm just stubborn about being coached while playing -- I prefer to learn the hard way. I earned my lumps on Dark Souls the hard-but-fun way.
Speaking of which:
Ouch, rough ending!
- I'd have stopped xbows at mindelay (10 iirc) and trained dodge instead.
- Not having rElec probably made black draconians hurt you significantly.
- Why were you using the war axe still? That broad axe is much, much better in all situations. Even vs invisibles, I'd take the broad axe.
- That kite shield is better than the tower, in my opinion. rF and rC and regen with no -Tele? Yes please. Sure the tower has great SH, but, as you learned, -Tele is really good at screwing you.
- You're probably not using Finesse enough. Endgame, my rule is that if it's dangerous enough for Heroism then it's dangerous enough for Finesse.
Interesting point on crossbows -- at that point it was more a case of "hey, these are proving pretty useful, more skill points means more accuracy+damage right?" I'll bear in mind that 10 is sufficient for hand crossbows and invest those points elsewhere in the future. I thought that if you had reflect and solid SH that dodge was less useful?
I never was able to get rElec in a slot that didn't feel like I was giving up too much in trade. Maybe my math was wrong on that front?
I would've actually just stuck with the kite shield, but with the +Reflect on my amulet, I figured maximizing my SH would be a more significant boon against all the ranged punishment.
As for finesse, I was worried I was using it too much because I kept dropping to 5* piety more often than it felt like I should. Is that less of a concern than I was thinking? I don't know why, but I always have struggled with keeping piety maxxed out but assumed that was important to do.
I appreciate the feedback, good stuff for me to bear in mind. I've been playing since sometime before .10 off and on very casually, so changes happen more than I can really keep up with, but I feel like I've taken a solid step up in the past year learning from others and from my experiences, whereas prior to that I was pretty much just a sloppy MiFi tab-fighter.
That's I think half-true for the crossbow training (and weapon training in general) - more skill doesn't increase accuracy, but does increase damage (slightly). Still, given you used your axe about twice as much as your xbow in XL25-27, I probably would've suggested to put more skill points into axes. Actually, maybe even dodging, especially if you could retroactively move a few of those STR points over to DEX. 38 STR is a huuuuge amount - I don't think the benefits of str scale that high. With Gold Dragon Scale you only need 25 to eliminate the encumbrance penalty - anything over that I would probably suggest putting into dex, and get some EV going.
As Math pointed out - the broad axe was much better than the war axe in virtually every way.
Having a ton of SH with +Reflect is certainly fun... but -Tele is almost always a no-go attribute in my games, with very specific exceptions (i.e. if the Zot 5 lungs are guarded by permanent tele traps).
Keeping yourself at max piety is great, except it's useless if you're dead. Piety is there to be used, and it grows back easily enough, especially in Zot 5.
Still, you did a great job with this game!
We should start gathering teams this weekend and getting the word out.
Ooo, time to check how DCSS runs on my new tablet! It barely chugged along during the last tournament. Count me interested.
https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/...
Highlights
----------
* New species: Palentonga.
* New background: Delver.
* Food and hunger are removed.
* Swamp has many new monsters and other changes.
....
* Centaurs are removed.
* The Charms skill (and the Skald background) are removed.
!!!!
Any word on why hunger was removed? Cause I've always hated hunger in roguelikes despite understanding the design philosophy behind it.
https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/...
0.26 Changelog wrote:Highlights
----------
* New species: Palentonga.
* New background: Delver.
* Food and hunger are removed.
* Swamp has many new monsters and other changes.
....
* Centaurs are removed.
* The Charms skill (and the Skald background) are removed.!!!!
Also:
* Beam spells and wands no longer have their range reduced by hitting things.
This is a reasonably big buff for spellcasters.
Any word on why hunger was removed? Cause I've always hated hunger in roguelikes despite understanding the design philosophy behind it.
From what I read (citation needed), it's basically that hunger management is boring, tedious, and doesn't contribute to making interesting decisions. Furthermore, virtually no games were lost due to starvation, since there's already plenty of food available in the dungeon, so it's kind of an empty threat. Now there's a "Zot Clock" that will outright murder you if you spend too much time in any given branch, or something like that; I haven't played a game in trunk with the Zot Clock yet, so I don't know exactly how it works.
Looking forward to the tourney, though - some interesting changes here.
Now there's a "Zot Clock" that will outright murder you if you spend too much time in any given branch, or something like that; I haven't played a game in trunk with the Zot Clock yet, so I don't know exactly how it works.
Add "always_show_zot = true" to your rcfile so you can always see how much time you have remaining in the current branch; normally it'll only display when you have less than 1500 turns left. I'm not sure yet whether it makes me feel overly pressured to see it always, but I'd rather have more information than less, until I'm more comfortable with the new mechanic.
I mostly play trunk. I like most of the changes. I think they make the game a little tighter. New stuff in Swamp means it is no longer the no brainer first rune branch if it shows in your game.
Kind of hate boulder beetles though.
I don't know how I feel about this. My first roguelike love was Nethack, and much of the reason why I loved it was how simulationist it was. There were dozens of ways you could interact with every different object, many of which were useless, but no other game was like it. Like one time I had a magic lamp that fell into a body of water in Nethack and I needed to get it back out. I was able to come up with several different methods of retrieving it. I could polymorph into a creature who could swim, I could shoot a wand of teleport at the square it was in, I could freeze the water and dig it out of the ice, I could push some boulders into the water to fill the water space and dig it out, etc.
DCSS was never as crazy about simulationism as Nethack was, but it had a nice balance between that part and just having as lot of new content (races, background, gods, branches, etc) and streamlining some of the monotony of roguelikes (autoexplore and the like). But so much if it has been taken away and pared down that it is really a completely different than it was when I first started playing. They talk about all these changes as focusing more on giving players interesting decisions but when so many systems have been removed it doesn't feel like there are a ton of decisions left. It feels like the target audience of the game are folks who speedrun the game with lots of scripts and macros and not folks like me.
I am probably romanticizing the older versions too much.
I've been playing a ton of 0.26 and love the removal of food/hunger. I was not initially a fan of removing them but now that I've adjusted to not having to eat all the time the tedium of having to deal with food and hunger again would be miserable. Good riddance!
Looking forward to the tournament!
I am probably romanticizing the older versions too much.
Maybe, but, there's no question the game has changed significantly over the past few years, and in a manner different from how most roguelikes change over time. Many roguelikes only add new things as development progresses: new systems, new content, etc. They may occasionally revamp or refactor a system or piece of content, but outright removal is very rare, especially once the roguelike has been around awhile and settled.
By contrast, in the last few years DCSS has been developed under what appears to be a philosophy of actively challenging features and content to justify their continued presence; those that can no longer be justified are removed. They also seem more likely to change or replace features and content rather than simply add outright.
Both approaches have their merits, but there's no question they lead to very different outcomes. A game developed under the first approach trend towards appealing more and more to existing fans (since nothing beloved is ever lost and new things are added to explore) and less and less to new players (since the barrier to entry grows higher and higher as more and more is added.)
A game developed under the second approach will have the opposite trend: existing fans may be lost as things they loved get removed or changed too much for their tastes, but new players won't have to endure 10 to 15 years of accumulated growth to get into the game.
For my own part, I definitely lost interest in DCSS over the past few years. That doesn't mean the changes they've made are wrong, even in my opinion, it just makes them different than I'd have personally preferred as a player.
If we can't all agree that different is wrong, I don't even know why we are on a gaming forum together.
As usual I don't mind being a captain (Dumpster fire related team name suggestions welcome), but probably will only have enough time for 1 game. Is MiBe still considered the "easiest" one?
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