Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

[golgepapaz]

While I enjoy roguelikes from time to time, I'm not really a specialist in any of them.
In DCSS I ususally played either a mage or a fighter, but recently I tried a Skald. Now armor penalties for casting suddenly become an issue.

Does anyone know how the casting penalty from armor gets determined? Does every armor penalize magic, or only metal one? Is it tied to the general evasion penalty the armor gives? How about holding weapons (and shields)?

I haven't played game almost a year now but if it did not change recently, evasion penalty of the armor affects the spell failure chance . Weapons does not. Shields do. Increasiing your armor and shield skill somewhat mitigates the penalty.increasing intelligence
and spell school skill level also helps obviously.

 

[Gozma]

My main body of Crawl knowledge is like version 0.7 vintage and I don't keep great track, so take me with a grain of salt, but:

It's based on the evasion penalty of the armor, not the material. The casting penalty is pretty superlinear (i.e. going from -2 to -3 evasion penalty armor is much worse than going from 0 to -1) but I don't know the exact equation. Armor with the "elven" tag is easier to cast in. I consider -3 armor stuff useable in the late game, but early on when spells mean life or death -1 is as low as I ever go.

Shield give a separate penalty that goes down with shield skill. Bucklers are pretty minor, large shields are unusable for casters until shield is really high. Elven tag helps again. Weapons don't matter except in a few special cases (e.g. a staff of wizardry)

 

[MisterStone]

Bros Ogre summoner, what is the best religion for me?

I got a book of power, so as an option I can learn pure non-elemental conjuration spells for offensive ranged attacks, which has another bonus of letting me learn fewer magic schools (which ogres are bad at, but they are good at basic spellcasting). Maybe I should just learn the Mystic Blast and Orb of destruction, then go to Vehumet?

 

[Gord]

Played a bit of DCSS again, v0.12.2.

Usually I don't get very far, because I suck at it, but my most recent run (Human Skald again) started pretty well.
Found an Trident of Protection +1/+4 and a Spear of Piercing +2/+3 early on, as well as some other minor AC-increasing stuff.
A bit low on useful potions maybe, but otherwise all was well.
Then on level 6 (yeah, still pretty early I guess) I got inflicted with Sentinel's Mark, which seems to be a new spell in 0.12 (?) that draws the attention of every monster on the level.
Before I could reach the exit, a centaur, an imp and several orcs had reached me. I tried fighting them in a corridor, but had a few bad rolls, so my health was quickly reduced. I used a teleport scroll which of course teleported me right into the middle of several more orcs, including priests and wizards. Result: You die... Fucking Orc Priests and their smiting.

 

[Hornawkawk]

Played a bit of DCSS again, v0.12.2.

Usually I don't get very far, because I suck at it, but my most recent run (Human Skald again) started pretty well.
Found an Trident of Protection +1/+4 and a Spear of Piercing +2/+3 early on, as well as some other minor AC-increasing stuff.
A bit low on useful potions maybe, but otherwise all was well.
Then on level 6 (yeah, still pretty early I guess) I got inflicted with Sentinel's Mark, which seems to be a new spell in 0.12 (?) that draws the attention of every monster on the level.
Before I could reach the exit, a centaur, an imp and several orcs had reached me. I tried fighting them in a corridor, but had a few bad rolls, so my health was quickly reduced. I used a teleport scroll which of course teleported me right into the middle of several more orcs, including priests and wizards. Result: You die... Fucking Orc Priests and their smiting.

I thought Skalds were removed in 0.12 and returned in 0.13?

 

[Zdzisiu]

Played a bit of DCSS again, v0.12.2.

Usually I don't get very far, because I suck at it, but my most recent run (Human Skald again) started pretty well.
Found an Trident of Protection +1/+4 and a Spear of Piercing +2/+3 early on, as well as some other minor AC-increasing stuff.
A bit low on useful potions maybe, but otherwise all was well.
Then on level 6 (yeah, still pretty early I guess) I got inflicted with Sentinel's Mark, which seems to be a new spell in 0.12 (?) that draws the attention of every monster on the level.
Before I could reach the exit, a centaur, an imp and several orcs had reached me. I tried fighting them in a corridor, but had a few bad rolls, so my health was quickly reduced. I used a teleport scroll which of course teleported me right into the middle of several more orcs, including priests and wizards. Result: You die... Fucking Orc Priests and their smiting.

Sentinels mark on D6? Thats weird, its a spell-ability of the vault guardians that spawn way deeper in the dungeon.

Btw, the Gargoyle race that is in 0.13 is kinda op, shitload of good features and resistances and nearly no disadvantages.

 

[Hornawkawk]

Played a bit of DCSS again, v0.12.2.

Usually I don't get very far, because I suck at it, but my most recent run (Human Skald again) started pretty well.
Found an Trident of Protection +1/+4 and a Spear of Piercing +2/+3 early on, as well as some other minor AC-increasing stuff.
A bit low on useful potions maybe, but otherwise all was well.
Then on level 6 (yeah, still pretty early I guess) I got inflicted with Sentinel's Mark, which seems to be a new spell in 0.12 (?) that draws the attention of every monster on the level.
Before I could reach the exit, a centaur, an imp and several orcs had reached me. I tried fighting them in a corridor, but had a few bad rolls, so my health was quickly reduced. I used a teleport scroll which of course teleported me right into the middle of several more orcs, including priests and wizards. Result: You die... Fucking Orc Priests and their smiting.

Sentinels mark on D6? Thats weird, its a spell-ability of the vault guardians that spawn way deeper in the dungeon.

Btw, the Gargoyle race that is in 0.13 is kinda op, shitload of good features and resistances and nearly no disadvantages.

Sentinel's mark can appear on you as a result of some semi-common trap as well.

Gargoyles are definitely overpowered. I don't think i ever started a gargoyle character that didn't finish the Lair. Their features don't make much sense - they have wings fully capable of sustained flight (which means that there is almost no reason not to fly once you hit lv 14), yet can wear any armor, while draconians are unable to do so, even with their vestigial stubby wings. They're somehow resistant to torment, electricity, and poison. The range of their abilities is so broad that on every level of the dungeon they have some kind of advantage.

 

[Gord]

I thought Skalds were removed in 0.12 and returned in 0.13?

Dunno, my version says 0.12.2...

Sentinel's mark can appear on you as a result of some semi-common trap as well.

Since there was no monster nearby when it happened, I guess I walked into a trap.

 

[Castanova]

About once a year I boot up this game to see the latest version and get a win on that online server (CAO). Won my 12th game last week on 12.2, using a TrMo (still nothing compared to Stabwound's ridiculous win count and success rate). Game feels mostly the same as previous versions except for some of the new layouts and the reduced number of overall levels. I'd say its an incremental improvement over the previous version. Anyway, I went for a second win, got 3 runes, and then got killed by a ghost who repeatedly cast Ice Storm on me. Dumb-ass death that was super preventable. Perfect reason to stop playing for another year.

 

[toroid]

Heh, well that was interesting. I haven't played a great deal, but I just experienced the Abyss for the first time. Just played a quick game as Ogre Wizard. Got a ring of wizardry on D:2 after teleporting away from almost being killed by Ijyb, and then went back and owned him with the help of summons. Started feeling pretty good. Immediately afterwards ran into Crazy Yiuf who smacked me straight into the Abyss. I was XL:4. I died quickly and confused.

  0 | D:1  | Dildos, the Ogre Wizard, began the quest for the Orb.
  0 | D:1  | Reached XP level 1. HP: 14/14 MP: 5/5
  279 | D:1  | Reached XP level 2. HP: 7/22 MP: 7/7
  837 | D:1  | Reached XP level 3. HP: 20/28 MP: 2/9
  1061 | D:1  | Reached skill level 1 in Conjurations
  1901 | D:2  | Reached XP level 4. HP: 21/36 MP: 9/11
  1936 | D:2  | Reached skill level 4 in Spellcasting
  2085 | D:2  | Noticed Ijyb
  2153 | D:2  | HP: 1/36 [Ijyb/club (6)]
  2397 | D:2  | Learned a level 2 spell: Call Imp
  2400 | D:2  | Learned a level 2 spell: Blink
  2504 | D:2  | Killed Ijyb
  2504 | D:2  | Reached skill level 1 in Maces & Flails
  2596 | D:2  | Noticed Crazy Yiuf
  2645 | D:2  | Cast into the Abyss (Crazy Yiuf)
  2684 | Abyss:1  | Got an ichor-stained short sword
  2727 | Abyss:1  | Noticed a smoke demon
  2727 | Abyss:1  | Noticed a hellwing
  2733 | Abyss:1  | Noticed a golden eye
  2757 | Abyss:1  | Noticed a starcursed mass
  2776 | Abyss:1  | Mangled by a starcursed mass

 

[Castanova]

The Abyss, imo, is easily the worst-designed piece of the whole game. You got sent to the Abyss about 5 hours earlier than you'd have any hope of surviving in there.

 

[TripJack]

worst thing about the abyss is how fucking long it can take to get out if you are unlucky

even a strong character that can easily take on most of the enemies might get stuck there for 10,000 turns and starve to death

 

[Gozma]

They have apparently changed a bunch of shit in the Abyss lately so I dunno.

You are supposed to learn to be afraid of the chaos branded staff Yiuf always has, it has several ways to effectively instakill you besides Abyssing. He's easy to avoid and/or run from (he's the same speed as a normal character and only has melee) if you don't have some safe way like a wand to kill him.

 

[Stabwound]

Yeah, they changed the Abyss, and it's much worse and deadly than it ever was before. It's just one of the shittiest aspects of the game that everyone refuses to remove or admit that it sucks. Now it has multiple brutal unique monsters and is 5 floors deep, with each floor being successively harder and the rune being only on the bottom floor.

What's stupid about the Abyss is that if you get sent there before you have a decent character with any charges of Haste, there's about a 99% chance you're just going to die. It comes down to sheer luck in any case, but you at least have a good chance of making it out alive if you can outrun shit that will ream you. Abyss at XL4 is virtually impossible for all intents and purposes.

I would rather have it set on a timer where you have to survive a certain amount of time than have random exits. That shit is the most annoying and frustrating part of the entire game: wandering around aimlessly, burning through whatever consumables you have hoping to hit a random exit. It's just shitty, especially since you usually don't intend to end up there.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Yeah, they changed the Abyss, and it's much worse and deadly than it ever was before. It's just one of the shittiest aspects of the game that everyone refuses to remove or admit that it sucks. Now it has multiple brutal unique monsters and is 5 floors deep; each floor being successively harder and the rune being only on the bottom floor.

What's stupid about the Abyss is that if you get sent there before you have a decent character with any charges of Haste, there's about a 99% chance you're just going to die. It comes down to sheer luck in any case, but you at least have a good chance of making it out alive if you can outrun shit that will ream you. Abyss at XL4 is virtually impossible for all intents and purposes.

I would rather have it set on a timer where you have to survive a certain amount of time than have random exits. That shit is the most annoying and frustrating part of the entire game: wandering around aimlessly, burning through whatever consumables you have hoping to hit a random exit. It's just shitty, especially since you usually don't intend to end up there.

Yeah, Abyss is the most irritating place in DCSS right now. Another thing that annoys me about it is the enemy spawn ratio, you are just drowned in not so strong and frankly not so interesting demons etc, that in most cases are just slowing you down by blocking possible ways to move, and they just keep coming and coming.

I think Abyss is just a lazy piece of design, make completly random map, spawn a lot of monsters and some items on it and force the player to run around looking for a stupid gate out, thats all that is to it.

 

[TripJack]

It's just one of the shittiest aspects of the game that everyone refuses to remove or admit that it sucks.

durr hurr hurr just avoid getting banished bro

 

[Gozma]

The Abyss being as good as death at low levels doesn't really bother me, since lots of stuff is as good as death at that point and the Abyss at least sometimes lets you out by luck. The thing I hated about the Abyss was having to spend ages and ages there if you got Abyssed and re-Abyssed several times doing a 15-rune game.

 

[toroid]

You are supposed to learn to be afraid of the chaos branded staff Yiuf always has, it has several ways to effectively instakill you besides Abyssing.

Yeah, I've definitely learned something from that experience. I have maybe a dozen or so hours in DCSS and Yiuf has never given me trouble before. Suppose my luck finally ran out.

I would rather have it set on a timer where you have to survive a certain amount of time than have random exits.

I actually hoped that I had only been temporarily banished while I was scrambling around for dear life. I used every unidentified item I had in inventory hoping to find some edge to cling to. The only thing I didn't have a chance to use was a deck of cards (which was another thing I had never seen before) that I picked up just before getting confused and mangled.


edit:
Jeez, more crazy RNG action. Maybe two games later I was playing as Spriggan Assassin and on D:4 I found Edmund and Grinder in the same room within five tiles of one another.

 

[Gozma]

It's not that weird, ghosts and uniques tend to appear in multiples (well, one ghost, multiple uniques) on a single level. I think the algorithm is basically that Crawl does a % check that asks "Does this level have a ghost/uniques on it?" and if yes then like roll a die for how many.

You usually want to go "fuck that" and bypass most of those levels until you have gotten your "power base" together.

 

[Castanova]

In my last game, I went to Elf:5 with a Minotaur Gladiator and got sent to the Abyss either 4 or 5 times in a row. Each time I was in there for several thousand turns at least. Beyond being a tremendous bore and taking an eternity, on all of those occasions I made it to Abyss:4 or Abyss:5, spent thousands of turns there, and never once found the rune. Plus, my character was strong enough that most of the encounters were incredibly easy. Only once did I get swarmed to the point that I my HP start dropping significantly. What a silly level.

 

[TripJack]

my poor mibe is screwed

about to enter Zot, but i've got no mutation resistance and only 1 cure potion

 

[Castanova]

my poor mibe is screwed

about to enter Zot, but i've got no mutation resistance and only 1 cure potion

Go back and farm either Abyss level 1 or Pan. Cake!

 

[TripJack]

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/13-beta

Crawl 0.13 is in beta!

You can test out the upcoming release on CSZO, CAO, or CLAN. We hope to have the other servers updated soon. Please report any bugs you find on Mantis.

The 0.13 release is scheduled for 11 October.

djinn will exist very soon

 

[Hornawkawk]

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/13-beta

Crawl 0.13 is in beta!

You can test out the upcoming release on CSZO, CAO, or CLAN. We hope to have the other servers updated soon. Please report any bugs you find on Mantis.

The 0.13 release is scheduled for 11 October.

djinn will exist very soon

You will believe a gargoyle can fly.

 

[TripJack]

i was wrong, djinn won't exist for awhile yet

djinn, lava orcs, and the new branch have all been pushed back to 0.14