Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

[Damned Registrations]

The weirder part is that some enemies can't use stairs. I guess for the player ghosts it's because they're trapped on the level they were made? Stair hopping bugs me too though. Making use of a hallway is a logical thing one could actually do (Though it would make more sense in a game like incursion where enemies actually have sizes, as opposed to fucked up situations where a kobold and a dragon both occupy one tile, and the former can stand in between and protect you from the dragon, who can also FLY.)

Though oddly I don't mind it so much in nethack or ToME, where no enemies can use stairs. I guess I sort of think of their particular level as being their lair, the borders of which they won't fight past.

 

[Zomg]

I can understand why someone would have some problem with it, but the whole thing where each DL is like an independent universe with player-permeable membranes between them is a classic Roguelike quirk. If only because the 2D ASCII drawing of the dungeon is inherently about seeing and dealing with one cross-section at a time, which would be kinda problematic even if you just allowed nearby dungeon levels to generate and live at the same time as the one the player is on and let monsters use stairs freely. Crawl adds a few kludgy things to reduce stair abuse power to being useful instead of all-consuming-ly unstoppable.

Stair abuse only seems salient in Crawl compared to in other RLs because its basic combat is dangerous enough that you need to use every advantage (well, other RLs have "stair abuse" but it's usually about abusing non-persistent level generation).

 

[Dragula]

http://tome.te4.org/download

How is this?

 

[Zomg]

Read page 11 of the thread. It's like Roguelike Oblivion, it's about exploring and building up your character and doing quests and less just flat-out Game like Crawl is. It's in active development so it's not like picking up ADOM or some decrepit *band shit, go for it if it sounds like something ur cravin'.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Do you also balk at the idea of manipulating which skills are on and off?

No, because this represents what the character's focus and strategy is.

What about backing into a hallway to fight enemies one on one?

This represents tactical positioning.

You have a representation of a physical space so why not use it?

It doesn't make sense that only one creature would follow you up the stairs. Or that creatures who had you in LOS would stop and stair at the stairwell waiting for you when they would otherwise chase you to the end of the earth.

I would hit the ogre with a mephitic cloud and then bang the imp with a wand of cold/throw ice, it's highly doubtful that I would be wounded at all...

And when would you learn fighting skill?

On creatures that aren't ogres? I mean, it only makes sense that practice would involve starting on easy tasks and then working your way up to difficult ones.

And why should I need to if I'm a wizard?

Also certain characters doesn't have cloud spells during Ogre encounter,

Then certain characters should have play styles apart from manipulating the system in such an egregious way. If the only way a character can win is to exploit the game itself(ie, cheat), then there is something wrong with the game balance.

Imagine this situation in real live. You are running around on stairs, then you run around until you lose the imp. You run back down stairs and imp is running around trying to find you. Is there any problem with that?

Imagine this situation in real life, you are in a room full of gnolls, one of them is right next to you and you are fighting it. You flee up the stairwell, the gnoll next to you follows. You kill it, eat something, jack off, and wait for your wounds to heal. Then you go back down the stairwell and all of the gnolls are standing exactly where they were when you left them. One of them approaches you, you go back up the stairs, he follows you, you kill him, you then proceed to jack off, eat, and let your wounds heel again.

Is it so hard to see why that is patently unbelievable?

Though oddly I don't mind it so much in nethack or ToME, where no enemies can use stairs.

I would find this preferable, as it prevents you from exploiting the system(which clearly intends to represent that monsters are willing to follow you to another level) to pick monsters off one by one. It would make a lot more sense is the monsters stuck together on their own level and waited for you or returned to their home positions.

All I'm asking for is a little internal consistency. I understand that the game is ridiculous and that everything in the dungeon just attacks you on sight for the hell of it. I understand that this is patently silly. On the other hand, I see it as nothing other than cheating to draw something up the stairs, kill it, then go back down, as it is discordant with the idea that monsters can and will follow you to another level.

I mean, did you guys consider it a legitimate strategy to move to the very edge of an enemy's LOS in Baldur's Gate, tag him with a projectile, draw him off into another room, kill him, and then go fetch another in the same way? I'm pretty sure that most of you would agree that is bad design, and you are exploiting that bad design by metagaming.

 

[Zomg]

It may not give you the sense of verisimilitude that you require from a Roguelike, but there are a few rules that make drawing single enemies up stairs and shit "balanced". It takes a full round to go up stairs for one, so everyone adjacent gets a free shot on you in addition to still being next to you at the top of the stairs. Anyone you left behind on the lower level will also gather around that staircase to beat the shit out of you upon your return and certainly if you try to pull the same trick twice (so you usually want to go back down a different staircase than the one you did this with).

It's been considered in development so it's not exploitive; it's just "unrealistic". I think a similar level of balanced unrealism would be that only 8 enemies/allies can surround you because of the grid structure of the game - is it realistic that having 8 butterflies around me protects me completely from a hydra?

 

[Dirk Diggler]

It's been considered in development so it's not exploitive

Well, I'm okay with it in that case. If that's how they intended you to play the game, then that's how I'll play the game. If the game is balanced with that strategy in mind, then I'm alright with it.

I certainly wasn't trying to make an argument for realism at any rate. There's a shit-ton to pick on in that regard well beyond stairhopping if I wanted to.

 

[Zomg]

There's really nothing in Crawl that you're just not supposed to do 'cause it would be too metagamey. From reading their tracker it seems like when stuff is even close to the "just not supposed to" area they intend to patch it out.

 

[crufty]

for what its worth summoned undead don't go up and down levels so its kinda fair in that sense.

i agree though, it seems like if a pack of gnolls are putting the boots to the player, medium styles, and the player flees up a stairs, the gnolls should follow.

the flipside is all's fair in roguelikes, the game is the metagame.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Damn, I had no idea that I was playing easy mode with those sludge elf wizards. I've been trying my hand as a crusader lately and I can't make it past level 5. You've really gotta earn your keep as a melee character. D:

EDIT:


Just killed Prince Ribbit with my lvl 4 High Elf Crusader thanks to a potion of invis and freezing aura. Took me to lvl 6, then I got chumped by a fucking ice beast.

 

[Malakal]

Protip: memorize berserk at level 3. Helps for most uniques and difficult situations.

 

[Castanova]

Crusader Protip: Fire Brand makes Ice Beasts so easy you actually WANT to find some of them.

 

[Malakal]

True, fire and freezing brands are enough for most encounters. Or berserk.

But remember to not use anything heavier than chainmail and buckler. Start with robes, climb to leather and chain is max. Depends on artifacts You find. Shields are very much worth it too, but start with them later since they greatly weaken spellcasting.

Consider acquiring rods, they are good shit.

 

[MisterStone]

Whats all this bullshit about stairways being cheesy? Crawl at least makes it HURT when you take a stairway right next to a monster- they get two free whacks on you, right? I remember when this was tweaked many years ago and people on Usenet were whining about it.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Crusader Protip: Fire Brand makes Ice Beasts so easy you actually WANT to find some of them.

Come on now, I'm not that dumb. I did use fire brand.

Though I hadn't folded berserk into my gameplan in an effective manner by that point. I got to lvl 8 last night with that in tow...then priests and poison got me. Which was admittedly dumb, because I had 3 healing potions in my inv.

Fuck this game is hard. When does this 'boring midgame' start? It just gets more and more intense from what I've seen.

 

[Zomg]

For most characters Lair is boring and homogenous if they have the basic tools to do it and uselessly dangerous if they don't. It's even much less likely to spawn uniques, and almost never one of those deathshit levels with 4 different uniques/player ghosts. Hive is idiotically boring also. Once you've cleared Lair/Orc/Hive you should be able to easily dive to like DL20 and some of upper vault without too much risk (depending on character - I have a centaur monk on akrasiac right now that I dread going back to because his defense is completely nil). People with dispel undead can wreck all but the bottom of crypt in here also. At some point you can go clear swamp/shoals/snake pit, all of which are gonna be not-that-high-risk once you get the basics down (although they get interesting because some of the really deadly uniques spawn there frequently).

But all of that, if you're using an effective race and your item luck isn't terrible, is gonna be a flattish difficulty curve with no big surprises. It was all exciting when I'd never seen it before and I was running into uniques for the first time etc. but now it's a slog.

Vault:8/Slime:6/Elf:7/Tomb can get interesting and Zot:5 and Hell are still exciting to me. I still haven't messed with Pandemonium, I pussed out with my 15-rune-capable vampire transmuter after Asmodeus almost killed him.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Hmm, it seems that I made it right to that threshold then. My most powerful character yet(formerly mentioned lvl 10 SEWiz) walked past the stairs to the lair. The sound of it scared me so I didn't go in.

I think that was at DL10.

I think that I went to DL 11 though w/o entering. Can you pass it up? Or am I remembering wrong?

 

[Zomg]

The staircase to lair is somewhere on DL8-13. With a wizard you could get in deep shit in lair because you don't have a serious attack spell in your starting book and several dangerous things in there are mephitic-immune, so you might have to just dip in carefully and use wands on poison-immune tough stuff. But like an ice elementalist or fire elementalist with icicle/sticky flame (or similar) should instantly go into lair when they see the stairs - don't even finish exploring the level you're on - and the earlier it shows up the better.

 

[MisterStone]

DONT go in the lair if you don't have poison resistance, and at least a couple of big gat wands to blast the Hydras 'n shit if things get hairy. At lev 10 anyway.

 

[Malakal]

Just buried my level 15 human crusader. Had good enchantment level, spellcasting, fire and ice magic, swords and necromancy, air magic too. Used all my spells from the first spellbook and sticky flame as a bonus.

Died to Snorg due to my carelessness. I had like three scrolls of blinking. Fuck, those weak chars require constant attention.

But of course Okawaru rained shit on me once againa nd I had like 14 AC with no artifacts anywhere. WTF he gifted me flails (no skill at all), daggers, shields... Fuck him, definitely changing gods next time.

 

[Castanova]

DONT go in the lair if you don't have poison resistance, and at least a couple of big gat wands to blast the Hydras 'n shit if things get hairy. At lev 10 anyway.

Generally true but if you're running an Elementalist/other strong caster, you don't even need poison resistance. Nothing should really hit you much.

I don't really consider Beserk a part of the main game plan considering how dangerous it is to be Slowed afterwards. It's more like a situational Oh Shit option. I only use Beserk if I can't physically run away and I'm 90% sure I can kill whatever is chasing me before the Beserk mode ends.

 

[Zomg]

Berserk isn't too bad if you're massively anal about it and only use it in explored+cleared out areas (leading whatever you want to kill back into it first). I actually try not to use it as a "shit has gone wrong" abilty because it's on the level of an uncontrolled teleport for last resort tools.

I guess an obsessively careful berserker is kinda unthematic.

Never use it on stuff that can blink

 

[Dirk Diggler]

I just got killed by an Unseen Horror.

I was lvl 10, on DL:8. HeCr. I tried to run, but it was faster. I ended up exhausting about 6 healing potions in the process of fighting it. I hit it several times, but several times just wasn't enough.

Fuck this game. I gave it a good shot, but it just doesn't even seem remotely fair.

 

[Castanova]

You gotta either run to another level or get into a single-space-wide hallway. Sometimes easier said than done, I guess. Bummer.

 

[Zomg]

DL8 is pretty early for a UH but post the equipment in that character's morgue file and we can see the item you forgot you had that would have saved your ass

They are super fast but they move like bats if you've never seen one with detect invisible so you can usually go up/down a stair safely even when one is after you, they like to get next to you for one hit and then retreat away.

Stuff that is money against unseen horrors:
sticky flame (hits them and makes them visible, also kills them)
corona/fedhas' light/Tso's halo
wand of polymorph
mephitic
wand of digging to make a tunnel
beam wands (draining, fire, cold)
hard hitting conjurations
draconian breath
being a naga or vampire

stuff to let you survive it to reach a stair
fear scroll, blink scroll, teleport scroll/wand/spell, semi-controlled blink
summons/slaves to block it (very few summoning spells see invisible to attack it, however)
potion of speed
a door (they won't open 'em)

Generally if your character is so fragile that a UH on 8 can take them apart before they can do anything you should probably reconsider your XP distribution for that archetype.