|
Serephina posted:I really don't like Ash with Gnolls (not that I've ever ascended one!). To me, the appeal of the character is being able to swap to whatever cool poo poo just dropped on the floor, which is kind of hard to do when all your gear is cursed. Or you could not curse your weapon&shield, but then why are you playing Ash? Oka, despite being a huge bore, generally gives much better results. Even helps remove penalties for spellcasting! But then you're playing Oka. Lose/lose. I played a gnsk of Ash and found it very strong and generally fun. The biggest problem with Ash is the weak early game, but gnolls are brutally strong early, especially as hybrid backgrounds, so right around the time the gnoll advantage starts to run out, there's a good chance you've picked up the skill boost from Ash. I cursed pretty much everything and didn't regret it. I did make the super boring choice of going for a longbow as my cursed weapon, though. Longbows are still almost certainly the strongest weapon type in the game and gnolls of Ash are very well positioned to use them. Ammo is only limited early, but unlike other ranged characters, your melee is just as good as your ranged skill. By the time you have lots of arrows and a longbow, you have the skill boost from Ash and can curse your weapon. Longbows fall off late, but by then you have lots of spells and evocations to make up for it. It's not hard to find a longbow fairly early, and for a gnoll, it's almost always going to be the best possible target for enchant weapon scrolls when you find one. If you do find an amazing artifact, just burn a scroll and switch. On the negative side, what I just described is sort of optimal, boring play. If you don't want to go for a longbow every single time you find one, or if you can't find one early, you'll have a worse time. And by mid-late game a gnoll of Ash with a longbow doesn't play much differently from a high elf of Ash with a longbow except it has more HP and it gets good evocations in exchange for shittier spells. But it's not a bad combo by any means. Einwand posted:I'm pretty sure those fencing gloves give every weapon the ability to riposte like long blades. If I recall, fencing gloves give a 33% riposte chance for all weapons except long blades, and for long blades, they double the chance to 66%. Teal posted:so is it a too radical thought to ponder if there isn't something wrong with the skill system when a lot of people find the game a lot more fun when it's just gone? That people find the skill system better when it's gone doesn't follow from the fact that people like gnolls. It's much more likely that people enjoy the novelty of gnolls and being able to choose a different approach, not that they would prefer to play every game without skill choices. That's not to say that it's impossible to improve the skill system, of course. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Nov 3, 2018 |
#
¿
Nov 3, 2018 16:15
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:33 |
|
|
tweet my meat posted:When do the wizard starter spells start dropping off in effectiveness? Magic dart falls off pretty fast, and it’s best to have another plan for dealing with enemies by the time you have to face beefy early-mid game enemies like orc warriors or yaks. Conjure flame is great all the way through lair and late D, meph cloud can be really strong even in lair branches and retains some utility in vaults (shutting down convokers.) I usually stop casting summon imp by the beginning of lair, but you can probably squeeze decent use out of it through the end of D as a way to get meph cloud resistant distractions, especially if you don’t have any other summons and aren’t really spending your MP on better stuff. The great thing about wizard is that you get your whole starting kit for a tiny bit of investment, which means you have a powerful set of utility skills through the early mid-game that can cover and support you while you develop into pretty much any character type you want. Low starting strength makes armor a problem and weapon damage a little awkward, but wizard is still a premier hybrid start. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Nov 13, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2018 16:16
|
|
|
tweet my meat posted:Blaster casters are boring to me, I just wanna collect a shitload of utility spells to facilitate me safely hitting things with a polearm. I think I'm gonna go with either ogre with a bunch of fighting or try to get some light armor casting going on with a human. Pole arm wizards are good, so are stabby wizards, and so are archer wizards. DEWz with a bow is really cool. If you go DEWz, take advantage of your hexes aptitude and go for slow. It’s dubious on most wizards, but great for DE. People are mentioning how dangerous rPois reptiles and amphibians are for wizards, but slow makes them easy to handle.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 02:16
|
|
|
tweet my meat posted:Now a polearm ogre is great and all, but how good is the giant spiked club with the new lovely mace apts? It’s still really good, but a regular giant club might be better, depending on how much you want to invest in magic and throwing and whether you are following oka (heroism) or ash(skill boost). Giant clubs are super efficient in damage to xp investment, while GSCs are typically more suited for pure bruisers.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 05:15
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:i just want to swing something else around as a big fat lad sometimes yknow? but its hard when theres a +2 apt and theres generally some kinda mace worth picking up pretty quick and My feeling is that the character of the species and the way it fulfills a particular melee glass cannon niche work better with the very high m&f aptitude. I understand wanting other choices to be viable, but aside from just going for coolness or different experiences, weapon choices aren’t very interesting in Crawl to begin with, so I don’t think it’s a terrible sacrifice. There are also enough species available overall that equating weapon choice with species choice is okay in a few cases. That’s admittedly a subjective opinion, though.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 16:13
|
|
|
Internet Kraken posted:Honestly I don't understand what the heck the devs think of mutations these days. There was a discussion in a Crawl discord about Zot and I said I actively avoid going there unless I need EXP now, because I don't wanna pick up irresistible mutations from OOFs. I usually stand in a moderate position on how much the dev team sucks and how much they’re ruining the game, but this perfectly encapsulates one of the things I find most frustrating about the way development is handled now. Even if gammafunk’s position that “mutations aren’t dangerous” is 100% true, his statement is still ridiculous. I actually don’t feel too bothered by malmutate, especially in Zot, but I can recognize that outside of a certain limited group of players, negative mutations, even when they don’t damage your chance of victory much, feel bad. Getting an awesome set of positive mutations feels good. I don’t think I need to cite much evidence to support that. It’s common sense and the way a very large number of people play the game makes it extremely clear. But rather than accepting that players don’t like unavoidable malmutate, gammafunk dictates to players what they’re supposed to like and how they ought to feel. You’re not supposed to feel bad about malmutate because it doesn’t actually lower your chance of victory much. If you do feel bad, your feeling is wrong. There is only one way to appreciate the game, and it is through a purely analytic lens. It’s fine for the devs to focus on catering almost entirely to the really analytic, competitive-minded players. But it’s no surprise when people who aren’t in that group complain. What really drives me nuts is when the devs, in response to those (legitimate) complaints, don’t say something like, “sorry, that isn’t the kind of game we’re interested in building”, but rather say, or imply, “you’re wrong and you don’t understand the game and our vision”.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2019 10:13
|
|
|
What are the dev arguments for the trap change? I’ve only seen one side of the discussion so far, but it seems pretty head scratching to me. For one, from the player’s perspective, it makes sense for traps to be something you can detect and imagine as an actual object in the game, not just a random chance for something to trigger when tiles are revealed. Second, I always thought one major purpose of traps was to force you to interact with terrain in unusual ways, for example even if you’re not in danger of stepping on to that zot trap over there, you still don’t want the enemies to, or you could lure scary melee enemies in the early game on to teleport traps
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2019 14:29
|
|
|
Getting rid of traps and doors as an arbitrary experience tax on all characters was a great move. Same with removing damage traps that were harmless to high level characters but would randomly kill you instantly in the early game with no warning. Those were legitimately bad. From the descriptions posted here, I don’t think the devs brought the bad traps back. I imagine the reasoning was something like, “traps are only interesting when you step on them, players will never step on a revealed trap, and eventually you reveal all traps before you step on them, so lets make it so traps are never revealed and their effects are just things that can randomly happen to the player when they explore.” I don’t really agree with that, but I don’t know if that’s the actual motivation behind the change, either.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2019 15:09
|
|
|
Araganzar posted:Does anyone know about Blade of Disaster? Vehumet has offered it to my octopode with Glaive of the Guard. I read the commits and it looks like it creates a Fulminant Prism maybe next to the monster? Is it a permabuff? Can you self-own with it? I wrote the spell, but haven’t actually played a full game using it. It’s not a permabuff and you definitely can self-own with it. The design ideas behind it are: 1. A charm that you interact with at the tactical, rather than just the strategic level. You would never want it to be a permabuff or on all the time, but it (hopefully) is still powerful enough to justify investment and frequent casting. 2. An incentive to make “reaver” type characters, i.e. characters that invest deeply in both melee and conjurations. 3. A high risk, high reward explosively powerful spell that lets you clear out fights quickly with good tactics, but that can also backfire horribly. I’ve only gotten feedback from one poster about it, who said it felt like a “win harder” spell, which is what I was afraid it would be. He was also playing a Chei character, which is definitely not the intended use case (if I ever get back into Crawl, I’m going to try it with a long blades character following WJC, which will probably result in me blowing myself the gently caress up, but there will be tons of fireworks). If you end up using it, let me know how it is and whether it works as intended! GreyjoyBastard posted:uh They’re quite fragile, so it’s possible to burst them down quickly before they destroy you if the situation allows for it. They also have very low MR (if I recall) so wands or hexes will take them out of the fight quickly. But in general, you need to be very careful around bee vaults well after normal bees are no longer a big threat. It’s generally better to avoid fighting meliai at all before you’re solidly in the mid-game section of the power-curve, and as soon as you realize they’re coming for you, you need to crap your pants and start burning consumables. It sucks to lose a character to them, but I think they’re a pretty fun monster, overall.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2019 07:41
|
|
|
Einwand posted:I've never tried blades of disaster personally because its never really seemed like it would be worth the effort of using it, pure mages tend to want much safer options, while my hybrids don't ever really want conjurations, and are usually a lot more focused on getting some lower level utility spells up to supplement murdering everything with an axe while in some sort of heavy armor. I'll have to try and actually use it sometime but it mostly just seems like it's too high level, for the investment of getting it running I could get invisibility and silence or deflect missiles functional. I almost always go for weapon skill, ranged or melee, on my mages, just because I like to have a quiet, MP free way to kill things. I love to play hybrid type characters, though and my favorite god is Ashenzari. Even my hybrids that don’t really take damage spells typically go very deep in some combination of charms, hexes summoning or necromancy. I don’t have a good sense of how strong the spell is, so I’m not sure whether it should be a lower level (I even forget what level I made it  ). I purposefully made it a higher level since I didn’t want it to be something late game melee characters get as a basically free buff.ogresque posted:maybe make it easier to cast and scale it off your ability to sword things somehow? I don’t remember the specifics, but it scales off of your weapon damage and your spell power unless you’re unarmed, in which case it’s just uses spell power, but at a higher coefficient. And, of course, it spawns the prisms when you attack, so hitting min delay with your weapon is the single best way to improve your damage with the spell. I guess not many people really play “reaver” type characters, which makes sense because they’re awkward to play unless you really value having lots of options over straight up power. I actually had a plan to write some kind of “god of reckless vengeance” that gave buffs along with continual self damage when casting spells that could only be burned off by taking damage or attacking in melee. But I couldn’t quite hammer out the details to my satisfaction and real life got in the way.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2019 08:49
|
|
|
Einwand posted:I tend to prioritise evocation as my ranged option on a lot of characters that aren't primarily magic focused, and when I do play a magical focused character it usually has a melee weapon to clean up trash enemies so I don't have to recover mp after literally every fight, not for killing anything I'd think would be dangerous enough to warrant something like blades of disaster. Maybe I'm underestimating the conjuration as a midgame ranged option, though. In the mid game, spells like freezing cloud can rack up really large amounts of damage while you attack in melee, while you can use bolt of cold or orb of destruction to soften or kill very dangerous enemies from range. And unlike with evocations, you can and should do this in every fight. You fight the enemies the same way a melee character would, except half of them die before they reach you and the others are half dead. Since you're still dangerous without MP, you can finish a lot of fights that a pure caster would have to bail on. The way the experience curve works in Crawl means that you can benefit a lot from leveling a bunch of skills to the mid-teens, particularly if you stick with a one-handed weapon and a shield or buckler and/or go with Okawaru, Vehemet or Ashenzari. So, in effect, a good hybrid hits the perfect middle ground between a bruiser and a blaster -- better offense than the bruiser and more staying power than the blaster. But it's true that while a HEWz of Ashenzari does more damage overall than a MiBe and has more versatility, the difference in defense is enormous. And if you're willing to play carefully, a good blaster can kill everything from range without ever needing to put itself in harm's way. So magic-heavy hybrids are more awkward to play than specialists, but can also be really rewarding. Blade of Disaster is meant to be a continuation on that theme: it makes you extremely dangerous in melee and gives you a way to deal AoE damage while repositioning (thus reducing your incoming melee damage), but it has serious drawbacks and can really gently caress you over if you use it badly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2019 13:04
|
|
|
Regarding poison magic, I agree that the school is lacking and not satisfying to use. It’s not worthless, like people are making it out to be. Venom mage is a very good start if you know how to play one, but it’s not even the strongest caster background and it doesn’t get any better as the game progresses. However strong your spells might be in the early and mid-game, and OTR, meph cloud and, to a lesser extent, noxious vapors are very strong, it doesn’t make up for feeling like your character’s primary toolset or identity becomes niche at best by the end game. So some new spells need to be added to poison magic. But I don’t agree with adding high level damage spells. Crawl doesn’t really need more damage types. I don’t think making yellow spells, that do the same thing as red spells or blue spells, but can’t be resisted and debuff enemies would make the game more interesting beyond filling the obvious hole in poison magic’s current design. Filling that hole is good, but should be treated as an opportunity to add more interesting spells, not just a new way to do the same thing as other schools. Powerful high level utility spells would be a perfect fit for poison magic and aren’t hard to imagine. Someone already mentioned the toxic sludge idea, which would be cool. You could also make a poison/air spell that forces flying creatures to land, or take heavy acid damage if they’re over deep water or lava. Or you could make a poison/hexes spell that fires a line of clouds that force an HD based chance for creatures to lose a turn. All of those would be extremely powerful, but much more interesting than just “like firestorm, but yellow.”
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2019 04:49
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:I know this isn't the gooncrawl way but if trunk wanted to just cut its losses and remove poison magic I wouldn't shed a tear Years ago, in response to the standardized dev response about poison magic’s design, somebody replied that if poison magic were proposed as a new feature with its current design, it would never be accepted. OTR, meph cloud and ignite poison are interesting and that’s about it. Those could easily be converted to other schools and poison just removed. Gooncrawl should absolutely add new poison spells, though, since Crawl really needs to try weird, new ideas more, even if those don’t work out perfectly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2019 06:23
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:On the one hand, I kind of agree, but on the other hand, you can't really blame people for wanting what sounds like an indirect-damage school of magic (what with being all about poisons) to actually be able to do effective damage even at high levels. That's actually a very good point. I would still hesitate to add high level damage spells, since there's a ton of room for creative utility spells, whereas most of the design space for damage spells is already occupied. Perhaps the prevalence of rPois could be adjusted? That would likely make meph cloud overpowered, but one spell needing to be adjusted is an acceptable cost for saving an entire school of magic. Or certain existing spells could just ignore rPois, but not poison immunity. OTR seems like a good candidate for that. Or if we add damage spells, they could be mid-level spells. If, say, demons, black mambas, hydras, ice and fire dragons all lost rPois and we got a mid-level acid spell, that would make poison much more relevant throughout the game (Parrow would still be good even in extended). I thought about stealing antipathetic field from Pillars of Eternity as a mid level poison spell in Crawl. You target an enemy, and everything in a line between you and it takes acid damage for a few turns. The damage could be lowish and it would still be a powerful spell. Then we could add some mid-high level utility spells to poison to keep it as a hybrid school that offers good, but situational damage and powerful control options. That would fit the feel most players are likely to associate with the name "poison magic", while keeping it unique and interesting.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2019 11:20
|
|
|
Panic! at Nabisco posted:This VSAc is going...very well. Started off with the shillelagh from the box, which is a lovely usable earlygame weapon, and then found this on like D:4 Next time you get devastator, try worshipping WJC. The detonation occurs on every hit of a whirlwind, which vaporizes groups nearly instantly. For your current character, your defenses are a little low. I’d work on dodging up to 10 or so, then armor until you get another point or two of AC. Some more maces and flails for fire starter would be my next goal after that.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2019 13:23
|
|
That, together with the hat of the alchemist I got from a shop, means I'm basically just a horrifying walking explosions platform. The only difficulty is remembering to swap to shillelagh against rF enemies.
|
Araganzar posted:I'm playing a Dr now that would be perfect for Blade of Disaster and I guess the issue is how do I get that spell as a hybrid? Would be easy as Sif, and I've been offered it a couple times with Vehumet, but here I'm stuck getting it from Tempests or a randart book. Most charms (shroud, swiftness, rmsl, regen, dmsl) and practically every hex are available in 2 fairly common books and most are in starters. This means it's a rare combo to find a character who has this spell available during the time it would be useful. What books do you recommend adding it to? Maybe book of power and book of enchantments? I could see adding it to the book of conjurations on a temporary basis to let people start with the spell and test it. I’m fine with it being a relatively rare thing you get to play with, rather than a staple of hybrids, but it’s true that it doesn’t make sense for a weird, new, niche spell in need of testing to be rare, or else nobody will test it. It definitely is not a spell for Chei followers. And even though statue form is a spell used by hybrids, I hardly think every hybrid will or should use statue form, and both are high level spells with schools that don’t overlap. I think it’s fair for the spell to not be useful if you have below average movement speed. I think you should always be able to get two prisms before you have to move, assuming average move speed, less than 1 attack delay and completely open terrain. Ripostes should also spawn the prisms, and if you attack very quickly, you can also get get more. If you’re hasted with a quick blade, you should be able to make a ton of them, though the explosions scale partially off of your weapon’s base damage. I actually considered having the prisms spawn behind enemies. There are two reasons I didn’t. The first is that if it’s too easy to avoid the drawbacks of the spell, I think there’s a real chance it could be overpowered. It adds scaling AoE damage to your melee attacks, which hugely amplifies your effectiveness as soon as you’re fighting more than one enemy. What’s more, the prisms can block enemy attacks or projectiles, and they allow you to move away from enemies, then still deal damage with the explosions, potentially reducing your incoming damage as well. This shouldn’t be a spell you want to have on all the time. It’s fine to not want to cast it if it would make you give up a good defensive position. It’s more an extra tool that would make fighting in a neutral position more appealing, rather than always retreating to advantageous terrain. Of course, it might not be possible to thread that needle with the current design of the spell. The second reason is that my compsci background is limited to a year of c++ back in high school, and looking at the code for targeting spells and spawning summons made me want to cry. But, do you think it would be better if the prisms always spawned in a fixed pattern, skipping spaces that are already filled? I like the randomness, in principle at least, because every fight will go a little differently, rather than the spell creating fixed movement and attack patterns you always adhere too. But it’s possible crowds of monsters and varying terrain would be enough to keep things fresh.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2019 06:24
|
|
|
I typically use acquirement on a weapon if I have at least 8-10 levels of skill in a weapon type and don’t have a good one. It’s pretty heavily weighted towards giving you a weapon of a type you haven’t seen yet but of a category that you have skill in. And a good weapon is going to make a much bigger difference for an early to mid game character than most pieces of randart armor, even if you get a good one. I find weapon acquirement especially attractive for short blades characters, since the chance of getting a quickblade early is pretty good. An early long bow also wrecks the game’s difficulty curve until lair branches and acquirement is very likely to give you one if your only weapon skill is bows. If I already have a weapon I’m satisfied with, I’ll acquire armor, unless there’s something in a shop I want and I don’t have the gold, in which case I acquire that. If I already have all armor slots filled with randarts or ego armor pieces and there’s nothing in any shops, I usually acquire jewelry, since I think that has a higher chance of giving you a decent randart than armor.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2019 07:37
|
|
|
Araganzar posted:Conjurations is not a hybrid start and starter books generally cap at level 5, so Enchantments for sure, maybe Party Tricks, I don't know, for now it should be readily available if you want it tested and want feedback. I've played quite a few games and quite a few characters that would use it that never saw it or never got it at the right time. This is valuable feedback and I have a few things to say in response, but it's time for me to go to sleep, so they'll have to wait for tomorrow. But before I go to bed, I just want to clarify how the spell works. I actually had to check this, because I haven't touched Crawl in months and I forgot how my own spell works. You should never have to move on the first turn you hit someone after casting it. The prisms it conjures have the same tile as fulminant prisms because I'm not an artist, but they're not the same. When you cast the spell, you have 4 turns to go nuts with melee attacks and make a bunch of prisms. The prisms are very durable (I think) and none of them will explode yet. Once your 4 turns are up, the -disaster status light goes on and you have 2 turns to get the hell away. The complete duration of the spell ends after 6 turns, then all the prisms explode at once. So the idea is, and it's possible the idea isn't working as intended, you attack for 4 turns and move for 2, during which time you can be moving away from melee attackers so they can't hit you. Then if you're fighting a group, you suddenly deal several times the damage you would normally deal with 4 turns of melee attacks when all your prisms explode.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2019 16:20
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:Is it 4/2 actions or 4/2 turns? If it's the latter, it sounds like something that would synergize well with any kind of haste effect. It’s turns. The spell pretty strongly favors attacking quickly, since your weapon’s base damage is only a part of the damage equation. The strongest use case for the spell, and also a very unrealistic one, is max unarmed with very high spell power (per the description, it uses double spell power when unarmed, rather than weapon damage). Following that, it should be extremely powerful with a triple sword, since ripostes spawn prisms (it follows the rules of auxilliary attacks, so no cleaving, yes ripostes, yes WJC attacks. Maybe that should change to no on all three, I’m not sure). Finally, it should be very good with a quickblade, a rapier of speed (better base damage than a quickblade), a demon whip or any decent long blade. Araganzar posted:Thanks for that explanation, that makes it much more useful. I'm programmed to back up when I see a prism in explodey range. This is related to some of the points I wanted to write about last night, but I went to sleep first. I wrote the spell when gooncrawl was first being discussed and floodkiller decided to make it, so there were no permabuffs at that time. Charms in general was a weak school, at that point, with very few attractive high level spells. In fact, I think there was even discussion (though perhaps not serious consideration) of removing the school in general. And, though I love the quality of life value of permabuffs, and think having them in the game is generally preferable over the situation in trunk, I don’t like them as a standard paradigm for the design of charms spells. So I wrote blade of disaster to exemplify an alternate paradigm for buff spells as opposed to permabuffs. My issue with permabuffs as the standard design of charms spells is that they have very minimal, if any, tactical implications. Even on a strategic level, a magic-light hybrid that learns phase shift, ozo’s armor and infusion is only really increasing the same numbers as a standard melee character, but is just highlighting different skills on the skill screen to do so. I really value the flavor aspect of buffs. Players come into the game and think “I want to play a spellsword” and the game should let them do that. But, I think playing a “spellsword” should also involve a different gameplay experience than playing a melee bruiser. Permabuffs make the two character types play too similarly for my liking. Just to clarify, I’m not opposed to having any permabuffs at all. I think they’re fine for certain spells. But I’m opposed to all buffs being permabuffs or permabuffs being the design paradigm of the charm’s school. So that’s why blade of disaster is charms, not hexes. It’s intended to be a strong personal buff that “reaver” types (from the old background that was a melee start with a conjurations spell book) want to learn, but that’s a buff the player actually has to think about and interact with tactically rather than being just a straight increase in the numbers on their stat sheet. Now that permabuffs are in and are common, perhaps blade of disaster should change. I still prefer it as conjurations/charms spell because hexes is already so amazing that it doesn’t really need any new spells. Conjurations isn’t a common choice for hybrids, but it’s a character type that I play frequently and really enjoy, so I’d like to have some more incentives to build that kind of character. Aumanor posted:So can we talk the implementation of repel and deflect missiles as permabuffs? Unlike other buffs, those two never timed out in their original version, and so didn't require you to keep mana in reserve to recast them. As such, they got hit way harder than other buffs in transition to permabuffs. At this point, I'm not sure Deflect is at all worth the investment on any primary caster. When permabuffs were being discussed and voted on, I argued against including these two. I think people just thought that making buffs permanent would make them better and they didn’t realize it would actually be a nerf in this case. I hope at some point we can change these back.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2019 04:09
|
|
|
Gorelab posted:So is enemy chance to resist your spells based on your skills as well as their stats? I died being a little clumsy trying to sleep/confuse a hydra. Yes. It’s your spell power — determined by relevant spell school, in this case, hexes, spellcasting skill and intelligence, plus whatever equipment or mutations you have increasing the power of your spells — compared to the monster’s magic resist. If you’re heavily dependent on hexes, getting more spell power is extremely important, though there will always be some things you can’t hex no matter how high your spellpower gets, so you’d better have a back up plan. Edit: Note, there are some spells that don’t check magic resistance. Mephitic cloud, for example, doesn’t care about magic resistance. It’s completely neutralized by poison resistance, and checks HD (hit dice, something like the monster’s overall power level). Metabolic Englaciation similarly is completely neutralized by cold resistance and checks against HD instead of MR. Meph cloud’s chance to confuse isn’t affected by spell power because it’s a cloud, but Metabolic Englaciation’s chance to slow, and the duration of the slow, is dependent on power. Another Edit: You can check the power of your spells on the screen that shows all the spells you’ve memorized. The number of #s isn’t a linear thing, each one represents more power than the last. Some hexes also have a hidden boost in power. Slow is a good example and this is one reason it’s a better spell than it looks. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Apr 22, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2019 04:54
|
|
|
Araganzar posted:You still want cblink if you're doing more than 3-4 runes. Probably enough blink scrolls to get you to Zot otherwise. I wouldn't go into extended without having Cblink and being on the way to Singularity though. We might have a difference in terminology. When I say “hybrid” I mean a spectrum of characters from those that get around ten levels in a single casting school all the way to characters casting tornado or singularity in depths. To me, a caster is a character that only uses its weapon to kill easy enemies, if at all, a melee character uses pretty much only its weapon with perhaps just a few very low level spells and a hybrid regularly uses its weapon, but also has at least modest investment in magic. I play hybrids with heavy investment in conjurations a lot. I think you’re selling the play style short. I don’t think a DE with 20 in long bows is weaker than a full DE caster, and similarly, I think a pure caster HE isn’t really better than one in dragon armor, a shield and the ability to swing a good long blade, but that can still cast chain lightning. Certainly if you’re speed running, you want to just stick to one primary way of dealing damage. But if you have good stats and aptitudes, or are following a god that boosts them (Oka, Ash, Veh, Chei) and you’re clearing each level, the way experience works in Crawl means you’ll have plenty available to be able to deal good damage with both weapons and conjurations while maintaining decent levels of defense. Aside from any kind of VM, IE or Wz, or DE with any caster start, FE^WJC is a unique way to play a hybrid that has a good skillset from early on. Get enough conjurations and fire for conjure flame and sticky flame, then start training your weapon. WJC’s whirlwind works beautifully with the FE spellbook. WJC isn’t as overtly powerful for a conjuror hybrid later on, but the actives will always be great, and the ability to reposition while dealing damage, or gain a tile of space whenever you need it will never stop being useful. All that said, I agree that charms needs a few more mid to high level spells to attract deep investment from hybrids given what’s offered in schools like hexes, transmutations, translocations, necromancy or summoning. I wrote the concept for a few other spells, but never coded them because programming is hard and life is busy.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2019 08:22
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:What's the point of Dispel Undead when (if) you can just cast Iron Shot instead? 3d32 damage at max power seems worse than 9d19, although it is only one school and has a lower max power requirement. But if you can already cast Iron Shot at a high level is there any reason to use Dispel Undead? You don’t need dispel undead if you can already cast iron shot at high power. Dispel undead is really good though, because it’s only one school, it’s a lower level, and it can’t miss. I wouldn’t take necromancy just to learn dispel undead, but it’s part of a really nice package. Does anyone have experience playing online on ios? I can’t get my keyboard to work in tiles. I can ssh in and play on console, but I’m really not used to console and it feels so weird and bad. What’s the deal with the experimental vampires? Do they still switch between the two states the same way as before, or is there some new mechanic other than hunger? I like the stat and aptitude spread of vampires a lot, but I just hate dealing with hunger for them.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2019 10:45
|
|
|
Araganzar posted:Played with Blade of Disaster, I think it's fine and now that I've had it explained very well by its creator I was able to use it very will with Wyrmslayer's 0.5 delay. Would be great with Oka, not so much with Chei. I think it should be level 5, then it could go in a starter book and it would be to my mind better positioned against spells like Phase Shift and SIlence. Really individual prisms are not that damaging so it's not a big deal to eat one if you want to keep attacking but I wouldn't budget for it at level 6 due to the fact that you WILL be forced to spend a few turns walking around. I’m glad that it’s working! I’ll add it to some extra books and reduce the level to 5. If I get some further feedback that the spell is too strong or too readily available for level 5, it should be easy to move it back. I’m not looking forward to having to figure out everything about how to deal with git again, and that will probably take some time, since I’ve completely forgotten. Floodkiller made a great effort post about it when I first started this that I’ve still got saved on my computer, though. I’m not sure which starter book it should go in. Book of Battle seems like the best fit, but the blade of disaster conflicts with spectral weapon, and skalds, with their low starting int, aren’t as well set up to use it, since it does care somewhat about spell power. I’m tempted to just make a reaver start, with something like: Infusion Swiftness Conjure Flame Force Lance Blade of Disaster as a temporary way to start with the spell for further testing.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2019 15:26
|
|
|
Gorelab posted:For some reason I always thought Zin was shittastic, but messing around with him... I think he's actually pretty drat good. Recite sometimes is insane and imprison and sanctuary can be insane escape skills. He’s also mini-Chei without the slow movement, since vitalization is cheap enough to use in every major fight and gives you a boost to all stats that scales with invocations, which you’re going to be getting anyway for his other powers. It also protects you from a bunch of nasty effects. Elyvilon is fiddly and weird, if strong, while TSO is mostly useless outside of extended, but Zin is nice throughout the game. I don’t remember exactly how bribing Zin works exactly, but I think if your piety ever starts to go down, but you have a lot of gold, you can bribe him for a huge reserve well of piety that slowly trickles in, meaning you can even use sanctuary fairly liberally in the end game.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2019 06:34
|
|
|
Anyone have recent experience building on OS X? I downloaded xcode and a local copy of the source code and made some changes, but now that it’s time to compile, I’m getting an error that I’m missing a font — dejavu sans, I think. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out tomorrow, but if anyone has experienced this before and knows a quick way to install it, or if there are any other missing dependencies on OS X now, I’d appreciate it!
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2019 16:53
|
|
|
I’ve submitted a pull request to change blade of disaster to level 5 and add it to the books of power and enchantments. At least I hope I have! Every time I mess with Crawl I feel like I have to learn a bunch of basic stuff with git all over again from the beginning. I’ll probably also submit one to add a reaver background that starts with blade of disaster (but does not add the spell to the book of enchantments) tomorrow I’m submitting two pull separate patches just because adding a new background might seem like too much of a change to implement without a thread vote. However, I think it would be fine to add it on a temporary basis to let people test the spell, and a vote can be held later regarding whether the changes should be kept. Of course, it’s up to Floodkiller which pull request to accept and whether to do it with or without a vote.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2019 17:41
|
|
|
I (hopefully) just submitted a pull request to add a reaver background with the following spells: Infusion Blink Ozocubu’s Armour Conjure Flame Force Lance Blade of Disaster I’m not extremely satisfied with that list, but I think it should give a decent starting toolkit that allows room to train a weapon skill while leaving blade of disaster available for lair, depending on god, weapon finds, aptitudes, etc. If reavers are to become a permanent background (not my intention, really), I think they need one or two unique low level spells to make the list more focused, but I hope what they have now will see people through the early game well enough. This patch doesn’t add BoD to Power or Enchantments, but it does add a new book with the same rareness as the book of Battle, so it should also up the chances for other backgrounds to find the spell.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2019 16:12
|
|
|
ZeeToo posted:
AshenzariReasons.png
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2019 16:22
|
|
|
Johnny Joestar posted:i still think wizlabs should be converted in a small side-branch that appears every game and is randomized between all the types so it's near-always something different. give them actually worthwhile loot but have them be weird and tricky encounters with cool themes. Some wizlabs have fantastic loot. The staff of Wucad Mu is game-breakingly good on a caster. I think there’s guaranteed moon troll leather in the moon base, too. It’s just that a lot of the wizlabs also have boring loot and are very threatening, like the one with all the mummies and demons, which seems to be more than 1/2 of all the wizlabs I’ve ever seen. I feel ice caves are definitely the most dangerous portals, since they can sucker you into trying to take on a giant, dragon or fiend way before you’re ready. The dangerous baileys are even nastier, relative to when they can appear, but they’re easy to recognize and there’s nothing that stops you from just leaving. Wizlabs and the desolation of salt can be really dangerous, but they show up at a point where characters should have enough options to either kill or escape out of depth enemies reliably, so dying in one feels more like the player’s fault. I absolutely love the desolation of salt, it usually has great loot, presents a unique and interesting challenge and has wonderful flavor.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2019 05:40
|
|
|
Araganzar posted:Won my last race as Archaeologist, now I guess I have to win Felid to win all races in If I recall, I think I found FeEE of Sif Muna decent. Your speed helps you kite in the early game, then by mid game you can transition into a petrify stabber with LRD support. Eventually, Sif will give you statue form, which lets you do very well in melee. Singularity is a great endgame plan for felids, and Sif has a decent chance to give you that, too.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2019 01:37
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:
I think that’s the lowest it goes. Honestly, I wouldn’t wear them unless I was hard-gated by need for rF and they were the only source of it in the game. 8 AC from normal enchanted boots would probably reduce more damage overall, even against lots of fire using enemies, unless you’re only taking fire damage and nothing else.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2019 06:58
|
|
|
Einwand posted:Its been awhile since I've tried out Ozocubu's refrigeration and I forgot just how absolutely terrible that spell is. Self damage, disabling the ability to drink potions in trade for some surprisingly mediocre screenwide ice damage. I do however have a new found respect for petrify, it's basically an infinite paralyse wand for stabbing as a mage. Petrify is indeed really cool. That and passwall (especially with ashenzari) make EE a really fun stabber background. Ozo’s refrigeration is actually really, strong if you have rC++ or +++ and very high spell power. So if you’ve got a staff of cold, a ring of cold, a robe of the archmagi and high int then you’ll wipe everything on the screen in a couple of casts. It’s also single school, so it gets to gently caress you levels of damage by lair branches easily. Being single school also makes it more friendly to combine with metabolic englaciation and simulacrum, both of which can be very powerful, but can be hard to swing in addition to other damaging spells like freezing cloud or bolt of cold.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2019 10:49
|
|
|
Can I ask where the test server for gooncrawl is located? I’m in China, which makes playing online a typically bad experience no matter what, unless the wind is blowing in just the right direction. But I can’t seem to start a game most of the time at all without using a VPN, however, I don’t know which server I should be logging on to.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2019 16:28
|
|
|
Amethyst posted:A level 1 halfling assassin is incapable of sneaking up to a sleeping rat. This is bullshit. stabbers are hard mode. Assassin and warper aren’t stealth backgrounds. I know, that’s conceptually weird, but the way you do an assassin play style in crawl is with disabling powers, either through needles, wands or spells, to open up enemies to stabs. Stealth is unreliable as a means to stab enemies. Its real value is as a powerful defensive stat that lets you escape from fights more easily, generally means you fight fewer enemies at a time and lets you pick your fights more carefully. If you want to play a stabber, the most straightforward choice is enchanter, though earth elementalist’s starting book allows them to transition into a good stabber in the mid game while providing the tools work around immunity to common stabber tricks. Warper is a really hard class, by the way. Its offense and defense are both sub par, and while it has great escape options, it’s very difficult to actually kill stuff. Assassin is a strong start, though. You just play as a normal melee character, but you have some very powerful ranged tools to take out early starting threats. TL;DR, light armor and stealth are hard to make work in Crawl without magic to support them. If you want to play a stealthy assassin type, start as an enchanter. Edit: Somehow I missed the whole page of posts above this. Anyway, I think it would be nice if short blades or even light weapons in general could do more damage and stabs would just be a bonus like cleaving or riposte. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jul 31, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2019 05:12
|
|
|
Amethyst posted:Man the crawl wiki is really obtuse about exactly how to-hit rolls and EV and AC interact. Is there a good breakdown somewhere? The way they work is just really, really weird. Somebody can post the to-hit formulae here if they want for a laugh. Basically, there’s no clear way to tell how much work your EV is doing, just that more of it is better, but it also has diminishing returns, so it’s not worth trying to push it too high. AC is fairly clear, I think. You deduct a number from 0 to AC from every attack (except AC ignoring ones, like smiting or many, but not all, elemental brands on monster attacks). Some electrical attacks only allow you to apply half your AC. Armor has a hidden GDR (guaranteed damage reduction) stat that changes the minimum damage reduction from 0 to a percent of your AC based on the type of armor, but this only applies to melee attacks, not ranged. So basically, if you have 10 AC, you’ll deduct an average of 5 damage from the majority of attacks. If you’re wearing plate armor and have 10 AC, you’ll deduct an average of 5 from ranged attacks and 7.5 from melee attacks. It’s totally possible for your armor to crap out and not protect you at all multiple times in a row, especially against ranged attacks because extremely random, swingy combat is a feature of Crawl. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong on AC.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2019 06:03
|
|
|
redneck nazgul posted:FR: Add the stabbing bonus to missile weapons. Actually, curare needles used to do some damage on impact against enemies without rPois. Since you could stab with a blowgun and stabbing multiplied the impact damage, at very high skill levels, you could kill pretty much anything without rPois silently in a single hit from range. It was really fun, though without the rPois restriction it would have been ridiculously overpowered. As it was, groups of draconians in Zot just all died without any possibility to react. And you could turn invisible and still murder them even if some poison resistant enemy woke up everyone up.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2019 17:19
|
|
|
Amethyst posted:Is shooting enemies with a missile weapon a bad idea when they are in melee range? No, it’s perfectly fine.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2019 01:52
|
|
|
Dispel undead is really good, but a lot of why it’s so good is that it’s very powerful and reliable at a minimal investment cost. It’s level 5 and single school, so a lot of characters can pick it up and use it to great effect. It’s especially good, aside from characters focusing mostly on the necromancy skill, for melee characters or hybrids that haven’t gone very deep in conjurations, like most stabbers. But as good as it is, there are plenty of other options that are as good or better: holy wrath weapons, especially two-handers at high skill, transmutations enhanced unarmed and top-tier damage spells all do better. Dispel undead is great if you build a character that didn’t specialize deeply into one of the archetypes that has tools to handle undead enemies even better. It’s a useful and powerful spell, but not a no-brainer. I don’t see how making it melee range would make players consider a broader range of options for dealing with undead, rather it would reduce the number of choices players have. If the devs feel necromancy in general needs a nerf, I think there are better ways than savaging agony and dispel undead. A range reduction of one tile, for example, would be much more understandable.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2019 07:35
|
|
|
Overall that actually looks pretty good, even if I disagree with some of the specific changes. The design of Crawl’s spell schools was already pretty good, but this mostly looks like it will make them better. I especially appreciate transitioning ice and poison away from conjurations. Now if only they would make weapon choices more interesting as well.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2019 06:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:33 |
|
|
Araganzar posted:The evolution of spells in crawl: There was a time when devs were willing to add new stuff. Or to change stuff because it sounded cool, fun and thematic rather than their vision of polished. We got singularity, after all, as well as skald book, and a number of other new spells or clear improvements over old ones (glaciate, dragon’s call). I don’t remember the exact year, but I think 2014-2016 was pretty good in Crawl development, though the devs have always had trouble with PR. redneck nazgul posted:So, let me see if I figured this out: Ice elementalists still have a way to deal with ice beasts. When you run into an icebeast, you summon two of your own. The new spell works more synergistically with the total IE skill set and is probably a buff to the class, not a nerf, unless its damage sucks. Then the problem is that the damage sucks, not that it’s an AoE spell that doesn’t damage your own summons. There are reasons to be critical of these changes, but some of these posts are just pure reaction. I haven’t actually played with the changes, and to be honest, I don’t intend to. I might go back to Crawl at some point, but after hundreds and hundreds of hours of play and without the attraction of being involved in meaningful conversations about its development, it’s not likely to attract me any time soon. So I’ll probably step out of this conversation soon, since I doubt I have much meaningful to add. I certainly can’t make many specific points about any of the spells except the very obvious ones. That said, even though I don’t agree with a lot of the nerfs — I already wrote my opinion about agony and dispel undead a few weeks ago — I am happy to see this kind of big change in Crawl. The devs haven’t been willing to make bold changes for a number of versions while the game clearly has a lot of places that can be improved. A rough first iteration of a big change isn’t a reason to write the whole thing off. Just from peoples reactions in this thread, I think a few points should be considered. -Early levels for casters need to be looked at. For VM, for example, if sting is now level 3, do they even have a level one spell? Per Araganzar’s feedback, FE probably needs to get a look too. Some caster starts could afford to be hybridized, by giving them their choice of a weapon and 1 level in it, if only as a way to indicate to players that they can’t only rely on their spell book to kill things. -The game needs simple, obvious workhorse spells. Completely removing them will make casting too frustrating. There were too many before, not every school needs one and they shouldn’t also be the best spells for every situation, but there should be at least one way to play the game where you just point your fingers at monsters and blast them, from the beginning to the end. These changes are too aggressive in removing these spells, and more care should be placed on deciding where simple, easy to use blasting spells should go. -The language used to describe the changes seem too thematically influenced, without enough consideration to gameplay, or they seem to be overly arbitrary decisions. Why should necromancy just be about melee? What does it mean for ice to be “diffuse and subtle” — that it prioritizes AoE and utility? If so, that should the design goal, with “diffuse and subtle” as a secondary thematic consideration. I doubt any devs read this thread anymore, but if they do, as a long time player, I’m happy to see changes like this that seem to be steps in the direction of vitality and creativity. I just hope that this also comes with a somewhat looser view on ownership of Crawl’s design philosophy and a little more willingness to engage with criticism.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2019 08:32
|
|