Really bothered that I can't think of a branch that doesn't Malmutate ._. (in my context: only Hells, Pan, Tomb, Zot:5, and the Abyss are still open to me. I hilariously cut off the only Ziggurat portal at...level 9, not knowing that there's a banner at LEVEL 10. :I)
I just really want to also ride out this nice RAPID EVOLUTION mutation I picked up too, but from shifting to TSO from Zin (from TSO).
Also in 0.18, it doesn't seem like the piety is cut in half when you shift between good gods?
And UC w/shield is almost exactly the same in damage output as UC without shield.
Wait, are you sure about that? It definitely didn't used to be the case, but I never read the changelogs that thoroughly.
Also just to do a drive-by on this whole 'What weapon' thing, you can never go wrong with Blade Hands.
As of the last version or few, shields don't decrease UC speed, but you still lose your offhand punch, which is... what, up to a quarter of your damage?
Same goes for Formicids, however I can attest that...
And we've got another death to that fucking hellion vault. I keep forgetting they're fast, so they get more then one Damnation per turn if you engage for long enough. Not that I'd probably have lasted long afterwards, honestly. A bardiche does NOT do enough damage quickly enough to justify the death from a thousand cuts that lacking a shield inflicts on you, even with Haste. Since there's only like two days left, its probably time to start breaking out the MiFis and going full ham to try and score one last win. Screw trying to have an interesting character, I want to bash in heads and win games, dammit.
More stuff I don't understand... I thought shields are even more useless in Extended than everywhere else, what with their inability to block any of:
- Bolt spells: Bolt of Fire, Bolt of Cold, Lightning Bolt, Bolt of Draining, Venom Bolt, Bolt of Magma, Bolt of Inaccuracy, Shock
- Explosions: Fireball, Hellfire, Fire Storm, Ice Storm, Conjure Ball Lightning, Lee's Rapid Deconstruction, exploding-branded weapons
- Other electricity-based beams: Chain Lightning
- Enchantments: Agony, Pain, etc
- Other ranged attacks that are not beams: Shatter, Tornado, Airstrike, Smite, Ozocubu's Refrigeration.
So most of the dangerous stuff (like for instance, that lovely Hellfire) bypasses shields completely, and even for stuff shields do block, they are only really effective like, once per turn, so its not like they are helping you much if you get surrounded by melee bruisers either???
I mean sure, my casters wear bucklers, but my melee dudes? Will a shield really improve my melee dudes survivability?
Even blocking one hit a turn[And shields block more then that] adds up. The problem I was having was in long drawn out fights that bled my mediocre merfolk hp bit by bit with hits that snuck through my EV until I had to burn absurd amounts of consumables to survive. This is a situation that I ran into a lot less with my traditional sword and boarders. It wasn't so much in Extended as it was in Depths and Zot and such, which left me with far less consumables then I was used to and thus made me doubt my ability to survive Extended with less resources.
That said, I do still maintain that Eveningstar + shield > Great mace. There's no way two points of extra base damage are worth taking more damage. Long blades are iffier, but I'd say the advantage is still with sword and board. And UC w/shield is almost exactly the same in damage output as UC without shield. It definitely does not work that way with polearms, since a Bardiche does six more points of base damage then the useless demon trident and axes have almost as big a gap between their best one-handed and best two-handed.
Given my experiences with a reflection amulet unique (unsure if shields have the reflect brand now), my shield can reflect AND block bolt spells (how many times I've had the calming humor of seeing several bolts being reflected back to their owners...), but it can't reflect any of the rest or block them.
Although given the high # of blocks I see in my own sheet (thanks Jiharo), I probably am not counting as I BET I've blocked (and then reflected) other ranged attacks and wand zaps too ._. Unless I'm misreading 'extended'.
And yes, shields improve survivability by a long-shot, especially in open-areas where the enemies can hit you; you'll either need good resistances or ways of escaping rather than a shield.
Shields didn't help me vs. torment and other annoying HP bar crushers.
Though I may be biased since the last game I did play was back in 0.7.
Is it possible to play the tournament with tiles? I can't be bothered with ascii anymore.
I've been playing at http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/#lobby which uses tiles.
There's a linkie in the server list that says
Graphical play via WebSocket: WebTilesAnd clicking the WebTiles brings you to the server that uses said tiles. I've been playing fully on tiles since ever (since multiple types of monsters spawned using the same letter and my color-visualization hasn't improved T_T).
I've been playing on this link to the Australian Server.
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Topic: Dungeon Crawl 0.18 tourney! Tourney is finished! Hooray Bay 12 (Read 15921 times)