Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Delta Foxtrot]

Unless they changed it again in the last while, any orc can convert to Beogh once they find their first Beogh altar or orc priest.
So yeah you won't be a priestling from your first step into the dungeon but you can make a Jesus out of yourself pretty quickly.

[moondowner]

Unless they changed it again in the last while, any orc can convert to Beogh once they find their first Beogh altar or orc priest.
So yeah you won't be a priestling from your first step into the dungeon but you can make a Jesus out of yourself pretty quickly.

I always thought it was necessary to be a priest, not just a member of Beogh's religion. Gotta try this, thanks.

[tompliss]

It changed pretty much at the same moment
it was needed so that you can follow Beogh before killing most of the orcs, anyway

[sambojin]

It always amused me on the various orc starts for Beogh.

Priest start "I'm orc Jesus. Let's go headkicking!"

Other (old) starts "Quick! Run to the temple! I wanna be orc Jesus! Don't mind the trail of dead orc bodies on the way. Beogh forgives. Me at least. I'm gonna be orc Jesus!"

Current start "Hi orc priest, me mate, me buddy, me pal. I don't know how to say this, but I think I might be orc Jesus."
"Holy shit, you're right! Lads, help orc Jesus out. No randomly killing him or anything...."

Thusly a saviour cometh and a religion is born...... Then YASD'd

[Leafsnail]

Just won a SpEn (again, first time was offline).  It's an easy build of course, but what was kindof notable is that I finally learnt how to ninja things.
http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/trunk/Leafsnail/morgue-Leafsnail-20140320-150412.txt

81501 | Zot:1    | Entered Level 1 of the Realm of Zot
 81582 | Zot:5    | Entered Level 5 of the Realm of Zot
 81637 | Zot:5    | Noticed an ancient lich
 81647 | Zot:5    | Noticed an orb of fire
 81652 | Zot:5    | Noticed an ancient lich
 81665 | Zot:5    | Got the Orb of Zot
 81673 | Zot:5    | Noticed an orb of fire
 81675 | Zot:5    | Gained mutation: Your body is slowly deteriorating. [an orb of fire]
 81825 | Depths:6 | Gained mutation: Your body is deteriorating. [mutagenic glow]
 82284 | D:1      | Noticed Thuotop the pandemonium lord
 82344 | D:$      | Escaped with the Orb!

Once you have your spells you really don't need to kill anything as a SpEn, especially when you have over 1000 stealth.

[Levi]

How do you get experience if you aren't killing things?

Btw, is dodging actually useful?  I always seem to get destroyed when I train it instead of armor.  The only time I've even gotten close to the orb was playing a fully armoured Minotaur warrior.

I keep trying to play as a troll monk and getting slaughtered in the middle game.

[Leafsnail]

How do you get experience if you aren't killing things?

I didn't need any more experience, I already had all the skills I needed.  At that point it became a lot safer to just evade everything.

The problem with dodging is that it's unreliable. In a roguelike, unreliability is very bad (as it just takes one 'failure' to lose all your progress).

I tried playing a FeSk a few months back (0.13, so, before Felids had Leap, or whatever it's called, that they added in trunk). I had ridiculous levels of dodging. Still died to a single stone giant when two rolls went askew and he hit me with two consecutive rocks.

I wonder if there could be some way to implement some guaranteed 'minimums' into dodging. Like 'glancing hits' or something, for some damage reduction. Or you could go the way Path of Exile did (50% chance to dodge = if attack A hits, B will miss, guaranteed), but that seems very scummable in a roguelike.

I love the theme of dodge characters, but dislike how they are so much more luck-dependent than armour ones.

AC rolls can be just as unreliable - you can always roll a 1 on it (there is GDR but it only applies to melee attacks and isn't that significant).  Your quick death is due to the fact that felids have horrible HP.

Basically EV is pretty good for reducing the amount of damage you take most of the time, it's just that you have to remain alert and escape if you take a bad hit.

[Leafsnail]

The problem you've identified is still with having low HP though, not low AC.  Also GDR's effect is pretty damn subtle so I'd be surprised if you found it noticeable.

[Levi]

How about shields?  I'm not entirely sure how they work, but are they more useful or less useful than armor? 

I think I just got to get better at knowing when to run away, but I usually don't know when that is until I'm already mostly dead and can't escape anyway.   

And on the subject, any advice for playing low-hp characters?  I've never managed to make any progress playing them at all.

[monk12]

How about shields?  I'm not entirely sure how they work, but are they more useful or less useful than armor? 

I think I just got to get better at knowing when to run away, but I usually don't know when that is until I'm already mostly dead and can't escape anyway.   

Being on the road to "already mostly dead" is the cue to book it.

[Levi]

Yeah, but usually they can just follow me up stairs or shoot spells, so running doesn't seem to help a lot most of the time for me.  I get the feeling sometimes I'm missing something fundamental about how to play this game.

[Graven]

Meh, I'd say GDR is very significant, in my personal experience. Also the sort of characters who build AC typically have decent HP to go along with it, mitigating any random strings of bad luck. Dodge-orientated races tend to also have low HP, compounding the issue.

GDR has been specifically described by devs as a pretty much internal stat that the player should always ignore for more total AC. Also to quote the bots: ""Guaranteed damage reduction" versus melee attacks, conferred by body armor. If you're making equipment decisions based on this, please reconsider."

In other words - nearly all players can just forget GDR exists as a statistic.

Dodging vs Armour - I've found armour a lot more reliable, honestly, but that's opinion. Both should be usable, especially since you generally get more EV in lighter armour which allows for easier spellcasting.

[Dr Feelgood]

GDR just makes the damage you take per hit a little bit more consistent. I wouldn't prioritize it over AC.

How about shields?  I'm not entirely sure how they work, but are they more useful or less useful than armor? 

I think I just got to get better at knowing when to run away, but I usually don't know when that is until I'm already mostly dead and can't escape anyway.   

And on the subject, any advice for playing low-hp characters?  I've never managed to make any progress playing them at all.

I like to use shields with EV-focused characters. All my low HP characters (below 100) used spells. A stabber is a good choice for a squishy race, since you can avoid fighting most enemies.

[Leafsnail]

On the opposing side, I've heard quite a few people describe that +27 body armor (I forget the name) as useless* precisely because of the lower GDR. I guess it's up for debate somewhat.

*Not literally useless.

The problems with Lear's Hauberk are a) low base AC means it won't improve as fast as a regular set of armour and b) you're locked out of a load of other slots and thus lose flexibility.  The difference in GDR between it and, say, a Plate Mail will be basically negligible.

[tryrar]

Ok WTF, today's been one of those days. I've been losing not to dungeon monsters, by my own player ghosts, all on the same level. 7 times in a row. FU too game.

of course, it doesn't help I've been trying to make a good venom mage, and since player ghosts are undead(and thus immune to poison), while I'm not, and also that I've learned poison bolt by the time I get to d:5(and player ghosts don't need to worry about failure chance), you can see where this is going....