[Crawl] To Hit or Not to Hit

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

My mummy death-knight just found a twisted mace, which turned out to be
an interesting weapon:

the cursed -5, +0 mace of Gross Domestic Product

A long handle with a heavy lump on one end.

Damage rating: 8
Accuracy rating: +3
Base attack delay: 140%

Occasionally upon striking a foe it will discharge
some electrical energy and cause terrible harm.
It affects your evasion (+4).
It affects your strength (+2).
It protects you from cold.
It enhances your eyesight.

Apart from the _interesting_ name, this looks to be a nice find, but I'm
wondering about the -5. He is mainly relying on necromantic arts, but
does occasionally resort to melee. How will the penalty affect learning
Maces & Flails and/or Fighting? I do have a hammer of protection, should
I use that as a training tool instead?

JJ

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

jjv wrote:
> My mummy death-knight just found a twisted mace, which turned out to be
> an interesting weapon:
>
> the cursed -5, +0 mace of Gross Domestic Product
>
> A long handle with a heavy lump on one end.
>
> Damage rating: 8
> Accuracy rating: +3
> Base attack delay: 140%
>
> Occasionally upon striking a foe it will discharge
> some electrical energy and cause terrible harm.
> It affects your evasion (+4).
> It affects your strength (+2).
> It protects you from cold.
> It enhances your eyesight.
>
> Apart from the _interesting_ name, this looks to be a nice find, but I'm
> wondering about the -5. He is mainly relying on necromantic arts, but
> does occasionally resort to melee. How will the penalty affect learning
> Maces & Flails and/or Fighting? I do have a hammer of protection, should
> I use that as a training tool instead?
>
> JJ

Weapon skills are exercised whenever you hurt a foe in melee (though if
the foe is helpless like a plant, it'll only get the skill up to 1).
Fighting skill works the same way, except that there's a 2/3 chance of
no exercising (no moving of XP into the skill) taking place, which is
why Fighting is always so much lower than one's main weapon skill.

So the minus won't affect the training; it doesn't affect the number of
times you need to hit to make a kill and thus doesn't affect the number
of exercisings. The Electrocution ego ("...electrical energy...") on it,
however, will mean fewer hits per kill on average, and thus fewer
exercisings.

None of this says anything about how efficient the exercisings are (how
much skill improvement for a given amount of XP); indeed, weapon
properties won't affect that.

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Erik Piper <erikNOSPAM@sky.cz> writes:

>Weapon skills are exercised whenever you hurt a foe in melee (though if
>the foe is helpless like a plant, it'll only get the skill up to 1).

Up to 2, actually.

-Jukka
--
Jukka Kuusisto

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

That out-of-depth-monster-generation routine kicks in when your
character is low on hp/mp. Or it seems to be.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Jukka Kuusisto wrote:
> Erik Piper <erikNOSPAM@sky.cz> writes:
>
>
>>Weapon skills are exercised whenever you hurt a foe in melee (though if
>>the foe is helpless like a plant, it'll only get the skill up to 1).
>
>
> Up to 2, actually.
>
> -Jukka

That's what I always thought, and it was my subjective impression as
well, but when reading the code just now I got confused by:

if (!helpless || you.skills[ wpn_skill ] < 2)

But now I get it... when the exercise event that takes you up to 2
occurs, you're not at 2 yet (otherwise you wouldn't need to be be pulled
up), so it's still allowed to occur.

Thanks for the correction!

e.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

jjv wrote:
> Erik Piper wrote:
>
>> Weapon skills are exercised whenever you hurt a foe in melee (though
>> if the foe is helpless like a plant, it'll only get the skill up to
>> 1). Fighting skill works the same way, except that there's a 2/3
>> chance of no exercising (no moving of XP into the skill) taking place,
>> which is why Fighting is always so much lower than one's main weapon
>> skill.
>>
>> So the minus won't affect the training; it doesn't affect the number
>> of times you need to hit to make a kill and thus doesn't affect the
>> number of exercisings.
>
> Hmm, so while I'm busily hurting the air above the rat with my -5 mace
> it spends all my skill points on excercising my dodging skill.

You're right; I didn't think of that. But turning off dodging should do
the trick.

>> The Electrocution ego ("...electrical energy...") on it, however, will
>> mean fewer hits per kill on average, and thus fewer exercisings.
>
> It's pretty rare though. But in terms of training up a secondary skill
> while surviving via e.g. necromancy I'm better off using a weapon which
> takes lots of hits to kill? Hmm, does that mean that a weapon of speed
> with a big damage malus is the fastest way to expend points on a weapon
> skill?

AFAIU no, because you have to actually cause damage (get through armour)
to make an expenditure. This understanding is based both on my reading
of the code and my experience with plant-whacking, but then again, I've
been wrong plenty of times before. Based on this assumption, the best
weapon for training weapon skill when facing a particular monster is one
that tends to do a little damage -- neither a lot, nor zero. But that
will vary so much from monster to monster that I wouldn't sweat it.

I think a simpler way to scum points into a weapon skill would be Summon
Elemental. Although I don't know for sure, my intuition is that summoned
elementals of the same type -- let's assume for the rest of the
paragraph you'll be turning walls into Earth elementals -- are similar
in AC. Earth elementals hit like a rock , but they're slow (so you
won't be training dodging too much). You'll get beat up by them pretty
badly, though, especially at first, so it'll be most efficient to wait
until you have a bit stored away in the pool, then pick up the weapon
you determine is best for just barely damaging earth elementals, then
scum away.

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Erik Piper wrote:

A quick self-correction before anyone else catches me


> I think a simpler way to scum points into a weapon skill would be Summon
> Elemental. Although I don't know for sure, my intuition is that summoned
> elementals of the same type -- let's assume for the rest of the
> paragraph you'll be turning walls into Earth elementals -- are similar
> in AC. Earth elementals hit like a rock , but they're slow (so you
> won't be training dodging too much). You'll get beat up by them pretty
> badly, though, especially at first, so it'll be most efficient to wait
> until you have a bit stored away in the pool, then pick up the weapon
> you determine is best for just barely damaging earth elementals, then
> scum away.

Both damage and damage blocking are variable, so even the theoretically
constant AC of the elementals won't be anything like a guarantee of
constant damage. A better bet would be a weapon with low damage and a
reproducible monster with low AC and, preferably, high HP.

Also, since you're a mummy, you do *not* have to worry about being
beaten up badly, since you have all the time in the world to restore
your health. There is, however, a function for creating an insanely out
of depth monster once in a blue moon, probably created to make precisely
this strategy a little more ticklish. I don't know much about how it
works, though, and I've no time to check at the moment.

Erik