almost there

[Sky]

i managed to finish a game by only dying 3 times. two of which i could have avoided.

1) died to Azog (man he's strong for his depth) because i had no speed or any other reasonable gear to take him on. could have recalled and phased around for 40+ turns.

2) died to Ariel because i was poisoned, R* doesn't work, so i kept the s pressed. She rushed me from out of sight and i was dead before i could lift my finger from the rest button. had TO, a rFire activation and pots of heal.

3) *unavoidable* had no ESP until way too low (randarts), took 1 step back and Huan breathed on me. I had previously TO him and completely forgot about it.

i guess diving isn't so bad, but the approach to the game needs to change completely, more so for an old D&D person like me, who wants to kill everything in sight. If i see a big monster, i take it as a challenge.

Instead, being out of depth thaught me that if i see a bile demon and i dont have rPois, *maybe* i should not attack him, specially if i have +5 stealth and i can just walk by.

[Carnivean]

3 also seems completely avoidable too. The idea is that if there is a monster on the level that can one shot you and that is awake, then you get out of there asap, lest it come close enough to kill you.

[Sky]

i misspoke. the first two were avoidable if i was playing at the proper pace. i should have not tried to melee azog without inspecting him first, and i should have not held down rest. the third was unavoidable because i had no idea Huan was there, and i had detected monsters just before. i would have likely died even if i was paying attention. obviously they were all mistakes, but some worse than others.

[Carnivean]

I like the attitude, and I have a lot of respect for the way you're evolving the way you play the game. Here's hoping your next game is a guilt-free win.

[Pete Mack]

Huan is bad news, a lot like the Tarrasque. If you are teleporting extreme OOD monsters out of a vault, by and large you should leave the level immediately after you are done. The dungeon is too dangerous to mess with at that point. And yes Azog is dangerous for his level. Even with !speed, I avoid him until much later.

[PowerDiver]

i should have not held down rest.

You should never hold down a key, ever, except to kill Maggot.

There are two choices for resting, R & and R !. You should choose whichever suits you, [I far prefer R !], and make a macro or keymap or whatever the cool kids are doing now.

[Sky]

?
what does R! do?

oh yeah, never mind. i use R*, out of habit. same-same. still, the poison is really annoying, when you got far more hp than you will ever receive, but you still gotta wait ...

[PowerDiver]

?
what does R! do?

oh yeah, never mind. i use R*, out of habit. same-same. still, the poison is really annoying, when you got far more hp than you will ever receive, but you still gotta wait ...

I agree that poison disturb is massively annoying. In my personal mods, I changed poison disturbance so it doesn't get you every turn, I forget exactly how, maybe only each time you drop to a new *10% mark.

[Sky]

now, i dont remember fully, but i think i had around 250 hp when poisoned, and my red warning was 100hp. maybe poison could disturb only when red or lower?

[krazyhades]

I agree that poison disturb is massively annoying. In my personal mods, I changed poison disturbance so it doesn't get you every turn, I forget exactly how, maybe only each time you drop to a new *10% mark.

That is some technology that really deserves to be ubiquitous in *bands. One of the (many) very poor user experience things. "Oh I have to hit . a thousand times, but not hold it down, until this status wears off, because it causes disturbance but holding a command is asking to die to a monster"

[Derakon]

Solution: replace the current HP-tick effect of poison with a temporary stat debuff, say -1 STR/DEX/CON per 25 turns' worth of poison. There's no continuing damage effect, so you can just rest it out, but at the same time its effects become much more relevant in the middle of a fight.

[Philip]

Should it be limited to STR/DEX/CON? Surely the monsters have figured out that some clever folks use INT and WIS and would adapt to that? Especially since Mages and Priests basically only care about CON of those. Poison would be a lot more threatening if it robbed you of SP and failrates.

It could also drop speed, while we're at it. It would be rather brutal, since STR loss can already do that, and it would quite possibly force people to cure poison every time they get poisoned. The obvious answer is to make that harder, but that just feels mean somehow.

[Sky]

i think poison is fine right now, doing hp damage. if anything, some poisons can be a bit too strong. i'm not sure what mob it is, maybe the tarantula, but there's a few poisonous mobs that do little melee damage ,but a ton of poison damage, way more than they should.
i would just change the disturb to only work when you are in the red. i can read, i see the POISONED text on the screen.

[Derakon]

Should it be limited to STR/DEX/CON? Surely the monsters have figured out that some clever folks use INT and WIS and would adapt to that? Especially since Mages and Priests basically only care about CON of those. Poison would be a lot more threatening if it robbed you of SP and failrates.

It could also drop speed, while we're at it. It would be rather brutal, since STR loss can already do that, and it would quite possibly force people to cure poison every time they get poisoned. The obvious answer is to make that harder, but that just feels mean somehow.

I don't have a problem with having different poisons that impact different stats, but conceptually the current "poisoned" status is clearly some kind of physical ailment, considering the HP damage. I think it does have some moderate direct effect on device failure rates, to-hit, to-dam, etc., but I haven't checked spell failure rates.

[Estie]

I have complained about the poison dot preventing resting for ages. Every time there are new brilliant ideas for a solution, but never does anything change. It would already be a great improvement if the poison dot got simply removed, which should be easy to do. Whenever someone feels like implementing a good poison functionality later, it can then be added.