How useful are heroism, holy chant, and other "buff" items?

[Wanderlust]

I find tons of these all over the dungeon and I really have no quantitative way to think about how useful they are in any given situation.

I've used them against low-level uniques and that has been quite good. But what about deeper in the dungeon?

I'd be interested in learning more about which "buff" items in general are useful in which situations.

It's not just potions and scrolls either. What about mushrooms? Most of them seem like double-edged swords, with a few notable exceptions.

I've been finding it useful to categorize the items I find into "buff", "attack", "escape", and "utility" items. The buff ones are starting to confuse me though, for real.

[Carnivean]

In general the buff spells tend to suffer diminishing returns against the player's powers. However by the end game they are basically free, especially from consumables.

Some of the mushrooms are definitely double-edged swords, but their side effects can be blocked with the right gear.

[Timo Pietilä]

I find tons of these all over the dungeon and I really have no quantitative way to think about how useful they are in any given situation.

Heroism and berserk rage give you temporary immunity to fear. To_hit improves a lot, especially for the classes that really suck at hitting anything.

Later in game those are not that important, but still better than nothing.

[Bowman]

As Timo mentioned, heroism and berserk are good for blocking fear if you don't have that resist. They also give you a little bit of healing, so I'll sometimes use them in the same way as !CLW. The to-hit bonus usually isn't too significant, so I wouldn't carry them around just for that, but if you're about to fight a big slab of HP and there happens to be a buff potion nearby, it doesn't hurt to get that little extra chance of hitting, particularly for non-warriors (since other classes tend to get fewer attacks along with having worse to-hit).

I don't tend to carry around !resist <element>, but again, if there's a situation where there's a appropriate resist potion nearby when I'm about to fight something, I'll suck it down.

Personally, I tend to squelch blessing/holy chant just about immediately, since I don't think they're worth the inventory weight, though I suppose rangers and maybe rogues could get some good use of them early on.

As far as buffing mushrooms, I usually carry clear mind and second sight until I get their effects from equipment, though red book casters can probably get away without second sight if you're diligent with casting reveal monsters. Terror could be useful, but I'd usually rather use ?phase/?teleport/?teleport level instead. I've never really used emergency, but if you have rChaos to block the hallucination, it could be nice in the right situations.

[Timo Pietilä]

As far as buffing mushrooms

Mushroom of terror and potions of speed stack. If you need to get away from something fast enough that you don't care about terror-effect that is good to remember.

Also mushroom of clear mind removes hallucination from shroom of emergency so as combo that could be useful. Also having item with rChaos prevents hallucination from Emergency, so after you gain that those are suddenly very useful again, even worth carrying (200 HP healing is not bad, and temp rFire and rCold can be good especially with warrior roaming around Tarrasque-depths).

Usually though sacrificing inventory space for them is not worth the benefit, so use them if you find them at the appropriate time, otherwise not that useful.

[wobbly]

The buffs can also be pretty useful for a mage if you've found a good shooter but haven't found the dungeon books. There's a fair section of the game where a mage will have better damage output from a shooter then spells, provided you can actually hit, which unbuffed they do quite poorly.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

[QUOTE=Timo Pietilä;107453]Mushroom of terror and potions of speed stack./QUOTE]

Is that right? I thought for !Speed that they were like food and did not stack. ?Bless/Chant/Prayer do. !Heroism/Berserk Strength do. But I don't think !Speed does.

[fizzix]

I think a more interesting question is whether these are things we should explore. For example, should a priest/paladin both be much weaker fighters, but benefit more from more powerful buffs? Then we could have more monsters debuff players and these monsters would be more dangerous and difficult for these classes to handle.

[Derakon]

[QUOTE=Ingwe Ingweron;107458]

Mushroom of terror and potions of speed stack./QUOTE]

Is that right? I thought for !Speed that they were like food and did not stack. ?Bless/Chant/Prayer do. !Heroism/Berserk Strength do. But I don't think !Speed does.

"Terror" is a separate effect from Haste, and thus gives a separate speed bonus, which stacks with Haste.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

[QUOTE=Derakon;107461]

"Terror" is a separate effect from Haste, and thus gives a separate speed bonus, which stacks with Haste.

Ah, I get it now. Speed potions don't stack with each other, but can be stacked with a mushroom of terror.

[luneya]

If you're going to melee, the fear effect is a major problem. Pretty much anything that inflicts fear will do so more than once, so boldness is useless. Until you get intrinsic protection (for a warrior) or the remove fear spell and enough mana to cast it repeatedly (for priest/paladin), you'll need to carry potions of heroism and/or berserk strength. (Ranger/rogue get spell versions of these in Tenser's Transformations, so they can eventually drop the potions. Mages don't, but they never need to melee).

The bless variants are never worth the inventory space to carry (unless it's so early that you literally haven't found anything else useful), but don't squelch them either. If a scroll of, e.g., holy chant happens to be on the floor next to you when you're about to go into battle, it's worth taking a turn to read it. Once fear is no longer an issue, heroism and berserk can be treated in the same way.

Speed is arguably the most valuable buff in the game, but if you're getting it from potions, there's a caveat: unlike other buffs, you can't extend the timer by quaffing a second potion before the first one expires. As has been pointed out, terror does provide a second speed buff that stacks with speed potion, but it also inflicts uncurable fear, so it's only useful for mages and rangers. Mushrooms of sprinting also provide a speed buff, but it does not stack with the potion.

Clear mind is another awesome buff. Confusion can completely ruin your day, but there are only a few monsters that can inflict it consistently enough that CSW/CCW won't solve the problem. If you have good equipment with rConf, obviously you use it, but if it's a choice between carrying mushrooms or equipping inferior gear as an anti-confusion swap, I'd rather have the mushrooms.

ESP may be an important intrinsic, but getting it from mushrooms of second sight isn't a great plan, as the buff has far too short of a duration. Only use these in positions where you really need to know what monster is behind the corner (e.g., in vaults).

The elemental resists are great, but getting them from potions is again sub-optimal. Yes, the potions do stack with intrinsic resists, but warriors have enough hp not to care, and any other class can cast spell versions of the resists. If you're diving without intrinsic rPois, you'll want to carry that potion, but the others should simply be dropped.

Hallucination is more of an annoyance than a hazard, so mushrooms of emergency are useful as a heal item during that period between when CCW becomes too weak to be a true emergency heal and !Healing becomes common. If you need to, you can prevent the hallucination with rChaos or remove it with clear mind, but usually the protocol is to finish the fight you're in when you use the mushroom, and then wait in the now-cleared room for the hallucination to stop. Or recall while hallucinating, if it's not an inappropriate time to do so. Also, note that the shrooms are valuable for the healing, not for the resists. If you really need temporary resists and don't have the spell, potions are a better choice, but as I said before, you shouldn't need such resists.

[Bowman]

I think a more interesting question is whether these are things we should explore. For example, should a priest/paladin both be much weaker fighters, but benefit more from more powerful buffs? Then we could have more monsters debuff players and these monsters would be more dangerous and difficult for these classes to handle.

Exploring a buff-based class sounds like a cool idea. What about adding another green-book hybrid class, say, a druid? Combat stats would be a "worst of" combination of paladin and ranger, hit die bonus between paladin and priest, no advanced casting, spell pool similar to paladin without OOD or dispels or enchant weapon/armor but with enlightenment. Gets spells that give scaling bonus to hit (starts out buffing it to around "best of" paladin/ranger levels, eventually buffs it to around rogue levels), scaling chance to avoid damage, mini-haste (maybe eventually coming up to a full haste), resistances (like red-book 5, plus maybe some higher and/or status resist spells), and scaling boosts to stats (probably limited to one active at a time, to a max of +5). Maybe even add a telepathy spell to godly insights (duration similar or a bit less than sense invisible) or a +damage buff spell to holy infusions.

It's a rough idea off the top of my head, so I doubt it's well thought-out and balanced . The aim was for something that's kind of weak normally, but it can buff up to be a versatile character with dependable physical damage (again, similar to a rogue), good durability (thanks to casting heal/resistances), and some unique gimmicks that mimic high-end equipment abilities (stat boosting, speed buff, possibly ESP or damage buff).

[Ingwe Ingweron]

The bless variants are never worth the inventory space to carry (unless it's so early that you literally haven't found anything else useful), but don't squelch them either. If a scroll of, e.g., holy chant happens to be on the floor next to you when you're about to go into battle, it's worth taking a turn to read it. Once fear is no longer an issue, heroism and berserk can be treated in the same way.

I pretty much agree with everything in your post, with a caveat regarding the above. Unless in an ironman no recall game, I buyout the stores inventories of buffs and read/quaff them before descending to take on the Bosses. Just improves the to-hit a handful of percentage points, but against them I figure it's worth it.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think a more interesting question is whether these are things we should explore. For example, should a priest/paladin both be much weaker fighters, but benefit more from more powerful buffs? Then we could have more monsters debuff players and these monsters would be more dangerous and difficult for these classes to handle.

Interesting. Ranger/Rogue/Paladin gets about par with warrior with buffs, but are considerably weaker without, mage/priest stay weaker, but could get more defensive buffs than the other three.

+1 to that idea.

[Wanderlust]

I think part of what confuses me about the buffs is the fact I don't really understand exactly what the various states mean. All the advice in this thread makes sense, and yet when I'm 1500' deep and need to free up an inventory spot, I still don't have any quantitative way to compare whether I'll be better off dropping the potion of heroism or berserk strength (just to pick a random example - in fact I suspect both may be near-useless at that level).

Is there a place the various states are documented? Or should I just grow a pair and read the source code?