The fresh mage of Belfalas

[Pete Mack]

Stealth increases as the cube root of 2, so every 3 stealth doubles your stealthiness. +1 doesn't matter much.

The issue about CON is that one point of STR goes ablong way towards CON when it is the difference between 16 and 17, or 17 and 18. That doesn't matter much in the early game. But later on, it can make a huge difference.

[Sphara]

Stealth increases as the cube root of 2, so every 3 stealth doubles your stealthiness. +1 doesn't matter much.

This is the kind of response that is exceptionally informative. Very much thanks for this just for my part.

I still do not know how stealth numbers ACTUALLY work. Namely the chances of you waking up a monster, being HOW close to a monster having HOW MUCH STEALTH. To be frank, I don't really need to know this. Some math is just good to be hidden in roguelikes

[Derakon]

Stealth is tricky to nail down in part because it varies by monster. Some monsters are easy to wake up (zephyr hounds are always awake), some, like dragons, sleep deeply. But in general the amount you disturb enemies scales with your distance to them, your speed, and of course your stealth score.

The feeling I get is that an Excellent stealth score is decent, but not enough to rely on. Superb means that things will rarely wake up before you're ready to deal with them.

[Pete Mack]

Heroic means things rarely wake up before you leave the area. And legendary stealth means you can waltz through a room containing Huan and Carcharoth and the Tarrasque--monsters that wake very easily--without any worries.

[Voovus]

The feeling I get is that an Excellent stealth score is decent, but not enough to rely on. Superb means that things will rarely wake up before you're ready to deal with them.

Would it make sense to rename the stealth scores so that they actually reflect this? What is at the moment "Excellent" ought to be "Fair", then "Superb" ought to be "Good", and so on.

[Pete Mack]

Excellent stealth is still more than enough for demons and dragons. If you make that change, then poor and bad stealth will cover too much territory.

[Voovus]

Excellent stealth is still more than enough for demons and dragons. If you make that change, then poor and bad stealth will cover too much territory.

If I understand correctly, the current descriptions for stealth are

<2 bad
2 poor
3-4 fair
5 good
6 very good
7 excellent
8-9 superb
10-14? heroic
15?+ legendary

The lower end seems unnecessarily fine and the name doesn't really correspond to the effect, while the upper end is fairly coarse. Simplest suggestion: change the name for every 2 points of stealth instead (2-3 poor, 4-5 fair, 6-7 good, 8-9 very good...).

[Kodiologist]

Perhaps the oddest thing is that stealth is given on the character sheet as an adjective while everything else gets a number.

[wobbly]

I assumed that +1 stealth was too small a bonus to matter, but I don't actually know the scale for stealth. Is there a good place to look in the code to learn about the stealth mechanics?

monster-move.c

Good luck though, there's actually 6 factors if you include monster & player speed. The other 4 are:

distance
hearing
sleepiness
stealth (duh!)

[Sky]

I dont use stealth. Ever.


My reasoning is that stealth comes from equipment; the majority of time it's me picking between a Item Of Stealth or Otheritem Of Somethingbetter.
This choice most often happens early on when im building my character and every scrap of XP and every +1 damage is useful; FA always takes the hand slot, ESP always takes the head slot, Speed always takes the feet slot, and Cloaks always get picked on the STR, DEX, CON or useful resist bonus.

It's very rarely that i have a viable choice between two items, and ever rarer that i can give preference to stealth.

Once i keep pl ... ok i should say, CL20->30 is harder without stealth. I have less resources to control my fights.
But once i do start playing with "you must kill everything because stealth isnt an option", and i favour combat stats, the extra trickle of XP does add up, and i wind up being a little stronger than a character than otherwise preferred stealth.

It's a tradeoff. And stealth will eventually just happen, like FA it tends to just be on a ton of artifacts, and all my CL50s are Excellent or higher, without even reading which item does or doesnt have +stealth.

[Derakon]

As I recall, Sky, you play by clearing every level and not proceeding deeper in the dungeon until you can clear every level. Which is fine, but does mean that stealth is correspondingly less valuable to you, compared to a character that must avoid fighting the majority of monsters on the level because they can all easily kill said character.

[Pete Mack]

Indeed. Divning with a mage, Defender(+4), Ring of the Mouse, Cloak of Stealth, etc are all excellent choices. I value a cloak of Stealth much higher than Protection in this case.

[Werbaer]

This choice most often happens early on when im building my character and every scrap of XP and every +1 damage is useful; [...]
It's very rarely that i have a viable choice between two items, and ever rarer that i can give preference to stealth.

Depends on your plaing style.

I play my mages without using melee or shooting; only spells and magic devices. As a result, i have to rest a lot; and even low-level monsters are a real problem when they come after me in large packs while i'm low on mana. Stealth is very usefull then to be able to regain SP before everything within 30 grids wakes up.

With a mage, +damage is worthless for me. And +1 stealth is more valuable than a minor high resist (say, shards, chaos, or disenchantment*)

(*)I just killed the Tarrasque with a mage two days ago. Lost 16 points of AC, and uncounted points of damage from my weapon, but didn't care

[Sky]

As I recall, Sky, you play by clearing every level and not proceeding deeper in the dungeon until you can clear every level. Which is fine, but does mean that stealth is correspondingly less valuable to you, compared to a character that must avoid fighting the majority of monsters on the level because they can all easily kill said character.

Its worse that that. Diving is not an option at all.
What i mean is that it's not like i dont WANT stealth, but +stealth comes slowly and there's often something which is better RIGHT THERE AND THEN. Just +1 Stealth won't save my skin, but +1 INT or +1 STR will have a real, tangible effect.
Also stealth is generally on boots (discarded in favour of FA) or cloaks, and on Mouse rings (discarded in favour of STR/INT depending on class).

[Grotug]

I post a lot of videos of myself playing but would love to see others post videos of their play to see how our styles differ.