On 26.04.2023 16:24, Kid Umby wrote:
Far as the horrors, it's somewhat trial and error - a bit cheeks,
granted, but you usually have a lot of attack options by the time you encounter one, and a polymorphed pet can also help provide
opportunities to see what works and what doesn't.
In new games - unless spoiled - there's typically a lot of trial and
error. In Evilhack too, of course. All trial and error is of no use,
though, if it's - as with shambling horrors (and per design) - not a
constant across different games; if you cannot learn from one game
how to behave (or what to try next) in another game. - What shall I
have learned here that would have helped me in the next game? - The
only obvious thing [for me] is to completely avoid these monsters,
not even try to defeat them with super-artifacts or classical means
(like cockatrice corpses), not even to get into line of sight, since
there's ranged magical attacks in that variant that could be fatal
even from distance. Because of the arbitrariness of the properties
in conjunction with masses of possible fatal attacks I also don't
see how I could choose an _effective_ "attack option" I have. Just
before that encounter I had contact with an "invincible" player
character - I posted about it. Neither my monk nor my powerful pet
(a very fast greater pegasus with about AC:-12 and HP:365, or so)
could even place a hit. Hard to believe that my powerful pegasus
would have helped here with the shambling horror; I'd rather have
expected that he'd got killed (and it seems I did the right thing to
leave him back, given the beheading attack of the shambling beast).
Once you kill one,
you can use the in-game monster lookup to see what abilities that
game's horror has and prepare accordingly for future ones.
That's not helpful here. If you have been able to kill it you don't
necessarily need any more information what stats it had (in _this_
instance of the game). You were able to kill it, you had experienced
some means that works. And in the next game you anyway start at zero information again; you don't know what beast it is that you meet.
[...]
The #evilhack IRC channel is full of well-seasoned players that can
provide pointers if you like.
Thanks, but I very rarely use chat channels for communication. And
in this case, as already announced some weeks ago, I will switch to
some other variant with a more reliable and deducible setup, better
balanced (hopefully), and less new instances of instant, in practice unavoidable, deaths. (YMMV, of course.) - I was anyway surprised how
long I traveled up and down before I got into the (from my previous observations on the game design already expected, as I posted) yet
another instant death situation; excellent artifact weapon, excellent
artifact armor, excellent pet - not a help for these instant death
situations. But don't get me wrong; instant-deaths have a history in rogue-likes. Increasing the amount of such situations/possibilities
is not exactly what I am considering as being fun. A player should
have the option to perceive these situation (like: "the giant wields
the Vorpal Blade", or "you are slowing down" - with a sensible time
to be effective, e.g. like green slime in Vanilla), or at least be
able to learn from it (as opposed to a arbitrary variable shambling
horror). But that was just the last straw; a couple other things I
considered also annoying (as posted earlier) that certainly aren't
compensated by some (but only few) inventions that I actually liked.
Happy hacking!
Janis
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