• [slashem] No advance in dagger skill while fighting with Serpent's tong

    From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to All on Sun May 29 18:25:58 2022
    In my Slashem game I want to advance my dagger skill since my
    droven Barbarian got the powerful Serpent's Tongue[*] from his
    god. But that seems not possible and I am puzzled about it.

    He started with the two-handed sword and it was necessary to
    advance it to Expert. Then he switched to Cleaver and advanced
    that too. When he got the artifact dagger he continued with it,
    eventually he got Basic in it and I seem to recall the message
    that I got "more" (not "most") advanced with it.[**]

    Weapon Skills
    dagger [Basic]
    * axe [Skilled]
    two-handed sword [Expert]

    Since then I slaughtered a lot, even cleared Grund's level with
    that dagger, continued sacrifice orgies at an altar, but to no
    avail. The step from Basic to Skilled should not be that large,
    I'd say.

    (I think I'll now continue throwing ordinary daggers to get my
    skill advanced.) I made such an observation before, but maybe
    someone can confirm that by own observation or prove me wrong.

    Janis

    [*] https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Serpent's_Tongue

    [**] In case I misremembered the message I would have expected
    a '#' marker in the Weapon Skills list at least.

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  • From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Sun May 29 18:36:12 2022
    On 29.05.2022 18:25, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    [...] The step from Basic to Skilled should not be that large,
    I'd say.

    (I think I'll now continue throwing ordinary daggers to get my
    skill advanced.)

    A dozen (or so) more hits with thrown ordinary daggers provided
    the '#' marker that the skill cannot be advanced further.

    Janis

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  • From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Thu Nov 3 16:02:17 2022
    On 29.05.2022 18:36, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    On 29.05.2022 18:25, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    [...] The step from Basic to Skilled should not be that large,
    I'd say.

    (I think I'll now continue throwing ordinary daggers to get my
    skill advanced.)

    A dozen (or so) more hits with thrown ordinary daggers provided
    the '#' marker that the skill cannot be advanced further.

    My current Neutral Barbarian seems to have the same issue with
    the Serpent's Tongue. He is Basic in daggers and continuously
    fought with that artifact weapon to enhance his proficiency;
    but to no avail. - Is that probably a bug with that artifact?

    I'll soon switch to an ordinary dagger, I suppose, (as my other
    character did, as described upthread) to get my dagger skills
    enhanced.

    Janis

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  • From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Fri Nov 4 00:06:07 2022
    On 03.11.2022 16:02, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    On 29.05.2022 18:36, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    On 29.05.2022 18:25, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    [...] The step from Basic to Skilled should not be that large,
    I'd say.

    (I think I'll now continue throwing ordinary daggers to get my
    skill advanced.)

    A dozen (or so) more hits with thrown ordinary daggers provided
    the '#' marker that the skill cannot be advanced further.

    My current Neutral Barbarian seems to have the same issue with
    the Serpent's Tongue. He is Basic in daggers and continuously
    fought with that artifact weapon to enhance his proficiency;
    but to no avail. - Is that probably a bug with that artifact?

    I'll soon switch to an ordinary dagger, I suppose, (as my other
    character did, as described upthread) to get my dagger skills
    enhanced.

    Okay, I think I now know what might be going on here...

    After many many more hits, like in the situation described in my
    old posting, the dagger got its '#' mark. I suspect that this mark
    will not be displayed until the internal proficiency counter will
    reach (or even extend) its 'Expert' margin; even in cases when the
    maximum proficiency can only become Skilled or even only Basic, as
    in the two experienced sample cases. - At least this would explain
    why one needs to train weapons "forever" before you get information
    that all effort was in vain. (A very bad implementation decision,
    IMO.)

    So it has nothing to do with that specific artifact - I'd switched
    to an ordinary +1 dagger to continue -, but it obviously works that
    way also with an ordinary weapon.

    This is nonetheless (based on observation) still a speculation, so
    feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

    Janis

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  • From Pat Rankin@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Thu Nov 3 16:48:30 2022
    On Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 4:06:10 PM UTC-7, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    A dozen (or so) more hits with thrown ordinary daggers provided
    the '#' marker that the skill cannot be advanced further.

    In nethack, that happens when you have trained enough such
    that you would be eligible for the next skill level if you were
    allowed to advance that far. (If restricted, that would never
    happen because you don't get any training accomplished.)
    'Expert' isn't relevant unless you're already at 'skilled' and are
    capped at 'skilled'.

    I doubt that slash'em deliberately changed that. I don't recall
    whether you're also supposed to need enough skill credits for
    the hypothetical advance. If so, you might need to achieve
    some level gains as well as accomplishing the training. But
    switching to ordinary daggers wouldn't have overcome that.

    Maybe hits which poison the target are being excluded from
    conferring skill training? However, I don't see anything in the
    code to support this. (I'm not sure that I have the source
    code for the same version you're playing though.)

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  • From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Pat Rankin on Fri Nov 4 01:25:10 2022
    On 04.11.2022 00:48, Pat Rankin wrote:
    On Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 4:06:10 PM UTC-7, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    A dozen (or so) more hits with thrown ordinary daggers provided
    the '#' marker that the skill cannot be advanced further.

    In nethack, that happens when you have trained enough such
    that you would be eligible for the next skill level if you were
    allowed to advance that far. (If restricted, that would never
    happen because you don't get any training accomplished.)
    'Expert' isn't relevant unless you're already at 'skilled' and are
    capped at 'skilled'.

    I doubt that slash'em deliberately changed that. I don't recall
    whether you're also supposed to need enough skill credits for
    the hypothetical advance. If so, you might need to achieve
    some level gains as well as accomplishing the training. But
    switching to ordinary daggers wouldn't have overcome that.

    Maybe hits which poison the target are being excluded from
    conferring skill training? However, I don't see anything in the
    code to support this. (I'm not sure that I have the source
    code for the same version you're playing though.)

    When I got aware that neither hitting with Serpent's Tongue
    nor hitting with an ordinary weapon changed the proficiency
    status or created the '#' limit mark (even after many many
    hits) I continued the game in an ordinary way; two-weaponing
    with the Serpent's Tongue and Vorpal Blade. At some point in
    time - after two-weaponing was already at maximum the Slashem
    specific implementation (here deviating from Nethack as you
    pointed out in the past) - the dagger skill slot got the '#'
    flag. So the impression was what I previously described. If
    we look at the stages, how many hits are required to get to
    the next level, it's (according to the Wiki): 0, 20, 80, 180.
    While I haven't counted the individual hits I've got the
    impression that the flag did not appear after (only) 80 hits.

    I cannot tell whether the "poisonous weapon" factor changes
    the handling (as you suspected), but it sounds reasonable
    given that my usual experience with ordinary dagger skills
    (with Rogues, or other dagger using roles) is that advancing
    this skill appears (subjectively, granted) to happen a lot
    faster.

    Janis

    PS: I'm playing slashem-0.0.7E7F3

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  • From Pat Rankin@21:1/5 to Janis Papanagnou on Fri Nov 4 11:06:10 2022
    On Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 5:25:14 PM UTC-7, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
    When I got aware that neither hitting with Serpent's Tongue
    nor hitting with an ordinary weapon changed the proficiency
    status or created the '#' limit mark (even after many many
    hits) I continued the game in an ordinary way; two-weaponing
    with the Serpent's Tongue and Vorpal Blade. [...]

    When two-weaponing, each hit has a 50:50 chance to apply
    training toward two-weapon or to the individual weapon (in
    slash'em; nethack doesn't do things that way). So you would
    need twice as many hits, on average, before the individual
    weapon reached its next skill level than you would if you
    just used that one weapon. Twice as many by that weapon,
    that is; even more it you just observe general hits rather than
    those for the specific weapon since half--probably more if
    it has higher skill--would be done by the other weapon.

    So if capped at basic, you would need on the order of 240
    general hits to get the '#' marker for being unable to reach
    skilled if you were using two-weapon combat rather than
    just the weapon itself. Fewer hits overall if both weapons
    used the same skill though, since a hit by either one could
    perform training.

    And hits need to dish out more than 1 point of damage in
    order to accomplish training. So a 1..4 damage against
    small, 1..3 against large dagger will do that either 75% or
    67% of the time, which would raise the number of hits
    needed for '#' to (4/3 or 3/2) times 240-ish. Note that
    the greater-than-1 check takes place before the poison
    bonus gets added and also before the artifact's double
    damage gets added. However, weapon's enchantment
    does get added before that check, so a +1 dagger should
    deal a blow that performs training every time it hits.
    Daggers you throw are probably at least +1 by mid-game
    so training with them wouldn't be diluted by 1 point hits
    (nor by two-weapon combat, and possibly increased by
    multi-shot throwing depending on role).

    I don't think you've encountered a bug, just the wimpyness
    of a +0 weapon that hits for 1 HP damage and missed
    opportunity for training purposes fairly often, then gets
    bonuses that make it be more effective than most
    weapons despite that lack of training.

    PS: I'm playing slashem-0.0.7E7F3

    That's the same as the source code I've got; I didn't think
    that it was the final release. Maybe I'm confused by the
    version I played for a while a bunch of years ago (around
    2005). That was new when I got the binaries for it (early
    2004) but by the time I unpacked it and played it, at least
    one newer version had already come out.

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  • From Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to Pat Rankin on Fri Nov 4 20:06:37 2022
    On 04.11.2022 19:06, Pat Rankin wrote:

    When two-weaponing, each hit has a 50:50 chance to apply
    training toward two-weapon or to the individual weapon (in
    slash'em; nethack doesn't do things that way).

    Yes, that's how I understood it already as you explained
    it here quite some time ago.

    So you would
    need twice as many hits, on average, before the individual
    weapon reached its next skill level than you would if you
    just used that one weapon. [...]

    And therefore I trained it first with the artifact dagger
    alone, then with the +1 dagger alone; neither showed that
    weapon enhancement effect after many many hits.

    Only after those ineffective tries I switched to two-weapon
    combat, then not considering or assuming any more that there
    would be any proficiency change in short term. (So I cannot
    tell how long or how many hits it needed until the effect
    was finally visible.)


    And hits need to dish out more than 1 point of damage in
    order to accomplish training. So a 1..4 damage against
    small, 1..3 against large dagger will do that either 75% or
    67% of the time,

    I knew there was some ineffectiveness limit or condition
    but didn't knew what exactly it was. Thanks!

    which would raise the number of hits
    needed for '#' to (4/3 or 3/2) times 240-ish. Note that
    the greater-than-1 check takes place before the poison
    bonus gets added and also before the artifact's double
    damage gets added. However, weapon's enchantment
    does get added before that check, so a +1 dagger should
    deal a blow that performs training every time it hits.

    And this is what also puzzles me; neither the artifact nor
    the _enchanted_ dagger seemed to have any effect.

    Daggers you throw are probably at least +1 by mid-game
    so training with them wouldn't be diluted by 1 point hits
    (nor by two-weapon combat, and possibly increased by
    multi-shot throwing depending on role).

    My impression was that using daggers (thrown or melee'd)
    is very effective even at +0 . I am currently playing a
    doppelganger Flame Mage and he's already at Expert with
    daggers. He throws +0 daggers (nothing else is available
    that early in my game). But not quite comparable anyway
    since the Firewall artifact he got from sacrifices is +2,
    and I didn't followed too closely how the game evolved
    hit-wise.


    I don't think you've encountered a bug, just the wimpyness
    of a +0 weapon that hits for 1 HP damage and missed
    opportunity for training purposes fairly often, then gets
    bonuses that make it be more effective than most
    weapons despite that lack of training.

    Maybe. Though I use daggers often. It's now the second
    time that I noticed the effect with Serpent's Tongue
    (not with other artifact daggers, and not with ordinary
    ones); it's common that I use daggers very effectively
    inclusive enhancing them for multi-shot. - That's why I
    am still unsure whether I missed something else.

    Janis

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