Newest versions going crazy on the cane toads. Disproportionately punishing on melee fighters especially given that kite shields are much rarer than artefacts now. Like 4 kite/large shields per game and 25 or so artefacts based on the past few months of play. Adding orbs is fine but it eliminated vast majority of actual shields, and could use a rebalance.
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That’s a lot of toads! I ran objstat on 100 Lairs on the latest 0.32-a trunk version and got similar results to this 0.31-a trunk version so I don’t think cane toad spawn rate in lair has changed significantly since then, at least. It looks like the average number of cane toads in lair is around half what you got but the max in those 1000 trials was 30 heh. You’re definitely high-rolling on toads!
Cane toads (and many simple animals) have very low willpower so consider using hexwands to disable them quickly if they are in a situation that would give you a lot of trouble.
1h weapon + shield is great but 2h weapons are good too! Big damage is fun! Crawl uses rng to vary what’s available each game. This is more true for spells than weapons, but if you stubbornly stick to 1 “build” plan, you will sometimes be punished by the rng not giving you what need for the plan. Unless you’re an unarmed Troll or something, try to keep an open mind with regard to equipment you find.
If you really want something consistent, Troll and Ogre can’t wield bucklers (size restrictions are silly in this game IMO) so Fighters will start with kite shields instead. Unarmed Troll Fighter has weapon and shield covered at D1, so you’re just praying for dragon scales (though it’s doable even if you get unlucky with scales) :P
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I admire your constructive and thoughtful reply that uses actual data to provide a counter-point. I’ve won the game many times on all classes and really just complaining about the lack of shields since I am a shield enthusiast.
Sounds like I did indeed just high roll cane toads and I mostly only noticed because I had no rPois that game.
Since I have your attention: Has the mysterious force been cranked up in recent version(s)? I understand it as a replacement for shafts, but shafts were a minor threat and mysterious force is a major one given how frequently it triggers.
Increasing the difficulty of the game is fine, but doing so in a way that is so RNG dependent is actually just demoralizing imo.
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