Can someone explain to me how I just died?

The Tavern Dungeon Crawling Advice
1

This death is the first that literally made me scream at the screen.

For context, I have won about 7 games in the last month or so on various builds, I just came back from a long hiatus.

Check the screenshots below. I have a +2 buckler and an amulet of reflection. My SH is 12.

As you can see below, I fought a single Satyr. As you can see, from the start to the end of the fight (one page) it hits me almost every turn, I don’t block or reflect a single one of its arrows, and it hits me for 31ish damage each hit even though my AC is 29.

I seriously checked to see that my amulet of reflection was still equipped. I have NEVER, in my entire time playing this game, been killed or brought to critical by a ranged attack while wearing a reflection amulet with a shield. I just got through all of orc without hitting yellow health. I killed groups of centaurs with no problem.

Not only did I not block and reflect a single missile, I took massive damage from each hit, at least 2 !! each, with high AC and decent EV and good shields. (Wow, if the game just let me see the dice rolls, I wouldn’t have to ask this question.).

No one in their right mind is going to use a consumable before fighting a single satyr, so by the time I hit half health there was literally nothing I could do. I ran away with half health, got 2 steps away, was literally standing on the upstairs as I got hit for 31 damage, instantly killing me. I suppose I could have blinked to skip a step, but I don’t think the most seasoned streaker would waste a blink scroll there.
I can’t outheal that. I can’t teleport away from that. I could have tried to banish him, but I would never think its a good idea to use banish against a single enemy, plus it might not work. I could have used animate armor, but he could just shoot around it, because he can move and attack on the same turn. (Why can’t player characters do that?)

Yeah, I probably could have used a consumable, but using a consumable against a single unnamed enemy is just bad gameplay. It means I will run out escape consumables before zot, I will just die anyway.

This amount of swingyness of damage is really not fun or interesting at all. I really think if this game wants to be more transparent and not require spoilers, that the 1D150 type of dice rolls need to be removed. Whose idea was that, and why do we defend it? And even then he probably still hits me after I blink. Tele is a no go for me in shoals with no flying and half the map uncovered. Haste does nothing. He is right next to me so fog does nothing. I have no butterflies. If a common, non red enemy can kill you from half HP in 2-3 turns, there is really no counterplay to that at all besides BLICK SCROLL, the ultimate and dominant strategy in this game with absolutely no downsides or thinking required, which excuses all BS and unfair, unavoidable deaths in this game because “You could have just blinked” is an easy excuse.

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2

For what it’s worth, Satyrs have higher accuracy than Centaurs. Satyrs also have a pretty high base damage – even higher than a Centaur Warrior.

And on top of that, this specific Satyr was equipped with an enchanted bow. Draining brand, and whatever enchantment bonus it has too.

And you’re blanking on all the arrows that merely hit “you!” and “you.”, so you’re overestimating the consistency with which it was doing higher damage.

3 Thanks
3

You died by not respecting the satyr. They are top tier Shoals threat on par with merfolk javelineers. That’s why they are a somewhat uncommon spawn and come in packages of one. Satyr counterplay involves things like: hex wands, mindburst, fear scroll, wand of flame, scroll of butterflies etc., although without looking at your morgue it’s impossible to say what options you had available. From the screenshot it seems like either your max HP is incredibly low or you actually took quite a bit of damage before getting in melee (again, impossible to judge without the morgue).

2 Thanks
4

So you are telling me that I should ALWAYS run away from a Satyr, even in 1v1 with 30 AC and a +5 war axe of freezing, an amulet of reflection and a +2 buckler? I should just expect to NEVER reflect a single arrow?

Or are you are saying that I ALWAYS need to use a consumable to fight a Satyr 1v1? Damn, I’ll be out of consumables by the end of shoals!

Or are you saying that I should have played better once I was at 50% health?

You didn’t read my post super thoroughly because I told you I don’t have a butterfly scroll, fog does nothing when I am in melee with him, and tele wouldn’t have procced in time. I could have blinked 2 steps away to the upstairs, but no one in their right mind would actually do that with the most valuable consumable in the game. No fear scroll.

You can notice that I get to half health, instantly move to run away, get hit once (!!), have 30hp left and am one step away from stairs. Nothing in my entire kit saves me here. I’m at low piety with Lugunu because I started ignis, switched to Yred, then to lugunu to get out of abyss. I can’t blink out of his line of sight. He will hit me before fog procs, and a water nymph just came on screen. If I heal, he kills me next turn, or the nymph kills me. I could animate armor, but it wont spawn between us. I could scorch, but that won’t kill him. That is literally everything I have. Objectively, the best choice was to step onto upstairs. Oops, I’m dead though.

Because in my 8 wins of Crawl, 6 in the past month, I have barely even noticed that Satyrs exist, and this one does 139 damage in less than 10 turns over 30 AC, when I am 2 steps away from upstair, with an amulet of reflection and +2 buckler? He does 30+ damage THREE TIMES, with 30 AC. Drained for 15 or so HP. How am I supposed to play this better without MAGNUS CARLSEN levels of foresight?

The only answer here is the game is too swingy for its own good sometimes and we should take a hard look at how often stuff like this happens in this game when the game will sometimes just kill you for doing the objective right option due to the swingyness of damage from one large dice. One spell even has 1D150. JFC. Gary Gigax is spinning in his grave. Devs claim this makes the game more interesting and combat less predictable, and I agree, but the high rolls need to be toned down. Period. Its just not realistic and doesn’t make any logical sense and warps the player experience and ability to learn about the game.

Taking the possibility for this type of high roll to happen out of the game would literally only make the game better. I see no reason why this type of high roll makes the game more interesting, it literally just checks for resources, which the devs keep making more and more rare, and creating more situations where you need to use them.

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5

Note that you actually attacked twice, cast two spells, then tried to tab-attack again after the water nymph came on screen!

And the draining brand can multiply damage by up to 50% (on top of the additional flat damage afterwards). And I would assume a Satyr wielding a runed bow is likely to have a middling enchantment bonus; especially if you felt it was clobbering you more than you expected.

I know it’s easy to miss things in the log over hours, but you should be able to edit your startup scripts to do things like force a pause any time you see a new monster you’ve never seen before (e.g. so you would notice the nymph immediately), or to expand the highlighting that is already done for things like distortion and curare to other kinds of things that you find easy to overlook.

6

I had resist negative, as you can see with “you partially resist”

I’m not a computer programmer dude. I’m not messing with anything related to code or scripting, not to mention that this knowledge is not easily found. Plus I use offline client which no one else does apparently (Need that sweet mouse control)

The nymph didn’t attack me once because I was standing on solid ground, but tide was rising 1 tile away, forcing urgency to get to stairs.

I understand that you are trying to be helpful, like many people in this community do, but I would be much happier with a “Yeah that was kind of BS and 99% of players would die in that situation” response. Or a “Yeah that is crazy that you didn’t block a single arrow”

7

In the offline client, you can put your options in “init.txt” in the “settings” directory. E.g. I have a file there that just has these contents

unusual_monster_items += venom

and any monster that has “venom” in its description in the log (i.e. because it has a weapon “of venom”) will get highlighted in purple. IIRC, the syntax works so that

unusual_monster_items += venom,drain

would highlight both the “venom” ego and the “drain” ego.

Incidentally, just faced a satyr to check in my game. With just a +0 longbow, their max damage was a whopping 54!

I honestly don’t know how surprising it is that you didn’t block something (especially not knowing the enchantment bonus the satyr had). Even in my Spriggans with 30+ EV (and maybe even some SH), they still hit uncomfortably often.

The fact this happened once in all your games is probably not even surprising at all – if you play 10,000 combats, you’re likely to suffer quite a few one-in-a-thousand chances.

FWIW, if your message was more “Wow, such crazy bad luck” or “I’m surprised a good weapon can make them so dangerous!” rather than “game sucks devs awful”, responses would not be so oriented to rebutting the “game sucks devs awful” message.

2 Thanks
8

So you are telling me that I should ALWAYS run away from a Satyr, even in 1v1 with 30 AC and a +5 war axe of freezing, an amulet of reflection and a +2 buckler? I should just expect to NEVER reflect a single arrow?

No, I’m saying that satyrs are dangerous, but they are glass cannons. It’s often much better to spend some consumables or god piety to kill them quickly, than to run.

Or are you are saying that I ALWAYS need to use a consumable to fight a Satyr 1v1? Damn, I’ll be out of consumables by the end of shoals!

No, you won’t. Cause there’s single digits amount of satyrs in Shoals.

Or are you saying that I should have played better once I was at 50% health?

Yeah, you could’ve played much better from that point onward. Casting Scorch (twice!) is a particularly bad move in that situation, level two spell would just never do enough damage in this scenario.

You didn’t read my post super thoroughly…

Nah, I’ve read everything that you wrote. My suggestions were more general, cause like I’ve said - it’s hard to give specific advice without seeing the morgue.

So for more specific advice: in this situation you should’ve just used your Banish ability as soon as you were threatened by the satyr. It’s a basic Lugonu ability and the main reason to pick the god in the first place. Even on a fail it would’ve severely debuffed the enemy and cut its damage output. On a success it’s an instakill effectively, and satyrs have very low Will, so you don’t even need a high Invocation skill (and MD have an amazing aptitude for Invo as well).

4 Thanks
9

Oh yeah, as far as random rolls go, they’ve been in the game since the very beginning. I’m pretty sure they are part of the original design. Adapting to occasional bad swings and not tilting into a spite death is part of getting better at the game.

3 Thanks
10

Recreating your chars EV and SH in wizmode the satyr has 54% chance to hit you. Looking at the screenshot you posted there are 3 missed and 7 hits which means you got slightly unlucky but nothing exceptional.

Casting Scorch was definitely a mistake. Without seeing your chars log file I won’t make any comments since I don’t know what you had available/trained or how the map looked. Satyrs are the most dangerous enemies in Shoals by far, casting a level 2 spell as a way to deal with them is probably not how you should be approaching them. On average there are 3.61 Satyrs in Shoals so using some of your many consumables is fine if things start going bad.

In general once you are below 70% you should either know you are winning the fight (no rolling 50% 10 times doesn’t count as knowing) or you should be thinking about how you are going to bail once things go bad. At 50% you should either know how you are going to win the fight in the next turn or two or you should be bailing.

2 Thanks
11

I did bail at 50% and died in 2 turns while standing on staircase :wink:

12

I never said game sucks or devs are awful i just shared you my opinions on game balance, we don’t need to get upset and put words in my mouth that I didn’t say bud. :)

13

Hi! I just wanna point out real quick that this forum does have a code of conduct, and I’d like to call your attention in particular to point 5, no spamming or trolling:

https://tavern.dcss.io/faq

In short, be excellent to each other. Don’t make us tap the sign. Nobody wants to do that.

3 Thanks
14

If you’re getting blasted below half health to a single enemy surprisingly fast, for sure use a blink scroll to get out of LOS, because that enemy is doing a lot more damage than you thought and may continue to do that much damage. Also, a random tele is fairly survivable in shoals if you also use a potion of invisibility, since most monsters do not see invisible. (Note that satyrs don’t see invisible.) So: you could probably blink out of LOS when you first dropped below half health, then tele/fog/invis. Or perhaps you could have quaffed berserk when you first realized the fight wasn’t going like you thought.

Also, the water nymph was next to you trying to hit you, and you were on the stairs. That’s a bad situation because it might cover the stairs in water and you wouldn’t be able to go up them. Since you were already near death, that’s a blink-away-from-the-stairs moment.

1 Thank
15

Thanks! I didn’t think of that.