YASD: 244 damage from yellow draconian acid breath

The Tavern Dungeon Crawling Advice
1

How is this remotely fair??

  567330 petercordia the Slayer (level 26, -55/203 HPs)
             Began as a Human Delver on Dec 19, 2023.
             Was a High Priest of Hepliaklqana.
             Killed from afar by a yellow draconian annihilator (244 damage)
             ... with an acid spray
             ... led by a purple draconian shifter
             ... on level 1 of the Realm of Zot on Feb 27, 2024.
             The game lasted 04:51:41 (55721 turns).

I went from 200 hp to -50 in a single turn. From a single attack. From a distance. From a pack member.

Comments from the game:
I tried to use the new human exploration regen to collect the new gems, but I quickly discovered Hep was a bad choice of god, and besides, I don’t enjoy speedrunning much.
All-round all-right game. Nothing spectacular. Hep is strong when your ancestor doesn’t die, but he does keep dying at inopportune moments and at those times you have to survive with no god powers and -10% hp.
(PS: an option to pay piety to instantly resurrect an ancestor would be amazing.)

Found a good bow early, started shooting stuff to support my ancestor. Felt pretty strong. Used blink scrolls when I had to, which is how I survived to Zot:1. Got pretty good gear, though I lost my helmet to a Horns mutation.

Vaults:5 wasn’t bad at all, probably the amazing stealth you’re almost forced into as an archer helped a lot there.

And then I got absolutely stomped by a acid-spitting draconian.

morgue: https://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/petercordia/morgue-petercordia-20240227-191433.txt

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2

I believe this was a bug, now fixed, introduced by the changes to player draconians that pushed yesterday.

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3

Another victim :pensive:

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4

darn, that yellow draconian really did annihilate you with the sea of acid…

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5

This was easy to prevent: Don’t play trunk. It’s not meant to be played anyway, you’re meant to play it to see what the devs do or give them feedback, but it’s not a stable version, for a reason. I don’t understand why trunk seems to be so popular. Maybe it’s just because I’m a perfectionist.

6

Trunk is best, you see everything realtime and it makes crawl more alive! An unexpected death here or there is a small price to pay, and now your splatted char is part of crawl lore. Revel in it :slight_smile:

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7

Sometimes Trunk kills you, and sometimes it gives you a boost. Bugs and balance issues can go both ways. But (kind of like worshiping Xom) it’s not for everyone and that’s okay :slight_smile:

I expect that the proportion of Trunk players very active in the Crawl community is much higher than stable versions because I think a lot of people play Trunk as a way to be more engaged with the game’s development. You’re probably less outnumbered than you feel.

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8

Like you can currently start a game as a Goglin hunter with a +2 sling and a +0 sling.

It’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, only making D: easier, but it’s still stronger than anything that’s likely to make it into trunk.

(+1 and -1 would probably be fair, even +1 and -2 would still be a reasonable start)