-POWDER- Quizar's Big Bag of Questions

I've been dipping my toes into POWDER lately, mostly getting
non-starters, but occasionally getting somewhere. Last night I reached
level 5 or 6 with a character who chose Barbarian at every level.
Things are starting to get a bit scary, though. Plus, I have some more
general question marks in my mind.

- Is there any way I can reliably deal with cockatrices? So far H'ruth
has pitched in for me every time, but in a previous game Klaskov
eventually forgot to protect me, and that was that. Of course with
Klaskov I could use ranged attacks -- but maintaining range against a
cockatrice long enough to kill seems to be extremely non-trivial. Of
course with H'ruth there's also the fact that ranged combat angers him.
(...I hope. Otherwise I'm an idiot for reading that into "wading into
the thick of combat".)
- Any thoughts on taking out a shinobi? (sp?) There's a named one on
level 4 or 5 in my current game, and all the named monsters I've killed
have had a bit of loot, so the evil side of me wants to know.
- Does a ring of regeneration have any negative effects? (If it's food
consumption, it's certainly not enough of an effect to care about.)
- Does Endure Hunger slow hungering, or something else?
- Do only roles whose gods have a "dress well" clause have a dress
code? I guess it would make sense, but I want to be sure before giving
up on trying to dress to please H'ruth. (I've only achieved one dress
code in the past anyway -- "ranger," which hopefully, and presumably,
was the way to go for that character, a thief-god worshipper.)
- Has anybody figured out >< 0 |\/| yet who's willing to spill some of
the secret of how to please him?
- Any thoughts on best practices for potion ID? Something like "have
enough HP to survive napalm, then quaff-ID," perhaps? This game I just
went hog wild and got lucky, but that doesn't usually work.
- When is water walking going to finally be any actual use? The water
I've seen so far has been boot-agnostic, it seems. My best boots for AC
so far have been water walking anyway, but that may change.
- Are there any sets of two gods where it seems particularly easy to
please both of them? E.g. so far in this game I've been quite
Klaskov-friendly (and Klaskov has been quite me-friendly), especially
since I've had an irrational fear of casting spells -- I didn't see
anything explicitly against spells, but not minding them would be
un-barbarian of him, no?). I've also had the feeling in games with the
Thiefly God of Forgettable Name (Quizar?) and Wizardly God of Even More
Forgettable Name that those two are not too hard to appease in tandem,
or, alternatively, He Who Might Be Named Quizar in conjunction with
Klaskov.
- Do wands count against H'ruth's (apparent) dislike of ranged combat?
- And Jeff, if you're reading this -- any chance of a "long rest"
command for (at least) the SDL version? Pretty please? And at the risk
of raising your ire -- how about verb-noun alternatives? (Look! Ducks!)
A dozen total hours of play or so, and I'm still not used to noun-verb.
*blush*

e.

Jeff Lait wrote:
> Erik Piper wrote:

[dealing with cockatrices]
> IIRC, polymorphing yourself will also clear the hardening counter.

Not that trying to take on something nasty while in the form of a rat
is all that much fun.

> For Barbarians the only sure fire thing is to keep acid potions around.
> If they are not yet ided, some despearate quaffing may save you. Your
> best bet would be to run away - which can be difficult when it seems
> the RNG only wants to create cockatrices. But, usually one has one of
> speed/jumpboots/teleport wand by this point.

Jumping! D'oh!

By the way (I *knew* I left out a question) is there anything besides
already-present speed that prevents hasting yourself with a wand from
working? A couple of times I zapped myself to no effect, it seems.
Perhaps I overlooked already being fast, but perhaps not?

And does it make a difference to a wand's operation when it's Evil? How
about a book's?

> > - Any thoughts on taking out a shinobi? (sp?) There's a named one on
> > level 4 or 5 in my current game, and all the named monsters I've killed
> > have had a bit of loot, so the evil side of me wants to know.
>
> No wonder you seem unable to follow Pax :>

He seems so similar in pickiness to Crawl's The Shining One (albeit
without TSO's lack of any real advantage) that I've never felt up to
the challenge.

> Shitomi's are not that
> deadly for their level (not nearly as bad as kiwis, for example) But,
> as the only friendly monster in the game, one would hope they'd be left
> alone.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAA

On the other hand, I do find shitomis in general (as opposed to the
mentioned walking pile of loot) to be extremely useful for the fact
that you can use them to open up a two-space distance from something.
That's really powerful.

> > - Has anybody figured out >< 0 |\/| yet who's willing to spill some of
> > the secret of how to please him?
>
> Well, I've figured >< 0 |V| out, but am not willing to spill the
> secrets :>

I was worried you'd say that. I guess I don't have to be worried any
more, at least.

> > - And Jeff, if you're reading this -- any chance of a "long rest"
> > command for (at least) the SDL version? Pretty please?
>
> First, I'm always suspicious of the need for such a command. My hope
> is to make a roguelike where one doesn't feel the need to engage in a
> long-rest. This tends to run into the "hide in a room to recover hit
> point" playstyle which I dislike playing.

Huh. I don't see what's so egregrious about it, but OK.

> That said, how would use see a long rest command working?

I've never seen any harm in the models I've seen in practice -- rest
until [numeric, hopefully configurable number of turns has elapsed |
Something Interesting Happens].

> Does it just do X rests in a row?

With no checking for interesting things? I'd be too scared to use such
a command, then -- unless I could truly create a safe area. Hmm...
boulder plus closed door?

> Rest until full HP?

Classically, that's just Something Interesting, which again, is fine
IMHO.

> I might just add a sleep
> command that gives yourself the sleep intrisnic for X turns (this has
> the nice side effect of already dealing with interruptions)

Whiny Roguelike Player Principle #1: if the developer hints that a
certain approach appeals to his laziness, shout "Yes! Yes!" even if
it's only "fairly close" to what you wanted.

Yes! Yes!

> > And at the risk
> > of raising your ire -- how about verb-noun alternatives? (Look! Ducks!)
> > A dozen total hours of play or so, and I'm still not used to noun-verb.
> > *blush*
>
> No need to worry about my ire. My noun-verb focus is designed for the
> handheld play. The right answer to the question of noun-verb or
> verb-noun is to support both. That said, i can't say I'll work on it
> any time soon. I'll put it on my list of SDL related clean ups.

Awesome!

One question that fell out of the original bag during delivery to my
fingers -- what's the meaning of the "MM >," or somesuch at the bottom
right of the screen?

e.