Going in and out of areas

[betamin]

Hi, new player here, I have to say this game is pretty awesome and with potential to grow even more, I'm pretty addicted by now. I have a question about going in and out of areas, when I face a boss the easiest tactic I've come up with is punch them a bit, go to the previous area, rest, go back to the area with the bosses, punch them again and repeat until they're dead, is this part of the design or it will be corrected later? Because it takes all of the challenge of the boss encounters, it would be cool if they could follow you or at least take a couple of blows while you change areas. Anyways, cool game indeed.

[lukep]

That's known as stairscumming, and it's generally frowned upon (though not severely). I usually avoid doing it because, as you said, it removes the challenge. That being said, I don't know if it will be removed/make enemies heal on leaving a zone.

[bricks]

Depending on class and experience with the game, you'll probably do some stair-hopping (or stair-scumming, though the term has different meaning in other roguelikes). Increasing your defensive and escape options will help keep you from "cheating" in this way.

I think enemies should heal while off-level. On the flipside, enemies healing to 100% when visiting the Eidolon can be really self-defeating, especially in situations where a bunch of new mobs have been summoned (or, god forbid, any enemy with excessive split or multiply). Adventure mode is already easycore, let people life-scum if they want .

[Ploppy]

Some builds absolutely can't beat certain bosses without stairscumming because they lack escape options (skeleton brawlers), damage output (early game doomed), or resistances (especially confusion and freeze). If you really want to create an experience where every available class can beat every boss in the game without stairscumming, you either need to nerf bosses considerably or level cap the bosses more severely so people can leave and gain another six levels before trying to beat the master or the crypt [new svn area] in one go.

This would be less of an issue if most of the bosses were optional/not considered the primary source of xp for most of the game.

[darkgod]

Dont relly on it though, several bosses in the game are nowhere near stairs, or dont even have stairs so ...

[edge2054]

Yeah, some bosses kinda require it with certain builds (especially early on) on the other hand almost every fight is optional. Killing the undead starting zone boss with a ghoul brawler took an obscene amount of stair scumming and in retrospect I could have just skipped that boss (I think) :/

[Grey]

Ever since the removal of insane numbers of summons I've never had to stair scum (and even then I only did it once). I think if you're having to rely on it then you're using the wrong tactics or haven't built your character well for the situation. If you think otherwise then post specific examples, because it should really be sorted out rather than glossed over.

[betamin]

I probably don't use optimal tactics but sometimes it's just too tempting since I play in roguelike mode and can't afford to lose. Even if there aren't stairs nearby I just run until I reach them, I don't know if this is always gonna be like this, but it would be really cool if you couldn't exploit stairs in some way because if you're going to play roguelike you'll want to eliminate risks and fighting standing on a stair is ideal for this.

[tiger_eye]

The only time I tried to stair-scum my character died on the way to the stairs

[edge2054]

Ever since the removal of insane numbers of summons I've never had to stair scum (and even then I only did it once). I think if you're having to rely on it then you're using the wrong tactics or haven't built your character well for the situation. If you think otherwise then post specific examples, because it should really be sorted out rather than glossed over.

Keep in mind an undead will be level 2 (3 tops) when encountering the boss. There's not a lot of room for leway here with builds. (Though I probably could have focused more on defense and had a chance of not stair scumming).

[shooth]

Isn't there some Achievement given for killing Bill the Troll at level 1?

How is this accomplished without stair-scumming? (Other than: "Oh look, an amulet of teleport/healing is sitting under that tree, right next to a triple ego weapon I can wield and a huge shielding rune. Oh lucky day!")

Given the current set up, is this achievement still possible?

[Grey]

Edge: I always consider that boss optional. As are most bosses, to be frank.

As for the Kill Bill achievement, I don't really see how possible that is with the current set-up. Only way I can imagine is with a mage with lots of frantic phase dooring, and even then you'd have to be very lucky *and* avoid killing too many other trolls.

[tiger_eye]

Keep in mind an undead will be level 2 (3 tops) when encountering the boss. There's not a lot of room for leway here with builds. (Though I probably could have focused more on defense and had a chance of not stair scumming).

The Blighted Ruins--the undead starting zone-- did have 6 levels (b29 and before), but now it has 4 levels (b30 and above). Hence, characters will be lower level when fighting that boss, so they won't have as many options as before. So, I propose that more npcs be added to the 4 levels of the Blighted Ruins to partially compensate for having fewer levels to do. It's currently 20-30 enemies per level. Maybe change that to 25-35 (or 30-40 ) per level, and add an extra room or two to the map.

[Covenant]

I strongly agree with the original poster - in games with the high stakes that permadeath brings, it should never be incumbent on the player themselves to enforce their own difficulty. You may start off wanting to play honourably, but if you're in a situation where it's retreat or let the character you've invested 20+ hours into die, well, not many players would be able to stick to their own code of conduct. Nobody wants to lose a character, but on the other hand, we don't want to denigrate our own achievement when we do win by using cheap tactics.

So yes, I think something should be put in place to prevent the usefulness of stair scumming. Healing the monsters completely upon map exit/entry is a possibility, but it would still allow players to scum or reattempt fights until they went in their favour. I think a good possible solution would be to heal all monsters on entry to a level, and on exit allow any enemies immediately surrounding the player to follow him to the new area, spawning around him.

As for leaving the area itself to go to the overworld map, that would have to be handled differently. One possibility would be preventing the player leaving the area if there are any monsters immediately adjacent to him (as ADOM does), though there may be better solutions.

[budswell]

I'll go with the healing monsters, that seems fair enough. But I don't think you should be too purist about making it hard. While stair scumming could be a little underhanded (although I would never have killed Bill without it when starting in the new Trollmire - basically this is now a come-back-later task for me) I don't think it should be removed at the cost of losing the ability to run away.

Once a game got tense in dreadfel just making my way back to the stairs when things went horribly wrong. If the 3 monsters adgacent to me at the time had followed I'd have been dead and denied the enjoyable "Phew... that was close" moment. Two seperate characters have come across the wierding beast too early and needed to flee for a couple more levels before giving it a second attempt.

I think you always need the option of sticking you toe in a level and then deciding "I might come back a bit later". I think stair scumming is a small price to pay for this fun aspect of the game.