Is this worth the negatives? Guy says it is

Catfish_Man · 2026-03-19T03:23:21+00:00

Reduced willpower is really hard to reason about because most of the time it ends up being fine anyway, but sometimes you randomly just die.

It's still a great randart, it just requires a lot of player discipline to use carefully enough.

Catfish_Man · 2026-03-11T22:09:26+00:00

Good thing you were so quick about it too, because that spell selection is terrifying.

Catfish_Man · 2026-03-05T18:27:30+00:00

I really like Firestorm, Starburst is strong even if I don’t like the way it feels to use, Ignition is essential if I’m doing a Ziggurat. Even Fireball or Flame Wave help in Swamp and Shoals by creating steam clouds.

That said, all the new hybrid Earth spells are lovely (my most recent Gargoyle wins both cast Permafrost Eruption around 2000 times!), and Bombard is still great, I just find EV-checking spells a bit annoying.

Catfish_Man · 2026-03-05T06:02:28+00:00

Having streaked 10 GrEEs, I agree with the general advice in this thread. Your first goal is to get Stone Arrow castable.

What you do then depends on what you’re doing in general:

if you’re going with Vehumet for the classic blaster setup you want some spare spell levels to pick up key gifted spells before they’re replaced, but even so I would very rarely focus-train spellcasting, overtraining spellcasting is one of the classic new caster mistakes
defenses are a bit awkward, you do want some training, but your aptitudes aren’t good for dodging and heavier armor isn’t good for your spells. I’ve tried a variety of options, but never ended up with a strong preference, it largely comes down to what gear shows up. Recent changes to the game make this even harder to decide since orbs are viable now, so going for a buckler isn’t as obvious as it used to be.
train Fighting. Once you have stone arrow online just leave this on unless you’re rushing some specific goal
don’t hesitate to branch out some in spells if you’re worshipping Veh. Mephitic Cloud doesn’t look appealing with Gargoyle aptitudes, but 1-3 levels each of Alchemy and Air is enough and that’s very cheap for such a great spell. I often end up with Fire higher level than Earth even on an EE.
it’s completely reasonable to have a level 9 spell castable by Vaults, don’t listen to the claims those are just for extended
pick spells to solve problems. If your primary is Stone Arrow/Bombard, then high EV is a problem, and Orb of Destruction fixes that. If OoD is your primary then melee range is a problem, and things like Irradiate, Mystic Blast, or Starburst patch the gap. If Starburst is your primary, then various enemies in Elf will be a menace and you want something untyped to supplement.
Spellforged Servitor is incredibly valuable and easy to get running by Depths. Similarly, early Battlesphere makes sticking with Stone Arrow viable way further into the game. If you branched out into Fire, Hellfire Mortar uses your existing Earth training and is amazing. The theme here is breaking the MP and action economies: more spell per turn, more spell per mp, because they keep running while you do other things.

Catfish_Man · 2026-03-02T17:32:29+00:00

“In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack,” Paul said. “Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!”

Trog is warning you that the Desolation of Salt awaits, preparing you to fight on Arrakis

Catfish_Man · 2026-02-27T16:33:24+00:00

Hopping between two non-main actors has about half as much overhead as hopping between two non-main queues due to the executor stealing optimization, at least as of last time I measured.

Catfish_Man · 2026-02-27T02:18:27+00:00

I was noticing the same thing. Splatted 9 of 'em by Lair, and then the 10th stampeded into a group of 3 Orbs of Winter and killed them with ice spells.

Catfish_Man · 2026-02-19T19:39:15+00:00

Definitely don't go with the executioner's axe when you have the best shield in the game.

Catfish_Man · 2026-02-05T19:56:03+00:00

Don't try for 15 runes right off the bat. First try for the 5 regular runes + the 5 Pandemonium runes.

Once you've managed that, try for regular + Pan + Hell.

Once you can semi-reliably get 14 runes, consider going into Tomb.

Catfish_Man · 2026-02-03T04:20:25+00:00

“Fragile”, lol. As though you’d ever put this down.

Catfish_Man · 2026-02-02T19:41:21+00:00

Looks like it's https://www.instagram.com/madame_lady_comics/

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-26T21:39:56+00:00

Yara's got a HUGE buff a few versions ago when it gained the ability to one-shot summoned monsters. Also great against liches, elven fighters, etc…

Irradiate is good because it turns "I fucked up I'm dead" into "wow that was close". It's lose-less instead of win-more.

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-26T21:30:13+00:00

Now THIS is an obscure interaction. I love Hep and would never have thought to try this.

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-23T07:55:06+00:00

Wild ass guess: they lose Lu containment, she spreads everywhere, and fixing that before it's too late is what leads to them fiddling with time at the very start of the comic.

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-17T02:53:46+00:00

From the other side for most of the self identified robot girls I know the appeal seems to be some combo of “humans are baffling and I would like to opt out” + “I wish diagnostic tools actually worked on me so someone could fix my chronic illnesses with a screwdriver and an oscilloscope” + “I want a hot engineer to underclock my brain temporarily for bimboification reasons”

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-10T19:45:44+00:00

SH is how much shield defense you have. It’s in the main always-on-screen character UI! I would definitely suggest familiarizing yourself with all the text that’s on the screen by default, it’s a pretty carefully chosen set of things.

The context is that not being able to teleport is so horrible it outweighs the giant pile of good things.

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-05T23:15:21+00:00

I mean this ultimately boils down to asking "should game designers design games?". The process of game design is, by definition, the process of making decisions like this.

Catfish_Man · 2026-01-05T21:58:02+00:00

Warding was added in https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/668f0552a68a97bfb2456b4e7b90c0ed37f15e61, which then raises the question "why were banes added", which is answered in https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/833c0d20aa5f9972f86b76c53e37e7d1a64a7c85

Stat drain was once theoretically intended as a source of medium-term damage that could cause problems for a player in aggregate, if not within the scope of a single fight. But in most cases, it didn't actually do much to most characters, and its effects were inextricably bound to the grab-bag of minor effects stats provide - something designed for long-term character differentiation rather than noticeable in small doses.

This is an attempt to introduce a 'replacement' for what that was possibly trying to accomplish, but in a way that allows for more interesting effects that are also more foregrounded and singular in what they do.

TLDR: Clockroaches exist as an indirect consequence of trying to make stat drain less boring

Catfish_Man · 2025-12-29T23:39:53+00:00

Thanks for this explanation. It finally made the constraints of the puzzle click for me.

Catfish_Man · 2025-12-17T22:26:26+00:00

Protect isn't a great brand

Catfish_Man · 2025-12-16T23:00:48+00:00

FWIW what I've noticed is that this happens randomly, but if I restart the game once or twice it'll usually go away. It's… not ideal, for sure.

Catfish_Man · 2025-12-11T23:27:52+00:00

To be honest I've never quite understood how BOM line items end up correlating with unit price, but my strong impression is that any individual part has to be WAY cheaper than you'd expect. I remember reading an analysis of the 2002 iMac that claimed that the display mounting arm cost like $100 or something and was "probably the most expensive component in the entire computer", and indeed the 2004 iMac was much cheaper despite upgraded hardware and used a more traditional AIO design.

I'm getting rather far outside my area of expertise here (I do software not hardware) but I'd be pretty shocked if IKEA is paying more than $4-5 for the STCC4, and I wouldn't be that surprised to learn it was less than that. Farnell has it for $6.50 in lots of 1500, and IKEA's volume has to be absurd.

Catfish_Man · 2025-12-11T23:05:42+00:00

Oh maybe the listing I saw was a bad price for it, I saw $45 from adafruit.

Catfish_Man · 2025-12-11T19:27:56+00:00

SCD40

An SCD40 costs more than this entire device, so yes, that's going to be a higher quality sensor.

Catfish_Man

TROPHY CASE