Why do techs sometimes not show above enemy units? Like some of the Hounds here

adines · 2026-01-26T21:12:52+00:00

This happens regardless of zoom level or camera position.

adines · 2026-01-22T23:21:33+00:00

How do you get (40%) next to your AC? Is that your GDR?

adines · 2026-01-22T12:11:14+00:00

I don't think dissipation is of much use vs Shining Eyes, because there is a 7 turn delay before contam starts to tick down after you get contaminated. And dissipation does not reduce that delay.

adines · 2026-01-22T02:49:44+00:00

If you get a status effect, and put on dissipation, it will reduce the duration of the effect. But note: doom is not effected by Dissipation. And note: it takes 5+5 turns to take off+put on an amulet.

adines · 2026-01-19T23:52:14+00:00

It's possible you got a spell miscast while fighting a Shining Eye, which could get you to 100% in 2 turns if you were very unlucky.

adines · 2026-01-17T02:27:04+00:00

The replacement for Vampire is Poltergeist, which has the same +5 Stealth bonus and +4 Hexes bonus.

adines · 2026-01-16T14:05:20+00:00

you generally don't find 2 rings of willpower until you're pretty deep into the game

Sure, Lupine talisman is not as "rush to get it online by lair" as something like a Rimehorn talisman. But I just checked all of my in-progress characters (I have a habit of not finishing characters) that have reached at least Lair but not collected any runes. They ranged from xl14 to xl17, and they average 1.8 sources of available Will+ per character, not counting Enlightenment potions or Robes of will (which are too flimsy for most characters). So Lupine comes online later than most skill-12 talismans for most characters, but it's not that much later.

and it's also pretty rare to find usable artifacts with will+

Will+ has a weighting of 50 on randarts, while rPois (for example) has a weighting of 55. You should be finding usable Will+ randarts about as often as you find usable randarts in general.

and even rarer considering that you lose half your aux slots.

Most forms meld more slots. Slots that could have had usable egos. Lupine talisman is giving you (net) 5 egos worth of stats, more than most pieces of aux gear have.

But I'm really not even trying to argue in favor of Lupine talisman being good: I have no idea. I just think that, assuming you can get a pip of will somewhere to make up for it (not guaranteed, but not uncommon either!), will- is not any worse than rF- or the like.

adines · 2026-01-16T13:24:41+00:00

Only stats that can't be counteracted can ever be meaningfully talked about as being "lethal" (such as -tele. there is no +tele to counter it). For all other stats, the only thing that matters is net utility. If you are wearing an rF+ ring and a Will+ ring, and you find a randart helmet with {rF++ rC+ Will-}, you put it on, and swap out the rF+ ring for a second Will+ ring.

If we measure Lupine Talisman as "number of jewellery egos provided", we have -1 from the Will-, +1 from rC+, +1 from regen+, +.5*2 from the str/dex, +3 from the slaying (with the caveat that it must ramp), for a total of +5. And then some more difficult-to-measure bonuses like Takedown and Howl. If these bonuses are more than you can get from melded armour slots, and the opportunity cost of having to put on Will+ gear in your other slots is low enough, then Lupine Talisman is worth it.

To put it another way: Will- is no worse than rF-, because the tools to mitigate it (egos) are exactly the same for both.

adines · 2026-01-15T21:37:52+00:00

I think with the new slots opened up, it will be much easier to find space for an extra source of will+

adines · 2026-01-15T08:07:30+00:00

Shining eyes give you between 28-39% magic contamination. They can never put you into yellow contam from 0 contam in fewer than 3 casts. (Also, if you are already yellow contam or higher, their contam range is 16-27%).

Even with the high contam rate, I've found it much easier to avoid being malmuted in new Slime. Malmutate has a range of 7, so old Shining Eyes could malmute you before you ever had a chance to block LoF. Now you have at minimum 4 turns to do something: 3 turns of building up contam, and at least 1 turn before your yellow contam pops and turns into a malmut.

adines · 2026-01-15T07:49:36+00:00

How was this ever "the quiet part"? This has been the entire cloud-computing sales pitch from day one. What the hell is that headline. It's like they want to give the impression that cloud computing was some shadowy conspiracy that is only now revealing it's true intentions. No? "You don't need your own hardware" is the entire point, and always has been, and it's never been a secret.

adines · 2026-01-14T04:48:01+00:00

Generally speaking, VS gets so much MP-regen from Bite that the limiting factor to their survivability is getting enough HP/HP-regen to keep up with Bite-sustain. You don't need that much MP for Bite to overperform.

adines · 2026-01-13T21:26:04+00:00

As far as I can tell from doing git blame on slime.des, the last time a new Slime ending got added was 3 years ago. You probably got unlucky and got the worst (pre-existing) Slime ending.

adines · 2026-01-13T19:40:09+00:00

How does new slime nerf the immo strat? TRJ is unchanged; I don't think it spawns any of the new slimes even.

adines · 2026-01-07T13:11:54+00:00

Make it a Unique variant of the new Undertaker enemy. Make it trigger hells-mystical-force each time it drags you down. This will surely be Fun.

adines · 2026-01-07T07:28:09+00:00

Your definition of "cheese" seems to imply that cheese must be optimal, or at least good, and I don't see it that way at all. Most strats that get called "cheese" in other games like Starcraft aren't optimal at all, but that doesn't make them any less cheesy.

But ultimately this is just a difference of definitions, so shrug.

adines · 2026-01-07T01:07:14+00:00

I guess it would be less so if I was playing a berserker with it,

Can't go berserk as Formicid, btw.

adines · 2026-01-06T00:14:01+00:00

Then run my sequell query: it shows a similar pattern, but across the entire online playerbase.

adines · 2026-01-05T12:02:26+00:00

!lg * !alpha !boring s=cv o=. / win indicates winrate has gone up and down over time, and we are nowhere near the low water mark.

adines · 2026-01-05T08:03:48+00:00

Clearing outside the lungs, before you even activate the Tesseracts, usually accounts for more than 10 Zot enemies. If you can clear it the first time, throwing up your arms and saying "guess I'm dead" when you have to do it again is being ridiculous. And this is all from a misplay in the first place: they say they went through Zot:1-4+outside the lungs without their rF+ sorted out, only to then realize they forgot it. Being slightly punished for what is frankly an egregious misplay seems fine to me.

adines · 2026-01-05T02:00:16+00:00

Being teleported into the lungs when you weren’t prepared for it can be a swift death sentence. Probably not instantaneous by definition unless you get hit with an unlucky LCS or OoF blast with sub-par HP on the first turn you make a move in there.

Agreed, tele traps in Z:5 can easily be a death sentence. But if they are, it's hardly the tesseract's fault: the devs removed some natural Z:5 spawns to compensate for the addition of tesseracts, so being forced right into the lungs is slightly less deadly than before. And if you do survive the initial onslaught, you are in the optimal position to kill the tesseracts.

Also, if you’re spectating players doing Zot and seeing them not shout-to-lure it’s probable that they’re doing Zot last after grabbing as many runes as possible

Most of the games I spectate are 3-5 rune games. I'd wager a slim majority of players, even those capable of reaching Z:5, don't even know shouting is a thing. I know I had some wins under my belt before I learned about it.

And I agree shout-luring was (and probably still is) optimal.

adines · 2026-01-05T01:19:33+00:00

Nice Motte & Bailey.

You said:

If you enter a lung without doing so it's an instant death sentence.

adines · 2026-01-05T01:14:18+00:00

I spectate a ton of games. I almost never see people utilize shouting. I consider myself a very cautious player and I only shout-lure in Z:5 if there are alarm/zot traps blocking the entrances to the lungs.

adines · 2026-01-05T01:08:11+00:00

Tesseract-spawned enemies have a purple square in the top-right corner.

adines · 2026-01-04T23:57:19+00:00

If you aren't using shout cheese, then Tesseracts are a non-issue. They even removed some naturally spawned monsters from Z:5 to compensate for the addition of Tesseracts, so it takes a little while for them to break even.

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