Talk:Ashenzari

Some observations

For a long time I used to hesitate and never chose Ashenzari. The concept is not attractive at first sight. Too restricted in case to case choice of weapons, no bows nor rods possible. - Now in 0.12 (Ashenzari Archivists being the tournament team name) I've tried it out, weighting the info and stats boosts on the other hand. Very interesting. But I found also some flaws. a) Ash is not too happy if you don't carry a doublehanded weapon. But more than two thirds of the possible avatars/backgrounds won't favour doublehanded. b) The changing of scolls of remove curse into curse scrolls by praying is completely hazard. My Summoner XL12 never(!) found any scrolls of curse armour nor got them by praying. That's not okay! 0.13 should offer you a choice which scrolls you want. Or at least give you the most missing/needed type. Why do I constantly get more scrolls of curse weapon when I've got five of them spare? c) And blowguns and rods should be made possible for Ashenzarists too. You can wield them with your shield hand. -- Bwijn 09:55, 31 May 2013 (CEST)

Under most circumstances, those curse scrolls are common enough that it's not a MAJOR issue. Admittedly it does make it very unwise to have a melee and a ranged weapon that you switch between, but there are several builds that are content with one. I'm not sure what you mean about Ash not liking one-handed weapons though; he gives equal piety for a cursed 1H or 2H weapon. But the few times I've made good progress with an Ash character, I've tried to stick to a single weapon the entire game and did pretty well that way. --MoogleDan 14:31, 31 May 2013 (CEST)

Well look it up: cursed doublehanded weapon grants "high" bonus instead of medium. That's what I pointed to. Quite a difference in advancing. True, best for an Ashenzarite is to find a decent high damage weapon early on and stick to it longtime. But if you don't find anything better than a short sword of speed (so as it happened to my KoSu XL12 while exploring up to D:11 and Lair:8) that must be sufficient. Provides a good compromise between a mere dagger for stabbing and a melee fighting weapon (supported by summoned ice beasts). And I actually found 11 scrolls of curse weapon (3 by praying), 4 curse jewellery and no curse armour at all! Just bad luck?? - Stupefied I am by what numbers of common Lair monsters (crocodiles, yaks, frogs, snakes) it takes in 0.12 to get very slowly nearer to XL13. -- Bwijn 17:34, 31 May 2013 (CEST)

Ohhhh, I understand. Yes, you get a smaller boost to your weapon skill for using a cursed 1H weapon than a cursed 2H. That's balanced, however, by the boost to your shields skill you get when wearing a cursed shield. As for the complete lack of curse armour, yeah, that's just very bad luck. All of those scrolls have equal odds of generating. --MoogleDan 18:46, 31 May 2013 (CEST)

buggy features of Ash 0.12

I've decided to explore Ash a bit. Two massive flaws I found up to now that the developers should correct.

• A) Draconians are constitutionally unable to wear body armour. But the Ash concept doesn't reflect that. My DrMo wears a cursed cap+2 and a cursed cloak of darkness+0 - all that he possibly can (shields are separate) - but the religios status display tells me: "You are not bound in armour." Clearly a bug! To be corrected ASAP, even before 0.13, because it seems not too complicated.
• B) The random number generator produces irritating results with reference to Ashenzari. To build up piety and get stats boosts you definitely need scrolls of curse (w,a,j). In several games I've observed that the game doesn't provide those scrolls in 0.12. Even the scrolls of uncurse which can be converted by praying have become much more rare than in former versions. You can nowadays easily achieve XL12 without finding the necessary scrolls to fulfil the Ash rules. Don't tell me that this could only happen extremely rare. Because it isn't that seldom. In three games now I've not found those scrolls in D:1-11 and Lair:1-3, sometimes one type of them missing completely, sometimes even all three.