What kind of bug would make machine learning suddenly 40% worse at NetHack?
Submitted 1 year ago by bot@lemmy.smeargle.fans [bot] to hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
Submitted 1 year ago by bot@lemmy.smeargle.fans [bot] to hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 year ago
Ah, I’ve seen this one. TL;DR: full moon raising luck by one point. There’s likely a similar issue when the day is Friday the 13 (luck decreases by 1).
This can’t be overstated so I’ll exemplify it with my usage of the “rubber chicken”.
I typically reserve one wish from my wand of wishing for the endgame. Then as I reach “a certain” floor, I use it to wish for a “blessed partly eaten chickatrice corpse”. For eating? Nope - no sane man would eat a [chick|cock]atrice corpse in Nethack, as it’ll stone you (Yet Another Stupid Death).
Why then? To wield it as a weapon.
It is not a gimmick, unlike my “Vladsbane”; it’s because it’s useful to stone the huge horde of enemies in the last floor. It’ll last ~250 turns before rotting away, and it’s a bit dangerous, but by then I probably ended the game already. You can’t touch it with bare hands but meh, by endgame I have full gear, including gloves.
You can’t use it against flesh golems either, otherwise they become stone golems. The later has bigger defence, so it’s more time-consuming to kill, and time is precious in the endgame.
Why “blessed”? Higher damage against the undead. Why a “chickatrice”? Lighter than a cockatrice, and I’m a hoarder. Why “partially eaten”? Ditto.
Are you getting the picture? My “rubber chicken” already shows that the devs thought that:
wishes might be used for odd items, such as corpses (worse, one that is edible only once);
wishes can include blessed/uncursed/cursed status, as well as odd modifiers like “partially eaten”;
just because a game doesn’t call an item a “weapon” it doesn’t mean that players should be disallowed from wielding it as one;
the effect you get from touching a monster (touching a cockatrice stones you) should apply also to its body (touching a cockatrice corpse stones you too);
gloves prevent you from directly touching a corpse, thus touching a corpse with gloves shouldn’t trigger its effects;
most enemies should follow the same rules as you - if it stones you, it should stone them too;
that a few enemies might be exceptions - like a “stoned flesh golem” being simply a “stone golem”;
That players might want them with some odd modifiers, like “partially eaten”.
That the corpse of a smaller monster (such as chickatrice) should weight less than the one of a larger monster (such as cockatrice).
That a partially eaten corpse should weight less.
Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I ain’t gonna leave such a detailed comment explaining everything left unanswered ! Thank you!