drain for gain talk

+ LarienTelrunya
ais523: hi! a player of slex has theoretized that it would be possible to get an arbitrarily high amount of max HP and Pw by continuously polymorphing into a "new man"; would you say that this is feasible?
11:41:37
← raisse hat den Raum verlassen (Ping timeout: 240 seconds)
11:41:43
+ ais523
LarienTelrunya: it's been done in 3.4.3
no idea whether it still works in slex
I think 3.6.0 had a fix for that trick?
11:42:21
+ LarienTelrunya
the 3.4.3 method, is that the one that involves several amulets of life saving (we assume that the player in question isn't using luck manipulation)?
11:42:29
+ ais523
it's quite complex to set up, though, you need either tasbot levels of luck or a huge number of amulets of life saving (+ some luck)
11:42:41
+ LarienTelrunya
ah, yeah that's what I thought as well
11:42:42
+ ais523
so yes (messages crossed)
(the reason the amulet helps is that you can set things up so that the unlucky outcomes would just kill the character, then the "oLS negates them altogether, meaning only the good outcomes do anything)
11:43:35
+ LarienTelrunya
this particular player says that he thinks it's possible to pull it off without either of the two by simply "getting lucky" that the amount of +hp from becoming a higher-level version of yourself will eventually be higher than the amount lost from losing levels
or alternately, his theory involves being about XL3-5 and leveling up from killing monsters when he gets drained below 3
but I don't think you're going to see much of a net gain in max HP that way, or am I missing something?
11:44:34
+ ais523
under 3.4.3 mechanics, that latter plan is terrible
it'll lead to a net /loss/ in max HP whenever your max HP is already above average
11:44:58
+ LarienTelrunya
ah, yeah that's also what I thought
after all, when the newman effect reduces your level, the loss is proportional to your current max (lose 10% per level lost I think?)
11:45:29
+ ais523
under 3.4.3, the former plan works, except that you need the newman effect to increase your level more than half the time
11:45:46
+ LarienTelrunya
yes, but he'd need luck manipulation for that
also eventually you'd reach XL30 and then you can't even get the HP-increasing effect anymore unless you drain yourself first!
11:46:16
+ ais523
and it's hard to see how you'd do that without luck manipulation or the amulets of life saving (you do it from level 1, then the amulet cancels any situation in which you'd lose levels)
11:46:54
+ LarienTelrunya
yeah, and even that would be less effective in slex because newmaning from 1 to, say, 3, no longer doubles your max HP if it's above average; instead, it only adds d12 to the max
11:47:04
stennowork
drain for gain is fixed in 3.6.x
oh and that new man thing too
11:47:49
+ ais523
1 to 3 triples it in vanilla
LarienTelrunya: the basic thing you have to do is to make all the gain/loss methods balance
11:48:09
+ LarienTelrunya
alright so I'll show him this conversation, maybe it will convince him that repeatedly trying to newman in slex won't have the result he desires ;)  (if he insists on trying it out with a real character, his loss)
11:48:16
+ ais523
any inconsistency can lead to a loop that indefinitely gains or indefinitely loses maxhp/maxpw
so if you also reduced the loss on newmanning down, then that might potentially lead to the "reverse loop" becoming broken
11:48:46
+ LarienTelrunya
ais523: yeah; I've looked over the code several times and I don't see any method to ensure a net gain over time
I don't think I've reduced the loss when you newman down, specifically because I want to ensure there is no net gain :D
11:51:09
+ ais523
somehow I'm not surprised that slex uses the "some loops indefinitely reduce your maxhp/maxpw" solution
11:53:03
+ LarienTelrunya
heh, by the same logic I also made it so that if you lose an experience level (from e.g. vampire's level drain attack), you lose more max HP/Pw on average than you got when you gained that same level ;)
otherwise, a player could just wear +10 rings of gain constitution/wisdom when leveling up, and take them off to drain themselves
rinse and repeat until you have a whole lot of max HP and Pw
in fact, would that still work in 3.6?
11:53:55
+ ais523
that trick also works in 3.4.3
IIRC it was known by the devteam at the time of 3.6, I wasn't on the devteam at the time though so I'm not sure what happened in response
jonadab probably knows, he likes to track things like that
11:54:31
+ LarienTelrunya
hmm... or maybe I should make it so that con/wis bonuses just do nothing when you regain a level that you previously lost :P
(but still result in a higher drain when you lose a level, of course)
11:55:54
+ ais523
the reasonable solution is to make all losses proportional to the proportion of your level you lost, and all gains based on the level-up formula
so if you lose half your levels, your maxHP and curHP halve
that lets you drain and regain levels to apply your +10 =oCon retroactively to your existing levels, but there's no way to loop it
12:00:12
+ LarienTelrunya
well I fear that would make random level drain (i.e. nonintentional ones, when the vampire gets lucky to slip past your MC3 or someone spawns with a wand of draining) too harsh
12:00:12
+ Beholder
[hdf-us] [nh363] demios1311 (Mon Hum Mal Law), 1796 points, T:3091, killed by a spotted jelly
12:04:13
+ rld
<@luxidream> Doesn’t work in 3.6
<@luxidream> When you lose levels you lose the same amount as you gained
<@luxidream> in hp
12:04:42
stennowork
yep
12:04:54
+ LarienTelrunya
does it actually save the amount you gained in some variable, and then deducts that when you lose the level?
12:05:25
+ rld
<@luxidream> Yeah
12:06:42
+ bhaak
lol. yeah, vanilla 3.4.3 and 3.6 still has the vampire biting cockatrice bug :-)
12:06:53
+ rld
<@luxidream> I think it’s a better solution than “lose half levels, lose half HP” because this way you don’t lose any extra hp
<@luxidream> from healing potions etc
<@luxidream> but it can’t be exploited like 3.4.3
<@luxidream> It is helpful in a way if you are doing drain for gain for protection, since you will never kill yourself