Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

[Zomg]

I got impatient and did it lol.

Isnt firestorm damage like 65% unresistable anyway? Why bother with learning spells from the cold school when You can spam one level 9 spell. Saves You levels to memorize and mana too. I would put all those spare levels into defensive spells.

It takes too many casts, so too much mana and too much noise, plus the flames block your way for a while and it's a big mess (edit - and you can't use it at close range 'cause you will fuck your shit UP). Fiends and Balrugs are weak to cold, Ice fiends are weak to fire, so the beams work great, and I always have amnesia memorized at some late point so I have no problem customizing the spell set to what I'm about to do and then forgetting anything that will be useless elsewhere afterwards. Fire storm doesn't even hit much harder than a beam against non-resistant stuff so the 35% resistable cut really hurts.

Defensive spells are pretty much worthless in the extended late game demon areas, the threat is torment and no-dodge no-resist hellfire, meaning your whole defense comes down to HP. Thrown hellfire can be stopped by summons and smite hellfire can't - other than that you have to have a fuckoff strong+efficient offense and massive HP or torment immunity. Luckily I made a point to use Mara's demon whip through most of the game so fighting had crept up to like 15 or 16.

stocking up on enough food (since You never know how much time You are going to spend there), prefereably of the lighter kind (since You are going to find a lot of loot) and watching out for Pan Lords and more annoying demons.

I almost ran out of food completely, like in the entire dungeon. I found an aquirement scroll in Pan and burned it on food and in the end I only had 3-4 rations to spare after doing tomb the slow, safe way, so it was tight. I never bothered with gourmand at any point though, as I was under the false impression that there was too much food in hive to ever run out.

I didn't kill Cerebov or Dispater. Dispater I couldn't find and I didn't want to risk getting banished again (happened a couple of times in Dis IIRC) and starving, so I walked out with the rune never having seen him. Cerebov has too many HP to trade firestorms with, I'd have had to controlled-teleport away a million times to whittle down his HP with some significant danger of a fiend waltzing out and double tormenting me or something so I apported that rune and left too. Read a spoiler afterwards that said he has a bunch of loot in his metal castle that I never saw.

 

[Castanova]

How does no hunger at all, hunger-less casting, and torment immunity sound? Amazing? Then I've got the spell for you - Necromutation! And you just need to find a Necronomicon somewhere. Solves all your 15+ rune problems with one easy spell

 

[Malakal]

How does no hunger at all, hunger-less casting, and torment immunity sound? Amazing? Then I've got the spell for you - Necromutation! And you just need to find a Necronomicon somewhere. Solves all your 15+ rune problems with one easy spell

Exactly, wanted to reccomend that too.

Unfortunately some enemies cast dispel undead with rather huge power... Be careful of shadow fiends.

 

[Zomg]

Does necromutation protect you from the torment-like mummy curses in tomb?

When I think about gunning for necromutation, I usually think to myself: You could just go roll a vampire or mummy, you know.

One would probably really like the versatility to go undead or not for a ziggurat run though.

 

[Malakal]

Healing Yourself stops the transformation, so its like being undead-not being undead whenever You want.

Also consider summoning for the summon greater demon spell. That pretty much is the ultimate spell in the game considering what You can do with it.

 

[MisterStone]

I have summon major demon once, and it was p. nasty. But it also sucked because IIRC the demon ALWAYS goes hostile before the spell ends. At least it did for me.

 

[Malakal]

Abjuration?

 

[Zomg]

Summon horrible things squirts out 3-4 large abominations per cast and sometimes a tentacled horror or two (which are amazingly tough), always friendly AFAIK and they never turn on you. Only drawback is a chance of getting a minor int drain (the normal temporary kind).

 

[Malakal]

Compared to what? Executioners? Blue Deaths that summon entire armies of monsters (including golden dragons)? Pit Fiends and Balrugs? Greater Demons are *THE* shit. Of course there is that problem with them eventually turning hostile, but its nothing that summoning MORE demons cant solve. Or blinking, blinking is good too and doesnt make this situation into a spiral of death and summoning...

 

[Zomg]

It's against my crawl religion to make things that can theoretically torment and/or hellfire me.

I guess SGD would be good for killing pan/hell lords and so on, but I like Summon horribles for being like super butterflies, filling space and complementing your offense instead of being your offense.

 

[Zomg]

Check out these fukkin' equips, on a Hill Orc Chaos Knight of Makhleb, a HOCK Makh if you will:

 Hand weapons
a - the +0,+10 battleaxe of the Inferno (weapon) {chop, rF++ rC+ rN+ Stlth+}
   (You found it on level 23 of the Dungeon)   
   It inflicts extra damage upon your enemies.
   It greatly protects you from fire.
   It protects you from cold.
   It protects you from negative energy.
   It makes you much more stealthy.
Armour
 L - the +2 pair of boots "Bliul" (worn) {+Blink rF++ rC+ rN+ MR SInv}
   (You found it in a Labyrinth)   
   It greatly protects you from fire.
   It protects you from cold.
   It protects you from negative energy.
   It increases your resistance to enchantments.
   It enhances your eyesight.
   It lets you blink.
Jewellery
 C - the ring "Ulamn" {rPois rF+ AC+1 Str+2 Dex+4}
   (You found it on level 8 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   [ring of poison resistance]
   It affects your AC (+1).
   It affects your strength (+2).
   It affects your dexterity (+4).
   It protects you from fire.

 Q - the ring "Gaschake" (right hand) {rF+ rC++ AC+2 Str-1}
   (You found it on level 9 of the Dungeon)   
   [ring of protection]
   It affects your AC (+2).
   It affects your strength (-1).
   It protects you from fire.
   It greatly protects you from cold.

Still managed to almost die in both Elf:7 and Zot:5

 

[Malakal]

6 times rF, 4 times rC? Seems wasteful. I would swap those rings for something better, unless everything else is crap. But this axe is the best weapon I have ever seen.

 

[Zomg]

He wore a ring of MR instead of the rF+/rC++ one most of the time to satisfy my banishment paranoia on top of the MR from the boots (until really late when he got a few levels of enchantment in Slime so he could cast Haste after quaffing a potion of brilliance for Zot:5), never got slaying or a serious ring of evasion/protection.

The boots are the really insane thing, obsoleted like half his gear in one labyrinth. And yet he never found rMut for Zot

 

[Castanova]

Speaking of banishment, fuck this game. My MDGl who was shaping up extremely nicely got banished to the Abyss 6 FUCKING TIMES within about 30 minutes and on the 6th time got cornered next to a Tormentor. This is the second time I've lost a good character in the Abyss and it's proof enough for me of a bit of seriously shitty game design.

 

[Zomg]

Ah shit that was a cool character. What kind of asshole ghost knows banishment?

I pretty well slap on the first source of MR I can find in fear of banishment and wands/spells of paralyzation or hibernation and I think really hard before prioritizing something else over a second source of MR from gear. Having enchantment levels also gives you some MR, making enchantment even more overpowered.

 

[Castanova]

Indeed. The downside of playing online, I guess!

Oh, well, back on the horse.

 

[Zomg]

Elyvilon's piety is so fucking annoying. How can anyone hack this tedious keystroke generator for the entire game? They should just tick up your piety every 50 turns or something. The only thing that might make it tolerable is that you can use an exploit by destroying a stack of reaping arrows/bolts/darts one at a time for 1 guaranteed piety per piece.

Edit - Wait, I thought you had to injure things before you could use the "healing" invocations to pacify them for piety. Not so, there is not even any reason not to use it on enemies at full health. So why the hell do they call it healing then I just

 

[Castanova]

If you've got a sling of flame and a bullet of frost, do your missiles do both fire and cold damage? Or does one supercede the other?

The reason I ask is Trog gifted me a +3/+12 artifact sling of flame {rC+ Stealth+}... :brag:

 

[Zomg]

The ammo brand supersedes venom/fire/cold launcher brands, including stuff you might not think of as a normal brand like silver/poisoned ammo. I think the speed/evasion/velocity launchers work like you would expect (maybe not velocity, dunno).

If you're wondering why Nessos gets to lauch flaming poison arrows it's because they gave him special code to do it for some reason.

I'm loathing a death knight of Yredelemnul I made. It's like they gave a god all the most boring and annoying features of necromancy with none of the interesting stuff. Edit - and he's dead of tedium-annoyo-boredom. Every God that isn't oka, trog, makhleb, kiku or vehumet annoys the hell out of me for one reason or another. Maybe I'll murder my win% with some Xom attempts.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS I MUST JUST SUCK AT THESE GAMES I SUCK AT THIS AND I SUCK AT IVAN MY BEST CHARACTER SO FAR WAS AN ORC PRITES

 

[Castanova]

That's OK, BLO, practice makes perfect.

My MiBe Slinger cleared out the Lair with ease. Sometimes it feels like Trog gifts me ammo after every three kills. Also, Steel brand on ammo is amazing for normal enemies. Of course, I know I'll manage to execute a stupid-ass death at some point especially since I haven't found virtually any armor whatsoever. I'm still at like 7/17 or something terrible like that although my sling gives +4 AC on top of that.

 

[Zomg]

Save up normal sling bullets and wield a big stack to read scrolls of enchant weapon I on. I had a bunch of +9 ammo on a HaHu winner and it helped him a lot, almost never got destroyed and he had enough to go full machinegun with a sling of speed vs. draconians, electric golems and so on in Zot (although he had to rely on a demon blade of slicing for orbs and silver ammo for ancient liches due to AC). Use EWII and EWIII for your launcher/melee weapon, hitting will never be a real problem once you get into the teens for skill.

I'm kinda down on slings because I'm down on shields. The damage output in Crawl is so unpredictable given how random AC and EV are that I'd much rather go pure offense once I've gotten a vaguely acceptable defense between AC/EV/HP, since at least I can then cut things down before they have too many chances to get a random huge damage spike on me. Although in early-midgame any ranged weapon works great so whatever, I seem to always end up getting 27 with whatever ranged thing I'm whoring before I switch to melee for late game high AC stuff.

 

[Malakal]

Acid Blob just raped my awesome conjurer-elementalist of Vehumet on level 16. Because I only found one +0 artifact robe, what the fuck? And level before there was this strange vault full of mega death monsters (golden dragon, stone giants, skeleton dragon etc) that I cleared barely. Of course no good loot.

What spells can be used to effectively kill stone giants or dragons at those 12-18 levels? I had to use Mystic Blast and Orb of Destruction, but those suck (mystic blast has low damage and orb is slow and misses all the time, not to mention that it costs a lot of food). Storms were at useless so I didnt bother, crystal spear too, what else is there? I have to summon shit?

 

[Zomg]

Stone giants/acid slimes don't show up outside of special vaults in that dungeon range. Acid slimes never generate normally outside of slime pits that I've seen and Stone giants shouldn't be around until like the lower half of vault/dl20ish IIRC. If I see some death oozes or something I know I've woken up a Jivya slime vault and I leave the level, basically, same for seeing multiple seriously out-of-depth enemies from a vault (Seen frost giants on like DL 8 before). Makhlebites can kill anything whenever with major demons, of course.

Iron shot and Fire/cold beams kill giants well once you get the power up, I imagine the shitty level 5 demi-beams are less good (magma/venom/unbounced lightning). Although in my experience OoD will kill the shit out of stone/fire/frost giants too - it really helps if you have stealth, because the spell is very quiet until it hits so you can cast two of them at a sleeping giant and it won't wake up until the first orb hits, so they hit one turn after the other and blow giant chunks about in a satisfying manner, sort of a magic backstab.

 

[Raghar]

full of mega death monsters (golden dragon, stone giants, skeleton dragon etc) that I cleared barely. Of course no good loot.

What spells can be used to effectively kill stone giants or dragons at those 12-18 levels?

Stone giants. Bolt of cold, Bolt of fire, Bolt of venom, Bolt of draining. Of course the problem is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFldBVWF ... r_embedded They do that with a boulder instead of a boot.

Or you can do something overpowered. Cast protection against missiles, haste, controlled blink near Stone giant, and gut it out.

Skeleton dragons. The same as against hungry ghosts.

Golden dragons. Nothing. Look sharp, act unsuspicious and move in opposite direction.