Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

[Zomg]

I wish he had done it like a huge fag by playing like Demonspawn Wizards 20 times.

Although varying it enough so that your focus doesn't evaporate due to boredom is probably strategically vital for the Assault on Mt. Stabwound

 

[Damned Registrations]

Fuck you crawl. I figure, hey, new version lets check this shit out. So I kamikaze a few characters till I'm back in my groove and get a spriggan conjurer going, raping face with some nice gear and good spells. Whats that? A single centaur warrior? No problem! Deflect missiles up and a few lightning bolts will fix this fucker. And hey, I got 36 hp left, no fucking way some shithead centaur is going to do THAT much in one shot that has a 1 in 20 chance of hitting me anyways.

1 fucking arrow later, for THIRTY NINE FUCKING DAMAGE, and the wizard is toast. What the fuck do they do later then? Just hit you for 300 from offscreen?

 

[betamin]

LOL this thread feels like so long ago, I just started playing crawl again reciently too. I think they want to nerf missile weapons in general.

 

[Zomg]

Your AC can roll straight up 0 damage reduction at any time, Crawl's damage spikes are brutal and encourage you to never drop below like 80% HP outside of dire emergencies.

Ranged could probably use some nerf but OTOH it seems meaty and reliable as it is while melee feels rickety as shit until you're like towards the second half of midgame and have a +4-5 damage 2/1.5 hander and 15+ skill. But it's definitely better than most of the conjurations even with mediocre-to-bad aptitude and races that can get a ton of HP can use it freely when their conjuration potential usually sucks.

The new god seems goofy and rewards a lot of cheeseball micromanagement with curse scrolls. The micromanagement gods like Chei/Fedhas/Nem need to be degayed and not balanced by tedium before they make more says I, more Trogs/TSO/Lugonu/Vehumets/Kikus less stashfucking and gods that were made with fuckin' stupid ziggurats and lategame switches in mind. But a lot of people like Chei et al so maybe it's me.

Felids are fine.

 

[Malakal]

I recently won both dungeon sprints with demonspawn fire elementalists worshipping Makhleb. Good fun, try those modes they are fast and furious.

 

[7hm]

After several months away (my best game was picking up a single rune and dying in Vault 8) I started DCSS up again and just got raped game after game. But now I have a lvl 14 KoBe going. It's crazy how easy this run has been.

He's at the point where he can just stand and dodge most attacks, block with a shield when need be, and stab the shit out of everything. Berserk when needed and the food cost is nonexistent for him. I found some MR really early which helped with the various wizards etc. If berserking seems like a dangerous move the Brothers in Arms absolutely dummies everything.

I have no corrosion or poison resistance yet though, so rather than attempt to look at Shoals or Slime I'm working my way into elf and going down the dungeon as I build him up.

I absolutely love this game.

Edit a couple hours later:

I love this game but jesus h christ I suck at it. Died to Agnes / hubris / stupidity on Elf 5. I was raping everything and hadn't really been in red health after the first handful of levels. I wasn't prepared to react intelligently / patiently. This game is brutal when you don't pay full attention. Not sure I have the stamina to roll another KoBe so quickly after failing.

 

[Malakal]

Ko is kobold? Then You have to very very careful, even at 70% hp some things can one shot you (ie crystal spear cast by ancient liches for example).

Brothers in arms is good but I prefer summon greater demon from Makhleb. Nothin beats executioners and pit fiends...

What weapon did you use? Swords?

 

[Zomg]

Stabbing sounds like short blades.

If you want to stick with a berserker, try something with good apts for a common 2-hander (battle axe or great mace, although greatswords are more common now in trunk due to wight packs), the firepower difference over mediocre 1-handers is shocking once you are in the high teens for skill. Mix with a longbow or crossbow (Trog gifts ammo) for distance damage and you do way more damage than casters in the midgame on, even while having much more HP (and all the disabling spells start not working most of the time at that point also).

 

[Malakal]

In general I agree with zomg, shields are more less useless. They have their uses versus one-two foes but against multiple ones there is no point - sh decreases each hit. Thus shields dont really help when one needs that extra armor... And if we add casting chance decrease and slower attackits compeltely not worth it. UNLESS you find a good artifact/resistance shield and you need those resists. Still executioner axe/demon whip/triple sword > shield

 

[7hm]

I was using a quickblade that Trog gifted me and slowly training up Long Blades to use an artifact demon blade I found. It was nice being able to walk halfway through a room as a berseker and not be noticed until I stabbed half the characters. And the food cost of berseking was non existent for me.

I was using the buckler to train up shields - I figured that with the lower HP I would need all the resistances I could find later on.

I shouldn't have died, it was just impatience / lack of attention.

 

[betamin]

Short blades berserkes gave me good results since you have to pump dex and that gave me lots of EV, 2 handers builds mostly rely on strength so you would have to spread your points. Shields I always liked them since my MDFi blocked 2 crystals spears from ancient liches with it lol.

 

[MisterStone]

If you like Kobold berserkers, yuo'd probably do even better with a Kobold crusader. They get the berserk spell as l.3 (I think, unless this changed recently) and as you noticed before, you can get all the nourishment you need from eating flesh. Kobolds are not especially good as casting, but with this class you can still focus mainly on fighting skills, and just learn enough magic to augment yourself with enchantments or such... or you can decide to learn more magic if you think it will work out better.

 

[Zomg]

Try playing random stuff (chosen with "#", not "!") and just going with the first god you run into an altar for, exempting a few that take forever to matter (Chei, TSO, Zin, Jivya maybe) or are useless for the race/class combo.

 

[7hm]

I have a Hill Orc Berserker going right now. I'm at about the same point I was at last game - around level 15. I'm finishing up the Lair and have most of Orc done, I've gone further down the dungeon though.

Question though - which of these items is the best to use?

I think I've already spread out my skills a bit much, but...

+1,+2 Executioner axe of freezing
+2,+2 demon's trident of venom
-2,+13 scythe of Intimidation (flame, rC+)

str is 22, DX is 13
axes is 6
mace + flail 9
polearms 9

 

[Raghar]

1 fucking arrow later, for THIRTY NINE FUCKING DAMAGE, and the wizard is toast. What the fuck do they do later then? Just hit you for 300 from offscreen?

You'd encounter two yakataur captains with few yakataurs. Then they would aim enchanted crossbows of flaming at you... Great food, I'm telling you.

BTW when you seen slimes going theirs way, and hear some strange sounds... Try to move away from that level for a while.

 

[Zomg]

The axe will be completely devastating if you get axes up to like 16-18, and orcs have a pretty good axe aptitude, but the trident will be better right away I think. Depends how much pressure you are feeling. The trident will just be OK later on, poison is not a big benefit for you already and it will only get less important, while polearms in general are weaker than longblades/axes/maces so you will still be meh after trading up. Freezing OTOH is a pretty useful brand. You can confidently use all of your scrolls of enchant weapon II and III on the axe also, because you won't ever find a weapon that's conspicuously superior.

The +13 damage on the scythe might be good enough for an interval but scythes are as slow as the executioner's axe with a big inherent accuracy penalty and poor base damage for a two-hander, I doubt it has much use.

 

[MisterStone]

Yeah the axe is the best on, but you'll want to train up the skill. Base damage is basically king, and the advantage at high skill levels goes to the weapon with the most epic base damage as low speed and accuracy starts to become less relevant. Also, you already have mace skill, plus you're an orc, so axe skill ought to train up to 9 very easily, and after that still be very fast.

 

[Malakal]

For one handed weapons katanaaah is the king. Unfortunately. For two handed weapons executioner axes rock with triple swords close. For orcs IMO its no brainer - axe. But try to get at least one axe of flaming for hydras/vulnerable enemies.

Also ultimately weapons of speed are so good that they are worth specializing in their category if you happen to find one.

 

[Zomg]

They buffed heavy armor back to pretty-goodness again in the 0.8 trunk, had a ghoul swordsman that was basically unkillable in melee with a demon blade, plate mail, large shield, and Makhleb kill-healing. You get immediate 40% guaranteed damage reduction as soon as you put on plate mail now, compared to 0.6 where you had I believe 0% GDR to start and 20% at 27 armor skill. I didn't play in the heyday of heavy armor but it's solid now for races that have a good aptitude or just a bad aptitude in caster hybrid stuff. My only problem with armor now is that it stacks perfectly with a shield but there's no way to build a really cost-effective armor/evasion stack, it's one or the other, so two-handers are on the outs.

They nerfed haste from obscene to really good, and nerfed slow from extremely bad to unpleasant, which together has the effect of making rage much better. Mountain Dwarf/Minotaur/Orc/Ghoul types going Trog or Makhleb with plate mail+shield are probably the most automatic win combo now with no point in the game where they're terrible.

 

[MisterStone]

Wait, is it still possible to start learning dodge if you train armor skill up enough to negate the evasion penalty, or did they remove that feature? I thought that was pretty cool, regardless of whether or not armor was underpowered or nerfed too much.

 

[Zomg]

You can train it yeah but it sucks. All the mundane sub-platemail armor has a worse base AC/base evasion penalty ratio and less guaranteed damage resistance, but the evasion penalty of platemail will absolutely murder your EV. If you have like 20 strength and 15 dex, and a dodge skill of 15 or so, the plate mail will be killing like 12+ points of your adjusted EV, which is ruinous and makes the dex and dodge a totally wasted investment and the character might be too anemic to hack it. There are dragon armors later in the game that have about the same base ac/base evasion ratio as plate mail that are less hostile to evasion but those might not be available for 2/3rds of the game or more.

 

[MisterStone]

Hmm sounds like they intended it to be this way. Does chainmail (inc elven chain) give a decent guaranteed damage reduction?

 

[Zomg]

The (current) formula is 5% damage reduction per base AC, minus 10% (so robes with 2 base AC give 0 GDR, plate with 10 AC gives 40%, crystal plate with 14 gives 60%). Since it's linear like that and anything over about -3 evasion penalty wastes way too much dex and dodge there's no way to efficiently go halfway, you either ruin your EV for strong AC+GDR or you dodge (and you're able to cast, which is the other big weight on the balance scale for armor vs. dodging). At least not until the lighter dragon armors, which are 2-3 evasion penalty for 7-9 base AC.

With the GDR change you can go all out AC with no shield and it's very doable, though.

Edit - After I wrote this I found a dragon armor from a new half-implemented "pearl" dragon that's going to be in the eventual holy branch - 10 AC -2 EV and 1 pip of draining resistance. So plate mail you can easily dodge and cast in. Seems kinda homogenizing really.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS YOU GOT ME INTO THIS AGAIN WITH THE THREAD NECRO BUT I STILL SUCK ASS

 

[Malakal]

10AC -2 EV for a pearl dragon? Not only does it sound gay but also its rather unbalanced. At least they fixed heavy armour, it was basically useless before...

BRO try a good caster-hybrid then. I strongly recommend merfolk crusaders - can swim, 100% exp cost, good stats compared to humans and nice aptitudes. Go for ice magic mainly - with ice armour you will have enough AC and EV for nearly everything.