Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

[desocupado]

Yeah, I figured as much and took Siggi on, Mummy Stalker FTW :D Kicked his ass surprisingly easy with confuse and then Dowan and Duvessa came along and met the same end. Now I have to choose a god. Can a mummy use Kikus Invoke Torment ?

I don't know, but I don't see a reason why not.

Unrelated, but I have a question of my own. Are stealth based characters viable to win? It seems small blades are pretty bad...

I'm also having some trouble playing tank characters. I did several Mountain Dwarf Fighters, and I don't seem to advance much. Poison is a big issue, and once I'm locked in combat with an enemy, it's to the death. I realized that running away is often the better option, but sometimes you make a mistake over what you can kill or not.

And the game insists in not giving me teleport scrolls. Or identify ones. There were games where I got only one of each.

EDIT: FUCK GHOSTS! FUCK THEM!

 

[Castanova]

Deso, stealth-based characters are not only viable but, in my opinion, they're the easiest.

This winning game plan can be executed by basically anyone as long as you don't get impatient:

- Play a Spriggan Enchanter
- Level up once and learn Ensorcelled Hibernation.
- Cast it on every monster (except easy no-threat monsters) to level up spellcasting to get your hunger costs down
- For most enemies, let them stand right next to you before casting it (that way you can stab them before they have a chance to wake up).
- For big hitters (like Hydras), cast it when they're one tile away, cross your fingers, step next to them. If they didn't wake up, stab them.
- Turn off Short Blades after a few levels but, once you learn it, keep Stabbing on
- Level up some more. Learn Confuse (assuming you haven't found other, better spellbooks yet). Use it to kill Undead and other enemies immune to sleep.
- Use your ridiculous speed to run away from any situation that is even remotely threatening.
- Worship Okawaru to get weapon and item gifts (quick blade, hopefully)
- Find spellbooks and learn spells such as Invisiblity, Blink, Repel Missiles, Control Teleport, Teleport Self, Haste, Apportation, Silence, Flight, etc.
- Later on, when you see large groups of dangerous enemies who are asleep, cast Invisibilty and stab them all to death.
- For Snake/Shoals/Swamp level 5s, kite individual enemies, sleep em, and kill them. Then when you clear some guys out, cast all your buffs, run in, Apport the rune, and control teleport to the stairs up.
- For Vaults:8, cast all your buffs on the down staircase on 7 (including Control Teleport), go downstairs, teleport yourself and while you wait read a scroll of magic mapping, teleport into the various vaults and Apport any nice looking items and of course teh Silver rune. Teleport away from dangerous situations. Get the rune, teleport back to the stairs up.
- For Zot:5, make sure you have access to lots of teleports. i.e., learn Teleport Self and bring magic potions and/or bring tons of scrolls/wands. Go down, cast every buff you have (and quaff any buff potions)... teleport yourself. You will land in a random location. If it's not near the Orb, teleport again immediately. Keep doing so until you land reasonably close to the Orb. Get within sight range, Apport the orb, cast teleport, pick up the orb, avoid badguys, teleport to stairs up.
- Win the game


That's the strategy I used for my first ascension.
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Casta ... 042822.txt


I don't think this will work as well in the 8.0 build, though, because I hear they nerfed Apportation pretty severely. That being said, stealth is still strong. My 2nd win was with a Halfling Assassin and I didn't use Apportation with him.

 

[7hm]

As you trunk you can't apport the orb.

Are you playing the trunk version deso?

And there are no games where you won't have more teleport and identify scrolls than you know what to do with by the time you're done Lair.

I've done well with the SpEn combo but I always burn out somewhere around Vault:8 danger level.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'd like to point out a couple things regarding stealth:

Invis works whether you have stealth or not. It lowers enemy awareness by a stupidly massive number. Your chance of waking a monster is awareness/stealth, so if invis lowers that awareness to 0 (And it usually will) you can be a minotaur in full plate with 0 stealth and they won't wake up. In short, just remember if you have an invis potion or spell, anyone can stealth by a room filled with centaur warriors.

Okawaru is fairly shitty for getting items. You can sift through a hundred gifts and not get anything decent. And he'll rage on you if you get an ally killed, even if it's a butterfly. Nemelex on the other hand, gives you awesome fucking summoning decks non stop for saccing corpses, and spriggans are insanely good at evocations, but kinda shitty at invocations.

Aside from that, the two best spells a stabber can have are alistairs intoxication (Auto confuse anything but poison immune stuff in LOS so you can get easy stabs, just make sure to have clarity) and summon butterflies (Used it to stab dragons, very slowly). Hibernation and meph cloud becomes very unreliable after the orc mines/lair phase of the game. Dispel undead is also a godsend because it's so insanely powerful and easy to cast. Don't count on stealth letting you stab anything past DL:12 or so. If it did, you got lucky.

 

[Ashery]

I had reasonable luck stabbing stuff on my halfling warper despite it not being my specialty, hell, I wouldn't have even called it a secondary focus. Cleared out at least a quarter of Blade before anything woke up despite that.

Small blades do a reasonably good job throughout the game. Had a +9, +8 quickblade on my HaWr and I was able to go toe to toe with all but the harder pan/hell lords. Okie works very well if you're going this route as heroism synergizes with high attack speed which you'll cap out at 20% with finesse. Distortion would work well here as well, but the blink (~9% chance) proc will get your ass killed vs end game casters.

But yea, Okie is hit/miss with items. Even when he does gift what you want, it's still possible that the item is utter trash (I went Okie first on my current NaWr to get some barding, it wasn't until I was about to clear Snake that I got it...a -2 barding with no other enchantments). Even worse, my previous naga got three weapons that he had no skill in as his first three gifts.

 

[Castanova]

Hibernation and meph cloud becomes very unreliable after the orc mines/lair phase of the game.

Sorry, but that's nonsense. Meph maybe, but you can sleep/stab virtually anything throughout the entire game. I've done it. Obviously, you're not going to be sleep/stabbing the very top tier enemies but you don't ever have to engage them unless shit hits the fan.

Also, Oka may be hit or miss but getting item gifts is much better for a newer player than learning how to use Nemelex. I've never played a lengthy Oka game where I wasn't wearing at least a couple items he gifted me.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Seriously? I can burn 30 MP away trying to hibernate a lousy death yak with no success half the time. By the time you get to elven annihilators, yaktuar captains, iron trolls, any kind of dragon or draconian... fuck it. Unless you're willing to spend a few hundred turns per enemy luring them away then kiting them while you regen MP for another hibernation attempt (And suck back their ranged attacks), your odds of success are a joke. There's plenty of 'extremely resistant to enchantment' enemies before Zot 5, and also plenty of ice resistant or plain sleep or enchantment immune. Generally speaking, if it's magic resistance was low enough to put to sleep, you could blast it with one of the billion enchantment wands I have laying around uselessly by that point in the game. I'd love to kill one of the dozen or so shadow dragons in the vaults by putting it to sleep and stabbing it, but it's not viable. Aside from that, almost everything that is high level but has notably low magic resistance can be invisistabbed anyways. And unlike alistair's, invis is easy as fuck to get a hold of and use.

And this is all assuming you can lure off the enemy by himself. Anyone else around will probably shout as soon as their buddy falls asleep. God forbid you're trying to deal with an enemy that summons shit, or a fucking Oklob plant cluster.

All that said, it is viable to win with stealth, but it's strength is in running away from anything you see stronger than a piece of shit everyone else mows down effortlessly, not in sleep stabbing things past the early game. If you want to memorize a single target enchantment for enemies weak to that shit, confuse is a safer bet, since it's single school so has more power, and fewer things (almost nothing) resists it specifically.

 

[Castanova]

By the time you get to elven annihilators, yaktuar captains, iron trolls, any kind of dragon or draconian

Yaktuar captains go down pretty easy to sleep/stab. But, yeah, there are obviously examples of monsters that you don't want to sleep stab. I never said otherwise. But it's a lie to say that sleep/stab isn't useful past the Lair. Even by D:27, I'd say 85-95% of enemies that appear are sleep/stab-able. Obviously it's more efficient to go Invis and stab everyone to death before they wake up but that's an ideal situation (uncommon outside of the open-air vault, really) and it assumes you don't mind the Honeycomb hunger cost for most of the run.

Confuse is 100x more dangerous against melee than Hibernate. I don't really feel like re-rolling my SpEn because a confused Death Yak got lucky and one-shotted me. Death Yaks do resist it a lot but they can't ever kill me from 2 squares away.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Confused enemies get a giant penalty to their to-hit rating. Generally speaking, unless it's a hydra nothing in the game is going to be able to hit you more than 1 in 10-20 times while confused. (And that's on top of the 1 in 8 chance they bump into you vs a wall) You've got much worse odds of your hibernation failing or stealth failing from moving even one square. To say nothing of the odds some assfuck monster spawns behind you and fucks you up while you're trying to kite something for your 20th hibernation attempt.

Yaktaur captains do have fairly decent odds (Maybe 1 in 3-5?) of falling asleep per cast. But they also have insanely high odds of dealing 60 damage in a single round from long range, and having a shitton of buddies around to do the same. Even if they're alone, your options are to either sleep from a distance and hope they don't wake up on the way to stab them, or close to melee and hope they fall asleep before you run out of mana and hp. Either way you'll be extremely fucked.

Obviously sleep still works when you find something laughably underlevelled for the area you're in, like an ogre in the vaults, but any credible threat, the way an orc wizard/priest/sorcerer is a credible threat when you first go into the orc mines, can't be dealt with safely using hibernate any more. If you can afford to spend 10 turns spamming hibernate and the 20 mana that goes with it, it was never going to kill you anyways. You could have killed it with a bunch of thrown rocks.

 

[Nim]

So I was under the assumption that undead don't take poison damage and then this happened

173908 Nim the Black Belt (level 17, -4/130 HPs)
Began as a Mummy Transmuter on Mar 22, 2011.
Was the Champion of Ashenzari.
Killed from afar by a greater naga (14 damage)
... with a bolt of poison

Huh ? Anyone can shed some light on that ?

 

[Malakal]

Its Bolt of Poison spell, 30% of the damage is irresistible. Used to be 60% but luckily they nerfed it. Still hilarious tho when a Mummy dies to it.

 

[Nim]

How much does this game hate me ?
Next mummy finds a glowing quarterstaff at the start, then another and another and a fourth on D4 and then I die stupidly.
And lo and behold, that last one was a +3,+12 quarterstaff Cuimigg (freeze, STR+4,Dex+1)

 

[Malakal]

Dont worry, thats a rather weak weapon. I always weep when I die with my +4 boots of rF+ rC+ rE+ rP+ and +4 AC, but this weapon? Weak brand, weak stat boost. Of course its a good weapon for early levels but nothing to cry about.

 

[7hm]

https://tiles.crawl.develz.org/#lobby

Sooooo much better than it was even a couple weeks ago. If the graphics were turning you off going online before, try this.

 

[Castanova]

lol was bored at the office so I decided to give WebTiles a try. Ended up doing a successful SpEn speed-run in just under 4 hours / 31k turns. How's that for a productive day at work?

http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.8/Cas ... 215615.txt

 

[desocupado]

lol was bored at the office so I decided to give WebTiles a try. Ended up doing a successful SpEn speed-run in just under 4 hours / 31k turns. How's that for a productive day at work?

http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.8/Cas ... 215615.txt

How did you managed to do that in 4 hours?

I usually take 8 to reach zot.

Did you sneak past everything?

 

[7hm]

lol was bored at the office so I decided to give WebTiles a try. Ended up doing a successful SpEn speed-run in just under 4 hours / 31k turns. How's that for a productive day at work?

http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.8/Cas ... 215615.txt

2203996 Castanova the Bewitcher ([b]level 16[/b], 81/81 HPs)

Damn...

Nice work.

 

[Castanova]

Did you sneak past everything?

Basic outline is the same as a normal game in terms of area progression but yeah... you pretty much avoid combat as much as possible from the mid-game onward. That's why I picked Ashenzari (besides just giving it a whirl) -- he reveals the map as you explore and lets you detect items/monsters. I basically just avoided unseen monsters and found the stairs down ASAP. From Dlvl ~18 onward I barely killed anything.

It relies on a little bit of luck. You need to get a little lucky to find stuff like Apportation before getting the Lair runes. And you need to get a little/moderate lucky to find teleport control before doing the Vault rune / Zot.

 

[sirfink]

There was a recent online tournament where someone got a victory (also with a SpEn) in an hour and a half I think. Unbelievable. I'm lucky if I find the Temple in an hour and a half.

 

[Castanova]

Yeah, that was a pretty crazy run. Now that Ashenzari is in the game, SpEn are even more uniquely suited for extremely fast runs. As long as you find teleport control, you're in business. It's still a gamble, though. I bet even if you run it optimally, I roughly estimate the strategy has a ~50% chance of failing anyway cuz of how dangerous it is to snatch the Orb.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

I'm not going to start a new thread for this. How do I avoid permadeath in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup? I am new to this. Roguelikes.

Welcome to Hell.

Survivability is low *ragequit*. Oh yeah, and I'm strangely addicted...

I have played a couple variations on vampires, and they are AWESOME! I need other race/class suggestions, since I was thinking Troll Berserker or maybe Spriggan Venom Mage (Naga was another option). Vampire Assassin got me furthest, though I always forgot to drink blood, which probably helped me most since I was stealthy (and don't know how to quit sneaking).

Interface is wonky. I'm fine with that. I survived Dungeon Lords, I can survive this. *wink*

Oh yeah, and I'm thinking Crusader sounds like something fun, but then again, there are TONS of classes and races, which is addictive as hell to experiment with, since all of them are distinct. I am definitely in for a monk, though I need racial suggestions, since Kenku is not an option ;/

Oh yeah, Abyssal, Death, and Chaos Knight all sound awesome. I am completely baffled on how they play, even from descriptions, and I am not willing to find out without a few distinct words from our brave sponsor, RPGCodeckzZz *lulz*. Yeah, I said it, eat a Shoggoth.

I want to play a Naga. Seriously. Class suggestions?

Okay, that sums it up.

And please don't let me permadie...

I may come to your house with a 2,000 page printed Wiki manual to beat your head in if you FAIL ME, PEONS!!!!

What are the best classes for Vampire? I mean, between Necroweenie, Asscappin', and Bunk (Necromancer, assassin, monk.)

Just askin'...

So...Waffles...?

 

[ArcturusXIV]

Oh yeah, best hand to hand race? Thinking monk.

I'm going to finalize this with one further question. Minotaurs?

Yeah, one word. I want one *Pats Minnie's head*

Class? Maybe monk/gladiator/berzerker?

 

[Qwertilot]

Not sure, but if you must avoid permadeath you can probably find the save file where the game puts it on the hard drive and make a copy. Although it might have protections against that.

It really is for your own good though, as the games do work much better with it in Especially one this 'short'.

Not that I'm not a little bit of a heretic - I'm not sure its unreasonable to save scum just once to see the whole game through (I did that with Zangband, then went back and beat it properly.).

 

[ArcturusXIV]

I just tried a minotaur berserker really quick, kinda boring, everything too easy, not my class. That said, real fun with the Vampire Assassin, I tried a Crusader variation as well and got my butt kicked. I'm not sure I understand Crusader's, but I also tried a Naga, and again, same result. Maybe not my kinda class? ya, that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Not sure, but if you must avoid permadeath you can probably find the save file where the game puts it on the hard drive and make a copy. Although it might have protections against that.

It really is for your own good though, as the games do work much better with it in Especially one this 'short'.

Not that I'm not a little bit of a heretic - I'm not sure its unreasonable to save scum just once to see the whole game through (I did that with Zangband, then went back and beat it properly.).

You can always use wizard mode for finding all the content in the game without dying over and over. Debatable whether or not that's 'fun' but there's no need to edit save files.