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Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

Zomg

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
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Did you have an amulet of faith on? I thought that it noticeably increased the amount of gifts from Trog/Oka. There's really no other non-artifact amulet that's worth keeping on except for special cases besides gourmand for casters, maybe warding for a decent resist.

In my minotaur berserker game even with Trog gifting nothing but weapons non-stop and hitting Elf/Slime Pit/Crypt 5/Vault 8 I was still using a battleaxe of chopping I made with a vorpalize scroll in like the orcish mines in Zot 5. It's basically a miracle when you get a useable randart weapon.
 

MisterStone

Arcane
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Apr 1, 2006
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OK so I'm running another Ogre Wiz. At level 10 now with option to take on the Lair or go further down the main dungeon. My main skills are summoning (call canines), and throwing, I can also cast blink and repel missiles. I have throwing up to lvl 4 or so and some javelins plus a blowgun with various needles, and darts of dispersion.

I recently got a nice treasure trove with two artifact rings and an artifact pimp hat (cursed) plus other nice things.

Thing is, I got several spell books, but my only magic skill right now is summoning. One of the books is ice magic stuff, including Oz's armor. Another is the book with impeding enchantment spells. Another is a book of power which among other things has Iskenderun's Mystic Blast (lev 4 pure conjuration spell).

As an ogre it is better to either rely more on low level spells and/or focus on a few schools of magic as possible. SO would it be better to forget conjurations and use throwing for my ranged attacks? Would enchantments be more useful than conjurations? Maybe ice and enchantments? Not sure what to do next...
 

Castanova

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FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU just killed a lvl 19 DEFE on Vault:7. Was trying to kill a Stone Giant, stepped around the corner to find myself standing next to a Yaktaur Captain and a Orc Knight. You think I'd be smart enough to use a fucking blink scroll?
 

Zomg

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MisterStone said:
OK so I'm running another Ogre Wiz. At level 10 now with option to take on the Lair or go further down the main dungeon. My main skills are summoning (call canines), and throwing, I can also cast blink and repel missiles. I have throwing up to lvl 4 or so and some javelins plus a blowgun with various needles, and darts of dispersion.

You can definitely just use throwing for your non-summon damage. Save any enchant weapon I scrolls you find and use them on big stacks of javelins or large rocks, they break less often at higher enchantment and enchant weapon I adds to both hit and damage for ammo.

Go Kiku if you haven't gotten a god yet. One of the books Kiku gifts (very quickly starting at 1-2 pips of piety) has the revivification spell in it which totally refills your HP at the cost of a small permanent max HP loss, which is negligible for an Ogre and will give you some real durability which is otherwise completely garbage for an ogre (no armor slots, no evade, no fast regeneration). Animate Dead will complement your summons and you can eventually get Haunt as well. Plus you can dispel undead whore through crypt+tomb to blow up your necromancy and level/HP.

Edit - actually fuck that won't work because Kiku doesn't give any piety for kills that you don't get personally, meaning your dog kills won't build piety and you are gonna have to be in a constant dog-storm for like half the game. I dunno.

Ice armor gives an AC bonus entirely dependent on your Ice skill, and Ice won't ever really lead to anything good for your Ogre so I wouldn't mess. By the time you collect the books and XP you need to be a real enchantment whore (haste, dispel missiles, flight, swiftness, extension, probably more I'm forgetting) you'll probably have collected a decent stock of emergency speed potions or a wand of hasting, which is like 75% of the benefit of enchantments at 1% of the investment, so I think it's not worth it for an ogre.
 

Malakal

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
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Amulet of Faith? What else, maybe resist corrosion? I had to use artifact amulet of resist corrosion because I couldnt find a normal one. Despite finding few general shops and one jewelry...

Oka gifted me a quite nice flaming demon sword with great fire resist and something else, alas compared to my +8/+8 katana of slicing it was very weak (and +4/-1). Katanas... crawl weaponsmiths spend years folding their katanas over 9000 times to produce the finest sword known to mankind. Seriously, +3 hit and 14 dmg with 120% speed is WEABOO BULLSHIT.
 

Castanova

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Any use for the venom brand? Two of the three axes Trog has gifted me with my current character are venom (including an Executioner's Axe) but it seems dumb to poison something in melee range. The other axe he gave me has electrocution... no artefacts yet.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
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It's great if you're a spriggan :P

Ok, more honestly, it's good if you have a fast weapon with low damage, since it stacks the poison with every hit and does damage independant of your melee damage. A venomous quickblade for example, can stack a whole shitload of poison on something like a stone giant even if your actually melee damage is fuck all.

Anything heavy is better off with a brand though, preferably slicing.
 

Zomg

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My impression is that poisoning is very useful early and worthless late, no matter what kind of weapon it's on. It's super nice to find like a dagger or whip of venom on DL:1 though (well unless you find it the hard way, via pathetic Kobold death).

There are only two significant levels of poisoning on monsters AFAIK (sick, sicker, and one more level of sick that just adds duration, not damage) and it takes proportionally much longer to kill anything hardier than like a hill giant or troll with poisoning than your raw damage output should manage at the point in the game that you run into them. And of course a huge number of enemies, often the nastier ones, are poison resistant anyway.

I just write off poison brands, non- mephitic cloud poison spells and poison needles as junk about the time I'm really rolling in lair.

IMO just vorpalize an orcish battleaxe from an orc warrior or something with a decent damage bonus (+3-4 starting) and start hitting it with enchant weapon II/III, that will never be obsolete and you don't have to fuck around saving scrolls when they can be turned into an advantage right away. The only thing that will be hands down better than that is a big 2H randart axe of speed - you will never find a non-artifact axe with the speed brand in 0.6 and you can do your elemental damage with wands and ranged weapons. If you play a longblade or mace user there is a slim chance of getting a scimitar or demon blade/whip of speed from some of the uniques I think.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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The of speed thing is kind of overrated actually, given how badly high AC on some enemies rapes your damage, plinking away 10 times a turn isn't really the way to go. Elemental brands can be nice here I guess, but of course you'll run into immunes sooner than later. Distortion is probably my favourite brand, unless you're fighting a caster, blinking the fucker away generally isn't a problem, teleporting the fucker away is pretty much NEVER a problem, and banishing to the abyss that fucking out of depth zombie that was going to rape you dead feels oh so satisfying.

And the damage? Nothing resists it except blink frogs. Who gives a fuck about blink frogs?
 

Zomg

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Well the big 2H weapons have a big enough base damage + weapon skill to get big hits past AC even before a brand is considered, so a speed brand is pretty unstoppable for them (which is why they were nerfed so everyone wouldn't be gunning for a semi-guaranteed great mace/battleaxe of speed in hall of blades). The vorpal bonus is also really small in 0.6, only 12.5% on average, so it's not hard for speed brand to match that. The fire/cold brands are 25% on average, holy wrath is more on demons/undead/evil (don't know %, probably 50?) and the rest are flat damage bonuses that are better for fast weapons.

I'm a pretty big fan of missile weapons and distortion prevents you from using any launchers, so throwing only and no blowdarts. I whore curare constantly even with casters in my games - basically all vulnerable uniques get curare'd, most of the badder giants, gold dragons, etc. And no butchering with a mace either.
 

Dirk Diggler

Scholar
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Okay, I'm going to say that 6 out of 10 times I'm getting killed by an Orc Priest, the other 4 times I'm getting killed by my own ghost.

What is the counter to that fucking smite that the priests use? It's utterly obnoxious. I have just started running as soon as I see them, but usually I'm down in 1 smite or two at most anyway.
 

Dirk Diggler

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Dirk Diggler said:
Okay, I'm going to say that 6 out of 10 times I'm getting killed by an Orc Priest, the other 4 times I'm getting killed by my own ghost.

What is the counter to that fucking smite that the priests use? It's utterly obnoxious. I have just started running as soon as I see them, but usually I'm down in 1 smite or two at most anyway.
JESUS TITTY FUCKING CHRIST THIS GAME IS FRUSTRATING AS ALL SHIT.

I just got a sludge elf fire elementalist to lvl 7. Had a +4 ring of protection, a +2 robe, ring of fire protection, and a gourmands amulet, all in all I was doing p. fucking good.

Then I take the first step down to the 6th level of the dungeon and a fucking centaur shoots me repeatedly with arrows of dispersal. This causes me to blink into a random group of ogres. I use my savvy to get out of the situation with a scroll of teleport. I then enter a few running skirmishes that I come out on top of. Then here comes THAT FUCKING CENTAUR AGAIN SHOOTING HIS ARROWS OF DISPERSAL, next thing I know I'm getting bounced across the dungeon into one horde of enemies after another. I finally get a moment out of his reach and manage to make it into a mazelike area where he can't shoot me. I end up getting pinned between imps, orcs, orc wizards, orc priests, and a warg. I kill two of the orcs, nail a wizard, and nearly kill the warg, THEN A PRIEST INVOKES HIS FAGGOT LORD'S POWER ON ME AND I DIE.

:rage:
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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I've found the best way to deal with priests is mephitic cloud, confuse, or wands of whatever you got early on. Once you get enough hp to survive a couple smites, unload whatever your best ranged attack is on them They're worth blowing curare needles or 8 MP and a honeycomb worth of food on imo. Barring that, run like a little girl.

They do give stupidly low xp considering how deadly they are.
 

Zomg

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Oct 21, 2005
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Commiseration.

The warg sounds like it was kinda out of depth there, you usually don't see them outside of the orcish mines or like DL10+, they're fast and poison immune. Anyway you should definitely feel like you're screwing up if a priest can see you and you can't kill or disable him or break LOS before his next turn. And using a scroll of teleport uncontrolled on a level that you haven't explored is like taking a 50% chance of a loss, a complete last-resort move. But everyone dies to priests and centaurs, they're just some of the harsh-ass enemies that make DL2-8 or so such a graveyard (and also fun, you'll miss them during the kinda boring midgame where you only really worry about uniques).
 

crufty

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Jun 29, 2004
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wise words. recent playthru: spriggan fire mage w/ring of fire...yay! dl1. done! yay!

step down. dl2! you feel a surge of power--toast a cockroach. Yay! step thru door. sigmund hits. ouch that hurts. you miscast! you tingle with magical energy. sigmund hits. you die!

mmmmm

crafty crafty sigmund

my strat re priests is to run away and lump them when they turn the corner in pursuit. those open levels though with/squads of gnolls and orc wizards (dl3-4) or so are tough on my mummy necromancer. oh how they burnses me!

still good fun.


i was a summoner--do summoned animals disappear? that is very weak.
 

Castanova

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Just... wow. First time I've played this game and felt serious rage.

Had a very promising basher character going with Trog... only level 12 or so but solid equipment so far and I had an Amulet of Faith so Trog had already gifted me about 10 items.

I see Sonja, decide to skip her but she wakes up anyway. I hit her one time and take her down to critical and think "OK, easy enough." I press up one more time and then find myself in the Abyss. Somehow I make it out of there alive which is a miracle as a level 12 basher and I continue on my way.

A few levels down, I get another god gift. A runed glaive. I'm not even using maces and flails but why not see what it is, right? I equip-ID it and find out it's of distortion. I remove it, say Yes I'm sure, and find myself in the Abyss. Again. And this time I immediately get attacked by a draconian annihilator, one of those angel things, and ugly purple things.

Good thing teleport doesn't work for crap there and the Annihilator popped my Heal Wounds potions. gg.
 

Malakal

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
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Ah yes, the Abyss. The graveyard of my most advanced characters. Because You can get resists to elements or to magic, rarely to both...
Play races with high m-res gain and dont id weapons by wearing them. Easy to tell, hard to do.

I hate distortion weapons, they are too random for me. And blinking and tping enemies is extremely annoying, banishment does not give xp too. Good luck with slime pits with distortion branded weapon - if You banish Royal slime You are screwed. I think this brand needs reworking.
 

Zomg

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Oct 21, 2005
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The gayest thing about the Abyss is that it goes from almost inevitably fatal (without either a very powerful character or portal luck) to trivial with any source of +movement speed. If they put like fairly common wands and/or scrolls of swiftness in the game Abyss deaths would be non-existent.
 

Castanova

Prophet
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Jan 11, 2006
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Couple esoteric questions:

1) If a character has slow metabolism, like Spriggans for example, do spell hunger costs also get cut down by some percentage? I was watching a Spriggan Enchanter on the server and he was casting Ensorcelled Hibernation like a madman and his hunger meter was at Full for a long while.

2) What (if any) macros do you guys use? As a caster with your go-to attack spell as 'a' it would seem like a 'zaf' macro would be useful. Similarly, a 'ff' macro for a ranged user. If you use macros, also describe the letters you bind them to. I haven't experimented with any of that yet.
 

Zomg

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Oct 21, 2005
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I'm fairly sure spell hunger doesn't pay attention to the metabolism mutation level. Do you drink from clear fountains with spriggans? I think they provide like a grape's worth of satiation per drink unless you're at the threshold of "Full".

I use "z" (lower case) to cast whatever my current garbage ranged attack is at the closest target. So it's "ff" for a missile weapon character, "aaf" for a Makhleb worshipper to shoot a lesser destruction, "zaf" for a necromancer to shoot a Pain, etc. Tab switches weapons. F1-F8 keys cast various things depending on the character. I use the "-" (minus) key on the numpad to autoexplore, and the "+", "/", and "*" keys to do things like evoke a crystal ball of energy or cast extension. Kinda minimalist I guess.

I do get confused sometimes and like throw a wand of paralyzation at a Hydra or something :?
 

Castanova

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Another question - is there any point in carrying around the stat-boosting potions (like potion of brilliance)? I can't think of any reason good enough to waste the inventory space. Please prove me wrong.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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They don't give you any glow so you could chug them all if you know you're going to be dealing with a tricky unique. Then again, if it's going to be tricky, you should probably run the fuck away.

Lost my face raping fire elementalist btw. If you run into Aizul, just go ahead and break your keyboard right there. He soaked up like 5 sticky flame spells without being even slightly wounded after 20 turns or so (And he has no regen, healing or fire resist), and then finished off my very poison immune naga with poison bolt. Lovely.

Oh, and ensorcelled hibernation gets to be hungerless pretty quick with an enchanter. Spriggans have crazy int stats, so you only need like 5-6 spellcasting to make a level 2 spell free iirc.
 

Zomg

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The might potion is like the might boost Okawaru gives, it's not just strength (adds bonus melee damage). Brilliance boosts spell power directly on top of the intelligence boost and gives some wizardry (lower spell failure) too. I dunno, it might worth it to get a spell from like very good to excellent against a unique or something. No need to carry 4-5 of them around for thousands of turns though. You can also extend them with the extension spell, but it'll build up yellow glow after 2-3 times.

Aizul is bad as hell. Good time to use some curare.

Edit - Oh, one more use for a potion of brilliance. Use it to raise a spell skill with a fairly high level spell, ex. earth elementalists have summon elemental in their starting book but no 1-2 level spell to build up summon skill with. Get some XP and pop a brilliance and get like summon 3-4 before it runs out, which will be enough to safely use the spell to dump XP without accidentally banishing yourself or some other horrible miscast effect.
 

Dirk Diggler

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Is there any way for say, a wizard to gain proficiency with short blades? Or are you always going to swing untrained regardless of how much you use them? My latest wiz just found a short sword of protection, does the AC bonus count against stealth etc...?
 

MisterStone

Arcane
Joined
Apr 1, 2006
Messages
9,422
Kaiserin, class only affects starting skill, religion and starting equipment. Skill aptitude is based entirely on race. So if you don't start with a weapon skill you can basically learn anything you want, but you would be advised to chose one that is easy for your race and that works well with your stats. Type ? for help and % for the list of race aptitudes, lower score is better as it denotes a lower cost in XP. Also examine the weapon in question, some (such as short blades) are better for people with high DEX, others (such as most clubs and axes) are better for high STR chars. If one stat is only a couple of points higher than the other it does not make a big difference, but eventually the weight towards one stat or the other is significant.

Also, here is a list of the "Top Killers" on the Akrasiac crawl server.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/killers.html

Orc Priests are in the top 10... oddly enough hobgoblins are number one, but that's probably because most characters die on lev 1 or 2. Also hobgobs, kobolds, etc. are 100s of times more common than orc priests.

If you tweaked it for monster rarity I bet orc priests would win... they just suck like that.

If you want to get revenge, play as an orc priest of Beogh, I think you can get that power for yourself.

:smug:
 

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