Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup questions/thread

[Damned Registrations]

The chance to stab them if they're not stuck is like 15% though. Kind of need it to be a lot better than that. I'll try the confuse thing out though. Just ran another spriggan enchanter into the ground. Petrify is actually pretty shitty. Doesn't last nearly long enough considering it's a level 4 spell and doesn't take effect immediately AND makes them highly damage resistant.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well after 5 dead chars one finally got to level 3 long enough for me to give confusion a whirl. Much better success rate. Definitely more useful than I'd thought, though it's still a pain since level 3 uses way more food than level 2 spells. On the other hand: confused orc warrior hit me for 23 damage with a plain scimitar before I hit level 4. Fucking hell.

 

[Zomg]

Don't use flame strike on the royal jelly

In retrospect I should have done something else to get a source of teleport control and then blink-kited it firing orbs of destruction through the empty levels above, even up to lair if I needed to. I was drunk on flame strike powah, drunk I say.

 

[Damned Registrations]

That sounds... interesting? /oS vs drawbridge in nethack scenario?

 

[Zomg]

Nah, it wasn't anything that gimmicky. It just spawns fast, dangerous enemies when it gets damaged, and the flame strike created a huge area of burning fire around it to make more every turn. I was so stupidly confident in flame strike at that point (basically the ultimate conjurer spell, never gotten it before and I'd done snake and shoals easily even before I got it) that I thought it would die in like 2-3 shots, but I didn't even get it below green health and by then I was in deep shit. I should have planned a nice calm sure kill like blink kiting instead of thinking I'd just squash it the first time I ever saw it.

Wearing a gourmand amulet and gore-blasting through several branches with orb of destruction (also the first time I ever used it) while eating the scattered chunks of exploded corpses was great <sigh>.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Finally got my enchanter off the ground. Deep in the lair and have spellcasting high enough I don't need to worry about starving while leveling my spells. Str is still at fuck all though, which is annoying because unidentified shit is piling up. God gift so far is a very nice +6/5 freezing.... battle axe. Great for a spriggan obviously. 2 artifacts found so far are an unidentified great sword I can't equip, and an amulet that would be nice except the one I'm wearing is godly: Guardian Spirit is just cheesy on a spriggan. I'm nearly invincible.

Had to skip by a player ghost of one of my troll death knights earlier, he had a nasty poison branded attack and insane armor for some reason. I got high level foodless dispel undead now though, so that won't be a problem in the future. Other enemy is Gastrok. I spent around 3000 turns in an epic spriggan vs snail speedy paper mage vs slow tank mage fight before giving up. Fucker hits hard and has a TON of hp, and I got no poison right now to abuse him with. He's highly magic resistant too, so I can't keep him confused long enough to let pain branded backstabs do their work. Maybe I'll grab something from the book shop to fix that when I start up again, pretty sure there was a source or two of poison weapon in there.

In the long run I want to get necromutation/extension rolling so I can toss around the crazy high level shit and learn every single school without starving. Hope Okawaru gives me a fucking decent dagger or armor some time soon. Don't think I'll ever bother worshipping him again. I'd heard he gifts based on your learned skills but that's clearly not the case at all. I'd be swimming in death cobs by now if I'd picked the death god. Could have had a pile of spells from the caster gods too.

Oh, and at some point I picked up the mutation that randomly teleports you around, which is really fucking annoying and dangerous.

Also, I'm so desperate for strength right now if I had a hat I'd switch to the slow god and brand all my shit for the +6 str bonus.

Edit: I desperately want to kill that snail mage because he's wearing a slimy hat and my head is all shamefully naked.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The fucker delivered! The quickblade of Disgust: Str +4, stab, god gift. Bwahahaha.

Oh, and he gave me a robe of resistance before that. So, actually now I see why everyone chooses this fucker.

 

[Damned Registrations]

And the snake pits killed me. Naga mage resisted confuse till I ran out of mana then started pelting me with orbs of destruction, which I didn't know they had. /sigh. I'd found a scroll of aqcuirement too but the book it gave me was trash.

 

[Malakal]

Well this sucks, but not as much as getting a real late gamer going only to get two shotted by ancient liches using crystal spears. Unresistable spells are bullshit.

 

[Castanova]

Listening to you guys talk about the mid/late game makes this game sound less and less appealing. Bad luck deaths should mostly phase out by the end of the early game in any good roguelike, imo.

 

[Malakal]

Depends on how much risk You are willing to take. Collect three runes and finish the game? No problem. But visiting hells, pandemonium, abyss or tombs/zigurrat is just asking for trouble. Of course running away at the first sign of trouble always works.

 

[Zomg]

Eh my story wasn't particularly about luck.

I really can only think of one or two games where bad luck killed me after I'd gotten to the temple.

One was a chain of disasters where fell through shafts three time in elf land when I was looking for a protection-branded sword for an air elementalist and nothing was leaving a corpse or I was getting food sickness 4-5 times in a row; I finally died after I had to swift-haste run past Nicola while sick and near starving trying to reach an up staircase and Sonya came out of nowhere and curare'd me in one turn. There were so many bad beats that had to happen at once there that I wasn't even pissed off.

OTOH equipment luck is real, if you're not in one of the classes that can reliably clear the lair and orc mine with their starting equipment (fire elementalist, ice elementalist, conjurer, transmuter, crusader, others I forget/don't know about) and you don't pick a god that gives immediate boosts you can get in a vise.

 

[crufty]

I actually skip animate dead, pain/vampiric drain/dispel undead will get you to lair easily,

I'm still in the early game phases, but vampiric drain didn't do it for me. Does it get better w/addtl levels?

Pain + animate skeleton seem like the way to go as a mummy necro.

plus i like the idea of a mummy lugging around goblin corpses for the next level's skeleton pack.


only bad luck death I've had was a fireball tossing near-death mage that insta-deathed my mummy. However, I saw him casting and figured an explosive dart would take him out so...i had a chance to escape and did not....

 

[Malakal]

Vampiric Drain has awesome damage potential. This is why it sucks for 'weak' casters (low int or weak specialization ones) and is very powerful for those, who can properly develop this potential. And mummies have the lowest stats in the entire game and get bonuses for necromancy rather late.
Do remember that summoned creatures eat away at Your exp gain, even further weakening Your character. Don't know about reanimated though.

I just got killed by a ghost of my former mage tossing fireballs like mad. Funny thing is when he was alive he couldn't cast that shit very effectively... Guess death improves ones casting skills.

 

[Zomg]

I think drain can only do as much damage as you can be healed, so you have to be hurt a bit to get full damage. It also always hits and lets you tank medium-dangerous shit like blink/spiny frogs when you first reach lair while still damaging them, that kind of thing.

Later on you pretty much have to be a summon-herder if you press on to the very high level necro spells. Haunt can probably win you the game except it's so boring you might lose your concentration and get the character killed.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The ghost of that enchanter is going to be a nightmare. High level spriggan enchanter with artifact weapon. Fucking fuck fuck.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Tried out a deep dwarf death knight for fun. Death by too many fucking hill giants spawning. I guess I could have used the drain life power, but I doubt it'd have killed the giant, I had no pets left and it'd prevent me from getting any more any time soon (And they'd suck when I did get them).

 

[crufty]

Doing the random character thing. level 1 centuarian death knight, spawned in the abyss. picked up armor, turned out it was -3 cursed. saw an abomination. went over and gave it a good whack. mistake. dead in one hit under 100 turns.

I enjoyed the brief interlude nevertheless.

 

[Castanova]

Been playing around with a Troll Monk. Very strong class early game what with the built in weapon/armor and insane regeneration. Pretty easy to keep alive.

What do you guys think is a good God to worship for this kind of class? I've been getting Mahkleb since he's easy to appease and it seems like a good way to get some ranged magic/support summons. Still, I'm sure there's alternate choices, right?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Going to try a troll monk worshipping Jiyva I think. Don't need items so you can let the jellies go to town, and mutations should help out with unarmed (And trolls can't equip shit anyways so horns and claws and talons aren't going to screw you, though jiyva will probabl remove them anyways.)

 

[Zomg]

It's possible that the only Jivya altar you see in a game is in the bottom level of slime pit.

Trog seems obvious.

I'll give it a try with Okawaru, I think you never get divine gifts you can't equip so you might get an artifact dragon armor or something.

Edit - Argh, made a troll hunter for this, got lucky with that early portal where you can get a million hand axes of returning (had to run back out of the portal with the axes due to orc knight sighting). Unfortunately the Lair was really deep and I ran into Sonya on 12, managed to wand her to death while she sliced me up with a sword of draining, but a hill giant took advantage of her curare-ing the shit out of me and I had to teleport away and landed in the middle of a bunch of orc warriors and priests, splat. The temple was deep too, and I only had two pips of piety with Oka from having to eat around every other corpse. I don't know how much of lair and mines you need to have done before you can 6 pip piety to get haste and begin getting goodies.

You have okay survivability for like, 1-2 hits from having high HP, but you cannot take sustained heat due to no AC and no evade, and your stealth is also very bad which means you usually run into uniques awake and aware, unlike normal sized characters even if they shut off stealth at level 1.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Lost another promising spriggan enchanter (those amulets really are insane).

Apparently the hall of blades is not somewhere you go with an enchanter. Everything is immune and some of them are FASTER than a spriggan. I thought I could get around by just summoning a horde of my own weapons but apparently mine are shit while they are level OVER 9000, even if it's the same fucking weapon I just killed.

Also, fuck Sif Muna. Seriously. Like 3 books of useless shit as gifts. Party tricks? With 12 spellcasting and half a dozen schools learned? Fuck you.

 

[Zomg]

Hall of Blades is a like some weird backstage area when you're a conjurer, almost everything dies in one hit from a level 4 spell (mystic blast, stone arrow or icicle) and gives you 2000 XP a pop.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Had a pretty buff troll monk going but got killed by very evil bullshit unique with scimitar of flaming (While I'm wearing ice dragon armor instead of the gold because I STILL haven't found a scroll of remove curse after 8 levels.)

The worst part is that she got paralyzed by my wand the turn I died, and a frog hit me for the last 2 points of damage. Fucking hell.

I had the talons mutation and some extra AC too, as well as clarity and an amulet of stasis.

 

[Castanova]

My new favorite build: Troll Monk of Nemelex Xobeh. The Troll Monk aspect is incredibly strong early game and since you don't use weapons, you can save up every runed/glowing/whatever weapon you find to sacrifice to Nemelex. Then you get rewarded with fun, if not badass, totally random decks of cards to play around with.