@ Roguelike games

Well this is a rare experience. Ending a session with a character still alive. The latest in a long, proud line of Troll Necromancers is still alive and kicking in the middle depths of the dungeon... but not for the game's lack of trying. A Giant Eyeball (paralyzes you briefly with its attack) spawned next to Uruk (unknown to me unique) and Norbert (nasty melee unique with a thing for branded two-handed weapons) at the bottom of a set of stairs. I was amazed I even managed to scamper back up alive after walking down into THAT mess.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/tourney10/... if you want to check out the pile of uniques he's eaten on the way down so far. (Only Dowan and Blork aren't ones he's killed too, if my memory's right.)

carrotpanic wrote:

What's the roguelike to get on iphone? 100 Rogues?

That's the best rogue-like I've found on the iPhone. Good fun, but really hard (like most RLs )

GWJ Lair or Bust is a four-man team. Still room for two more, alls yalls out there. Doesn't matter how new you are to Crawl, you can't do worse than I do. I stubbornly refuse to pick any good races!

gbuchold wrote:

GWJ Lair or Bust is a four-man team. Still room for two more, alls yalls out there. Doesn't matter how new you are to Crawl, you can't do worse than I do. I stubbornly refuse to pick any good races!

I have only played the tutorial for Crawl so far, but I have ascended in Nethack many times. I am willing join up if you all are interested in having me.

Jump on in. Can't do worse than the guy who incinerated himself playing "dial a miracle: unidentified wands edition"

Oh, wait, that was me.

Are there tricks to IDing items without ID scrolls in Crawl like there are in Nethack? Like engraving with wands or dropping rings in sinks?

There are tricks, but less of them. The most common trick is "whatever you have the most of is probably worth the least". The second most common trick is "just put it on and hope it isn't cursed or that some of your scrolls are Remove Curse". ID scrolls are pretty common, though, and the better you are at Spellcasting the more IDs you can get out of one scroll, so it's more a matter of taking calculated risks and wear-IDing armor rather than spending scrolls on them.

edit: And give me your CAO name and I'll add you up - more people more better.

Hey, the words on scrolls; I haven't taken the time to analyze this, but has anyone else checked to see if, as a hypothetical example, Identify scrolls are always "QWERT YUIOP"? If so, I'm gonna start writing these puppies down. If not, I don't want to waste my time.

I'm a little disappointed that none of the spellcasters I've tried seem able to identify magical stuff without a scroll of Identify.

Some helpful tricks:

1) If you can stand to wait, pick up a bunch of equippables first, then use a scroll of detect curse before you go spending ID scrolls. 1 Detect Curse affects all carried items, and can easily rule out multiple cursed items and save some ID scrolls.

2) If you know a piece of equipment is uncursed, go ahead and try it on. Depending on its bonuses, it may self ID right away (armor most often is good about this.) If it still has a {tried} inscription, it still has hidden features.

3) Almost all wands affect monsters, so aim them at those. If a wand doesn't work on a monster, try aiming it at wall, it's probably a Wand of Digging. Make sure you test on a wimpy monster. Some wands are nasty AE effects though.. be careful not to be too close to your target when experimenting with wands or you might end up like this fellow: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Fe...

4) You don't need to Identify spellbooks. Just read them. Only in rare cases will this be insufficient (wimpy character trying to read a really powerful spellbook.)

5) Potion experimentation... even early on... can be dangerous. Degeneration (stat loss) and Mutation (random.. often bad.. mutations) show up early. The most common potions are usually Healing or Heal Wounds, so if you end up with x3 or more of one or two types than another, it's probably those.

6) Scrolls tend to be relatively safe to experiment with if you wait until you have a bunch. Start with your least numerous scrolls: those are usually the bad or silly ones, and the more common good ones tend to reverse them anyway. Remember that the only scrolls that target your inventory are Identify (works on any item), Enchant Armor (works on armor not enchanted to max), and Recharge (works on rechargables, mostly wands and rods.) Process of elimination should let you figure those out from each other.

7) Most item flavors (scroll labels, potion colors/descriptions, ring descriptions, etc.) aren't constant from game to game, but a few are. For example, a clear potion is always a Potion of Water.

8) Don't forget that adjectives on equipment suggest a stronger possibility of bonuses (or curses/penalties). i.e.: dyed leather armor as opposed to leather armor, steaming plate mail as opposed to plate mail.

Farscry wrote:

Hey, the words on scrolls; I haven't taken the time to analyze this, but has anyone else checked to see if, as a hypothetical example, Identify scrolls are always "QWERT YUIOP"? If so, I'm gonna start writing these puppies down. If not, I don't want to waste my time.

I'm a little disappointed that none of the spellcasters I've tried seem able to identify magical stuff without a scroll of Identify. :(

Don't waste your time, the scrolls change game-to-game (as do rings etc). Also, Identify as a spell was removed in 0.6, when the Divination school was taken out in favor of scrolls. That's why ID and Detect scrolls are more common in 0.6 and 0.7 than they were in 0.5, to make up for the removal of Divination.

One other trick - if a necklace isn't cursed, try it on. If it doesn't self-ID, take it off. Necklace of inaccuracy is pretty common and doesn't self-ID, but it's the only bad non-cursed necklace. No strangulation in this roguelike, thankfully.

edit: The spoiler wiki is located here. The "identifying items" page has some more tricks like the ones Ferret wrote up there.

I'm willing to try the Crawl tourney. I think I prefer "Lair or Oogaba" to "Lair or Bust." Also, I am a terrible person.

I'm "Mixolyde" on cao, oh team captain.

I gave up on prospector after a while due to the uneven difficulty curve. It seemed pretty hard to tell easy planets from very hard ones and the RNG destroyed me too frequently.

Ferret wrote:

Some helpful tricks:

1) If you can stand to wait, pick up a bunch of equippables first, then use a scroll of detect curse before you go spending ID scrolls. 1 Detect Curse affects all carried items, and can easily rule out multiple cursed items and save some ID scrolls.

2) If you know a piece of equipment is uncursed, go ahead and try it on. Depending on its bonuses, it may self ID right away (armor most often is good about this.) If it still has a {tried} inscription, it still has hidden features.

3) Almost all wands affect monsters, so aim them at those. If a wand doesn't work on a monster, try aiming it at wall, it's probably a Wand of Digging. Make sure you test on a wimpy monster. Some wands are nasty AE effects though.. be careful not to be too close to your target when experimenting with wands or you might end up like this fellow: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Fe...

4) You don't need to Identify spellbooks. Just read them. Only in rare cases will this be insufficient (wimpy character trying to read a really powerful spellbook.)

5) Potion experimentation... even early on... can be dangerous. Degeneration (stat loss) and Mutation (random.. often bad.. mutations) show up early. The most common potions are usually Healing or Heal Wounds, so if you end up with x3 or more of one or two types than another, it's probably those.

6) Scrolls tend to be relatively safe to experiment with if you wait until you have a bunch. Start with your least numerous scrolls: those are usually the bad or silly ones, and the more common good ones tend to reverse them anyway. Remember that the only scrolls that target your inventory are Identify (works on any item), Enchant Armor (works on armor not enchanted to max), and Recharge (works on rechargables, mostly wands and rods.) Process of elimination should let you figure those out from each other.

7) Most item flavors (scroll labels, potion colors/descriptions, ring descriptions, etc.) aren't constant from game to game, but a few are. For example, a clear potion is always a Potion of Water.

8) Don't forget that adjectives on equipment suggest a stronger possibility of bonuses (or curses/penalties). i.e.: dyed leather armor as opposed to leather armor, steaming plate mail as opposed to plate mail.

These are great tips, thanks! I know one of the keys to winning Nethack was to be able to reliably and quickly ID the items you find so you can buff up your character. Anyway, my name on CAO is, predictably, EriktheRed.

carrotpanic wrote:

What's the roguelike to get on iphone? 100 Rogues?

I actually haven't tried that one yet, but I have been enjoying Sword of Fargoal. My sense of that one is that it's easy as far as roguelikes go -- not too many penalties for hanging about on the upper levels and taking it very slowly, although that may have changed in recent versions. (I haven't actually played it in a while.)

The cool thing about Sword of Fargoal is it is basically an update of an old Epyx game from the Temple of Apshai era (eg, late 1970's, early 1980's).

This character is listed as Level 8 Troll on D:4. My biggest problem with the game appears to be moving downstairs more quickly than I should - how did you manage having a level so high after only a half-hour of play? Or did you go down to 5 or 6 then come back up?

gbuchold wrote:

This character is listed as Level 8 Troll on D:4. My biggest problem with the game appears to be moving downstairs more quickly than I should - how did you manage having a level so high after only a half-hour of play? Or did you go down to 5 or 6 then come back up?

I was actually on D:5 at my deepest on that character, but had come back up for some reason or another (I think I got blocked on the floor below and had to come back up.)

You probably aren't going down too fast unless you're not exploring most/all of each map before you go. The game is very well designed to pressure you to go deeper: hanging around on mostly cleared floors usually just ends up being a waste of munchies.

That particular character was unusually high level primarily because he had encountered and killed several uniques (according to the list: Sigmund, Menakure, Jessica, Ijyb, Edmund, Prince Ribbit, Terence, and Pikel) already. Hitting 8 uniques in 5 dungeon levels is more than a little unusual. I think my Trolls usually are only 5th or 6th by this point in their dungeon delving.

sigh. Pretty sad that he managed to slay all those guys so early then died to fireballing himself with an unIDed wand. Such a promising start. On the other hand, what can you expect when you have a Troll trying to learn how magic works?

Ferret wrote:

Well this is a rare experience. Ending a session with a character still alive.

You got that right, took me long enough yesterday to get a decent guy off the ground and sniffing the Lair just so I can do something monumentally stupid and kill him this evening

My first tourney character scored about 12k and the next four or five didn't do less than 2k. Then I had a long string of dying before the temple dudes because I was stupid and/or cocky. The hardest thing for me is that right after having a pretty good run with a character, with a new one I forget that I'm all squishy and a goblin can curb stomp me at level 2

Well that didn't take long. Went down to 9, fell through a shaft to 12. Go up to 11 to find that all 3 of the stairs are right together with 7 yaks right there. Teleport out, find the entrance to the Lair but decide to go up to D10 to clear it out and run into a giant, couple of big kobolds, orc wizard, more yaks, etc. so I TP again. Of course instead of doing the right thing and diving to the Lair I try to search for the stairs again only to run into the gang of death again. Got surrounded on all sides but managed to cut my way out until.......

Things that are here:
a scimitar; a glowing robe
The orc wizard hits you but does no damage.
You block the orc wizard's attack.
The orc priest calls down the wrath of Beogh upon you.
Something smites you!
You die...

###########
...........##
.............##
..............#
...............#
.................#
.........@.........##
.....ooYooo.........##
o.....ooF##Y.........##
.o......KC............##
#........K....%........##
##......................##
##.................(....#
#.................(......
#.........#...........(...
........###............).
......## ##.............

You could see 2 yaks, a giant frog, 3 orc wizards, an orc priest and 3 orcs.

Man, I wish I could set up my work PC to run this.

I'll add Mixolyde and EriktheRed when I get home... after I get off work... at 9 Pacific. Hooray overtime!

What's this "Lair" you guys are talking about?

...spoken like the noob I am who has yet to go deeper than D5

First thing you want to do is find the Ecumenical Temple and pick your god. If you need to it's also a good place to stash your goodies in case you have too much to carry around since no monster generate there. Lair and the Hive are also great stash places. After that the next step is to find the Lair, the Orc Mines, and the Hive. You usually want to do the Lair first and then Orc. Hopefully by that time you'll find some means of poison resistance, when you have that hit the Hive. It's pretty easy with poison res and there's a bunch of good stuff there along with tons of honeycombs and royal jellies. Jellies fill you up like meat rations and also restore abilities. After that begins the "middle game" of beginning to clear out the branches for leveling yourself up to start grabbing runes.

Finally got signed up. necroyeti on CAO.

Arrrgh. Promising character walks down a flight of stairs and is standing in a corridor staring down an orc, an orc priest, and an orc wizard. Tried to escape back up the stairs. Smite, Confuse, Smack, and trip back down the stairs due to confusion. I was at 42/42 HP at the start of the round. Tripping down the stairs took me from 1... to 0. Talk about ignominy.

Where are my decent shops? I'm getting in trouble due to awful item drops.. most notably, no poison resistance for letting me finish Snake Pits and eat green corpses.

But hey! I DID finally get corrosion resistance! ....

The twitching amulet "Chen Tao" {rCorr, AC-4, Int-5}

...sigh.

Watch out for those cyclopses, they're a dead shot with their big honkin' boulders.

IanDavid's picking up some clan points for us with his ghosts: they've apparently killed 2 other players so far. Maybe I should hurry up and get this troll killed, I doubt anyone will expect magic from a troll ghost.

ooh, I feel sorry for the poor soul who runs into my ghost and faces the Wolf Pack of Doom!

Alas, I am fallen! The Abyss is a vile, vile place.

But I did grab the rune before I died. +50 tourney points and I got a banner. Final score was 96,000ish.

Whoa! Nice job, Ferret!

Great score! My first character is dead. A random dwarf healer. Got whacked too hard by a critter I couldn't pacify and ran out of heal stuff. Good first run considering I'm still learning this particular RL. The more I learn, the more I like. Trying the troll/berserker that's recommended for newbs.