Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup - The Soupening

I'm definitely in, but no promises on time commitment. I have one successful win under my belt. Hope to repeat. Maybe with a Hill Orc Jesus.

Aww yeahh!

Did someone say Tournament?

It's a busy time of year, but it's tempting.

I'm always up for a tournament. Hopefully I'll get further into the late game this time.

Oh I'm in!

I missed last tourney so I want to participate. I don't know how much time I can commit though, so put me on the C team!

I took the liberty of adding a 0.20 sheet to the tournament sign-up Google doc (link is in OP).

Participation's looking a little light so far... we have 6 (enough for one full clan) at least. Don't be shy!

I feel like the game has gotten significantly harder. Orc has become really difficult. Only two levels and both are packed with bad-asses. Often Level 1 is only a small cave with a single entrance down to Level 2 so you can't even clear level 1 before having to wade into the hell of Level 2.

I've also noticed that the placement of spellbooks has changed such that only low level spellbooks are located all the way down through lair and orc. Sometimes I'll find like three Books of Cantrips and two Books of Party tricks before anything else. For spellcasters this really really sucks because the game is not giving you a chance to add quality spells before you really need them (i.e. Lair and Orc). Vehumet now becomes really the only reliable choice for a character that wants to focus on damaging spells.

Sif is pretty awesome though.

And unrelated to the above: VSSk of Uskayaw is pretty fun. Usk is a strong god immediately, and Song of Slaying synergizes pretty well; just don't use Infusion.

Disclaimer: I've only tried a couple of these, and didn't get very far.

I'm still on the fence. These next two weeks are the busiest of the year for me work-wise.

Okay, finally signed up.

No tournament for me. Last week of fishing for the season leaves me with barely enough time to eat or sleep so crawl is right out!

I'll be spectating a little perhaps. May your randarts all have rF++!

I hope to win with my current TrAM before the tourney, but we'll see. My in-laws are in town for my son's birthday on Sunday. I really hope to get a win this tourney.

9 people have registered for the tournament so far. Shall we start forming two teams (5 and 4?), and hope that 3 more people join, to round them out? Anyone have thoughts on team names?

Sounds good to me. I'm terrible at coming up with names though, so no help from me there.

Black Hole Sun Demons
Black Hole Summons

Like a Stone Giant
Like a Stone Soup

Fell on Black Daeva

There's also the spreadsheet linked in OP that we've been maintaining.

I do like the Black Hole Sun references though.

I like the CC references too! Nice tribute. How about "Full on Kev's Mom"

Maybe we should try to get a shout out on the podcast this week, get some more interest. Although 2 teams is not terrible representation, all things considered.

Senkrad wrote:

I like the CC references too! Nice tribute. How about "Full on Kev's Mom"

Maybe we should try to get a shout out on the podcast this week, get some more interest. Although 2 teams is not terrible representation, all things considered.

That's a good idea, I will ping Certis and see if he wouldn't mind mentioning it on the podcast, although it will be next Wednesday's CC after the tourney starts.

Can't hurt to try though. At least may get a few more folks playing. I'll also ping some of the old timers who haven't been in the thread in a while to see if they have any interest. If any of you guys can think of someone, reach out to them.

Not sure how much I will be able to play, I have a project that is crunching next week that goes live Monday week which I am sure will go smooth as silk (hahahahahahahahaha). But I hope to get a couple of decent runs in or, more likely, a lot of stupid deaths on about D4.

Copingsaw, unless you'd like to take the honors of captaining a team under your "Black Hole Sun Demons" banner, I would be delighted to do so myself.

merphle wrote:

Copingsaw, unless you'd like to take the honors of captaining a team under your "Black Hole Sun Demons" banner, I would be delighted to do so myself.

Please do, I'd rather not be a captain.

Of course just before the tourney, I have a really good DDFi^Mahkleb going. I have 5 runes and am working on clearning Zot before my first ever forray into Extended (Pan?). I'm curious what weapon you think I should use of

+4 morningstar of the Beast {vamp, Int+5 Dex+7} (currently equipped)
+9 demon blade of venom
+9 demon blade of freezing
+5 vampiric broad axe

(I have 5 scrolls of enchant weapon which is why the enchants look different than the dump)

The mace and demon blades are at min-delay. The axe is at 10/18 needed skill (cross trained from M&F), but getting it up to 18 shouldn't be too hard. I currently have -Cast, so I haven't trained any spellcasting (the only other decent boots are +1 boots of stealth which honestly might be better than +0, -Cast, +Fly, and Str +4.

---
Insane things this game, a bunch of scrolls of acquirement (got an artifact +1 demon blade of flame on Lair 1 and the rest was sh*t) and 3(!) potions of experience.

EDIT:
Classic stay up too late and die. Hell is really hard as a DD. It's nearly impossible to get back to full HP. It was easy enough to escape hell. On any other race, I would have just healed to full and headed back in, but Deep Dwarf didn't have a good way to get back up without fighting potentially dangerous enemies. Eventually a Hell Sentinel on Dis:7 Iron Shotted me beyond my healing powers.

Sorry to hear of your demise :(. I'm too late but I'll chime in and say I probably would've used the broad axe after fully enchanting it. I also would've search back for brand weapon scrolls hoping to get antimagic or vamp on one of the demon blades or a demon whip. In the end I think you were probably undone by having a substandard weapon. A demon whip or maybe an eveningstar would have significantly increased your overall killing power.

Extended is all about resists and huge damage output. Things will kill you but your best defense is to kill them first. I often play a one hander and shield up until I enter extended. Once I get to Hells, Pan and Tomb I get the biggest 2 hander I can find enchanted with holy, vampiric, or antimagic (in that order of preference) and have at it.

I just can't seem to understand DD. I've tried them out a few different times but I just can't seem to understand how to play them right with their lack of healing. It seems like a huge handicap.

On another note - are we assigning ourselves to a team or are the captains doing it?

In the interests of time, I moved folks onto the two teams in, what I hope is, a relatively balanced manner:

Black Hole Sun Demons
merphle - Captain
Copingsaw
Zaque
Clumber
NormanTheIntern
IjonTichy

Runing My Weekend
tboon - Captain
miserium
Senkrad
EriktheRed
kaostheory
mixolyde

Reminder to everyone (kaostheory included): If you don't see your name on the above list, it's because you didn't sign up. Go there and put yourself onto a team.

I forgot to hit the sign up sheet. I'll add myself tonight. And I can captain if we need a third.

OK. Names, anyone have a good name for this team?

Are we going to prepend team names with GWJ so we can find each other easily in the standings?

Also, set up your RC files. My username is tboon.