Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup - The Soupening

merphle wrote:

Congrats to Rauc! First win for team Hubris Maximus! Nicely done. :)

Thanks! This run went so much smoother than the one I lost on the run out earlier. I was all ready to kill Orbs of Fire with my antimagic weapon and rF+++ and then ended up only seeing one of them, compared to the 9 in the previous run.

I've done a few gauntlets, I lived through them but it was a close call every time. I skipped killing most things and just grabbed loot and jumped through the portal. However I then had to fight the Minotaur and what followed me through the portal together. Those javelins hurt!

Thanks for the answers. I was able to make it through. I wasn't really worried about the Minotaur as a battlesphere plus magma bolts or fireballs works wonders. Glass cannon's can be fun. Luckily I still have some blink scrolls left, but I need a way to either cast or invoke blink soon.

One question I do have, as I haven't gotten many casters this far, is when do I stop training the various schools of magic to get some defense up? Right now I have:

Spellcasting 13.6
Conjurations 15.3
Charms 8.1
Fire Magic 12.0
Earth Magic 9.0

but I have nothing in shields dodge or armour. And I think I need to start training them at least a bit, right?

Zaque wrote:

Has anyone gone through one of the new gauntlets yet. I am in one and it looks real challenging for my glass cannon DeFe.

I like the gauntlets. They are significantly more difficult than the labyrinth, which was a joke. The Minotaur is an increased challenge but still not near as difficult as some of the gauntlets they throw at you. Death is a real possibility.

Congrats Copingsaw and Rauc! Way to go!

So...

Scarf of cloud immunity? Would that make me immune to any sort of clouds (fire, cold, etc.), and potentially be useful for say a scroll of immolation entry on the bottom of Vaults?

Also, are previous tournament results still available somewhere? I've tried using the links in the blog but they seem dead, and tweaking URLs isn't working either. (I'm trying to see when the last tournament I played was.)

I've got a Gargoyle Fighter up to XL16 or so. He's making decent progress in Spider at the moment, thanks mainly to Okawaru's generosity. I just got to the point where I was thinking "DAMN! I'M INVINCIBLE!", so I decided to take a quick break for a drink of reality juice.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Scarf of cloud immunity? Would that make me immune to any sort of clouds (fire, cold, etc.), and potentially be useful for say a scroll of immolation entry on the bottom of Vaults?

I'm 99% sure that this is true.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Also, are previous tournament results still available somewhere? I've tried using the links in the blog but they seem dead, and tweaking URLs isn't working either. (I'm trying to see when the last tournament I played was.)

I was also looking for them a couple of days ago, but I think dobrazupa has dried up. I had hoped that develz.org had taken a snapshot of them, but seems like the answer to that question is "no".

The Wayback Machine has the 0.21 main tournament page (and a few other sub-pages) archived, but not individual clans or players, it seems. Or at least not the ones that I checked. The Wayback Machine does not have the 0.22 tournament. I didn't check anything else. How sad that those pages are all seemingly lost.

merphle wrote:

How sad that those pages are all seemingly lost.

That'd be a bummer, yes. It was always fun to look back over previous tournaments and see how you did in comparison.

It looks like the individual, non-tournament player histories are still up, which is good.

I have a crawl super power: When I got down to Vaults 5 and tele to the edge to sneak around, I will always - always - pick the wrong quadrant to start in and the rune will be in the last one I examine.

Congrats to all the winners so far!

merphle wrote:

Also, the typical recommended path of exploration is:

1) Dungeon 1 to 11
2) Lair 1 to 6
3) Dungeon 12 to 15
4) Orc 1 to 2
5) First "S" branch to 3
6) Second "S" branch to 3
7) First "S" branch to 4, get the rune
8) Second "S" branch to 4, get the rune
9) Vaults 1 to 4
10) Depths 1 to 5

11) Get third rune
12) Zot 1 to 5
13) GD0

More stuffs...

Spoiler:

The "S" branches, in generally accepted difficulty order:
1) Swamp
2) Snake
3) Spider
4) Shoals
You'll only ever get two of those in a game -- (Swamp/Shoals) and (Snake/Spider).

The third rune would typically be one of the below, NOT in difficulty order:
1) Vaults 5 -- beware of even walking down to V:5 unless you're fully prepared, because there's an entry trap.
2) Abyss 3 -- the rune spawns only at A:3 or deeper, and there are no guaranteed exits out of the Abyss.
3) Slime 5 -- very slimy, difficult fights.
I think I prefer Slime 5 as my third rune these days.

I've got the items in bold completed. I accidentally went down to Vaults 5 and about s*** my pants. All I saw was darkness and a ton of mobs so I thought there was no light and no way out. I didn't realize there was a -- more -- prompt going - *whew* - after hitting spacebar, I went back upstairs with my skin intact.

It's time for the 3rd rune, it seems!

Do I just ignore Crypt, Halls of Pandemonium, Hell, Ziggurat, etc? It's so damned hard not to enter an available doorway.

I don't have an "Abyss" on my CTRL-G menu, but I do have Slime Pits. I'm going to head there.

If there's no guaranteed way out of Abyss, how do you win? Just getting the MacGuffin?

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:

It's time for the 3rd rune, it seems!

Do I just ignore Crypt, Halls of Pandemonium, Hell, Ziggurat, etc? It's so damned hard not to enter an available doorway.

I don't have an "Abyss" on my CTRL-G menu, but I do have Slime Pits. I'm going to head there.

If there's no guaranteed way out of Abyss, how do you win? Just getting the MacGuffin?

First off, it should go without saying: You're having one heck of a first game.

I would recommend skipping Crypt, Pan, Hell, and Zig. Pan and Hell are pretty much entirely the 15 rune "extended" game. Crypt could be done; it's a bunch of undead nasties that can cause you grief, ending with a doorway to Tomb, which is even more undeadier nastiers that will cause even the badassiest of badass characters grief. The Ziggurat is basically a 27-floor dungeon, increasing in difficulty (and loot rewards) with each floor; you can escape at the end of each floor, or risk it for the biscuit and head on to the next floor.

Abyss is an infinite floor in every direction, with walls and tiles that randomly shuffle periodically while you're walking around. There's also loot scattered around, as well as enemies. The rune only spawns on Abyss 3, 4, or 5, and typically you would enter on Abyss 1 (there's guaranteed to be at least one entrance in Depths, so if you don't see it in your G or Ctrl-O menu, then you must've missed it somewhere). Inside Abyss there will randomly appear a doorway leading deeper (e.g. Abyss 1 -> Abyss 2), or more rarely a doorway leading out (Abyss x -> wherever you entered from). It can sometimes take 10s of thousands of turns just trying to find an exit out, and it can be an incredibly stressful situation, because the enemies literally never stop spawning. One good way of mitigating a mob-heavy situation is by teleporting, because you'll land in a brand new area, and never have to see the previous set of mobs again. This is not a guarantee of safety. Also, there are a ton of mobs that will mutate you in Abyss, increasing the frustration factor more. Generally Abyss is sliiiightly safer for a stealthy sneaky character, and riskier for a caster character (because resting to recover MP is a good way to get more mobs spawning on you).

You are fortunate to have rCorr on your character, making Slime sliiiiiiightly safer for you. You'll still want to beware of floating eyes (which can paralyze you), acid blobs (which can spit acid at you to lower your defenses and attack strength), azure jellies (which hit like a truck if you don't have rC), shining eyes (which can mutate you), and of course The Royal Jelly, which is the big bad guy guarding the vault. Actually just beware everything in there.

Honestly, Vault 5 might almost be a more straightforward fight for a burly MiBe. It's the most "normal" to what you've already fought your way through so far. Be particularly cautious of the dragons and liches, which will f you up. Basically anything showing in red. One tactic commonly used is to teleport on V:5 until you get to a side/corner section (the floor is basically 4 square rooms, one in each corner, with an outer hallway around the whole thing, and an inner hallway between the four rooms, with the staircases all right in the center), and then slowly explore the outer perimiter, and then work your way through each of the corner rooms.

Do I just ignore Crypt, Halls of Pandemonium, Hell, Ziggurat, etc? It's so damned hard not to enter an available doorway.

Generally, yes, you want to avoid these for the moment. However, if you're feeling daring, you could pop in and pop out to pick up some points for your tournament score. Your first entry into a region gets you five points. Unless you care about that, I'd stay away for now.

However, Ziggurats are generally pretty safe for the first few levels. They get progressively harder as you go. Depending on your level, you could potentially dip in and do a couple of levels, just for fun. I'd recommend against it unless you are short something that you really need.

I don't have an "Abyss" on my CTRL-G menu, but I do have Slime Pits. I'm going to head there.
Unless the game has changed since I was playing before, there should be an entrance to the Abyss in the Depths somewhere.

If there's no guaranteed way out of Abyss, how do you win? Just getting the MacGuffin?
Abyss exits and doorways down and up will pop up now and then when you are inside, you can go through them when they appear. There is a rune in there, which can be found on the 3rd floor or lower. The floors get progressively harder the lower you go.

The 3rd rune is generally harder than the first two. For the Vaults, you've already discovered why by going down to the 5th floor by accident. Slime has The Royal Jelly on the bottom floor, which is worth reading up on before you get there. Both the abyss and the slime pits have enemies who can give you malmutations, which can be anywhere from mildly annoying to life threatening.

Michael wrote:

I have a crawl super power: When I got down to Vaults 5 and tele to the edge to sneak around, I will always - always - pick the wrong quadrant to start in and the rune will be in the last one I examine.

Wait, is there a way to do controlled teleports now? I've been reading some scrolls, but they just chuck me wherever.

Quick question...

So I got chucked in the abyss from the Vaults. While there, I picked up a ton of malmutations, but they were all temporary and disappeared once I got back out. Have they changed the way malmutations work? Are there permanent malmutations still?

There are permanent mutations, but if they are in purple - probably from a Wretched Star - they go away as you gain XP, like the drain status. Permanent mutations will be in red.

Michael wrote:

There are permanent mutations, but if they are in purple - probably from a Wretched Star - they go away as you gain XP, like the drain status. Permanent mutations will be in red.

These were in white, but in brackets. Since they went away quickly, they must have been temporary? I remember they used to be purple and red, but they don't seem colored anymore.

Anything I'm missing with this gargoyle?

- I've been saving the enchant armor scrolls for some golden dragon armor, but no luck yet.

- The character has been pretty steady for quite a while now. Hard to damage, and deals enough damage with the vampire mace that he heals up as he fights.

- I'm thinking to try Vaults for rune #3. Maybe just a stair dance with teleport as a backup should that fail. If it comes to teleporting though, well, my success rate isn't so good.

Newb question...I always have trouble deciding which weapon. Do you just go with the highest base damage weapon (in the skill you've been training in, of course) you can carry?

There just seems to be a lot of little variables that I never know which one to stick with (base damage, delay, enchantment pluses, brandings, one/two-handed, etc.). I just figured you should hit stuff with the biggest stick you can find and how for the best.

quasiChaos wrote:

Newb question...I always have trouble deciding which weapon. Do you just go with the highest base damage weapon (in the skill you've been training in, of course) you can carry?

There just seems to be a lot of little variables that I never know which one to stick with (base damage, delay, enchantment pluses, brandings, one/two-handed, etc.). I just figured you should hit stuff with the biggest stick you can find and how for the best.

Generally yes, other than the one/two-handed thing. Although sometimes it is better to have a lower delay with less base damage than a higher delay and higher base damage. Brands such as crushing/slice/flaming/freezing/vampiric deal additional damage based on the base damage while distortion/electrical/pain only are applied on hits so you want to hit more often, ie lower delay.

bepnewt wrote:

Well, Elven Halls:3 is a serious hot mess. I've used all of my healing potions, 2 of my teleport scrolls, all of my blink scrolls, and 2 fog scrolls. I think I'll bail out of here until I'm a little stronger.

CTRL-F: Wow. That's awesome. Thanks.

I got everything IDd, thanks for the advice on that, folks.

I'll give your .rc file a shot, Merphle.

D'oh. I decided to bail on the Elven Halls and instead of warping out to continue where I was, I semi-warped by going to each level on the way out since I didn't remember where I came from. I went up some stairs that took me to a different part of the Orc Mines that isn't connected to where I went before. Glad I didn't warp all the way out!

-BEP

I just remembered this. All of the normal dungeon levels have 3 sets of normal stairs except the first level. So if you only can see two ways down from a level you know that there is another "hidden" area you can get to. Also Elven Halls:3 is generally optional and most of the time after you have gotten your thrid rune.

Congratulations to Godzilla Blitz! Win #4 for v23 And Me

Oh damn, nice job Godzilla!

And also a fine game finished off last night by bepnewt! Not bad for your third ever game of Crawl.

Good job Godzilla.

Great job!

Congrats on the wins and I have to agree with everyone else: You are doing frakkin' amazing bepnewt!

merphle wrote:

Oh damn, nice job Godzilla!

And also a fine game finished off last night by bepnewt! Not bad for your third ever game of Crawl. :)

It was crazy. No way I would have won without the help at the end. Is that last boss beatable? Without the help, I would have had to fight him/her/it, I bet.

I need to use my consumables more. I always finish RPG type games with an overstuffed inventory of items I could have used during play to help. "Saving it for the right time" = never using it.

Thanks for all the help. I understand a ton more, now. There's a lot of quality of life hotkeys in this game, for sure.

I think I'll try another melee character, then maybe a hybrid, then a "pure" caster if there is such a thing. It seems like a pure caster would get owned when encountering mobs that drain "mana".

Were the other observers people from here or just random pop-ins?

-BEP

That last boss was just a random big bad guy from Pandemonium -- a "Pan Lord". They have randomized skills and powers, but generally are pretty tough. They're definitely beatable, but if you can avoid them, better to do so. You may not see a single Pan Lord in a game... or you might kill hundreds.

I think you did fine with your consumables. Hoarding them is a common problem with Crawl players; there's always the mentality that the next fight one might really need this, so they save it... only to die before even getting to that next fight. I was happy to see you using your Trog abilities so much -- I definitely wouldn't have used Trog's Hand quite as much, in order to save piety to use more Bro's, but that's just my preference.

The other spectators (there were 7 people total, plus 2 bots) were just randoms. I don't think anyone else from GWJ. They probably just saw that there was a game with a bunch of spectators, and decided to drop in to see what's up.

Thank you, everyone! I had a bear of a time with Zot 5 mutations and the ascent, but made it through. Happy happy.

But wait, bepnewt won his game? His third game? Like third game ever?!?! That’s AMAZING! Congratulations! And here I thought Math was really really good at this game. Winning your third game ever, that’s like, unheard of. Serious kudos!

My first win came on my 100th game. I was thrilled to get to D2 on my third game.

sh*t it took me years to win one.

Michael wrote:

sh*t it took me years to win one.

No kidding. There are people in the player rolls that have thousands of games without a win. Third game ever is savant-level stuff. That's the most amazing thing I've heard so far this year.

Admittedly, the win percentages have gone up to about 3% from around 1% during tournaments and the tutorials and help are better than a few years ago, but still, no one wins their third game. That's crazy good!

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Michael wrote:

sh*t it took me years to win one.

No kidding. There are people in the player rolls that have thousands of games without a win. Third game ever is savant-level stuff. That's the most amazing thing I've heard so far this year.

Admittedly, the win percentages have gone up to about 3% from around 1% during tournaments and the tutorials and help are better than a few years ago, but still, no one wins their third game. That's crazy good!

Congratulations, GodzillaBlitz!

And Holy Cats... Congrats, bepnewt!!! Waaay2Go!!! Now off to try to win my first game for the 100th time...

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Michael wrote:

sh*t it took me years to win one.

No kidding. There are people in the player rolls that have thousands of games without a win. Third game ever is savant-level stuff. That's the most amazing thing I've heard so far this year.

Thanks for the kudos, all. I'm sure I cheated somehow. I'll have the Russian judge look at the logs or something.

@Merphle -- Trog's Hand vs. Bros: Frankly, I think I used Bros once when I first got it, then I used it again when you suggested it in Slime. Mainly because I forgot about it and also because I don't know how to see my current Piety. Is it the number of asterisks next to the God's name?

A coworker plays, mainly local to his PC, though. I told him I wanted to go melee on my next run and he suggested Gargoyle. Time to start another game! Or download the source and compile it for the fun of it.

Start a new game won out...

-BEP

Yes, for most gods, the number of stars next to the god's name is your current piety level. You can see all of the details about your current god by pressing the ^ key (this is also what's shown when you pray at an altar, when potentially choosing to worship a new god).

Gargoyle is another great race to learn on, alongside Minotaur and Hill Orc. Try a Gargoyle Gladiator or Fighter and look to pick up Okawaru as a god, if you want something that's kinda similar to your MiBe.

merphle wrote:

Gargoyle is another great race to learn on, alongside Minotaur and Hill Orc. Try a Gargoyle Gladiator or Fighter and look to pick up Okawaru as a god, if you want something that's kinda similar to your MiBe.

Gargoyles are really good for the early game too, with built in rPois (and other resistances) for the Lair and Spider. And by the time you need it they can fly, which makes Shoals or Swamp much easier for a second rune.

Beware their low HP though. They can be doing really well and then, bang, they are dead. A half full health bar for a Gargoyle isn't the same as a half full health bar for a Minotaur. The game I just finished was with a Gargoyle, and a couple times I got down to around 10 HP, even with training Fighting to give me more HP right from the start.