Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup - The Soupening

The Hep ancestor is a neat mechanic. Personally I think the Hexer ancestor is the strongest of the three, but I've only really tried the Knight or Battlemage once or twice. Might just be that Hexer pairs well with my personal play style.

Crap. I looked back at my work screen, stepped through some more code I’m analyzing, and when I looked back, Kronen’s body was lying on the ground turning black from a hornet’s poison sting.

Sorry, man. Boooooo!

-BEP

Grats as well to rauc, merph, and clumber! (Condolences to Kronen and to those who were shafted—both figuratively and literally.)

bepnewt wrote:

I’ve been watching Fasrcry, too. I think he was in D9 when he left. I hadn’t seen anyone play with the Ancestor before. I’m going to have to try it sometime.

-BEP

I wondered who my spectator was!

Yeah, I'm working so when I'm not stuck on one of my client's VPN connections (which block DCSS) and am sitting on a mind-numbing conference call, I grab a little Crawl time

I haven't gone with the ancestor much yet, but after spending years focused on MiFi of Okawaru as my "main", I ran across a Hep shrine very early on and thought "hey, why not?"

So far, I'm digging having my hexer buddy. I'm still doing the heavy lifting, but having a partner doing some draining & confusion has made the occasional bigger baddy more manageable (I would normally have run away from two-headed ogres on D:9, but it worked pretty well). I'm also planning to stick with 1h & shield instead of leaning into 2h later; I think having some crowd control from the hexer will let me give myself a little more defense (since I do have the 10% HP penalty from having an ancestor).

About this point in the game I always start stressing out about missing resistances, and this current run is no exception. At least I have rElec now!

@farscry - you can click where it says “1 spectators” and it will open up a chat box where you see who is spectating and you can chat with them.

I never would have gotten my first win had Merphle not coached me on Zot5 via that chat window. It was nerve-wracking and I had no clue what I was doing.

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:

@farscry - you can click where it says “1 spectators” and it will open up a chat box where you see who is spectating and you can chat with them.

Only if the spectator is logged in to that particular server; otherwise it just shows "1 anon". And anons can't write any chat messages, only read.

bepnewt wrote:

I never would have gotten my first win had Merphle not coached me on Zot5 via that chat window. It was nerve-wracking and I had no clue what I was doing.

-BEP

I'm just stubborn, was the same way with the Dark Souls games which is probably why each one took me so long to beat.

That being said, cool, I didn't realize you could chat with spectators!

Farscry wrote:
bepnewt wrote:

I never would have gotten my first win had Merphle not coached me on Zot5 via that chat window. It was nerve-wracking and I had no clue what I was doing.

-BEP

I'm just stubborn, was the same way with the Dark Souls games which is probably why each one took me so long to beat.

That being said, cool, I didn't realize you could chat with spectators!

"I'm just stubborn" would be an accurate clan name for any clan including me.

You and me both. Add it to the list.

Hey! They must have just added the “Ongoing Games” section to the individual clan home pages. I was missing seeing that there to see what people are up to.

Edit: ...and I see the wins and top games section is back as well! (It’s the little things that make me happy)

merphle wrote:

You and me both. Add it to the list.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/y4MPWpg.jpg)

quasiChaos wrote:

Hey! They must have just added the “Ongoing Games” section to the individual clan home pages. I was missing seeing that there to see what people are up to.

Edit: ...and I see the wins and top games section is back as well! (It’s the little things that make me happy)

Agreed. This is looking better!

Can we take a moment to just appreciate the hard work that everyone involved in building, maintaining, and running the tourney scripts -- completely on a volunteer, unpaid basis. I know the scripts are on Github, so if folks are interested in helping to improve them, I know they're accepting code submissions via merge requests.

Also, please consider donating to your friendly local crawl server to help offset their costs.

Woah! So I found the generated vault with the Trog altar, a bunch of rats, and a Moth of Wrath locked away inside a ring of Iron Grates. Ha ha, the Moth of Wrath causes rats to go berserk and attack you. Funny, right?

Except this vault has Natasha lurking away at the back, outside of my immediate view. And Natasha is a badass smarty-pants. And this Natasha has a Wand of Digging.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/hL5pRzv.png)

Edit: I got berserked by the MoW, then managed to kill both it and Natasha, but succumbed to a berserked Worm while I was slowed by the by-then expired berserk while trying to run away. And that's the story of how I killed a Moth of Wrath on D:3 at XL5.

Ack, well... crap, now I'm getting paranoid that I'm going to die for some really stupid reason since I've had such good luck for drops now. Just about cleared D:10, I gotta take a break and come back fresh and calm.

Farscry the Fighter (Minotaur Fighter) Turns: 9776, Time: 01:01:43 Health: 90/90 AC: 33 Str: 24 XL: 11 Next: 41% Magic: 16/16 EV: 10 Int: 7 God: Hepliaklqana [****..] Gold: 625 SH: 12 Dex: 10 Spells: 9/10 levels left rFire + . . SeeInvis + D - +0 morningstar rCold . . . Gourm . c - +0 kite shield rNeg + . . Faith . Y - +11 plate armour of Defence {rF+} rPois + Spirit . N - +3 crown of Dyrovepreva {rElec Int+2 SInv} rElec + Reflect . K - +0 cloak rCorr . Harm . (no gloves) MR +++.. Clarity + n - +2 pair of boots Stlth .......... x - amulet of the Four Winds {rN+ MR+++ Clar} HPRegen 0.25/turn l - +4 ring of evasion MPRegen 0.15/turn F - ring of poison resistance @: no status effects A: retaliatory headbutt, reduced essence, horns 2

I started out a DrFE since you all made it sound like it should be something fun to try (and it is so far). But now I’ve just gotten my color and it is white which is directly against learning fire spells. Do I switch And focus on the ice completely? I’ve not really tried a draconian and it has been a while since I’ve done a caster.

I seem to be having a hard time posting my first win this Tournament.

https://pastebin.com/2fCYFt3v

Died in Zot:5 to Hubris (aka two berserk Orb Guardians). This is AFTER I killed 5 OoFs, Liches, etc and picked up the Orb

quasiChaos wrote:

I started out a DrFE since you all made it sound like it should be something fun to try (and it is so far). But now I’ve just gotten my color and it is white which is directly against learning fire spells. Do I switch And focus on the ice completely? I’ve not really tried a draconian and it has been a while since I’ve done a caster.

That's exactly what happened to my DrFE this tournament, actually. You can totally power through that -2 training modifier if you want to stick with Fire - it's not a total dealbreaker; keep training Conjurations (it's generally good all-around for a blaster caster), and maybe cap Fire off at around 8 to start - that should get you pretty decent Fireballs, at least.

That said, you might want to bear in mind that since some of the top-tier mobs in DCSS (Orbs of Fire, in particular) are completely immune to fire (and lightning; and highly resistant to ice) that you might want to consider branching out a bit, anyway. Personally I'm a fan of Orb of Destruction (pure Conjuration), Iron Shot (Conj/Earth), and L's Crystal Spear (Conj/Earth?); all of these are effective on Orbs of Fire, and just about every other top-tier mob in the game.

Here's what my fairly-promising DrFE's skill training looked like. Note that XL7 is when you learn what color you're going to be, and it didn't really change my training right away:

Skill XL: | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 | ---------------+-------------------------------------------------+----- Conjurations | 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | 14.4 Spellcasting | 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 12 13 14 | 14.1 Fire Magic | 4 3 4 5 6 7 8 | 8.0 Dodging | 2 4 6 | 6.0 Fighting | 1 4 6 8 10 12 13 | 13.9 Air Magic | 3 4 6 8 | 8.0 Poison Magic | 3 4 | 4.0 Earth Magic | 4 | 4.0 Ice Magic | 2 5 8 | 8.0 Shields | 4 | 4.0 Translocations | 3 | 3.8 Stealth | | 1.7
Math wrote:

Died in Zot:5 to Hubris (aka two berserk Orb Guardians). This is AFTER I killed 5 OoFs, Liches, etc and picked up the Orb :(

Ouch. Sorry to hear that, Math.

I just got a new mechanical keyboard. I'm already in love with it, but I think I won't be able to play a Spriggan Enchanter any more because it's too loud.

Edit: I bet my Troll and Ogre games will be improved though. Hmmmm!

Thanks, merphle! Really appreciate the in-depth suggestions. Wouldn't have thought through the later-tier mob spell resistances until it was too late!

Wow, the Ice Elementalist book start also got a bit of a revamp in this version. Throw Frost and Throw Icicle were both removed from the game entirely, and therefore also not part of the starting book. Instead, it jumps from Freeze at level 1 (fairly damaging for a level 1 spell, though it requires the caster to be in melee range, which is inherently dangerous), to the new Frozen Ramparts spell at level 3.

Frozen Ramparts seems delightfully overpowered, especially with the right geography; it basically creates frozen floor tiles alongside all walls within a range of 2 from the caster (like the acidic floor next to the walls in Slime Pit, but temporary). No damage to caster or allies, and fairly good damage to all enemies in it; I was able to kill both Dowan and Duvessa with 1 cast of the spell (and a Freeze or two), and a Two-headed Ogre with 1 cast, and walking away. Excellent spell for hallways or other cramped passageways.

tl;dr: I didn't realize there were so many Spell changes in 0.25. At first I was a bit let-down that 0.25 was going to be kind of a minor upgrade (no new races, backgrounds, gods), but all of the "little" tweaks I've seen have been really good.

Hey, Mix! Add me to your team, please. I done got drugged back in.

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:

Hey, Mix! Add me to your team, please. I done got drugged back in.

-BEP

Will do!

bepnewt wrote:

Hey, Mix! Add me to your team, please. I done got drugged back in.

-BEP

Fixed. Hopefully not too late.

My heart skipped a beat...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/H5w1Zgs.png)

EDIT: D:15 complete!

What a weird run (also, one my best so far - don't judge): https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/m...

Looking good, mecharm! You completed D:15 early - a difficult move, but hopefully got you some good loot and XP.

Remember that the last floor of each branch is always going to be a lot more difficult than every other floor in the branch. For that reason, my recommended branch order for the path of least resistance is:

merphle wrote:

Also, the typical recommended path of exploration is:

1) Dungeon 1 to 11
2) Lair 1 to 6 (2020 edit: maybe even defer Lair 6 until after D:15)
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

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.

In the "old days" the few times I managed to get runes, I actually was able to snap up the slime rune a couple times or so.

However, in the last few versions of the game, I've made it to Slime 5 a handful of times and the Royal Jelly proved entirely too much for me to handle each time. Vaults 5, while super nasty, seems more approachable.

mecharm wrote:

My heart skipped a beat...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/H5w1Zgs.png)

EDIT: D:15 complete!

What a weird run (also, one my best so far - don't judge): https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/m...

Nice! Good run and well done to complete Dungeon before going to Lair, Lair should be pretty easy now.

A little advice, take it for what it is worth:
- Put on the kite shield in place of the tower shield - at 12.2 shields skill, the tower shield hurts EV and accuracy quite a bit more than the kite shield. Drop the tower shield and come back for it later when you have shields around 20ish.
- You may want to go get
D:8 | Identified the +8 plate armour "Sops" {rF+ MR+}
That is decent armor and you need the MR and rF. Being a garg, you don't need to worry about AC, but you do still need to worry about MR and rF. Would recommend doing Lair next. You are a little over-levelled for it, it should be relatively easy. You have a decent chance of finding some MR and rF (and rC) item in Lair
- If you like that quick blade, dump all the other weapons and just use that. No need to carry all the rest of that stuff around. The problem with quick blades, IMO, is they are very rare, so getting an upgrade to that will be hard to find unless Trog gifts you one. The good thing is that short blades don't make hydra head multiply (pretty sure at least ), so you can use it in Lair. You may also want to see if you can find a branded rapier (other than that vamp one) - elec would be ideal - or rebrand the vamp one you already have. A high enchant rapier of elec is probably a 3+ rune-worthy weapon esp when you get short blades to 27.

Things you need badly: MR, rF, rC

Good luck!

Thank you merphle and tboon!!

I always (= since I've started playing a month ago) try to beeline dungeon and THEN do the branches...I just assumed that's a logical way to go about it (and I even wiki-d, guide-ed around).

- You may want to go get
D:8 | Identified the +8 plate armour "Sops" {rF+ MR+}

...h...how did I miss this? I honestly had no idea this even happened!

And yeah, the quickblade is insane...damage output is almost not existent, but the 0.2-0.3 speed is crazy.

These crumpets of knowledge are invaluable, much obliged!

mecharm wrote:
- You may want to go get
D:8 | Identified the +8 plate armour "Sops" {rF+ MR+}

...h...how did I miss this? I honestly had no idea this even happened!

Make liberal use of Ctrl-F, my friend. I'll usually do searches for "brand" and "artefact" every few floors, just to see if I missed anything. Or "rpois" if I'm missing that valuable resistance before heading into Snake/Spider. Etc.

Might as well repost this again, too. How to not grind the interface. Note that the post is 6 years (and quite a few DCSS versions) old, so some portions of it is not relevant, but there are still a few great morsels in there.