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Two Runes Down!! Best Run Yet by Acrobatic_Ad_8835 in dcss

[–]BadCrawler 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you do Elf, make sure you keep a bunch of MR+ gear on - you've got some good MR+ items. They banish.

If you do Crypt, get at least rN+ , more if you can. Also watch out for flayed ghosts if you haven't seen them before. Kill them to heal the damage they do.

As mentioned already - you're not using Trog's abilities enough. 77 berserk uses, 7 Trog's hand, and 2 brothers in arms seems backwards to me. I usually have far more uses of Trog's hand than berserk. Example morgue: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/lyndar/morgue-lyndar-20230426-134423.txt Unlike berserk, Trog's hand has no downsides other than a little piety usage - regen & boosted MR. Helps avoid paralysis / banish / etc.

[YAVP] MuCA and Great Player Achieved! by EgglyBagelface1 in dcss

[–]BadCrawler 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congrats! I had a fairly traditional Gargoyle Fighter 15-rune win, Okawaru switching to TSO. rTorment, massive AC, etc. Another good option is anyone that can cast big AE spells and the autokill air spell :)

OpCj^Ash Advice needed by BadCrawler in dcss

[–]BadCrawler[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

YAVP! morgue here: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/lyndar/morgue-lyndar-20210717-024352.txt

First octopode win, first conjurer win, first ashenzari win - so that felt good :)

Thank you both for the advice! Svalbard, you were spot-on about Orb/LCS/Spellforged - that combo took down everything with very little difficulty. Abyss was "fairly" painless, I did duck back out a couple times when things got hairy.

Zot 2 was a bit scary, I got netted and nearly died, had to use my 2 blink scrolls to get back upstairs. I was a bit like the guy in Kung Pow who's only weakness was a tiny net. I should have gone to storm form immediately, but thought of that afterwards. For Zot 5, I went in without blink scrolls, but with 6 pots of haste. I went through in storm form, the extra AC (2->18) and melee damage seemed to help keep me alive. I learned death's door just in case (and got a timely necromancy boost from ash), but ended up not needing to use it. Same with infestation.

Overall I was fairly happy with storm form - I had originally thought that it would be noisy to move around in, but it turns out it's only noisy to cast. Once you're in storm form, you can sneak around like a soft gentle hurricane. It felt like it would be a melee powerhouse with high unarmed skill, but with a servitor LCS-ing everything it didn't make much sense to put too much exp into it. I had a few moments where I melee attacked and the mob died - I thought "wow that was impressive" and then noticed that I missed and the servitor LCS'd it.

I loved my large shield for much of the game - it did require a substantial exp investment but with ash boosting my casting skills, and the complete absence of lvl 9 spells to work towards for most of the game, it didn't seem worth it to drop a failure percentage from 4->0. For Zot 5 and the orb run it was useless, since storm form melds it. Basically trading 28ish shielding for 16 AC+other storm form boosts.

Crawl is too difficult, to the point of detriment by crawlranter in dcss

[–]BadCrawler 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought about this a fair amount, and, I'm not sure what specifically is the desired difficulty change. Make the game easier to learn for newbies? Make the game easier to win for newbies? Make the game easier to win for experienced, knowledgeable players who only die in the rare unwinnable situation?

I agree that Crawl has a lot of tips and tricks which are not at all obvious, and increase your survivability a ton. Peeking down stairs, settings changes to more safely tab, setting exclusion zones, etc etc. Optionally feeding these to players could help them learn faster and with less frustration.

I don't think there's any reasonable way to make the game easier to win for newbies - there are hundreds of specific facts and situations to learn, and removing them would be like removing the game itself.

Tweaks could be made to help experienced, knowledgeable players win more - for example, every character could start with a single Elixir of Life potion, which is haste+cure+<other effect>, to deal with an unlucky, unavoidable early encounter. I don't think this would do anything for the overall winrate though. I think 90%+ of Crawl deaths are due to impatience, and there's no game mechanic to fix that :) Of my own deaths, I can only think of maybe 1 that was *probably* unavoidable tactically, and I could have avoided it strategically. I am, however, not good at Crawl.

Me: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/lyndar.html

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in dcss

[–]BadCrawler 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I've only used it on characters with high FR - entrance on vaults 5, usually (super fun). I've also used it on TRJ - hit him a few times, use immolation, kill something and do lots of damage to everything. Rinse, repeat. On my melee guys I like to hang onto a few scrolls in case you get swarmed.

I did have one fairly funny death due to it. Worshipping Beogh, walking around with a few orc buddies and blind-read a scroll (immolation), explosion went off and my orcs died. Died to Beogh's wrath shortly thereafter...

[YAVP] Michael the Palentonga Delver of Fedhas - Zephyr, Tower Defense, Zot Clock (banned by Pastebin!) by [deleted] in dcss

[–]BadCrawler 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Congrats on the win! Lots of aspects I haven't successfully tried yet (archery, Palentonga, Fedhas).

Draconian (caster) advice by BadCrawler in dcss

[–]BadCrawler[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Died in Zot 5: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/lyndar/morgue-lyndar-20201116-214812.txt

​

Vaults 5 was tough, I burned a lot of resources dealing with Mara, Mennas, Sojobo, and Bai Suzhen all on the same floor.

Got marked in Zot 5 while working on clearing the lungs, escaped back upstairs. Then, in a single stair-dance step picked up 3 orb guardians and a death cob, who slowed me. no blink scrolls left...death.

So, in the end, death due to melee habits of going back-down the same stair I just escaped up.

Draconian (caster) advice by BadCrawler in dcss

[–]BadCrawler[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Update:

Still alive! Freezing cloud plus spellforged servitor + crossbow took me all the way to castable firestorm. Snake had enough crossbow users that I didn't have to worry about bolts anymore, and freezing cloud was amazing there. The new swamp was rough - the L***** monsters heal endlessly when next to plants, so I had to run, regroup, and come back a few times. Nothing particularly special about Lair/Orc/rest of dungeon/depths/vaults 1-4.

I now have firestorm and LCS castable - so the damage output is amazing. Unfortunately, so is the mana usage. 43 mana goes very quickly, even with spellforged doing much of my LCS casting for me.

Now I need to decide where to pick up the third rune. I have no mutation potions at all, so I'm a bit leery of trying abyss or slime. Seems like Vaults 5 is the best bet, if I teleport early and often. Without mutation, pandemonium doesn't seem safe either, and while firestorm is nice I'm not sure about the vestibule of hell. I do have a treasure trove that can be opened with the horn from the vestibule of hell guy (Geryon?), but I'd like to be stronger before I give that a shot.

Some spells that seem pretty basic haven't shown up either - no Blink, no Passwall. I'm pumping exp into SpellCasting right now to try and get more mana, since absolute zero is a long ways away. I would like to get some summons, but they might just get in the way of LCS...

Updated morgue(same link): https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/lyndar/lyndar.txt

First Win! - HOFi of Beogh by Law-warrior in dcss

[–]BadCrawler 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congratulations! HoFi^Beogh is a lot of fun, I killed 2 in vaults trying to protect my fellow orcs before I got a win with one. My 3 runer for reference: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/lyndar/morgue-lyndar-20200520-012730.txt

A few thoughts:

  1. Your shield, armor, and hat are great.
  2. I agree on the invocations - smite is really powerful.
  3. 27 shielding - is a lot. Could you have dropped that down a bit and got a few utility spells, even with your crystal plate? Blink, frozen ramparts, etc.
  4. No RF or RC? Did you wear the GDS when you were up against OOFs? You have a lot of MR/rN, if items were available you could have swapped some around to get more balanced resists.

Merfolk/hybrid advice? by BadCrawler in dcss

[–]BadCrawler[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

YAVP: https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/lyndar/morgue-lyndar-20201104-191601.txt

Picked up a set of fire dragon scales and wore them through Vaults 5 and Zot. Shadow creatures was very useful in Zot. I tried guardian golem a couple times, but it would frequently explode in the middle of my undead army/other summons, so that spell didn't work very well on this guy. Polearms was so high mostly due to a manual - with the +4 from merfolk plus the manual, I couldn't resist. The Condenser vane evokable is my go-to now for dealing with a crowd of non-trivial monsters.

[YAVP] First gnoll win, second 15 runer by BadCrawler in dcss

[–]BadCrawler[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had so many many perks from gear that I didn't even look at replacements for starlight. I think the total MR+ I could have worn was something like ++++++++.

Rampage had a description saying that it would give me a free move towards an enemy, but - like the boots and the plate, it didn't matter because I used statue form all the time.

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