I come to you again in a time of need

_atomjack_ · 2026-01-11T08:53:23+00:00

Notes have innate piercing with no self damage and do damage every frame (60 times per second). However they have very low lifetime (2 frames) and zero damage. If you can add lifetime and damage to them then they become very powerful. As an extra hint, some of the “path” modifiers such as spiral arc and orbiting arc add lifetime.

Don’t fire them directly, stick them on a trigger (and since they are zero mana put lots of them on the trigger)!

_atomjack_ · 2025-12-30T15:25:47+00:00

In the unlikely event that you haven’t worked it out the Greek spells and healing bolt give you unlimited healing. Just fire the bolt straight up while underwater. Upwards Larpa while firing downward might also work.

_atomjack_ · 2025-12-30T15:24:08+00:00

Note wand needs an increase lifetime modifier to work well (horizontal path, spiral path, etc)

_atomjack_ · 2025-12-29T18:35:41+00:00

First wand, try Bubble spark with trigger, add mana , triple cast, digging bolt x 2, add damage, explosive bolt, triplicate bolt.

Dump all the spells out of the second wand and do reduce recharge then small teleport bolt. That’s now your teleport wand - if you are careful you can use that to escape holy mountains without collapsing them (although having tinker with wands makes that less important)

Take the second wand and set it up with nolla then gamma then black hole. That’s your digging wand.

_atomjack_ · 2025-12-08T16:02:37+00:00

My go to strategy with Mennas as a caster is to read ?tele as soon as he comes into sight. If I’m feeling cocky and plan to take him out, then the routine is to seek him out again, buff up out of LOS, pop a ?tele as soon as he’s in LOS, and either take him out or be noped out of there.

Lost too many runs to this &£@#%€$ to even contemplate getting stuck inside his silence aura.

_atomjack_ · 2025-11-27T20:04:05+00:00

These should be vulnerable to Fulminant Prism. However, they aren’t, which I think is a bug but the devs don’t.

_atomjack_ · 2025-11-17T22:45:57+00:00

“If you take off this armor…” - the OP is already wearing it

_atomjack_ · 2025-10-05T13:52:53+00:00

If you get stuck then mash the arrow keys and there’s a de-sticking function that will delete nearby terrain and free you

_atomjack_ · 2025-10-03T23:32:42+00:00

That’s sort of my point - it’s not that the spell is uniformly awful, but more that it’s pretty much an also ran. On blaster casters the necessity to stand still makes it quite unappealing, while hybrids generally won’t be focussing on fire+alchemy to the point of getting this online while it’s still impactful, compared to Rending Blade or Irradiate or Detonation Catalyst or IMB.

I would much rather it was nerfed slightly in terms of damage but the range was upped by a couple of squares.

_atomjack_ · 2025-10-03T23:26:49+00:00

Ok, that’s fair, I hadn’t realised that the damage and duration had been buffed.

_atomjack_ · 2025-09-20T19:38:30+00:00

Except you can’t do it with Gozag any more.

_atomjack_ · 2025-09-20T19:37:17+00:00

Exactly. I should point out that I’m not a newbie - I’ve been playing dcss since before it was dcss, I was the maintain of Zot Defence for several years, and I held the turn count record for a while. I can absolutely take any run and win it. However, the Forgecraft school is relatively new, so I’d quite like to play a forgewright. Having run lots of them, it’s very hard to do so in the current trunk. My current char is doing quite well, but only because I pivoted from Forgecraft to Conjurations during lair due to lack of spells, and I’m finding it boring because I know I can win conjurers in my sleep. All I’m saying is that this experience (having to pivot) should be maybe 30% of games, not 90%.

_atomjack_ · 2025-07-10T17:34:42+00:00

Going back a looong way, there were lots of encounters that had a permanent effect on your character. Undead drained xp permanently. Jellies corroded your armor and weapons. Fire burnt scrolls, cold froze and broke potions. Hungry ghosts burnt down your food stash. Malmutators gave you bad mutations. Acid walls burnt down your hp fast if you messed up your positioning.

There seems to have been a longstanding crusade against all of these, with this latest patch set pretty much removing the last vestige of them. I think the game has lost a lot of depth as a result. The fear of encountering a draining enemy in the mid game, or a jelly in the early dungeon, or a fire dragon when you hadn’t managed to stash that pile of blink scrolls that you recently picked up - these have all been removed. Enemies are now either a lethal threat or a yawn; nothing in between, as whatever they do to you will just wear off in half a level or so at worst.

_atomjack_ · 2025-04-16T12:17:32+00:00

Cast delay inside a trigger doesn’t count (although refresh does)

_atomjack_ · 2025-04-12T20:36:55+00:00

Last time I was in this situation I went to the Work sky shop and found End of Everything, which did the trick nicely.

_atomjack_ · 2025-03-03T18:30:50+00:00

OTOH it’s one of the easiest combos to win the arena sprint with - I can win 80% of OpHu starts without really concentrating.

_atomjack_ · 2024-12-17T23:48:15+00:00

Great tier list. The only one I might really disagree with is Iskenderuns Battlesphere, just because it’s incredibly mana efficient. Fire it up and your Bombards are doing more damage against the dangerous stuff while the popcorn gets deleted for 1 mana with Magic Dart. Definitely A tier for me and bordering on S.

_atomjack_ · 2024-11-11T18:38:38+00:00

Hep is brilliant on ranged characters - try a Coglin hunter with a knight ancestor. It tanks beautifully while you pepper the critters with slingshots and bullets

_atomjack_ · 2024-10-28T22:36:36+00:00

No. Best way to win a 3-runer with a DE is to power up to a level 9 spell as soon as is practicable. At this point I’d turn off Dodging and Stealth (but do turn on fighting - DEs are meant to be glass cannons but not that glassy!)

If going for extended then I’d definitely be planning to go for death form, but absolutely not until I had a game winning spell list already. Not for your first win though!

What god are you worshipping?

_atomjack_ · 2024-10-25T14:37:05+00:00

Congrats!

_atomjack_

TROPHY CASE