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The 15 rune portion of my game accounted for 36% of the game, and increased my total turn count by roughly 56% (not 3x the length 3 rune game as you mentioned for your game, but 1.5x the length). The factor of 3 referred to the time taken. The 3-rune part of my run took about 93K turns (including t...

...And there we go, my second extended win, beating my previous one by well over 12 hours and 66k turns. Ended up going with Shatter over Necromutation, both to take the Tomb:2 shortcut and to retain access to Death's Door, which I ended up using once on my first trip through Tomb:2 to safely go bac...

Alright, I managed to get all the Pan and Hell runes. TSO's fortress was a lot less awful than I remember. Like last time, I didn't kill Cerebov, but this time I ended up not killing Asmodeus, Antaeus and Dispater either because they didn't go down quickly enough and nicking the rune and teleporting...

After some rather tedious trudging around the Abyss I finally managed to find the rune. Is it just me or is the spawn rate on Abyss:4 a tad on the ridiculous side? I finally had to settle for teleporting out of the rune vault because every time I tried to leave there was yet another large batch of m...

Disclaimer: I'm a mediocre-at-best player, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Also, all of the following is based on a blaster setup. For other character types I'll defer to someone who has actually won one. Personally, I think Deep Elves are one of the easiest races to win with, particularly i...

Okay, cleared Crypt, Vaults and the Vestibule and got some slightly better gear out of it. So I assume Abyss should be next? And if so, what should the general strategy be? Avoid as many enemies as possible, try to take out enemies relatively quietly or conserve MP by fire storming groups? And which...

Crypt can be easier than Vaults:$. I would do that first. Alrighty, I'll try that. Gourmand is useless. Wear another amulet. Oh, I know. I'm only wearing it for the pip of resistance. My only other artifact amulet is {Faith *Contam +Blink rC++ Str+3}, and of the mundane ones only reflection and reg...

Since it's been very nearly six years since I last had a look at extended, and because my current character seems like he just might be capable of tackling it, I figured it might be time to have another look at the postgame to see what's changed in the meantime. I've cleared Zot:$, but before I dive...

It was about time for my annual ascension, and after splatting a bunch of DEFEs throughout the year I finally managed to win with one, making this my first DEFE win and my 10th win overall. I didn't manage to get Fire Storm this time round, but Ignition is a very acceptable replacement, and in certa...

Thanks for the suggestions. Ended up switching to the golden dragon scales and putting on another MR ring I had ignored earlier. I thought I'd give the Crypt a go before getting the third rune, but a near-fatal run-in with a curse skull quickly convinced me to get the hell out of there. Am I the onl...

Thought I'd give the new god a go, and so far I'm liking the Council quite a bit: the movement-related abilities feel reasonably powerful and Heaven on Earth is a nice panic button. Haven't had occasion to use Serpent's Lash yet. I just cleared Depths:5, so now I need to decide what to do for my thi...

Got the urge to play DCSS again and managed to secure my eighth win overall, almost two years and three version since my previous one in 0.17 (admittedly, I only play a few games once or twice a year). Since it had been so long I chose easy mode by playing a DECj of Vehumet, which to my mind is stil...

My second attempt at trying to win a game with one of the two new gods after my MiFi splatted in Crypt. Doing fairly okay so far. Currently in Slime:$ with the option to fight TRJ or back off for now, so I figured this was a good time to ask whether I'm ready for the confrontation yet and if so, wha...

Well, that didn't last long. It would appear I also need to put spark wasps on the list of enemies to run away from really fast. You'd think rElec would do more to protect against them. Oh well, YASD I suppose. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.18-a0-316-gf882de5 (tiles) character file. 363498 Falc...

Got the urge to play Crawl again and am doing fairly okay with this character. It's probably going to be another 3-runer, though I'm not ruling out having a little look at extended again, given that it's been 3.5 years since my only 15-rune win. Loot has been even more underwhelming than usual, but ...

This is my seventh win overall, and I managed to shave over an hour and a half off my previous best time (though the turn count is higher). Went with a primarily melee character this time, with some occasional crossbow use. Nothing too special gear-wise, though the plate armor was fairly decent and ...

As I see it there a 2 groups. One says haste if too powerful and should be removed of heavily neffed. Other says haste is not so good in the first place. There's at least one more: the group who thinks haste is just fine as it is. Haste serves two purposes: temporarily improving your killdudes and ...

If the mp cost is something like 2 or 3 mp per turn as mentioned, it's useable by all characters (with no fiddly anything). It would be useable by all melee and hybrid characters. It would be all but unusable for characters who primarily/only use spells. Over the course of a 10-round fight (not unr...

If there's any change I would make to repel missiles, it would be to change the way it is affected by spell power. Currently spell power determines how quickly the spell expires, while the spell's effect is fixed (lower to-hit of bolts by 50-100%, beams by 0-100%). This means that as soon as you get...

Was running through Lair with my CeHu today and wanted to make sure my longbow was at mindelay, so I hit @ to see my attack speed, which was listed as quite slow. I thought this was strange, since I'd hit the (base speed - min speed) * 2 skill level, so I pulled the character into wizard mode. Hitti...

I have to say that personally I'm not a big fan of taking random hits to your MP pool. It's not too much of a problem as long as you're over 11 MP, but when you're nearing the end of your reserves that 2 MP can be the difference that determines whether you're able to cast a certain spell or not (cBl...

Spellcasters already have really hard time to deal with limited mana in combat While 'really hard' is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, it is certainly true that characters which primarily use spells are quite a bit worse at dealing with larger groups of non-trivial enemies than more melee-focused...

Perhaps I'm in the minority with the viewpoint that I just want to make a really powerful character and kill everything in the game, and some people just want to win the challenge of ascending with the orb, and they want to do it in one relatively short sitting. You're hardly the only one. My first...

I don't understand, if I play 4 games in 4 hours, or 1 game in 4 hours, I was still playing a game for 4 hours. Why is the number of games completed so important? If you find crawl boring, play something else. You are quite correct: the number of games is irrelevant, provided it is at least 1. And ...

crawl's tactics are good; they're not good enough to support a four hour game without changing at all And four hours is how long it takes someone who is actually competent at the game. To provide some anecdotal data for the kind of player that isn't, it takes me about 12-14 hours for a melee charac...

Doing pretty well so far, just cleared Swamp:$ and found the plutonium sword. While it's obviously a fairly awesome weapon, particularly for an Ash worshiper who won't be switching anyway, I'm not entirely sure it's better for me than my current +5,+7 vampiric demon blade and +2 rF+ shield. Which wo...

Just tossing out an idea which, while not solving the problem of having to rest after every fight, does help reduce the amount of ingame turns (and real time for those who don't set the delay to -1) spent waiting: accelerating MP recovery when no monsters are near. When a monster is in LOS, MP recov...

I am wondering whether I should propose "monsters don't pick up items at all" as a 0.15 rule change Making it safe to just drop stuff wherever instead of having to trudge back up to Temple/Lair:2 every two seconds, thus eliminating one of the most tedious parts of Crawl? Please, please, p...

Habit, mostly. It wasn't until after clearing Vaults that I figured 'eh, why not?' and did Slime. I don't usually go there because I dislike getting mutated or having all my stuff corroded. It's barely tolerable for a caster since you can take most things out from a distance. I wouldn't ever go ther...

Thanks. Like I said, the main reason for getting the fourth (i.e. slime) rune was that I hadn't been there since version 0.11 and wanted to see if anything had changed (and possibly get some decent loot, but sadly it was all trash). It's also the only one of the extended runes that isn't exceedingly...

Nothing of particular interest to report about this run. Sif didn't see fit to gift me a book with a storm spell so I had to make do with iron shot and freezing cloud. Loot was okay but not brilliant. Got the slime rune because I wanted to see what the slime pits looked like these days (the little b...

Specifically, it has up to five of the following spells (it only knows them if you do): Airstrike Bolt Of Cold Bolt Of Draining Bolt Of Fire Bolt Of Magma Conjure Ball Lightning Dazzling Spray Fireball Flame Tongue Force Lance Freeze Freezing Cloud Orb of Destruction Iron Shot Iskenderuns Mystic Bla...

Just tossing out an idea for a slight flavor change: how about Poltergeists instead of floating brains? At least to me, floating brains stand out a little too much from the selection of predominantly humanoid species we have so far. Poltergeists would look a little less out of place, I think. Polter...

I think I read somewhere, that if servitor does nothing, if you tell him to 'wait here'(t,w) then he might engage into fighting monsters in LoS. I also think that summons don't attack until being attacked, even if you have have monsters in your LoS, because their main default action is follow you b...

In my current game as a DECj, Vehumet offered me the knowledge of Spellforged Servitor, which just so happened to be the spell I really wanted to try out. However, after casting it a few times on Lair:$ it seemed rather... underwhelming. Obviously a feeling doesn't really mean anything, so I jumped ...

Just adding my support behind increasing the max MP, particularly for characters like Deep Elves who put so much effort in specializing in magic. With the current 50 MP, casters just feel far less powerful than melee characters, at least when limiting the scope to a basic 3-rune game. I can't speak ...

Add another vote to the pile of just getting rid of food entirely. dpeg's idea of getting rid of chunks is already a big improvement over the status quo. Take for example my current game, where I'm playing a DECj. Getting rid of chunks removes the following: - Having to butcher corpses - Autoexplore...

Thanks for the advice. I went on to win this one. Even killed two Pan lords on my way back up. And it means I get to add a new race, class and god to my list of victories. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.14-a0-2723-gdc5d926 (tiles) character file. 1515884 FalconNL the Impregnable (level 26, 261/2...

You know those walls that surround the four quadrants of Vaults:5 that act as a barrier between you and the endless hordes of monsters behind them? If you want to keep those (and you do), don't bring a spectral deep troll earth mage as part of your band of undead followers. On a related note, when y...

I got the urge to play Crawl again and have been doing fairly well with a MiDK of Yred. I'm about ready to get the Vaults rune and since this is my first time playing a death knight I figured I'd better get some advice. In case it matters, I'm playing a version from the 19th of February, which means...

One possibility would be to use treasure troves. Perhaps something like the following: In addition to the normal treasure troves, a limited number of 'artefact swapping' treasure troves are generated, say 2-4 in the entire dungeon. These treasure troves require an entry fee of 3-5 artefacts. After p...

I guess Crawl has been kind to me so far. Looking through the logs of my four wins it seems I've only encountered him once, and in that case I defeated him pretty quickly (probably with summons). Don't worry, he is now on my list of 'things to run way from really fast', particularly when partnered w...

Well, that ended quickly. Everything was going fine: I had some pretty nice gear and had just gotten the Snake rune. On a side note, vampiric batteleaxes are awesome, since I could pretty much tank the rune vault. A few steps into Swamp:5, I see Mara. Okay, let's see... rF+++? Check. Abjuration? Che...

MR doesn't become a hard requirement until Elf:3 Wut? Oh, you must mean other than Kirke, Erolcha, vault sentinels, monsters with confuse, monsters with slow and the orc sorcerors at the bottom of Orc. Meh. Kirke is only threatening if she porkolates you with other monsters around. Erolcha, I'll gr...

Except for snake and spider (and Mennas), rPois is just a waste of time Perhaps, but I always find poisoning annoying enough to try to have rPois up if at all possible. Besides, I have Swamp this run and as far as I know rPois helps prevent confusion from swamp drakes, which actually could be a pro...

I managed to get a DsFi of Ashenzari off the ground. Cleared Lair and Orc, and with the Orc:4 shops explored I figured it was about time to plan some equipment changes, which with Ash take a little more planning than usual. In case it matters, this will be a 3-runer and I'd like to play a melee/magi...

Well, that was certainly my most boring orb run ever. Might as well not even have bothered with that extra preparation. Didn't see a single Pan lord or anything else even remotely challenging. In related news, boots of running are highly useful. Still, it feels good to have my first melee win under ...

a +0 GDA is quite literally one of the worst armours in the game, especially since you have elemental resistances anyway. the +3 plate of MR from your first post is better even if it hasn't been enchanted further. Really? From what I read GDA is generally the thing heavy-armor users wear. I mostly ...

Currently standing next to the orb, after a fairly uneventful trip through Zot. As was to be expected, the game where I get both an rMut amulet and the rMut mutation is the game where I only face a grand total of only three orbs of fire. Oh well, can't complain I suppose. So, time for a little pre-o...

Ended up going the 'use fear, run to a corridor' route, which worked less than ideally. Turns out fear doesn't work nearly as long as I thought it might, which meant the entire welcome squad had gotten over their phobia of me and was in hot pursuit before I was even halfway down the central corridor...

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