Streak of 30 15-runes games

[Nebukadnezar]

21 different TrXY (except Ak,Ck, Be) followed by 9 of the easiest diff. combos (DD, Ce, Mi, Ho).
Oka->TSO except for DD (Makhleb) and Trog->TSO once.
(link to streak in my sign.)

I don't think there is anything special about winning with these combos (except for streaking them) but there might be 1 topic of interest: Tomb.

I went with shatter for Tomb.
This means:
- usually chosing Int for stat-upgrade
- not wearing the biggest armour the whole time
- opening tomb 1 with shatter from the outside
- chain-casting shatter in tomb 3

Tomb 3 is entered with
- agility
- brilliance
- statue form
- haste
wielding a staff of power
No -tele.
As much mp as possible.

TSO: divine shield
Makhleb: Invisibility.

Then I'm trying to get marked and cast shatter.
Some of the combos above start with rather low int.
Getting Earth to 22-25 demands less skilling in combat skills, which means planning accordingly.

Potions of magic when mp runs low.
Scrolls of Holy Word when mp is low, too.

The point of getting marked: Greater Mummies are much slower than Scarabs but I want the refilling (mp/hp) from killing Scarabs while attacking Greater Mummies.
The point of invisibility (any god but TSO): death scarabs (among others) cannot sinv.

I decided against immolation because most often I can't get F+++ or cloud immunity without lowering mr/int/mp.

In this setting I don't care much about dispersal traps.
What I fear most: Zot-traps. I try to keep them out of my LOS.

[TheMeInTeam]

I had first death in a long time in W from a zot trap recently. I got blink + paralyzed the moment I went back into W:2 after clearing ambush areas + hallways of W:1. According to the death log sequence I got paralyzed back to back w/o getting a chance to move, which I thought wasn't supposed to happen/that you're supposed to get a grace period after previous paralysis. Went from full health to nothing in one go with no inputs allowed, pretty sour.

With how stuff moves fog is really important to block Zot trap effects sometimes, but you do need at least one turn to be able to use that or blink in a way to deny crap walking over them in LoS. I don't like that the simple act of attempting to continue W killed me.

A 30 streak through there + other areas is very impressive! I suggest using lignification in Tomb often also, it gives immunity to torment and you're still not susceptible to dispel undead, plus a lot of HP, so you can often camp with TSO or Makhleb and just kill everything. Dispersal means nothing to you while in tree form also.

[Nebukadnezar]

Lign. in W3: In earlier versions of DCSS I wouldn't have done it or: treated it as a poor man's version of fighting.
It might not happen very often but when all you can get at are summons you won't regain hp/mp (TSO/Makleb). I've been in that situation before: liches/AL/GM summon summoner.
But now (when each javelin is treated as having penetration) the situation might have changed a lot. As long as you have good throwing and enough javelins you might be able to take the summoner out which wasn't possible (until you had a lot of javelins of penet.) before in a crowded environment with many summons.
So I think your advice might be useful now (for >=0.24).

Shatter (in my streak) has high synergy with SF. This also has the advantage of already being in SF when going downstairs giving protection from torment.
I invest in stealth, too, so my stealth in SF is pretty good, which means that for a few turns noone will wake up reducing the possiblity of something stepping into zot traps even further.
Anyone walking downstairs while wearing armour (and low stealth) has much higher chances to wake something up.

ZOT traps can do a lot of ugly things: contam (in case you wanted to stay inv.), draining mp (ups ..), canceling your enchantments ( including SF/treeform) and I think I've experienced all of these effects in games some time ago (I've done tomb3 283 times now)

Can you post your morgue where you were paralyzed twice in a row without getting a chance to act ?
This sounds a bit strange. I'm not an expert/codediver, so I cannot help but it would interest me.

[Nebukadnezar]

That's the morgue:
https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Th ... 221300.txt

You were killed in W2.
You've been in W2 before.
When you enter a floor for the 1st time player gets 1st action.
But you've been in W2 before so monster get to act first.
This is normal behaviour and you can get attacked/paralyzed/etc. like in every other floor.

You were paralyzed for 4 turns once (according to turnlog) and a 2nd time (according to message log which is not in the turnlog ??). This new to me, too, that you could get paralyzed twice in a row. I also thought there was some kind of turn-out.
But here is the ugly part: besides other things (torment, smite) a flayed ghost (summon?) was in LOS.
Treeform (which you didn't have there) wouldn't protect you from it.
SF (or being undead) does.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer SF when entering Tomb.
A single flayed ghost can ruin your day.
They cannot sinv so Inv would be another form of protection but TSO won't let you go inv.

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah, I'm referring to post-penetration javelins. I had a Dg 15 rune recently that full-cleared Tomb using combination of lig, thrown javelins, and immolation.

I'm well aware that you only get one "grace move" on entering a floor the first time. Like I said, I cleared W:2 ambush, did the W:1 corridors, then went back to W:2. Unless you have shatter, it is impossible to progress in Tomb without doing this.

If I had even a single move after going down the hatch I'd have been fine. Flayed ghosts aren't common in Tomb, and when you see them you can read fog even if you're in tree form (if they get close enough to see you in fog you can kill them with cleansing flame with a build like this).

Unless you pick Sif Muna or scum for potentially hours there is no spell you are guaranteed to get. I don't like relying on such, though perhaps if you want to be really safe on a streak this kind of action is warranted.

[vt]

Like I said, I cleared W:2 ambush, did the W:1 corridors, then went back to W:2. Unless you have shatter, it is impossible to progress in Tomb without doing this.

That's not true: you can teleport into the ring on Tomb 1 that leads to the part of Tomb 2 that is meant to be done second, and so totally avoid the part of Tomb 2 with the ambush. This means it is possible to enter a non-cleared area of Tomb 2 only once. So as not to waste all your ?teleport you can clear the rest of Tomb 1 and then put on a teleport ring.

You can also use god abilities to enter that ring: Fedhas and Lucy both let you crack stone walls, and I'm probably forgetting someone else; but of course that might require swapping gods.

(I suppose, technically, you can commit suicide as a Felid and hope to get reincarnated in the right spot. But the cure seems worse than the disease.)

If I had even a single move after going down the hatch I'd have been fine.

From the ttyrec I see that you moved Northeast twice, and from the ascii map in the morgue we can see that you did not die where you landed. Being frustrated with a late-game splat is totally understandable, but come on....

[Nebukadnezar]

From the ttyrec I see that you moved Northeast twice, and from the ascii map in the morgue we can see that you did not die where you landed. Being frustrated with a late-game splat is totally understandable, but come on....

That's important information (I don't even know how to watch a ttyrec) whether he got actions between both paralyzations or not.

From a programmers point of view the non-logging of the 2nd paralyzation in the turn log looks to be the most puzzling event. The developers might be interested in that.


@TheMeInTeam:
On getting SF:
SF is one of the most common spells in the game. It's in more than 1 book and there is also a Unique guaranteed to provide the spell (Roxanne). It is possible not to get a spell but in this case very very unlikely. If you want it for tomb (pretty late in game), you can almost count on it.

Flayed ghost:
As summon it is pretty common. In a prolonged battle you can almost count on someone summoning it.
This is what scared me: Being in treeform with summons blocking summoners getting closer and then fog disappears and for a few turns a new scroll won't block LOS. The dmg from flayed ghosts will stay for some time even when they are not visible anymore. This happened to me once and since then I don't use lign. in crowded environment anymore. (Not extremely likely to happen)

[petercordia]

I'm well aware that you only get one "grace move" on entering a floor the first time. Like I said, I cleared W:2 ambush, did the W:1 corridors, then went back to W:2. Unless you have shatter, it is impossible to progress in Tomb without doing this.

Rings of *tele still worked last time I tried. They also help you avoid the ambush, if you use them on W:1.


PS: respect for Nebukadnezar

[vt]

After source diving for a minute, it looks like you are immune to getting paralysed while already paralysed and do get a (potentially very) short period of immunity to paralysis after your paralysis times out---but some sources of paralysis override that immunity. Including, unfortunately, Zot traps. Other sources are Zin and Usk retribution and casting Borg's Revivification while in Death's Door.

Spoiler: show

If you want to take a look for yourself: the relevant lines are player::paralyse in player.cc, trap_def::trigger in traps.cc, and MiscastEffect::_paralyse in spl-miscast.cc. In traps.cc you can see that a monster stepping into a Zot trap constructs the MiscastEffect with _act_source as nullptr; so when _paralyse is called the parameter 'who' passed to player::paralyse is nullptr, meaning paralysis immunity is not checked.

From a programmers point of view the non-logging of the 2nd paralyzation in the turn log looks to be the most puzzling event. The developers might be interested in that.

The power of Zot is invoked against you!
You suddenly lose the ability to move!

does seem to be in the message history twice.

[Nebukadnezar]

The power of Zot is invoked against you!
You suddenly lose the ability to move!

does seem to be in the message history twice.

Yes, it is in the message log.
But it is not in the turn log.
At 123201 there is a paralyzation for 4 turns.
The second paralyzation is not in the turn log and here *might* be a possiblity for a bug.

[vt]

Oh sorry, you are right. It's not noted again in the turn log if you're already paralysed---it looks to me like it was a deliberate decision but as far as I can see the original author didn't record why they decided to do that.

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm well aware that you only get one "grace move" on entering a floor the first time. Like I said, I cleared W:2 ambush, did the W:1 corridors, then went back to W:2. Unless you have shatter, it is impossible to progress in Tomb without doing this.

Rings of *tele still worked last time I tried. They also help you avoid the ambush, if you use them on W:1.


PS: respect for Nebukadnezar

True, but there are two problems with this approach. Rarely, there are no *tele rings (I've actually seen it happen). More importantly, while Tomb is mostly similar run to run there are two hatches down in the corridors. One takes you back to the ambush, the other takes you to the area that goes to W:3. I don't THINK there's a way to know for sure which is which (they can flip between games), so you might jump into the ambush anyway. So I think if you're streaking you wouldn't want to use this approach.

[petercordia]

That's still 50% odds of avoiding the ambush
If you do go into the ambush (as I did in my last game) you can be sure that the upstairs area safe.
What is the disadvantage of using *Tele?

[TheMeInTeam]

*Tele doesn't save you much, since the exact thing that happens on going down the hatch can also happen as a consequence of the teleport (there are blink and zot traps in W:1 corridors too). In both cases a majority of the floor can be cleared in advance to give you reasonable odds with teleport scrolls, and in both cases you don't want to rely on teleport scrolls given the nature of the threats.

Shatter really is safer, since you can bust your way into both W:1 corridors and all sections of W:2 without risk of chain para. That said chain para is pretty low odds, I think this is the only game I've played where I got two paralysis hits from a Zot trap back to back. It's extremely rare in a run that I allow a Zot trap to go off at all prior to areas like this. So you can likely get a pretty good streak w/o always going shatter.

[Magipi]

Oka->TSO except for DD (Makhleb) and Trog->TSO once.

This is the most interesting part. Even if you believe that Oka->TSO is by far the best, I'd expect a few cases in 30 games when you either find an early Makhleb altar, or you don't find Oka in the Temple. I'd be tempted to pick Makhleb.

[sanka]

For a Troll it does not really matter to get a god early, so if you enjoy Oka you could easily get it even on a streak even if it only spawns on D9.

[vt]

The hatches to different locations are distinguishable.

[TheMeInTeam]

The hatches to different locations are distinguishable.

Good to know, but that's spoiler information. It's not obvious at a glance.

[Nebukadnezar]

Oka->TSO except for DD (Makhleb) and Trog->TSO once.

This is the most interesting part. Even if you believe that Oka->TSO is by far the best, I'd expect a few cases in 30 games when you either find an early Makhleb altar, or you don't find Oka in the Temple. I'd be tempted to pick Makhleb.

Here is the longer version of what Sanka wrote:
21 chars of my current streak (now at 34 ) were TrXY.
A troll can survive most often the first levels of D thanks to claws and built-in regen without a god.

Oka provides something a TrXY really wants:
- Heroism at *. +5 especially to UC is huge.
- Ammo Gifts (javelins, darts, etc.) at ***. Throwing is nice for everyone but it is even better for someone who lacks defense the longer he walks without armour/shield (typical for trolls).
- TrXY have fewer slots and a hard time getting mr-equipment. Getting a shield or branded hat/cloak at ***** is a major event for a troll.
(Finesse is a minor advantage of oka. Nice to have but the 3 points above are the main selling points for TrXY of Oka imo)

I have a hard time thinking about a better god for a Troll than Oka. Heroism at * is too good to have and allows for rather low investment in UC for a long time.

[TheMeInTeam]

Throwing is one of Tr's halfway decent aptitudes, and it's always strong when trained highly even w/o large rocks. With them it's very powerful.

I'm still not quite sold on passing up a D:2 TSO or something when planning 15 rune. The same argument that Tr is good early should also serve to offset this time period being weak for god choices like that. While Oka can give very nice gear, in a typical 3-5 rune (before you'd switch) I'm not sure the marginal value over best-found equipment is so consistently high to merit god wrath and such. But maybe guaranteed access to good throwing implements for extended makes it worth it regardless. A lot of otherwise significant problems disappear when smashed by a javelin or large rock. Even tier 1 demons.

[Nebukadnezar]

I'm not trying to sell anything.
What I'm doing is reporting about what is working for me and here it's a streak of 15 rune-games with the new tomb.

The Trolls i've played can be divided into 2 classes: Trolls with starting skilling in stealth and those without.
What I noticed (I lost some games/smaller streaks): with just an investment of 1.0 stealth my trolls could very often see (for example) a sleeping unique...and walk away.
Those with 0.0 stealth were hardly able to do so.

So I skilled stealth to 1.0 with every Troll even with an aptitude of -5. (1.0 is a minor investment).

This helped a lot - at least in my imagination.
It's an easy choice to me since it'll be a long time before a troll will find heavy armour.

Your example - taking TSO - would kill stealth.
It's not what i want.

As long as I can chose my battles I'm pretty confident that I can make it to Lair/D11 even without a god.
At that point of the game a troll wants a shield/mr-equipment/rpois/whatever. Centaurs come in packs now.
Lair has hard-hitting monster and some have poison.
A shield can help running around without rpois and this is something where Oka will help.

I've had some games where even after D,L and O I didn't have rpois sitting in front of spider/shoals but I had a cloak of inv from Oka which made Shoals doable.

This is a streak.
If I ever lose a single game I don't lose just a single game but every single game in the streak.
Oka helped me to cover some weaknesses of a troll.
Heroism can be used to get away from something you cannot beat. It boosts stealth, too.
Later in the game (slime) I'm using perma-heroism just for more stealth (useful when you get a game where only 2 potions of mut can be found (without abyss/ziggurat) ).

[sanka]

Streak or not, taking a D2 TSO because you plan 15 runes is not a good strategy. TSO is a very weak god before extended. Switching later is way easier if you want TSO for extended than surviving till then without a good god, and this does not change just because both is relatively easy with a troll.

Also, TSO is not so absolutely good for extended as some people thinks - he does not allow necromancy, which is strong for many characters in extended, Zin has way better life saving ability which is much more useful in extended, and other gods are still ok etc.

[Magipi]

TSO is a very weak god before extended.

I think that this is not true. While TSO does provide only small things early on, when you get to 5* of piety the game changes - you have access to divine warriors. Angels are really good summons and daevas are absurd. A daeva can pretty much beat anything in the middlegame and with a little luck can clear a whole floor.

Ultraviolent4 has a video series about a 3-rune TSO game, check that out if you don't believe me.

[sanka]

My problem was with Angels/Daevas that they seemed to require high invocation and even then they are expensive and TSO piety gain seemed to be too slow to be able to use them frequently. But maybe I should try TSO again one day.

[sanka]

Ultraviolent4 has a video series about a 3-rune TSO game, check that out if you don't believe me.

Giving it a second thought it may just strengthen my point. After all, Ultraviolent4 is unlikely to make a video series about "here is how to win MiBe 3 runes" level things.

[petercordia]

I think he actually has a video like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfoi8c0 ... DFijuf8doF
UV4 also played a lairless 3-rune TSO octopode during a sudden death tournament, iirc

[Nebukadnezar]

Streak at 39 now.
The last 3 were GnXY of Gozag.
Unlike Makhleb/TSO there is no hp/mp for kills, so I'll report what I'm using in Tomb 3:

- SF
- Agility
- haste
- brilliance
- invisibility

Doing tomb as rune #6 these Gnolls have rings of wiz and +int.
Equipped:
a) staff of Power (if spells are castable)
or
b) staff of wiz

Spells:
- Aura of abj.
- ignition
- infestation.

The point here is building an army of scarabs and let them kill everything while acting as a platform of Abjuration.
Ignition supports it but is not needed.
Once you reach a critical mass nothing (in tomb) short of a choke point can stop it.
Besides keeping Abj up the job of the player char is simple: stay alive (quaff potions) and move to keep your army going.
Allied scarabs will avoid traps.

(EDIT: nearly died (8 hp) because I tried to use infestation on too many monster before applying the big area spell. This meant eating a *lot* of death curses at once.)

[Nebukadnezar]

....and it's over.
After 40 wins #41 saw a YASD where I totally died without a reson. I didn't quaff a potion, didn't want a potion petition, didn't use BVC, etc. against a Red dragon and I have to say I'm glad it's over. Played too much. I took a break several times before because I made a lot of ...strange..misclicks

My goal was to get into the top-10 of streaks, I achieved it and that's it.
Streaking can become a mental burden the longer the streak gets.
I don't think I'll ever try it again because the next time I would start at -40 games.