Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver special!


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Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 4432

Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51

Post Friday, 23rd June 2017, 10:47

Re: Road to greatfelid (16/20): Covfefe (covering FeFE)

I don't understand one thing, I have just found my FeSk to see how much I trained skills for Statue Form.

  Code:
c - Statue Form           Trmt/Erth      ######...    1%          6    #####..

Int 14
+ Level 19.2 Spellcasting
 - Level 11.1(15.3) Transmutations
- Level 9.1(13.5) Earth Magic

No wizardry ring, no wizardry-related mutations

ZoFy's FeNe had Int 23 (!), Spellcasting 13.1, Transmutations 12.0, Earth 9.8 and 10% failure!

Is Int almost irrelevant for spell failures or what?
Underestimated: cleaving, Deep Elf, Formicid, Vehumet, EV
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Slime Squisher

Posts: 332

Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Friday, 23rd June 2017, 13:56

Re: Road to greatfelid (16/20): Covfefe (covering FeFE)

http://crawl.develz.org/info/index.php?q=success_rate wrote:Note that Intelligence stat affects spell success 1/6 as much as average spell skill, and Spellcasting skill affects spell success 1/4 as much as average spell skill.

Yes, it's barely relevant. I probably shouldn't be trying to train Int and Dex equally on melee cats.
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VeryAngryFelid

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Post Friday, 23rd June 2017, 14:20

Re: Road to greatfelid (16/20): Covfefe (covering FeFE)

For spell failure, 6 points of Int is worth 1 spell level in every school
Spellcasting penalties, Armour skill, and strength
15 runes: 2x HuSk, Op(Mo,Tm,Wn,Fi,Wr,EE,AM,Wz,Ne), VSTm, DsTm, Dg(Sk,Tm), MuGl, GhMo, Fe(En,EE,Ar,Wn,IE)
3 runes: FoFi, OgSk, KoHu, SpCj, 2x DgGl, MiBe, Fe(Fi,Tm,Mo,Su)

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Airwolf

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Friday, 23rd June 2017, 19:50

Re: Road to greatfelid (16/20): Covfefe (covering FeFE)

ThreeInvisibleDucks wrote:For spell failure, 6 points of Int is worth 1 spell level in every school

For those interested in the formula:

spellFailure = 60 - [6 * spell skills] - [2 * Intelligence] + Spell difficulty + Armour/shield penalty

"Spell skills" is [Spellcasting / 2] + [Average(SpellSkills) * 2], so spell skills ultimately get multiplied by 12, and int by 2, hence the 6 points of int is equal to +1 in all schools. Spell difficulty is a fixed constant depending on the level of the school, and then there's the armor/shield penalties which I won't really get into because I'm lazy.

In the above felid comparison, having 6 more spellcasting, 3.3 more transmutations, and 3.7 more earth magic means your skills contribute (3.5 * 2 + 6/2) * 6 = 60 more points to spell success, which would be equivalent to 30 points of int.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 332

Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Wednesday, 6th June 2018, 16:26

Road to greatfelid (17/20): FeIE should not be recommended

So, the calendar says it's June, this means it's time to play muh cats again! I've been postponing this FeIE character for a few reasons:

  • I don't like IE all that much despite the Tavern wisdom™ teaching us how good this background is. Would play FE over it every time assuming i got equal aptitudes for fire and ice. FE doesn't have to face as many resistant monsters early on, gets Conjure Flame + Flame Tongue combo and Sticky Flame. On the other hand, if you want to kill something non-trivial with the IE starting book, you gotta spam ice beasts. Which is a good strategy but also fiddly because it involves summoning.
  • FeIE is pretty bad for streaking despite being a recommended combo. You'd think if both felid and ice elementalist are good, they'd make a great combination. In reality, an XL 1 FeIE has 7 health (8 if you train Fighting to 0,4) and only melee range attacks. So, at the very start of the game you get worst of both worlds: no ranged attacks to kite 10 speed melee folks yet you're more likely to get one-shot by a dart slug or a dude with a weapon. At XL 2 you, of course, get a ranged attack and can play as a typical felid mage for a while.
  • As far as offline playtesting went last year, i believe i tried the combo twice, had one win with Kiku which was highly unpleasant and one game lost to Natasha.
But this combo had to be played at some point, so i faced my fears and rolled the dices. A lot of dices actually, as the very start of the game was just brutal. There was a sleeping dart slug to the north literally blocking the only path on that side. To the south, there was a kobold with a whip of pain(!) and stones. I tried to sneak past that kobold into one of the hallways but to no avail, he woke up. Then i got too scared to just run past him because anything meeting me on the other side of those hallways could have meant death. So, i tried to hide from him on the northern side which somehow worked, and i even managed to stab the dart slug, then finish it off with freezes. What was waiting for me afterwards was a jackal pack which i failed to sneak past yet again. As i was trying to deal with them in the corridor which the dart slug used to occupy, the kobold found me. So i had to run to one of those unsafe southern hallways just to not be attacked from two sides. Obviously, my starting mana pool was not enough to freeze everything and this is when felid's stock unarmed and evasion kicked in and i somehow only took 1 damage throughout that entire encounter. A good example of why those claws and teeth mutations aren't as useless as you might think. But i'm absolutely sure that i misplayed the whole situation horribly.

Between D:1 and XL 4 i also met an orc priest while having 15 max HP. Thankfully, senpai hasn't noticed me that time.
Gotta say a few words about the god choice. After further offline playtesting it seemed like picking Vehumet was working out alright so i was aiming to be a mage cat. However, in an early D:4 Temple there was no Vehumet or Sif altar, so i just picked boring Gozag for the third time in this streak, saying no to the mage playstyle. As much as i'd like to introduce variety, it seems like Okawaru/Gozag/Makhleb for melee and Vehumet for mages are all the deities in 0.18 i can be comfortable with. Funnily enough, altars of both magic gods were found later in the part of D:3 which i hadn't explored because of the aforementioned orc priest.

After becoming a worshipper of Gozag, i quickly earned 200 gold and used that money to buy a book of Minor Magic in a D:4 shop. That allowed me to play FeWz instead of FeIE and just mephitic all the things. Conjure Flame got some use in Lair as well. And the Orc:2 vault had a lot of lava, so i've had my fun incinerating dudes there. After that, i was requesting more and more book shops which eventually gave me all the spells i tend to use except for Statue Form. However, the one time i opened a jewellery store, it had these two items that fit each other perfectly as if they were from the same set or something. With the bonus to slaying/AC/SH from those items as well as Ozocubu's Armour and a +6 ring of protection which was found later on, my cat was actually half decent in melee without any forms. I'm talking about something like 16/30/6 defences with rPois in Spider, 23/34/6 without it in Elf and 35/21/6 in Dragon Form at the end of the game.
As far as Gozag's shops in mid to late game go, i had to request food shops almost every time due to relying on Invisibility too much. I bet i wouldn't have had the same issues in 0.21 because my game had 44 inedible bread rations which turned into plain rations in modern Crawl. In fact, i think i'll play the rest of my streak in 0.21. As much as i dislike the removal of three rare wands, recharging, Pakellas and Haste/rMsl spells (as well as the ogre nerf), recent quality of life changes have been on point. After playing 0.21 offline for a while, i miss being able to interact with non-food items from the floor and look up monster's max HP/damage in the game itself. Stacking wands are also nice. Yet 0.21 seems totally winnable despite my initial predictions. Just a bit harder as per usual. Also, 0.21 has two fun new gods which synergise with stabbing but provide a good way to wreck my potential win rate. And i'm yet to try playing a crippled cat of Ru.

At the end of the day, this is the 5-th deathless felid game in a row and the remaining combos should be getting progressively easier. Unless 0.21 ends up being too hard.
https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Feli ... 174059.txt
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Slime Squisher

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Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Sunday, 10th June 2018, 12:34

Road to greatfelid (18/20): how dare i experiment?

Next felid to play was FeAE which is a recommended start again. In offline test run, i tried to introduce more variety and worship a god not taken on the streak already. Ended up getting an early Dithmenos altar and trying him out. Despite Dith not being a new god in the slightest, i'm still not too experienced with him. So, in the offline game i just learned Shock and Airstrike, got them to reasonable failure rates, then switched to usual melee strats. Didn't bother with Lightning Bolt because it misses, low rolls and "marks" you. This worked out alright and what i was impressed by was the shadow mimic boosting my Shock and Airstrike damage. So, the plan for the actual online run that counts was to go full mage and abuse that shadow mimic.

...and that failed pretty hard. Shock is a really good level 1 spell for a species that can kite and setup double zaps. Airstrike has better damage per turn but pretty bad mana efficiency. For that reason i ended up resting too much, not getting enough piety and therefore failing to even get that shadow mimic. In order to make my mana consumption more efficient, i tried to go deeper in the "mage route" by learning Lightning Bolt, double zapping elephants with it and then running away from the entire floor. This made killing those elephants (and a few uniques) possible but was still godawful and tedious as heck. Ctrl^Q level tedious. With no other blaster caster books found, i couldn't even attempt to do Lair:6.

This is where i gave up and started training UC to abuse it with the wand of paralysis and Ensorcelled Hibernation i found in Lair. For a long while i had quite weak stabs but things definitely started going better from that point on. Thankfully, i got an Orc:2 vault with no warlords so i could just snipe dudes with airstrikes. Also, the luck was on my side as i got a treasure trove asking for 2 acquirement scrolls and was able to enter it after going through late Dungeon. The trove had a lot of books, with most notable one having Invisibility which was useful for both Lair subbranches (Spider and Shoals). I also happened to learn Cause Fear for once, and it helped a lot. I always knew it was a good spell but never really found enough slots for it before.

In Shoals:4 something peculiar happened which i'd like to ask you about. I tried to sleep-stab all the rune guardians and almost succeeded due to being able to jump towards the aquamancers fast. But after i stabbed the kraken simulacrum, someone woke up and shouted. The question is: does a simulacrum "death" make noise due to leaving a freezing cloud? Or was it just invisibility failing as per usual?

Also in Shoals, there was Roxanne who, to my surprise, is invis-stabbable in 0.21. And, as per usual, that meant Statue Form and basically gg. Doing Depths without castable Haste was surprisingly tough though. Unironically harder than Zot, even without any caustic shrikes. Pretty sure that a juggernaut could 1v1 me in statue form with no buffs. What he couldn't deal with was the snakes spam :lol: Due to not feeling invulnerable in Depths, i cleared Zot for experience. Found an rCorr ring there but didn't bother to do Slime because i already had what i needed to win and a few spectators as well. I even tried my best to play at the speed of a normal human being in Zot but i doubt anyone was actually watching since nobody even gg'ed in the end. Oh well.

So, yet another deathless game in the bag but it was unnecessarily long due to an early skill training mistake. It turns out playing full mage of Dithmenos ain't that smart, at least with this combo. Not only you don't get book gifts but you don't get piety either. Overall opinion on Dithmenos? Well, he's... okay? Nowhere near the Gozag/Makhleb/Okawaru trio i'd usually pick for melee cats. The synergy with stabbing is there, of course, but i'm not even sure if i prefer it to Wu Jian's stuff which is potentially less powerful but more fail-safe. Shadow mimic didn't really work out in my instance but i heard it was great with ranged, gotta try that one day. And shadow form is there for ninja-ing, it's fun but i never really had to use it. Would've been a good way to grab the orb if i got no transmutations. Thank goodness, that was not the case.

https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Feli ... 175656.txt
Offline greaterplayer (who cares). I don't always play online, but when i do, i streak felids.
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Slime Squisher

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Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Saturday, 7th July 2018, 21:37

Re: Road to greatfelid (19/20): casual 49 EV.

Not gonna lie, i'm already bored with Crawl again but gotta finally finish this run ASAP anyway.

FeEE is actually a surprisingly solid (yet not recommended by the game) start: Sandblast deals a ton of damage for a level 1 spell and felid's speed is as good as always. However, i still got into big trouble on D:4 by going downstairs straight into melee range of Blork the orc with a battleaxe. As you can see, i had 15 max HP at the moment which was clearly in one-shot range. The correct play could've still been just going upstairs. But i chickened out and started running into unknown, trying to gain distance and blast him with a wand of disintegration i found somewhere at D:2-3. Surprisingly, that worked and Blork did literally nothing other than walking at me the whole time.

As for the god choice, i was looking forward to picking up a "new" deity like Ru or Wu Jian. Instead the game offered me a D:3 Uskayaw altar which i declined because i've never tried that god before and heard it was mediocre. Later on D:3 i found an Okawaru altar and proceeded to take it like a boring person. I don't need to tell you how good Heroism/Finesse are and, thanks to the lack of gifts, i was never even close to being short on piety.

After that Blork episode, this game has been quite smooth (by felid standards) for a while. I even found Confusing Touch pre-Lair, a few hexes in Lair and Statue Form under Roxanne on D:15. My rings were quite sick too. The problems began when i wanted to clear Shoals:1-3 and go to sleep but then saw i had spectators and pushed myself to do the branch ending. Somehow i thought it was a good idea to passwall into one of the potential rune vaults and save digging charges which i was really short on. That lead to a stupid death.

Afterwards (next day, of course) i was afraid of doing Vaults without an MR item (22% chance to get marked seemed uncomfortable) so i payed elves a visit. Somehow, even despite sick 27/41 defences, i still got into a couple potentially lethal situations even before the Elf:3 vault, presumably because of not having DMsl and, once again, being short on digging charges. When i went into Vaults like a normal person, vault sentinels turned out being not nearly as scary as i thought, and a book with DMsl was there too.

Finally, the Abyss wasn't kind to me at all, making me collapse twice because of unlucky transient mutations. I was trying to chain might potions to get rid of the status but the game doesn't even seem to warn players about the might/agility/brilliance effects ending soon. Then i just fought my way through those mutations while slowed like a boss.

The rest of the game went just fine. My defensive stats with statue form and heroism up were at 28/49 which is nothing to scoff at. I still just went for 3 runes because why waste time on an already won game. It's not like i was even going to beat Yermak's all-time highscore anyway.

https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Feli ... 151005.txt
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Post Sunday, 8th July 2018, 20:21

Re: Re: Road to greatfelid (19/20): casual 49 EV.

FeVM! FeVM! FeVM!

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 4432

Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51

Post Monday, 9th July 2018, 07:36

Re: Re: Road to greatfelid (19/20): casual 49 EV.

I think your decision regarding Blork was perfect, EV is significantly decreased while using stairs.
Underestimated: cleaving, Deep Elf, Formicid, Vehumet, EV
Overestimated: AC, GDS
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Slime Squisher

Posts: 332

Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Tuesday, 9th October 2018, 12:32

Road to greatfelid (20/20): a 3 months late announcement.

Welp, as you all probably know, my greatfelid run is complete now, and has in fact ended 3 months ago. Someone has made a reddit post about it back then and the crawl scoring page on CAO website has been displaying my streak the whole time too. Meanwhile, i've been procrastinating on making a report post about the final game of it and maybe writing a little "felid guide" or something. But it's about time i realised i can't be bothered with all of that, sorry. Feel free to ask your questions, i guess. And have the final morgue too.

It's been quite a journey, and i think it's likely gonna be the conclusion of my crawl adventures. I'm not much of an online player, so from your viewpoint i could look like a random guy who came out of nowhere just a couple years ago but in reality i've played this game for way too many hours since 2012. I even attempted to be an educational Crawl youtuber but Ultraviolent4 does that job way better than i ever could, what a legend. I've also turned 27 somewhat recently which looks like an appropriate stopping point. The amount of time i can find for games right now is only really enough for slaying a spire or two. And, while there are still a lot of challenges for me to do in this game (i haven't seriously participated in a tourney or even won a Nemelex/Beogh game yet), i've likely done everything i could have had fun with. At some point of your crawl career you just realise your player skill is as good as "boring" your playstyle is. And the further you go down this path, the harder it becomes to throw games by playing worse than you could. That's probably why zxc quit this game. And why minmay doesn't have a 100% winrate despite knowing the game inside out.

At the end of the day, it would be cool to get onto learndb somehow. Having an entry of my own would be the dream but not even being mentioned in the greatrace entry is kind of unfair. I thought bots would edit it automatically. How do i get this fixed without going to ##crawl IRC?

So, uhm. Thanks for reading this thread, have fun crawling. Because that's what matters in the end.
Oh, and also, felid is a good race.
Offline greaterplayer (who cares). I don't always play online, but when i do, i streak felids.
Zot:5 on easy mode video
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Mines Malingerer

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Joined: Tuesday, 31st October 2017, 08:40

Post Tuesday, 9th October 2018, 13:45

Re: Road to greatfelid (19/20): casual 49 EV.

Ru indicates that your awakening is complete.
You reveal the great annihilating truth to your foes!

ZoFy wrote:Oh, and also, felid is a good race.

Congratz!

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ZoFy

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51

Post Saturday, 13th October 2018, 17:41

Re: Road to greatfelid (20/20): a 3 months late announcement

Lol at 27 as end of gaming life. There is nothing wrong with having a hobby at any age.
Underestimated: cleaving, Deep Elf, Formicid, Vehumet, EV
Overestimated: AC, GDS
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Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Monday, 12th November 2018, 11:25

Re: Road to greatfelid (20/20): a 3 months late announcement

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Lol at 27 as end of gaming life. There is nothing wrong with having a hobby at any age.

Paul Morphy retired from chess at 22, didn't he? :D

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 4432

Joined: Friday, 8th May 2015, 17:51

Post Monday, 12th November 2018, 11:40

Re: Road to greatfelid (20/20): a 3 months late announcement

Magipi wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Lol at 27 as end of gaming life. There is nothing wrong with having a hobby at any age.

Paul Morphy retired from chess at 22, didn't he? :D


Well, Russian wiki page for him has "Since the mid 1860s. and until the end of his life Morphy suffered a severe mental illness." though I failed to find it in English version. Anyway I don't see how it is relevant when he had much free time ("Financially secure thanks to his family fortune, Morphy essentially spent the rest of his life in idleness" from English wiki)
Underestimated: cleaving, Deep Elf, Formicid, Vehumet, EV
Overestimated: AC, GDS
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Slime Squisher

Posts: 332

Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Thursday, 13th January 2022, 18:24

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

Well, long time no see, right? It's been over three years, and so much has changed since then. I've saved up some money and went on the longest vacation, then devoted a lot of time to playing and streaming Hearthstone Battlegrounds (which was ultimately a failure but at least i got into top 25 in my region a few times). Got a bit into chess as well so now i at least understand who's that Paul Morphy guy the posters above had mentioned. Surely wish i could be "financially secure thanks to [my] family fortune", huh. As for Crawl, the australian crew (Demise, UV4 and zxc) don't make content about it anymore (i might stream some maybe?), devs have removed food but also even more fun (where's Tornado and DMsl? what's the point of new Tm?), and people have almost stopped using the Tavern because /r/dcss and Discord servers exist. I'll still continue doing my reports here and miss my chance to farm some free Reddit karma.

So, obviously i'm coming back because the devs have come up with a new background, Delver. Technically there's Cinder Acolyte too but i'll wait to try that out until the 0.28 release (CA might not even get there). Also, there's another felid streaker whose streak is actually longer than mine. I find it quite funny that the longest active streaks are literally 4 huge variety ones, then two streaks with 20+ felids and no other race even comes close. Clearly, that means felids are OP.

Delver is a strong contender for being the weakest start in the whole game, fighting for that spot with Chaos Knight. Instead of Xom summoning a D:1 harpy (fine, that was a weapon of chaos but Xom could probably do it too), delver has a D:5 start and a possibility to turn a corner into a centaur/Sigmund/Grinder/orc wizard/priest and instantly die. Yet their killdudes kit is the most basic one possible (leather + weak weapon and 2 skill in it), the consumables are most likely getting used up to get to D:1 and all you really get from this start is a chance to find a very early altar. How is this any better than Monk actually (in a non-startscumming way)?
Of course, i had to come back to Crawl one day and streak a FeDe. So i played the combo a few times (a total of 8) on my other account and surprisingly only won 4 of them, not even being able to do it twice in a row. None of the deaths actually happened before i reached D:1 (despite having a few super close calls) but rather it was me being unable to stabilise pre-Lair (no help from the background and maybe me being rusty) or statue/dragon felid not being nearly as strong as before and routinely losing fights without divine help (no idea why, maybe i'm too used to having DMsl). A few days ago i got so sick of that practice that i just went for it and played the combo on the streak account.

The game started in a very optimistic way, with upstairs in sight. Too bad that immediately upon ascension, i was in range of Robin and a few of her goons so a fear scroll had to be used immediately. D:4 was a wide open floor and also made me run away from an orc wizard and a scorpion. I don't remember if it happened on my way up or down but that floor even made me up quaff ID some pots (thankfully, there were 3 heal wounds pots which let me fight adders safely). D:1 had a spear gnoll btw but at least a cat is too fast for him. After getting to D:1 i was still weak, excluded a lot of monsters out and was desperately searching for a way to kill things. It ended up being a book with Sticky Flame coupled with a D:4 altar of Vehumet (the second altar i saw this game after Nemelex). Obviously, Sticky Flame was very far away at that point but after killing some weaklings with 4 UC and a bit of wand use i did get offered Magic Dart (at XL 5) and that was the worst sufficient spell for kiting dudes. While it was barely piercing any armour (still better than Sandblast though) and i was hard losing magic duels versus orc wizards, i had acquired a secure tool for killing gnolls, iguanas, wights and even two-headed ogres at a "low" price of real life time and turn count. Four two-headed ogres have been slain that way for some massive experience.

Eventually i did get Sticky Flame online (still had to Magic Dart those ogres though due to being in one-shot range), and that could kill most things even in Lair with enough patience. Vehumet was offering me total crap until Fireball on Lair:3. Between that and Fire Storm i found in a book, my elemental school had been chosen, and Vehumet eventually did offer me the missing step in that plan in form of Ignition. Fire is the only elemental school i'd consider on a cat anyway: Ice wants you to surround yourself with enemies while casting Polar Vortex, Air wants you to literally wait or take damage and Earth's ultimate spell barely does anything to flying threats. Maybe if Absolute Zero was still a thing, i could've gone for that. Sigh.

The rest of my spell kit ended up being more or less what you would expect: things like OOD, Freezing Cloud, Irradiate, Starburst, and of course, Mephitic Cloud, Blink and Passwall. But i also had to splash into some Hexes: Invisibility and Cause Fear. Yes, there was no stabbing going on but since there's no DMsl or even rMsl anymore, being invisible seemed to be the only way to stay on the same screen with yaktaurs, merfolk javelineers, stone giants and breathing draconians without being instantly removed as a non-melee cat. Invis was also the spell to use before going downstairs. However, it came with a downside of turning miscasts/Irradiate spam into a bad mutation/waste of cancellation.

When it was time to get runes, i made some mistakes in branch ordering, deciding to do Shoals before Snake Pits. Sure, i had Invisibility and Fireball made steam clouds everywhere but Snake Pit ended up being way easier due to lack of water, kite potential and Freezing Cloud owning quite hard. Shoals have actually claimed my only death due to me not noticing a water nymph and then getting a bit unlucky with damage rolls.
Going to Elf after both S-branches, i brought my Ignition to castability and finally felt like i'm doing something powerful as elves coming at me from the final vault were lining up perfectly for it. Vaults weren't very memorable except for me discovering i could kite Xtahua with OOD as their Bolt of Fire doesn't have perfect range. Slime was my third rune of choice and has put me in a predicament due to all stairs from Slime:3 to Slime:4 leading to an area with the same one stair down to Slime:5. And i was very low on digging, so i seemingly had to use just one set of stairs for Slime:5. I handled the situation using the good old "make a crapton of noise, then go up immediately and return right next to TRJ" method. It was not very effective but somehow by using !blink, ?haste, ?brilliance, !Immolation and Ignition while being at 60 health i managed to straight up kill TRJ and run away from the fire-resistant rockslimes.
Depths have also put me in an interesting situation by placing all Depths:2 upstairs at the same place (hangedman_pleasuredromes?). Instead of getting surrounded, i snuck to the lower floor and cleared Depths:3 before Depths:2. A true Delver experience. After clearing Depths, i actually tried myself at a Ziggurat. Unfortunately, Zigs got buffed with an increased amount of panlords while players got nerfed with the lack of Haste, CBlink and DMsl so not much fun was allowed for me and i had to bail from Zig:11, going net negative on blink scrolls and only getting a nice amulet with a bit of experience for it. Ouch. Jokes on me for forgetting to put on a fire ring and not stocking up on tree form potions though.

On the bright side, i did get Fire Storm online, making Zot fairly easy. I'll never understand people who say Fire Storm is useless in a 3-rune game. This had been the Tavern wisdom even before Ignition existed, now people say Ignition is a lot better instead. Sure, Ignition is nice for its requirements but unless you're fighting a very tight pack of mobs, its damage is way inferior to the level 9 spell. Fire Storm is a half-resistible Orb of Destruction instantly applied to a 5x5 square with the added benefits of clouds and fire vortices. Ignition is a weaker, fully-resistible Fireball cast on every monster in LOS. It's not even close in most situations. Yes, Fire Storm requires a ton of skills but you get to 2-shot most enemies in Zot with an AoE attack, for crying out loud. It does make tons of noise but so does Ignition and even Fireball. Just run to the stairs or something. I've learned Fire Storm on every fire mage i've ever played and never regretted it. It does make you miss out on some defence but even a goddamn cat call pull it off and not die. Because who needs defences at that point.

This would be the end of my report, i'll try to streak a FeCA in stable 0.28 if that ever happens, or consider trying retired combos like FeHe and FePr in Crawl versions where more fun was allowed. See you later or something.
Morgue here, please don't look at the turncount, i was resting off my contamination way too much.
Offline greaterplayer (who cares). I don't always play online, but when i do, i streak felids.
Zot:5 on easy mode video
Double Skullcrusher

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Friday, 14th January 2022, 13:03

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

Welcome back, and thanks for the fun to read report! Finally a post on Tavern.

I find it quite funny that the longest active streaks are literally 4 huge variety ones, then two streaks with 20+ felids and no other race even comes close.


How do you list streaks? I had a look on the CAO homepage, and the Felid streaks are not so near to the top. There are Troll, DS, DD (Rip), Naga streaks.

Tavern wisdom is that level 9 spells are sometimes useful with Vehumet (in a 3 rune game), but Vehumet is a weak god, so overall they are considered to be on the weak side.

Congratulations on your streak, you are truly a master of cats.
User avatar

Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 732

Joined: Monday, 24th April 2017, 11:46

Post Friday, 14th January 2022, 13:30

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

sanka wrote:Tavern wisdom is that level 9 spells are sometimes useful with Vehumet (in a 3 rune game), but Vehumet is a weak god, so overall they are considered to be on the weak side.

Everything you just said is wrong. (Star-Wars Wisdom)
Maɟaŋ

Slime Squisher

Posts: 332

Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Sunday, 16th January 2022, 09:24

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

sanka wrote:Welcome back, and thanks for the fun to read report! Finally a post on Tavern.

I find it quite funny that the longest active streaks are literally 4 huge variety ones, then two streaks with 20+ felids and no other race even comes close.


How do you list streaks? I had a look on the CAO homepage, and the Felid streaks are not so near to the top. There are Troll, DS, DD (Rip), Naga streaks.

Tavern wisdom is that level 9 spells are sometimes useful with Vehumet (in a 3 rune game), but Vehumet is a weak god, so overall they are considered to be on the weak side.

Congratulations on your streak, you are truly a master of cats.

Nice to still see some familiar faces here. I'm looking at the active streaks at CAO overview page. I sure wish i could do a naga streak but i've literally just ripped my 9 streak on another account by turning a corner as a naga, awakening and getting hit by a club kobold immediately, then losing a 1v1, huh. And before that i did accidentally start a naga on a felid account and only realised something was wrong on D:4 :lol:
Offline greaterplayer (who cares). I don't always play online, but when i do, i streak felids.
Zot:5 on easy mode video
Double Skullcrusher

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Sunday, 16th January 2022, 10:42

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

Yeah, while I adore your ability to streak felids, as I am not a streaker, but I can imagine that it can be done. I always wondered, however, how do people avoid death consistently with a Naga on the first few levels. Just luck? Some people told me it's stealth, but I do not beleive them: you may not begin with much stealth on D1 where you are the weakest, and I have died with characters with (relatively) high stealth by turning a corner and Sigmund immediately confusing me.

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

Joined: Thursday, 16th August 2018, 21:19

Post Sunday, 16th January 2022, 11:08

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

I'm not a streaker either, but it's exceptionally rare for me to lose a Naga in the early dungeon.
It's a combination of stealth, spit poison, stairdancing, and carefulness. Naga's having high health and rPois and Sinv also helps sometimes.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Wednesday, 19th January 2022, 03:43

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

For what it's worth, I've mostly got nagas home by spitting poison at everything.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 332

Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23

Post Friday, 21st January 2022, 12:03

Re: Road to greatfelid (21/21.5?): movie-length Delver speci

damerell wrote:For what it's worth, I've mostly got nagas home by spitting poison at everything.

"Mostly" is the problem here, i've had good experiences with them as well until that recent incident.
Offline greaterplayer (who cares). I don't always play online, but when i do, i streak felids.
Zot:5 on easy mode video
Double Skullcrusher
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