Slime Squisher
Posts: 419
Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25
YAVP: 0.23ish Sludge Elf Transmuter of Hep, W 4th (before U)
What, a sludge elf in 0.23?
We'd been talking about maybe putting them back, but then reproduced a vanilla bug that let you get removed species (whose stats are still in the game for savefile compatibility purposes) from random selection. (It's not clear this bug was ever deployed live in vanilla). Hence a slightly surprising incident where one of the other Stoat Soupies zigsprinted a SE and told me about it, and I said "but they're not back in the game yet". Well, if they're that keen to be back in the game that they're sneaking in via bugs, they get to be back in the game.
(So, can you play one online? Only if you're a European console player, I'm afraid; in December 2019 I was pretty sure we'd get Stoat Soup 0.23 out in a month or so, and then there was a global pandemic and things went a bit shit for a very long time. Presently the development 0.23 version is only on crawl.montres.org.uk. Sorry about that.)
SETm was a surprisingly hard combo given their apparently very solid aptitudes for the role (+3 Transmutations, +2 Dodging, +1 Spellcasting/Fighting/UC). I'd not won a straight Tm before (only a CeTm who found Trog on D:2 or so), which didn't help. I'd got to Lair with Chei, Hep, and WJC, and found Usk and Makh at least vaguely plausible choices. It took me 31 SETm to get one home, making it my third most-splatted combo after DEFE (41) and FeMo (56).
I think I struggled because of focusing very strongly on getting Blade Hands up and running. I'd turn off everything but Transmutations (double rate) and UC *single) very early on then die because I was a glass cannon with no hitpoints or evasion. Once I stopped doing that and just leaned on Beastly Appendage and Spider form for longer, things got easier and I soon got a win, and actually it doesn't seem to make all that much difference to when you get Blade Hands online because of the way XP scales through the game.
Grinder was the best performing monster this game, having me at 2 HP on D:4. I didn't get any suitable god until the Temple on D:6, passing up Fedhas, QAZLAL, and Vehumet. I took Hep, who I haven't won in a while. I have wins with the hexer and knight, so I took battlemage; IDK what the optimal choice would have been, but Uncle Murder seemed very effective, especially when he started nuking stuff with LCS. In the later game he got used a lot as Iskenderun's Orb of Ancestor to chuck at something to keep it busy while I chewed up its friends.
I'd get Blade Hands online on D:10, using it first to kill Harold. I also found a +6 scale mail with {Str+4} here; I decided the boost to defences was worth putting up with the spell failure chance. I'd use it until the point - much later in the game - where Statue Form and Dragon Form were merging my body armour anyway so I might as well wear a robe and cast Ozo's when untransformed. Finally, there was a Platinum Reserve, which to my surprise I'd buy a 2,350 GP pair of boots from later.
I took Tukima's on D:11, but didn't really get much use out of it - I never had enough spare XP to get much spellpower, so the success chances were pretty bad. The Lair also turned up on D:11 - both it and Orc as late as possible.
I learned Regeneration on Lair:2; it's a permabuff in Stoat Soup, and I hadn't realised the implication - I'd keep getting miscasts when I had Blade Hands increasing the failure chance. As a result I'd train quite a lot of Charms and Necromancy which did me no good at all for the time being.
Lair was full of artifacts I'd use; +0 boots with {rCorr Int-3 Dex+2 SInv} - the Int-3 was a nuisance but they were my only source of SInv for ages - and +2 gloves with {Int+5} - lovely, but didn't do anything about the "spells don't work with Blade Hands" issue. Also an ice cave and a labyrinth; a +2 robe with {rN++ Str+4} in the latter, which I'd swap to once I was using Statue/Dragon Form. Acquirement gave me a ring with {rElec rN+ Str+3 Dex-2 Slay+3} I'd use for a while. Finally, a +2 helmet with {Int+2} - exasperatingly, horns would push this off my head, and much later I'd mutroulette and lose them, and forgot the helmet existed. Stupid of me.
Orc was next - Josephine and curare-and-distortion Sonja gave me a nasty moment, and I got evolution off a neqoxec (hooray, or at least hooray until it lost me the helmet in Snake), but there wasn't all that much to buy.
My first Lair branch was Snake; this got very hairy in places (especially running at Vashnia's pack in a corridor and being reminded they've all got Portal Projectile so they could all shoot me at once) and perhaps I should have backed out and gone to Swamp. I didn't much fancy Swamp without rPois for swamp drakes and dragons and with Blade Hands as my main offence (so what for hydras?), though. I did acquire a book with Irradiate in, though, which was a no-brainer for a transmuter.
Rather than duck into Swamp I finished the Dungeon, getting a +10 hunting sling with {speed, Int+4 Dex+} - a great find since I'd been training Slings already - and learned Yara's, which is also a no-brainer for a transmuter (and generally a spell I really enjoy). I hadn't fixed the other problems but at least I had more HP, more spell success, and a better ranged weapon.
In the end Swamp was surprisingly easy, not sure why. Even Lernie at the end was relatively straightforward. A friendly ghost turned up to help me, but I killed Lernie before the ghost could get stuck in.
Where next? I had plenty of MR, so had a crack at Elf - a decision that panned out when I killed Roxanne on E:1 getting Statue Form. It would be a little while before I could use it, but at least now I knew I had it. E:3 gave me an amulet with {Spirit +Blink rElec Dex+2}; near the middle of the game I was feeling I could do better since I tended to blast away all my MP and I could get rElec from Statue Form, but it was ages until I found a replacement.
Next was Vaults 1-4, where I found a Book of the Dragon. I didn't actually make much use of Dragon Form, but I used it on orbs of fire where rF++ and huge melee damage are just what the doctor ordered. I had suitable jewellery not to have an actual cold vulnerability in dragon form.
With Statue Form working fine, it was time to do the Crypt. This posed no problem since I could just punch out curse skulls. Next was Vaults:5; again no trouble other than using up a few teleports, and got some good artifact rings and enough gold that I spent 2350 of it on +1 boots with {rC+ Regen+} from the Platinum Reserve; I clearly was never going to run out of gold so might as well pay a huge amount for a couple of resistance pips.
Obviously the next place to go was not Depths - too conventional - but Tomb. I learned Dispel Undead and jumped in. The Tomb:2 ambush got pretty bad with repeated unfortunate teleports and Mara and Jory turning up, but I managed to get into the side rooms eventually and heal up. Along the corridor of greater mummies in Tomb:1 - three turned up at once a couple of times.
Tomb:3 was, predictably, horrible; teleported a lot, burned a lot of consumables, the usual story - given an extra frisson of amusement when Mennas turned up. I managed to use Transference shenanigans to get him to an up-hatch and deal with him alone. However, I did get deterioration and berserkitis off blundering into a Zot trap; I mutrouletted ending up with rMut and less potion healing. The latter would have been more painful if I had _had_ many heal wounds left after Tomb.
My last late-game death was a GrSu who had done Tomb 4th, gone to Gehenna, become overconfident (arguably that happened around the time I did Tomb 4th), and got completely wiped by Asmodeus's friends. I wanted revenge - but to go to Hell, I had to actually go to Depths. Not much happened in Depths except learning Aura of Abjuration; I kept taking Summonings for a while afterwards in the hope of getting Dragon's Call (a spell I love) online, but it clearly wasn't happening even with brilliance.
I worked my way down Gehenna quite quickly, burning through magic mappings. That wasn't too bad except Geh:7; Asmodeus was not where I expected, and so I faced him without full HP/MP and without the ancestor. However, turning into a dragon sorted him out in fairly short order. Revenge! (My useless ghost turned up to polish off a hellion after Asmodeus was done and dusted).
Zot didn't pose much trouble; I mastered Unarmed Combat. Everything went down to either Statue or Dragon Form without difficulty, and on Zot:4 I acquired an amulet with {Faith +Blink Str+2 Dex+4 Slay+3} which finally replaced the old faithful {Spirit +Blink rElec Dex+2} I'd had all game.
Zot did have three panlords on the orbrun; I evaded one but flattened the other two. One of them, incredibly satisfyingly, I Transferenced next to me and one-shot. One more panlord on D:7 got evaded, and I was home free.