CIP=>YAVP - DECj who is afraid of anything - now with diary

[Owen]

Hello all.

Background. I was an experienced Rogue player, having escaped two dozens times or so. I've found DCSS about a month ago and tried it. Thanks to Wiki I've managed to avoid some stupid deaths but nevertheless I've died six times (including tutorial, lol).

I've decided to go ranged: I hate melee since in Rogue it was the only option. So I've went DECo of Sif Muna.

This current character has made a lot of great mistakes: I've tried to clear L:8 temple with lots of demons (freezing clouds and death yak skeletons made all the job actually), bottom of OM, I've entered EH and even finished it before proceeding Dungeon further. Bottom level of EH was mostly suicidal but contained a huge pile of trophies. And luckily my character is still alive =)

I see that you are dumping your characters here; I can't do that due to technical reasons. So I'll try to do it manually.
Game version is 0.10.2 (tiles).
I've got:
rF+++, rC+ (switchable to rF++, rC++), rAcid, rPois, mutation of teleport control (lucky me!), rN+ (possibly rN++), Gourmand.
Skills:
XL 17, Spellcasting about 15, Fire magic 14, Ice magic 9, Air magic 9, Conjurations about 15, Necromanty about 10, T&D 8 or 9. Fighting 10, Dodge about 12.

The skill management was very stupid till XL 7 or so (I've got some slings skill trained, yep) and it seems to me that it's yet stupid now.

So the questions are following.
1. I've got mottled dragon armor (made from hide). Is it better than +3 orcish leather with rF+?
2. I've got a dagger with rN, rMag. Also I have several staves: of fire, of cold, of death, of power. Now I'm wielding mostly staff of power because of Orb of Destruction; sometimes I'm using staff of fire with ring of fire for fireball-nuking. Maybe I'm wrong?
3. With rings - I've left behind two randart rings boosting EV (like +1 or +2), Dex, AC (+1 or so too). Now I'm wearing +4 ring of strength (when it comes to loot collecting and stashing), ring of wizardry, ring of fire (I've got ring of cold too, but prefer fire). Ring of see invis for swap when I see smth like "It barely misses you". Is it OK? Or should I always wear a ring with see invis?
I have no troubles with amulets because I've got a randart amulet which collects all the buffs of previously used jewelry =)
4. I'm waiting for fire storm, so now I'm developing only spellcasting, conjurations, fire magic (and T&D because people say I have to hit 10th level of it). Is it OK? Actually as far as I understood from Wiki and from this forum, Haunt+Necromutation will fit my playing style better, but there were a lot of posts like 'you have to wait for it for a great amount of time, don't bother'. Is it correct?

One more issue is that I've collected not enough food due to my cowardice. I'm afraid of any monster I see for the first time, so I'm running fast from it, buffing hard and usually kill it with one hit. Thus using a lot of food for this process due to channeling. Chunks are fine (I've tried even mutagenous ones but stop after a couple of nasty mutations), but seems that they aren't enough for me. For example, breaking into heavily guarded part of EH:5 forced me to eat two meat rations and a bread ration because each elven mage/conjurer/summoner etc took a plenty of time to be killed so all my chunks become rotten. I've spent a lot of perma-food in Spider's nest too.
So I have to improve my food-management, but yet don't know how. May be you can help me?

Concerning spells.
My basic attacking spells are poisonous cloud, freezing cloud, fireball (1% fail), ice bolt (1 or 0% fail), after EH:5 orb of destruction (3% fail) too.
Also I'm collecting a meatshield with Animate Skeleton or smth like that (1st level spell). I've used summon elemental, but it takes 14 MP to summon an unfriendly elemental and kill it with 2 fireballs (yet more food with channeling or waiting). So now I have summon ugly thing but mostly don't use it. Elementals saved me a couple of times in OM esp on a pre-crowded ladders; also they are taking off those nasty Oklob plants. I can try to memorize (forgetting smth offensive) summon hydra, summon demonic horde, summon canine. Which one is better?
My means of escape are the following: wand of teleport, several scrolls of blinking, potions of curing and of healing wounds. Anything else?
Miscellaneous spells I'm using include dig and flight.

What else? I'm new to DCSS, so any comment is highly appreciated =)

Update: I've made it!

[cerebovssquire]

  Code:

1. I've got mottled dragon armor (made from hide). Is it better than +3 orcish leather with rF+?
2. I've got a dagger with rN, rMag. Also I have several staves: of fire, of cold, of death, of power. Now I'm wielding mostly staff of power because of Orb of Destruction; sometimes I'm using staff of fire with ring of fire for fireball-nuking. Maybe I'm wrong?
3. With rings - I've left behind two randart rings boosting EV (like +1 or +2), Dex, AC (+1 or so too). Now I'm wearing +4 ring of strength (when it comes to loot collecting and stashing), ring of wizardry, ring of fire (I've got ring of cold too, but prefer fire). Ring of see invis for swap when I see smth like "It barely misses you". Is it OK? Or should I always wear a ring with see invis?
I have no troubles with amulets because I've got a randart amulet which collects all the buffs of previously used jewelry =)
4. I'm waiting for fire storm, so now I'm developing only spellcasting, conjurations, fire magic (and T&D because people say I have to hit 10th level of it). Is it OK? Actually as far as I understood from Wiki and from this forum, Haunt+Necromutation will fit my playing style better, but there were a lot of posts like 'you have to wait for it for a great amount of time, don't bother'. Is it correct?


*DECj

Mottled dragon armour is excellent. Wear it.

Use the staff of fire if you are using fire spells a lot. Looking below it seems that you do. If you want to attack with Bolt of Cold, wield the staff. If you really need MR (for instance, against Louise, Norris, deep elf sorcerer/demonologist, Rupert), wield the dagger. You will basically never need rN.
Weapon switching takes less than a turn.

Your means of escape should contain potions of speed. It seems that you are severely underestimating the value of Haste. More below.

Concerning food: be careful about combat, not paranoid.

You are a long way from Fire Storm. You also have a lot of good offensive spells for now. Building for Fire Storm right now, especially if you already have food problems, would be a big mistake. Going for Fire Storm > Necromutation would be an even bigger mistake, because Necromutation is nearly useless before extended. Sure, spamming channeling and high-hunger spells is nice, but other things are higher on your priority list. Specifically, if you have Haste and/or Controlled Blink, get them now, in that order. Also, 10ish Fighting (preferably more) and 15 Dodging would be things I would want on this character after Haste and cBlink (or if you have neither or just one, now or after that one). You need to offset your current fragility somehow.

Ring of wizardry if your spell success is under, say, low 90s for your main attack spells. Strength is useless in combat, so just use it for travelling. Ring of ice/fire are very good, and should be swapped out situationally like I described above when talking about staves.

Also, very important: don't use the wiki. I consider some pages that contain only objective information to be useful (on the other hand, some are outdated), and the three guides I have written myself are, if I may blow my own horn, usable at the very least ("The Better MuWz guide"/"Sludge Elf/Merfolk Transmuter guide"/"Fire Elementalist guide"), but otherwise the wiki, in particular the subjective (guide) parts, is a gigantic cesspool of misinformation and suboptimal strategies. Good alternatives include the Tavern (some people here do give good advice), ##crawl IRC on freenode (the best players hang out here) and the knowledge bots (which is continuously being updated by IRC).

[Owen]

At first, thank you.

> If you really need MR (for instance, against Louise, Norris, deep elf sorcerer/demonologist, Rupert), wield the dagger. You will basically never need rN.

Louise, Norris and Rupert are already dead. OK: I'll remove my dagger and drop it to stash 'till the good times'.

> Your means of escape should contain potions of speed. It seems that you are severely underestimating the value of Haste. More below.

Yes, I've missed them. I surely do have a couple and they are potions I'm using the most. I have Haste in book with an awful fail rate; I'll try to master it. Surely it is better than consuming potions.

> Concerning food: be careful about combat, not paranoid.

You know, only paranoid can survive in Rogue =)
I'll try.

> Specifically, if you have Haste and/or Controlled Blink, get them now, in that order.

I have blink (fail about 1 or 3%) and I have a mutation of translocation control; will it work together as a controlled blink?

> Also, 10ish Fighting (preferably more) and 15 Dodging would be things I would want on this character after Haste and cBlink (or if you have neither or just one, now or after that one).

I see. I have to turn them on and keep raising all the time?

> Ring of wizardry if your spell success is under, say, low 90s for your main attack spells.

So what is the substitute? Ring of (+EV, +AC, +Dex), ring of see invis, smth else?

> Also, very important: don't use the wiki.

I'm critical there, thanks. I see the difference between experienced player and unexp one reading the guide. The latter lacks arguments usually. I use it mostly for a monster info.

BTW, are disks of storms useful? And box of beasts?

[cerebovssquire]

At first, thank you.

> If you really need MR (for instance, against Louise, Norris, deep elf sorcerer/demonologist, Rupert), wield the dagger. You will basically never need rN.

Louise, Norris and Rupert are already dead. OK: I'll remove my dagger and drop it to stash 'till the good times'.

> Your means of escape should contain potions of speed. It seems that you are severely underestimating the value of Haste. More below.

Yes, I've missed them. I surely do have a couple and they are potions I'm using the most. I have Haste in book with an awful fail rate; I'll try to master it. Surely it is better than consuming potions.

> Concerning food: be careful about combat, not paranoid.

You know, only paranoid can survive in Rogue =)
I'll try.

> Specifically, if you have Haste and/or Controlled Blink, get them now, in that order.

I have blink (fail about 1 or 3%) and I have a mutation of translocation control; will it work together as a controlled blink?

> Also, 10ish Fighting (preferably more) and 15 Dodging would be things I would want on this character after Haste and cBlink (or if you have neither or just one, now or after that one).

I see. I have to turn them on and keep raising all the time?

> Ring of wizardry if your spell success is under, say, low 90s for your main attack spells.

So what is the substitute? Ring of (+EV, +AC, +Dex), ring of see invis, smth else?

> Also, very important: don't use the wiki.

I'm critical there, thanks. I see the difference between experienced player and unexp one reading the guide. The latter lacks arguments usually. I use it mostly for a monster info.

BTW, are disks of storms useful? And box of beasts?

I said "for instance". MR is still very useful on many occasions.

EV, AC, and DEX are moderately useful to this character. If you don't have anything else, sure. When Haste is at 60%-70% success rate, you probably want to swap back to wizardry so you can use this excellent spell as soon as possible.

Preferably you would train one skill at a time. This is because one good skill if better than two half-baked skills, and because you always want one skill more than others. An exception training for multi-school spells with equal apts. Assuming you have Haste and Controlled Blink, your skill training should look something like Charms 12 -> Translocations 14 -> Fighting 10 -> Dodging 15.

There are three different types of blink spells: uncontrolled (puts you somewhere randomly), semi-controlled (you can't choose the square, but the rough direction, and this is obtained by blink+cTele like you have), controlled (choose a specific square). Controlled Blink is very useful because of its accuracy. Semi-controlled blink, for instance, won't be so useful in blinking through groups of monsters.

Disc of storms and box of beasts are useless clutter.

[Owen]

Concerning extended (Pandemonium, Hells, Ziggurat) - is it possible to run those with this character type? Or it is better to get Lair-based runes (Swamp, Slime, Shoals in my case) and go Zot?

> Mottled dragon armour is excellent. Wear it.

I've got several enchant armor scrolls. Should I enchant it now, save them waiting for a treasure trove or save them till I find better armor? I see that most of armors have greater evasion penalty thus giving spellcasting penalty. So is mottled dragon armor the best one (except randarts) for a caster like this character?

> Assuming you have Haste and Controlled Blink, your skill training should look something like Charms 12 -> Translocations 14 -> Fighting 10 -> Dodging 15.

I see. Haste instead of bolt of cold, orb of destruction for everything that is fire immune, and train-train-train. Btw, fighting is 10 already, did I mention it?

Now I don't possess a book with controlled blink as well as deflect missiles. I feel I have to find (or get from Sif Muna) and improve them in order to go Shoals. Btw, it seems to me that Wiki article on channeling is outdated. I'm channeling up to 5 MPs having only 2 in Invocations while Wiki says I have to channel 1d2 MPs.

Concerning food. Actually I have some honeycombs, fruits, ambrosia, royal jellies stashed. So maybe I'm just rogue-like paranoid about food and everything is OK now.

[cerebovssquire]

MDA is, in my experience, the best type of armour for this character type, especially as you are not lacking resistances.
Any character type can do extended. Deep elf blasters are pretty well-suited, actually. Many other species (Nagas, Draconians, Demonspawn come to mind) feel stronger to me because they don't have any problems with their average aptitudes by then and have excellent HP. You can still do Zot before extended if you feel that you need the experience. I'd also get Fire Storm up and running for extended.
Deflect Missiles is mainly useful for characters with low EV. If you have an abundance of spell slots it's OK, but this is rarely the case. I prefer sticking with Repel Missiles in most cases.

[Owen]

I've tried swamp, and it was pretty easy. Only swamp and ice dragons asked for the third fireball. The S:5 ending was 'Icy', so I've blazed it easily, fireball-fireball-channel-channel-channel-rinse and repeat. I've got a scroll of acquirement and asked for jewellry; received amulet with rMut. I see now that I had to get to Swamp and at least till D15-D17 before EH. It's a miracle that I've survived EH:5 and now everything is plain and trivial.

Concerning development plan: yes, I've built all of these skills. I've got charms 12 (Haste has 2% fail with ring of wizardry), translocations 14 (sadly no controlled blink spell yet), fighting 10, dodging 15. I've got AC 22, EV 19. Int/Str/Dex 25/15 (base 9!)/15.

Where to go further? I'd like to switch back to SpC+Conj+FM.

One more question. How many max MP are granted on level-up? Is it random? And max HP?

Concerning armor. I've got a pearl dragon hide a bit earlier than mottled; is it better than mottled for a caster? It gives more penalty to EV and it is written that -3EV penalties can't be eliminated totally. Or I can save it for a while, develop Armour skill and then use it. What's preferrable?

[Blade]

On a deep elf, MDA is usually better than PDA, and almost certainly better before the last postgame. PDA will wreck your spell success rates for a long time, and deep elves don't have a particularly good armour apt to reduce that penalty. In other words, you will be burning a lot of xp on getting that armour usable. Mottled, on the other hand, has a barely-noticeable casting penalty that will almost never hurt anything. I would recommend staying with it.

In the future, don't raise skills that aren't immediately useful (e.g. raising tloc to 14 without cblink). It's a rare spell, and many games never find it; it's far better to wait until you find a spell that you want before training skills up for it. Your defenses look very solid right now; no worries there.

I'm a bit confused about your stats. 25 int is really low for a late deep elf; you should have that by xl16 at the latest. Raise int every 3 levels as soon as you are comfortable with your carrying capacity; str 6-8 is enough in almost every case. If you get burdened, drop some of your junk. You should never be up to 15 str unless you've found really good randarts that happen to include incidental strength bonuses; are you wearing rings of +str or something? If so, stop it. Strength is useless to you.

If you have fire storm, you may as well go for that. Deep elves have incredible apts, and there's not much reason not to take advantage of them for high-level nuke spells. Other than that, it looks like you're quite well set up to win.

(by the way, it would be a lot easier to advise you if you could post dumps. What are the "technical reasons" preventing you from doing so?)

[That Other Guy]

You need to go for either fire or icestorm as soon as possible. I recently won my first win as a DEFE (15 runes) and I cannot explain with words how useful it is for killing any and everything (I've blasted orbs of fire with that spell, and nearly fried Cerebov, too) As far as armour goes it's pretty much useless on a DE to run anything with more than a -2 EV penalty unless you plan on dumping a metric boatload of exp into armour. You're probably better off with a good randart, but don't hesitate to dump all your enchant Armour scrolls into that, you can't enchant randarts anyway.

Also, I'm not sure what your mutation sheet looks like, but most people would kill for the control translocations mutation. I'm no expert, but in my limited experience those semicontrolled blinks are almost always as good as the controlled ones.

I'd also pick up some summons if you can spare the Exp, summon butterflies can fill your screen with meat shields in a few turns, and summoned dragons will tear the game a new one in most cases. Speaking of shields, you should probably be using one, an elven buckler hardly has any penalty (None, if you invest 5 skill points in it!) , and the extra 8-9 SH points are a huge boon. Feel free to upgrade to a bigger shield, but be aware that it takes 15 in shields to negate a regular shield penalty and 25 to negate a large shield.

As for MP, don't worry about it, it caps out at 50, and you'll reach that easily by XP:23 or so. I'm not sure what the exact formula is, but you gain 2 extra points per level compared to a human (And 2 less HP!). You can boost this number with rings/staff, but the effect over 50 is halved.

[Owen]

> I'm a bit confused about your stats. 25 int is really low for a late deep elf; you should have that by xl16 at the latest. Raise int every 3 levels as soon as you are comfortable with your carrying capacity; str 6-8 is enough in almost every case. If you get burdened, drop some of your junk. You should never be up to 15 str unless you've found really good randarts that happen to include incidental strength bonuses; are you wearing rings of +str or something? If so, stop it.

Yes: I've got gloves of strength (the only enchanted gloves I've met), they give +3, and a randart helm that gives bonus to strength. And these armours are strictly best I've run across, all others are just plain armours. My natural strength is 8 or 9 now AFAIR.

> Other than that, it looks like you're quite well set up to win.

Yep. I've progressed a bit, Shoals were no challenge at all. But Slime pits burned several meat rations because of regular channeling and I've put myself in a tough situation with that pesky TRJ minions. Now I've got all 3 runes and I want to try deeper. Even if I die, that was worth trying.

I don't have Fire Storm available right now, only Tornado. I've found the 'Find' option, and now I know that I can purchase a book in OM:4 with Control Blink.

> What are the "technical reasons" preventing you from doing so?)

I have internet only at work. Playing computer is located at home and it doesn't even have a network card - actually it is dedicated to compute hard derivative tasks, I'm playing while they're running.
So the only way is to move dump from computer to a portable device, then send it to work via e-mail from somewhere, then post it here. Very long way =( But if necessary, I can try.

> peaking of shields, you should probably be using one, an elven buckler hardly has any penalty (None, if you invest 5 skill points in it!) , and the extra 8-9 SH points are a huge boon.

OK, got it.

[rebthor]

Go to Orc right away and buy the book with controlled blink!

[Owen]

Yes sir!

Btw, I've got lantern of shadows, elemental fan, fire lantern and two bottled efreeti. Are they clutter too?

[rchandra]

the lantern of shadows can be occasionally useful for escapes. It drastically lowers your spellpower, so you can't use it all the time. Air elemental fan can be useful if your air/evocations skills are high, but in practise I find by the time I get them high enough air elementals aren't that good. lantern of fire is too anoying to use. the bottled efreeti are a guaranteed flaming scimitar and possible permanent ally (or annoying enemy), either use them or don't, but don't carry them.

[pratamawirya]

The lantern of shadows is quite helpful in the Abyss.

[Owen]

So here is the dump.

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.10.2 character file.

Owen the Sorcerer (Deep Elf Conjurer)           Turns: 61191, Time: 1, 04:09:00

HP 124/124       AC 25     Str 16      XL: 22   Next: 55%
MP  27/46        EV 21     Int 27      God: Sif Muna [******]
Gold 1976        SH 14     Dex 14      Spells: 15 memorised,  2 levels left

Res.Fire  : + + .   See Invis. : +    w - staff of fire
Res.Cold  : + . .   Warding    : . .  p - +6 mottled dragon armour
Life Prot.: . . .   Conserve   : +    r - +2 elf buckler {AC+3}
Res.Acid. : + . .   Res.Corr.  : +    s - +0 mask of the Dragon {MR Acc+3 Dam+3 SInv
Res.Poison: +       Clarity    : +    m - +2 cloak {rCorr, Cons}
Res.Elec. : .       Spirit.Shd : .    c - +2 pair of gloves {Str+3}
Sust.Abil.: . .     Stasis     : .    k - +1 pair of boots {run}
Res.Mut.  : .       Ctrl.Telep.: +    F - amulet "Zeunlal" {Gourm +Inv rC++ MR}
Res.Rott. : .       Levitation : .    Q - ring of fire
Gourmand  : +       Ctrl.Flight: .    v - ring of wizardry

@: quick, extraordinarily resistant to hostile enchantments, stealthy
A: clarity, poison resistance, teleport control, Str +4, Dex -1
a: Channel Energy, Forget Spell, Renounce Religion, Evoke Invisibility
}: 3/15 runes: decaying, barnacled, slimy


You are on level 24 of the Dungeon.
You worship Sif Muna.
Sif Muna is exalted by your worship.
You are full.

You have visited 8 branches of the dungeon, and seen 58 of its levels.
You have visited 1 Labyrinth.
You have visited 3 portal chambers: volcano, spiders nest, bailey.

You have collected 5084 gold pieces.
You have spent 3128 gold pieces at shops.

Inventory:

Armour
 c - a +2 pair of gloves of strength (worn)
 h - the +0 helmet of Beauty {rF++ Str+2}
   (You found it on level 14 of the Dungeon)   
   
   It affects your strength (+2).
   It greatly protects you from fire.
 k - a +1 pair of boots of running (worn)
 m - a +2 cloak of preservation (worn)
 p - a +6 mottled dragon armour (worn)
 r - a +2 elven buckler of protection (worn)
 s - the +0 mask of the Dragon (worn) {MR Acc+3 Dam+3 SInv}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 7 of the Dungeon)   
   
   It affects your accuracy (+3).
   It affects your damage-dealing abilities (+3).
   It increases your resistance to enchantments.
   It enhances your eyesight.
Magical devices
 i - a wand of lightning {zapped: 1}
 M - a wand of flame
 O - a wand of lightning
 P - a wand of disintegration (7)
 V - a tapered copper wand
Comestibles
 b - 9 meat rations
 L - a bread ration
 S - a lychee
 U - a chunk of rock troll flesh
Scrolls
 a - a scroll of enchant armour
 e - 4 scrolls of detect curse
 n - 2 scrolls of blinking
 t - 8 scrolls of identify
 u - a scroll of fog
 A - 6 scrolls of fear
 C - 6 scrolls of teleportation
 G - 4 scrolls of magic mapping
 I - 2 scrolls of enchant weapon I
 N - 5 scrolls of remove curse
 R - 2 scrolls of acquirement
 Y - a scroll of immolation
Jewellery
 d - a ring of life protection
 l - a ring of wizardry
 v - a ring of wizardry (left hand)
 F - the amulet "Zeunlal" (around neck) {Gourm +Inv rC++ MR}
   (You found it on level 5 of the Elven Halls)   
   
   [amulet of the gourmand]
   
   It greatly protects you from cold.
   It increases your resistance to enchantments.
   It lets you turn invisible.
 Q - a ring of fire (right hand)
Potions
 j - 11 potions of curing
 q - 3 potions of speed
 x - 2 potions of brilliance
 y - 3 potions of heal wounds
 z - 2 potions of restore abilities
 D - a potion of levitation
 E - 3 potions of agility
 X - 2 potions of might
Books
 f - a book of Frost {god gift}   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   Freeze                             Ice                          1
   Throw Frost                        Conjuration/Ice              2
   Ozocubu's Armour                   Charms/Ice                   3
   Throw Icicle                       Conjuration/Ice              4
   Summon Ice Beast                   Ice/Summoning                4
   Condensation Shield                Ice/Transmutation            4
 g - a book of the Warp   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   Recall                             Summoning/Translocation      3
   Passage of Golubria                Translocation                4
   Phase Shift                        Translocation                5
   Warp Weapon                        Charms/Translocation         5
   Dispersal                          Translocation                6
   *Controlled Blink                  Translocation                7
 o - Sif Muna's Disquisition on Good Luck {god gift}
   (Sif Muna gifted it to you on level 1 of the Elven Halls)   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   *Repel Missiles                    Charms/Air                   2
   Freezing Aura                      Charms/Ice                   2
   See Invisible                      Charms                       4
   Warp Weapon                        Charms/Translocation         5
   Ring of Flames                     Charms/Fire                  7
 J - a book of the Dragon   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   *Flight                            Charms/Air                   3
   Cause Fear                         Hexes                        4
   *Bolt of Fire                      Conjuration/Fire             6
   Dragon Form                        Fire/Transmutation           7
   Summon Dragon                      Summoning                    9
 K - a book of Summonings   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   Abjuration                         Summoning                    3
   Recall                             Summoning/Translocation      3
   Summon Elemental                   Summoning                    4
   Shadow Creatures                   Summoning                    5
   Summon Demon                       Summoning                    5
   Summon Ugly Thing                  Summoning                    6
 T - a book of Geomancy   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   Sandblast                          Earth                        1
   Stoneskin                          Transmutation/Earth          2
   Passwall                           Transmutation/Earth          3
   Stone Arrow                        Conjuration/Earth            3
   Petrify                            Transmutation/Earth          4
   Lee's Rapid Deconstruction         Earth                        5
Magical staves
 w - a staff of fire (weapon)
 B - a staff of energy
Miscellaneous
 H - an air elemental fan
 Z - an ornate deck of cards


   Skills:
 - Level 10,1 Fighting
 - Level 0,5 Maces & Flails
 - Level 2,4 Slings
 - Level 1,9 Bows
 - Level 3,0 Throwing
 + Level 7,0 Armour
 - Level 13,9 Dodging
 - Level 4,2 Stealth
 + Level 5,9 Shields
 - Level 10,2 Traps & Doors
 - Level 0,2 Unarmed Combat
 * Level 21,6 Spellcasting
 - Level 15,1 Conjurations
 - Level 12,0 Charms
 - Level 6,6 Summonings
 - Level 7,0 Necromancy
 - Level 14,0 Translocations
 + Level 16,0 Fire Magic
 - Level 9,4 Ice Magic
 - Level 9,0 Air Magic
 - Level 2,2 Poison Magic
 - Level 7,7 Invocations


You have 2 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Haste                 Chrm           #######..    1%          6    None
b - Fireball              Fire/Conj      #########.   1%          5    None
c - Bolt of Fire          Fire/Conj      #########.   1%          6    None
d - Orb of Destruction    Conj           ########..   1%          7    Choko
e - Bolt of Cold          Ice/Conj       ####......   1%          6    None
f - Repel Missiles        Air/Chrm       #######...   1%          2    None
g - Flight                Air/Chrm       #######...   1%          3    None
h - Dispel Undead         Necr           #######..    1%          5    None
i - Animate Skeleton      Necr           N/A          1%          1    None
j - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          0%          2    None
k - Dig                   Erth/Trmt      #####....    7%          4    None
l - Delayed Fireball      Fire/Conj      N/A          1%          7    Choko
m - Swiftness             Air/Chrm       #######...   1%          2    None
n - Iskenderun's Mystic   Conj           ########.    1%          4    None
o - Controlled Blink      Tloc           N/A          1%          7    Choko


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (24/27)            Temple (0/1) D:4             Orc (4/4) D:11
    Elf (5/5) Orc:4          Lair (8/8) D:8           Swamp (5/5) Lair:2
 Shoals (5/5) Lair:5        Slime (6/6) Lair:8        Vault (1/8) D:16

Altars:
Cheibriados
Elyvilon
Fedhas
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Sif Muna
Trog
Vehumet
Xom
Yredelemnul
Zin
Beogh

Shops:
D:4: (  D:6: [  D:7: [*/?  D:8: [  D:16: [  D:24: [  Orc:4: (%%+  Elf:1: %  Elf:3: !
Elf:4: !

Portals:
Hell: D:21 D:22 D:23 D:24 Lair:8
Abyss: D:22 D:23
Pan: D:24
Ziggurat: D:24 (2680 gp)


                    Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You possess an exceptional clarity of mind.
Your system is resistant to poisons.
Your muscles are strong (Str +3).
Your muscles are strong, but stiff (Str +1, Dex -1).
You can control translocations.


Message History

You continue butchering the corpse.
You finish chopping the rock troll corpse into pieces.
You can't pick everything up without burdening yourself.
U - 3 chunks of rock troll flesh
You see here a chunk of rock troll flesh.
This raw flesh tastes great.
You continue eating.
You finish eating.
This raw flesh tastes great.
You continue eating.
You finish eating.
This raw flesh tastes great.
You continue eating.
You finish eating.
U - a chunk of rock troll flesh
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
You see here an eye of devastation corpse.
You see here a giant eyeball corpse.
You now have 1976 gold pieces.
There is a gateway to a ziggurat here.

    ##
   #..
   #.##
   #..##
  ##...##
 ##..#..##
##.#####.##
#..#...#..#
#.##.?.##.#
#..#.@.#..#
##.##%##.##
 ##..#..##
  ##...##
   #<.##
   #.##
   #.#
   #.#        #.#
   #.#        #.#
   #.#        #.#
   #.#        #.#


There are no monsters in sight!


[Owen]

Here is a diary =)

  Code:

Blork the Orc, D:3.
Was found on an island in a small pond of deep water guarding a nearby altar of Sif Muna. I've already decided to worship Sif, so I ran around the island far enough, became a worshipper, confused Blork and drowned him easily.

Pikel, D:7.
He was asleep, resting with a couple of enslaved humans. They resided in a heavily-crossed part of the dungeon, so Mephitic confused a lot of them making a funny mess there. But the final blow on Pikel was mine.

Eustachio, D:9
Upon entering on D:9 we noticed each other. I was a bit afraid of him, he was encouraged to establish some kind of partnership with me, but I was faster in winging back on D:8. See you later! Let's go Lair.

Volcano, L:1
Entering a tunnel was a weird action. Several scrolls were burnt to ashes there but I've got a nice fireproof leather and collected enough money to purchase wand of digging... I was sure I'll need it!

L:3
Got XL11 along with Spellcasting 10. Tried to establish a skill management since L:1, now no slings training!

Spider's nest, L:4
Saw a portal not far from a staircase and decided to enter.
That was an awful mistake! Twice I got swarmed and saved only by great luck. In order to get here I have to get some more silent way to kill buddies, some speed buffs and even more patience.
Sif Muna granted me a book with Flight in the middle of the fight thus making this level much easier.

Labyrinth, L:5
I heard the ticking of a clock... OK, magic mapping and rush! A pack of yaks along with two blinking frogs died altogether in a narrow passage after two lightnings. Great efficiency! Having an amulet of Gourmand lets me feed myself up to engorged on chunks.
So I'm in the maze. Only two options where to go - S and E. Let's try east?.. After a while I see stone walls, then metallic walls... Heh, here is a minotaur, let's go lightning party!

Gastronok, L:7.
One Hydra's skeleton and a couple of those whose living forms were called 'death yaks' did the job perfectly. Gastronok tried to summon some mammals twice but it was just a struggle for survival: my wave of minions could kill them all in one turn.

Oklob plants, L:7.
I've found 3 of these defending the staircase. Fortunately they missed me as I've step in their LOS. Retreat, summon air elemental, kill him because he was spawned hostile, summon next one and one more, wait a bit, enter the forbidden area, shout the attack command for my undead horde - that's all.

Demons, L:8.
After a great forestfire (it was nice to bake up some drakes there) I've entered a secret chamber. Magician is easy; he couldn't escape from my swarm of skeletons. Next door... Ouch! Demons! Really frightening since I didn't meet any of them earlier; all of them are 'dangerous' and 'extremely dangerous'. But freezing clouds along with a lot of skeletons are doing fine... Oops, what was that? Somebody teleported me away! Getting there again takes some time, but I encounter only a couple of survivors and only one by one. So now I possess several demon whips and several demon tridents; people say these weapons are best for the end-game, but I'm not a melee fighter, so I let them alone.
Let's improve offense... Fireball and poisonous cloud are what I need now.

Maurice, D:9
Maurice? Yep, I suppose I met him occasionally, but where is he now? I don't know, sorry.
+2 cloak of preservation? Yes, it's mine. No, no, not Maurice's, you are wrong. It's mine!

Eustachio, D:9
Oh, let's continue our dispute? Wait, why are you dead already, we didn't finish yet!

Bee hive, D:10
Bees, queen bees... Honey, honey, honey!

Orcish mines, D:11
Oh, money and shops! My mother told me that any elf must collect gold and spend it in shops, so I'm in!

O:2
Oh, that was really close. I've entered into a vault full of orcs. One poisoning cloud and run away - that was a mistake, I should run away immediately. Nevertheless, my skeletons saved me from a horde of followers, but I was forced to drink most of my heal wounds and all my magic restoration potions. Too bad.

O:4
Oh, an ogre... let's poison him... oh, another three... poison will work on them too... ouch, there are at least ten of them! And they bypass the cloud alive! I'm running out of MP and can't channel more due to hunger! Fuf, that's all. Let's see the shop. What? Book of warp? Controlled blink? No, thanks.
Let's explore more staircases...

O:3
Mommy!! They want to kill me!
Once more I've entered a small vault densely inhabited by orcs.
With a orcish warlord (as well as some more orcs)on my back I ran to O:2. He hit me... And with 1 HP left I manage to hide my ass behind of a wave of animated skeletons.
Ouch, that was really close once more. Crawl gives me the third ultimate chance to survive... Bet I've got no more chances available.
But wait, I'm going to revenge! Where is my digging wand? Let's make a surprise for these ugly bastards!

O:4
By the way, shopping time! Potions of mutations... lovely! Dagger with rN+, MR - oh, I'll clear all the swamp with rN+!
Yep, I'm that stupid. Really. Feel free to laugh at me.
By the way. I'm going to kick some elven asses now!

E:1
Food boutique. Nice. It's the fourth of this kind. But maybe jewelry? No?..

Roxanne, E:2
Ouch, it hurts! Let's learn a new spell, Demonic Horde... Have a nice day, Roxanne!

Agnes, E:3
Oh, this berserk is insanely fast and capable! It butchered my demonic horde in a couple of turns and running to get ME! Teleport!! And don't forget to poison her.

Rupert, E:3
No MPs, low HP, cornered, Rupert nearby. Staring at me. Don't know how tough is he... And actually don't want to check. Teleport.

Agnes, E:3
OK, seems this place is safe. Let's channel and summon. What? Agnes? HP-halved? Nice to meet you, have a nice lightning!

Donald, E:3
Hmm, where is that Rupert? He was here a couple hundreds turns ago... Donald, don't bother me, I'm searching for Rupert.

Rupert, E:3
Hi. And bye.

Norris, E:3
The 4th unique on this level. You're funny guy, Norris, but you forgot your gun, that's your mistake.

Mutations, E:4
Argh, by the way. I've got some mutagenic chunks and potions of mutations; I've never had any mutations in Crawl (nor in Rogue), so...
You possess an exceptional clarity of mind.
Your system is resistant to poisons.
Heh, sounds nice. Why those players don't want to eat mutagenic chunks?

Elven stronghold, E:5
Food-consuming because of intense channeling but not that hard. Poison clouds everywhere, stay in 1-tile-wide corridor and perform lightnings. When any elf summons a dangerously looking demon, get to skeletal shield, hide behind it and wait for a while. Easy.
Reward is good, unique amulet {Gourm +Inv rC++ MR}, staffs of all kinds - fire, cold, death, power, some rings - ice, fire, sustain abilities. Nice spells, including blink and orb of bloody mess.
But now I'm in panic: what to wield, what to put on?..
Let's try all of them in Dungeon.

Bailey, D:12
Flagged portal not far from a staircase. Let's try it.
... a lot of orcs, big door, a lot of orcs, big door, a lot of orcs...
OK, some potions and some enchanting scrolls. Fine.

Sonja, D:13
OOD, two turns. I'm not a gentleman.

Mutations, D:13
By the way, another pack of ugly things! I was lucky for the first time, maybe I can try once more?
You can control translocations.
Your muscles are strong, but stiff (Str +1, Dex -1).
Your muscles are strong (Str +1).
Hey, that's an uber-strong way to improve character! Why don't you use it?
... and the I lurked into Wiki and calculated approx. probability of this lucky set. Oh. Never further, I swear.

More mutations, D:14
Oh, two black potions... Let's try... Wow, gain strength! Now I have Str +4, Dex -1. Funny mage-bodybuilder.

the staircase to the Vaults was a mimic, D:15
Yep. It cheated me. No Vaults now, let's go deeper in Dungeon.

... I'm tired already.
So briefly.
D:... say, 12-14. Mottled dragon, luckily with corpse and skin.
D:16. A scroll of acquirement.
From D:17 to Swamp 1-5, very easy but boring, icy ending, no treasure, rune.
Then Shoals 1-5. Easy except for krakens. Rune.
Then Slime pits. Suddenly hard and very, very food-consuming. Zot-trapped for the first time, forced to fight an eldritch tentacle, really dangerous situation. 1k turns spent stair-dancing between Slime:5 and Slime:6. No good treasure except for a buckler and rune.
Then went upstairs on a shop spree. Book of warp (controlled blink), boots of running (who call them "boots of winning"?), unrandart mask of the Dragon.
Then more Dungeon, I remember Xtahua - see, run away, prepare a lot, two orbs and it is already dead. And Mara - it was really frustrating to see three of them along with my ghost casting offensive spells on me. Fortunately my orbs hit the correct one and I was quick enough to teleport from those inhospitable ghosts.


[tasonir]

As I was reading down the thread I was worried you were lumping slime in with swamp/snake/shoals. Slime is considerably harder than the other three, but I guess since you've already cleared it, I can rest a bit easier. Must be all that rogue experience

With haste and controlled blink you should be able to handle everything fairly well. Fire storm is the obvious next goal as already said, but you're pretty much set. After fire storm I'd probably go fairly heavily into fighting just because I like high health characters, although dodging/fighting mix is probably better.

You probably have the most absurdly good set of mutations possible. Pick up a crystal ball of energy for nearly-infinite mana. Use it around 1/2 mana, it will fail more often the lower your current mana is. You can use ctrl+f to search all items in the game to see if you've passed one. Also, use # to get character dumps in webtiles, although I suppose you figured that out already.

Going for the win vs going for extended and 15 runes is the only tough call here, if you haven't won yet it's tempting to just finish, but your character is very lucky so far and should be able to handle extended. Use the knowledge bots a LOT if you do go extended. Look up -all- the mobs you don't already know, imho

Edit: A bit more about the crystal ball: the crystal ball will restore a lot more mana than sif muna's ability. There are two downsides to it: confusion, and -int. Confusion will be 100% blocked by your innate clarity, and is the more serious downside. If you use innate clarity, reconsider using the ball. The int loss will hurt a little bit, but it is temporary, and will return. Carry a few restore abilities if you can, but it shouldn't happen often if you use the ball while at half mana with decent evocations. At least 10 evo, 15 is better (and it keeps improving all the way to 27). There's a wiki page with your % chances of failure here: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... _of_energy

It will be a somewhat significant investment of experience, but you haven't trained invocations up that much yet, so at least consider it. Sif muna can be enough if you'd rather dump more exp into dodging/fighting.

[Owen]

Concerning ball of energy - if I'll find one, I'll consider this way. Now since there are a lot of corpses around I have no problems using channeling, but it is written in Wiki that Hells and Pan are corpseless realms... I think I'll have to switch.

Another question - does ring of fire (staff of fire) improve irresistible part of Fire Storm's damage? And is it a good idea to use staff of energy along with Fire Storm to eliminate it's food cost or staff of fire is far more deadly?

Concerning development... Now I'm involved in Spellcasting+Conjurations+Fire magic (Fire storm fail rate with a ring of wizardry is 30% now - want to have it less than 5%).
After that I have several other goals:
1. Upgrade fighting+dodge, maybe armour+shield skills. I feel very fragile now... Getting through vault 1-7 was pretty easy, but trying to clear Vestibule was extremely hard. Swift+Fly+Repel+Haste - channel to max MP - dive - immediate controlled blink to another portal - orbs/fireballs - get back - rest - rinse and repeat. Spent a lot of time, food and nerves because of torments. Tried Cocytus since my best thing is fire, but it became too tough already on lvl 2, had to escape.
2. Upgrade my summoning skill to have several summons along with me in travels because I feel much more confident when I have somebody friendly stopping those nasty enemies. Dragons should be perfect.
3. Upgrade Lee's Rapid Deconstruction in order to be able to break stone or even metallic walls. Now earth magic is 0 and air magic is 9... quite a long way. But it would be nice to have.

Concerning 3 rune/15 runes... I decided to try 15 (or at least 5-7, lol).

[Patashu]

You're very lucky to get those particular mutations. Clarity and Teleport Control are incredibly good - the former because confusion shuts down almost everything you can do (it is especially awful as a mummy or in lich form, as you can't even quaff curing to fix it), and the latter because all your casts and evocations of blink are now semicontrolled (you pick a direction and the game tries to select a tile that way - note it won't put you over water/lava even if you're flying but it will put you in clouds and next to monsters) and all your teleports are controlled (you pick a location on the map to place yourself on, but if it is a cramped or impossible space it might make a random teleport instead, so pick away from walls!). You can get them in jewellery form, of course, but you've got them all day long

Another question - does ring of fire (staff of fire) improve irresistible part of Fire Storm's damage? And is it a good idea to use staff of energy along with Fire Storm to eliminate it's food cost or staff of fire is far more deadly?

The irresistable part of XXX Storm spells is a fixed percent - the more damage, the more of it is irresistable. (Concerning Fire Storm and Ice Storm - more of Ice Storm is irresistable, but Fire Storm is easier to target and creates friendly fire vortices that keep enemies distracted)
Use staff of energy if you are worried about hunger and an enhancer staff otherwise, imho. (Also, don't use staff of energy in 0.11 trunk, as it got nerfed badly and now halves hunger instead of removing it )

Concerning development... Now I'm involved in Spellcasting+Conjurations+Fire magic (Fire storm fail rate with a ring of wizardry is 30% now - want to have it less than 5%).
After that I have several other goals:
1. Upgrade fighting+dodge, maybe armour+shield skills. I feel very fragile now... Getting through vault 1-7 was pretty easy, but trying to clear Vestibule was extremely hard. Swift+Fly+Repel+Haste - channel to max MP - dive - immediate controlled blink to another portal - orbs/fireballs - get back - rest - rinse and repeat. Spent a lot of time, food and nerves because of torments. Tried Cocytus since my best thing is fire, but it became too tough already on lvl 2, had to escape.

Dodging helps a lot with survivability. While you might think 'EV is only going to protect me randomly, that's no good' the same is true for AC, and having around 30 EV makes you dodge an incredible number of attacks - 30 EV + Deflect Missiles is like invulnerability to missiles.

2. Upgrade my summoning skill to have several summons along with me in travels because I feel much more confident when I have somebody friendly stopping those nasty enemies. Dragons should be perfect.

Summon Dragon is insanely powerful, if you can get it. Summon Horrible Things is also good, especially due to its long duration, but wear a ring of sustain ability when casting it.

3. Upgrade Lee's Rapid Deconstruction in order to be able to break stone or even metallic walls. Now earth magic is 0 and air magic is 9... quite a long way. But it would be nice to have.

Shouldn't ever be needed. Maybe learn dig? Or if you're desperate, Orbs of Destruction can dig one tile at a time

[Owen]

I have Dig already, it's a handy spell. But I want to be sure that I'm able to check every rectangle in Vaults as well as break walls to Pan runes (it was written in Wiki that LRD/Shatter might be needed).

[Patashu]

I have Dig already, it's a handy spell. But I want to be sure that I'm able to check every rectangle in Vaults as well as break walls to Pan runes (it was written in Wiki that LRD/Shatter might be needed).

Metal rectangles in vaults I'm pretty sure contain nothing.
You can get the rune on every pandemonium level easily by 1) reading magic mapping 2) putting on control teleport 3) starting a teleport and ending it in the place you want to be in. Such strategies don't work in Hell, however, which is -cTele everywhere. In neither place, however, will you need LRD/Shatter to get a rune - it just makes it faster if you know where to do it.

[Owen]

I've found a crystal ball in V:8, now training Evocations along with mastering storm. And yes, now I see the fun of the Fire Storm: it kills everything by now in 2 (rarely 3) hits, distracts enemies, gives perfect space control. I have miscast rate about 13% - say, I miss 1 time in 8. V:8 was quite easy: two controlled blinks to the edge of the LOS, then channeling/storming. Quite hard to imagine how melee character can survive there.

Now I have 4 runes (decaying, barnacled, slimy, silver) and going to clear the rest of Dungeon including Zot:1-4, also aiming Abyss. And then - should I try Pan firstly or should I go to Hell? Which one? As I understood, I have to get weapon of distortion as an escape plan from Pan and a lot of food with me in case of a long road. Something else?

BTW, some more questions.
Does Fire Storm burn scrolls lying on the ground where it was cast? Does it burn scrolls in monster's inventory?

Is scroll of vulnerability valuable (for example, to make fire-immune unique more vulnerable to fire storm)?

Are there any wands recommended to have except wand of teleport? Like Disintegration or maybe elemental damage or smth else? No need of wand of digging since I know the corresponding spell.

I've got two scrolls of acquirement. What do you recommend to acquire for? I'm thinking about jewelry (rings if I'm lucky enough to get one) and armour (gloves/buckler hopefully). Where do I have better chances on acquiring a nice useful item?

Are decks of cards useful? I'm quite short in scrolls of identification and a bit afraid to evoke-identify them.

Does treasure trove appear every game?

Should I consider switching to any other god because I've got all the spells I need and I've got crystal ball as a source of mana? Which god is better in this case?

Sorry, I'm a noob, remember it =)

[onton]

AFAIK fire storm does burn scrolls, although not every time.
The scroll of vulnerability is great for polymorphing the royal jelly (you don't need it already ) and dissipating glow. For example, when you cblink the hell out from a pan vault while hasted you are pretty much guaranteed to get glowing, probably up to the stage where a glow discharge will mutate you. Reading a scroll of vulnerability dissipates a good chunk of it.
The best wands are: heal wounds, teleport and hasting. Hasting is less useful for a wizard, but the heal wounds one is a THE great one for every char.
As for acquirement there are mostly three ways people go: get gold for a nice shopping spree (not useful for you), wands hoping for healing or armour. In case you go armour, be sure you have all your body slots covered, this reduces the chance of getting some crap like +1 cap. Jewellery is somewhat risky.
About the endgame and postendgame: Abyss is easy and boring for you now, but you must do if you want the rune, so feel free to go there any moment and bring some food just in case. As for Pan, distortion weapon no longer helps (you will depart the abyss to the pan level you were on when banished). Bring some food in, but don't be paranoid, people (including myself) often scum pan for food. You definitely will find more than you spend in a long run.
Hells are nasty. I personally do Tartarus first, followed by Cocytus or Gehenna depending on my resisits and then Dis. Just dive all the way to the bottom and don't attempt to clear the hell levels - it's not worth it. You also must have a plan for countering the hell effects like rot and stat drain, so collecting restab potions in pan might be a wise move. In Pan and Hells you WILL also face torment and hellfire - be sure to have a plan for them. Having necromutation doesn't hurt either, just watch out for undead dispellers.
Decks of cards are only really useful with very high evocations and/or under Nemelex. Drawing from unid'd decks is very, very bad. You might get something like shuffle, which will ruin your char. But id'ing the top card of a legendary deck with high evo is cool if you have spare id scrolls.
I'd not switch gods if I were you. Sif Muna's wrath is harsh (you don't want your firestorm miscast, believe me) and she is pretty great for the whole game. Pump your invocations to increase the amount of MP channeled. Using a crystall ball when not low on mana is totally ok.

[Patashu]

V:8 was quite easy: two controlled blinks to the edge of the LOS, then channeling/storming. Quite hard to imagine how melee character can survive there.

You can blink (possibly using the scroll) or teleport past the vault guards when you enter and fight from the side using haste so they can't surround you, or you can lure them up the stairs group by group into a corridor where you can dispatch them with less danger. As a melee character by vaults:8 you'd want very good defenses and a powerful weapon so you can handle these kinds of strategies fine.

Now I have 4 runes (decaying, barnacled, slimy, silver) and going to clear the rest of Dungeon including Zot:1-4, also aiming Abyss. And then - should I try Pan firstly or should I go to Hell? Which one? As I understood, I have to get weapon of distortion as an escape plan from Pan and a lot of food with me in case of a long road. Something else?

Weapons of distortion are no longer good for escaping from pan - you just get put back in pan after you escape the abyss. (The ability to abyss yourself is useful in general, but unwielding distortion only does this about 25% of the time).
Pan is in general easier than hell.
Pan: Full of randomly generated levels that you can never reach again after you leave. 'Ordinary' pan levels have a bunch of scattered demons, loot and a vault containing a pandemonium lord and a chance for a demonic rune or exit from pandemonium. Pandemonium lords are typically fast, have random spells and random other characteristics (such as resistances). They might know no spells, or they might know ice storm, torment and summon greater demons. Some levels have 'a great lord of Pandemonium' - these are the levels that you can't leave until you have the rune, or you will miss the rune forever.
Hell: Full of levels with no loot, and if you take the upstairs you're placed right back in the vestibule. As you spend time in hell, 'hell effects' randomly occur - summoning monsters around you, slowing you, damaging you and various other things. As a result, you want to dive through hell as quickly as possible. Magic mapping is great for the 7th and deepest floor of each hell, as it is for levels of pandemonium. Hell also has -cTele everywhere, so controlled blinks and controlled teleports can't be used to 'ninja' runes in the same way they can in Pandemonium - the other reason why Hell is a lot harder.

BTW, some more questions.
Does Fire Storm burn scrolls lying on the ground where it was cast? Does it burn scrolls in monster's inventory?

Monsters never carry scrolls, and fire storm I believe burns scrolls on the ground (I know freezing clouds will shatter potions)

Is scroll of vulnerability valuable (for example, to make fire-immune unique more vulnerable to fire storm)?

Wrong kind of vulnerability - it halves MR. It's technically useful, but I never hear of anyone using them as a strategy. (A lot of powerful monsters have 200 or higher MR - so halving it still makes them all but impossible to afflict.)

Are there any wands recommended to have except wand of teleport? Like Disintegration or maybe elemental damage or smth else? No need of wand of digging since I know the corresponding spell.

Teleport, haste and heal wounds - the 'big three wands'. Haste is good even if you know the spell, as in an emergency you want to waste as few turns as possible - and it is possible to lose all your mana (such as by crystal ball misevocation and ghost moths).
Digging and disintegration are useful for terrain altering. Also, disintegration instantly destroys all statues except ice statues.
Fire, cold, lightning, draining and fireball are useful attack wands - but by this point you can channel as much mana as you need and everything will have too much HP to notice such feeble wand blasts. Probably not needed anymore.
Wand of random effects seems useless, but if you are in a safe place you can zap it at yourself until you get the 'heal wounds' effect - which will cure several points of rotted max hp IF you were at full hp when you did it.

I've got two scrolls of acquirement. What do you recommend to acquire for? I'm thinking about jewelry (rings if I'm lucky enough to get one) and armour (gloves/buckler hopefully). Where do I have better chances on acquiring a nice useful item?

I like to acquire wands if I haven't seen all three of the big three yet. If you are NOT a spell caster, there are some interesting choices - book (which will give you a skill manual) and staves (which will give you a rod - rod of destruction and rod of warding are very good). If you have identified all the common kinds of jewellery and are after a rarer type, jewellery is worth trying. I haven't tried armour enough to know how reliable it is.

Are decks of cards useful? I'm quite short in scrolls of identification and a bit afraid to evoke-identify them.

If you do not worship Nemelex Xobeh, decks of cards are typically more trouble than they're worth, with two exceptions - the Elixir card and the Alchemist card, which can be wielded and drawn for healing. (Technically other cards work as well, but getting the cards you want will be a lot more difficult as non-Nemelex.)

Does treasure trove appear every game?

I think the answer is no.

Should I consider switching to any other god because I've got all the spells I need and I've got crystal ball as a source of mana? Which god is better in this case?

Good gods for extended:
The Shining One - gives you HP and MP on evil kills (which will be almost everything now), lets you invoke a ball of cleansing flame around you, summon angels and some other things. However, forbids you from using necromancy, poison and draining as well as attacking enemies in certain states of impairment.
Makhleb - Gives you HP on kills, tolerates pretty much whatever you do unlike TSO. Can also summon 1s and 2s with greater servant, but with low invo they are likely to be summoned hostile instead of friendly.

Not as optimal but sometimes used:
Kikubaaqudgha - Makes torment hurt a lot less, gives an ability to drop corpses around you which can be raised into zombies or butchered and used for mp (with Sublimation of Blood) or nutrition, gifts the Necronomicon at ****** piety (contains Borgs', Necromutation, Death's Door and Haunt - all insanely good spells for different reasons if you can get them castable).
Vehumet - Gives you MP on kills, makes your conjurations and summonings have lower miscast, higher range and higher spell power, will gift the Book of Annihilations and Grand Grimoire if you haven't seen them yet.

However, Sif Muna wrath is awful. Until he is mollified, he gives all your spells +5% miscast chance and will randomly and periodically bring his wrath upon you:
-20% INT drain
-30% confusion
-20% divination miscast (int loss, possible mp loss and possible) confusion)
-20% mana drain (100 points)
-10% cancellation of all temporary magic (including levitation!)
The worst one is stopped by your innate clarity, but losing all your MP suddenly is not cool. If you want to abandon Sif Muna, you should strongly consider waiting out his wrath in some safe place, preferably with a ring of sustenance or necromutation on so you need less food. I think waiting out wrath takes a few ten thousand turns. You also won't be able to get MP back without a staff of channeling/Wucad Mu, as crystal balls of energy are only reliable when you already have some MP.

[Owen]

I have neither heal wounds nor haste wand. So you think acquiring for wand is the best choice? Hmm, ok.

And it seems to be too boring for me to wait 10 000 - 20 000 turns so I'm stuck with Sif Muna.

Must be all that rogue experience

Missed that. Yep, Rogue taught me how to be paranoid in survival. I can stop and think at any point of the game. It's OK for me to check game mechanics (tomorrow online since I don't have internet where I play) and try to calculate probabilities for turns outcome. And I do it not when the situation get tight but when I suppose it ever may get tight. It took a day to make one move - I've entered V:8, saw this circle of buddies, read about a couple dragons behind them... and went thinking till next evening =)

More, I have some illusions from Rogue. For example, I was afraid to use blink and other means of teleportation because of confusion caused by teleports in Rogue. In Rogue it is dangerous to be confused near a your-tier monster and it's deadly to be confused near a high-tier monster. So I've made some experiments (on a cleared level heavily populated by my minions) using blink and teleport scrolls, wand of teleport and corresponding spells. Everything went OK, so now I'm using this awesome spell - controlled blink.

That's why this game is soooo loooooong. I see that players finish off their games in 2-15 hours; that's not my case =)

... but these two games are very different. In Rogue one can't win only by skill, mind and knowledge. You need a good portion of luck to defeat some monsters (first H being lvl 1, C, T, P etc.) and find some items (two-handed, enough food/ring of slow digestion, a couple of escape items as well as some means of safe killing uber monsters etc) even when you are skilled and mindful. DCSS makes a step forward due to a lot of new possibilities thus giving a fair chance for the most games started. Fine, really.

[nago]

I'd acquire wands: as others have already said, wand of hasting is still useful for a wizard, and heal wounds is a must have.

I suggest to NOT abandon Sif Muna: is wrath is terrible for a spellcaster - and waiting until she is mollified is really boring.
Furthemore, Sif Muna is still powerful in extended game - her channeling is the safest and best way to gain mp in very dangerous situation - Crystal Ball of energy grants a lot more mp for every successful evocation, but they're never 100% safe to use (even with 27 evo!), so I tend not to use them in very bad moments, when I can't afford to lose all the mp left.

Oh, this time you're lucky - you have innate clarity - but, generally speaking NEVER NEVER NEVER use a crystal ball of energy in lich form without clarity: one common miscast effect is confusion, which is incurable while being a lich, and can be a easily death sentence in Pan/hell.
Ah, Sif Muna's wrath can cause mp+confusion (which is resistible, if I remember correctly) or just confusion, which IS NOT resistible, even with clarity.

edit: about tranlocations: in DCSS they're quite safe and the best way to escape from dangers. The only drawbacks are that Controlled Blink (the lv.7 spell) cause glow - with two or three consecutive cast you usually get enough contamination to be mutated - and that their miscast effects are among the most dangerous in the game (irresistible damage, being abyssed, and so on...). Oh, uncontrolled teleport may be consider dangerous too: in an unexplored level you can land in a situation worse the one you were escaping from. On the other hand, controlled teleport is an awesome way (and 99% safe) to get out from trouble

[Owen]

Still alive.
Passed through Dungeon, found a treasure trove, it asked for a shop item and was pretty useless, lots of potions, no gear. Passed till Zot:4, now went into Abyss. 4 runes so far, fire storm with 5% fail, training to get summon dragon and necromutation =)

Abyss is really boring. Met 3 or 4 portals out, no rune. Maybe I don't know how does it look like?

[MacChris]

It looks like any other rune, i thnk kinda reddish. AFAIK, the rune has a small chance to get generated on any new tile soo you'll just have to keep looking. The chances for it to be generated rise with the time youre in the Abyss. It could also be in a small vault/temple, my last abyssal rune was in one.

And yes, by the time you want to go to the abyss to get the rune its mostly just a boring search.

[Owen]

Didn't have an internet access for a while.
Now my char is quite stronger - hungerless Fire Storm and Summon Dragon (spell casting 27 + Int 42), ten runes out of 15 (all hells included as well as Tomb). Gehenna was tough, but not as strong as Spider's Nest. Tomb ate a plenty of potions due to curses and was very nervous but definetely easy with Haste, RoF, Fire Storm and Summon Dragon.

Going to Pan these days, wish me good luck =)

[Jabberwocky]

If you have hungerless summon dragon and fire storm pan will be nothing unless the RNG decides to screw you and put you out of a portal right into hellion island. Good luck.

[Patashu]

If you have hungerless summon dragon and fire storm pan will be nothing unless the RNG decides to screw you and put you out of a portal right into hellion island. Good luck.

Being put on hellion island is survivable if you have a controlled blink ready. Now, being put on hellion island after the level has been loaded... that's a different story.

[Owen]

Don't know yet what is it. Never met a hellion island =)
So having 3 Pan runes I've found an entrance to Ziggurat. It seems quite simple so far (14 levels), but I've met some moths who ate my mana =(
But I've got an eudemon blade (bad Daeva wanted to hit me with it) enchanted to +8,+8 or so, that's why I'm still alive. Silent spectres force me to summon some dragons - a couple of dozens actually - and let them do the job. No nice loot yet - I'm still fighting with two rings of fire, staff of fire, cloak of preservation.

[Galefury]

You should probably get out of there. The difficulty variance is huge, so while most levels will be pretty safe for you, some carry an very high risk of death. There are a few ways to deal with this (the best is probably Death's Door), but trying to finish a Zig is not something I would recommend to a new player that actually wants their character to live.

[Owen]

Zig beginning was very easy, my swarm of dragons was just a waste of time. I've blazed easily through until 23rd level where I've encountered more than 10 pandemonium lords. They went one-by-one... no... let's say, not more than three at a time, so it was easily manageble, but scary.

When I killed them all, I thought a lot: is it OK to dive deeper? I've decided to improve my preparations for any level summoning at least 15 dragons so they are able to handle the fight themselves without heavy firestorming. Pity that I can't manage the battle in the way like "squad 1, 4 dragons, go south and kill these two pesky demons; squad 2, 3 drags, defend north; squad 3, 8 dragons, hold your ground, suplly is on the way; squad 4 - reserve, keep surrounding me" =)

But what really scares me - what if I'll meet a dozen of silent spectres along with those pan lords?!

Anyway... Rogue tought me that player needs all the playing experience he can gain to master the game. And in Rogue most of the playing experience comes with death. Here I can get it yet without dying (perhaps), so I'll do my very best to explore everything till I win or till I die.

... and high levels of Zig are really challenging!

P.S.
BTW.
I'm now at 40+ Int (with items), not so high resistant (rF+ or so, rC+ or so, no rN or rN+, no rElec). I'm wielding staff of fire and wearing two rings of fire since strong offence is the best defence. My firestorm is at "all #s" power. Maybe it's better to switch some of the rings (or weapon) to resistances/ring of Vitality/smth else?

[Galefury]

Note that a full bar doesn't mean maximum spellpower, just that you have at least 150 spellpower. The maximum for firestorm is 200, which I think you have reached with 40 int and 3 enhancers. It's not really possible with "just" two enhancers. At 40 int with maxed spellcasting, fire and conjurations you should be at 180 spellpower with two enhancers, so the third enhancer will only give you about 10% extra damage to your firestorm. Probably still one of your better options. Ring of Vitality is great if you need the regen, but if you don't get damaged due to your dragon bodyguards it's not very useful. Same for resists, really. Swapping in resists once you know what kind of floor you got is often a good idea, but the worst floors tend to be unpredictable or unresistable.

The hardest floors are holy, mummy and panlord floors. Fire floors are also pretty hard for firestormers due to lots of orbs of fire, but summon dragon will probably deal with them well enough. Spider floors might also be quite hard due to ghost moths, but some types of dragons sense invis, so if you summon enough in advance you should probably be okay. Teleport wand and scrolls still work without MP and can get you away from the moths on late floors. Spider floors are probably much more nasty in version 0.11. Silent spectres are only on crypt floors, which dragons should tear through without effort. Without decent melee capabilities and defenses you might have to use a wand of teleport to get out of the silence if your dragons run out. Attack wands also still work and silent spectres are quite fragile, so try wand of fire first. Panlords can have silence, though, which is a lot more problematic, because demons are immune to it and you cant just kill them with a wand. They can also have summon eyeballs, storm spells, haste, naturally extremely high speed, and some other really nasty stuff. Most are not too bad, though.

Holy: your minions and resists cant protect you from daeva smiting and the devastating holy breath of pearl dragons. Try not to fight too many enemies at once and let your dragons deal with stuff out of sight. Firestorming while retreating is also really good, I think the fire clouds still last ridiculously long in 0.10.
Mummy: smiting, torment, abjuration, death curses, and lots of enemy summons. Think tomb times three. Lich form is a huge help here, preventing damage from torment and death curses. Try to let your summons do the fighting for you if you don't have lich form, but if too many summoners are on the screen at once it will probably not be possible. These floors are one of the reasons Necromutation is popular on zigrunners.
Panlord: you already had a late panlord floor, no need to explain. Note that the difficulty of these ranges from hard to nearly impossible. You may have gotten one of the easier ones. Congrats on surviving a Zig:23 Panlord floor!

Note that projected noise (possibly used with mapping, possibly after retreating a bit) can help bypass late zig floors or stop the huge wave of enemies from attacking all at once. Spamming summon dragon + channel in lich form and letting the dragons rampage around the level while you stand at the other end is probably also quite viable, but I haven't tried a zig with summon dragon yet. Teleport can be useful if you get in trouble on late zig floors because they are huge. Anyway, if you beat Zig:23 already there are just 4 more levels left, and most likely they will be pretty easy. But maybe not.

[nago]

Galefury has described quite exhaustively Ziggurats; I'd make only one correction: I had at least one time a mixed-themed floor, where there were silent specters, liches and Pan Lords at same times (so it was like abyss-themed like, only tenfold nastier). In this case you case, you have to maneuver carefully to stay outside silence range as much as possible, killing specters as fast as possible.

Oh, for Mummies' floors, I'll stress one more time Galefury's advices: take it slow, and if not in Lich-form, DON'T attack many mummies with firestorm at once, as their death-curse could easily kill you in one turn.

Another dangerous (or actually, tedious) zig's floor is deep dwarves one: they aren't really strong, either alone or in group, but many of them can use Yredelemnul's Injury Mirror, which reflect the damage they suffer to YOU.
Hit one or two with firestorm and considering DE's low hp, you'll probably die in the same turn. Fortunately, with Summon Dragons you should be able to clear fast those floors.
Anyway, if you want to speed up things with firestorm, a message appears when a deep dwarf activates the ability - something ending like "is bathed in a unholy energy". I'm not sure, but probably DD with Injury Mirror active should be also described in the list of all the visible creatures (visible with ctrl-x). Just not attack those enemies and you should be fine.

[Galefury]

That mixed theme floor may have been an abyss floor. They get a single panlord IIRC, and can spawn a great variety of monsters. They are almost always really easy by the time you can do deep zig though, so I forgot about them.

Also I'm not sure if Tar floors can spawn silent spectres, but they might.

I usually just storm through DD floors, especially with Makhleb. I prefer Tornado to Fire Storm for this. In my experience waiting around and avoiding the mirroring enemies makes me take more damage in the end than just killing everything as fast as I can. Not sure how well this works with Sif. I think my last zigrunner used Veh and deep DD floors were fine. Dragons will probably take care of them decently well, without having to worry about injury mirror.

[nago]

If you storm as you as you notice it's a DD floor, especially if keeping most foes outside LOS (personally, I find this easier with Firestorm and Vehumet), they aren't *so* bad. But if some dwarves have the time to invoke Injury Mirror... well you're quite fucked up, and you need to wait the effect wear off - or to risk attacking them.

Personally, DD's floor are one one the main reason I usually enter in Zigs with Death's Door memorized: bringing havoc to an entire clan of mad evil fellows , while an Evil God trying uselessly to defend them is really funny

[cerebovssquire]

I read in some other thread that summon damage will be reflected to you as well.

[crate]

Fire storming a dd floor is pretty risky since the dwarves will turn on pain mirror if they can see your fire vortices. Ice storming a dd floor is pretty safe though.

[Owen]

So...

The last levels of Zig were easy, dragon one and undead one. Twenty dragons were enough for Zig:27 to immolate everything even without firestorm =) I've met no DD levels as well as no holy levels. I've got one mummy level among 20-s, but it was quite easy since my dragons held most of the curses.

Then I returned to Pan, made a short job of Cerebov, fully explored a couple of Pan levels in search of the 5th rune, found a way out and easily cleared Zot:5. Those orb guardians are dying after 1 FS, nothing to be afraid of.

Than returning to D:1 with orb (people say that orb is glowing with mutagenic glow, but I acquired no mutations) and winning.

So that's my first win in DCSS, already with 15 runes and Ziggurat. I'll post a dump tomorrow or so.

Thanks a lot to everybody who posted here and gave me advices, it was really important for keeping my character alive!

[Owen]

Now went to MiFi of Okawaru. Already found a +5,+6 demon trident of flaming in Volcano =) Hope to make 3-runes easily... But it seems impossible to me to win Zig with melee character no matter how strong he is.

[Galefury]

Congrats on your first win! People have finished Zigs with melee characters, but they also cast some spells.

Edit: just came across a nice example.

[BlackSheep]

Than returning to D:1 with orb (people say that orb is glowing with mutagenic glow, but I acquired no mutations) and winning.

The orb does contribute some contamination, but at a rate slower than you naturally dissipate it. It effectively halves the rate that you shed glow.

[Owen]

In the very beginning I've asked about armour.
Here is an answer:

On a deep elf, MDA is usually better than PDA, and almost certainly better before the last postgame. PDA will wreck your spell success rates for a long time, and deep elves don't have a particularly good armour apt to reduce that penalty.

Now I guess that maybe PDA was better for both Pan and Zig because it grants rN+ as well as better AC, GDR than MDA does; and I was able to put quite a lot of exp into any desired skill. How high Armour class should I have to wear PDA without big penalties to fire storm and summon dragon? How is it possible to calculate it?

[Galefury]

The penalty from fire, ice and pearl dragon armor is somewhat noticeable on level 9 spells even at maxed armor skill and spell skills. It's certainly viable if you have a huge amount of exp to spare, but really does take a lot of exp. I don't feel like going into the details of armor casting penalties because they are complicated and I would have to look them up, but this spreadsheet has most of the information you want. Note that the spellcasting penalty tabs assume armor or shield respectively are the only source of casting penalty. The armor tab assumes you are not wearing a shield, or its penalty is completely compensated by shield skill (see tab 2), the shield casting penalty tab assumes you are wearing a robe. Also note that there is a stepdown of casting success at low failure rates (starting at 50% if I recall correctly), so a penalty of 10 will usually not mean an additional 10% failure rate. Just 1% extra failure can be pretty bad, though.

[cerebovssquire]

Congrats on your first win! People have finished Zigs with melee characters, but they also cast some spells.

Edit: just came across a nice example.

No, most people cast spells. I have definitely done a spellless zig myself (marquisronove alt account, HOFi), and I'm not sure if others have. This was done with a lot of Cleansing Flame, 89 SH and tons of slaying by the way.

  Code:

You visited 4 Ziggurats (completing 1), and saw 87 of their levels.

I reached level 27 in another one, but I was banished by a draconian. HO MR sucks.

Here it is: http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.10/ma ... 154300.txt

  Code:

Res.Fire  : + + +   See Invis. : +    a - +9 Blessed Scourge
Res.Cold  : + . .   Warding    : . .  P - +12 gold dragon armour
Life Prot.: + + +   Conserve   : +    O - +7 large shield "Wesedgh" {god gift, rPois
Res.Acid. : + . .   Res.Corr.  : +    j - +2 helmet of the Barnacle {god gift, rF+ D
Res.Poison: +       Clarity    : .    c - +2 cloak {rCorr, Cons}
Res.Elec. : .       Spirit.Shd : .    X - +2 pair of fencer's gloves {EV+3 Dex+3 Acc
Sust.Abil.: . .     Stasis     : .    t - +2 pair of orc boots {run} {god gift}
Res.Mut.  : +       Ctrl.Telep.: x    o - cursed amulet "Cis Anu" {rMut rF+ Dam+6}
Res.Rott. : .       Levitation : .    K - ring "Ihiettaghe" {rPois Int+2 Dam+6}
Saprovore : + . .   Ctrl.Flight: .    M - cursed +0,+9 ring of slaying

beautiful stuff

[Owen]

How do you think, are
+2 pair of fencer's gloves
better than
the +1 pair of gloves of Distant Worlds (worn) {+Blink rElec rC++ Str+2 Dex+2}
?