The Tavern

So, my long-term goal with Crawl is to ascend every species (10 down so far). I'm working on Deep Dwarf, and I've gotta admit, I'm not a big fan of this no-regen thing, although I think it's improving my play. I've gotten to a similar point in the game with a past DDEE and a DDNe (the latter had a heartbreaking death to a couple of acid blobs inside a Slime treasure vault *after* wasting TRJ and getting the third rune) , and I'd really like this one to make it out.




Some notes:

Haven't generated Iron Shot or Bolt of Magma. Without intermediate Earth magic, I'm relying mostly on melee/crossbow with some support from Makhleb abilities and LRD in certain circumstances. Most of the time I throw up stoneskin, statue form, and haste, and clobber monsters, if I'm unable to pick them off with my crossbow before they close in. No Blink either, which is quite annoying, especially since I'm often lumbering around as a statue. Irradiate serves as an aid in case of getting surrounded.

I know I have a ton of exp in shields and am dumping more, but the extra defenses of the large shield and esp. the rF are very valuable to me and I need to still be able to cast.

Should I have been statting up Dex more? Or even Str for armor? I usually felt like the int would be more useful in keeping my spellcasting viable while I upgraded armor and shields.

So I'm welcoming all suggestions on what direction to take next. Shatter is available, but would require quite a bit more exp, and there's not a lot of easy exp left. Would it be worth it to swap out that +4 EV ring for +3 slaying, or wizardry to offset the shield penalty? I feel like there's a big difference between low teens and high teens when it comes to EV.

Depths:5, Vaults:5, and Slime are the next options. Possibly Elf:3 to loot up some more. All of those kind of worry me.

why did you learn statue form on this character
and yes, more dex = more good

At the time I learned Statue, I had very few options to gain some breathing room if something closed into melee range. So it gave me added durability against many monsters that otherwise would have been burning many healing wand charges so early and often. I don't have a problem with using the wand, but since I had the spell schools already, it seemed like a good option to have on hand, and it's been very helpful in bludgeoning to death many foes. If I stack Statue Form, Stoneskin, and Haste, I'm a much more durable, much harder hitting version of myself, and moving at normal speed.

Since posting, I've gone ahead and cleared out Elf, Depths and Vaults and upgraded some gear, and cleared out the Vestibule. I entered Zot and was greeted by one of the nastiest entrance vaults I've ever seen, with several dragons, guardian(?) mummies, tentacled monstrosities, etc., surrounding the entrance. I've always found branch entrances can be as tough as branch exits because of the chokepoint. There is no approaching from another staircase, you have to do all the luring on-level. Depths:1 and Zot:1 been trouble for me in many games. I tele-hopped just around the corner where I found a lava pit and three(!) Orbs of Fire, then teleported again, luckily arriving at a fortunately placed hallway at the extreme corner of the map. There I munched the corpses of a few errant moths of wrath and felt like a true interloper in Zot. I pulled away and killed many monsters and finally thought I had the entrance clear, but by the time I reached it to leave, many more terrifying monsters had shown themselves, and it really looks no more inviting than it did the first time.

I have gotten dodgier, and rounded out many of my skills. The orbs buzzing around the entrance bother me, though. If I had a pip more of rF, I think I could take them down one by one in melee with statue+SS+haste, but with just rF+1, they will incinerate me. The only other source of rF in the game is a randart chainmail that cuts my AC, EV, and toasts my spells.

So, went ahead and ascended this one. The Orbs of Fire turned out to be not a big deal as long as I stacked all my buffs and took them on solo, I could take them down pretty easily in melee. Also, I used exactly all of the recharge scrolls that appeared in the game, without needing to dip into mana for recharges, which I find oddly satisfying. This character was quite fun and powerful near the end, but I don't anticipate playing DD again anytime soon.