I started making terrible Crawl LPs

[ZoFy]

What is up Tavern, how is it crawling? I'm ZoFy aka YukkuriChei on YouTube, and welcome to my official thread!

Earlier i was making videos with my most interesting crawling experiences being shown, but got to the conclusion that such videos are pretty difficult to produce. First of all, those interesting moments can pop up out of nowhere while i'm not recording. Secondly, even if i predict something awesome to happen, it's too hard to break my fun, stop playing and start recording. Thirdly, those vids require a fair amount of editing per minute of material which i'm just too lazy to do. And finally, i'm being too perfectionist about this, which hurts me more than benefits.

That's basically why i decided to move from making rare montage videos to more frequent LPs. This way i can have all the possible cool fragments of gameplay captured (which will be useful to make a montage later on) and teach less experienced players something. There's a certain lack of good successful LPs on CrawlTube, and i'm gonna try to fill it.

Things you should expect from me:
— showing stuff which didn't get screen time on the CrawlTube yet, this includes relatively recent additions to trunk;
— trying pretty hard to win: losing isn't anything special in this game, so why should i show it?
— trying for Vow of Courage III (getting 4 runes before entering D:14) if possible: i just like this challenge so much that i use it as my own analogue of crate_crawl;
— being heavily spoiled and looking up things i'm not sure about: a corollary to the previous point;
— pretty weak commentaries: right now they are just at a level of being a bit better then no commentary; this should improve with practice, but now i'm only at the square one;
— slow gameplay: which word out of "Yukkuri" (ゆっくり, Japanese for "slowly") and "Chei" do you not understand?
— more melee/ranged based characters than blaster-casters: playing the latter will slow me down even more;
— occasional retarded references to Touhou, Pokemon, some anime and other stuff nobody cares about.
Things you shouldn't expect:
— well-known newbie combos like MiFi, SpEn and DEFE (outside of special challenges): that's what most of the CrawlTubers play anyways;
— trying things blindly (that's what i have a ton of test characters for);
— 100% following the wisdom of Tavern: sometimes i'll do things like wearing GDA or worshiping Chei which usually switch our counselors and other good players into preaching or trolling mode (i'll try to make remarks like "do not try this at home, certified good players™ do not approve" though);
— characters of Xom, Nemelex, Elyvilon, most likely Yredelemnul, Beogh and Fedhas, also summoners: not my playstyle;
— firestorming necromutating liches of Vehumet: a certain musical bounty hunter covered them far and wide;
— fun (in Xomish understanding of this word at least).

Okay, with all that being said, i'm ready to present the pilot episode of my first LP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw_cxhjmYhE In this episode i started as a KoAK and got pretty lucky before reaching the Temple (i swear to all the Crawl pantheon, it was my first try to record, i didn't startscum for this!). My intention with this LP is to showcase Lugonu and some stabber tricks you do not see every day.
Thanks for your attention, i'm all ears to your feedback. And no, i won't announce every episode here, this would be too much of a spam. Expect uploads from once to thrice a week, i guess.

[ZoFy]

Believe it or not, this project is actually back! And, apparently, i'm announcing every single episode of it. The second one was recorded long time ago, but wasn't uploaded because... reasons and excuses. But now it's out, "please enjoy it if you can" ©: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb64BaQR7hY I'm sincerely hoping to make the series at least weekly.

[ZoFy]

The biannual let's play is back once again, reaching the new levels of terribleness. This time around i'm bringing some gameplay from July 2014 and trying to announce the significant changes made into the game back then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGBnMPnk8PA The future of this project is unclear because i'm out of touch with Crawl right now and lost a lot of my player skill.

I also have a question: how do slaying bonuses affect blowguns? Judging by some fsim testing i did there's barely any influence at all, yet in that video i got surprised by the power of my +0 blowgun multiple times.

[tasonir]

I'm impressed with your sticking to the biannual release schedule, keep it up As far as I know, slaying bonuses for needles will just improve the accuracy, needles do not deal damage, and so that should be unaffected by the damage bonus. Blowguns in general are quite strong against anything that's vulnerable to the type of needle you're using.

[Blomdor]

Indeed, keep it up. I love watching LPs of games and Crawl is no exception.

I've killed far OoD deep and iron trolls among other remarkably dangerous things with blowguns. They are just extremely useful things to have. Curare in particular is something I strive to have on me at all times, at least outside of the parts of extended that are absolutely full of things that are immune to it.

[ZoFy]

Thanks for your kind replies. Sure, i knew blowguns were very good and used them with any non-felid character. The LP one also did a lot of work with one. But a single needle bringing an orc warrior down to 35% from full HP just shifted my expectations. Maybe it's just the lack of recent practice, were those always that strong?

[GlassGo]

Well, I don't know about curare, but in my last 15-rune run, I used curare against Ereshkigal (spelling) - it didn't work, but paralizing - wow, she was stopped from 1 needle (+9 blowgun). So it can be used against single strong enemy.

[XuaXua]

Maybe it's just the lack of recent practice, were those always that strong?

I've always believed so. This is why needles mulch easily.

[tasonir]

Poison needles are great in the early game, and I usually carry a few for things like goliath beetles, although they can be used on pretty much anything at that point (orc warriors/knights, etc). The really powerful ones are usually curare and paralysis, curare because it can slow anything non-poison resistant, as well as very high damage. Trivializes any unique who doesn't resist it. I haven't done as much with frenzy/paralysis personally, but as far as I know needle paralysis is the only way to incapacitate high level demons, and it works on literally every monster in the game. Higher HD have a better chance to resist, so if you're going needle stabber you want very high throwing (20+) if you're going to try to make that work in extended, as skill raises your chance. Not a build I've done personally but it does sound interesting. Eventually, as strong as they are, I usually end up dropping the blowgun just for inventory space, because I'm lame like that.

[mechanicalmaniac]

I'm MechanicalManiac, AKA Madmachine. Have a sub.

By the way, what is your first language?

[zrn]

I find your crawl videos quite entertaining and relaxing. Keep up the good (biannual) work!

[ZoFy]

I haven't done as much with frenzy/paralysis personally, but as far as I know needle paralysis is the only way to incapacitate high level demons, and it works on literally every monster in the game. Higher HD have a better chance to resist, so if you're going needle stabber you want very high throwing (20+) if you're going to try to make that work in extended, as skill raises your chance. Not a build I've done personally but it does sound interesting. Eventually, as strong as they are, I usually end up dropping the blowgun just for inventory space, because I'm lame like that.

I actually played net/needle stabbers several times and used to recommend the build to all the SpEn players on this board complaining about stabbing being unviable late game. It's definitely more fun than the branching into Iron Shot which was considered the standard strategy, but reliant on the amount of special missiles you get throughout the game. Tool-assisted stabbing also wouldn't work on some non-living foes like electric golems and orbs of fire but those are the minority.

By the way, what is your first language?

Russian.