CIP - DESu speedrun

[asdu]

I have this promising dude who just got the 2nd rune in 17k turns, but I very much have no idea what I'm doing, having hardly ever played "pure summoners", let alone speedrun them. I feel stupid worrying about a speedrun character (that I expect to splat soon due to bad play anyway), but since I get this far so rarely on this type of character I'm willing to play a bit more slowly in the interest of survival, and at least any tips will serve as future reference for other attempts.

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17-a0-1663-gb806841 (console) character file.

asdu the Eclecticist (Deep Elf Summoner)           Turns: 17335, Time: 03:59:52

Health: 82/82      AC: 19    Str:  5    XL:     14   Next: 64%
Magic:  33/39      EV: 18    Int: 29    God:    Sif Muna [******]
Gold:   453        SH:  6    Dex: 16    Spells: 11 memorised, 8 levels left

rFire  . . .     SeeInvis +     w - +1 trident (protect)
rCold  + + .     Clarity  .     t - +0 leather armour of Valour {rPois rC+ Regen+}
rNeg   + . .     SustAt   .     i - +1 buckler {AC+3}
rPois  +         Gourm    +     I - +2 helmet of Liberty {MR++ Dex-3 SInv Stlth+}
rElec  .         Spirit   .     K - +1 cloak
rCorr  .         Warding  .     F - +1 pair of gloves
rMut   .         Stasis   .     P - +0 pair of boots of the Other World {rN+ Slay+3}
MR     +++++                    S - amulet of Vehumet's Supremacy {Gourm rC+ MR+}
Stlth  ++++......               A - ring of the Mage {Wiz MR++ Int+3}
                                C - +4 ring of dexterity

@: repel missiles, almost entirely resistant to hostile enchantments, stealthy
A: high mp 1
a: Channel Energy, Forget Spell, Renounce Religion
}: 2/15 runes: barnacled, gossamer


You are on level 2 of the Shoals.
You worship Sif Muna.
Sif Muna is exalted by your worship.
You are not hungry.

You have visited 6 branches of the dungeon, and seen 35 of its levels.
You have also visited: Labyrinth and Volcano.

You have collected 2764 gold pieces.
You have spent 2311 gold pieces at shops.

Inventory:

Hand weapons
 e - a +0 blowgun
 w - a +1 trident of protection (weapon)
 X - a +1 demon trident of venom
Missiles
 a - 4 throwing nets (quivered)
 U - 9 curare-tipped needles
Armour
 i - a +1 buckler of protection (worn)
 t - the +0 leather armour of Valour (worn) {rPois rC+ Regen+}
   (You found it on level 3 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   
   It protects you from cold.
   It protects you from poison.
   It increases your rate of regeneration.
 F - a +1 pair of gloves (worn)
 I - the +2 helmet of Liberty (worn) {MR++ Dex-3 SInv Stlth+}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 4 of the Orcish Mines)   
   
   It affects your dexterity (-3).
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
   It lets you see invisible.
   It makes you more stealthy.
 K - a +1 cloak (worn)
 P - the +0 pair of boots of the Other World (worn) {rN+ Slay+3}
   (You found it on level 6 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   
   It affects your accuracy and damage with ranged weapons and melee attacks
   (+3).
   It protects you from negative energy.
Magical staves
 h - an uncursed staff of air
Rods
 u - a +5 rod of clouds (13/13)
   (You found it in a labyrinth)
 v - a +3 rod of destruction (9/9)
   (You found it in a labyrinth)
Jewellery
 l - an uncursed ring of ice
 y - a +4 ring of slaying
 z - an uncursed amulet of resist mutation
 A - the ring of the Mage (right hand) {Wiz MR++ Int+3}
   (You found it in a labyrinth)   
   
   [ring of wizardry]
   
   It improves your spell success rate.
   It affects your intelligence (+3).
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
 C - a +4 ring of dexterity (left hand)
 Q - the ring of Cuer {Fire rPois Dex+2}
   (You found it on level 12 of the Dungeon)   
   
   [ring of fire]
   
   It enhances your fire magic, and weakens your ice magic.
   It affects your dexterity (+2).
   It protects you from fire.
   It makes you vulnerable to cold.
   It protects you from poison.
 S - the amulet of Vehumet's Supremacy (around neck) {Gourm rC+ MR+}
   (You found it on level 4 of the Shoals)   
   
   [amulet of the gourmand]
   
   It allows you to eat raw meat even when not hungry.
   It protects you from cold.
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
Magical devices
 m - a wand of fireball {zapped: 2}
 r - a wand of confusion
 x - a wand of disintegration
Scrolls
 c - a scroll of enchant weapon
 o - a scroll of blinking
 p - 7 scrolls of remove curse
 q - 3 scrolls of identify
 s - 4 scrolls of fear
 E - a scroll of enchant armour
 N - 2 scrolls of magic mapping
 V - 7 scrolls of teleportation
 W - 3 scrolls of recharging
Potions
 d - a potion of cancellation
 f - 2 potions of agility
 k - a potion of lignification
 n - a potion of haste
 D - 3 potions of resistance
 G - 3 potions of magic
 J - 2 potions of berserk rage
 L - 6 potions of flight
 O - 4 potions of brilliance
 R - 4 potions of heal wounds
 Z - 3 potions of curing
Books
 H - Sif Muna's Incunabulum of Good Intentions
   (Sif Muna gifted it to you on level 4 of the Shoals)   
   
    Spells                             Type                      Level
    a - Summon Ice Beast             Ice/Summoning                 4
    b - Summon Demon                 Summoning                     5
    c - Summon Horrible Things       Summoning                     8
Miscellaneous
 T - a sack of spiders
Comestibles
 b - 4 fruits
 g - 13 bread rations
 B - 2 meat rations
 M - a slice of pizza


   Skills:
 - Level 7.0 Fighting
 + Level 11.9 Dodging
 - Level 4.2 Stealth
 - Level 2.7 Shields
 * Level 15.9 Spellcasting
 - Level 8.5 Charms
 + Level 14.7 Summonings
 - Level 3.7 Translocations
 - Level 3.1 Ice Magic
 - Level 1.3 Air Magic
 + Level 10.7 Invocations
 - Level 3.4 Evocations


You have 8 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Passage of Golubria   Tloc           N/A          4%          4    None
c - Call Canine Familiar  Summ           #######.     1%          3    None
d - Summon Mana Viper     Hex/Summ       ######..     3%          5    None
e - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          1%          2    None
f - Summon Ice Beast      Ice/Summ       ######..     1%          4    None
p - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ######       1%          2    None
q - Apportation           Tloc           #####.....   1%          1    None
s - Summon Lightning Spi  Summ/Air       ######..     1%          4    None
x - Summon Hydra          Summ           #######...   4%          7    #####..
y - Ozocubu's Armour      Chrm/Ice       ######..     1%          3    None
z - Summon Butterflies    Summ           #######.     0%          1    None


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (14/15)            Temple (1/1) D:4            Lair (8/8) D:9
 Shoals (4/4) Lair:4       Spider (4/4) Lair:5        Slime (0/6) Lair:8
    Orc (4/4) D:12            Elf (0/3) Orc:4       
Vaults: D:13-14     

Altars:
Ashenzari
Cheibriados
Dithmenos
Elyvilon
Gozag
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Nemelex Xobeh
Okawaru
Qazlal
Ru
Sif Muna
Trog
Vehumet
Xom
Yredelemnul
Zin
The Shining One
Beogh

Shops:
D:5 :   D:8 ?[*   D:10 %   D:12 =   Orc:4 *[*?   Shoals:1 ==!

Annotations:
D:9 Erolcha
Lair:5 Rupert
Spider:2 PeterLawrence's ghost, mighty GrFi


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You have an increased reservoir of magic (+10% MP).



What spells I should aim for? Obviously I want summon XXX and dragon's call (I have both available), shadow creatures and aura of abjuration. I guess recall is needed too. Do I want malign gateway (literally never used, but I hear it's good)? Should I keep summon hydra in the long run? The short duration makes it way too mp intensive, also I don't know how well its damage will scale. Is mana viper useful? I haven't really seen spellcasters to use it on yet, but I don't know how well they can be directed to the right target in bigger fights amidst all the summon spam. I'm sure it's great if I catch a lich 1v1, but I feel like I'll be hurting for slots (still don't have haste, necromutation, regeneration, R/DMsl, controlled blink, etc). What about haunt? I don't feel like I want it even though I'll have to train necromancy eventually for necromutation.

I'm probably not going to do slime yet, because an acid blob or two could easily snipe my 82 hp ass from beond my wall of meatshields, and I don't even know what it takes to kill TRJ with summons (is XXX enough?).
Is elf doable with no abjuration? Speaking of which, how does monster abjuration works? IIRC, in older versions enemy summoners (at least the high level ones) could cast mass abjuration. Has that been replaced by aura of abjuration or something else? Are summoners a pain to fight for a summoner? Haven't seen anything abjure my summons yet, but I haven't seen many summoners either.
I'm also terrified of V:5, especially titans who can airstrike me AND bolt me though summons. Pls help.
Also any general tips regarding summoners, speedruns or both are greatly appreciated, especially anything related to summoning tactics.

[gammafunk]

Monster summoners still have a chance of casting Mass Abjure each time they would summon. Fighting most summoners is pretty easy if you have mass abjure and sif because you can easily outsummon them, although you want to keep in mind that any summoning monster can abjure your summons. An ancient lich on V:5 is pretty good at making all your X disappear.

I've gotten a DeSu to the barnacled rune in 4.8k turns (best turncount for getting a rune of any mage that didn't involve Lucy or Jiyva). After that I got silver at 8.6k, serpentine at 12.1k (some bad luck on that one). That run ended in Slime due to a mix of some unfortunate TRJ luck and some bad moves, but it was not exactly where I wanted to be turncount-wise either.

Ultimately your strategy it depends on how low of a turncount you're aiming for with your summoner (I shoot for the Su score class or DE species scores, so 25-27k for 15 runes). If you want a 15-rune win at something like 50k, you have a lot more time to burn getting XP. For <30K wins you have to be much more aggressive, and it's probably a bad idea to ever do elf, which is quite time consuming (I'd instead spend a bit more time on V:5 if you need loot).

You'll will want shadow creatures and menagerie through most of the game. Malign is a lot of spell levels and hard to get castable due to the Translocations school. While it's nice situationally, dragon's call + XXX and sometimes shadow creatures or menag later on is generally all you need offensively. Hydra and mana viper are certainly nice while you're waiting to get Menagerie and shadow creatures, and Summon Greater Demon is excellent when you have Abjuration (just be careful to have at least 6mp remaining so you can cast it after summoning a hostile demon. But eventually I'm only using Dragon's call, XXX, Menag. and Shadow C. Then can use your remaining spell levels for necromutation, haste, and all the lower-level spells you need, If you have levels Borg's or Ddoor are very nice in places like Tomb.

My route is Lair->Water Branch->Vaults->Poison Branch->Slime->Tomb (if necromute is available)->Hell+Pan. Spider and Snake are pretty bad and slow for a summoner without the best spells, even more so without rpois, so I don't do them first and save them for after vaults, when I have dcall and/or XXX. Vaults:5 is probably the most difficult level of the run, since there is a lot of rng and no margin for error. Having rElec helps tremendously with avoiding death to Titans (lightning bolts hit you through your summons very easily, and they have airstrike). You want at least rF+ and rC+, and rN+ is also very good to have. Slime is not too bad in comparison; rCorr is nice but not necessary, and TRJ fight is the only notable thing, but you should have both XXX and dcall by now. I find it best to fight it relatively in the open or with it just coming out of the center vault when you're hasted and engorged, preferably with some Xs already summoned. Then you cast dragon's call, and keep filling in Xs as necessary. Using XXX alone is difficult, but doable; having a magic pot and another haste pot is nice, and in some cases you can finish it of with some wand shots or possibly use immolation (careful about turning any of your summoned meatshields into hostiles).

[archaeo]

I only watch speedrunners, but I'll chime in to point out that gammafunk is literally the only player who has seriously tried speedrunning **Su since they were nerfed. His advice is all really good.

The only thing missing is a reminder to play 0.16 if you want to compete against old top scores, as the removal of cTele adds several thousand turns to the game. It's no big deal if you prefer Trunk, as I bet lots of people will be interested to see what top scores look like with that change, but sub-30k times are going to require some very lucky RNG.

[asdu]

Very useful info, much appreciated.

I'm obviously not aiming for anything like sub 30k (I couldn't anyway at this point), and in any case runs that ridiculously fast depend too much on the rng to even seriously consider. I wouldn't have even though it was possible to achieve those turncounts with a summoner in newer versions, but then you getting a rune in 4.8k turns also sounds incredible to me (with DESu or anything else for that matter).
Still, 50k turns, which looks somewhat within the realm of possibility would be (surprisingly, to me) the DESu high score. Fun fact: according to Sequell no DESu^sif 15 rune games were won past 0.11. I doubt I'll break that streak.

I only watch speedrunners, but I'll chime in to point out that gammafunk is literally the only player who has seriously tried speedrunning **Su since they were nerfed.

You can catch me failing on cxc sometime in the future.

The only thing missing is a reminder to play 0.16 if you want to compete against old top scores, as the removal of cTele adds several thousand turns to the game. It's no big deal if you prefer Trunk, as I bet lots of people will be interested to see what top scores look like with that change, but sub-30k times are going to require some very lucky RNG.

Yeah, like I said I don't have big ambitions to break high scores or anything, and shadow traps keep me from enjoying 0.16 anyway. I do miss cTele though :(

[archaeo]

50k seems like a good and fun goal, good luck asdu!

Fun fact: according to Sequell no DESu^sif 15 rune games were won past 0.11.

lol gamma

[bel]

I tried a few MfSu (3 rune) speedruns. The best I got was about 30kish turns on Zot:5 and died there (I am not a good speedrunner). I usually went with Ash, though that might not have been ideal.

I usually do Orc, then Lair, the two normal runes, then slime/Abyss ( I tried doing Vaults:5 a couple of times, but I always get killed there.), then Depths then Zot. i usually only dip into elf, because often it takes a lot of turns. I usually just dip enough to read some mapping to see if there are shops generated.

[gammafunk]

OP, if you're curious about what's been done speedrun-wise as summoners for 15-rune speedruns since the summons nerf in 0.10-a/0.11, here's are some:

A summoner from 0.12 that started IE since that was a stronger start overall compared to Su. Quit on D:1 with the Orb because it just missed having the turns necessary to get HE high score (which was about 49k). In 0.12 the new summons spells didn't exist, but summons were uncapped. That and contam chunks made the game very different, but XXX was basically all you need in the end game (and rings of sustain abilities):

  Code:

<gammafunk> !hs * place=d:1 x=urune,cv
<Sequell> 1226969. [urune=15;cv=0.12] gammafunk the Demonologist (L27 HEIE of Sif Muna), quit the game on D:1 on 2014-02-22 20:26:26, with 941018 points after 49424 turns and 12:08:34.


Someone mentioned a Su of Ash, and here's a good example of that that's much more recent. Best score of any recent char with summonings>=15.

  Code:

[urune=15;cv=0.17-a] JacquesDerrida the Imperceptible (L27 MfSu of Ashenzari), escaped with the Orb and 15 runes on 2015-03-09 17:03:07, with 30648000 points after 48013 turns and 8:57:38.


Below is a solid run that would have been <44k (hell is pretty easy for summoner that late in the game), but that wasn't good enough to take the 39k HE score at that time (PurpleRed had improved it from 49k to 39k with a HESk of Chei).

  Code:

[urune=11;cv=0.16-a] gammafunk the Demonologist (L22 HESu of Sif Muna), quit the game on Vaults:2 (minmay_crypt_entry_simple_sparse) on 2014-08-26 10:34:32, with 661808 points after 36572 turns and 10:28:47.


This is my best result for any summoner in terms of rune progress. It was well on track for <39k to take the score (although it would have been close), but sadly a ring of teleport never came and I ran out of teleport by tomb, so I suicided it.

  Code:

 [urune=10;cv=0.15] gammafunk the Demonologist (L22 HESu of Sif Muna), slain by a tentacled monstrosity (summoned by the player character) on Tomb:2 (tomb_2) on 2015-01-31 05:29:44, with 603537 points after 32262 turns and 8:03:33.


So you can definitely do <50k with your DESu in recent crawl, since you can do <40k already with HESu, and you don't have to use Sif either.

[Sandman25]

I don't understand, is speedrunning a competition vs other players only? Aren't you interested in improving your personal best? Quitting on D1 with orb looks silly to me, sorry, provided you would win the character if it was best score I guess.

[dynast]

Only if you care about total score.

[byrel]

I don't understand, is speedrunning a competition vs other players only? Aren't you interested in improving your personal best? Quitting on D1 with orb looks silly to me, sorry, provided you would win the character if it was best score I guess.

OTOH, it probably doesn't matter to your personal competition whether you press < or not.

[Sandman25]

OTOH, it probably doesn't matter to your personal competition whether you press < or not.

If it happened on exit, then it changes nothing to me: it is easier to press < than ctrl+shift+q and then type yes. I hate to type "yes", it always forces me to make sure that I am not trying to enter wizmode in real game

[asdu]

it is easier to press < than ctrl+shift+q and then type yes

Hence quitting > winning.