Slime Squisher
Posts: 332
Joined: Wednesday, 19th December 2012, 13:23
YAVP: TeHu of Gozag, got PDA but dived into Abyss for bolts
Gozag was my god of choice because with Oka/Trog the game would've been too easy plus i've seen Demise (a Crawl YouTuber) bribing the majority of Hall of Zot and turning Zot:5 into a cakewalk. There was also a chance of me getting bolts from shops. None of that happened.
So, as expected, early game was all about managing my stack of bolts and taking on easy enemies (and only them) with unskilled melee. Which was quite good because of tengu's auxillary attacks. I even found a dagger of electrocution and i should've just trained Short Blades for it but just before doing that i got myself a quarterstaff of protection which i used instead because staves were included in my long-term plan. That was a big mistake: for the most of the game i got stuck with that quarterstaff and a +0 one of freezing which i was refusing to enchant due to being stubborn and wishing to invest into a better weapon.
Thankfully, i found a +4 arbalest pre-Lair as well as a book of Spatial Translocations so as long as i had bolts i could deal with pretty much anything at that point. Obtaining those bolts was a huge struggle, however. I didn't get any in Gozag's general stores and assorted antiques ones, didn't get Snake Pit with sharpshooters and wasted my acquirement scroll to get a trash weapon instead of ammo (just couldn't make myself acquire ammo). The first three floors of Swamp and Spider were handled in okay-ish way with the help of a +0 quarterstaff of freezing, an artifact ring with +3 slaying and a flippin' pearl dragon armour i purchased for 3000 gold in a shop. But i've had about 10—15 bolts left after that so i descended into Depths to try and find some yaktaurs.
In Depths, however, i was met by deep trolls and Mara who i had to run away from. Filled by desperation, i just dived into Abyss thinking i might steal a rune from there and deserve the right to enter Vaults and meet yaktaurs this way. As you'd expect, i ran into problems on the very first floor since i could only fight popcorn. A few teleport scrolls and haste potions later i wanted just to find a portal out. Lugonu had another opinion on the matter and was throwing only "downstairs" at me. I took them and after a lucky teleport on Abyss:3 i landed in LOS of a sleeping dire elephant. Knowing what that means, i quaffed invisibility and took the rune without having to fight anything.
The game got much easier after i entered Vaults and got myself a whole lot of ammo. Why do Vaults even have to be "rune locked" and not Depths if the latter branch is much more dangerous? It would also make more sense to lock Depths because it's the continuation of main Dungeon just like Zot is. I'd like to bring this issue up in GDD but i can rarely understand how developers and other denizens of that board think. Literally the first thread i see there right now is "remove rings: rFire, rCold, rPois etc". What a scary place.
In Vaults the only enemy i had real issues with was Mennas but that's only because i had no Haste spell and was forgetting to use bolts of penetration/potion of might. This is kind of notable because i can't recall last time i actually struggled with that unique even though back in the day i used to call him the most dangerous enemy in a 3 rune game.
With a bunch of bolts, two Lair runes were obtained quite easily and i purchased those sick gauntlets of War in a shop. My defences (something around 30/25) and my offence looked pretty good but i wanted to get Haste and Deflect Missiles before doing Zot. So i cleared Elf (third floor was reasonably easy but i almost died in the Hall of Blades due to not realising how likely a random teleport was to put me back in that huge area) and Slime (didn't get haste in a potion petition but bolts of penetration w/ might took care of TRJ anyway). Still none of those spells. The treasure trove finally gave me a lajatang of electrocution though which was honestly enough to kill dudes comfortably even without the whole ranged thing. Afterwards i even cleared Vaults:5 unwillingly and got Repel Missiles out of it. Yay? It feels like the book generation was tweaked a bit, my previous character was a designated stabber who won a game without ever finding EH or Confuse. inb4 just a clustering illusion.
Zot was not too hard for this tengu, bolts of penetration wrecked draconians in corridors, Portal Projectile dealt with callers, high EV and rMsl rendered electric golems quite useless even without rElec and silver bolts were a nice anti-OoF tool. What really disappointed me was the Bribe Branch ability. Here you can clearly see that ability turning Zot:5 into a joke, bribing multiple orbs of fire and stuff. While for me it just bribed a couple tentacled monstrosities and made an ancient lich neutral, that's about it. Sigh.
Gozag felt like bad Okawaru in this game: his first ability (get haste and some random buffs for 300+ gold) was basically an expensive Heroism, Call Merchant gave me a subset of Oka's gifts and Bribe Branch didn't really work. Occasional gold distractions were nice though.
Sorry for another large blog post, i know nobody really cares but that's what this board is for after all.
TL;DR: i got carried by finding Blink early on; without a god like Trog or Oka bolts and staves are hard to come by; i risked my character's life by going into Abyss just to get access to Vaults; Depths should have the "rune lock" instead; Haste and DMsl are apparently very hard to find as well but PDA and gauntlets of War aren't, lol; Gozag << Okawaru, no big surprise there.
Zot:5 on easy mode video
Double Skullcrusher