YAVP: DsFE of Nemelex --> Kiku

[dolemite99]

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 070422.txt

Disclaimer: I'm very new to posting in the Tavern so if there is some community-preferred way of embedding morgue files, lemme know.

It wasn't pretty but I'll take my first Fire Elementalist win. Nemelex was pretty good to me for most of the game, now that he uses Invocations, and Ds have a +3 aptitude for that skill .... I was getting great utility off of decks.

After clearing the first 3 or 4 levels of Zot, I had (what I perceived as) two big problems .... (1.) scarcity of food, and (2.) no good spells for dealing with Orbs of Fire. So I ditched Nemelex for Kiku, and decided to scum the abyss and Pan levels to look for books, while building Kiku piety to get 'Receive Corpses'.

Lesson learned: Nemelex abandonment wrath is VERY nasty and lasted a long time. He drew from the Deck of Punishment many, many times, polymorphing me into a Pig at least 3 times and blasting me with miscellaneous god wraths, also hitting me with Famine a few times. I compounded this danger by stupidly diving down to Abyss:2 and Abyss:3 just out of sheer habit while under penance, since most times that I voluntarily go to the Abyss I'm hunting for the rune. So I kinda forgot that I was really just trying to weather out the wrath and get Kiku online.

Eventually found a book with Iron Shot, then memorized Simulacrum too, and once those spells were at low fail % rates, and Nemelex stopped punishing me I went and did Vaults:5 and then Zot:5. I was surprised how well I survived against Orbs of Fire a few times (without any Simulacrums present) while just wearing a +2 robe in my body armour slot. I guess rF+++, Haste, Iron Shot and the super-handy "Augmentation" mutation was a pretty good combo.

Had no interest in going for more than 4 runes on this guy, so grabbed the rune (Orb, duh) and sprinted for D:1 after about 15 hours (gasp) of gameplay. Time to try another book start!

[dolemite99]

Oh, I did have one unresolved question about this game. I had really wanted to abandon Nemelex for Jiyva just for the hell of it since I know you get satiation when the jellies eat items, and I'd never ascended a Jiyva character before.

But since I killed both Dissolution and TRJ in this game, the altar disappeared. If I had killed one of them but not the other, would the altar have stayed in the game? How's that work exactly?

[vergil]

From what I can see, you were trying to level too much skills. Which is a bad thing for any race, and especially for Ds (since aptitudes and exp gain isn't good).
Try not too much exp on Ds on different things. Focus on something one.
Next up, even if levelling too much spellcasting is not very helpfull - it is helping against spell hunger on lower levels, effectively decreasing amount of permafood wasted. Having higher int as possible also helps. Because 23 is too low with 13 in spellcasting, even for a hybrid. No wonder that without it and spellcasting, hunger costs were tremendous.

Nemelex is not worth abandonning just for the food, since it's already better than Kiku in long run (IMO). If you're lucky enough, and manage decks properly, you can deal with most of the threats easily.

If you were planning to transition to Jyiva, then all that exp wasted for Invocations aren't that great.
Also, you can just copy&paste everything from the morgue under [ code ]. Link is okay too.

My 2 coins.

[Airwolf]

Congrats! Augmentation is insane.

[Sandman25]

Int 23 is typical Int for a hybrid IMHO. It looks like you put most bonus points into Str, use some MDA/FDA/IDA/ring mail in this case.
Heavier body armour would naturally force you to ignore stealth and train magic skills higher which is good for spell power provided it was multiplied by augmentation. Also I wouldn't train Evocations (at least that high).

[dolemite99]

Int 23 is typical Int for a hybrid IMHO. It looks like you put most bonus points into Str, use some MDA/FDA/IDA/ring mail in this case.
Heavier body armour would naturally force you to ignore stealth and train magic skills higher which is good for spell power provided it was multiplied by augmentation. Also I wouldn't train Evocations (at least that high).

Thanks, I definitely see that could have been a possibility to get into ring mail or a lighter dragon armour. Even without that finishing amulet (+4 STR) I had enough strength to handle something with more base AC than a robe. I was liking the rF+ and rC+ on the same torso slot so just rolled with it.

[dolemite99]

Nemelex is not worth abandonning just for the food, since it's already better than Kiku in long run (IMO). If you're lucky enough, and manage decks properly, you can deal with most of the threats easily. If you were planning to transition to Jyiva, then all that exp wasted for Invocations aren't that great.

Yeah this was definitely one of my bigger lessons from this run. Manage resources better so god abandonment doesn't even become tempting for a 3 or 4 rune game. Too bad Nemelex does not give "Decks of Lunch", in which case I'd never have even considered ditching. In hindsight if I really still wanted to ditch Nemelex just to be insanely risky for no logical reason, Makhleb would have been a mo' betta choice with all that Invocations investment I had already made. Or maybe Ashenzari and then knowledge-transfer the Invocations points to something useful. But sticking with Nemelex while scumming Abyss:1 for permafood would have still given me lots of decks from all the turns I spent exploring new territory.