YAVP - DsFi^Qaz - first ziggurat cleared + some impressions

[nublet]

Greetings!

First 15-rune win in the new version, and first ever ziggurat cleared, so I thought I'd share the story as well as sdome impressions (read: mini-rants) about extended

http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/nublet/morgue-nublet-20160828-184153.txt

Started as a mace-toting DsFi, with the intention of getting defense-heavy with demon whip+shield and relying on a god (Qaz, Mak) for emergency ranged power.
However, I got the monstrous mutation set, and consequently ditched the flail and went full UC. I still joined Qazlal (+3 to invocations really helps...), and the early game went by without too much hassle. Having just played some 0.13 offline, early game in the new 0.19 version is really, really forgiving in comparison. As soon as I had Disaster Area online with decent power behind it, I was pretty much set - a surprisingly good panic button. Got the first two runes, and proceeded to Vaults:4. Now, from previous experience, I remembered that V:5 can be really really nasty. Vault wardens bottling you in, ancient liches hammering you... yeah. So I opted to clear Elf And Depths first - along the way, I visited the new minibranch Desolation, which was interesting in some ways, and the Abyss to try and get the rune. Again, my previous experience suggested me that the abyssal rune would be pretty easy to get - I turned out to be wrong, and had a close call. I escaped, and, undeterred, tried again more carefully. This time I found the rune soon (level 3), and grabbed it. Already worn from the battle for the rune, I got set upon by enemies, had a very close brush with death, and survived thanks to invocations and escape items. After managing to clear Depths, I went for V:5, which was surprisingly, almost disappointingly, easy. A couple Disaster Areas and a short mop up, and the floor went quiet.

In the meantime I had worked to get Statue Form online, which I managed to do, and went for Crypt and Tomb. With Statue Form and rN+++, I managed to pretty much steamroll and loot Tomb, which felt almost trivially easy. Personally, I don't really get why it has such a scary reputation, though it could be that most of my extended characters were monks and transmuters. It was now time to take on Hell. Once again, overconfidence from previous plays almost got me in the vestibule, but the pocket nuke that is Disaster Area and the copious amount of items that I had saved pretty much made everything manageable. The rest of the Hell branches went by very, very easily - nothing at all in hell was actually a threat anymore. However, some of the hell effects were absolutely irritating: Twice I got contaminated without being able to do anything, and even the cancellation potions didn't do much. Luckily the resulting malmutations were not particularly bad, and I could save my precious curemut potions for when I really needed them - which was about to happen.

Pandaemonium was usually not a dangerous place either. Some of the lords were nasty - that is, the ones that could summon eyeballs - but the rest were pretty much cannon fodder. On the other hand, neqoxecs and cacodemons were apparently all over the place, which made the whole pan thing really obnoxious. You probably know already, but immediately breaking line of fire and nuking the whole damn screen just because a single neqoxec walked in is NOT fun, and it isn't bulletproof either, so I ended up catching a few malmutations. In the past versions I would've kept a rMut on, but now, eh... So I made a short detour through the Abyss to devour a few ugly things and, hopefully, lighten the load of bad mutations. This worked only partially, and more neqoxecs were starting to appear, so I decided to pull the plug and quaff my curemuts. Fortunately, I had found a necronomicon, and had quickly begun to learn Necromutation. By that time, it was just coming online, so I decided to always wander in pan in lichform. I didn't regret it. Not having to deal with malmutators and tormentors (the latter of which, with statue form, were already pretty much a non-issue) was a huge relief. Seeing the malmutators getting a shot at me, temporarily losing a paltry point of Str/Dex/Int, and getting my revenge up close and personal on them was beyond satisfying. Between 27 UC and 20+ invocations, the unique pan lords didn't last long either, and I got all the pan runes.

It was now time to try a Ziggurat - had never done so before, and everything I had heard about them was scary - floors packed full of nasty enemies, hellfire being thrown around with abandon, and so on. I had heard that a splash damage spell was pretty much mandatory, and hoped that my divine invocations were up to it. In the end, they more than were. In fact, having little other to do, I got shatter castable - and it felt really underwhelming. It took like 3 casts to kill a few random draconians, with a potion of brilliance. I guess characters that aren't built on Int shouldn't even bother with offensive spells. I stuck with Disaster Area afterwards, with great effect. At 27 invocations, one blast literally wiped the screen clean, and even the toughest pan lords would be on their own and nearly dead afterwards.
The only time I was somewhat concerned was by what should be insignificant enemies by now: entropy weavers. I didn't think I could really spam my invocations to kill them, the mere fact that they were in LOS meant that I caught some unavoidable corrosion effects (rCorr didn't do much), there was no cover, and when I killed a wave, another would walk in. Eventually I nuked them all and regained my piety on the next floor. So I finished the zig, and, satisfied, steamrolled Zot and ascended.

Sorry for the wall of text, really felt like sharing the fun and the pain.

Concluding, I'd say that:
Statue form makes Tomb/Hell a joke.
Malmutation sucks. It really does.
Disaster Area really feels OP.

and, PS:
Having to write this all over because my login timed out also sucks. In crawl as well as outside it, having a backup plan always pays off.

[Sprucery]

Thanks for the story and congrats!

Having to write this all over because my login timed out also sucks. In crawl as well as outside it, having a backup plan always pays off.

Yeah, it's a good idea to copy the text to the clipboard before clicking submit...

[nublet]

Thanks, I'm now trying my luck with a KoHu^Oka, I need to learn how to keep those low HP races alive. I've never won with anything less than +10% HP

[Siegurt]

Qaz definitely makes the abyss harder, and v5 easier than they are with other gods.

IIRC the new monster set came in after .13, so there's stuff you might not have encountered previously there, which may have also thrown off your expectations of difficulty.

[and into]

Sounds like a fun game! Congrats on the first zigg clearing.

Disaster area needs to be really strong, as it requires max piety with the noise god and substantial invocations investment. Qaz can make some specific areas of the game seem easier, but the constant loud noise is a very dangerous conduct overall.

Re: shatter, yes, direct damage spells tend to be lackluster with low intelligence. Many utility/defense spells and some "offense" spells (summonings in particular, other random ones like conjure flame) can still be very good with low-to-middling int, however.

[advil]

Shatter is underwhelming in zigs partly because there's so much flying stuff. It's really effective on certain floors, or not effective at all on others. One use case in zigs though is shattering beyond fog (assuming this still works, I know firestorm got nerfed out of los) if you get desperate on a bad mummy floor, this saved me once. But really it's a spell for other areas of the game, where it can be extremely effective and entertaining.

[cerebovssquire]

Congratulations!

Tomb has honestly never been very hard. In its old form it helped a lot to be spoiled to know what populates which parts, like the sphinx pack, greater mummy ring or areas with a lot of traps, and of course for death curses. And it was always a test of patience since it's the place that requires the most stairdancing in the game. Greater mummies look scary on paper, except for the speed 10, but you're never going to get surrounded away from a staircase if you know the levels a little bit.

I haven't played new tomb as much but I think I was never in danger using the same tactics. It's a frustrating and boring place and that probably leads to the reputation more than its lethality.

[Midn8]

Yeah I won a zigsprint with qazlal and a hill orc (didnt do ds because there is so much holy damage). 27 invoke disaster area takes forever to finish the animation.