The Tavern

Hooray, won again! 2 from 39 games. I fancied a go at Vine Stalkers with their clever gimmicks. On the way to this win I had an embarrassing death in Pandemonium with 5 runes (two Lair branches, Abyssal, Vaults, and Lom Lobon) - embarrassing both because I had no business trying clever extra-rune stunts on my second potential win and because I had switched to Zin (after Vaults:5, Okawaru's wrath is like a gentle shower of warm rain) and forgot to use Sanctuary.

I lucked out this game by getting the quick blade from a scroll of acquirement (mind you, I had a few scrolls of acquirement during the game and also cleared out Elf, so I think the odds of me getting a QB at some point were good - indeed, I found a second one at some point) and, on deciding to roll the dice when I had two scrolls of brand weapon, getting electrocution first try. For much of the game I had a randart dagger I'd swap to for rElec.

Okawaru's gifts ranged, as usual, from occasionally useful to laughably bad (as I recall, two -6 bucklers with a stat penalty to boot), but he did cough up javelins early (I almost never had to throw a tomahawk), boots of flying, and a crystal plate armour with a juicy set of resistances... and -Tele. I did use that for a while but decided to go to Depths to try and make myself a gold dragon armour, which I did using one of the guardians of the Zot portal (having almost despaired of getting a golden dragon to leave a corpse).

I got some mileage out of the lightning rod, which I burned my scrolls of recharging into. I made almost no use of the lamp of fire, etc, but that's at least partly because I decided to leave Vaults:5 well alone and grab the abyssal rune instead.

Branch-wise, Snake was pretty straightforward (not as many guardian serpents as I feared). I was wary of Shoals having been once before and died, but with boots of flying it proved to be a doddle. Elf:3 took a bit of thought but of course vine stalkers with 0.3 weapon delay absolutely excel at mugging enemy spellcasters. I cleared out Crypt (might as well) without trouble. I needed a couple of cure mutations after the Abyss, but I had them to spare (besides those on the dump, there's a couple in shops, I think). Zot:5 was really suspiciously easy: I came around one corner to find two orbs of fire, two ancient lichen, and various other nuisances, but other than that I just strolled up to the Orb (squishing Orb Guardians but, to be honest, they're not that bad) and hit a permanent teleporter. By good fortune I landed in the explored lobe of the orb vault. The orbrun was totally uneventful; never even saw a Panlord.

Gratz on the win. Btw we can't see your skills/spells - your dump is truncated.

As for Shoals, it's scary because powerful ranged things swimming extremely fast with minimal corridors to cheese funnel. Even if you don't waddle slowly in water, there are exclusion zones (Mesmermise, Fear) and other movement hinderers (Slow, Barbs).

That's intentional. I floundered about a bit on skills in a way I know is bad but don't really need to be told is bad. :-)

I used no spells.

Mesmerise was not such an issue on Shoals; I already had extremely high magic resistance when I ran it.

Congrats on your win. Man, I love VS. One of the best designed species IMO. And pretty strong too.

They're certainly a novel way to play, and very different to my previous deep dwarf win. In spite of having about 100 fewer HP, I didn't really ever find myself in danger in Zot.

don't use +6 gda next time with those str/dex, you might have much better ac/ev in +5 plate armour or +5 ring mail (hopefully one of protection from fire)

you generaly want at least STR=ER in the new systems as STR=ER is a breakpoint in the ER penalty formula. Generaly you will want STR to be a few points higher than ER though.

I would abstain from giving any rules of thumbs, just try different armour and see how you like it (usually it means maximizing total except when ev is very low but a better way is to use fsim of course)

I'm still in 0.18 where as I understand it the breakpoint is a bit lower... but really, since I got a CPA early-ish, I should just have taken more Strength and less Dex at level-up. For much of the game I had some +Str gear that may have masked this deficiency.

what I said about gda applies to cpa even more. for example I found cpa early in my game too;

E - a +12 crystal plate armour (worn)
(You found it on level 13 of the Dungeon)

yet I was using other armours instead because it was giving higher defense



+o cpa is even worse than +0 gda because it gives no resists and kills ev a bit more

edit. also +0 plate becomes a bad armour before lair. +1 chain mail or +3 ring mail are much better for most characters

You didn't see the god-gifted CPA. (You also seem to persistently labour under the impression that I've asked for advice.)

Ok, I suppose it was not plain +0 cpa so my advice does not apply then (sorry, this is a public forum. I realize you are not interested in advices after your second post in the thread but there are other readers also so...)

Unless it has been changed in trunk or something, the ER of CPA and GDA are equivalent (23). One does not lower EV more than the other.

Sometimes +0 plate is the best you will find, but yes it is worth checking other armors for enchantment. It is outright misleading to say that "+1 chain mail" is "much better for most characters" than +0 plate (emphasis mine). These are very similar pieces of armor.

It is certainly possible that +3 ring mail is significantly better for a character than +0 plate, e.g., if you are casting spells or have low-ish strength and some dodging already trained. But then this is why, when talking about body armor choices, it makes more sense to generalize only with regard to similar types of characters.

Anyway it is difficult for me to imagine any character that is not relying on spells that would avoid using +12 CPA.

XL 6 VSFi who put both stat points into Str has
AC 11, EV 3 in +0 plate armour and AC 9, EV 5 in +1 chain mail.
With points in Dex instead it is AC 11, EV 2 and AC 9, EV 4.

XL 12 VSFi, 2 points in Str and 2 points in Dex:
still AC 11, EV 3 and AC 9, EV 5.

With Armour 6 and Dodging 6:
AC 13, EV 7 and AC 11, EV 9

Regular shield with initial shields training decreases EV by about 2.

Edit. +3 ring mail always gives AC 8, EV 8, AC 8, EV 7 and AC 9, EV 12

fim vs adder:

plate armour:


+1 chain mail:


+3 ring mail:


kind of expected, plate armour is bad for offense early game

edit. I don't understand why AvHitDam to adder is less in plate armour than in ring mail, it should affect accuracy only. Tried again, still got 3.9 and 4.2. weird