The Tavern

Started in 0.16 I've won 15 runes with all species, gods, backgrounds and never used necromutation: 114 games, 44 wins.
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/playe ... nezar.html

I added 'no necromutation' because at the time when I started playing it looked like a way to get around most obstacles easily.

Games of notice:
18 Megazigs with a Garg. of Zin: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17020&p=233177#p233177
Orbrun through Tomb (tournament banner) with DrVm of Veh: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=18236&p=249460#p249460
Keeping Orcs alive through Exteneded: HoFi of Beorgh: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17583&p=241607#p241607

I've posted several YASD, too

What I felt was the biggest challenge:
Whenever I win I have a feeling about what kind of monster is a threat or none at all but I don't have the actual numbers. Just a feeling.
Starting with another combo then I'll have to adapt to kobolds again and more often then not my thinking from playing a powerful combo with lots of spells, artifacts before will get me into trouble.

I like DCSS a lot and want to say 'Thank you' to the developers.

Can you give us your thoughts on doing 15 runes with out necromutation for the various combos?

I know in some regards its a bit of crutch for food/mutation, but still I find playing without it to be rather annoying especially in hell due to massive contamination.

Statue form is an ok substitue to deal with torment but its still pretty painful (when you aren't kiku) and the slow is a really bad penalty, although doable.

The trick to dealing with torment is to recognize that it can't kill you

Yeah but tormentors are often accompanied by smiters or hellfire guys and those can kill you after torment(s). Some combos seem like they could be pretty rough as they may have limited spells/abilities or inherent dangerous characteristics like being slow.

Hellfire: keep a harmless monster adjacent to you which is susp. to hellfire (more on it in my mega-zig post). As long as a hell sentinel see this monster adjacent to you it won't fire (in almost all cases)

mutations:
Most of my chars have the freedom to acquire some ranks of stealth by the time I get to Pan.
This means that I can chose whether to fight a monster which enters my LOS or not.
I use normal walking, passage of Golubia, teleport (sometimes CBlink) to get away if I don't want to fight them since I'm mainly looking for a portal in Pan.
I try to avoid fighting in Pan whenever I can except for levels with a rune and there only Mnoleg has mutaters.
Lighting spire, summons or chaming ugly things (wands) is useful in Mnolegs realm if one wants to avoid mutations or at least: avoiding mutations until something comes into melee-range.
Portal projectile is cheap if you have some good ranged skills.

Torment:
Stealth helps a lot here, too.
CBlink, Lesser Beckoning, Passage of Golubria when you want to close a istance.
In melee I don't consider Tormentors that dangerous. What I fear is what might appear at the edge of LOS. So I almost neverTab.

Casters have a diff approach: firestorm will destroy mutaters outright or at the least put a lot of summons between you an the mutator to prevent malmutation sin almost every case.
And a caster should have CBlink ready when he gets to Pan.

Contam is somehting I don't fear that much.
There is a % that the malmutation you get is ugly (potions of Cmut then) but most often it is harmless.
Getting petrified is uglier imo (pot. of Canc) in Hell.

In short:
Stealth, something to block LOS and a way to close the distance or to get away and overwhelming firepower (caster).plus having a harmless monster susp. to hellfire if this is a threat.

If you look for a new challenge: remove 'o' and 'tab' from your keyboard and go for 15-runers in < 50 k turns. Watch games of PurpleRed, Sapher, Charly or 4thArra if you like.

Advanced:

I don't use 'o' and hardly ever 'Tab'.
The players you mentioned I already like to watch, thx

It'll take me a lot of time to get near that 50 K turns
EDIT:
I'm a pack rat who has to 'o' everything again after clearing an area and dropping the surplus in my stash starting when I've cleared a lair branch. An estimated 5k turns is wasted on that - but it is a habit hard to give up.

Necromutation does not affect difficulty of games that much, IMO.


Few warriors/archers would learn it.
Transmuters has no problem w/o necromut, as their unarmed combat is too OP in the lategame. (and lesser beckoning makes them ever more OP)
Summoners lack exp.

Destructive mages already have awesome L9 spells to vanquish everything.
Necromutation is at least good for them, but still it is not the must.
Actually, it gives inconvenience in channeling, as it blocks Regeneration+Sublime combo and makes CBoE and WucadMu staff very risky to use.