Slime Squisher
Posts: 419
Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25
Friday, 4th August 2017, 12:30
YAVP: Kitty of Yred: the murder katamari rolls on
http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20170804-005525.txt
I daresay some of the experts will say Felid isn't that hard, but bah to them, I'm pretty smug about this one. A bit after my fourth win - all heavy armour types - I decided I'd never win a kitty unless I just played kitties. Those 4 wins came from 83 non-kitty games; it took me 72 kitty games to get this one home. I have not won at XL23 before but I guess that's what you get for dying four times and killing everything with allies.
I'd had 1-rune deaths with Heplie and Dithmo, and was starting to make some progress with FeBes, but I'd also had a frustrating 2-rune splat with Yred which I complained about beforehand - basically that the S runes were laughably easy but then I hit a wall where my Yred allies were unable to really hack it in Depths or Vaults and I had nothing else. I got some good advice from that complaint, essentially that you have to be developing something else with that phase of the game in mind.
I did a bit of that via Dragon Form, but also by more careful play with the Yred allies - partly adding "experienced", "vision", "destroyed" to runrest_stop_message, which catches most of the cases where they fight out of your LOS or are attacked from out of your LOS; Crawl by default will quite happily let you sit and rest while a yaktaur shoots all your allies. I intentionally did not adjust my speed to theirs for autotravel; if you come on a sleeping group you can have a go at stabbing them all up yourself if you're alone, but if you're accompanied your allies are prone to aggroing some of the sleepers and waking them. The main thing, however, was to avoid fights in constrained terrain. I outnumbered almost any encounter; the last thing I wanted is a one-on-one fair fight in a choke point with monsters that might be individually stronger than my allies. Finding some open space and Recalling into it - you can Recall allies into a room beyond some monsters blocking the doorway, that sort of thing - brought about pell-mell melees where my superior numbers could tell. Also, I had to be prepared to take a few lumps myself; with that Str, Dex, and UC I was pretty fearsome if fragile (until I got Dragon Form), and once I got the amulet of faith I could Drain Life pretty well with impunity both to let me keep fighting and as an AoE attack, so I'd routinely displace an injured bone dragon or profane servitor back from the front line. Plus, even distraction stabs as a kitty are pretty lethal. Cause Fear was also a great help in breaking up large groups of aggressors and making space for allies to Recall into, but I had to be a bit careful because of course I wanted the same MP for Draining Life and for mid-fight reinforcements. I managed as a result to keep two profane servitors and one bone dragon almost all game; I was down to two top-tier allies a couple of times but only on the orbrun did they start to deplete and not be replaced. Even ghouls and vampire knights held up pretty well until Zot.
I've been told Felid book starts are best, but in practice I find I meet an adder, my magic doesn't kill it, I can't run away because they're fast, and it poisons me into my measly 7HP, splat or possibly saved by potions of desperation. I figured there would be time to build up Int and spell skills later, and that's how it worked out this game. Besides Hexes for Cause Fear, I was building up some Conjurations in a vague hope something decent would turn up for later, but when I found the Book of the Dragon on Elf:1 I just rushed Transmutations to see if I could get Dragon Form online. I had a ring of wizardry so I figured I had a pretty decent chance; early I had to also swap into an Int+7 ring to go Dragony. I first used Dragon Form for Vaults:5, where I arrived as an invisible fast dragon. This was a bit of an oversight; I should have been an invisible fast mighty dragon. Also in the oversight department, I completely forgot Dragon Form can breathe flame, sigh.
I'd also found and cashed a manual of Evocations. I didn't get much use out of this, but I still think it was the right thing to do. I finished with a huge stack of boxes of beasts and sacks of spiders (and ~all the other misc evokables) and so if I'd got into a sticky situation with a panlord or something I had the option of drowning it in a horde and running away. I did carry a bunch of wands I never used - most of the time there are allies in the way, and when I was on the front line most of the time either I wasn't badly injured and didn't feel the need to do anything but attack, or I wanted to use Drain Life. However, it's not like inventory space is in short supply on kitties.
I got some mileage out of Enslave Soul - the log has Kirke (who died immediately to her own hogs), Fannar, Frances, Nikola, Asterion, and Mara (who was utterly brilliant but got himself killed by a vault guard with a weapon of distortion) but also of course you can get plenty of benefit from just enslaving whatever turns up - I had an enslaved titan for quite a while when there hadn't been any juicy uniques.
I damn near lost the game on D:2 to Robin's pack, and then was shafted on D:3 and had my first death to an iguana - with no spare lives at this point I thought this was just going to be another kitty skull on the pile. I'm not sure I ever finished exploring D:3, oops. I'd then die on D:10 - oddly, to an orc warrior, not to the horde of heffalumps around the Lair entrance, perhaps because Yred had started to cough up allies between the orc warrior and the heffalumps. I got Cause Fear on the Lair:1, my first spell. I was not delighted to find Spider (full of fast and poisonous things) and Shoals (just always horrible); I'd much prefer Swamp and Snake. I must have found the manual of Evocations on Lair:5.
Having cleared the Lair I went to Orc in the hope of finding some shops to spend all the gold burning a hole in my pocket. 3 weapon shops, one armour - hooray. Orc:2 was the usual mess with orc sorcs and high priests, but at least as a kitty you are well set to run away and mug them individually later.
Chewed through the rest of the Dungeon, getting my profane servitors and bone dragon. I turned off Stealth here both because I was usually in a servitor's umbra and because there's diminishing returns - it's never perfect, so you always have to be prepared for it not working. I got killed by a vault guard at the Vaults entrance, almost certainly as a result of our old friend hubris. Met what I think was an orbrun MiBe ghost on D:14 but decided to blitz it with the horde, which worked out.
I did Shoals first because I had a ring of flight but no rPois for Spider. It got a bit hairy at one point when I hit a bug (https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=11166) - as far as I can make out, if flight runs out over deep water, autoexplore doesn't regard this as a problem. It only really bites you in Shoals where it might then run happily around half the map draining you down to nothing; this is the first time I've been purple-drained, and returning to manual control next to the rune vault with all your skills vanished is not a welcome development. Still, if anyone's going to survive that, it's a Yred worshipper with a murder katamari; I hid behind my allies in a sterling display of cowardice and while it got a bit hairy with my inability to support them or dodge much of the stuff that came my way, it wasn't fatal.
I still had no rPois but obviously there was nothing to do but try Spider anyway, which actually was just fine, and I acquired a randart Str+6 amulet of faith which was, obviously, incredibly useful in increasing the gift frequency and ability to Drain Life; I had 5 acquirements, but this was the only useful item I got from them. I took Force Lance because I was still planning to try for some Conjurations, and I'd want some Translocations if Blink turned up (which it did later), but I never used it.
I didn't much fancy Depths or Vaults after my previous experience, especially since I hadn't really developed much in the way of abilities for the hypothetical phase when Yred allies were obsolete (since in practice that phase didn't really happen with better tactics, I guess I could have gone straight to Vaults), so I did Elf. A kitty has to be careful in Elf because stuff like deep elf master archers can do you walloping big lumps of damage in a very short time. I was not careful, and chalked up my fourth and final death. I did get the ring of Eczagrem {AC+3 Str+6 Int-2} which was handy until I wanted to use Dragon Form, but I'd hoped to get a bit more useful stuff out of Elf. I found a wizlab and impulsively went in; quite a bad mistake since you don't take permanent allies into portal branches and they can't all be exited immediately. On finding it was Iskenderun's Mystic Tower and hence I'd have to tackle a bunch of conjurer statues to get anywhere I had an attack of sense and left.
Vaults 1-4 was pretty routine; found the ring "Kariatt" {rF+ Int+7 Dex+5 Slay-5} which could be swapped in to go dragony and then immediately swapped back to something that covered the rC vulnerability and didn't have the slaying malus. Depths was considerably hairier; the fights didn't come in contained packages where I could use my superior numbers, deep troll earth mages could mop up my weaker allies very easily, the gates to Hell and Pan had the usual surrounding nastiness, and the Enchantress turned up in a tree-and-water vault along with a vast quantity of nasty stuff and the sort of poor LOS that made it easy for beasties to be killing off my allies out of view. Depths:3 did, however, have a bazaar and some extra shops that let me dump my huge stack of gold into potions, sacks of spiders, and a replacement phantom mirror (I used my first one on Mara). A Zot trap on Depths:5 gave me shoutitis and dopey; I mutrouletted into dopey, clumsy, clarity, and MR+. Then I mutrouletted again into evolution and Wild Magic 1, apparently because someone had unscrewed my brain and stolen it - I have no idea what I was thinking there, I should have been more than happy to live with losing a little Int and Dex for clarity and MR. I decided to live with to see what evolution would turn up. I passed the heady heights of 103 max HP here.
So, the usual question of which third rune. You can't Recall allies in the Abyss, so that was right out. I've never done Slime (yes, this is a self-perpetuating problem) and didn't have rCorr, so I didn't fancy that. Hence, off to Vaults:5 as a fast invisible dragon. I didn't teleport away immediately; I figured killing off the vault guards would give me a large supply of cannon fodder early, and I could always teleport later. This worked out beautifully, as it happened; I had much more trouble clearing the side vaults where there were some tough fights in confined spaces than I did at the entrance where I could bring my full strength to bear. I bought up all the potions of magic available; I didn't really have enough MP to Drain, Cause Fear, and Animate with impunity otherwise.
To the Zotmobile! Evolution gave me a second level of Wild Magic, which was exactly what I didn't want - I wanted Dragon Form to work first time, not to last a bit longer (in particular, on the orbrun I drank my heal wounds when it ran out to get more benefit from them) - but I had a limited supply of mutation and was only going to reroll major problems. I saw the big square of runed doors on Zot:3 but prudence intervened and I left it well alone. I didn't clear Zot, something I'd slightly regret when I had to leave Zot:5 via an unplanned set of stairs and then ended up exploring a bunch more Zot on the orbrun (at least I'd magic mapped it so I knew where I was going). I think next time I might secure all the stairs in Zot, not just the most convenient looking set.
In Zot:5 I basically stayed constantly dragon-y. Orb Guardians were a bit of a nuisance, both chewing up my allies and doing me a surprising amount of damage even in Dragon Form, but they could be Drained to put it all back again. I met an ancient lich and two orbs of fire on the way in, but flattened them easily; one of the orbs gave me berserkitis, which I mutrouletted out to only Wild Magic 1 (phew), rPois (OK), Int+2 (good), and frail. I decided to live with that; even with frail I had circa 170 HP in dragon form, which if you've been playing a lot of kitties seems like a huge quantity.
I'd accumulated a vast supply of potions of haste so could just chug them through most of Zot on the way up. Things got a bit hairy again when another alich-and-two-OOFs combo turned up just at the exit from the orb vault with demons gating in at distressing speed and nothing around to Drain Life. They were between me and my desired stairs, and I couldn't easily either leg it for some other stairs without giving them clear shots at me or fight it out without running a real risk of dying or getting all my permanent allies killed and hence not available for later meatshielding. I kind of dithered in a not very effective fashion before deciding it wouldn't be the end of the world if I did die, especially if I still had permanent allies left to recall, so waded in and killed the alich, the OOFs, and a couple of golden dragons that cooperatively turned up to be Drain Lifed.
The rest of the orbrun was pretty smooth sailing - never saw any panlords, although I think my plan of summoning the world and legging it would have worked just fine.
- Code:
1590846 damerell the Slayer (level 23, 108/108 HPs)
Began as a Felid Fighter on July 28, 2017.
Was the Champion of Yredelemnul.
Escaped with the Orb
... and 3 runes on Aug 4, 2017!
The game lasted 10:51:38 (64398 turns).
damerell the Slayer (Felid Fighter) Turns: 64398, Time: 10:51:39
Health: 108/108 AC: 3 Str: 23 XL: 23 Next: 1%
Magic: 34/34 EV: 36 Int: 15 God: Yredelemnul [******]
Gold: 1651 SH: 0 Dex: 19 Spells: 4/28 levels left
Lives: 2 Deaths: 4
rFire + . . SeeInvis + - Unarmed
rCold + + . Gourm . (shield unavailable)
rNeg . . . Faith + (armour unavailable)
rPois + Spirit . (helmet unavailable)
rElec . Reflect . (cloak unavailable)
rCorr . Harm . (gloves unavailable)
MR +++.. (boots unavailable)
Stlth ++........ Z - amulet of Doicoh {Faith Str+6}
Regen 0.3/turn C - ring of wizardry
MPRegen 0.3/turn B - ring "Qaujetre" {rF+ rC+ Str+2}
@: quick
A: no armour, no weapons or thrown items, stealth, claws 1, fangs 3, see
invisible, carnivore 3, clever 1, speed 1, frail 1, poison resistance, shaggy
fur 3, slow metabolism 1, wild magic 1, sharp paws
0: Orb of Zot
}: 3/15 runes: barnacled, silver, gossamer
a: Recall Undead Slaves, Injury Mirror, Animate Dead, Drain Life, Enslave Soul,
Renounce Religion
You escaped.
You worshipped Yredelemnul.
Yredelemnul was exalted by your worship.
You were not hungry.
You visited 10 branches of the dungeon, and saw 50 of its levels.
You visited 1 bazaar.
You also visited: Wizlab.
You collected 5988 gold pieces.
You spent 4337 gold pieces at shops.
I daresay some of the experts will say Felid isn't that hard, but bah to them, I'm pretty smug about this one. A bit after my fourth win - all heavy armour types - I decided I'd never win a kitty unless I just played kitties. Those 4 wins came from 83 non-kitty games; it took me 72 kitty games to get this one home. I have not won at XL23 before but I guess that's what you get for dying four times and killing everything with allies.
I'd had 1-rune deaths with Heplie and Dithmo, and was starting to make some progress with FeBes, but I'd also had a frustrating 2-rune splat with Yred which I complained about beforehand - basically that the S runes were laughably easy but then I hit a wall where my Yred allies were unable to really hack it in Depths or Vaults and I had nothing else. I got some good advice from that complaint, essentially that you have to be developing something else with that phase of the game in mind.
I did a bit of that via Dragon Form, but also by more careful play with the Yred allies - partly adding "experienced", "vision", "destroyed" to runrest_stop_message, which catches most of the cases where they fight out of your LOS or are attacked from out of your LOS; Crawl by default will quite happily let you sit and rest while a yaktaur shoots all your allies. I intentionally did not adjust my speed to theirs for autotravel; if you come on a sleeping group you can have a go at stabbing them all up yourself if you're alone, but if you're accompanied your allies are prone to aggroing some of the sleepers and waking them. The main thing, however, was to avoid fights in constrained terrain. I outnumbered almost any encounter; the last thing I wanted is a one-on-one fair fight in a choke point with monsters that might be individually stronger than my allies. Finding some open space and Recalling into it - you can Recall allies into a room beyond some monsters blocking the doorway, that sort of thing - brought about pell-mell melees where my superior numbers could tell. Also, I had to be prepared to take a few lumps myself; with that Str, Dex, and UC I was pretty fearsome if fragile (until I got Dragon Form), and once I got the amulet of faith I could Drain Life pretty well with impunity both to let me keep fighting and as an AoE attack, so I'd routinely displace an injured bone dragon or profane servitor back from the front line. Plus, even distraction stabs as a kitty are pretty lethal. Cause Fear was also a great help in breaking up large groups of aggressors and making space for allies to Recall into, but I had to be a bit careful because of course I wanted the same MP for Draining Life and for mid-fight reinforcements. I managed as a result to keep two profane servitors and one bone dragon almost all game; I was down to two top-tier allies a couple of times but only on the orbrun did they start to deplete and not be replaced. Even ghouls and vampire knights held up pretty well until Zot.
I've been told Felid book starts are best, but in practice I find I meet an adder, my magic doesn't kill it, I can't run away because they're fast, and it poisons me into my measly 7HP, splat or possibly saved by potions of desperation. I figured there would be time to build up Int and spell skills later, and that's how it worked out this game. Besides Hexes for Cause Fear, I was building up some Conjurations in a vague hope something decent would turn up for later, but when I found the Book of the Dragon on Elf:1 I just rushed Transmutations to see if I could get Dragon Form online. I had a ring of wizardry so I figured I had a pretty decent chance; early I had to also swap into an Int+7 ring to go Dragony. I first used Dragon Form for Vaults:5, where I arrived as an invisible fast dragon. This was a bit of an oversight; I should have been an invisible fast mighty dragon. Also in the oversight department, I completely forgot Dragon Form can breathe flame, sigh.
I'd also found and cashed a manual of Evocations. I didn't get much use out of this, but I still think it was the right thing to do. I finished with a huge stack of boxes of beasts and sacks of spiders (and ~all the other misc evokables) and so if I'd got into a sticky situation with a panlord or something I had the option of drowning it in a horde and running away. I did carry a bunch of wands I never used - most of the time there are allies in the way, and when I was on the front line most of the time either I wasn't badly injured and didn't feel the need to do anything but attack, or I wanted to use Drain Life. However, it's not like inventory space is in short supply on kitties.
I got some mileage out of Enslave Soul - the log has Kirke (who died immediately to her own hogs), Fannar, Frances, Nikola, Asterion, and Mara (who was utterly brilliant but got himself killed by a vault guard with a weapon of distortion) but also of course you can get plenty of benefit from just enslaving whatever turns up - I had an enslaved titan for quite a while when there hadn't been any juicy uniques.
I damn near lost the game on D:2 to Robin's pack, and then was shafted on D:3 and had my first death to an iguana - with no spare lives at this point I thought this was just going to be another kitty skull on the pile. I'm not sure I ever finished exploring D:3, oops. I'd then die on D:10 - oddly, to an orc warrior, not to the horde of heffalumps around the Lair entrance, perhaps because Yred had started to cough up allies between the orc warrior and the heffalumps. I got Cause Fear on the Lair:1, my first spell. I was not delighted to find Spider (full of fast and poisonous things) and Shoals (just always horrible); I'd much prefer Swamp and Snake. I must have found the manual of Evocations on Lair:5.
Having cleared the Lair I went to Orc in the hope of finding some shops to spend all the gold burning a hole in my pocket. 3 weapon shops, one armour - hooray. Orc:2 was the usual mess with orc sorcs and high priests, but at least as a kitty you are well set to run away and mug them individually later.
Chewed through the rest of the Dungeon, getting my profane servitors and bone dragon. I turned off Stealth here both because I was usually in a servitor's umbra and because there's diminishing returns - it's never perfect, so you always have to be prepared for it not working. I got killed by a vault guard at the Vaults entrance, almost certainly as a result of our old friend hubris. Met what I think was an orbrun MiBe ghost on D:14 but decided to blitz it with the horde, which worked out.
I did Shoals first because I had a ring of flight but no rPois for Spider. It got a bit hairy at one point when I hit a bug (https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=11166) - as far as I can make out, if flight runs out over deep water, autoexplore doesn't regard this as a problem. It only really bites you in Shoals where it might then run happily around half the map draining you down to nothing; this is the first time I've been purple-drained, and returning to manual control next to the rune vault with all your skills vanished is not a welcome development. Still, if anyone's going to survive that, it's a Yred worshipper with a murder katamari; I hid behind my allies in a sterling display of cowardice and while it got a bit hairy with my inability to support them or dodge much of the stuff that came my way, it wasn't fatal.
I still had no rPois but obviously there was nothing to do but try Spider anyway, which actually was just fine, and I acquired a randart Str+6 amulet of faith which was, obviously, incredibly useful in increasing the gift frequency and ability to Drain Life; I had 5 acquirements, but this was the only useful item I got from them. I took Force Lance because I was still planning to try for some Conjurations, and I'd want some Translocations if Blink turned up (which it did later), but I never used it.
I didn't much fancy Depths or Vaults after my previous experience, especially since I hadn't really developed much in the way of abilities for the hypothetical phase when Yred allies were obsolete (since in practice that phase didn't really happen with better tactics, I guess I could have gone straight to Vaults), so I did Elf. A kitty has to be careful in Elf because stuff like deep elf master archers can do you walloping big lumps of damage in a very short time. I was not careful, and chalked up my fourth and final death. I did get the ring of Eczagrem {AC+3 Str+6 Int-2} which was handy until I wanted to use Dragon Form, but I'd hoped to get a bit more useful stuff out of Elf. I found a wizlab and impulsively went in; quite a bad mistake since you don't take permanent allies into portal branches and they can't all be exited immediately. On finding it was Iskenderun's Mystic Tower and hence I'd have to tackle a bunch of conjurer statues to get anywhere I had an attack of sense and left.
Vaults 1-4 was pretty routine; found the ring "Kariatt" {rF+ Int+7 Dex+5 Slay-5} which could be swapped in to go dragony and then immediately swapped back to something that covered the rC vulnerability and didn't have the slaying malus. Depths was considerably hairier; the fights didn't come in contained packages where I could use my superior numbers, deep troll earth mages could mop up my weaker allies very easily, the gates to Hell and Pan had the usual surrounding nastiness, and the Enchantress turned up in a tree-and-water vault along with a vast quantity of nasty stuff and the sort of poor LOS that made it easy for beasties to be killing off my allies out of view. Depths:3 did, however, have a bazaar and some extra shops that let me dump my huge stack of gold into potions, sacks of spiders, and a replacement phantom mirror (I used my first one on Mara). A Zot trap on Depths:5 gave me shoutitis and dopey; I mutrouletted into dopey, clumsy, clarity, and MR+. Then I mutrouletted again into evolution and Wild Magic 1, apparently because someone had unscrewed my brain and stolen it - I have no idea what I was thinking there, I should have been more than happy to live with losing a little Int and Dex for clarity and MR. I decided to live with to see what evolution would turn up. I passed the heady heights of 103 max HP here.
So, the usual question of which third rune. You can't Recall allies in the Abyss, so that was right out. I've never done Slime (yes, this is a self-perpetuating problem) and didn't have rCorr, so I didn't fancy that. Hence, off to Vaults:5 as a fast invisible dragon. I didn't teleport away immediately; I figured killing off the vault guards would give me a large supply of cannon fodder early, and I could always teleport later. This worked out beautifully, as it happened; I had much more trouble clearing the side vaults where there were some tough fights in confined spaces than I did at the entrance where I could bring my full strength to bear. I bought up all the potions of magic available; I didn't really have enough MP to Drain, Cause Fear, and Animate with impunity otherwise.
To the Zotmobile! Evolution gave me a second level of Wild Magic, which was exactly what I didn't want - I wanted Dragon Form to work first time, not to last a bit longer (in particular, on the orbrun I drank my heal wounds when it ran out to get more benefit from them) - but I had a limited supply of mutation and was only going to reroll major problems. I saw the big square of runed doors on Zot:3 but prudence intervened and I left it well alone. I didn't clear Zot, something I'd slightly regret when I had to leave Zot:5 via an unplanned set of stairs and then ended up exploring a bunch more Zot on the orbrun (at least I'd magic mapped it so I knew where I was going). I think next time I might secure all the stairs in Zot, not just the most convenient looking set.
In Zot:5 I basically stayed constantly dragon-y. Orb Guardians were a bit of a nuisance, both chewing up my allies and doing me a surprising amount of damage even in Dragon Form, but they could be Drained to put it all back again. I met an ancient lich and two orbs of fire on the way in, but flattened them easily; one of the orbs gave me berserkitis, which I mutrouletted out to only Wild Magic 1 (phew), rPois (OK), Int+2 (good), and frail. I decided to live with that; even with frail I had circa 170 HP in dragon form, which if you've been playing a lot of kitties seems like a huge quantity.
I'd accumulated a vast supply of potions of haste so could just chug them through most of Zot on the way up. Things got a bit hairy again when another alich-and-two-OOFs combo turned up just at the exit from the orb vault with demons gating in at distressing speed and nothing around to Drain Life. They were between me and my desired stairs, and I couldn't easily either leg it for some other stairs without giving them clear shots at me or fight it out without running a real risk of dying or getting all my permanent allies killed and hence not available for later meatshielding. I kind of dithered in a not very effective fashion before deciding it wouldn't be the end of the world if I did die, especially if I still had permanent allies left to recall, so waded in and killed the alich, the OOFs, and a couple of golden dragons that cooperatively turned up to be Drain Lifed.
The rest of the orbrun was pretty smooth sailing - never saw any panlords, although I think my plan of summoning the world and legging it would have worked just fine.
Last edited by damerell on Sunday, 6th August 2017, 16:59, edited 1 time in total.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.
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