YAVP: 3-rune DEFE of Uskayaw, first trip to Hell


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Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Wednesday, 14th March 2018, 19:52

YAVP: 3-rune DEFE of Uskayaw, first trip to Hell

https://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20180311-202824.txt

Inevitably, my happy proclamation after my last win that I'm "fairly knocking these out" meant 3 months and 40 dead DEFEs to get one home. Since I'm still trying not to repeat a god, that ruled out the obvious options of Vehumet and Sif Muna; eb on IRC suggested Uskayaw to me, using pain bond as another way to effectively stretch MP further, and almost all these DEFE attempts took Usk.

I want to say that worked rather well, in spite of the compelling evidence to the contrary - DE has taken me more attempts to win than anything except kitties. Of course you don't have much in the way of escape options, although backing up when paralysis kicks in works surprisingly well, but you are so dominant in nearly all encounters that there's a ready supply of consumables to deal with the encounters that go sour. The big problem comes from being a mediocre player; if you dominate nearly every encounter, our old friend overconfidence kicks in and you completely fail to recognise when you need to be using those consumables.

I was quite surprised to win this one - in previous games I'd usually had an amulet of faith, which is obviously incredibly effective with Usk and can be swapped out with impunity, and in games that had gone well I'd found Ignition which is ludicrously effective both at building piety and producing absurd carnivals of carnage once the pain bond kicks in. I found neither Ignition nor Firestorm this game. That said, of course a robe of the Archmagi was an ideal find and while I might prefer to have found it before doing Elf, the ring of the Mage was also extremely useful.

I found Orc before Lair, and stuck my nose in; O:1 was OK and wasn't disjoint, so I had a look at O:2 (I'm reluctant to do so if I have only one downstairs because an underpowered character can assemble a horrible ambush around the stairs and then you've got to wait to find digging to be able to get to the other stairs and untangle things), but it had a rock-hard MiBe ghost with an antimagic weapon and an orc warlord handing out giant globs of damage with an arbalest, so I gave up on it - not for the first time.

D:11 produced the +11 rapier of Edewn {pierce, rC+ rN+ Dex+3} which was a stroke of luck. I carefully found and enchanted up a +9 dagger of speed this game and, between this and a +10 randart short sword, basically never used it. Lair was OK - Lair:6 was swarming with yaks, death yaks, heffalumps etc but sticky flame solves many problems and also the level had plenty of water, which is a FE's best friend.

Back to O:2 again, but it was still seriously hairy. I continued down the dungeon, clearing it out and learning Iron Shot, giving me an option for fire-immune targets. I found a manual of Shields around D:14 and cashed it on using a medium shield, which worked out pretty well; I had good luck with manuals this game.

I still didn't fancy Orc so I stuck my nose into Shoals - why not Spider? In my experience it's all too easy to get swarmed and dry on mana on a DEFE in Spider, and Shoals has lots of water for boiling monsters alive. However, I wasn't far into Shoals before Aizul turned up along with a bunch of other nasties, so I backed out. I don't know why I didn't try Spider then, but I seem to have hoped I was now firm enough to tackle O:2.

I was, and while the shops didn't have much else they did have a manual of Spellcasting which was an absolute godsend; I bought it immediately.

Now I went to clear out Spider. Most of it was not too bad, but Mara turned up on Spider:4. From the log, he managed to produce illusions of me six times in a running fight across Spider:4 and Spider:3, but I got him in the end - not with a paralysis stab, just by hammering him down with Iron Shot. The final rune room was also pretty bad but (unlike in a previous stupid DEFE death) I had the sense to teleport away and tackle the monsters one at a time - ghost moths were a serious problem and drained a lot of my stats, but I had enough spellpower I could Fireball them down (sometimes dropping Fireball on myself; I suspect this character has no eyebrows now) before they could empty my mana.

Back to Shoals. Aizul immediately poisoned me down to 7/103, a close call, but after that most of Shoals was not too bad. Shoals:4 was a problem with two sets of stairs leading down to a small separate island, making it hard to keep swapping stairs when trying to get into the level. Ilsuiw turned up and I badly overextended killing her, but managed to salvage the situation; there was also a tricky TrFi ghost which I nailed only after getting the rune.

Next was Elf, in spite of limited MR. I don't like Vaults on DEFE - sealing runes, sentinels' marks, and convokers recalling can all make it tricky not to run out of mana before everything is dead. I'm generally reluctant to use staves on DEFE^Usk because I'm a bad player and find myself trying to stab with them, but I used both a ring and staff of power for the Hall of Blades - Iron Shot can mop up dancing weapons provided you bring enough mana to deal with missing them. Elf:3 was much easier than it has been sometimes, carefully luring monsters out of the room of bastards a few at a time; it also had Roxanne, who I blew up with an orb of destruction after a bit of a think about what I'd do if she blinked me in front of it. There wasn't much usable loot on E:3, alas.

I went to Vaults but almost immediately killed a storm dragon, with a trove wanting +2 storm dragon scales; I entered the trove which was mostly books and scrolls. There wasn't as much as I'd hoped but I did manage to replace Bolt of Magma with Bolt of Fire and learn Invisibility.

I worked my way down Vaults, having a bit of a nervous moment with Jorgrun, but then identifying acquirement and getting the amulet of the Lost Ships {Reflect Dex+7 SH+2} - since I was using a medium shield anyway this seemed pretty solid, especially since the only other useful amulet I had was regeneration. I also killed Xtahua and Boris - never saw Boris again.

Depths was next, with U:1 being a 4-shop level with nothing useful (alas). Here I found the +10 short sword "Cawetwan" {freeze, +Blink rPois rF+}, which was pretty handy as a rPois swap or for extra rF against OOFs.

Here I made the first of two stupid mistakes, diving into the mutagenic cloud vault in order to identify a pair of useless randart boots and getting Frail for my sins. I should at least have waited until I had cancellation.

On U:2 I was shafted for 2 floors to a level with a bazaar, leaving me both with an incentive to push into the level and no line of retreat. This rapidly turned amusing as I started to work my way out of the room I was in towards where I thought where the bazaar was; I backed up to recover mana only to have a door at the back of the room open to reveal a juggernaut, lich, deep troll, and spriggan air mage (with, as it turned out, some more bastards behind them), while more monsters came in from the direction I'd been working in.

Things got distinctly hairy at this point; I was hoping that Uskayaw paralysis would kick in letting me thin their numbers with stabs, but to no avail. I blinked out (into unknown territory, but better than hanging about to get killed) and started running to where I thought the bazaar was; finally paralysis kicked in and I could leave some of my enemies behind, but not enough. I teleported, a desperation move on an unexplored level, but landed with only a tengu reaver and vampire mage (asleep) visible. I quaffed ambrosia to try and recover some HP and MP; this worked, giving me enough MP to kill them. With high piety I could then stab some more enemies as they straggled in, but then teleported again, and from the next spot I landed I could get into the bazaar. This sold me a book with Ozo's Armour and a book with LRD, but perhaps more important was their special promotional offer of all my HP and MP back for free.

I got up to Depths:2 to complete the pair of stupid mistakes; I failed to notice both that Invisibility lasts a while and that the contamination lasts a while, and so got myself yellow contamination in order to turn invisible... while already invisible and facing only monsters which saw invisible. This egregious piece of stupidity got me clumsy and deterioration to add to my existing frail; after a bit of thought (I had only 2 !mut, although as luck would have it I found plenty later and needed none) I quaffed, rolling all of these out in return for +4 AC, rElec, and no regeneration with monsters in view. I decided to live with that.

I went back to working down Depths to get shafted on U:3 for 2 floors to a level with a bazaar. Fortunately, the deja vu ended there with no near-death experience getting into the bazaar; it didn't have much but I bought some useful potions. I had a bit of trouble with Louise while getting back into explored territory, but after that I could clear the rest of Depths OK; I bought a manual of Evocations now which I'd been pondering for some time, but I was pretty sure now no more shops were coming and I wanted to have enough XP left in the game to cash it.

I didn't actually do much with Evocations, but I was glad I trained it; if things had gone badly south I could have summoned a huge supply of allies from the Horn, sacks of spiders, and boxes of beasts, as indeed I did once.

I went to do Crypt, as I usually do. Mennas turned up on C:2 - bad news for a DEFE, and one of my two previous 2-rune deaths was to Mennas. I had a clear line of retreat so decided to have a bash at him; two phantom mirrors both gave disappointing results with my newly minted Evocations, but I used a sack of spiders and box of beasts to open the range then blew him up with some iron shots and an orb of destruction; he became audible again just in time to make a "BOOM", which was very satisfying.

Crypt:3 also got a bit hairy, getting separated from the upstairs (stupid) then finding Bai Suzhen between me and them; it was the version of the level made of dead trees so I inadvertently burned my way into the Tomb entry vault releasing a stream of annoyed mummies and other nuisances with, because of Bai Suzhen, no obvious line of retreat. Fortunately the trees also meant I could gradually make space in the hinterlands of the level and, not without a bit of desperate poking with my rapier, I got in control of things. Once MP were full again Bai Suzhen herself was easy enough to tackle.

Here I'd normally be up to the 3rd rune question, but I was still hoping to find Firestorm or Ignition, and I've never done the Vestibule of Hell before - with about 16 Evocations, it seemed like a good time to see if I could get the Horn of Geryon. The Vestibule was a pretty straightforward stair dance - with Ozo's up my defences were something like 30/36/19 so taking a few hits on the way in wasn't an issue - so Horn retrieved and off to V:5.

I arrived about to teleport; it kicked in a bit later than I expected but that just meant I could nuke some vault guards with Fireballs and arrive at my teleport destination already full on piety in case of any unpleasantness. By luck, I landed near a corner and could clear cautiously outwards from there; Iron Shot is, it's worth remembering, not nearly as noisy as Fireball.

To Zot! Except to back out immediately and go and buy all the consumables on my shopping list.

To Zot! Except to back out immediately and go and learn Freezing Cloud, given I had spell slots and while otherwise solid was lacking edge-of-LOS attacks. I did know Darkness but didn't use it much, probably because I'm bad.

To Zot! I usually clear Zot these days; I slightly regretted it here, finding two OOFs on the way down. However, this did let me test the idea that at high spellpower, Orb of Destruction works well on OOFs; it does. You can launch an OOD at them and then blast away with Iron Shot, and when it connects it does spectacular damage because while an OOF resists all kinds of things big lumps of raw damage aren't amongst them. Clearing Zot also produces a lot of XP, of course; I maxed Conjurations, Fire Magic, and Spellcasting, and then took a healthy chunk of Invocations.

Zot:5 had the door vault, the ring of runed doors around a chunk of ordinary doors around a 4x4 square of bastards. In an uncommon outbreak of good sense I resisted the urge to open it. The rest of clearing Z:5 was relatively easy, except for a tricky bit getting into one of the lungs where two OOFs turned up when already low on mana. I blew the Horn of Geryon, used a box of beasts, and danced around retreating behind my allies until enough mana came in to polish off one OOF and an Uskayaw paralysis let me stab the other.

The orbrun was really pretty routine; I saw two panlords but both could simply be evaded.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.

For this message the author damerell has received thanks: 2
Airwolf, Tulse

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1193

Joined: Friday, 16th January 2015, 20:20

Post Wednesday, 14th March 2018, 22:17

Re: YAVP: 3-rune DEFE of Uskayaw, first trip to Hell

I would say congrats, but it doesn't count since you didn't open that door vault. Sorry.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Thursday, 15th March 2018, 21:28

Re: YAVP: 3-rune DEFE of Uskayaw, first trip to Hell

Airwolf wrote:I would say congrats, but it doesn't count since you didn't open that door vault. Sorry.

Aw, man! Caught again. I'll know next time. :-)
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.

For this message the author damerell has received thanks:
Airwolf

Slime Squisher

Posts: 346

Joined: Thursday, 15th August 2013, 11:33

Post Friday, 16th March 2018, 03:19

Re: YAVP: 3-rune DEFE of Uskayaw, first trip to Hell

What 4 things did you use Grand Finale on?

For this message the author cerealjynx has received thanks:
Airwolf

Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Friday, 16th March 2018, 19:33

Re: YAVP: 3-rune DEFE of Uskayaw, first trip to Hell

cerealjynx wrote:What 4 things did you use Grand Finale on?

A vampire mage and three draconians. Grand Finale was not so attractive on this character as it would be on a melee Usk worshipper - not only did I have plenty of ways of killing things at range but usually I could spend the 8 mana on killing the thing with spells and not reset my piety. The vampire mage in particular was a mistake, since it pinged me forwards into LOS of some other undead, and the 3 draconians were simply practice, to get a feel for when the ability would be useful. I'd have Grand Finale-d an OOF, say, but the opportunity didn't come up since I was usually trying to kill them first not build piety to blow them up later.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.

For this message the author damerell has received thanks:
Airwolf

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