YASD - GhHu Spell-less Mega-Zig attempt (12th zig)

[Flaz]

This run follows my previous attempt and is very similar.
The morgue file is here
This time I was lucky enough to find the Singing Sword in the 3rd ziggurat and ended up blasted in a small angel floor while exploring the 12th ziggurat.

Why did I die ?
With Umbra (glowing aura cancellation) and a +6 Ev ring on me on arrival, I was quite self-confident while arriving in an angel floor.
My first two actions were to drink a potion of haste and put the amulet of the air instead of the four winds (for RMsl and +5Ev).
Meanwhile, smiters began to lower my HP and in spite of my new amulet, I was crushed by a powerful pearl dragon breath. At this moment every angel was at full life, I was encircled by an ophanim's holy flames ring and was seriously hurt .
Then I did a(nother) wrong move. In my previous angel floors, I remember having been able to hide behind holy flame clouds. So I decided to read a scroll of fog, in order to extend the cloud enough to hide inside from smiters. Actually, it didn't work at all. While waiting the fog to take effect, I gave a few swings to angels but missed half of them and made a pause at 100 HP. I definitely should have read one or two scrolls of torment instead of these actions.
When I realized the fog will not work, I was very tempted to invoke another ziggurat and flee inside, but I renounced, because it seemed like cheating (chaining a ziggurat inside another ziggurat may allow to trick their difficulty level).
So I tried to drink "heal wounds" potions instead, but after two or three, I was lightly more damaged than healed.
Angels around me were too healthy to be one-shoted but I needed Makhleb's heals badly. So I threw some javelins of penetration on the few damaged monsters behind, through the pearl dragon in front of me. I killed a few of them, hurt some of the others but was now about to die. The good news is the pearl dragon in front of me and some other angels behind too. So I tried to make my sword sing, and thrust the pearl dragon. I hit him without killing him nor anything else, and was blasted to death.

Lesson learnt : Whatever the ziggurat level size, an angel floor as an undead remains a major threat, and a scroll of fog at turn #1 is a no-brainer
In older crawl versions, I already lost a few spell-less mega-zig characters on SMALL angel floors because since they are small, there aren't so much healing sources inside.
In this run, I succeed in much bigger angel floors by using fog soon enough to weaken only a fistful of angels inside.
This way, when the fog dissipates, I just had to activate the Singing Sword martingale, by killing the dying angels while hurting others, and ended up with a much smoother healing over the time.

In the end, I feel simultaneously happy and unhappy about this run.
- On the bad side, I feel like I haven't achieved something new, and since the run has been easier than the previous one (3 less ziggurats before getting the Singing Sword), I feel far less deserving about it.
- On the bright side, I thought farther than before, learnt some more tricks (such as "how to not even be afraid of pandemonium lords floors"), got hard times in corrosion-heavy floors (Yes, even spider floors !), and had the occasion to test new unrandarts/evocables combinations/shenanigans. Finally, I refined a lot my tactics to always reduce the chances things have to go wrong. Actually it may be a good time to start compiling notes about them.

[tasonir]

I would guess that fog is released from the player character and can't move through other clouds, meaning if you're surrounded by 8 clouds of holy flame, it would only make one tile of smoke over yourself? I would guess that you'd want to blink out first in that situation, assuming that you have enough blinking scrolls, although they could be in short supply.

If you aren't determined to do a ghoul character picking something which isn't vulnerable to holy might help. It could make other floors more difficult, as you're not using spells, so necromutation/statue form can't be used as a torment solution. Normally I'd suggest going with a living race and using those as needed per floor.