Slime Squisher
Posts: 419
Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25
Monday, 20th January 2020, 23:57
YAVP: (first) 15 rune win, GhMo of Makhleb
http://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/dame ... 193952.txt
I haven't posted my last few YAVPs on the Tavern, but this one is a bit of a milestone for me.
This is my 27th win, and my first 15-rune win (and also the first time I have recovered the iron, obsidian and magical runes). I didn't really plan to do 15 runes, but after getting Tomb 4th without any major problems, I decided to scoop up a few more, and it sort of got out of hand.
Ghoul was surprisingly straightforward; I didn't really appreciate their species characteristics are not so much a downside as a tendency to have plenty of healing on-demand. You don't always have chunks, but you do most of the time, and if you also have Makhleb topping up your health you can accumulate a ridiculous number of spare heal wounds potions. (I had 20 before hitting Zot:1 where a combination of a nasty welcoming party and overconfidence caused me to use about half of them up - bad, but at least I had them to use.) Dispel Undead or no, torment immunity was a huge boon in extended, and the poison immunity helps with a lot of early game nuisances.
Because I now have a win with every god, I feel free to take any god I feel like, and Makhleb seemed an obvious choice given I hadn't played them since getting my very first win as DDFi; this worked out very nicely. On DD I never used Minor Destruction owing to being new - you don't want to use something that drains HP casually on DD, but it made no sense to shun it completely. On this ghoul I spammed it at almost everything; this let me pump Invo at +1 for my ranged attack rather than a weapon skill at -1 which of course also made the summons work and gave me MP for guardian spirit.
Vexingly, I had a stupid splat (thwomped by first ogre) between this and my previous win, avoiding a streak; but since I was on 1/94 HP from an orc warrior on D:7, this could easily just have been another splat. Other than that the early game was pretty uneventful, leaving Sigmund on D:3 for later.
By Lair on D:9 I had about 100 HP and enough piety that Makhleb was serving up HP on a regular basis, and I'd figured out I wanted to use Minor Destruction constantly; things were getting pretty under control.
I cleared Orc next (from D:11) and bought a +8 plate with {rF+++ MP+9 Int+4 Dex-5} - the MP+9 was nice with guardian spirit and while the Dex was a bit unfortunate, this was by far the best armour available for a while; eventually I'd have a crystal plate and enough enchant armours to make that more attractive. I also bought gloves of strength; I wasn't sure if Claws 1 was better or worse than the strength but it was 3 points of AC.
On D:12 I found the shield of Resistance which I'd use all game; there weren't any good large shields, and while I didn't need the rF or rC all that much, the MR gave me a lot of freedom to pick jewellery.
On D:13 I found a trove that wanted 2 scrolls of acquirement; I found one of them in Spider:1, but never the other one. I should have cashed the single scroll before the orbrun, but forgot.
i got the two S runes without difficulty, then cleared Elf, then worked down Vaults; it's a real pleasure to meet Mennas when you can just punch him to death, silenced or not. Next I cleared Crypt, being immune to torment; Khufu on C:2 was considerably harder than anything on C:3 and I got a ring with Int+6 I'd keep as a brainlessness swap.
Depths had a manual of Armour to buy, a lucky find with plenty of money to spend, and then I went to V:5; since I had rF+++ I tried the immolation approach, which worked out very well since every time something explodes Makhleb tries to stuff some more HP into you. I'd been training Unarmed Combat all game and mastered it here.
Now, I had 3 runes, and could just go to Zot; but these days I try to play for a minimum 4 or 5 runes. I've got the Tomb rune only once before; I thought this character was reasonably well positioned to do it, so decided to at least go into Tomb and see how feasible it looked, at this point just with a view to perhaps turning in a 4-rune win one of which was Tomb.
Tomb:1 was OK; the sphinx mob was a bit bad but I knew it was coming. The initial entry into Tomb:2 went pretty sour and I had to teleport repeatedly, but landed in one of the isolated corridors and was able to clear a beachhead, and after that could clear the rest of Tomb:1 and :2 to the Tomb:3 entrance.
Tomb:3 was surprisingly manageable. Luckily, I didn't try and teleport and land in corridors near the rune, because I got a version with almost no walls up there at all; instead I made it through a door into one of the treasure vaults and fought there with a clear line of retreat to the stairs. With torment immunity and Makhleb HP topups, I could pretty well just stand there and fight everything on Tomb:3 as it came through that door.
After this, I started to think about getting a few more. I spoke to luxidream, a more experienced player, who suggested what branches he'd do next, but also said he thought this character was good for 15. I wasn't sure about that, but I thought I might at least try to beat my previous record of 7.
Slime was next. I planned to use the immolation approach on TRJ, but it turned out I could just punch it to death in a corridor before it could back away. This character's melee damage output was very satisfying; I think the finest moment was two-shotting an orb of fire.
To Hell! I cleared the Vestibule with immolation (some stuff's immune, most isn't). I had done Tartarus and Cocytus before - and Dis on a character who subsequently died - and Gehenna's all fire, so it seemed like it would be OK. Indeed, the Hell branches themselves were fine; I did all four without ever having to bail back to the vestibule, partly because torment immunity meant I was never down a huge chunk of HP, and partly because chunk healing meant I had to spend less time resting and taking more hell effects.
Asmodeus wasn't too bad, and Ereshkigal a pushover; Cocytus had the Serpent of Hell amidst a huge horde of other Coc monsters which got a bit hairy, and Antaeus was serious trouble, but I had loads of phantom mirrors so used one which let me beat him. Dispater wasn't too bad, albeit I was running down my supply of haste/might/agility on Hell bosses (and later panlords) which I'd regret in Zot; I'd master Fighting and Invocations in Dis.
Then, Abyss. I think here I'd admitted I was going for all 15; until then I was thinking of fewer and so was trying to scoop up some runes I'd never or almost never got before, but now I could just go for whatever looked easiest. I had to plug around Abyss:3 for ages, and then got a rune vault that's full of floating eyes and related unpleasantness; however, being paralysed six times in quick succession is not a big deal if you already read immolation and made some clouds of flame and your god gives you HP every time something explodes.
That just left Pandemonium. I was pretty worried about holy Pan, but it didn't show up. Cerebov was the first named panlord, and I landed on his level with him in LOS; he was serious trouble and I burned plenty of consumables, but again used a phantom mirror to good effect. Gloorx Vloq was a pushover. I landed on Mnoleg's level with Mnoleg in LOS, but just had to find a defensible spot and start punching things.
Now, when I had only one win under my belt, I went to Pan on a VSFi, got Lom Lobon's rune, and died elsewhere in Pan, so it was going to be very satisfying if I could actually get it out of the dungeon. Lom Lobon turned up in a very irritating position on the far side of an open room with me having no good line of retreat, then opened with ball lightning - rElec was my one major resistance hole - but I quaffed a resistance and tried to close in. Lobon then cast Tornado which was irritating but brought me intermittently into punching range; I had some cleverer options in reserve but this turned out to be sufficient.
Finally, I wanted the demonic rune; I'd checked a few ordinary panlord's vaults to no avail, but as it happened the very next level had the lemuel_hall_of_pain vault. This had or summoned a load of malmutators and intelligence drainers, and I went brainless; however, I was carrying an Int+6 swap and a stack of brilliance for just this problem, and it didn't get quite bad enough that I needed brilliance and the swap not to be brainless.
I bought the usual heap of consumables (indeed, after a bit of Zot I went back and bought some more, realising there were a bunch of wands I hadn't put on the shopping list because I rarely have spare money for them, but this time I had nothing better to buy; I'd been pushing Evo partly because I had little else to train) and went to Zot.
Here I nearly came a cropper, a combination of overconfidence and bad luck - as far as I could make out, the entry stairs were between multiple draconian packs and the most incredible horde turned up. Shifters kept surrounding me when I blinked out; stormcallers dished out damage and abjured anything I summoned; storm dragons and black draconians kept hitting me in my rElec hole until I burned a brilliance. I didn't like to teleport blind on an unexplored Z:1 but was forced to, and after a couple of bad landings had got somewhere reasonably safe, but this debacle burned through about half my heal wounds and caused me to really regret having used hastes so liberally in Hell and Pan.
I do sometimes find there are games where the normal Zot threat hierarchy is reversed - eg if I have IOOD and Iron Shot, OOFs aren't too much of a problem but draconian packs can be because you can only zap one of them at a time. This game was definitely like that - as mentioned I two-shot one OOF but more generally I saw six OOFs and on no occasion had to do anything cleverer than walking up to them and punching them.
I met Tiamat on Z:2 in a huge vault full of dragons, but beat her without too much trouble and gladly accepted 2 more AC and half coverage of my rElec hole.
Zot:5 had what would normally have been a pretty nasty collection of OOFs and ancient liches, but on this character didn't pose any real problem and let me master Armour. Almost regrettably, I had zero real excitement on the orbrun apart from running away from a couple of daeva - I expect I could have beaten them, but why risk it?
The species I have left are mummy, spriggan, and demonspawn. I wonder what I'll try next?
I haven't posted my last few YAVPs on the Tavern, but this one is a bit of a milestone for me.
This is my 27th win, and my first 15-rune win (and also the first time I have recovered the iron, obsidian and magical runes). I didn't really plan to do 15 runes, but after getting Tomb 4th without any major problems, I decided to scoop up a few more, and it sort of got out of hand.
Ghoul was surprisingly straightforward; I didn't really appreciate their species characteristics are not so much a downside as a tendency to have plenty of healing on-demand. You don't always have chunks, but you do most of the time, and if you also have Makhleb topping up your health you can accumulate a ridiculous number of spare heal wounds potions. (I had 20 before hitting Zot:1 where a combination of a nasty welcoming party and overconfidence caused me to use about half of them up - bad, but at least I had them to use.) Dispel Undead or no, torment immunity was a huge boon in extended, and the poison immunity helps with a lot of early game nuisances.
Because I now have a win with every god, I feel free to take any god I feel like, and Makhleb seemed an obvious choice given I hadn't played them since getting my very first win as DDFi; this worked out very nicely. On DD I never used Minor Destruction owing to being new - you don't want to use something that drains HP casually on DD, but it made no sense to shun it completely. On this ghoul I spammed it at almost everything; this let me pump Invo at +1 for my ranged attack rather than a weapon skill at -1 which of course also made the summons work and gave me MP for guardian spirit.
Vexingly, I had a stupid splat (thwomped by first ogre) between this and my previous win, avoiding a streak; but since I was on 1/94 HP from an orc warrior on D:7, this could easily just have been another splat. Other than that the early game was pretty uneventful, leaving Sigmund on D:3 for later.
By Lair on D:9 I had about 100 HP and enough piety that Makhleb was serving up HP on a regular basis, and I'd figured out I wanted to use Minor Destruction constantly; things were getting pretty under control.
I cleared Orc next (from D:11) and bought a +8 plate with {rF+++ MP+9 Int+4 Dex-5} - the MP+9 was nice with guardian spirit and while the Dex was a bit unfortunate, this was by far the best armour available for a while; eventually I'd have a crystal plate and enough enchant armours to make that more attractive. I also bought gloves of strength; I wasn't sure if Claws 1 was better or worse than the strength but it was 3 points of AC.
On D:12 I found the shield of Resistance which I'd use all game; there weren't any good large shields, and while I didn't need the rF or rC all that much, the MR gave me a lot of freedom to pick jewellery.
On D:13 I found a trove that wanted 2 scrolls of acquirement; I found one of them in Spider:1, but never the other one. I should have cashed the single scroll before the orbrun, but forgot.
i got the two S runes without difficulty, then cleared Elf, then worked down Vaults; it's a real pleasure to meet Mennas when you can just punch him to death, silenced or not. Next I cleared Crypt, being immune to torment; Khufu on C:2 was considerably harder than anything on C:3 and I got a ring with Int+6 I'd keep as a brainlessness swap.
Depths had a manual of Armour to buy, a lucky find with plenty of money to spend, and then I went to V:5; since I had rF+++ I tried the immolation approach, which worked out very well since every time something explodes Makhleb tries to stuff some more HP into you. I'd been training Unarmed Combat all game and mastered it here.
Now, I had 3 runes, and could just go to Zot; but these days I try to play for a minimum 4 or 5 runes. I've got the Tomb rune only once before; I thought this character was reasonably well positioned to do it, so decided to at least go into Tomb and see how feasible it looked, at this point just with a view to perhaps turning in a 4-rune win one of which was Tomb.
Tomb:1 was OK; the sphinx mob was a bit bad but I knew it was coming. The initial entry into Tomb:2 went pretty sour and I had to teleport repeatedly, but landed in one of the isolated corridors and was able to clear a beachhead, and after that could clear the rest of Tomb:1 and :2 to the Tomb:3 entrance.
Tomb:3 was surprisingly manageable. Luckily, I didn't try and teleport and land in corridors near the rune, because I got a version with almost no walls up there at all; instead I made it through a door into one of the treasure vaults and fought there with a clear line of retreat to the stairs. With torment immunity and Makhleb HP topups, I could pretty well just stand there and fight everything on Tomb:3 as it came through that door.
After this, I started to think about getting a few more. I spoke to luxidream, a more experienced player, who suggested what branches he'd do next, but also said he thought this character was good for 15. I wasn't sure about that, but I thought I might at least try to beat my previous record of 7.
Slime was next. I planned to use the immolation approach on TRJ, but it turned out I could just punch it to death in a corridor before it could back away. This character's melee damage output was very satisfying; I think the finest moment was two-shotting an orb of fire.
To Hell! I cleared the Vestibule with immolation (some stuff's immune, most isn't). I had done Tartarus and Cocytus before - and Dis on a character who subsequently died - and Gehenna's all fire, so it seemed like it would be OK. Indeed, the Hell branches themselves were fine; I did all four without ever having to bail back to the vestibule, partly because torment immunity meant I was never down a huge chunk of HP, and partly because chunk healing meant I had to spend less time resting and taking more hell effects.
Asmodeus wasn't too bad, and Ereshkigal a pushover; Cocytus had the Serpent of Hell amidst a huge horde of other Coc monsters which got a bit hairy, and Antaeus was serious trouble, but I had loads of phantom mirrors so used one which let me beat him. Dispater wasn't too bad, albeit I was running down my supply of haste/might/agility on Hell bosses (and later panlords) which I'd regret in Zot; I'd master Fighting and Invocations in Dis.
Then, Abyss. I think here I'd admitted I was going for all 15; until then I was thinking of fewer and so was trying to scoop up some runes I'd never or almost never got before, but now I could just go for whatever looked easiest. I had to plug around Abyss:3 for ages, and then got a rune vault that's full of floating eyes and related unpleasantness; however, being paralysed six times in quick succession is not a big deal if you already read immolation and made some clouds of flame and your god gives you HP every time something explodes.
That just left Pandemonium. I was pretty worried about holy Pan, but it didn't show up. Cerebov was the first named panlord, and I landed on his level with him in LOS; he was serious trouble and I burned plenty of consumables, but again used a phantom mirror to good effect. Gloorx Vloq was a pushover. I landed on Mnoleg's level with Mnoleg in LOS, but just had to find a defensible spot and start punching things.
Now, when I had only one win under my belt, I went to Pan on a VSFi, got Lom Lobon's rune, and died elsewhere in Pan, so it was going to be very satisfying if I could actually get it out of the dungeon. Lom Lobon turned up in a very irritating position on the far side of an open room with me having no good line of retreat, then opened with ball lightning - rElec was my one major resistance hole - but I quaffed a resistance and tried to close in. Lobon then cast Tornado which was irritating but brought me intermittently into punching range; I had some cleverer options in reserve but this turned out to be sufficient.
Finally, I wanted the demonic rune; I'd checked a few ordinary panlord's vaults to no avail, but as it happened the very next level had the lemuel_hall_of_pain vault. This had or summoned a load of malmutators and intelligence drainers, and I went brainless; however, I was carrying an Int+6 swap and a stack of brilliance for just this problem, and it didn't get quite bad enough that I needed brilliance and the swap not to be brainless.
I bought the usual heap of consumables (indeed, after a bit of Zot I went back and bought some more, realising there were a bunch of wands I hadn't put on the shopping list because I rarely have spare money for them, but this time I had nothing better to buy; I'd been pushing Evo partly because I had little else to train) and went to Zot.
Here I nearly came a cropper, a combination of overconfidence and bad luck - as far as I could make out, the entry stairs were between multiple draconian packs and the most incredible horde turned up. Shifters kept surrounding me when I blinked out; stormcallers dished out damage and abjured anything I summoned; storm dragons and black draconians kept hitting me in my rElec hole until I burned a brilliance. I didn't like to teleport blind on an unexplored Z:1 but was forced to, and after a couple of bad landings had got somewhere reasonably safe, but this debacle burned through about half my heal wounds and caused me to really regret having used hastes so liberally in Hell and Pan.
I do sometimes find there are games where the normal Zot threat hierarchy is reversed - eg if I have IOOD and Iron Shot, OOFs aren't too much of a problem but draconian packs can be because you can only zap one of them at a time. This game was definitely like that - as mentioned I two-shot one OOF but more generally I saw six OOFs and on no occasion had to do anything cleverer than walking up to them and punching them.
I met Tiamat on Z:2 in a huge vault full of dragons, but beat her without too much trouble and gladly accepted 2 more AC and half coverage of my rElec hole.
Zot:5 had what would normally have been a pretty nasty collection of OOFs and ancient liches, but on this character didn't pose any real problem and let me master Armour. Almost regrettably, I had zero real excitement on the orbrun apart from running away from a couple of daeva - I expect I could have beaten them, but why risk it?
The species I have left are mummy, spriggan, and demonspawn. I wonder what I'll try next?
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