The Tavern

I'm having a lot of fun with this character, congratulations to whoever designed the Palentonga

I've gone round the dungeon (rolling-)charging at anything in sight, with tab and p, and I've only had to retreat a few times because my health got below 50%. Twice I've had to teleport, once I've used a scroll of fog, and I had to dip into my supply of nets to deal with the minotaur.

Usually I find Uska a bit frustrating, because he encourages me to stay in the fight too long, but it hasn't been a problem so far.

Hydra's have been a bit of a nuisance, but nothing too bad. I'm really liking the new rechargeable evokables.

character dump is here: https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/pete ... cordia.txt

If I may ask some advice:
1. is there a way to set it up so you use your quivered item if you can, and use auto-attack otherwise? I think it's almost always preferable to be rolling back and forth between enemies, rather than getting stuck in melee.

2. would you think a battleaxe of distortion would be more fun, or an executioners axe of flaming (I can rebrand if that'd be a good idea)?
I can see a lot of benefit to the distortion axe, and it's a combo I don't think I'll have again anytime soon (Palentonga + axe + distortion, and uska would make it extra fun), but I imagine it'll be slightly weaker and losing items to distortion still feels bad.

Aaaaand... I'm dead

For some reason I though using Uska's ultimate ability on TRJ wouldn't cause him to spill all his no-piety spawn. I was wrong. I should have left when I'd realised, maybe come back later.

It's not that I couldn't take out M:$, it's just so frustrating. I took an unnecessary risk (fighting on a little after reading my ?tele) because I got too frustrated (and I was too tired) and then I died.

https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/pete ... 234142.txt

The same with using Absolute Zero on TRJ - you need to have a plan for what he leaves behind.

The reason it's frustrating is that Uska followers have no good way to deal the the TRJ spawn because it doesn't give piety. You can do things that would work on any other floor, and die. You have to suddenly play carefully and stay close to the stairs and lure when I haven't had to do any of that all game long.

Uska should have a way to deal with the Slime branch, and I thought that Grand Finale was it. It's not.

It's not comparable with Absolute Zero, because an advanced Ice Mage is likely to have the tools to deal with the Jelly Blob. A Uska follower is not.

The standard (general not-specific-to-usk) way to deal with TRJ is haste+torment (or other large damage source)+immo+ something that will kill stuff to light the fuse (the current popular option is tin of tremors, but it could be anything, even an axe if you can take a couple immo hits in your face).

Once there's fire clouds everywhere, the spawns die fairly quickly and mopping up the remainder isn't any harder than just descending into slime in the first place. Now you know for future reference grand finale on TRJ isn't great.

Usk is really good, but you probably shouldn't try to rely on him for everything.

Oh, and I played a Pal with disto axe (broad in my case) recentlyish, and it is super good. Losing stuff to banishment is immaterial and you shouldn't even care.