Post Thursday, 22nd April 2021, 17:53

YAVP: 0.23ish 6-rune GhCj of QAZLAL, Tomb 3rd rune

http://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/dame ... 132000.txt

Hooray, won again - after a dry spell of about two dozen deaths, none of which so much as got a rune. (Indeed, the last time I died with a rune seems to have been... 2019, which is good, I guess?) I'm not sure I really deserved to win this one - there are half a dozen points in the log where one more good hit would have killed me.

This game I did Tomb 3rd, which is probably my limit; I can't imagine doing it second (obviously, discarding cheesy approaches like clearing an entire rune branch but not picking up the rune).

The downside to playing completely random combos is they're a lot harder - and if (like me) you're not very good, you don't really get spellcasters home because you need more than one attempt to get a spellcaster home. I'm not sure what to do about that.

GhCj felt like another somewhat doomed combo, given the mismatch of starting kit and apts, but 22 Magic Darts into the game I found a +2 large shield on D:1 and took the hint. I'd get a handful of spells online later, but Joseph gifted me a hunting sling of flaming on D:7, so there never was a point where direct damage spells looked attractive.

I had great luck with manuals this game, cashing about 3 of Dodging, one of Fighting, one of UC, one of Slings (how convenient), one of Spellcasting, one of Ice Magic, and one of Evo.

I took Qazlal on D:3; there were altars to Ru and Nemelex too, but we have a Nemelex rework planned, and I'd had a couple of exasperating losses with Ru. I didn't really expect to get far with Qazlal, but if you live long enough to get Disaster Area online, they're not too bad; I hit ***** piety on D:10 and from there at least I had the option of just blowing the doors of anything that vexed me.

Lair and Orc were pretty routine, and then Snake. I didn't fancy Shoals much, so I took a punt at Elf - even given my terrible MR this went OK. With the extra XP Shoals was fine (particularly, just blowing up Ilsuiw and all her friends with Disaster Area is pretty satisfying).

I peeked into Slime briefly, but it was clearly too hard at that stage. Cleared down Vaults instead, getting a Desolation of Salt. This was surprisingly easy - I killed a lot of stuff on the entrance then teleported away and could grind up monsters in one of the structures as they came to find out what all the noise was.

On V:2 I'd learn BVC, which I did actually make a fair amount of use of, and with the Necromancy I trained for that I'd learn Vampiric Draining later, a useful fallback when I didn't have chunks to eat for health.

I went to Crypt from V:2; the idea of doing Tomb 3rd was creeping up on me, and I knew I'd want to clear the largely corpseless branches in stages to avoid rotting away too badly. Crypt was no problem, and I went to Tomb:1. The sphinxes nearly got me - I must remember that ambush is surprisingly horrible - but other than that Tomb:1 was OK.

Cleared down to V:4, then went to Depths, hitting Lehudib's Moon Base on U:2. Easy, and netted me a helmet with {Int+3 SInv Stlth+} and +5 gloves, both of which seemed ideal.

Fresh with confidence (and with vampire mages being much less annoying) I went to Tomb:2. I'd planned to read fog on arrival in the hope that when it cleared there'd be a screenful of monsters I could blow up; this didn't work since a Zot trap dropped a twister on me, and mummies and I alike went flying around the area. Handily, it dropped me somewhere relatively defensible and I was able to back off into the side rooms and clear from there.

Next I crossed over the corridor of greater mummies on W:1 - which was a pain - and went back to Depths to regain some max HP. Here the Enchantress dropped the faerie dragon scales - +6 with {rElec MR+ rCorr}. Up until here I'd been using a +6 plate with Int+4, but those resistances were just what the doctor ordered, and the armour was light enough spells were working much better. I also found the brooch of Shielding {Ward, rN+ AC+4 EV+4} and waved goodbye, somewhat sadly, to the +6 reflection amulet I'd been using forever.

Back to Tomb - I'd only cleared a level of Depths - and tried the fog trick again on entering Tomb:3. This worked pretty well, but then I found myself teleporting around increasingly desperately trying to get back to Tomb:2 or to get some peace long enough to heal up. I could easily have died here, but got away with it, getting up to Tomb:2, healing, and then clearing the remainder of Tomb:3 without trouble... albeit I now had no heal wounds, and few enough curing. I also got manuals of Fighting and Dodging here, which was handy.

I finished Depths, then went to Vaults:5. I didn't Disaster Area the initial ambush, just punched out of the circle then dragged them down a corridor to roast in my clouds; I wanted to get some nastier enemies in view before I started to spend piety.

Back to Slime, which was relatively easy at this point; the noise means TRJ came out into an open space, I punched it a few times to release jellies, and then it was Disaster Area time.

I had 5 runes including Tomb, but it seemed like Ereshkigal wouldn't be too bad for an undead character who doesn't need spells. To cut a long story short, she wasn't, although the doom hounds were a pain as always.

Bought all the consumables and to Zot. I cleared Zot: I figured I was going to fight everything anyway, so I might as well pick up its stuff once I was done. The first orb of fire caused me some trouble, but the rest were OK - sacks of spiders can work nicely since if you're lucky the OOF spends turns killing individual spiders.

Not much to say about the orbrun; I saw two panlords, one of which I avoided and one of which I just clobbered.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.