Post Thursday, 28th October 2021, 17:12

YAVP: 5-rune (with demonic) MiIE of Chei

http://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/dame ... 230905.txt

I'm still playing random combos, playing each one at least until I hit Lair and maybe then until I'm fed up. I managed to get killed in Tartarus on a MuEn, and then the RNG handed me MiIE. As we'll see, I went Chei which let me play it pretty straight, making use of spells up to and including Freezing Cloud.

It helped that I found the Hat of the Alchemist. The AC cost is often bad, but in this case I had no other hats at all (so it was only costing me 2 AC) and I had a lot of available gear with stats but few or no resistances. Alchemist let me trade those two points of AC for another big chunk of Str and Int on top of Chei stats.

(Might it have been better just to go Oka/Trog/WJC/Usk and hit monsters with sticks? Yeah, but not as much fun. :-)

I'd only found Kiku and Hep before hitting the Temple on D:7; I considered Hep, but my previous Mi win was with Hep. As Chei piety built up, I'd start to get non-trivial spells online, taking Fulminant Prism on Lair:1 which I'd make use of in the midgame, and getting Regeneration (which is level 4 in Stoat Soup 0.23) online during the Lair.

During Lair I bought an amulet with {Spirit rPois MR+ Int-4 SInv} - the Int-4 was annoying but guardian spirit was hard to pass up. I'd use it for a while. I cleared Orc and shortly after bought the Alchemist, which as mentioned basically took care of resistances for the rest of the game.

Snake:2 was a unique party with Nikola, Agnes, and Vashnia; Agnes went down pretty easily, but Nikola and Vashnia's pack both had a reasonable go at killing me. Shoals was by comparison quite easy; it helped that I had a huge stack of flame charges for boiling things, learned Throw Flame for boiling more things, and Animate Dead (which I didn't use much, but was pretty handy for instant reinforcements in a crisis). I learned Freezing Cloud here but it would be a long time before I could cast it reliably without quaffing brilliance.

I cleared Elf; I must remember that an empowered DE annihilator is a crisis. One nearly collected me with a crystal spear. However, I lived and got a +6 scale mail with {Str+5} which I'd use for much of the rest of the game, letting me amnesia out Ozo's - I was always short of spell slots because of my rotten Spellcasting aptitude.

E:3 also had a trove (+2 storm dragon scales) which I cracked into after killing a storm dragon in Vaults; it gave me some consumables and also added a bunch of spells to the library. I learned Meph Cloud, but barely used it - after a while it became clear I'd rather use Freezing Cloud.

I cleared down to V:4, having a nasty tangle with a death knight and phantasmal warrior, and bought a ring with {+Inv rPois Str+4 Int+4 Stlth-} which I'd use all game. Cleared the Crypt, killing Sojobo and Margery.

I often do V:5 after V:4 if I seem to be doing well against Vaults monsters; I did here. I got a ring with {rC- rN+ MP+9 Str+5 Int+3} which I'd also use all game - again, the terrible Spellcasting aptitude meant I really valued the extra MP. The rC hole was annoying, but there was a manual of Crossbows on E:3 so I bought a +3 hand crossbow with {elec, rElec rC+} to shoot frost giants and ice dragons with (at least when I remembered).

To Depths! I learned Isk's Battlesphere which I'd cycle with Magic Dart as a standard ranged attack for the rest of the game. Steamrollered the Enchantress on U:1; learned Yara's around U:3, which I got surprisingly little use out of (but it's good to have, and the Transmutations also let me use Irradiate so they didn't go to waste).

After Depths I went to Slime, being well kitted out for it; I killed TRJ with immolation and javelins of penetration. Unfortunately, there wasn't really very much in the way of useful loot besides some consumables.

I cleared the Vestibule and stuck my nose into Dis, but rapidly decided Chei was a pretty bad fit with hell effects. To Pan, then. The first level I landed on had Hellion Island, which AFAIK I haven't seen before; it nearly turned into an excessively educational experience, but I worked out how to tackle it in time. I nearly got killed in the next Pan level, decided I'd had enough, and got out - hitting Gloorx Vloq and Lom Lobon's levels, but leaving them well alone.

However, one good thing about Pan was I _finally_ found a scroll of brand weapon and could stop hitting things with an unbranded broad axe.

To Zot! Zot was quite straightforward, really - I could never quite decide if I wanted to try and shut down OOFs with my antimagic demon trident, or just hammer them flat with the axe. The lung I chose was almost suspiciously quiet; it did have a permanent teleport trap near the orb chamber which I dived in after snagging the Orb... landing in the unexplored lung. Oh, well. I managed to get out, obviously, but this was a pain.

The orbrun was pretty uneventful except that one of the two panlords I saw immediately Glaciated me into my rC hole, but I managed to escape.

Pleasingly, one of the other two Stoat Soupies won this weekend as well: http://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/ceb/ ... 013950.txt
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