Post Monday, 13th June 2022, 18:31

YAVP: 15-rune 0.23ish FoCj of Gozag

http://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/dame ... 220641.txt

I've got two 15-rune wins, both punch ghouls, and joked for a while that some day I'll have to get a 15-rune win that's not a punch ghoul. It turns out some day is now; after rolling through Gehenna 6th and Tomb 7th, I decided to keep going. Nice timing - this is my 50th win.

I splatted 7 FoCj without hitting the Lair before getting this one home. I suspect what made the difference here was early luck; I found fire dragon scales on D:1 and made it through the awkward point where nothing but Magic Dart worked at all. I took a faded altar on D:2 - I hadn't had any luck picking gods on the previous attempt and thought I might as well roll the dice and see what turned up - and got Gozag. Early Gozag with no service fee worked out nicely (given I didn't quite run out of food early), meaning I was rich enough to buy a lajatang of protection in a shop on D:4.

On D:5 I found +2 boots with {rC+ Int-2 Dex+3 Slay+2}, neatly covering the rC hole from the fire dragon scales, but I nearly got collected by an orc warrior and Edmund on D:6, then by a salamander in a volcano in the Lair, then by a black mamba on Lair:4. Of course Potion Petition can get you out of any given crisis but it can't get you out of them all...

On Lair:5 I learned Yara's, always a favourite (and Fo's good at Hexes, and I had quite a bit for early-game stalwart Fulminant Prism), and then Irradiate on on Lair:6 (along with Iron Shot; I think at this point I had Shatter in my library and was planning to push Earth Magic to get it online). A Lair:6 ice cave got pretty hairy but gave me boots of running; handy, even on a character who spent half their time later in Statue Form.

On D:10 I identified a stack of 3 acquirements - gold from two, but I got a randart scarf with {rC+ rF+, rElec Int+4 Slay+3} which I'd use all game.

To Snake! Here I acquired a +9 lajatang with {drain, rPois MR- Str+3 Dex+8} - in spite of the MR-, this was pretty good (it helps that Fo is immune to many of the bigger MR annoyances) especially as a more convenient rPois source than a ring with {+Fly rPois Str-2 Int+7 Dex-2} I'd bought in Orc. I also bought a +8 shield with {+Blink Str+3 Int-2 SInv} which I'd use for a while before getting a solid large shield (and trying to stack +Int items to squeeze out high-level spells). Snake:3 got pretty hairy but Snake:4 wasn't too bad, especially since I had Statue Form online so if I could find a defensible spot I could go into Statue Form and hammer away at everything.

To Swamp! Not much to write about here; after clearing it I bought a book with Isk's Battlesphere which I'd use Magic Dart to cycle for a while - eventually in the Hells I'd find I had better uses for my MP and also that the sphere was getting squashed flat by damnation etc all the time.

Elf next, which was OK apart from one nasty moment in the Hall of Blades. However, I hit a bazaar on E:3 and, oh joy, a Gozag worshipper can easily drop 2,500 gold for Wyrmbane. I also learned Aura of Abjuration (building some Summonings which would come in handy later).

Vaults 1-4 was pretty routine; I acquired a +2 large shield of protection which I'd replace the +8 randart with and enchant up. I learned Shatter; I dunno when I first cast it, but it must have been at least slightly plausible with brilliance, or why bother learning it?

Depths had some vaults with ridiculous numbers of caustic shrikes in, but otherwise was pretty reasonable; the Enchantress dropped the faerie dragon scales as +0 {-Tele +Fly rCorr Slay+6 Stlth+} which were overall an upgrade from the +4 TLA I was using; it was a nuisance only having rCorr out of Statue Form, but not the end of the world.

I cleared V:5 with immolation to dispose of the welcoming committee then a series of Shatters, then going back upstairs before I was dry on MP (so if a vault warden locked the stairs I could blow it up) and hatching down - if I'd got a really bad landing spot I'd have had to throw money at the problem, but I didn't and could then clear from where I was knowing most of the monsters on the level were investigating the ridiculous amounts of noise that had come from the stairs. I got an amulet with {Faith *Slow Str+2 Int+8 Stlth+} here which - well, I never had any amazing amulets and a big lump of Int didn't hurt.

To the Crypt! I learned Invisibility here but, alas, the Contam from it means it is not a good match with loving to blast monsters up close with Irradiate, and most nasty monsters see invisible anyway. I amnesiaed it out and replaced it with Ignition which is always good for a laugh; I had a suitable rN+++ setup for Tomb, but needed more XP for Ignition.

Abyss next was easy enough; found stairs quickly and landed next to a rune vault with acolytes of Luguno casting eldritch tentacle. I dug into it easily; had a bit of trouble extracting myself, but nothing too bad. Next I cleared the Vestibule; this got a bit sticky until I gave up on not making too much noise and just blew everything up with Shatter. Then Slime; with Ignition still brewing up, I used immolation on TRJ and its daughters.

I was still short of spell failure on Ignition so I went to Gehenna, where I was unlikely to feel the lack of it. Embarassingly, I only remembered I could shaft down through Hell branches on the fourth one, so I worked down Gehenna the old-fashioned way. I don't think Asmodeus presented any serious problem, and now with Ignition online I was ready for the Tomb. The Serpent of Hell turned up, but I could hardly have been better equipped to fight it.

I used Shatter to sequence-break on Tomb:1, cracking open the corridor of greater mummies as close to the upstairs as possible - in the end I didn't need to retreat. I pulled much the same trick on Tomb:2, descending from the Tomb:1 corridor into the side of Tomb:2 rather than hitting the giant Tomb:2 welcoming committee head on, but once that side was clear I Shattered into the large central room, made as much noise as possible killing stuff, then went back upstairs and came back down into the large room.

Tomb:3 was really not too bad - at least as Tomb:3 goes. I managed to get into one of the side chambers by walking around the initial monsters, and then could stand on the upstairs and blow stuff up - once again making ridiculous amounts of noise with Shatter. This didn't work so well - the entry point is not so far from those stairs - but I had enough cash I could spam Potion Petition as needed, burn consumables, and chew up everything as it tricked in.

Next was Tartarus. Doom hounds were a bit of a pain - aren't they always - but Ereshkigal didn't have the usual mob of Tzitzis and didn't drop an inconvenient silence, so I meleed her flat. With other spells online and a manual of Summonings stashed, I learned Dragon's Call.

Cocytus gave me a harmless Int-2 malmutation but I decided to roll the dice, getting rMut and robust. Hooray! Cashing the manual let me cast Dragon's Call with brilliance, and as such I can add Antaeus to the list of things in Crawl that can't survive being covered in dragons.

In Dis I remembered to shaft myself. Dispater, it turns out, _also_ can't survive being covered in dragons.

To Pan! Only to remember I had a manual of Throwing and I might as well cash that, so I escaped and scooped it up. The demonic rune was distinctly elusive and it turned out Mnoleg, Gloorz Vloq, Cerebov, and Lom Lobon also can't survive being Shattered and/or covered in dragons. Of these, Lom Lobon was by far the most troublesome - whopping damage with Glaciate, blinks away from the dragons, and the tornado generally makes it hard to get close and hammer away. Late in Pan I'd learn IOOD and master Evocations; I did slightly consider ascending with 14 runes just to be perverse, but the demonic rune turned up in a vault blocked off with ice statues. I also killed Ignacio for the second time ever.

I escaped via the Abyss - easy - and headed to Zot. Zot was pretty plain sailing to the point I didn't even bribe it... until Zot:5 when _six_ orbs of fire came around the corner of my selected lung in rapid succession along with an ancient lich to abjure away the dragons. This got pretty bad but I bribed at that point and started pulling 27-Evo box beasts out, focussed down the alich, and spent money like water on Potion Petitions (I had over 40,000 entering Zot so I wasn't concerned with running dry).

The orbrun was fine; one panlord, but by now killing panlords was old hat so I just steamrollered it.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.