Post Saturday, 23rd July 2022, 11:04

YAVP: 6-rune 0.23ish DgWn

http://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/dame ... 193924.txt

I'm kind of pleased with this since it was a win the first time I played a combo, but equally I escaped death by the narrowest of margins more than once. In particular having splatted a perfectly good HaFe on Dis:7, I went to Dis for a return match, and ended up on 3 HP with more than one monster left to fight.

Although this game is 0.23ish we have the 0.27 change to give Dg lower initial stats but +4 to a stat every 3 levels. This is very satisfying; weaker in the early game ofc, but at least you don't have so much of that late-game feeling that Dg aptitudes are making you really bad at everything.

I started out with a shortbow and a mace and for a long time I'd go 2-handed, upgrading these to a longbow and a respectable great mace I'd found early - but eventually I had spells for ranged combat, a demon whip, and a large shield of resistance.

I nearly got killed by Crazy Yuif but after that not too much happened until getting shafted from D:9 to D:12 and nearly killed by an unseen horror. On the way back up I found a trove - 13 potions of heal wounds, which unsurprisingly I never cashed but served its main function of making me risk getting killed slightly more than I should have.

Lair first, then Orc, then D:15, then Swamp: here I found a scarf with {rC+ rF+, Str+8 Dex+3}, a really nice find I'd keep all game. Then Spider: unique party on Spider:3 with Asterion, Nikola, and Jorgrun.

Then Elf: I had decent MR with the right armour but a scimitar of distortion abyssed me the old-fashioned way by hitting me. I landed on A:3 near a rune vault and while it was probably a mistake to try for it - it got incredibly hairy - I got the rune and escaped. Elf:3 meant a lot of teleporting away from the room of bastards but I got Isk's Battlesphere here; soon after I'd buy the large shield so it's here I transitioned to spells for ranged combat.

Vaults (Boris, Margery) and bought a +5 scale mail with {rN+ rCorr Int+2 Dex+4} which seemed about right for someone with a lot of STR and INT and an rCorr hole. It looked like the best armour from that point onwards.

Depths: an amulet with {RegenMP Int+8}; shafted to Depths:5 but no real issues. At this point I bought the +2 hat of the High Council {Archmagi, Wiz- Stlth-} thinking my enormous stats would let me overcome the Wiz- and get a huge amount of spellpower. I have no idea if this was actually a good move - I had to train a lot of skill into Dg's apts to make spells work, but I got up to IOOD and when spells did work they did indeed have huge spellpower.

Crypt, which was unusually nasty; Vaults:5, scoring a fourth rune; Slime, using immolation on TRJ and scoring a fifth rune.

Hell. I think Geryon was nastier than the logfile reflects, and I then went to Dis not so much because this was a good idea as because I wanted a return match with Dispater. I backed out for a bit to buy a book with Yara's in a shop, then plunged down, saw my own ghost help me with a Brimstone Fiend, and on Dispater and their pack of allies made the classic mistake of berserking down a group slightly too large to berserk down. As soon as it wore off I quaffed most of my heal wounds (goodbye trove), polished off the last monsters, and scooped up a sixth rune.

To Zot. OOFs not too bad - by now I had Iron Shot, IOOD, and Statue Form melee to use on them - but one or two nasty curse toe encounters. Zot:5 had a lot of ancient liches and I got a brief side trip to Abyss:5, but it never got too serious. Grabbed the Orb, evaded one panlord, and I was home free.

Next the RNG gave me TeAK. I suspect this is not the start of a streak.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.