The Tavern

Pretty smooth run in all. Played a straight-up fighter until converting to TSO, after which I started to branch out to Invocations and supportive magic. Started out worshipping Beogh, entered the orcish mines as soon as I saw them with a handful of followers and left them alone save for Urug thanks to a rather vicious Ogre/Giant/Troll ending (which granted made for some sweet emergent gameplay as I led what amounted to a small army storming it in the first place). Urug proved enough however as he provided the backbone to the far smaller and more elite band I raided the lair with. Ended up with two High Priests, a Sorcerer, Urug, a Warlord and some Knight before clearing out Snake:5 (since, y'know, why not? Everything in lair was positively murdered by the spellcasters and I had rPoison). Lost the Knights and one of the High Priests to the welcoming party, was teleported away by a helpful greater naga and salvaged the rest through recall and ended up getting the rune at clevel 16. So much for constriction bringing it up to par I suppose . This would predictably not last as I was ambushed by one of those Hidden Door monster vaults in the mid-vaults, teleported out and promptly couldn't bring my followers with me due to Beogh being pissed for whatever reason (must've hit one whilst confused without noticing).

The gifted orcs kinda lost steam at that point, but the Water walk ability proved useful in the Shoals. After getting the Barnacled Rune (and avoiding one of my old ghosts in the process - forgetting to renew Ice Form on a lvl 25 character can be a bitch like that) I went back to the Vaults and got a Vampiric Executioner's Axe in the Hall of Blades. Nice. After ensuring that it'd be blessable by TSO I then Enchanted it up with everything I had and proceeded to murder positively everything down to Zot:5 (sometimes accompanied by some fodder Orcs). Found and skinned a Gold Dragon in mid-Zot, got my bling armor on (armor drops through the rest of the game were kind of shit, unfortunatly), maxed my fighting skills and got the low level charms and blink workable around this point. Cleared the chamber, cleared the Slime Pits, converted to TSO, cleared Crypt with an Amulet of Faith on, got me blessed ExAxe of Holy Wrath (TSO altar on crypt:5 - nice), (slowly) cleared Tomb, lived it up in Pan, got Abyssed by a Pan Lord, got Abyssal rune, got back to Pan, killed off the Unique Pan Lords in between frequent loot dropoffs in the vestibule, entered hell, promptly almost died on Dis:7 due to idiot charging a Pit Fiend with its 2 pals hangin' 2 steps behind it, used up most of my healing supplies, destroyed all that opposed me, got the orb and ran up the stairs and got out in one piece (..more or less, used up my last healing charges in hell so the ascent was a bit hairy at times with a few blind teleports to get away from those lovely tormentor + lord spawns).

Things I've learned:

* Beogh is a pretty swell early to midgame god, powerful, good utility and the followers are easy to bond to and an excellent opportunity for emergent gameplay. Gj designers.

* Beogh's penance is directed at the Orc followers, not the PC.

* Having a lot of followers at once breaks the tileset somehow; at times it looked like I was followed by an army of assorted artifacts instead of Orcs.

* Difficulty curve is still very wonky; almost all of my characters die pre-lair, but those that make it through are nigh indestructible in comparison thanks to killing everything rapidly and having all the escape options online. Entering the post-lategame knowing that the hardest part are behind me just feels wrong somehow.

* Summoning needs to go. My midgame consisted of watching my Orc spellcasters burying any and all enemies unlucky enough to happen by in summoned demons, then raising their corpses and throwing THEM at the next foo that happened by. The exp penalty isn't even an issue since none can stand before you until the lategame, at which point you accumulate far more than you'll ever need anyway. This goes for certain god powers like Summon Angel/Greater Demon as well unless limited to one or two of each (especially lategame where piety is cheap and bosses trivialized). Necromancy is kinda Ok since corpses are a finite resource and still requires you to kill at least something by yourself each level, and Beoghs Orc leveling minigame is fun and reasonably balanced as you actually have to keep your followers alive to reap the benefits (aside for the aforementioned summoning spam).

* Ditto the food clock. I ended the game with what, 60+ rations in addition to pretty much every other misc foodstuff I'd encountered up to that point. There isn't much point in wasting time except for restoring stats and waiting out god wrath anyway, and there have to be better ways of curbing those exploits than by straining immersion and patience by having to manually slaughter corpses every few minutes.

* Skill Cap? Having to dump Exp into Unarmed because the utility spells are all easily cast at acceptable hunger and there's nothing better to burn it on strikes me as a bit silly. The lategame isn't hard anyhow, and forcing players to plan their character ahead would be good for, well, building character.

* The new lategame tilesets are purty, gj artists.

*Above all, do not relax and lose focus after ascending. It may not kill your character, but cutting yourself due to not paying attention whilst preparing veggies for dinner still hurts like a [potty mouth].

I do NOT think summoning should GO, but I believe it should have a CAP based on Summoning Skill and total {quantifier} of summons.

And if you summon something new, and it hits the cap, your earliest summon auto-abjures.

Where {quantifier} is something like hit dice or whatever, so you can still spammal (to a point), but if you then ask for a dragon, 95% of those spammals vanish.

Same sort of cap should exist for undead, but if so, then undead should be able to travel between levels.]

Undead and summons caps should not touch each other.

Discuss in detail here.