YASD: NaWr, 15 runes, but dead

[Midpoint]

Almost finished this one. Actually, the golden rune was a pretty phyrric victory. And not very pretty.

After reading through the Naga/chei stuff, I thought I'd see how it works in trunk. Honestly, I didn't have much trouble with the early game, even without constriction until lvl 13. Poison spit still rocks the early game, and all the escape mechanisms that warpers have don't hurt either. Made it to temple, but no chei, so I had to look for an outside altar. Found nice branded tridents of flame, freezing and dragon slaying which I used until I could replace them with branded demon tridents. That took longer than I expected, though.

Long story short, book drops pushed me towards fire conjuration, and I obliged up to fire storm. Poison cloud-> ignite poison was lots of fun. I found that I tended to just plow through branches to their end (at least for swamp, elf, vaults). I could have done shoals straight through but got conservative. Pan and the hells were a little more challenging than some recent characters I've taken there. A lot had to do with everything being immune to fire (it seemed). At least among the hell lords, fiends, and a lot of other things, fire storm was less useful than expected. Constriction was more useful than expected on them.

Death was via tomb with teleportitis and not bothering to equip stasis, or learn statue form/necromutation. I think either fix would have been enough to survive. I still managed to aport the rune for bragging rights. I almost took out that last dangerous group of mummies, but ran out of heal wounds charges and curing potions just didn't quite keep up with damage (still silenced after killing several greater mummies and mummy priests). Blech. I just find tomb dangerous, tedious, and not much fun. Maybe it will grow on me later.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Midpoint/morgue-Midpoint-20120404-233442.txt

[tasonir]

How do you feel about a somewhat melee character who then branches into firestorm? To me, it seems like a redundant choice - melee deals damage, firestorm deals damage. I usually pick spells that do utility things, like controlled blink, mass abjuration, statue form/necromutation, etc. But you had 15 runes, so it's clearly a viable choice, I'm just wondering how you managed the early/mid/late game. Did you start melee, going spells after, or kind of do both from the start? What kind of light vs heavy armor, etc?

I certainly agree that tomb is a huge pain, and the one and only time I cleared it, i did so with necromutation at <5% fail after raising necro/trans through most of Pan. Necro or stone form is nearly essential for naga melee in tomb, imho. It was a good choice to do it last, it's just that hard that you need the skill experience. Teleportitis is a tough break

[cerebovssquire]

No distortion weapons in the entire game? This was one of the situations where having one could have been a lifesaver (wield/unwield directly after picking up the rune, I mean).

Necro or stone form is nearly essential for naga melee in tomb, imho.

TSO and Zin get the job fine too. Pacifying everyone should also work.

[crate]

Why didn't you just teleport/semicontrolled blink back to the stairs once you grabbed the rune? Getting the rune undoes the -ctele in Tomb so it's really easy to get out if you can grab the rune in any way.

Teleportitis in tomb is not really that bad if you get a lot of stealth and are planning to just ninja the rune anyway (which is what I would usually do on a naga, since killing mummies is a real pain).

[Midpoint]

HA! Now I feel really dumb. Yeah, I had just dropped my distortion demon trident in Hell before running Gehenna, after keeping it with me in the other three hells and Pan and never needing it. Completely slipped my mind that I had it. And yes, teleportitis was more help than hindrance for most of Tomb; it let me skip much of T2, and helped a bit on the second part of T1.

I was out of player-initiated tele-sources, however. No more charges on that wand or scrolls on hand (shoulda gone back to stash...), and my ring would have taken a couple turns to uncurse and put on (but may have been worth the effort). Semi-controlled was where I was headed as soon as the silence dropped. Well, probably step-from-time to shed the summons, then semi-controlled blink to the exit. I was sort of hoping for a teleportitis teleport with my intrinsic teleport control and then I was home free. I survived a fairly long number of turns at <30HP and shredded plenty of mummies while waiting in vain. Sort of hoping is a bad strategy, btw.

Blinking immediately after grabbing the rune probably would have killed me, with at least 2 each of greater mummies and mummy priests and lowish health already. But, it might have worked with a fog scroll. Hmm, maybe even apport, fog, step from time, fog, blink, blink, blink....
What's the movement speed on Naga blinks? Does it follow your movement speed or just speed 10? For all the blinking I did, I never took the time to measure the time expended.

Anyway, this is one of those cases where either stepping away from the computer or just preparing slightly more would have been enough to bring it home. I just pointed out a few of the things I knew offhand that would have helped. The other suggestions are much appreciated, as always. Grabbing a couple more recharge scrolls off the floor would have worked too. Or drinking that cure mutations I had saved for OOF problems in Zot 5. Or just taking a few extra minutes. Oh well.

Tasonir: I had controlled blink available, but I just never felt like I needed it this game. Other games I've had to lean on it, but this naga was a tank. In situations that I would have blinked with a DE (i.e., Hell effect spawns a fiend next to you), I just threw a couple iron shots and let it take a swing/bolt at me. Same with stone form/necro. Did I get tormented, sure, but with high HP and damage output, I didn't really need immunity.
Like most warpers, I was a light armor melee hybrid from the start. My damage output plateaued, though, so I argued with myself over whether to drop shield and go bardiche, or train up the magic skills. INT > 40 made it an easier choice. Turned off melee skills and made quick progress up to meph cloud, conjure flame, toxic radiance, bolt of fire, poison cloud, ignite poison. Conjure flame was VERY tactical at times. Toxic radiance was like a mini-slouch-over-time. You could slash the HP of everything/kill with slouch, and then toxic radiance to clean up the rest. Melee took care of the remaining poison-resistance creatures, or I would just turn the poison cloud next to me into flame, and then beat them to death. The extra damage output at range helped as well. Firestorm was nice, but often less useful than bolt of fire and bolt of iron. I think I could have gotten by fine without FS, but it certainly made Cocytus a snap. So, right, your question. Light armour (robe/leather) hybrid melee with basic buffs, to which I added poison and fire crowd control/ranged attack in the midgame (before I started armour, but after min-delay weapons/shield). My first defensive pickup was a +2 large shield that I used until the vestibule (treasure trove required the horn). After SH 15, I trained dodging a little. Armour I didn't add until I found my artifact ice dragon armour (crypt). I had trained fire/conjurations so high by that point, that the lack or armour skill didn't affect my casting much (i.e, up to lvl 6 spells), but it did delay fire storm quite a bit. The throwing skill I only added in the hells, for those few times when I needed range and was out of MP/silenced. I had carried the steel javelins with me since Shoals, but almost never used them, except in the late, late endgame. The character likely would have been just as strong without conjurations, additional throwing skill, and more javelins (of which there were plenty). For the hell/pan lords, the strategy for most was to blast fire storm or slouch (or both) to clear out followers and bust down hp on the boss, temporal distortion if they stayed out of melee and I was low on mp, otherwise bolts of foo. Constrict on melee range and channel to bolts of foo/firestorm/slouch depending on the tactical situation. Sometimes that meant constricting the lord and turning around to melee the remaining followers/summons (never found mass abjuration, had no summoning skill, used rods for the worst summons). This was not a sufficient strategy for Cerebov, who I just had to ninja the rune after making a couple unsuccessful attempts on his life (got close!).

[demolicious]

To me, it seems like a redundant choice - melee deals damage, firestorm deals damage.

Firestorm deals monstrous damage over a large area over several turns, is ranged, summons fire vortexes/vortices, and will still deal damage to fire resistant enemies. If you can cast firestorm reliably you can drop all your weapons and items and cruise through most of the game. I wouldn't say it's a redundant choice at all, just not one that you'd normally have to make as switching from melee to very high level fire conjurations mid-game isn't really an optimal plan in terms of skill management. Awesome, but not optimal.