YAVP & YASD: Massive tournament report and morgue links!

[tasonir]

Several Naga, Troll and Deep Dwarves were sent to an early grave by my lazy starting practices (tab everything, if it dies, just restart). The promising characters:

DDBe #1: Died with 2 runes

A deep dwarf who really should have won ended up dying on vault:8 because I felt that charging into several giants was safe...only to find more giants and a death drake near them. Several large rocks and a cloud of miasma that slowed me proved to be too much for that poor dwarf. Had I pulled things back towards known territory it would have been easily prevented.

This was probably fueled by the fact that I had a vampiric executioner's axe. Seriously, you can't get a more perfect weapon. Which then makes you tab way too much. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now Also, a hat of alchemist took care of most of my resistances... *sigh*

Morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 220445.txt

TrHu #1: Died with 1 rune

In a similar story, but a significantly weaker character, I lost a troll on swamp:5 who was also too agressive. He happened to be at that awkward point in character growth where I had just barely gotten statue form castable, used it a few times, but was generally underpowered in terms of skill levels since I had to push so much experience into statue form.

This character did not have my deep dwarf's luck in gear, with zero resistances on armor, having to make a +0 steam dragon armor out of desperation just to get any AC. I wasn't sitting on any robes of resistance or similar. Died quaffing a potion of magic, trying to get enough mana back to cast step from time.

Morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 055820.txt

TrHu #2: Escaped with 4 runes

But persistence pays off, and I then scored my first tournament win, sticking with Troll Hunter and also going back to Okawaru, the same as the test character I did the week before the tournament. I may not have worshipped Chei, but I did use the ponderous unrand hat all game long. I really had no other hats that were even comparable. I didn't bother switching to Jiyva late game, primarily because I wanted to win quickly and didn't feel like running any side areas like crypt or elf. I accidentally got banished to the abyss at level 16, and despite trying to find an exit and get out of there asap, I ended up finding a shining one holy rune vault before any exit and went for the rune. After that, an exit appeared rather quickly.

I never once found an amulet of resist mutation, but managed to survive the abyss and the rest of the game with very, very few mutations. Got -2 str, cured it, got -dex, cured it, and only picked up meaningful mutations in one orb of fire fight, the teleportisis 1 mutation, which I also promptly removed. Had around 6 or so total cure mutation potions, so I wasn't too worried. Also do shields of reflection have a higher chance to block projectiles than regular shields? Ie, does it reflect things that might have gotten through, or does it only reflect if it successfully blocked? The reflection shield I had this game seemed very effective in blocking damage.

It was also notable for me personally in that I was level 26 - not too much of a difference, but my first win to not be 27. Starting to skip areas and take on areas with less experience and items. Now if I can just stop running back to my lair stash all game long I might be able to improve my turn count more

Morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 073716.txt

SETm #1: Died with 4 runes

Next up I go sludge elf transmuter of Chei. It's been long enough that Chei is worth a lot of points now, and I only splat 4 elves before getting one through the midgame. I find statue form from Roxanne and I buy a book of the warp in orc...only to later on find an additional THREE copies of this supposedly rare book! I found a scroll of acquirement and almost took jewelry before I remembered I can't get a wand of hasting following chei, so I have a very good chance of getting a wand of healing. Picked wand and got healing as I wanted, and was basically set to win.

Focused on getting my spells castable and then raised my physical skills more later on - the simulacrum hydras in swamp:5 were a breeze. I was able to tab the whole ending with only one pip of rC. Onwards to spider, and Arachne falls easily enough. Vaults fell quickly. Slime was cake. Elf was free loot.

What I wasn't expecting (you saw this coming, didn't you?) was an 82 damage iron shot from frederick. Gah. Such a powerful character, shot down before his time! Doesn't iron shot respect AC? I had 33 <.<

Morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 214729.txt

DDBe #2: Died with no runes

Splat another 3 million SETm's, get bored, try some naga ones, some octopode ones. More splats. Roll a DDBe because I feel like winning. Have an incredibly frustrating fight against an invisible orc wizard early on - get stubborn and refuse to run (I clearly practice optimal play at all times) and just keep swinging at something I can't see. Decide not to intentionally suicide, burn 3 charges of heal wounds just to kill one wizard. Know that I'm going to win this game now, just like you know when you find an early ring of slaying you will die. If they're making it this frustrating I am bound to go far!

On d:10, find the most surprising ghost fight I've ever seen. Snack, a Kobold assassin, very evasive. Deals almost no damage, but has a draining attack and very high accuracy. Drains nearly 2 full levels before I give up and teleport away. I was exhausted, so I try going back when I can berserk, lose more levels. Give up, go to the next level. Find a bailey, outside of which is a goblin with a randart draining short sword. Lose more levels. I think I've gone from 10.something down to level 7 now. Enter the bailey, berserk through 3 huge packs of orcs, burning lots of heal wounds charges. Get rewarded when an orc knight has a crystal plate armor. Soon after get my first battleaxe from trog and I'm glad I wasted so many heal wounds charges on that orc wizard! Took a few levels to get the strength to wear the crystal plate mail, but I managed. Trog's second gift is a +0 +6 randart executioner's axe of flaming, with rF++ rElec.

Get down to D:17, come across Aizul and a couple of moderate threats. I remember to toss on trog's hand for MR, but somehow forget to notice that I'm not currently wearing my ring of poison resistance. After I berserk I cut off any reasonable escape option and am forced to go down swinging. While I died of all the poison damage, it was the first time I've ever gone brainless due to some brain worms nearby. I had the potion to restore it so that would have been fine, if it wasn't for the whole "having zero hit points" problem.

Morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 191156.txt

DDBe #3: Died with 3 runes on Zot:5

Splat a couple more squishy characters (transmuters mostly), get annoyed, repeat the cycle, fire up another DDBe. I'm getting a bit tired of writing up poor non-healing berserkers, but this one managed to nearly win - I had 3 runes, I was down in zot:5, but I just couldn't get enough piety per damage over the last 10-15 floors I was on. Having teleportisis for most of these levels was a hinderance as well, although I did cure that eventually. I was burning through wand charges way too quickly and this was the first time I've lost a DDBe to just having 0 mana. I had level 27 evocations, and burned every point of mana I could get my hands on. Piety was low as well, 4 *'s. Could have tried to burn a few more regens but I had just cleared so many more mobs on Zot:5 than I was expecting to have to go through. I did try a few random teleports - teleported into the left lung once when I had been clearing the right side. Immediately put up another teleport, and a purple draconian dispels it! Took down a lot of health trying to heal wounds myself before I could get another teleport to fire off. I might have made it if I didn't attempt to clear zot:5 at all and went for a strictly grab and run approach. Not sure. I skipped crypt because I was having piety problems and trog doesn't give piety for undead. I ran elf to try to regain some, but I think it was mostly break even.

I had a rather impressive array of wands, although I mostly ended up just using them for the occasional fireball on fleeing targets and abjuration on summoned fiends. If someone wants to load up the replay of my zot:5 run it should be good for a laugh I think I managed the pulling mobs slowly fairly well, but I was still taking a lot of damage throughout the level. It seemed to have a higher monster count than usual, but that could just be observer bias or the normal random variation. I could have bought one more scroll of acquirement and an rElec ring, but didn't end up going back to buy them. I don't think it would have made a critical difference, but probably should have. I didn't end up taking that much elec damage in zot.

Morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 001405.txt

NaHu #1: Escaped with 7 runes

Went back to a couple more SETm's, splated quickly, messed around with Naga transmuters, monks, and then a hunter. Fortunately/Unfortunately, the hunter is the one that took off, and that means I don't get credit for wins with two different classes as my troll was a hunter.

In any case, my Naga hunter went pretty smoothly - did melee attacks early on to conserve arrows, but eventually found enough arrows to use bows exclusively. I still trained a fair amount of unarmed and even a little bit of shields because half of the game I was worried I'd run out of arrows and be unable to finish extended. Running elf helped a lot though, plenty of arrows around.

Made some rather unusual build choices, I mean, I have a reputation to live up to. Like casting controlled blink in golden dragon armor, or just casting anything at all in GDA. Also learned mass abjuration, because summons really annoy me. Didn't end up going for statue form - I had it memorized but didn't bring it down to castable levels. This was mostly due to time constraints - I really wanted to go for 15 runes but two factors made this not possible:

1) Never found any source of rMut.
2) Due to personal time constraints, wednesday night was my last full time crawl night, so I probably couldn't finish the game if I didn't have it wrapped up already.

With regards to rMut: Search the morgue file for "gained mutation" for a good laugh. It occurs 43 times. Most of them weren't too bad, but being a complete herbivore and having fast metabolism 2 can be pretty scary. I did have a decent stockpile of bread rations though, and the mutations didn't last too long. I ran Slime, then entered Pan, which is where most of the mutations came from. In pan I find a ziggurat enter it, get banished to the abyss by a Pan lord with distortion while still inside the zig, and then run abyss. It was an interesting order to run things in and I was never quite going where I expected to go. Crawl decides, you can only follow! I ended up leaving after zig:10 because I knew I wasn't going to do all 27 and didn't really feel like straining. I mostly just wanted to have *some* zig credit during the tournament, even if it wasn't much.

Once I returned to Pan I couldn't seem to find any unique levels, just more mutations. Then I landed on the holy level of pan. Not really something I was looking to fully clear, but I do know it is a source of cure mutation. I had magic mapping and found Zin's temple, quaffed all three cure Mutation potions and a restore abilities potion (I was missing around 20 points of int out of 40 total), and then left the level. I did finally find Lom Loban, killed him and got the magical rune, and then decided I didn't really want to keep going through mutations and took the next exit out of Pan that I found. I had already started to re-mutate, and I couldn't depend on another holy pan level supplying cure mutations. I had very fast metabolism and was still a herbivore; I didn't see 3 more unique pan levels and hell being too safe of a bet.

Zot:5 was fairly uneventful: I did kill at least 4 orbs of fire at the same time (within 4 turns), but this is fairly easy on a naga of chei - 4 turns of slouch will kill them all. Running out went smoothly.

  Code:

109962 | Zot:5    | Killed an orb of fire
109962 | Zot:5    | Gained mutation: You are clumsy (Dex -1). [an orb of fire]
109962 | Zot:5    | Gained mutation: Your mind is acute (Int +1). [an orb of fire]
109964 | Zot:5    | Killed an orb of fire
109966 | Zot:5    | Killed an orb of fire
109966 | Zot:5    | Killed an orb of fire

Full morgue: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 052133.txt

I'll definitely be firing up more ranged characters in the future, I think I'd like to go crossbows, there seems to be more bolts in the dungeon than arrows, although you do lose the bonus arrows in elf. Integrating a ranged and melee character would be interesting and make me worry less about running out of ammo, although the experience requirements are rather high. Still, this would be for a 15 rune game, so the experience is there. Maybe I just won't wear GDA, and stick with FDA or something easier to cast in.

I'm tempted to try to speedrun a DDBe with 3 runes because my original goal was 3 wins in the tournament, but losing the last weekend I don't think I'll have time. We'll see.

[Psieye]

I'll definitely be firing up more ranged characters in the future, I think I'd like to go crossbows, there seems to be more bolts in the dungeon than arrows, although you do lose the bonus arrows in elf. Integrating a ranged and melee character would be interesting and make me worry less about running out of ammo, although the experience requirements are rather high. Still, this would be for a 15 rune game, so the experience is there. Maybe I just won't wear GDA, and stick with FDA or something easier to cast in.

Unnecessary, my MiBe was a melee/ranged hybrid by post-Lair. That is: 20+ Axe and 14+ Crossbow. So long as you don't try to keep both melee and ranged at the forefront it's not too steep an EXP requirement. I mean ok I didn't get to wield my Exec Axe until some extra floors later than if I had gone pure melee but the ranged option is well worth it. A battleaxe is good enough for midgame mobs and I was at 26 Axe by lategame comfortably.

[crate]

If you worship oka or trog you will have plenty of crossbow bolts.

My crossbow ophu was very easy, crossbows are definitely the best ranged weapon for killing everything imo, mainly since penetration bolts are that good. I carried a demon blade around but I don't think I used it for anything but killing plants once I found it.

If you worship a non-ammo-gift god then you want a melee weapon also.

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As far as dying to Frederick's iron shot, yes it respects AC but it also does like 120 damage (same as Cerebov's iron shot) so AC doesn't do much for most characters, and you can always get a bad roll. EV is dramatically better. I had him oneshot my best online DEFE from 90 hp.

[tasonir]

Yeah I did play oka and trog fairly heavily in the tournament because I like winning, but aside from trying to get wins I find both of them pretty dull gods to play. I have a lot of Chei experience, but I really want to branch out into other interesting gods like Ashenzari, fedhas, or play jiyva again. Coincidentally, Op was going to be the next race I try, unless I go back to the Sludge elves who never seem to find the lair

And yeah, I figured it was working correctly, I just wanted to gripe about having good ac. But I can certainly see how, in the case where you get a near max damage roll, even getting a max AC roll (with 30ac) is only 25% off. And your average is 12.5% off...Basically I should have been healing a lot sooner, which hurts because I had the power to do so, I was simply unaware his spells hit for that much. AFTER I died, I looked him up on the knowledge bots and saw he casts at cerebov's power. These are things I tend to forget when I haven't been playing for the last few months. Overall I was pretty rusty and lost at least 2 characters amazing I shouldn't have (DDBe #1 and SETm #1), and probably really should have been able to save all 5 of the listed deaths.

[tasonir]

Also as a followup: in the case where a DDBe is running entirely out of mana and can't recharge the wand enough anymore, is there any way to try to recover? Places I could go for piety easily enough? I skipped crypt because trog doesn't give piety for undead - would it have been worth it to run? Try to do pan?

[Baldu]

If you start an arrow guy, you'll have a bit of trouble with ammo early on but you'll have enough for the big threats if you're careful, and you'll eventually have enough to never run out.

For a crossbow guy you will constantly be running out of bolts until vaults, so need to train another way to kill to get there. There are very few penetration and steel bolts, need to be very careful with those. One of my favorite uses of penetration bolts is for the royal jelly, parking self in corridor, hasting, and shooting, it takes a bit of time but is pretty safe and everything eventually melts.

You are also right about arrows/bolts numbers if my last couple games are to be believed, i've been ending with a stock of 1200+ bolts on crossbows and 800+ arrows on bows. Of course this is all without an ammo god.

[crate]

If you're running out of mp on ddbe you should train evocations (edit: I see that you do ... in that case just take less damage!!). It's a good skill for ddbe even without the maxmp gain, and now that you get maxmp for evo.... You are best served by just fighting fewer enemies though I suspect, since DDBe does run out of healing eventually. Pan is very bad since you will get tormented occasionally and you have to keep your current HP reasonably high because of hellfire/panlords (and even the regular enemies will do some damage to you), so this will cost you a ton of wand charges.

---

While I understand that you might be wanting to play things you're comfortable with during the tournament I will say that when I want to win a game I will worship Fedhas before most other gods, because he is the surest path to winning without a lot of xp investment/limitations in my experience (but then, I have more fedhas wins than anyone else online). Of course, other players disagree.

[ddubois]

While I understand that you might be wanting to play things you're comfortable with during the tournament I will say that when I want to win a game I will worship Fedhas before most other gods, because he is the surest path to winning without a lot of xp investment/limitations in my experience (but then, I have more fedhas wins than anyone else online).

That only holds true for 3-runers, I imagine?

I have a psychological block that says it's not a "real win" unless I kill E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

[crate]

Well Fedhas wrath is pretty tame by the time you want to switch gods (worst it can do is make some oklobs or destroy some consumables), so you can always just switch gods. Fedhas is ok in extended if you have fruit left--you can play "tomb defense" in tomb:3 just fine for instance, and it's a pretty good way to clear out the floor. And if you don't just swap to TSO or Makhleb or Jiyva or something, you've gotten past the early game by worshipping the god who is the strongest early on, which was presumably why you picked Fedhas.

[tasonir]

fedhas and ashenzari are the two I am looking to learn next, definitely. I did train evo as you noticed, but I think it was the teleportisis putting me into bad spots and me just staying and fighting out of it that cost me too many charges. I'll just shelve DDBe for now and try fedhas...in 3 months or whenever I have time