The Tavern

...I decide to request a shop from Gozag on my MuMo before going for my first rune, and manage to buy this:



This is a hexer-stabber-ice mage hybrid of sorts BTW, who also found this early on:

"Your Serpent of Hell grins greedily, jangling a coin purse."

[...]

"Here: your Serpent of Hell (friendly)"

Barely survived and had to leave the level. Time of revenge:

Okay, I rarely know when it's "safe" enough to use a wand of polymorph. But sometimes, in desperation things work out. (Oh yes, I also have no clue how to win with a felid yet... But I am trying!)

Little Kitty (Felid Wanderer level 7-ish, 6-8 points each in Dodging and Unarmed combat, 22 EV but low on consumables) spots Pikel and retinue on D:6. Little Kitty leads Pikel over a shaft, but the slaves remain. Gradually scratches through them over time. Eventually kitty has to go down to the next level (running away from Duvessa, as it happens). Kitty is having a rather good time of D:7, but spends most of the remaining consumables to pull through a couple other more dangerous beasties. Finally finds Pikel again, now blocking off the corridor which leads to the part with most of the stairwells.

Takes a shot at Pikel and slam, whip of electrocution. One life gone. Runs around a while looking for other things to do but ends up back there again. Just slightly more Unarmed combat. "Oh well?" Tries again and gets shocked in no time. Doh. Retreat. Now Pikel starts using a wand, which happens to be acid! Kitty at 5 HP. Reads tele scroll. Desperate measures. Zaps Pikel with wand of polymorph! (All of 1 Evocations.) Expects to get something horrible... Actually Pikel turns into a golden eye and immediately blinks away behind a big corner.

Speedy little kitty teleports, rests, has good luck with a couple more encounters, and comes back to find Pikel still has not yet returned. Picks up all of Pikel's gear which is now lying on the floor, as an eye apparently cannot carry it. Both the handy acid wand and that nasty whip. Not that a cat can use the whip, but neither can Pikel now. "Not this time you won't."

... Kitty also happens to have been blessed with Clarity and extra MR by a potion of mutation earlier. Which makes clawing one golden eye relatively easy, it turns out.

Other good polymorph targets: Maurice, Sonja, Nessos.

Note that picking up the whip was not necessary, as polymorphing a monster is permanent.

Thanks. (But it was still somehow gratifying. )

Permanent strikes me as somehow OP, but anyway...

Well, it is a gamble... If you worship Xom you'll see the other side of the coin ("You see here Gastronok the shard shrike").

I've read that once it was very easy to poly Grinder into a hellion, but I never could replicate that.

Grinder has HD 6 and hellion has HD 7 so it is quite possible, yes (monster polymorph tends to slightly increase HD, IIRC).

The maps are procedurally generated with quite a random component, so I'm not sure the game is ever going to be "smart enough" to encourage both some challenges and "no" nigh-impossible situations. Just imagine what it would have to do. It would have to take into account your species, background, current equipment, and the movement rates and equipment of all the roving mobs on each level after they're generated.

And how recursive or progressive do you want such a rule to be? "Any aspect of the game"?? If there are 25 remove curse scrolls in the 3-rune game but 40 cursed items generate, is that a design flaw or does it mean you really shouldn't have randomly tested quite so many different items -- particularly if you did so after you knew you didn't have any more of those scrolls? If you don't train Fighting or ranged abilities for the whole first 15 dungeon levels, has the game made things "impossible" by still placing a komodo dragon or an 8-headed hydra somewhere on Lair:1-2? Is the idea that if you make all of 4 or 12 different choices right along the way within oh 4 turns of sighting each choice, there should be a way to solve the situation... Or how hard is "too hard"? It only takes so many of those before one lands in a "nigh impossible" situation not by map layout alone, but as a result of many different things and player choices all interacting for several levels.

It's one thing to say static parts normally shouldn't be "too difficult," but even with those I think many of us can imagine situations where it's a lot more interesting to occasionally break through to the ones that actually are (at least seemingly) awfully tricky that particular iteration of the game. Putting in a lot of fixes to make sure that "none are impossible" in spite of all the things players can do early on to make that even more likely as a matter of course -- or less likely as a matter of strategy, might not be a winnable effort. Things are either going to get at least very strange or silly easy if you chased after that too hard, I suspect.

I love it when an enemy's chaos weapon hastes you and makes you invisible.

I also love it when I find a +6 ring of slaying long before I even reach the Temple.

How often do you see this:

Did you have to mention the devil?

A few games later (still messing with felids), random drawing deck of destruction poly'd Gastronok on L:2 and got this. Killed me once right away, a couple XL later still put up a merry chase and took almost a whole ornate deck of summons to whittle it away!

D:1
Fire Dragon Scales

Nice, but makes me wonder what the hell is coming for me...

EDIT: Died on d:2 from tons of poison because no healing potions...

That's it I am going to die oO

Bought as an unidentified scroll for 25 gold

Damnit max MP, you had one job.

Yes, playing anything but DD is full of disappointments

Nice, I didn't expect to return back and enter the ossuary with no scrolls of magic mapping at all.

.. acquirement gives you what you want. I found 4 scrolls of acquirement so far.
First scroll gave me a +1 arbalest of velocity on D:8 (I had hand crossbow at min delay and hoped to get an arbalest)
Second one gave me gauntlets of war on Lair:2. I am a pure hunter, all my damage comes from arbalest (unlimited ammo option and nightmare difficulty are activated).
Then I found 2 scrolls as a stack on Depths:4. Third one gave me alchemist hat: my only empty slot was hat and I didn't really need anything except hat at this time.
Now I am looking at last scroll of acquirement and don't know what to wish. Damnation arbalest maybe? I have sniper already.



Also somewhat related to a thread in GDD, the Minotaur has 3 nice spells from 4 magic schools in Shadow Dragon Scales.

I just googled myself, but I think this may be it (some more description on the page):


Grammatically, I'd always just assumed it was related to the notion of a production still being "in the pipe" -- like "in the trunk" before one gets to something "fully grown" or creating all sorts of other variants. But then, as a non-dev, I've always found the term "fork" a strange thing to combine with "trunk" too. Are we plants or roads? I guess some urban planners do talk about "trunk roads"? But still.

Killing or even stabbing things in dragon form is still fun.

I already made a post in this topic about an OpFi in dragon form, stabbing with '!!!!!' (72-143 damage).

In a recent game, a green DrWn of Ely with already 25 UC in dragon form, I even got '!!!!!!' (144 - 287 damage):

58596 | Zot:1 | //The helpless quicksilver dragon fails to defend itself. You maul the quicksilver dragon!!!!!! You kill the quicksilver dragon!

End game armour? Wrong. Upgraded to

End game armour? Wrong. Upgraded to

End game armour? Wrong. Upgraded to
which was enhanced immediately from +0 to +11 after first gold dragon died. I really wanted the resistances on body armour due to 2 rings with Slay+5 and fustibalus/sacred scourge.

Mara (fighting in storm left over from Bai Suzhen moments before -- edit: Or was it wand of clouds actually?) utterly fails to repel Elder Batox Beast (from box of beasts, 16 Evocations)...

Beastie who has such a big cute icon too.

Thank you, shapeshifter, I wouldn't quaff one of my two potions of mutation otherwise!

D:4. On a melee build.

Anything is a melee build after finding that

Dying in the abyss after a Zot trap on Shoals:3. I end up in Abyss:4. For having autoexplored a cleared level.

"Cleared" ?

cough cough

Just when I thought I was never going to find a rune on Abyss:3

It's great having rElec and rC+++ for situations like these.

(The rune was in the middle tile between all the spires - already apported it just in case! Am so not wandering around to find this vault again.)

...I find the Book of Annihilations on D:2 as a DECj. I never actually used it until much later in the game, but still!

Btw, I guess spit is meant to be split.

No, from http://www.m-w.com:

Searing Ray keeps going and going! I did not realize this before.

Found all of these on D:1-3 this game
And didn't get killed by any of the brands either...

+0 hand axe of venom (first, fortunately on the floor)

+0 hand axe of freezing (from an orc)
+1 hand axe of electrocution (another orc)

+5 dagger (on the floor)
Short sword of distortion (a kobold)
+0 short sword of electrocution (an orc)

Thanks Trog!

The earliest Fire Storm I've ever seen (XL 14, Orc:2). Also kind of funny that I scored a Pan Lord on the same floor as the Pan Orc vault.

Not my game. Best potion I've ever seen. Is it possible to get 3 levels of robust from a single potion?

I love it when I survive double shafting for five levels (MfNe of Kiku):

7613 | D:9 | Reached skill level 5 in Stealth
Well, that was wasted xp (allied zombies break stealth) and included gambling to survive. I don't see gambling as a good thing, we supposedly have a roguelike here

I strongly disagree. Stealth definitely helped me in getting from D:10 back to D:5. I didn't have any allies with me there, you know.

I could have run away from that slime creature but I saw stairs up behind it and decided to engage. I have Zephyr and thought I could handle it, but a miscast Vampiric Draining (with something like 2%) made it a bit too close... So the gambling I did (risk the slime for getting to the closest stairs) was quite ok and appropriate for a roguelike.

I meant without those shafts you wouldn't waste xp. I mean to me it is like getting berserkitis from neqotec on orc:2 and then you find amulet of clarity (in old version where it existed). Yes, you survived but the character might be stronger without that shaft(mutation) because it would not waste xp(amulet slot).

Ok, I understand your point now. However, I didn't change my skill training at all due to being shafted. I almost always train stealth in the early game when I'm wearing a robe. I know good players don't do that but I have my own method for skilling which is surely unoptimal :)

No, I'm not worshipping Lugonu (GrFE of Ely).

oh no



ha! thanks Loiuse!

I wonder if I'll be able to land those curare hits...I didn't even know blowguns could go to +11; it was generated that high off Sonja.

Phantom Mirror (x2) + Haunt + holy trishula (starting behind his balrug in corridor too) + high defense = Die, Cerebov!
(although it took a while)
(actually stole the mirrors from his side vaults in the big square layout)
L27 Gnoll in gold dragon armor +2, holy trishula +9, all char attributes 22-25, base combat skills about 20, Heroism+Finesse, might, DMsl, brilliance, AC 30, EV 25 base, SH 22, rF+++ (had 4 total rF to begin with), rN++, MR+++++ and Clar.