New player

[Balgoth]

Hello Everyone

new player here, and i just wanted to thank everyone who is involved in the development of this wonderful game. I am not a stranger to roguelikes, but i never gave DC much attention (silly me). This week i started to dabble a bit on it, and try my luck... died a lot as expected, some of them could probably be avoided if i payed attention to what i had in my inventory. Yesterday my best run ever, got to the third level i think of the beast lair, opened a door and was swarmed by giant ants, almost took them all out...died of course, because i was to stupid to use those teleport scrolls... I was pissed, i was so well equipped and i lost it all, and to giants ants no less.

Tried again today...and wow!! Currently level 10 with my Minotaur warrior in the 9th level of the dungeon, full plate, with a +2 ac flail, Fueriakh ring, got the phial of floods on the previous level, and now i just got this crazy item... +10 hand axe of Balgoth's Sudden Death, +2 dex, prot from poison, affects my resistance to hostile environments, my magic capacity (-9) and lets me turn invisible... I am completely hooked!!

So thank you all of you who are involved and helped turning this game to this always wonderfull and sometimes frustrating experience!!


Balgoth

[byrel]

If you need advice, you've come to the right place.

Most ants only move at the same speed as you, so backing up to the stairs when it gets dicey is viable too...

[daggaz]

General rules of Crawl that will improve your survivability:

0) Always move away from unknown (black) territory before fighting, try to fight in corridors whenever possible.
1) Use consumables! Dont hoard them. (you are going to die anyhow, better you learn how to use them than to die with them in your inventory, but this rule holds even for more experienced, conservative players)
2) Teleport out of a situation long before you actually think you need to. This applies to other panic button mechanics as well.
3) Focus an offensive skill first (get your killdudes going)
a) Dont switch around here. If you picked Maces n Flails, dont switch to axes because you found a sweet randart.
4) Remember that skills have exponentially increasing costs but not exponentially increasing gains. 14 is about where you start hitting the curve, and 20 is where it really starts getting heavy.
5) RUN AWAY. You don't have to kill everything, its often a very bad idea.

[archaeo]

Rule -1) the Crawl community is incapable of looking at a morgue or a character dump without telling you what you're doing wrong, and if the first person isn't right, a second person will be along shortly to explain why they're wrong.

In other words, if you hit # in your game and post the results in code tags, along with your specific questions, in the Dungeon Crawling Advice forum (or ask the tileschat cloud in CSZO, ##crawl on freenode, or /r/dcss on reddit), you'll probably get a pretty good answer in short order.

Welcome to the forum!

[tedric]

Most ants only move at the same speed as you, so backing up to the stairs when it gets dicey is viable too...

Sorry, but this is misleading at best. Your standard "worker ant" is faster than most player species (including the minotaur the OP is rolling) and is the ant you're most likely to meet in the early game -- thus what I'd think of as "most ants", at least in the context of advising a new player.

"Soldier ants" are speed 10, the same speed as player species, and "queen ants" are slow at speed 7 -- but they're both rare in the early game outside of vaults like the one that killed the OP's previous character.

On the other hand: Ants of any kind, like almost all insects, are extra-vulnerable to poison, and poison combos strongly with backing away...

[duvessa]

If you need advice, you've come to the right place.

you must not spend very much time here

[MainiacJoe]

If you need advice, you've come to the right place.

you must not spend very much time here

Who said anything about good advice?

[Moose]

There's actually a pinned thread for this kind of thing. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=100

[Balgoth]

Thank you all for your advice , and thank you for the welcoming posts !

[twelwe]

new reply

just wanna thank all those posts behind that made this a thread worthy of another new reply

[byrel]

but you didn't thank them

[tasonir]

Most ants only move at the same speed as you, so backing up to the stairs when it gets dicey is viable too...

Sorry, but this is misleading at best. Your standard "worker ant" is faster than most player species (including the minotaur the OP is rolling) and is the ant you're most likely to meet in the early game -- thus what I'd think of as "most ants", at least in the context of advising a new player.

"Soldier ants" are speed 10, the same speed as player species, and "queen ants" are slow at speed 7 -- but they're both rare in the early game outside of vaults like the one that killed the OP's previous character.

On the other hand: Ants of any kind, like almost all insects, are extra-vulnerable to poison, and poison combos strongly with backing away...

On a hilarious note about timing, I believe that queen ants had their speed changed and are now 10 as well. Crawl: Where the best advice was probably right at some point, but that point might not be "now" anymore.