Anyone else **really** suck (but keep coming back for more?)

[Confidence Interval]

Sometimes I read posts on here that say something like "I suck at this game. It took me over 100 attempts to make it to Zot."
Or "I suck at this game. I've only over completed it three times, and only once with more then three runes."
Or "I suck at this game. It wasn't til my 42nd ascension that I managed it with a [insert improbably difficult race-character combination]."

All of you: I take my hat off to you. But you don't suck. I suck. I counted up my deaths recently and there were around 1850; I've played more since then, and I probably missed some, so let's figure I've had over 2000 games. Occasionally I make it to about XL14 - that's my highest. I've cleared Hive two or three times and been to Snake once but no other branches. No clue what Zot looks like. Hall of Blades, Pandemonium, Elf place? No clue. I *once* got a rune (the Serpentine one, obviously), and that was when I cheated. Mostly I die well before then. On Dungeon Level 1, most commonly.

So I suck. I really suck. Yet I still play. I love DCSS and am humbly grateful to its creators and developers.

But my question: am I the only one? Is it only me who sucks, or is there a silent mass of suckers out there who just don't post ? Do you, too, despair of ever getting through (or even to) the midgame? If so, speak up! Be proud!

DCSS-suckers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your anonymity/ pride/ remaining sense of selfworth!

[jejorda2]

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/jejorda2.html
2800 online games without a win, plus hundreds of offline games before I discovered the online play. I have made it to char level 27 a handful of times, and I cleared to Zot:4 once before dying in Tomb looking for more resistances, but I haven't seen the orb yet.

I think it's been two months since I got a rune.

[ekolis]

You've seen a RUNE? Lucky! I hardly ever make it to the Ecumenical Temple, which means I don't get to play a worshipper of any of the new gods - and not even of The Shining One these days, what with the removal of paladins!

[mrbobbyg]

As someone who is exiting his sucking phase, all I can say is STUDY. Crawl requires study; you have to read, observe, and experiment. If you keep dying at level 14 it's probably because you're trying to do the same thing over and over and it's not working.

Single biggest mistake I find is not running away soon enough. Rupert and you don't have stasis? RUN! Nessos and you don't resist fire and poison? RUN! Mennas? RUN! Ogre and you don't have a ranged attack? RUN! 2 snakes and you don't have rpois? RUN!

Basically, to succeed at crawl, imo, you have to be a sneaky skulking coward who only fights when he is assured of victory. Sure, it's nice to see 3000 exp in your pool when you lucked out and killed a unique you shouldn't have been able to, but all that's going to happen to that is a wraith is gonna drain it. =)

[pratamawirya]

Basically, to succeed at crawl, imo, you have to be a sneaky skulking coward who only fights when he is assured of victory.

THIS IS NOT FAR FROM TRUTH

(I swear I capitalized that for a purpose)

[Roderic]

I've only manage to arrive at Swamps until Agnes owned me

I've visit Pan in Wiz mode, nonetheless

[Grimm]

I've seen maybe two runes in hundreds of games. I keep coming back because Crawl is exactly what I want in a game: turnbased, quick to start, easy control scheme (once you get the keys down), lots of fun things to do and see, and challenging. And free.

[Grimm]

To put it another way, I've never beaten a chess grandmaster, but I still enjoy playing the game.

[Confidence Interval]

To put it another way, I've never beaten a chess grandmaster, but I still enjoy playing the game.

I'm with you. But you probably don't log onto grandmaster-heavy online forums where it's all, "I beat this guy the other day starting with only two pawns and a king."

I mean, after a while you might start to think that you really sucked at chess...

[RFHolloway]

All time high score under 5000 despite over 300 games played - does that count? I'm still using the Go philosophy of play fast, have fun, get lots of data, then work out what you are doing wrong. I like playing a SEIE of vehemut at the moment - played over 50 games, and just getting to decide what the third spell should be.

The hard part is learning to run away.

[ClawlessVictory]

I've played maybe 100 or 150 games total, online and offline without spoilers. I've nabbed a total of 2 runes, both in the last 2 weeks, so I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Like others have mentioned, you have to learn to run away. Also, remember to use every resource available to survive; scrolls, potions and wands. I'm only now understanding the importance of wands to blast my way out of horrible situations. And there is definitely a certain path you should take as you progress in levels, and I'm gradually figuring this out through trial and error. In my opinion, this is the toughest lesson to learn.

[DemiFiend]

I suck. I did win once...after like 3 years of playing on and off. I'm trying to win my first 15-runer, but the farthest I've come after my first victory was the hall of blades. Haven't even seen Zot since the first time I won.

[thevogonpoet]

Yeah, I properly suck at this game. Never seen a rune. Can't get a spellcaster as far as the lair, not even a summoner. Can't get an Enchanter past the first couple of orc priests it sees. Never received a non-Trog god gift. My Spriggans starve to death. Hell, I can barely get a SETr to the temple (I am sure they feel more fragile in Trunk than in 0.8).

I keep thinking I am playing cautiously, but then just get to the point where I can't seem to defeat any monster, making running away trickier due to all the hostile traffic, and then I die stupidly soon after.

I think I am slowly improving though. At least the number a character combos I am dreadful at is increasing. Loosing is fun.

[Shade]

I'm no pro, and I have only a handful of ascensions (and only one in .8), but to me Crawl is a game of plateaus. My big leaps in improvement went like this:
-plateau in the early game with me being lucky to make it to the Temple
-plateau in the early mid-game with me being lucky to see the bottom of Orc and / or Lair
-plateau in the late mid-game and lucky to see the end of the Lair branches or Elf
-plateau in late game around the Vaults (and Crypt), the Vestibule of Hell, and Zot (<- I'm currently here)
-wallow in the really (post) endgame stuff (Looking forward to it)

The best way I found to learn was to play about half of my games with a tightly related list of Species and Backgrounds (Mostly non-summoning elven casters), and then to play the other half of my games randomly from the recommended combos screen. I found that the attempt to understand how everything works helped with my specialized characters, and the specialized characters (which I was / am better with) gave me enough foreknowledge of the dungeon to help get the random character off the ground.

Crawl as a HEAE and Crawl as a KoBe are two different games.

Also, if you ever happen to hit level Character Level 27 don't rush to Zot. You can, and should (IMHO), still build skills especially as a first timer.

[RFHolloway]

There are 70 users with more than 100 online games and a top score of under 5000, and although some of those are special purpose accounts (e.g. blinkrobin) that gives some reasonable benchmarks for this question.

In short - you are not alone.

[Zzz]

My best character made it to Vaults 1 and Agnes got me. Out of about 300 games. Haven't touched a rune yet.

[snow]

I think I'm decent.

If you really want to win just play a spriggan wizard and go with vehumet. It's the best combination I've found so far.

Turn off everything till conjurations is at 5 then turn off conjurations and turn of dodging and spellcasting. Turn off other skills as you gain them. Why 5 conjurations? It maxes the damage on magic dart... and you want max damage ASAP.

Learn blink, meph cloud, conjure flame, and repel missiles from the starting book... you can kill anything that's up the the liar that's not poison resistant with meph cloud and magic dart. If it's poison resistant just make a line of flames in a choke point and watch it walk through them and die.

Learn stone arrow, iron shot, poison cloud, and abjuration from gifts. abjuration instantly kills all summoned monsters. poison cloud kills kills anything that's not poison resistant... all the "hard" uniques tend to die in a few casts of this spell. Crystal spear is good to learn for killing orbs of fire in zot I guess... so put some xp into earth magic endgame.

other spells that are really good: haste, deflect missiles, dispel undead, apport, and teleport self. Not needed but helpful I guess.

also for branch order: dungeon up to lair, complete lair, complete orc, complete hive, find vaults, then do elf/snake/swamp/shoals, then complete crypt/hall of blades, complete vaults (be careful of those draining dragons, dance xp into earth magic/dodge/spellcasting), then rest of dungeon, then zot.

If you have crystal spear, you can clear the entrance to hell also. I usually do this and stash there.

Having died a dozen times in zot, here is my advice: have fire resistance++, elect resist, and poison resist. If you get mutated REALLY bad, ditch vehumet, go zin, and offer all your cash to zin and have him cure your mutations. wait out vehumet wrath at temple... and have some cold resistance incase of ice fiend summons.

[Happy Corner]

I would also like to admit that I totally suck.

I have gotten to Zot:5 (on a lowly three-rune run), but have yet to come within sight of the Orb, let alone ascend. Those guys who pull off 15-rune runs have a level of leetness I can only begin to imagine. Even moreso those streakers who can keep winning with one combo after another. That's particularly amazing, as there's only ONE combo (Kobold Berserker) that I have ever even made it to Zot with. I've made it past the so-called "early game" with other Berserkers, Ghoul Monks, Deep Dwarf Necromancers, Spriggan Venom Mages (or rather old-school Stalkers), and now I'm learning to appreciate Nagas, but I have yet to stop sucking with any of those even as little as I have begun to not suck anymore with KoBe's.

And yet somehow this is still my favorite old-school roguelike.

[moekitten]

>Those guys who pull off 15-rune runs have a level of leetness I can only begin to imagine. Even moreso those streakers who can keep winning with one combo after another.

huh, i'd say to streak two wins with an easy combo is way easier than to win an allruner but maybe other people have another opinion. to streak more than two wins and to streak hard combos are harder though

>Spriggan Venom Mages (or rather old-school Stalkers)

oh, i agree with you! the old spst was so better than spvm :3

[galehar]

And yet somehow this is still my favorite old-school roguelike.

Roguelike are old-school, but I wouldn't call crawl an old-school roguelike (which is redundant). Crawl is a modern roguelike. Sorry for nitpicking

[Confidence Interval]

The streaking thing is a mystery to me - I don't know how people can avoid nasty RNG outcomes so reliably.

This has led to me to two reflections on my play. In relation to game theory, I unintentionally apply both minimax and maximin strategies to constrain my own success:

Minimax: although I'm (very slowly) improving, I have a high mortality risk when I'm doing well, primarily because I run into new situations and don't treat them with sufficient caution: "A monster or unique I've never met before (or at least not often enough to gauge how tough they are)? Well I'll just wade on in! After all, this is my most successful character ever and I've managed to get through every encounter so far without dying!" This is an easy but stupid way to die.

Maximin: this relates more closely to the streaking thing. A lot of my characters die early - *really* early. Like with a score of 20 or not much more. This happens partly because I am sloppy on the first level or two because I haven't yet invested much time or energy in the character. That could be dealt with by taking more care but often I'll just meet something I can't cope with: out-of-depth gnolls, goblin who quaffs a potion of invisibility and kicks my ass, snake when I haven't yet found any potions of healing. Any of these things, and a lot more besides, bring about my early death, and some of them seem pretty hard to avoid. Being poisoned by a snake is pretty common, after all, and most characters can't outrun them.

But then again, as mentioned, I suck at this

[Happy Corner]

huh, i'd say to streak two wins with an easy combo is way easier than to win an allruner but maybe other people have another opinion. to streak more than two wins and to streak hard combos are harder though

That may well be true. The fact that I am unable to determine that is, of course, further proof of how much I suck!

Roguelike are old-school, but I wouldn't call crawl an old-school roguelike (which is redundant). Crawl is a modern roguelike. Sorry for nitpicking

Forgiven! I see your point, actually. Crawl is certainly more polished and evolved than, say, the last version of Zangband, and it is "modern" (delightfully so) in that sense.

In my defense, I had meant "old-school" in the sense of Crawl being a dungeon-diving, fantasy-themed roguelike, which is where the genre started and what most of the famous roguelikes still are. However, the roguelike genre now includes games like Rogue Survivor (urban zombie apocalypse) and Prospector (galactic exploration/looting), both of which go a totally different direction than Crawl, yet remain (IMHO, at least) undeniably roguelike. But now I am the one nitpicking.

[blackhatbarry]

I've been getting my butt kicked by this thing since the late 90s. Never got to Zot. Done everything short of that however. I ALWAYS seem to stuff it up by rampaging into the unknown when I get overconfident.

[Grimm]

KoboldLord said some time ago that all deaths past XL 7 or so are the player's fault. I'm not sure this is 100% true but it's nearly so - almost all of my midgame deaths are due to impatience, overconfidence, nerves, shortsightedness, lack of clear and thorough thinking, und so weiter.

This is a core strength of Crawl as a game, a strength it shares with chess, go, and other classic games: ultimately, you play not against the opponent or the game system, but against yourself. The game reveals flaws in your character, draws your attention to them, and in so doing gives you the opportunity to work on correcting them. It then rewards successful inner work with victory in the game.

This is why I keep coming back.

[Rex_Bael]

Well said Grimm, very well said.

[joellercoaster]

huh, i'd say to streak two wins with an easy combo is way easier than to win an allruner

That may well be true. The fact that I am unable to determine that is, of course, further proof of how much I suck!

Maybe "easier" should have been "less hard", at least where most people are concerned

[Confidence Interval]

The game reveals flaws in your character, draws your attention to them, and in so doing gives you the opportunity to work on correcting them. It then rewards successful inner work with victory in the game.

Can you give an example of how you have been able to correct your character flaws following your playing of DCSS?

Also: my lack of victory in the game now leads me to suppose I am a flawed character, a hollow man. Gadzooks.

[Grimm]

Can you give an example of how you have been able to correct your character flaws following your playing of DCSS?

My patience has been strengthened as a result of suffering repeatedly in the Crawl midgame. It's a flaw I have been working on for many years; Crawl has helped. I'll keep an eye peeled for a specific instance of this.

Also: my lack of victory in the game now leads me to suppose I am a flawed character, a hollow man. Gadzooks.

I've been thinking about this thread for a while now. At first I was all, 'you've totally got to work on your character, it's an opportunity for improvement!'. But a week or so ago I was in a non-Crawl, non-game situation in which I made an error. There was a gentleman in the same building who I knew would have done a better job. I thought to myself: 'I'll never be as good as him, why do I even bother?' And immediately saw that I was indulging in a Crawl-loser attitude. I know this mindset well. But I also know there's a step beyond.

There's always a bigger dog. One can strive either to emulate or surpass him, or to give up.

[joellercoaster]

There's always a bigger dog. One can strive either to emulate or surpass him, or to give up.

Alternatively:

"The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself."

[Confidence Interval]

There's always a bigger dog. One can strive either to emulate or surpass him, or to give up.

So, building on my Crawl experience: if I am challenged by such a bigger dog in a workplace environment, should I invoke Trog and go berserk?

[7hm]

There's always a bigger dog. One can strive either to emulate or surpass him, or to give up.

So, building on my Crawl experience: if I am challenged by such a bigger dog in a workplace environment, should I invoke Trog and go berserk?

Yes, but make sure you pull him into a corner so that nobody else is around when you do it. You need to make sure you don't get interrupted when you're butchering his corpse and eating his delicious meat chunks.

[Confidence Interval]

So, building on my Crawl experience: if I am challenged by such a bigger dog in a workplace environment, should I invoke Trog and go berserk?

Yes, but make sure you pull him into a corner so that nobody else is around when you do it. You need to make sure you don't get interrupted when you're butchering his corpse and eating his delicious meat chunks.

In the event I decided against berserking and then chopping him up to cannibalize.

Instead, having figured I was a faster runner than him, I threw stones at him until he followed me to the stairwell. I ran up to the offices above - and he followed me. When he appeared at the top, away from our colleagues, I threw poison darts at him until he died!

I can recommend the Crawl approach to resolving difficult situations in the workplace.

[Grimm]

That very technique is recommended in Crawl Your Way To The Top: The DCSS Method For Success In The Workplace. Wise to avoid the chunks: some white collar workers leave poisonous corpses.

[Confidence Interval]

That very technique is recommended in Crawl Your Way To The Top: The DCSS Method For Success In The Workplace. Wise to avoid the chunks: some white collar workers leave poisonous corpses.

I haven't come across that one, thanks. There are some great related reads out there. I recommend:
Beogh's Way: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience
What Business can learn from Zot: 12 Simple Rules for Success in the Dungeon, Workplace, and Home
and
The Six Sigmund Handbook

[Stormfox]

That very technique is recommended in Crawl Your Way To The Top: The DCSS Method For Success In The Workplace. Wise to avoid the chunks: some white collar workers leave poisonous corpses.

Human chunks are contaminated anyhow, and if you're a Zin follower, remember that cannibalism is a no-no. Learn Fulsome and brew them up into confusion potions.

(Wait...Soylent Beer is people???)

[jejorda2]

Human chunks are contaminated anyhow, and if you're a Zin follower, remember that cannibalism is a no-no. Learn Fulsome and brew them up into confusion potions.

Fulsome Distillation is Necromancy, also prohibited by Zin. Unless I've missed some change.

[Confidence Interval]

Human chunks are contaminated anyhow, and if you're a Zin follower, remember that cannibalism is a no-no. Learn Fulsome and brew them up into confusion potions.

Fulsome Distillation is Necromancy, also prohibited by Zin. Unless I've missed some change.

Yeah, you want to watch that. Last thing you want during a busy day at the office is some wiseass quoting the Axioms of Law at you...