You still haven't won yet?

[ClawlessVictory]

Jeez, what's wrong with you...

Just kidding. I'm just curious how long some of you have been playing without a win. It took me about 7 months playing without spoilers.

[Herode2]

Without spoilers, said you ? Well, looks to me like a pretty good performance. I began playing Crawl around 2011 nov, that's nearly 10 month of constant YASDs. Best score by now for me: HOPr^Beogh died at XL16 in the Lair. But I do use spoilers in order to avoid (some) brutal death. Also, now that my style is improving a bit (I lead characters at XL > 10 on a regular basis), I tend to clean bones in order to avoid the ghosts left after my previous failures. So, I'm playing a much easier game than you.

BTW, I'm not a roguelike fan and any other game leading me to so many... hmmm... FUN... would have discouraged me a long time ago. For some reason, I'm still enjoying Crawl and finding every week some new ways of making my last character fail miserably. That's the magic of Crawl (and his community wich helps to find new ideas and points of views on the game).

I still hope to make a win before the end of the world

[Jabberwocky]

I started playing in late July 2011. I only won on March 3rd, however the HEWz that went to victory I started on November 11.

[defen]

I started in May 2011 (to fill the poker-shaped hole in my heart) and won by late July. With spoilers, of course.

[pratamawirya]

From Crawl 0.5 to 0.7 I produced countless YASD's (and I played the latest version of Linley's DC too although with savescumming). In 0.8 I finally got my 1st win (Demonspawn Conjurer with robustness mutation).

[christhawk]

Started playing with 0.5, still haven't won. I've come close... sooooo very close! But no dice. Yet.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Even with hints, there is still not a single victory brought by one of my adventurers. And I had been playing Crawl at least for a month before registering here.

[psch]

Nope, haven't won yet. Started playing about 2 years ago, with two or three 2-3 month breaks. My furthest was a DDEE^Makhleb during the 0.10 tourney that died in Zot:5 with 3 runes.

[cerebovssquire]

My very first game was a TeAE who died on D:1 (it was KeAE back then). This can't have been more than a couple weeks before my first online game, a Felid Chaos Knight of Xom who died on D:5, on the 16th of January 2011. I splatted at least one winnable character with three runes because I wanted an allruner for my first win. I remember drowning in the Abyss with a three-rune-holding SpAr. Anyway, I got a 17-rune win with 15 unique runes on 3rd of April 2011, so we are probably looking at almost exactly three months. This was using as many spoilers as I could get, and help from IRC that went beyond simply spoilers. Also I didn't really deserve that win since I had ridiculous luck on Tomb:3, I think we're talking single-digit chance of survival considering my terrible tactics back then.

[Deimos]

My first win was a MiFi just a few month ago. I've been able to replicate it quite a few times now.

I have no idea when I started playing, but my first post on the forums was on the 10th of August last year, detailing the horrible death of my KoSu to a Hellion on Orc:4.

My first win was posted right here in a godawful wall of text because of how happy I was. This was on the 21st of April of this year, 4 months ago.

If we assume that I started playing when I first posted on the forum (which isn't true, but the best I can do), it took me 8 months to get a win. It's more likely the actual time was between 12-16 months.

[Roderic]

I have got my first rune after many many attempts... since v 0.8

It's something

[TwilightPhoenix]

Closest I can get is started in .5, won in .6.

[white_noise]

Not even close.
Played around 30 games by now.
My best achievement is that I've almost got snaky rune once.
Also have played some ancient version long time ago. 0.1.something. Didn't get far either.
But this time I determined to complete at least 3-rune run.

[spacewolf009]

I got my first win after about 7-8 months playing in December 2011. I got very close (died during the orb run) a month or two earlier in the year. I did play with some spoilers though.

[roctavian]

I started playing in '08 on and off, but I can't remember what version it was. I lived in a house with a lot of people then, and we had our computer hooked up to a projector; I didn't read spoilers and I splatted countless MDFi and SpVM around D:5 or so. Most of my roommates couldn't understand what was happening on the screen, some ruminated that I didn't understand the controls and that was why I was so bad. Only one other guy tried to play and he died twice on D:1 before switching to Sim City (which was all that anyone else in my house ever played). I switched to Spelunky after that, because it was more entertaining for everyone when I played, and forgot about Crawl for a while.

I didn't seriously pick it up until maybe a year and a half ago. My partner went out of town for a weekend and I had nothing to do, so I got together with a bottle of wine and a KoBe and found myself levitating invisibly through Shoals with the Snake rune, assassinating sleeping merfolk before an alligator snapping turtle bit me in half. I had no idea what was going on because I hadn't really started looking at spoilers yet, but I was fucking hooked after that run.

I completed my first three-runer around April. Most runes I've picked up so far is six, but someday I'll get that 15-runer done.

[Moanerette]

Been playing for about a year and 300+ characters without even seeing a rune (reached Vaults once). As for spoilers, I'm quite happy to ransack the forum for hints and check the knowledge bots when I'm not sure about something. I think I'm just a bad player.

[danr]

We are all bad players. Or maybe we are all average players of an above-averagely-difficult game.

I've won once, and died on the orb run once. I did get a 15-runer a little while ago but that was by save-scumming.

I've been playing on and off since I can't remember when, it was when the original DC had been released in its last version (4.00 beta 26) but before the DCSS project started.

I use spoilers when I come across a new monster, unique or fixedart.

[cursednobleman]

I started playing maybe 18 months ago? Played for a month or two killing an arseload of troll berserkers making the scariest early-game ghosts possible. The farthest I had gotten was a 2 runer with a MdFi of Oka. Then I died to a titanic slime in the pits and didn't have a good game for awhile. Maybe after a 9 month break, I started playing again abusing the wiki and trying to absorb knowledge from the forums and other places and managed to ascend a DEWz with luck and two exp potions from the bailey. I've been getting more consistent with 3 runers ever since, and now only have 5 species that haven't completed an ascension.

[stickyhippo]

Played off and on for over a couple years before recording my first victory with a DEFE a month ago. Many failed attempts later I won with the classic MiBe combo. I can now pretty consistently get a rune or two, although I often still die for failure to play slowly.

[Serfuzz]

Took me 535 games on CAO, plus hundreds more offline, and heavy spoilers, to score my first and so far only win. And that was on trunk, so I could still have benefitted from a temporary imbalance of the game in my favor. I played regularly from late Aug 2011 till the winning game in Apr 2012; taking a break from playing right now.

[Dingbat]

Since I first discovered Crawl in October 2011, the closest I've come to winning was getting my MfGl of Fedhas eviscerated on Shoals: 5 (after I'd already defeated Ilsuiw) by an impaler wielding a demon trident of electrocution. Next time when I'm attempting to set up a death trap for the javelineers and impalers chasing me, I'll know to evolve three oklob plants instead of just two.

In the past month I've been able to get over ten local highscores, so hopefully I can actually manage to get a win this fall.

[IronJelly]

I've never won either.

I've been playing on and off since I discovered DCSS in like 2008. I am, however, an impatient alt-aholic who doesn't finish most of the games I play, instead finding some sort of satisfaction or fun in trying out the various different combinations available to me at the beginning. This is why I barely play MMOs anymore. I've memorized the starting planets on SWTOR, and have one of each class around level 15 or so. Back in Champions Online, I held the record for a little while of the most character slots, and I never made max level on any of them, despite playing that from pre-order until it went F2P. Despite that, I tried every power, and a bunch of combinations, and never really got bored of it. I did that back in City of Heroes too, but I did get bored. I never got a max level in World of Warcraft. I never completely finished Fallout New Vegas. Or Borderlands. Or Skyrim. Or Oblivion. Or Morrowind. Or Daggerfall. I never completely finished a campaign in Dawn of War either. Or Torchlight for that matter.

The last game that I can think of that I actually really felt that I had "completed" was Populous: The Beginning. I beat the whole game, the expansion pack, and have won multiplayer games on almost every multiplayer map, as well as a number of the user-created worlds.

Well, that's not counting the games, particularly short ones, with definitive ends, like LIMBO, Braid, and whatnot. I guess I also "completed" the Binding of Isaac. And I won once in SLASH'EM, which I consider to be an achievement.

Oh wait... I did finish Portal, and Portal 2 (and the co-op in Portal 2), and half Life 1 and 2 and Opposing Force, and Blue Shift, and Episodes 1 and 2 of Half Life 2, and Counter-Strike Condition Zero's Single Player game.

Hi, I'm IronJelly, and I'm an Alt-aholic.

[SchwaWarrior]

I must have played over 100 games, and I've only won once.

The fact that I'm still just as interested in this game as ever, despite having beaten it at least once, proves that it is a fantastic game to me. Crawl's probably got the most replay value out of any video game ever made.

[Jabberwocky]

Even mutiplayer games provided you have fast enough internet?

[BlackSheep]

Even mutiplayer games...?

It's this part that usually drives me away from games.

[Jabberwocky]

It depends on the game. If it's a singleplayer game which the devs decided to put mutiplayer into without regard for balance or how the mutiplayer would work than yes it's annoying. If it's a purely mutiplayer game it can be amazingly fun to replay over and over and over. I'm logged ~300 hours of TF2 and I still have lots of fun playing and are still learning about the game.

[Deimos]

I'd say Crawl has replay value on par with multiplayer games, but way over what you'd expect from a singleplayer game.

[roctavian]

When people say they've played Crawl some finite number of times (thirty, a hundred, etc) it makes me pause for a minute. I feel like I can play about a hundred games per hour. That's not playing seriously, and it's obviously not a way to succeed at the game, but it's entertaining to fly through the first few levels of the dungeon in a couple minutes, just to see how fast I can get certain common button press patterns down. Like reaching XL3 as an air mage and hitting i/M/a/enter/a/enter/o. It's like a piano recital or something, but with an improv element.

[evktalo]

Well, I've been playing Crawl from the very first versions, before it was any good. I won a game in Linley's DC 2.something. There were no branches/runes and I don't think there were gods yet either. AI had telepathic knowledge of your whereabouts, but could not pathfind around the level. I think I had a Hill Dwarf casting in armour, maybe with a spell staff. There were guardian robots and giant swords in the final level guarding the orb. I think I was bit like "was that it?" when I grabbed the orb. I sent an e-mail to Linley after I won, too bad I don't have it anymore. I don't think this took a lot of plays. I also don't think it really counts at this point.

I couldn't win 3.* or 4.0.0 betas. I think I made it to the Swamp rune vault in either as my best run. The game had gotten pretty huge with the branches and there was no travel or stash search yet (well, they existed as patches to 4b26 but I didn't know yet).

I discovered Stone Soup at version 0.2.5 or so, and quite soon got a Grey Elf Conjurer to D:27 (not sure about runes though, I wonder if I have morgues) where I died to a greater demon -summoning lich. This was without too many spoilers IIRC. I finally won a MDPa in 0.4 (probably trunk) with some extra runes. learndb and irc helped a lot.

So, because the 2.foo win doesn't count, I'd say it took me about ten years to win.

--Eino

[TehDruid]

I started playing back at the end of 0.6. Heavy armour sucked immensely and since I mostly play spell less that was quite bad for my tastes. I splatted a lot of MDFis before I realised how difficult things were after the heavy armour nerf. Anyway, my first win came offline on a 0.10-something trunk build, my HOFi of Oka/Jiyva with 3 runes one day of September 2011. I still have the morgue saved on my laptop to remember that win, equipped with the epic "buckler of Chier" that had 8 properties, a +11 CPM artifact and I was running around with like 60 AC. Also it has been the only game so far where I managed to get a +18, +18 Wyrmbane, 2-3 shotting Golden Dragons in Zot and owning Draconians in general. This happened before the Hill Orc buffs and the change to Wyrmbane that made it a special "lance" type weapon. I don't think these things would have changed much though. Later I started trying to win all-rune games still offline but I lost two awesome chars to Cerebov. I won a MfBe with 10 runes in October/November but still no all-rune win. Then the 0.10 tournament came and after winning a GhCK with 3 runes I finally won my first 15 rune game, a MiMo (which last time I checked holds the highscore for this combo, a pretty modest ~12.9M pts).

[blueDave]

I have yet to even see a rune, across several hundred hours of play.
I refuse to give up though...

[ClawlessVictory]

I only play this game with my arms crossed and my nose tipped highly into the air.