The Tavern

Please use this thread for discussion of all things pertaining to Week 7 of the Crawl Sudden Death Challenges competition.

Week 7: TeSk

Tier I Bonus: Enter Tomb before Depths.
Tier II Bonus: Collect the golden rune as your 3rd rune or earlier.

NOTE: Unless otherwise specified, you do not need to win the game to get points for the bonus challenges.

CSDC Season 1 Results and Standings

Week 7 Challenge Wins

Spoiler: show

Most frustrating death evar. Stupid, but then highly frustrating.

Flew into a deep water tunnel, came to a treasure hoard guarded by an orange crystal statue, got trapped in a confusion loop in shallow water next to deep water with no !heal. Since you pretty much can't do anything when confused, including use flying, this got highly frustrating highly fast.

Now it turns out that you actually can stumble about in shallow water next to deep water, despite the warnings, because you end up back in shallow water. Had I known that, my wand of digging and 4 !RA would have saved me, but only in desperation did I actually attempt it when I thought it was instakill.

After experimentation, I played this dude as a pure melee dude, despite the challenge. Worked out well until the end.

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 160830.txt

As far as I know it's random: if you are confused and are trying to move when there are 4 deep water tiles and 4 normal tiles around you, you have 50% chance to die.

So what's the strategy for this character? Never played a Tengu or a Skald. My (probably bad) plan is to focus on my charms in the starting book to assist my melee until Temple. Once I got there, I'd go for Vehumet for some conjurations. Problem is, I have no idea what he'll gift me since I won't have trained any conjurations at that point. I just figured with a Tengu's aptitude for conjurations and air magic, and terrible HP, it'd probably be better suited for casting.

I was going for melee with a spell dependent branch to hybrid later in game until my unfortunately stupid death. I tangled with many hydras, without much in the way of squishy problems. Low HP could have been a problem later but again, I was hoping for enough spell goodness to offset the squishy.

The Vehumet approach seems viable; the challenges are whispering for you to go Kiku necro hybrid which seems also viable.

There are different gods for Sk IMHO
1) Kiku for golden rune
2) Vehumet for standard conjurer
3) Oka for easier early game and possible hybridization later
4) Ashenzari for standard Skald (Te has bad aptitudes in Charms/Hexes which are used for Spectral Weapon)
5) Jiyva (only if lucky like me to find an early altar, it basically guarantees getting at least 1 rune)
Depending on god you will train different skills.
Also there are some funny gods like Trog, Nemelex, Fedhas and Yredemnul

Edit. I am more concerned with player ghosts, a TeSk ghost almost killed me with chaos weapon before Lair and now I cannot get to Orcish Mines 4 shops because of MiBe with AC 26 and executioner's axe of electrocution with 23 skill in Axes, it killed my Azure Jelly really fast

diviton wrote:My (probably bad) plan is to focus on my charms in the starting book to assist my melee until Temple.

Also, I haven't played many skald, but when I've gone that approach relative to just going killy early, it's been bad. The extra XP diverted to charms just wasn't worth the benefit. My most successful Sk have ignored spellcasting for a while, fighting heavy armor and getting weapon to mindelay, pushing up fighting/armor, and then adding charms later. Tengu have enough armor skill that casting in ring is totally feasible. In fact, that's why I was going Oka on my failed attempt; reduce the basic fighting skill costs by a bunch so that I'd have more skill to place in spells, and hoping for good spell compatible armor drops.

Kiku is probably your best choice if you want to go for the Tier II bonus, and the early charms skill will be useful later when you want to get Death's Door up (which is awesome for low hp species like Tengu, by the way).

Oka and Trog are always incredibly viable for early game survival, and after that it's really just up to how you like to play.

Just a reminder though, remember that you CANNOT worship Dith. I know he'd also be a nice choice for this challenge.

Was double-shot by player ghost (+5,+6 giant spiked club of Certain Death {crush, -Tele Str+2}). That was still very stupid death as I was standing on stairs and automatically went upstairs instead of swapping position with Azure Jelly. Is there a setting option to require a minute to pass before your next action if you got "Huge Dmg: -51%(-49hp) hp: 49%(47hp)"?

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 000655.txt

Back to "berserker with spear" games.

I hate that I'm only not pretty much the worst only because some people stopped playing. I'd like the title to be legitimate if I've earned it.

Sandman25 wrote:Was double-shot by player ghost (+5,+6 giant spiked club of Certain Death {crush, -Tele Str+2}). That was still very stupid death as I was standing on stairs and automatically went upstairs instead of swapping position with Azure Jelly. Is there a setting option to require a minute to pass before your next action if you got "Huge Dmg: -51%(-49hp) hp: 49%(47hp)"?

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 000655.txt

Back to "berserker with spear" games.

Shouldn't 51% damage trigger "Ouch! That really hurt!" message normally? Maybe your lua messed that. I believe it has force_more by default, and that's probably enough to stop and think.

XuaXua wrote:I hate that I'm only not pretty much the worst only because some people stopped playing. I'd like the title to be legitimate if I've earned it.

Convince Walker to replace the inactives, then profit!

stickyfingers wrote:
XuaXua wrote:I hate that I'm only not pretty much the worst only because some people stopped playing. I'd like the title to be legitimate if I've earned it.

Convince Walker to replace the inactives, then profit!

I agree. The whole thing drives on participation. If people flake out, that takes away half the fun.

It'd be really cool if players who lose motivation (or just don't seem to find the time) can pm WalkerBoh about it. And he'd then replace them by active players.

stickyfingers wrote:Shouldn't 51% damage trigger "Ouch! That really hurt!" message normally? Maybe your lua messed that. I believe it has force_more by default, and that's probably enough to stop and think.

For some reason the game differentiates damage from melee weapon and its brand so there is no message.
This game made me realize main reason of most deaths: I don't feel comfortable being in danger (especially if it was caused by my mistake, if I could have avoided it) and subconsciously I try to end the situation as soon as possible, it results in me acting without thinking about inventory/retreat, consideration of all options etc. I will try to modify my settings to automatically save the game when I get 40% damage, it will be slightly annoying in extended though but I really need it, being tormented 3 times in a row during orb run was not very smart either.

Perhaps a player should be replaced if she missed a round unless the player warns in advance she will not be able to finish that round but is going to play other rounds as usual.

Whelp, crawl did NOT want me to live today. First try: third enemy is kobold with elect short sword. Second try: second enemy is kobold with venom short sword that auto lethal poisons me. Fastest two deaths I've ever had.

XL4 and out!

MrPlanck wrote:XL4 and out!

google doc shows you can replay your game.

dpeg wrote:I agree. The whole thing drives on participation. If people flake out, that takes away half the fun.

It'd be really cool if players who lose motivation (or just don't seem to find the time) can pm WalkerBoh about it. And he'd then replace them by active players.

Indeed, it's a little disappointing to me that several players have gone MIA. But I think it's a flaw of the format, and I've been reflecting on ways to make it more flexible in the future so people dropping out does not matter.

With regards to replacement, this is easier said than done. I was comfortable replacing players earlier because 1) I had people waiting who wanted to join, and 2) it was very early in the competition still. At this point, any replacements would have 7 challenges to play, and would do so knowing exactly what score they need for most of them. So I am hesitant to replace now.

I could, of course, simply remove the inactive players. This takes a bit of work on the spreadsheet to preserve automation, but I think that might be best for now.

Well, there are unofficial participants who completed most combos. Some of them even have several wins. Maybe it could be easier for you to just replace some nicks in your scripts.

Sandman25 wrote:
MrPlanck wrote:XL4 and out!

google doc shows you can replay your game.

It does, but I was XL 4 so that should be it. I played TeSk in my next game and experimented with some things and died early. Shame if that one was my second try! But I think my first go should be my last.

I was really excited when I found a glowing trident on DL:4! but when I wielded it, uh oh ... Distortion!

Well, things could be worse I guess, distortion isn't an awful early-game brand, but it's very annoying when you cant finish anything because it teleports away before you kill it. The distortion weapon became increasingly troublesome, which is why I was elated when I got a scroll of vorpalize around lair.

Little did I know that vorpalizing a distortion weapon can abyss you like unwield. Well, it happened, and my adventure was ended by a Lorycropa in the Abyss. Guess I've learned 2 things

1) Don't wield unidentified weapons
2) vorpalizing can (and due to our friend Murphy, WILL) abyss you.

Perhaps scroll of brand weapon should request confirmation before applying on distortion weapon, something like "Really brand distortion weapon? It is equivalent of unwielding the weapon, you can be sent to Abyss. y/N".

Yes, distortion is annoying for melee but somewhat less bad for polearms thanks to reaching.

I didn't expect to do well this week, given how I had fared in previous ones, and that I didn't really have a plan for how to go about doing it. I found a Trog altar right after coming down the stairs to d:2, though, so I decided to give in to the temptation and take him. A decent randart (The +9,+4 war axe of the Hills {freeze, +Inv Str+3}) on d:4 convinced me to switch from m&f to axes, and it was mostly smooth sailing after that with Trog's help, aside from some close shaves due to Tengus' squishiness. So far this game, I've found 13 scrolls of enchant armour, 9 of which went into my nice FDA from the dragon in the Lair dragon end. I managed to snag the first bonus, but given that Mennas is now camping the Tomb entrance, I don't think I'll be going back any time soon! I hope I can clear depths/v:5/zot alright and get my first win of the challenge (would also be my first tengu and skald wins).

MrPlanck wrote:It does, but I was XL 4 so that should be it. I played TeSk in my next game and experimented with some things and died early. Shame if that one was my second try! But I think my first go should be my last.

You're right, I probably typo'd my query. I'll fix it tonight when I get home.

WalkerBoh wrote: At this point, any replacements would have 7 challenges to play, and would do so knowing exactly what score they need for most of them.

Yes, I am a little miffed about that last one; on the other hand, the argument that I could have scored higher on the DrCK but didn't need to is exploiting the same effect, but in the original explicit time frame, so it's hard to complain too much.

And I won! I didn't even think about going back to Tomb for the second bonus, though I did got to Elf:1-2, hoping for some more rC (got it in vaults:5). I cleared Zot, probably the first time since my first win (I didn't find cons until vaults:5, so some ?map scrolls were destroyed, and they were generally rare), which was laughably easy with my vamp exec axe. I saw an orb of fire outside zot:5 for the first time, and my first curse toe ever. In general everything my vamp axe didn't demolish the antimagic one did, so my only scary moments were when I couldn't melee monsters (the aforementioned curse toe, which I had to blink to, and an alich behind an oof who summoned two fiends). Tengu was surprisingly a ton of fun, but without that axe I would have had to be a lot more careful in order to not get demolished by draconians.

Congrats wheals! I also really enjoy Tengu, as long as you can survive the rough start it's a pretty fun race. I have a feeling this challenge is going to have a very high rate of low scores, which makes it all the more impressive that you won it.

Why does this only appear to me when playing SDC games ? :evil:

Code:: D:3 Grinder, Purgy

Edit

:

Code:: D:3 Grinder, Purgy, Sigmund

New edit :

Code:: Annotations: D:3 Grinder, Purgy, Sigmund D:4 Blork the orc D:7 Ijyb

Of course I died like a jerk

But once you've lost, what happens on D:1 ?

Code:: a - a +1,+2 spear (weapon) g - a +5 ring of evasion (left hand)

WalkerBoh wrote:
dpeg wrote:I agree. The whole thing drives on participation. If people flake out, that takes away half the fun.

It'd be really cool if players who lose motivation (or just don't seem to find the time) can pm WalkerBoh about it. And he'd then replace them by active players.

Indeed, it's a little disappointing to me that several players have gone MIA. But I think it's a flaw of the format, and I've been reflecting on ways to make it more flexible in the future so people dropping out does not matter.

With regards to replacement, this is easier said than done. I was comfortable replacing players earlier because 1) I had people waiting who wanted to join, and 2) it was very early in the competition still. At this point, any replacements would have 7 challenges to play, and would do so knowing exactly what score they need for most of them. So I am hesitant to replace now.

I could, of course, simply remove the inactive players. This takes a bit of work on the spreadsheet to preserve automation, but I think that might be best for now.

Replace inactives who have missed three in a row with those who are "participating at home" from the list you have at the bottom.

Not a bad idea, but it is a little messier than that. With the season this far along I think it is better not to replace.

Doing really well. Orc Wizard blasted me for 24 damage with Dagger of Electrocution. Oh, Crawl... You old vixen.

I'm sorry, WalkerBoh, could you extend TeSk round a bit? You shifted start for the third combo to Friday and all this time I was under impression that rounds last for two weeks and one extra weekend. So I planned TeSk on that last weekend.

No worries, sorry for the confusion. I noticed that your game just finished, I will count it.

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CSDC Week 7 - TeSk, CLOSED

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