Kannon wrote:B: Inner Flame on a fragile friendly rat skeleton is a really fun way to get rid of tough/annoying monsters.
I've never tried Inner Flame before but it sounds like a lot of fun playing a Necromancer/Fire spellcaster build, or a Fire Death Knight (Yred) or something.
Specifically with Yred and Amulet of Faith, those undead summon gifts come in
really fast.
By the end of Lair, me wearing Faith ever since the Temple, I probably had about 50 permanent undead servants, one of them being a Profane Servitor. I didn't have Inner Flame sadly, but yeah, for something like that it would have been *amazing*.
I lost that character via banishment to the Abyss and then getting destroyed by a Brimstone Fiend summoned by an Ancient Lich. Thing about banishment is that it separates you from all your summons or allies, so... if that hadn't happened I would've gotten a lot farther. ^^;;
That said, here's a tip to anyone who struggles with banishment in the Elven Halls: bringing a ring of Magic Resistance is very much worth it. Even an XL 20 character can be banished without too much trouble by those damn Elven Demonologists, but with a source of MR, I almost never have to worry about it. I wonder if a lot of players overlook MR because "Oh I'll be fine if I meet anyone with hex spells, confusion and slow and whatever doesn't bug me", but you know, on the other hand MR is a pretty solid and good buff, since it protects against a *lot* of different effects. I'd likely pick MR over rPois unless I was in the Lair or Snake Pits, and even against Aizul, I'd probably rather take the 50-damage Poison Arrow which might miss, instead of the Sleep + 100-ish-damage melee attack combo which can never miss 'cause I've been put to sleep due to not having enough MR. (Both rPois and MR would be best, though. So if I had a ring of each, and Slaying, I'd remove Slaying just to defeat Aizul.)
Yeah and okay I'm ranting at this point, but... thinking if I had a ring of each thing, I must say, sometimes the options I have to choose from overwhelm me. Let's say I had a plate armor melee build, now, choosing between Ring of Regeneration vs. Ring of +6 EV vs. +3+4 Ring of Slaying is a
huge toss-up for me. And weapons! Early game if I'm training up Maces and have it at like 3.0 or 4.0 at XL 3 or 4, and then in D:4 or 5 I find an
amazing randart falchion that offers +Blink and a couple good resistances, and then soon after, a +2+4 Vampiric Great Mace I took off an Orc Warrior, it tends to make me grab my face going "ayayayayayayay what do I DOOO" which gets me weird looks all over Starbucks.
I'm so in love with Crawl, because it offers challenges and predicaments of all kinds, even when you're not in battle. I love video games that really make me think, and Crawl does that while still being adrenaline at the same time during the intense battles and close calls.
And the delicious coffee makes the game all the more enjoyable, to boot!
That's why I prefer to play in Starbucks. That, and when a person sometimes sits down and starts watching me, I feel really motivated and I play better.
The other week I had a fellow geek sit down to watch me and he was a long-time NetHack player and even though he had not seen DCSS before, he knew the ins and outs. A Hydra comes along and he's like "You have Javelins, you'll be able to kill it, but get it away from the Yaks first." He was flawlessly correct, too, the Hydra began to flee on the fifth javelin and died on the sixth! I love it when that kind of thing happens and I meet such a cool person who shares my interests.
But Starbucks is closing in 20 minutes so I better wrap this rant up. Have a good night everyone! *finishes off my mocha and logs out*