If you could choose your demonspawn muts

[Lyrick]

What would your dream combination be?

crawl.chaosforge.org/Demonspawn_mutations

My dream demonspawn would have nightstalker and augmentation (for stabbing, and extra stabbing damage), antenna for detection, icemail for OP, and black scales for even more AC (+20 AC if you aren't hit by fire, +10 otherwise).

I've never gotten it...but if I had that I'd feel like I was breaking the game.

[dck]

I just want a fucking monstrous Ds that exists in this plane of reality.

[Knight9910]

Yeah, monstrous is super rare. The wiki claims it's a 10% chance, but seriously? I play demonspawn a LOT (they're probably my favorite race) and I've only gotten a monstrous like... once.

[Lyrick]

I just want a fucking monstrous Ds that exists in this plane of reality.

Yeah, monstrous is super rare. The wiki claims it's a 10% chance, but seriously? I play demonspawn a LOT (they're probably my favorite race) and I've only gotten a monstrous like... once.

I don't really like monstrous...you miss out on scales, but not only that

  Code:

You feel monstrous as your demonic ancestry asserts yourself...
A pair of horns grows on your head!
Yout +0 helmet of the Evil One {dam +6} falls away!


[duvessa]

i dont care what ds mutations i get so long as none of them are demonic guardian

[Hirsch I]

Ignite Blood, Claws for the bleeding, molten scales for further rF, foul stench because miasma is awesome, augmentation for spellpower, then proceed to blast stuff with OOD, clawing anyone that gets too close and being generally awesome.
why do you not like demonic guardian, duvessa?

[duvessa]

its really annoying and steals your piety and gives you a bunch of prompts

[crate]

anything but demonic guardian or nightstalker, pretty much
thin skeletal structure is kind of annoying too

[Knight9910]

Hollow bones and rough black scales can both potentially mess up your character build. "Oh, you're trying to make an EV-based character? Pff! Take some rough black scales, bitch! How do you like them -DEX apples?!"

Nightstalker is decent if you're going for an assassin, somewhere between useless and hindering otherwise.

Demonic Guardian can be useful at times, but I usually find it more obnoxious than anything else.

[Sandman25]

If I found a CPA on D1:
Rough Black Scales (+10 AC, -3 DEX ), Icemail (up to +10 AC), Powered by Death and Robust.

If I found spriggans knife and want to be a stabber
Thin Skeletal Structure (+6 DEX, -2 STR, +75 Stealth), Nightstalker, Demonic Guardian and Robust

If I found spriggans knife but don't want to be a stabber
Repulsion field (+4 EV, permanent Repel Missiles effect), Powered by Death, Powered by Pain and Robust

If I am IE with Ozocubu's Refrigeration
Icy Blue Scales (rC+), Icemail (rC+), Passive Freeze (rC+).

[basil]

"Oh, you're trying to make an EV-based character? Pff! Take some rough black scales, bitch! How do you like them -DEX apples?!"

I prefer to have AC and EV, instead of one or the other. In any case: With 15 Dodging, a normal-size character wearing a robe gets 27 Evasion with 21 dex and 29 Evasion with 24 dex. At 27 dodging, it is 36 and 38 Evasion respectively. And dex past 24 is subject to stepdowns.

Nightstalker is decent if you're going for an assassin, somewhere between useless and hindering otherwise.

Assassin is usually not a stabber background, and LOS reduction benefits most or all characters.

[crate]

I'm pretty sure that 3 dex will never give you 12 EV, so if you treat 1 AC = 1 EV (this is shortchanging AC a bit) then rough black scales are still always very good.

[Galefury]

Mana facet is fun.

[and into]

Yeah really I just get annoyed by demonic guardian. I'm usually ok with nightstalker though I completely understand why it annoys some people. Typically I find spiny to be pretty worthless and negative energy resistance isn't too exciting, either. Otherwise I'm happy.

[Lasty]

Negative energy facet got a huge boost recently; it's pretty exciting now, I think, though I haven't gotten to try it yet.

[Knight9910]

Negative energy facet got a huge boost recently; it's pretty exciting now, I think, though I haven't gotten to try it yet.

Black Mark? Yeah, it does sound pretty cool, though I can't say I've had the chance to try it out yet either.

[Abominae]

Monstrous--
Claws
Horns
Hooves

Powered By Pain
Mana Shield / Powered By Death

Robust

[and into]

Negative energy facet got a huge boost recently; it's pretty exciting now, I think, though I haven't gotten to try it yet.

Just checked that out, looks awesome. Nice. Haven't gotten a Ds with that facet since the change. Used to be really disappointing though.

[Knight9910]

Actually, Powered by Pain (restore MP when taking HP damage) and Mana Shield (lose MP instead of HP when hurt) seems like it would work very well together. Would certainly be a nice combo to get.

[duvessa]

I wouldn't call black mark a huge boost since it's level 3 of a tier 3 mutation so you don't actually get it until you don't care.

[Knight9910]

I thought they said it was level 2?

Because it was:

T1: rNeg+
T2: rNeg++
T3: rTorment

And then they said they replaced "rNeg++" with Black Mark

[duvessa]

You get rN+ at level 1, torment resistance at level 2, and black mark at level 3.

[Knight9910]

You get rN+ at level 1, torment resistance at level 2, and black mark at level 3.

That's stupid. You shouldn't get rTorment until late game because you don't NEED it until late game.

[Sar]

Augmentation sounds like it would be great with a monstrous Ds since it gives you a ton of slaying and IIRC slaying works for aux attacks too.

[Knight9910]

Yeah. I think the best setup would be...

Monstrous--
Claws
Talons
Horns
Powered By Pain
Mana Shield
Augmentation

I would prefer talons over hooves because hooves reduce your stealth. If I don't care about stealth then I might go hooves because I think (though am not 100% certain) they do more damage.

I considered antennae instead of horns for the utility, but in the end I think more damage going out would be preferable.

Mana Shield, Powered by Pain, and Augmentation go very well together. MP works to keep your HP up which means you get the slaying bonus from Augmentation for longer, and when you MP is gone and you do start taking HP damage you get more MP with every hit, which is then used to protect you even further.

[Sar]

Hooves ignore AC, which is good.

[and into]

I had a monstrous DsAK that died tragically to Sphinxralysis in the Depths, didn't have augmentation but did have some +slaying from items and yeah, that guy tore stuff apart in melee. Very fun.

[Abominae]

Hooves also have 1 more damage than Talons at level three (10 vs 9). Also, PbP's effect you actually care about is repeated (and slightly abusable) Might/Agility effects. Well, at least on a DS that would be happy to be monstrous. The synergy between PbP, Manashield, and Augmentation is really neat, but I wouldn't argue it as the strongest combination. Nor would I even argue PbP + Manashield is the strongest combination of tier 2 mutations in regards to monstrous DS or regular DS.

[and into]

I considered antennae instead of horns for the utility, but in the end I think more damage going out would be preferable.

"You sense a monster nearby" interrupts autoexplore and autotravel. It doesn't happen so frequently at levels 1 and 2, but when you have the full antennae going it gets to be pretty annoying, especially since (unlike Ash) you get no really useful information about the enemy. (Frankly I think antennae mutation should just be removed, or else have it only give SInv, at like tier 2 or something and lose the passive monster detection, which overlaps with a god ability anyway.)

[Turukano]

There are some mutations I like, but these are my favourites:

• Claws, because UC gets a strong buff. It's a bit like playing trolls without their disadvantages.
• Powered by death which eases your combat and lowers your turncount for speedruns.
• rN / rTorment even in the old version as it's very useful in extended.

[Lacuenta]

Me and a friend of mine once tried scumming the optimal demonspawn fighter(axe) for zigging once:

We agreed on:

Body: antenaes works with nightstalker and well is just a lot of fun.

T1: Rotres/fireblood rotres just makes things easier in tomb crypt undead floors, fireblood makes any living floor trivial. V5 entrance is awesome if you're wearing an axe

T1: Nightstalker, one of the best t1 for fighter, can't torment/smite you if they can't see you, also makes it surprisingly easy to flee from enemies, and use hit and run tactics, the stealth bonus coupled with a few lvls of stlth makes it very easy to sneak up on things even in plate. And their friends standing a few tiles away will never hear or see you.

Scale: we went rep field, since we would have enough AC this would give some additional defenses in a field which was otherwise hard to come by.

T2: torment resistance, makes pan and hells a lot easier most notably pan floors in ziggs.

We got one together with fireblood eventually, and suffice it to say he raided many a zigg

[barretdolph]

its really annoying and steals your piety and gives you a bunch of prompts

Before I thought it was great. Mostly because, as I know realize, I wasn't playing very well. Last character picked up two levels of DG as the first two mutations. Started off nice as I didn't have to worry about ghosts which sometimes give me trouble. After it was really annoying and mostly I spent my time trying to control them and let me kill things.

[duvessa]

I recently closed a door on a storm dragon and demonic guardian immediately opened the door again.

[Sprucery]

Why on earth do they open doors at all?

[duvessa]

Because crawl allies are designed to force all your actions to revolve around them

[Pereza0]

The maximum piety title for Beogh worshipers should be "Nanny" rather than "Messiah"

[WingedEspeon]

Rugged brown scales (HP), Robust (more HP), Spirit shield for essentially more hp (I think you see the theme here), powered by pain b/c power by pain is awsome +can give you mp back which can be turned to hp (I like hp!), and Claws (I cloud go UC if I chose mutatons from the start). Essentially a super troll without the regeneration.

[XuaXua]

My dream demonspawn...

Your dreamonspawn?

[ajon]

I haven't had the chance to try it out with level 3 mutations, but powered by death and mana shield seem like they would also go well together, possibly better than powered by pain if hp regen is turned into mp regen.

[edgefigaro]

Just a shoutout. Spiny sucks. Having spiny as my first three mutations was excellent, and that is true of the char I am running.

It no longer does much around lair, but each rank of spiny kept me safe in the dungeon, and provided safety in the most difficult parts of the game.

[duvessa]

i'm actually pretty glad to get spiny these days because
1. it blocks constriction which makes melee less annoying
2. it's not demonic guardian

it would be nice if it actually did something else though

[celem]

I hate claws. Because I love them...

Im somewhat obliged by brainbug to start all non-Ash DS without a weapon skill, because it might get Claws.
It leaves me playing casters with wand backups until muts start to slot in, I very rarely get Claws before the chracterbuild falls over because Im building around a mut I may or may not ever get. If I do get Claws, I'll YASD straight up. Murphy is a git.

Nightstalker is epic to my mind, for anyone. Its borderline hands-down-best for every build just for -LoS. You could argue other traits, but -LoS helps you from the moment you get it until death/ascension, in and out of combat.

Manashield is certainly very strong, its a property I seek in all characters, but in almost every case (barring fi/be maybe) there will be a couple of encounters where I want to turn it off, which the DS cant.

Guardian bites, i'll summon if I want summons. Random summons grinds my gears, they generally just get in the way.

[Hurkyl]

Nightstalker is epic to my mind, for anyone. Its borderline hands-down-best for every build just for -LoS. You could argue other traits, but -LoS helps you from the moment you get it until death/ascension, in and out of combat.

-LoS is not strictly beneficial; it actively impairs the ranged combat version of "the best defense is a good offense", and against fast monsters it makes it harder to run away and makes blink a less effective escape tool.

[duvessa]

except it doesn't really do any of those things at all

[Berder]

Nightstalker is the best one for ziggurats, as reduced LOS really really cuts down on the incoming damage. Plus tornado hits the edge of LOS, which is nice.

[Sar]

I thought Tornado already hit the edge of LoS.

[Berder]

It's 2 squares short.