Best run ever, need advice

[sage1234]

I want this to be my record run if not my first completion. I have some good equipment and I have learned to not throw away resistance items. Thank you.

  Code:

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.14.1-26-g5a19342 (webtiles) character file.

sage1234 the Bludgeoner (Minotaur Fighter)         Turns: 19009, Time: 03:09:37

HP  95/113       AC 53     Str 24      XL: 13   Next: 76%
MP  21/21        EV  8     Int  6      God: Okawaru [*****.]
Gold 646         SH  0     Dex 11      Spells:  0 memorised, 12 levels left

rFire  . . .     SeeInvis .     a - +1,+6 great mace (protect)
rCold  . . .     Clarity  .     r - +16 plate armour of Anarchy {+Fly Acc+4}
rNeg   + + .     Conserve +     (no shield)
rPois  +         rCorr    +     (helmet restricted)
rElec  +         rRot     .     j - +1 cloak {rCorr, Cons}
SustAb . .       Spirit   .     k - +2 pair of gloves
rMut   .         Warding  +     x - +1 pair of boots
Saprov . . .     NoTele   +     c - amulet of Cekugob {Ward -Tele Hunger rElec rPois rN+ AC+1 EV+1}
MR     .....                    X - +3 ring of protection
                                z - +5 ring of protection

@: not resistant to hostile enchantments, extremely unstealthy
A: retaliatory headbutt, horns 2
a: Heroism, Finesse, Renounce Religion, Evoke Flight


You are on level 4 of the Orcish Mines.
You worship Okawaru.
Okawaru is extremely pleased with you.
You are not hungry.

You have visited 5 branches of the dungeon, and seen 21 of its levels.
You have also visited: Labyrinth, Bailey and Ice Cave.

You have collected 1949 gold pieces.
You have spent 1303 gold pieces at shops.

Inventory:

Hand weapons
 a - a +1,+6 great mace of protection (weapon)
 b - a +2,+2 bow of frost
 O - a +3,+2 eveningstar
Missiles
 t - 60 arrows
 v - 11 arrows of frost
 B - 11 tomahawks (quivered)
 I - 5 javelins
 L - 4 tomahawks of returning
 P - 65 arrows of flame
Armour
 f - a +3 chain mail of poison resistance
 j - a +1 cloak of preservation (worn)
 k - a +2 pair of gloves (worn)
 r - the +16 plate armour of Anarchy (worn) {+Fly Acc+4}
   (You found it on level 4 of the Dungeon)   
   
   It affects your accuracy with ranged weapons and melee attacks (+4).
   It lets you fly.
 x - a +1 pair of boots (worn)
 H - a +2 cloak of cold resistance
 U - the +5 chain mail of Free Will {rElec SInv}
   (You found it on level 10 of the Dungeon)   
   
   It insulates you from electricity.
   It enhances your eyesight.
Magical devices
 h - a wand of fireball (7)
 m - a wand of invisibility {zapped: 1}
 s - a wand of disintegration (10)
 D - a wand of random effects
 J - a wand of teleportation {zapped: 1}
 R - a wand of fire {zapped: 3}
 S - a wand of flame
 Y - a wand of slowing {zapped: 1}
Comestibles
 g - 4 lychees
 l - a rambutan
 p - 6 grapes
 q - 3 strawberries
 A - 5 meat rations
 C - 6 apricots
 G - 6 oranges
 Q - 8 chokos
 V - a bread ration
Scrolls
 n - 3 scrolls of teleportation
 o - 3 scrolls of fog
 w - a scroll of fear
 y - 2 scrolls of blinking
 N - 2 scrolls of remove curse
 Z - 6 scrolls of identify
Jewellery
 c - the amulet of Cekugob (around neck) {Ward -Tele Hunger rElec rPois rN+ AC+1 EV+1}
   (You bought it in a shop on level 2 of the Orcish Mines)   
   
   [amulet of warding]
   It affects your AC (+1).
   It affects your evasion (+1).
   It insulates you from electricity.
   It protects you from poison.
   It protects you from negative energy.
   It prevents most forms of teleportation.
   It speeds your metabolism.
 z - a +5 ring of protection (left hand)
 E - an uncursed amulet of guardian spirit
 F - a ring of ice
 X - a +3 ring of protection (right hand)
Potions
 d - 2 potions of heal wounds
 e - a potion of magic
 i - 3 potions of curing
 u - a potion of invisibility
 K - 3 potions of restore abilities
 M - a potion of agility


   Skills:
 + Level 10.2 Fighting
 * Level 20.5 Maces & Flails
 + Level 10.3 Armour
   Level 4.0 Shields
 + Level 8.2 Invocations
 - Level 5.3 Evocations


You have 12 spell levels left.
You don't know any spells.

Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (11/15)            Temple (1/1) D:5             Orc (4/4) D:9
   Lair (4/8) D:10         Shoals (1/5) Lair:4     
   Elf: Orc:3-4      Swamp: Lair:3-6     Snake: Lair:3-6    Spider: Lair:3-6

Altars:
Ashenzari
Cheibriados
Dithmenos
Elyvilon
Fedhas
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Nemelex Xobeh
Okawaru
Sif Muna
Trog
Vehumet
Xom
Yredelemnul
Zin
The Shining One

Shops:
D:9 !   Orc:2 =

Annotations:
Shoals:1 Snorg


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You reflexively headbutt those who attack you in melee.
You have a pair of horns on your head.


Message History

S - a wand of flame
Items here: %%% ))) [
You offer a prayer to Okawaru.
The orc corpse slowly burns to ash. x2
The human corpse of Psyche is consumed by flame.
Okawaru is extremely pleased with you.
Items here: % )) [[[
You offer a prayer to Okawaru.
The orc corpse slowly burns to ash.
Okawaru is extremely pleased with you.
Items here: %% )) [[
You offer a prayer to Okawaru.
The orc corpse slowly burns to ash. x2
Okawaru is extremely pleased with you.
Welcome back, sage1234 the Minotaur Fighter.
Okawaru says: Bring me glory in combat!
Press ? for a list of commands and other information.
Eat which item? (? for menu, Esc to quit)
You continue eating.
You finish eating. That rambutan was delicious!


[Patashu]

Holy cow, that AC is crazy for xl13.

[sage1234]

OUCH!!!!

Well I died, got killed by a soul eater summoned by an orc priest. This game is not nice, but I am sure after a short break I will be playing again.

On another note, how many games can I expect my first win?

[Siegurt]

The average win percentage is between 1-2% (for all players of all skill levels, playing all types)

I would say 200-300 is probably a good rough average, obviously some win much more quickly and some take much longer.

[Patashu]

On another note, how many games can I expect my first win?

You will lose 99%+ of the time until you decide to play a game with all correct tactics, then you will win 90+% of the time. Because Crawl is a turn based game, you do not have to rush to make any decision, and in fact there are some simple rules and combat tactics that you can apply to increase your survivability to be very close to the top level of play. Nothing is holding you back from doing all these at all. (When people say 'Crawl is an easy game' this is the sense in which Crawl is easy.)

Rule -1 is to not play while low on energy or otherwise apathetic, if you only barely have enough energy to play by definition you only have enough energy to make all bad decisions. The #1 and only cause of death in Crawl past D:1 unavoidable deaths is is 'didn't think hard enough about it'

Rule 0 is to never approach a monster the moment you see it, but instead walk away from it (on the optimal shortest path towards a staircase, never going through unexplored territory, etc) (barring cases like if it's a centaur and there's no cover nearby). Dangerous monsters tend to come with company, but don't follow each other, only noises made near them and if they see you and become aware of your existence, so if you double back into explored territory/towards the stairs until you see even a hint of danger (one orc = probably orc priests nearby = you want to double back and split the pack one monster after the other, and maybe even not go back there until you like your odds of fighting an orc priest, which for me isn't until after lair!) you basically guarantee you will only fight it one on one with none of its friends helping. This also makes decisions like 'should I berserk' easier.
And also when retreating to heal don't stop until you're far away from all unexplored territory, or monsters from it might wander on and catch you while you're still on low hp, it's the same principle. Basically, don't fight anything without making the context of the battle be in your favour, one on one with nearby stairs, etc, and if you can't make it in your favour completely avoid it and go somewhere else, and never cut yourself off from a line of retreat to the stairs or run from monsters into unexplored territory because that can make you completely trapped and surrounded.
Also, don't just duck around a corner and think you've retreated enough, monster shouting and melee and spellcasting makes noise and that can bounce around corners and make monsters come to you if they were within earshot, you have to retreat 10+ tiles to be sure.

Rule 1 is to start panicing early, but in a very precognized, thought through way. Even at 100% hp you should be thinking about what you will do if you start losing hp at all, because crawl combat is incredibly random and even routine encounters monsters can get lucky strings of hard hits in on you and now you have to save your life. (Rule 0 helps with this, because if you follow rule 0 it's always easier to disengage.)
At 75% hp if there's a power/consumable that needs to be used early to make full use of it for your 'escape plan' (such as a combat buff) then don't wait any longer to use it. At 50% consider the battle over, use whatever you have to to disengage now (and since you followed rule 0, this might be as simple as take the stairs, haste and take the stairs, blink and take the stairs, whatever, the battle is immediately over and you can rest until healed).
In Crawl your HP can melt very fast with lucky enemy rolls (from midgame on enemies being able to get 50+ damage hits becomes very common) and is very slow to recover (there is no easy 'heal all your health' item in this game unlike in other popular games).

Try reading these:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=7699
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12062&p=168952&hilit=friend#p168952

[savageorange]

On another note, how many games can I expect my first win?

You will lose 99%+ of the time until you decide to play a game with all correct tactics, then you will win 90+% of the time.
[simple summary of how]

Good post which deserves to be read, but really needs better formatting. All the 'rules' are sort of smooshed together in one paragraph, maybe you could make them each their own paragraph.

[Patashu]

On another note, how many games can I expect my first win?

You will lose 99%+ of the time until you decide to play a game with all correct tactics, then you will win 90+% of the time.
[simple summary of how]

Good post which deserves to be read, but really needs better formatting. All the 'rules' are sort of smooshed together in one paragraph, maybe you could make them each their own paragraph.

(I hit thanks instead of quote, whoops!)
I reformatted it a bit, but I don't feel like making it any prettier than that, because the two links I give at the bottom of that post are already really good. Seriously. Read them at least once!
And you can ask me any time if you have Qs. Or you can go to ##crawl on http://webchat.freenode.net/ , there are always players there to give you advice and even spectate your game if you are playing online (online reasons).

[Magipi]

You will lose 99%+ of the time until you decide to play a game with all correct tactics, then you will win 90+% of the time.

In this case, nobody is using correct tactics, because nobody is close to this number.

[Patashu]

You will lose 99%+ of the time until you decide to play a game with all correct tactics, then you will win 90+% of the time.

In this case, nobody is using correct tactics, because nobody is close to this number.

That's because when you're very good at Crawl, playing strictly for winrate is no longer interesting, because you'd just ascend infinitely many mibes or grbes or whatever in a row. Two things happen:
1) They start optimizing for minimizing how long it takes to win games instead of win rate
2) They start trying to ascend hard/challenge combos/every possible background for a race/every possible race for a background/etc
Or some people instead of going for win rate go for highest possible score, which means get 15 runes with a very low turncount. High score players include:
<Sequell> 809067. PurpleRed the Slayer (L27 VSGl of Cheibriados), escaped with the Orb and 15 runes on 2014-06-15 12:00:10, with 55396974 points after 26025 turns and 10:15:08.
and
<Sequell> 791. Yermak the Ninja (L22 SpEn of Dithmenos), escaped with the Orb and 15 runes on 2014-04-10 18:12:53, with 54334266 points after 26400 turns and 8:45:17.
and many more. Their winrates are atrocious, but that's because they discard every run that is not going to go very fast, by taking calculated risks in the name of minimizing turncount until they die. Instead of showing their skill by winrate or streak, they show their skill by getting the one god run to rule them all!
But there's plenty of proof that incredibly high winrates are possible to pull off, such as:

<Patashu_> !won megabat
<Sequell> megabat has won 13 times in 14 games (92.86%): 1xCeMo 1xDDNe 1xDgCj 1xHEAE 1xHaAs 1xHuVM 1xKoHu 1xMDBe 1xMfIE 1xMiGl 1xSEEE 1xSpEn 1xTrFi

and

<Patashu_> !streak mikee_
<Sequell> mikee has 23 consecutive wins (HuPr, DrVM, TrWn, SENe, CeGl, HOAE, OpEE, OgAM, DgSt, DsBe, DDFi, NaEn, MfIE, HaAs, SpEn, HEWz, MiHe, GhMo, DECj, NaTm, VpSu, KoAr, TeFE) and has won their last 6 games (MuJr, OgJr, TeAr, VpWn, HEMo, DEGl).
<Patashu_> !streak the_glow
<Sequell> theglow has 19 consecutive wins (HECj, TeDK, GhMo, CeHu, MiBe, DrTm, SESt, DDEE, SpEn, FeSu, VpIE, DsVM, DgFE, HuAM, MuWz, TrSk, HaAs, HOHe, DEFE), and can keep going!

If your effective win rate is 90% (with those kinds of characters as selected by mikee_ the chance of getting a 23 win streak is 9%. 80%? 0.6%, and with how long winning takes, if no one had an effective win rate over 80% the 23 win streak would not exist.