I think we learned an important lesson today.

[Stormfox]

Mennas with an artifact large shield while wielding an eudemon blade? Yeah, you're not getting either, boy.

Sure you are, if you don't mind getting the pointy end of the eudemon blade.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Every unique has the potential to be dangerous, even if you've already defeated many of similar difficulty.

Conversely, every potential danger can be unique, even if you've already defeated many similar monsters.

[cybersaint2k]

Coming off my first extended game win (12 runes with a non-magic using Ghoul Monk of Makhleb), I make the following observations:

The staff of Dispater is useful for characters with enough HP and evocation training. Very, very useful.

Steam Dragon armor is useful for all characters, especially the +5 steam dragon armour of the Sun (worn) {rC++ Dam+4}.

Cerebov is very strong. I could not beat him one-on-one, and I wonder if it's possible for a melee character to do it. Maybe with the
s - the +13,+13 sword of the Doom Knight {pain, -CAST MR} but I didn't even ID it, didn't know what I had until I won. Otherwise, control tele and run.

Spirit Shield is wonderful for melee character, could not find a better amulet for general use all game long. That and a ring of magical power kept me around 300 hp.

Stat death is very scary. You must sustain abilities when you face even a single opponent who drains intelligence. Especially when your natural intel is 5. I had an ax "Thryde" that could have insta-killed me (or would it, I don't know for sure) since it was -5 to intel.

My new jelly strategy: Four scrolls of torment. While laughing.
My new elf strategy: Fog scrolls and throwing everything but the kitchen sink down the hall

[Stornor]

D:3

Spriggan Chaos Knight doing fairly well. Level 4 / 23 HP/ 19 EV/4 AC/ Dagger of Draining

Encounter with a goliat zombie beetle

I manage to hit something like 15 hits on it. It misses every time.
Then

Blablabla

You die
WTF??

23 damage in one hit.
Seriously???

[XuaXua]

D:3

Spriggan Chaos Knight doing fairly well. Level 4 / 23 HP/ 19 EV/4 AC/ Dagger of Draining

Encounter with a goliat zombie beetle

I manage to hit something like 15 hits on it. It misses every time.
Then

Blablabla

You die
WTF??

23 damage in one hit.
Seriously???

It's a Goliath Beetle. Those do huge amounts of damage like worms do.

And it's a ZOMBIE one at that.

You should have been stab, walk and wait, stab, walk and wait or throwing crap at him. Good XP on D2.

[joellercoaster]

It is entirely possible to encounter (and be killed by, though that part was panic) a Vault Guard on D:11.

[TehDruid]

It is entirely possible to encounter (and be killed by, though that part was panic) a Vault Guard on D:11.

A single Vault Guard is a sign that there's a room with a portal to a treasure trove in early D. Most of the times though it's 3 of them for me.

[Grimm]

There are times when I would sell my immortal soul for a bottle of cure mutation.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Fortunately, Zin and Jiyva are buying!

[Grimm]

I'd have to abandon Troggo and I'm not sure I can deal with his punishment.

[AtT]

If you like your toenails, wear closed shoes on a bike!

[TwilightPhoenix]

Well Grimm, let me tell you what to do. You need to sit him down, look him dead in the eye, and you say, "Please don't kill me." He'd have to be awfully evil for that not to work. And, I'm not going to lie, but I like the cut of his jib.

[Grimm]

I tried that and it worked!

[TehDruid]

Mutations are great when they are going your way, but that pack of Yaktaurs can kill your SpCK hotshot with 2 successful silver bolts if you're lvl 15-ish with low fighting. (almost happened yesterday)

[Pteriforever]

Never enter an unexplored set of stairs while hungry. You never know how much you'll need to expend in the stairs-waiting parties the orcs have got going at the bottom of most of the stairways.

[Mattchew]

If you have a strange run of luck and get few/no remove curse scrolls in the early game, you really need to take note of this fact. Adjust your habits. One cursed -3 blowgun can ruin your whole day.

[Bragelonne]

Hi! I'm new here!

What I have learnt... Fear potions of greater poison. REALLY fear them.

I lost a lvl16 MDFi of Oka with great gear by randomly identifying my remaining items... Came across one of these with no healing pots =S

[Grimm]

With the nerfing of rPois and the apparent (to me) buffing of monster poison, potions of curing (née healing) are now essential items for the modern adventurer.

[mageykun]

Having just successfully cleared a spider's lair for the first time, I have the following important lesson to add:

The pittance of loot at the end of these miserable spider holes is nowhere near worth the disproportionate risk involved in clearing one.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Unless you have access to Mephitic Cloud, Poisonous Cloud, or Ignite Poison. Then while the loot may not be amazing, it's easy XP.

[KoboldLord]

A rolling wall of spider zombies is also pretty great, and usually there's an angle of approach where a semi-stealthy blaster or archer can gun down spiders from a fairly safe spot without waking up too many others. Sometimes they hiss when they see you, but it's not like you're trying to lure out orc packs and the like.

Going in as a melee character without rPois is generally pretty rough, but that's because the world of Crawl hates melee characters.

[joellercoaster]

What I have learnt... Fear potions of greater poison. REALLY fear them.

I lost a lvl16 MDFi of Oka with great gear by randomly identifying my remaining items... Came across one of these with no healing pots =S

I think this can be distilled down to "if you are quaff-IDing potions, Cute Mutation is nice but Healing (Curing in 0.10) is essential. Strong Poison isn't the only one that can ruin your day!

[PerverseSuffering]

↑"Cute Mutation is nice"
Cat ears sure are nice! Impying they aren't on a male hobgoblin. Or on any male. Of any race. Come to think of it, they won't really look nice on any race except Felids who have that by default. Oh well.

As for them lessons, ain't you never underestimate alligators and never overestimate blinking scrolls. No good that did to me. And I had the second Vehumet's tome by the time! Just, just... careful with the Swamp.
ESPECIALLY if playing Trunk. I have no idea why that scroll didn't work. Maybe I wasn't fast enough to read it before the alligator attacked.
tl;dr ALLIGATORS AND TRUNK VERSIONS, FEAR THEM!

[Jeremiah]

If you see a dangerous uniqe asleep, don't trust your stealth and think you can safely explore the rest of the level without waking it up - just leave the level and come back when you're strong enough to kill it (or not at all.)

[joellercoaster]

There are some really big hive vaults

[edit: Checking with the morgue file, the one I just found on L:2 had one queen, and 51 killer bees. Never have I missed rP quite so much.]

[varsovie]

Found a rod of poison early?

Be sure to map your "stick to snake" far away from your blink. -_-

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Do you know that you can map spells to Shift+letters (capital letters)? For some spells, like Revivification, it is very helpful.

[Stormfox]

Abilities, too. Berserkers, once you get to the part of the game where the post-berserk cooldown can put you into mortal danger (which, these days, can be D:3 when the gnolls with polearms start spawning), remap Berserk to something other than 'a' so you don't fat-finger it!

[Pteriforever]

Don't underexstimate something just because the wiki tells you to. I just lost a promising XL11 character to the labyrinth guardian minotaur after the wiki said this:

"By the time you reach his lair, you should beat him without problems"

[Grimm]

Don't do ANYTHING the wiki tells you to.

[KoboldLord]

Don't underexstimate something just because the wiki tells you to. I just lost a promising XL11 character to the labyrinth guardian minotaur after the wiki said this:

"By the time you reach his lair, you should beat him without problems"

At the time that wiki page was written, labyrinths spawned significantly deeper than they do today. They were moved to a drastically more shallow depth specifically because of this fact, since the fight at the end is no fun if it's easy and boring.

Generally speaking, if you see a magic bullet solution to a problem on the wiki, it will have been fixed by the current version. Exploits are usually dealt with fairly quickly from version to version.

[TehDruid]

Speaking of Labyrinths, I just YASD'ed a DSCK of Xom from some early electric eels. He had +5 Int!
Well, labyrinth spawned at level 12. I find the minotaur. He picks up an artifact spear of freezing. (I had demonic guardian 2) a sixfirny spawns to help me, it dies in one turn while it closes in to melee him, by 2 hits of the spear and 1 headbutt. I started kiting him and more demons spawned, but they were smoke demons and sixfirnys, after a bunch of them died and one spawned, I just stood in a relatively open area so they could hit him while he tried to kill me and quaffed pots of cure wounds for a while. He was hitting me for like 30 dmg every turn. Granted, I was wearing a +2 robe. Well, finally he died and I got the spear - +2 +3 freeze, rC, MR. Meh.

[greepish]

Don't do ANYTHING the wiki tells you to.

Unless it tells you not to do something.

[joellercoaster]

Then you should not not do that.

[edit: OnOnTopicComment: When you leap six inches out of your chair because a hydra just came around the corner, don't let your panic make you fail to note the snapping turtle right beside it.]

[Yet Another Stupid Noob]

No matter how strong you think your character is, don't go into Zot when you come home from working a full day on 4 hours of sleep.

[Blade]

Poisoned needles and a blowgun to shoot them are among the very most useful things any character (especially melee) can pick up in the early dungeon.

[TehDruid]

Mennas = 3-4 slouch casts.

[PerverseSuffering]

You will not outrun deathyaks, unless you're a spriggan or sped up somehow.
Especially if you're a draconian.
Four deathyaks mean a swift click on that blink/teleport scroll.

[TehDruid]

When you find a GDA on your TrBe in Lair, you'll get banished soon. Then switch to Lugonu and try to wait out Trog wrath, but it will take toooooooo long and you'll eventually run out of food. Funny. I was waiting in a small corner at D:15 and a Boring Beetle had spawned, and it made the entire level swiss.

[varsovie]

With the nerfing of rPois and the apparent (to me) buffing of monster poison, potions of curing (née healing) are now essential items for the modern adventurer.

The spell "cure poison" now worth something.
In case green death get two lucky shots.

[Grimm]

Wands of enslavement work on sickly sirens.

Hoist by her own petard.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Don't read too much about something you don't really need.
I spent six hours in the last two days reading Narutopedia -- it started out of curiosity! -- and now I am confused, and I still can't remember much difference between byakugan and rinnegan. The question is, did I need all that information?

[mageykun]

Here's an odd one- you can defeat fungal colonies with naught but steam.

I discovered this accidentally on a FeTM^N who came across a spore and realized he couldn't throw anything it at it, so I did the next best thing and evaporated a potion of water. It worked, and the steam killed the colony before I could get halfway there. :p

[Yet Another Stupid Noob]

Here's an odd one- you can defeat fungal colonies with naught but steam.

I discovered this accidentally on a FeTM^N who came across a spore and realized he couldn't throw anything it at it, so I did the next best thing and evaporated a potion of water. It worked, and the steam killed the colony before I could get halfway there. :p

Fungacide.

I guess that is what they are doing when they put those big tents over houses.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Spores dies from everything. You can throw food, bows, pieces of armor, chunks, corpses, spellbooks, scrolls, decks of cards, or whatever else you can get your hands on to make them pop.

[Stormfox]

Yeah, but that doesn't help a Felid who can't throw anything except spells and can't zap wands. I'll have to remember the steam cloud trick next time I run a FeSt, or whatever background ends up starting with Evaporate once things settle down in that department.

[Blade]

Mummies of Sif with Summon Dragon are insanely, terrifyingly powerful.

[Serne]

Adventurers need to learn how to swim. That is all.

[FluidDynamite]

To all aspiring worshippers of Nemelex: A Spark card does not necessarily mean "Lightning Bolt".

  Code:

The orb of electricity explodes!
The orb of electricity engulfs your long sword.
Your long sword appears unharmed.
Your long sword is moderately damaged.
The orb of electricity engulfs your spiny frog.
You kill your spiny frog!
Your spiny frog's corpse disappears in a puff of smoke!
Ouch! That really hurt!
You die...
Your body disappears without a glow.

Yeah, I tried firing that darn thing through my summoned sword... Was at full health, too. And controlled blink castable at excellent... I especially enjoyed the part of "Your long sword appears unharmed."

Fakeedit: Oh come on game, you just have to rub this in my face don't you

  Code:

 90209 | D:27     | Killed themselves with bad targeting