Shoals:5 - what to expect?

[Jeremiah]

Never been to Shoals:5 before, all my games where I survived that far have had snake + swamp...

Just wondering what I should expect; I've heard it's harder than either of those, so how does it compare with the Vaults and Slime rune levels? Maybe I should just go for the Abyssal Rune instead.

[mrbobbyg]

It really depends on your build and your gear.

Are you a MfCr? Then it's not so bad.

Are you a MdFi with no levitation? You are in for a world of pain.

[Galefury]

Expect lots of javelins thrown at you, and quite a bit of water too. Levitation is not optional. Also bring SInv. With DMsl and/or a shield the Javelins are not too bad, but Aquamancers can still bring your HP down pretty quickly. As for all branch ends having a good way to retreat (teleport, cblink, HasteSwiftFly, ...) helps. As long as you're careful and can deal with ranged attackers it's not too bad.

[slowcar]

to make some of those tips a bit more direct:
aquamancers can call the water to rise (locally). if you don't have levitation/fly or can escape quickly you will drown on the spot.
you can often use walls for your advantage against the ranged attackers.
there can be some dangerous uniques around, i've found up to three of the likes of Mara, Boris and co.

Remember that you don't have to fight every monster here, you are here for the rune, not to clean the place out (but feel free to do so if you have fly, deflect missiles etc).
There is easier XP in other parts of the dungeon.

[XuaXua]

And hide your food on an earlier floor; harpies will take it all!

[mageykun]

I would advice extreme caution. Shoals:5 throws a lot of enemies at you at once, and they can all hit hard, and come with ranged attacks. When you take the Vault:8 dive, only 8 vault guards can smack you at a time, and even when the crowd thins out, there aren't too many yaktaurs with a clear shot at once. Really, it's only when the titans and shadow dragons show up, and start airstrike-ing or draining you through the crowd that things get dicey. Shoals:5 you can expect the crowds to be more spread out, and to shower you with steel / silver javelins and aqua-mancy. Also, Ilsuiw sucks.

The biggest problem with shoals:5 is that you can't really retreat. Lots of ranged attacks mean it's hard stair dance, and the geometry of the shoals and the land killing aquamancers make running hard. This leaves very little room for error, and is why I advocate putting shoals:5 off until you can do it comfortably.

One thing the shoals do have in favor over the vaults is that the map isn't fixed, so all the stairs won't necessarily be next to each other. This can help keep you from getting killed when trying to stair dance. You can try and come behind crowds. Also- one of the few rune vaults you don't have to kill everything in! If you wake the merfolk in the rune vault and run, you can sneak back later and find the rune unprotected.

[XuaXua]

Lots of ranged attacks mean it's hard stair dance, and the geometry of the shoals and the land killing aquamancers make running hard.

Surround yourself with as many summons as possible before going downstairs.

[Sometimes]

Magic mapping should cut down on your wandering-around-pincushioned time enormously. The rune's in one of the little island chambers- get in, get out.

[moekitten]

things there cannot see invisible so invisibility (evocable or a spell) makes shoals 5 significantly easier

[pratamawirya]

If you wanna retreat (of course you do!), then it might help if you get your MR high. Getting mesmerized by a mermaid when there're javelineers around isn't nice at all.

[njvack]

My best experience was with a stealthy ice caster -- went invisible before going downstairs, mapped, and used Refrigeration on the rune vault. Grabbed the rune and took off; the guards never saw me.

I don't ninja runes (or at least, not pre-Zot runes) as a rule, but I'm happy to ninja Shoals:5. It's a nasty place.

[Stormfox]

Take some scrolls of noise to break mesmerization. Don't count on your MR to protect you 100% of the time no matter how high it is, since there are so few cases of 100% safety in Crawl anyhow.

If you play with friends or meatshields -- HOPr, summoner, Makhlebite -- remember that javelins can carry the penetration brand too. And, of course, if your meatshields can't swim or fly, that affects their utility too.

You will have run into impalers before now, but you'll see a lot more on level 5. And they have a distressing tendency to carry reaching weapons.

[snow]

I normally do shoals after vaults.

By the time you clear vaults you're close to level 27 and at that point shoals is trivial. So the choice is do shoals at level 21 and risk dying or do it at level 27 and guarantee survival. That's just how I see it... I've died there enough to think it's not worth the risk.

[joellercoaster]

Levitation is not optional.

It's not often I try Shoals:5 without some form of water travel, but I've done it fine before. You just have to work more carefully through it, killing things from solid ground (one excellent form of which comes from Digging walls out).

Other things that work: Being an Octopode, Ice Form

[Happy Corner]

It may just be my own bad luck, but Shoals:5 seems to have a higher population of uniques than most... at least most Lair branches. I can almost promise you'll see at least one, and possibly several. They can be nasty, too. I've encountered Saint Roka down there before, and Mennas on another occasion. (Actually, Mennas was on a Shoal level above 5 that game... I'm just saying that this place doesn't pull its punches.)

The island buildings have diggable walls. If you're a melee type (or even if you're not), that makes them useful to funnel the monsters so that they can't all surround you, or take cover from all the javelins that will be flying at you, or even peeking in one of them to see if the rune is there. With all the deep water and monsters, you're not necessarily going to want to circle it to find the door...

None of the merfolk resist poison, so don't forget your venom weapons and poison spells, too. They deserve it!

As for getting the Abyssal rune instead, why not both? The Abyss isn't too hard if you can survive the Shoals and know how to deal with it. Either keep moving (keep the walls between you and the demon hordes as much as possible) and don't let yourself get surrounded... or find a nice corner blocked off on as many sides as possible, wait for the random teleport, and repeat. Sooner or later, the rune will pop up. Once you have it, keep moving until you see the exit portal. Other than the greater demons, of course, keep yourself out of sight of the smoke demons (smiters) and the purple nexoqec demons (who cause mutations).

[KoboldLord]

With a few notable exceptions, you should be grateful to find as many uniques as possible in Shoals. The vast majority of uniques can't swim, which means you can kill them with absolute impunity if you can levitate indefinitely or can lure them to a point where there's a narrow water barrier to work with. Saint Roka is quite a bit less threatening if he's separated from his army on a total of one tile of shallow water, completely isolated by the threat of a lethal plunge into the aquatic abyss.

[Shade]

Where is that XP to get you from 21 to 27 going to come from? You wouldn't wait until Lair is trivial to do Lair, because you have to do a bunch of non-trivial stuff to actually make it trivial.

Not to mention, level 17 or level 27, Shoals:5 can go horribly wrong in a hurry. While Elf:5 and the end of Slime present relatively concentrated threats, all of Shoals:5 can be bad but with concentrated nuggets of sheer terror.

[snow]

The experience comes from the main dungeon and vaults, usually. The vaults except for vaults 8 are easy because of the layout.

[Bim]

Haunt. Everything. I found that I could reliably raise enough of the merfolk to make it alright, especially as I was lucky enough to stair dance quite a lot of the nasty stuff up to my zombie hoard. Major thing is NOT to get confused/mesmerized, so make sure MR is high/clarity, as falling into the water is a horrible, horrible way to die.

[Waywinkle]

I've never had trouble in Shoals:5 unless there is a Kraken around. Those things are death machines. The tentacles move faster than a flying+swiftness glass canon can run and they hit harder than a stone giant. I've cleared the shoals quite a few times and the only times (3) I've died it has been to Krakens. I think they've had a buff in 0.9, something to do with the tentacles being able to be much longer.