The Tavern

I keep dying in the Abyss to those damned starcursed masses. I try to run away, break LOS, teleport, etc., but it seems like every time I go for the abyssal rune, sooner or later, I end up cornered somewhere in Abyss 3 with a ton of these things screaming at me until I die. Shapeless little buggers have killed me more than all of Pandemonium combined . The learndb says to hit them to make them recombine, but somehow, it seems like I can never do enough of that to overcome the pace that they split at, even using stuff like javelins of penetration or rod of ignition (NB: all of my characters who've tried for the abyssal rune were melee focused, so I haven't faced them with something like firestorm). Is there anything specific that helps in dealing with them, or is it just a matter of me needing to be more proactive in escaping?

spam slouch

Haste early and retreat

Retreat into passages without LOS aka killholes

Use fog liberally

Use stasis or be Fomicid

Dont go to abyss

Use axes or other AoE effects, rods of lightnig, spells etc

Play a fast race, Sp/Ce/Fe

Worship Lugonu or Ashenzari for less time in abyss

Carry ring of teleport and evoke on sight, or use one of your 20 ?tele, or a single charge on one of your three /tele

Really there is no reason you have to die to them. By the time you need a third rune something from the above should be viable.

Unless they're sitting on something you believe to be a Rune or exit vault, they generally aren't worth the turns it takes to kill them. Usually I start walking the other way as soon as I'm aware of them, because even if I can deal with them quickly I'm going to be drawing attention from other things in the surrounding area.

If for some reason you need to kill this particular mass, you want to get ahead of their splitting. If you are a melee character, you should not be walking across a large open area with them splitting the entire way. Get them into an enclosed area where you can kill them in small numbers, the moment they move around the corner. If you have an evokable item that produces friendly monsters, that can be used to fill up extra spaces, and if there are any hostile but harmless low-level demons or undead around you probably want to leave them alive so the masses can't split into those tiles. Make sure your summons don't get between you and the masses, of course.

But mostly walk away. They're not worth fighting.

Kind of hard to get the abyssal rune without going to the abyss, isn't it?

Anyway, pretty much I just need to get better at staying away from them, then. I had a suspicion that that was pretty much the answer, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask in case there was something that I was overlooking. The most recent death was completely my own stinginess, since I had absolutely no evokable teleport spawn in that game and was trying to save my consumable teleports for fleeing trouble in hell. Oh well, die and learn.

Well dont go to abyss until you have 14 runes then. If you after that still were to die to starcursed masses, you'd be a hopeless case.

They seem to die fairly fast if you're putting down serious melee damage. Perhaps you need to enter Abyss with some more serious weaponary and weapon skills (art + 15+ skill in category kills them very quickly).

Failing this, with high evocations, stones of tremors/fan of gales etc can sort them out. The damage + re-enforcements are most helpful in killing them. Though, personally, I've found such re-enforcements are more useful elsewhere in Abyss (so much bad stuff in there)!

As KL suggests, you will have a much easier time in Abyss if you don't fight things there. Walk away. Lots. Teleporting is usually better than fighting. Yeah, there's scary stuff in there. Extend your middle finger towards it and walk away.

Every turn you spend killing something is a turn you don't spend finding the exit. Every turn you spend killing something is a turn something else may notice you and come over to fight you. The exit is on one of those tiles you haven't seen yet. Keep uncovering tiles.

The main exceptions I can see are:

* Something is faster than you (or directly in your way) and will be absolutely trivial to kill
* You're pretty sure you're at the rune vault and you want the rune

Eh, on some characters I'll abyss scum a bit for XP. If you do this, you want to still run from 90% of things as the abyssal monsters mostly give sucky XP. The two abyssal exceptions are starcursed masses (which are their own kettle of fish, and nearly always best avoided. Unless you have a ready-made killhole) and tentacled starspawn (which give almost as much XP as a lich).

So, rules of thumb:

1. If you want to scum abyss for XP on any combo with good apts, don't. You probably don't need more to win the game. If you've managed to skill your way into a corner with no solution for OoF or are practically locked out of U:4 or something... maybe consider it. But realize it was your mistake before that.
2. Always have a method for dealing with neqoxecs. Either kill them in 1 shot or rMut or a sizeable stash of cure mut. Or Jiyva I suppose.
3. Have some stealth if at all possible.
4. Have 20+tele charges or evokable tele (really, have evokable tele). Have your evokable tele below 50% fail rate.
5. Never auto-explore
6. Never go past A:1; your danger here is getting overwhelmed, so just take the extra tedium in exchange for safety.
7. If there are ever 3 sets of mobs chasing you, just tp. It'll reset the entire abyss.
8. If you see a nearly solo tentacled starspawn or high-level non-abyssal monster that you're sure you can handle when you don't have dangerous mobs in sight, kill them.
9. If you end up low on life after a tp, find a spot that minimizes LOS and rest to heal. TP if anything comes into sight, as probably a lot of monsters spawned while resting, and the noise would draw them. Regeneration is nice but really unnecessary.

freezing cloud works pretty well: it hits several at once if you've let it split up, causing it to reform, and if it splits up again in the cloud it just auto-recombines, since it reforms whenever it's attacked.

summon butterflies + airstrike against neqoxecs worked really well when I had to scum the abyss for a book with 'haste'/scroll of acq. (took me 10k turns to get it)

Ditto. A good bolt wand/rod etc. when you first see them. (Wiki recommended.) Takes resources but with high evocations, really works.

Otherwise, anything to minimize the LOS!