Advice for shaving turn count

[Clownie]

After finally getting a good score at 21 million, I want to go harder, faster, stronger. I want to dive fast and get ~40 million points.

Trouble is, I don't know how. It's so hard. I've been trying to get the feel for speedrunning with TrBe (regen wastes fewer turns healing, berserk helps take out high HD targets for quick levels), but the difficulty spike in lair branches kills me. I don't find rPois anywhere near reliably – more likely, I have no jewellery and most of my consumables aren't ID'd by the time I reach the first lair branch (takes a bit less than 2000 turns, varies a lot because I have to scour D8-11 and L3-6). Generally, just one enemy in a lair branch will almost kill me, and I won't have brothers in arms up because I use trog's hand so often to save turns and to stay alive.

Advice? How to speedrun?

[edgefigaro]

Some of the difficulty spike in lair branches is coming from being a troll rather than speedrunning. That is the area where their power curve really bottoms out assuming no dragon armor and no shield. Trog's hand shouldn't be used for regen turn shaving IMO.

Try getting a balance for how hard/fast to dive and how much to explore. I like to take both downstairs and upstairs and clear out little pockets around staircases. Lets you play safely, have areas to retreat to, keep encounters under control.

For practice, I recommend taking the second downstaircase you find on every level. This isn't optimal speedrunning behavior, but provides some balance between full clearing level by level and really playing with staircases and what the dungeon layouts give you.

[asdu]

In my experience, being able to go for a rune when you first see a branch entrance is extremely rare. I've attempted it a couple times with characters that looked especially promising and never succeeded, although I'm sure it's been done plenty. I absolutely expect to go to lair:8 first and I actually often do orc before entering lair, although I don't know if others do this.

Likewise, I don't think there's a way around rPois for the poison branch, and even swamp can be borderline impossible depending on the rune vault. Even if your character is enough of a beast to survive the poison damage you'll waste so many turns resting to make it inefficient over exploring other areas for rPois (any orc could drop body armour with it, after all. Playing trolls doesn't help here).
Maybe an especially strong DESu with a lot of consumables can make it through spider at level 14 or whatever without rPois by virtue of never getting touched by an enemy, but characters that need to be able to tank definitely can't (again, in my experience).

Disclaimer: I'm bad at speedruns.

[archaeo]

I'd suggest watching speedrunners. Gammafunk does a twitch stream at least once a week, and you can usually catch 4tharra playing on CXC. You can sometimes find tabstorm doing CSZO speedruns too. I'm not sure where Charly plays, but he's also a speedrunner worth watching. You should also look at scores in the range you're aiming at; it looks like "~40 million" means aiming for 36k or so, and you should probably check out some of the recent examples to set up some benchmarks to hit.

Unless you're looking to beat the TrBe high score, I'd suggest starting with another background and going Chei, using 4tharra's multiple Tr speedruns as your guide. Even Rosh ditches Trog for Chei, though I'm not sure that a Hypothetically Optimal TrBe speedrun would look like that. I suspect a 35k TrBe will require finding excellent armor very early and going Makh instead of Chei in extended, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Otherwise, it's hard to give tips for speedruns that aren't just tips for getting good at Crawl, imo. Obviously, there's a small amount of tech, like breadswinging or some cute tricks with passage of golubria and cblink. Otherwise, it's really about knowing the game and applying that knowledge flawlessly when the RNG hands you the tools to win. I realize that "get good" isn't very helpful advice, however; it's probably better to say that Crawl's a turn-based game, so any non-trivial tactical choice should be made deliberately and carefully.

[tabstorm]

If you are going to play a Troll, use Chei and hope for statue form to spawn or even Oka and hope for a good dragon armor to drop early. TrBe is bad for a high score because races with limited armor slots tend to get killed in Lair branches without Statue form, or will spend an eternity resting. If you want to get a 40m with the least possible difficulty, you should play VS of Chei, or MiBe with Trog -> TSO. You will die a lot of times until the right items drop for you to be able to win in principle - then you need to play extremely well to actually win.

[Clownie]

I'm not dead-set on playing a troll – I just figured their regeneration and huge base "kill shit" ability would be a big help to finish as fast as possible. I'd actually love to do it as a formicid because they're my favourite species, but they can't berserk and they have almost no escape options, so I don't know how to get a formicid off the ground while diving fast. DD seems good too, since they don't have to spend turns resting.

[tabstorm]

Formicid is bad for a highscore because they can't teleport or berserk. You basically need to play Chei and use statue, or play Makhleb and hope for amazing armor drops. DD is good, but can be very RNG-dependent if you start with Makhleb, or have issues with running out of healing by extended if you use Trog -> Makhleb/TSO unless a vamp weapon drops for you to use in the midgame.

[Eyesburn]

I'm not sure where Charly plays, but he's also a speedrunner worth watching.

He plays on CXC.

Advice? How to speedrun?

As Turgon said: Don't use 5 and o.

[carbonbasedlifeform]

Turn-count shaving? It takes:
cheap tactics ( yea... it is about abusing broken game mechanics...i know it sounds ugly, its least pleasurable part of the speedrunning but most of it will be fixed in future dcss releases )

Spoiler: show

- uc ( for overpowered single-target damage) or axes (for overpowered cumulative cleaving damage)
- bread swinging
- tele spam ( if you are playing 0.17 or older)
- golubria spam if you have reliable source of mp regen ( amu or being vs)
- cblink, deaths door - you should think of that if you have godlike int, once reliably castable breaks the game
- luring ( shouting, being marked; in Vaults Convoker is you best friend), and maximizing amount of enemies to be damaged per turn ( cleaving/slouch/firestorm/evocables at smart angles etc)
- taking unknown staircases whenever possible ( for 2 turns you are exploring completely new screen, higher chance for finding loot or exp-worthy opponents)
- dive straight to d:4, d1-3 is expless comparing to ogre, grinder +temple
- food management ( at certain stage of the game you will release that you have enough food for rest of the game - stop picking it up or try eating from ground)
- gold after vaults is useless for you

bread & butter:

Spoiler: show

-avoiding corridors, prefer open spaces
-never reading scrolls at dungeon lower than 3( because if you roll mapping- good luck! you wasted potential to map temple) - actually its preferable to start reading at d:9 since this is lowest floor to have orcs and lair entrances the same time)
- your first acq should be weapon if you are playing weapon-based character or armour for unarmed
- you want to identify lowest stacks of potions first ( for the higher chance of !exp)
- taking on armor takes 10 turns - think of identifying it first off scroll
- when the situation gets clutchy - reconsider all your available options (look at abilities, mutations, spells; look at inventory - literally every consumable!!! scroll of uselessness can generate butterflies, mut potion can give you some extra hp/ac/ev, look at unknown items and estimate chances for unknown consumable to be desired item ( unknown potion to be heal wounds etc)

complex thinking:

Spoiler: show

-dropping useless items only if you have to ( for example during waiting for the monster to reach you can drop poison potion and that 1 turn will also regenerate your hp/mp as well as give you one empty item slot)
-plan several thousand turns ahead ( - 1res potion is enough for slime pits, so always think twice before you drink it before lair: Do I really want to backtrack for slime or take the risk and clutch out Erika with no resistances) - this is example, there are too many of them but most of it you will figure out ( like thinking in lair about sources of negative resistance for tomb etc)
- rush down is the sign to save and exit and finish the game when you get back on right thinking ( trust me )
- when you are waiting for a teleport to kick in - try not to attack ( since your attack is usually faster than than waiting or walking ) or switch to scroll for 1 or two swings unless you know that that attack will bring you singificant benefit ( kill an enemy therefore piety/hp/ solid exp)

specific type of mindset:

Spoiler: show

NEVER GIVE UP ( 0.1% chance is still higher than 0 ). You probably do not want to bond with that rule like me ( read: die- reroll- repeat) unless you want your win-ratio to be competitive with bots