The Tavern

Trying to return to playing crawl but can't get anything started. Keep dying before D3. Last game last 21 turns with zero points. Monsters seams more difficult to kill and harder monsters are spawned on early levels. Have died multiple time to snakes either poisoning or constricting so others can finish. On D1 there is no save place to run to when faced with snakes and Gnolls. The snake are fast then constrict so gnoll can come up and one shot kill with pole arm.

I know I'm a bad player but this fells like a waste of time now.

Clustering illusion, bad luck, rusty skills. It will get better. Pick an easy combo for starters.

+1 pick an easy combo. if you are playing something 'squishier' you have to know your limits. place exclusions on sleeping enemies that might be dangerous, and lure enemies a little bit before fighting them. I sometimes find it valuable to train some stealth (like a level or two) before anything else on squishy characters, especially those with high stealth apts.

Troll will get you past the few few deungeon levels reliably. TrHu for the big rocks or TrBe for the good god.

Troll can reliably tab through to lair. The troll wall is never D. It lair into sbranches.

Still good for a pick me up i-can't-get-past-d3 spat.

Tips:

1) Don't go to monsters, let them come to you and lure them to well-explored places, near safety, where the sound won't carry, and then pick them off one at a time.
2) Read-Id all your scrolls after D1 and D2 cleared. Use your ID scrolls to ID potions - start with multiple stacks - you don't want to quaff flight when you need curing.
3) Go for an easy combo - MiGl, TrMo, DEFE, SpEn are good.
4) Gnoll packs, adders, orc packs and early uniques are the most prolific killers in the game - give them as much respect as you would a Pan / Hell boss. Avoid if at all possible, and burn consumables / lure / pillar dance / stairdance / kite if you can't. If you have to take them on, a high accuracy weapon such as a whip / short sword is good for adders, pick off gnolls one at a time, and kill the rest of the orc pack first before you take on the priest.
5) Bear in mind that statistically D3 is the most deadly level in the game - give it respect.
6) Explore near staircases first, then the edges of the map / choke points, then push into open areas last. Always keep an escape (upstairs, downstairs, choke points, hatches, tele traps, even shafts (better a possible death than certain death)) as close as you can.
7) Put nearly all of your xp into your primary weapon / starting spell school(s) until temple. (maybe branch out a tiny bit into secondary spell schools / defence if you're confident, but if it doubt, don't)

HTH

The ASCII-illustrated guide in my sig is still mostly valid even though it's from a very old version.

One note: you can break out of constriction by walking into empty space. Better if you have high Str but cumulative turns attempting to break constriction will succeed.

I tried a Troll and died 1/2 way thru D1.

I don't understand why the developers have added so many insta death monster to D1. You don't have any items or god powers to use and no way to escape.

Damn, I forgot this again...

God... I... I have to know.

Which insta-death monsters are those?

Anyway, congrats on dying as a troll on D1. That takes some doing!

Snakes and gnolls. Getting swarmed by monsters that are faster then you and can stop you from moving, poison you repeatably, or carry magic pole arms on D1 is just stupid.

Doesn't matter at this point! I have already deleted all my bookmarks for crawl.

D:1 adders are stupid, but last time I checked ball pythons are speed 10 and gnolls are defiantly speed 10.

How do you die to ball pythons? You'd have to be exploring at low health or march out into the black (and a pack of monsters) for this to happen much at all.

Yeah, you're playing way too aggressively. I'd say that over 50% of fights require some running away early on. If it's a halberd gnoll asleep or with a ? (And most monsters give you one round of action before the enemy notices you) go the other way and don't look back. If it's a jackal pack move into a corrider so you're fighting one at a time.

Everybody is playing the same game. The good players are the ones who run away most.

I've been playing some wildly sub-optimal characters, and it's still rare I die in D1. I know it happens, of course, but you do realize you can run from gnolls and ball pythons, right?

Or maybe crawl specifically has it out for you. In fact, that's probably it, so it was a good idea to delete your crawl bookmarks.
The CA fork of crawl has an easy mode, maybe try that out? It seems to specifically aim to make the early game less dangerous.

Could you post some morgue files so we can give you a post-mortem?

k bye

we (and crawl) will try not to cry ourselves to sleep now that you aren't playing it anymore

Looking at your scoring page (http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/lawndartjedi.html), it looks like you're ignoring the #1 most powerful tactic in crawl: running away.

Things like gnolls, hobgoblins, and ice beasts only have 10 speed, which is no more than you. If you're losing a fight with something like that you should try to run away instead of continuing to attack until it kills you. They're just as fast as you so you probably won't escape, but especially for single enemies you might be able to run away for long enough to regenerate your hp and start the fight again from scratch.

You often can actually escape, as well, by way of other, less dangerous monsters getting between you and them, or energy variation. And if there's multiple enemies you can at least split them/force them through a corridor.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Lawnd ... 203241.txt

Died with 3 large rocks and 2 nets in inventory, in 1v1 combat against a gnoll.

while wielding an uncursed +0 short sword, as a troll

P.S. troll regen makes pillar dancing rather tolerable

That's it.