Speedrun postmortem and speed run advice

[tasonir]

Looking to get feedback on the proper way to handle this death I recently had, and general speed run tips, particularly on whether or not I should have kept my heavy armor on. The entire run was recorded and can be watched on twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/tasonir/v/72736791 until twitch deletes it in 14 days), and youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cnIaagyzso. But I'll explain the important bits:


Enter depths, hit autoexplore (I'm speedrunning here, but I'm also lazy, and not trying to get a really impressive record), and this is where it lands me. Edit: Just noticed I apparently tried hitting it once? Oops! In any case, I've lost about 40 health, and I've got some very scary monsters directly in melee. I've recently switched back into light armor, I have statue form at 6% fail, and I have rC+ (for the simulacrum). But quicksilver dragon simulacrums can destroy you even with rC, so I'm not really looking to stay and fight. I probably should have thought this through a lot longer on THIS turn, but instead I figure taking a step back to the perfect choke so I only fight one monster would be wise, and:



So I lost a good bit more health than I was expecting here. Obviously I'm with Chei and this is something that can happen, but ouch. I think I was more used to my previous heavy armor and having gone down to 13 ac put me at risk, but hey. Let's come back to that later. You're now on this turn. What do you do? I have: Blinking scroll, scroll of fear, wand of paralysis, potion of agility. Step from time is sadly still at 26% fail, but could have been used on turn 1 - turn 2 I don't have the mana for it. Could go for a slouch if you're feeling daring - I did get one strong hit on it before. I'm VS, so no healing. Wand has a 51% success rate. This is the turn that I took the time to actually think about it, but last turn would have been the ideal turn to stop and think about it...Ah well. What would you do? I won't say what I did just yet but it's in the video if you want to check - it did not work well and I'm sure there's better choices.


Part 2: the armor choice. I had gotten statue form to 6% fail in my leather armor (+1 artefact with +3 dex), so I switched to that, but then the autoexplore into direct melee range meant I never ended up casting statue form, so I was in terrible armor. This hurts even more, because my former armor was so good it was really hard to give up: +8 chainmail with rN++, regen, dex+2. I had only 3 armor skill, but hey. If I was wearing this, I'd probably have just tabbed that simulacrum...Any chei speedrunners want to weigh in on if you should delay statue form (probably until you're ready for extended) when you have such a good armor? Did I rush it too soon? I probably should have picked up shield skill first?

18876 turns for 2 runes, having explored orc/vaults:1-4. Not a terrible time, I'm not expecting to break any records, just aiming for <50k Morgue here: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Tason ... 142307.txt

[Magipi]

I figure taking a step back to the perfect choke so I only fight one monster would be wise

I seriously can't follow you. You are with Chei, and you decide to move in the middle of a dangerous combat, impressive. How many actions did you allow that quicksilver simulacrum exactly? I'm not good with Chei math.

[tasonir]

If I was still in heavy armor, it'd be worth it. I think I underestimated how much damage I could take with 13 ac, and sadly the 30 EV didn't do much. I'm not sure exactly what the speed of a simulacrum is (it should be slightly slower), but a regular quicksilver dragon is speed 15, I'm taking 20 auts go to back to the choke, so it would take 3 "actions" which means one step + 2 attacks. Compare this to staying in place, and I'd take 1.5 hits from the dragon, and one from the jugg zombie. I'd take more hits on a 10 aut action in place then I take going back. And going back gives you a perfect 1 on 1 fight. Of course, I still ended up losing that fight.

I think it's pretty clear that if you stopped and paid enough attention on turn 1, the solution is just to blink to the entrance and leave. What you can do from turn 2 is a lot harder, and sadly that's the one I couldn't solve. But moving with chei is often still worth it, at least if you have the armor...

[amaril]

Can't say I have any experience chei speedrunning, but I would probably have stepped from time were this a normal game. (Don't know what your invo was tho)

[tasonir]

Can't say I have any experience chei speedrunning, but I would probably have stepped from time were this a normal game. (Don't know what your invo was tho)

As mentioned, invo was a bit low, so step from time was 26% fail. Still a possible choice for turn 1, but by turn 2 I took so much damage I didn't have the 10 mana for it anymore.

[Sandman25]

I am not sure why you use statue form with characters who have similar defense in natural form. Statue Form is very bad with Chei unless you need rElec or rTorm.

[tasonir]

The torment resistance (would be a 15 rune game) and the damage increase is a key part of why the turn count is so low for chei speedruns. Still, not statue form does do high damage as well. Also the armor is generally better than you'd get with armor - speedruns have far fewer enchant scrolls on average, but that artefact +8 chainmail was incredible.

[Sandman25]

Oh, I forgot it was speedrun which basically means play in a bad way to save some actions.

[stickyfingers]

Blink next to the hatch. Far from good chance to survive, but still better than current position's 0.

[stickyfingers]

I'm not sure exactly what the speed of a simulacrum is (it should be slightly slower), but a regular quicksilver dragon is speed 15, I'm taking 20 auts go to back to the choke, so it would take 3 "actions" which means one step + 2 attacks.

Simulacrum is -2 to normal, so 13 in that case.

[ManMan]

Important question: is this a real-time or turn count speedrun? (I'm guessing the latter).

Edit: Nevermind, I figured out that it's a turn count speedrun from the comments. Basically you should have blinked to the stairs after taking 40 damage like you said, then went back downstairs after casting statue form, or taken a different staircase.

[Eyesburn]

I figure taking a step back to the perfect choke so I only fight one monster would be wise

If you decided that and not reading blink scroll, then maybe you should use Bend Time first then move to choke spot,
or even Temporal Distortion, that would move monsters away from you [people may think that Temporal Distortion moves monsters towards you (like when theres centaur shooting at you from the others side of screen) but TD also moves monsters away from you if there are adjacent dudes, like rearrange their position]

[tasonir]

That's a good point - after step 2, when I blinked back to the depths staircase, I had one tile between me and the simulacrum. I could have tried to go up, but I knew it would get at least one attack on me, and probably 2 or more. I can never remember exactly how long stair travel takes - is it 1.5 turns? And then with chei speed, 3? There's some breakdown of time spent on the first floor and then time on the other, but in any case, the point is I probably could have tried a temporal distortion to get two tiles of space between us, and then try going up. This might be the best solution to the turn 2 problem, with an earlier blink on step 1 being the solution there.

[tabstorm]

Why weren't you using statue form?

If anything you should rush statue form, not delay it. I try to get it usable by the 2nd lair branch at latest. Also, you need to do Tomb earlier, once you have statue form. You can maybe do it before Vaults:5 to rack up some experience. Tomb is pretty easy as a statue.