TrBe - Skills?


Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

Mines Malingerer

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Post Thursday, 4th October 2018, 15:10

TrBe - Skills?

TrBe should be easy but I can find no way to live past lair/ork. Take so much damage so fast in rune branches that can't fight or run away. I try maxing UC but that just give more damage to me from enemies. Dodging is a waste. Spells are a waste.


There really should be a way to search the forum titles. I'm sure I'm not the first with this problem

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Thursday, 4th October 2018, 15:50

Re: TrBe - Skills?

Search button is in the upper left, the option for searching "titles only" is about halfway down the search form.

Dodging is not a waste (although it's not amazing for a troll either) primarily there's four things that help you not die in the mid game as a TrBe:
1. More hps, train fighting, it helps a bit with offense and gives you more hps, it should be equal to, if not above your UC skill.
2. A Shield, as an UC troll, you sacrifice a tiny amount of offense for a much-needed significant chunk of defense, and it only takes 9 skill to remove the penalties for a regular shield as a troll.
3. Ranged combat, typically throwing. Large rocks get all the press, but all thrown weapons kill things before they get to you, I usually pause UC around skill 11 or so, and get throwing up to 12 (min delay for tomahawks) at which point you can kill a lot of threats before they get into claw range, piddly ones with stones, beefier ones with bigger thrown weapons, (Typically I advance throwing to 16 once my UC is around 16, as that's min delay for javelins) Trog will also drop plenty of throwing ammo on you. Also if you find one, blowguns are pretty decent (Poison needles aren't amazing compared to your other options, but disabling needles of all sorts are 110% worth using) Also being picky about how you approach possible areas so you get as much LOS to kill things with (or run away space if it's nasty) goes hand in hand with ranged combat, pay attention to where stuff can come at you from.
4. Branch order is probably also a problem, you say you're having problems living past lair/ork, but then talk about rune branches, the rune branches in the lair are much harder than the lair itself, and are harder than most of the dungeon levels as well, typically you want to do D1-10, L1-6, O1-2, D11-14, *then* do the Snake/Spider/Swamp/Spider branches, by which point you'll have at a minimum troll leather, and maybe dragon armour of some sort (I'd estimate slightly over half the time) if you don't have dragon armour, but do get swamp and have rPois, you'll certainly get Swamp dragon armour from Swamp (Well, most of the time anyway)

Finally, the thing that helps all characters not die the most is tactics, learn how to lure things back and murder them in a quiet alley, Crawl's not a brawling game, it's a secret murder game, where you want to see someone get their attention by pegging them with a rock, run down a deserted alley, drawing them away from any possibility of calling for help and murder them with the tools at your disposal where no-one else can see you. That's a bit of poetic licence, but it seriously describes the safest tactics for playing crawl, make sure engage in combat further away from unexplored space, draw things back into corridors whenever possible, and try to keep packs broken apart.
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Thursday, 4th October 2018, 19:47

Re: TrBe - Skills?

Everything Siegurt said.

I peeked at your morgues a little, and these are some things I noticed:

1. Some games were better than others, but generally should not land in Lair with lots of potions and scrolls still unidentified. Especially potions. You once died with 4 potions of Agility still unknown. It's often worthwhile to either identify potions that you have lots of as soon as they stack up, or even just quaff one of them randomly before a big fight or when you're starting to sense trouble (ideally when you still have time to read a teleport scroll and be near time to port out as well). Some games just have a shortage of early identify scrolls, but in many cases there are enough to id most of your potions by early Lair.

2. Just repeating the thing about Fighting. If very early Lair isn't the worst and one is very careful, then you sometimes can get by starting out with slightly under 10. But getting Fighting around 11-15 is much better.

3. I'm not sure how big a factor this is, but just in case? Be sure to get your buffs up before fights turn sour. You don't want to lose time while you're already in trouble. And a potion of Lignification for example is often good, but it can help a bit more when you are nearer full HP.

4. You probably realize this by now, but do not fight hydrae with claws (at least, not usually in Dungeon/Lair). You'll just give them more heads. Later in the rune branches if your Fighting and UC are both whopping extremely good (and maybe if you have Slaying), you might be able to smash them faster than they grow back... But I generally would not bet on it, and Swamp can send you packs of them on the lower levels. It's good to hit them with rocks or javelins starting from a good distance (javelins are awesome if you find some), wands like Disintegration or Iceblast or even lots of times with Flame, or even finish them off in melee with a moderately trained flaming weapon. A sling of flame or freezing, or a moderately trained hand crossbow is also very good if you can get enough distance to begin with. Also, you can hit them in melee (to finish) with maces and flails, including the great maces and giant clubs (but preferably with a good bit of skill or a very big bonus on the weapon - it's still bad attrition if they are fighting too much faster than you).

5. Sometimes you just have bad luck on top of the other things. Using the hex wands like Paralysis was a fair idea (can use enslavement also to keep things busy, maybe tell it to "retreat" away). We tend to think a few bursts of 50% paralysis should work, but the dice don't always roll quite that way.

6. Oh, and meeting the Spark Wasp in early Spider? That was a really bad break. Those things are nasty even in Depths. Elemental damage in Crawl can be massive if you don't happen to pick up the right resistance on your travels. (Keep anything you can possibly use that has exotic stuff like rElec.) Poison wasn't a bad idea in principle, but they have decent EV and together with a tarantella just.... Ewww. If it was just the wasp, a few bursts of AOE iceblast and some helpful summons might be better. I'll also go ahead and say, Spider is actually becoming my own least favorite branch for Ogres and Trolls. Stuff moves really fast (sometimes with ugly open layouts) and damage stacks up quick in there, if your defense isn't superb. Shoals is pretty scary with ranged bombardments too, but fast plus elemental melee in Spider is incredibly strong against tank characters that aren't used to that.

7. Blink frogs are another case where I usually go crazy with iceblast and any other AOE I can find. They shouldn't be able to get you right away if your skills and HP are high, but it's still really good to soften them up faster than one at a time.

8. I'm not good at reading the ASCII maps, but wonder if you could escape some of these deaths by reading a Teleportation or Blink scroll sooner.


Not really for the Berserker obviously, but you might also try Okawaru. Heroism works longer than Berserk (can be refreshed immediately assuming you have piety) and you can still get Finesse for extra attacks in extreme situations. The Heroism skills boost helps for using some of the neater/pickup weapons earlier in the game, too.
Online game stats & morgues
More runes! GnWn (11, 0.21), GhMo^Makh (15, 0.17)
And a Yiuf: (1.4.6, 0.20): ImpGl^Oka (3)

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Post Thursday, 4th October 2018, 20:01

Re: TrBe - Skills?

Siegurt wrote:Search button is in the upper left, the option for searching "titles only" is about halfway down the search form.

To clarify this: to reach this "search form" you should search for something, then above the search results there is a misleadingly titled "Return to advanced search" link which does not appear to be a link, in very small letters. I haven't ever noticed it until now.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Thursday, 4th October 2018, 20:33

Re: TrBe - Skills?

Magipi wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Search button is in the upper left, the option for searching "titles only" is about halfway down the search form.

To clarify this: to reach this "search form" you should search for something, then above the search results there is a misleadingly titled "Return to advanced search" link which does not appear to be a link, in very small letters. I haven't ever noticed it until now.

In the upper left of my browsers there's three things:
User Control Panel • FAQ • Search

When I click on "Search" it takes me to:
search.php
Which for me looks like this:
SearchForm.png
SearchForm.png (255.19 KiB) Viewed 2301 times

You'll note the "topic titles only" halfway down.
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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 5th October 2018, 03:14

Re: TrBe - Skills?

IMO, far and away the best way to search Tavern is with Google; enter your search terms and then "site:crawl.develz.org".

For example, this.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Friday, 5th October 2018, 07:49

Re: TrBe - Skills?

Siegurt wrote:In the upper left of my browsers there's three things:
User Control Panel • FAQ • Search

Wow. I haven't noticed those either in all those years. Amazing.

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