The Tavern

So this was my third win and the first time getting the runes in Slime and Abyss (Yay! )

https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Lowtech/morgue-Lowtech-20190915-112948.txt

Questions:
Extended was never an option for me since I wanted to get 5 runes and a Chei win. However assuming that had kept going with Chei into extended how would this character fare?

Is there anything particular that I should have done during the last part of the run if I had wanted to prepare this character for extended? I could have bought the Necronomicon.

Approximately how high do you need to raise Necromancy and Transmutation order to be able to cast Necromutation with say 25 int and less than 10% fail wearing robes?

Any thoughts on the mutation potion quaffing after Slime? Turn 64835 -> 66356. Good or bad decision and would you have stopped at some earlier point?

Is 3k turns about normal to spend in the Abyss to get the rune and escape? Felt like it took a long time…

Whats up with the log saying I entered Zot and Crypt during my time in the Abyss?

Does mutation “MP-powered wands” increase power of wands?

The Gauntlet always seems too scary to enter and I’ve died there once so a bit apprehensive about it. Any idea how often it is sort of safe to do it and if there some good advice how or when to do it

What would be best vs pain and torrent immune monsters, the +7 sceptre of Torment (weapon) {pain, torment} or +9 Morningstar of freezing?

I never use immolation scrolls because when I’m surrounded by lots of mobs and think maybe it would be effective I’m too scared of how much damage I will take. Thoughts on using them safely in melee?

All comments or pointers welcome!

Lessons learned:
Don’t use wand of clouds next to deep water if you want to get your hands of the only Eveningstar (except the Sceptre) appearing in the game. This time it didn’t matter because it was branded with holy wrath and I never found a brand weapon scroll anyway.

-tele in Zot 5 is really good and saved me at least 2 times from teleporting.

The sturdy frame mutation is probably better than I first thought and with Chei I think it boosted my EV to a better defensive effect than more AC from scales would have done.

I don't have much experience with chei extended. I think if you wanted to continue to extender you should either use high-level spells or upgrade to a large shield.

I would have stopped with !mutation after getting evolution1. Evolution often removes bad mutations.

MP powered wands makes your wands more powerful, similar to archmagi.

You can almost always leave a gauntlet after entering it, without fighting any monsters. (Look for up stairs.) I always try to enter, the loot is good. You can also often get the loot and leave an arena without killing everything. Only the minotaur is truly dangerous in my experience.

If you have decent rF and/or AC, immolation doesn't hurt you much.

I would use wizard mode to test this kind of thing. It can load your dump to reproduce your character.

I try only to use mutation if I think my current malmutations are likely to be fatal.

I'm not sure there is a "normal"; it varies wildly IME. Sometimes the rune's right there, sometimes it's a godawful slog. (Sometimes the rune's right there and you still aren't happy: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~damerell/games/bother.png).

That looks buggy to me.

The morningstar.

It's not clear to me what happened here to stop you getting it.

The monster wielding the eveningstar got confused from noxious fumes and drowned in deep water?

Immolation is not supposed to be used when surrounded. The perfect setup for immolation is when you're looking into an area full of monsters through a single-tile entrance. This way you'll only get hit by 1, maybe 2 explosions. You can go even further and enslave the closest monster to avoid self-damage entirely (don't do this if you worship a god with no-harming-allies conduct). Otherwise just throw whatever ranged attacks you have at the weakest monster affected by immo to start the chain reaction

Exactly what happened.

The easiest extended game is to just pump STR and don't cast anything but low-mid level spells even until the end of the game, and switch to TSO from whatever other god you had. If you're a race that cannot worship TSO, Mak is the next best choice. If you're a race that cannot worship TSO, then choose Mak. If you want to run zigs take Mak over TSO, and balance out your INT and STR (you need both, STR for armour and backup melee, and mostly INT for AOE spells). If you make it past the early and mid game, and take my advice, with a bit of caution, extended won't be that tough. The key element is to not always kill stuff just because you can, but save them up like mobile healing potions when you need to bounce your health back up. You also need to be able to channel mana for Zigs.

On the question of Chei in extended, I think this character would have had a relatively easy time. The primary threat is torment imho (damnation is worth mentioning as well but I'm more afraid of torments), and so I tend to do extended only when I have some form of torment resistance. For me this is generally statue form, although your demonspawn simply mutated it themselves, which is plenty.

Necromutation is an option, but it's generally overkill and is only really needed if you're planning on fully clearing Zigs (and especially mega-zigs). It's generally about level 18 necromancy/transmutations to get it online, although this varies based on your int and other spell success modifiers. Chei's +15 int helps a lot here, but if you know you're planning on going for level 8 or 9 spells, I'd also throw some of your stat points into int as you level up.

You can look at my scoring page to see a lot of 15 rune chei games, although sadly I used to play on dobrazupa, so many of the morgues are gone. All of the morgues from win #72 and later are still accessible: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/tasonir.html.

Example 15 rune chei wins with: Troll Vine Stalker (speedrun) Ogre Octopode. They all have a fairly similar style, it's the style I like to play and I don't mind repetition so much.

Edit: Worth mentioning another primary consideration for extended is to have some method of rapid healing. You don't want to get worn down by long fights, and packs in extended are often very large swarms. Having some built in regeneration, regeneration equipment (which includes things like spirit shield), or the regeneration spell are all very helpful. Your linked character has spirit shield and magic regeneration, which are both excellent mutations.