Immutable Laws of the Dungeon of Zot

[DemonOfWrath]

How dangerous the creatures spawned in the early dungeon (up until Lair) are is inversely proportional to how well a character's doing. It seems that 90% of the time whenever I get up an extra level or two compared to normal, or get good Demonspawn mutations I start running into Ogres on D:3, Centaurs D:5, Priests everywhere, as the game then decides that I should die for that.

[Curio]

As far as I know, Crawl doesn't "scale" monsters to character level. It's all pretty random. You can meet OOD Dragon on a 3rd dungeon level if you very-very (un)lucky.

[mageykun]

If you see an Elf, it's not. That's a shapeshifter.

[joellercoaster]

Scrolls of blinking are three times more likely to be consumed by sticky flame.

Word.

My current game is 52,000 turns old, and I've found exactly two.

One I use-ID'ed in the Temple, and the other (found about five minutes ago in the Halls, with much rejoicing) got destroyed about a minute ago in the usual way, with very little rejoicing indeed.

[Sjohara]

Using a Scroll of Acquirement to wish for a weapon will invariably result in a runed crossbow, regardless of weapon skills. I literally cannot remember the last time this didn't happen.

[gb]

Using a Scroll of Acquirement to wish for a weapon will invariably result in a runed crossbow, regardless of weapon skills. I literally cannot remember the last time this didn't happen.

IMO you should always acquire jewelry...*always*

[szanth]

Nah, I mostly do gold.

[Un67]

The moment after you find a book with spammals in it, you will find an altar of Okawaru.

[TwilightPhoenix]

The moment you have any confidence in your character is the moment things are about to get bad, if you don't just outright die.

[Sjohara]

Using a Scroll of Acquirement to wish for a weapon will invariably result in a runed crossbow, regardless of weapon skills. I literally cannot remember the last time this didn't happen.

IMO you should always acquire jewelry...*always*

Jewelery tends to give me the most marginal unidentified type available, like a Ring of Invisibility or a Ring of See Invisible when I already have it on a helmet. Plus I frequently have a few pieces of decent jewelery like a Ring of Magical Power or Amulet of the Gourmand such that the benefits of having a piece of half-decent randart resist gear in the same slot would be kind of muted.

Personally I usually go for armor unless I already have something meaningfully useful good in at least two misc armor slots (and I'm increasingly wondering if I should still take armor even if I have more, given the results of the alternatives). I usually get a decent randart helmet or a buckler of protection or something out of the deal, and since branded misc gear is pretty rare in the dungeon whatever I get is almost always an upgrade. At the very least it's usually good about not giving perfectly ordinary junk like +1 boots.

[KoboldLord]

You just got a bad streak of jewelry acquirements. Jewelry acquirement has a 40% chance of getting you randart jewelry, and it will try very hard to get you an item of jewelry that you haven't identified yet the rest of the time. Identifying more jewelry you don't want will improve the chances of getting the jewelry you do want for next time, so even an acquirement that gets you something of marginal use has at least some benefit.

Armor acquirement is another pretty good one, but it sometimes gets you wildly inappropriate body armors or shields. It's definitely worth thinking about, particularly if your character has never seen an item that fits into an available body slot.

[Shinigami]

Characters aiming for Cheibriados will undoubtedly find an incredibly useful weapon... of speed.

[Jenx]

Characters aiming for Cheibriados will undoubtedly find an incredibly useful weapon... of speed.

Uh...so what? speed brand on weapons just makes their attack speed higher, I don't think Che cares about how fast you attack, just how fast you move.

[GameKnut]

Characters aiming for Cheibriados will undoubtedly find an incredibly useful weapon... of speed.

Uh...so what? speed brand on weapons just makes their attack speed higher, I don't think Che cares about how fast you attack, just how fast you move.

Cheibriados dislikes weapons that are unnaturally fast. This includes weapons of speed and randarts with *Rage or +Rage.


Armor pieces will be generated to perfectly suit the character you aren't playing. As a draconian, you'll find plate mail, gloves, boots, and helmets galore. As a demonspawn, you will find boots within 100 turns of developing hooves. Naga and centaur bardings litter the dungeon floor until you try to play a naga or centaur.

[Zicher]

If you start a class with a god, Temple will spawn on D:4.
If you start a class without a god, either the Temple will spawn on D:7, or it will not contain an altar of the god you want to worship.

[Stormfox]

If you start a class with a god, Temple will spawn on D:4.
If you start a class without a god, either the Temple will spawn on D:7, or it will not contain an altar of the god you want to worship.

And in the last case, the altar you do want will be in the vault that has it surrounded by deep water with an escape hatch down. And you won't be a Merfolk or have levitation handy.

[TwilightPhoenix]

And if you do have either of those, it'll be the vault where it's blocked by a stone statue instead.

[Curio]

And if you do have either of those, it'll be the vault where it's blocked by a stone statue instead.

I still don't get those.
What the point? Wand of digging will not help you to dig through stone walls. Even if you will find one on a D1-5 lvl

[Zicher]

And if you do have either of those, it'll be the vault where it's blocked by a stone statue instead.

I still don't get those.
What the point? Wand of digging will not help you to dig through stone walls. Even if you will find one on a D1-5 lvl

It's stone statues. But anyway, a wand of disintegration or a scroll of blinking solves this problem.

[Curio]

And if you do have either of those, it'll be the vault where it's blocked by a stone statue instead.

I still don't get those.
What the point? Wand of digging will not help you to dig through stone walls. Even if you will find one on a D1-5 lvl

It's stone statues. But anyway, a wand of disintegration or a scroll of blinking solves this problem.

I meant walls that surround altar and statue. In most cases it's not plain dungeon brick wall but a stone one.
Statue can be destroyed with wand of digging?

[Kylearan]

Mara will KILL YOU and dance on your corpse.

[mageykun]

[...]

I still don't get those.
What the point? Wand of digging will not help you to dig through stone walls. Even if you will find one on a D1-5 lvl

It's stone statues. But anyway, a wand of disintegration or a scroll of blinking solves this problem.

I meant walls that surround altar and statue. In most cases it's not plain dungeon brick wall but a stone one.
Statue can be destroyed with wand of digging?

Statues can be circumvented with a scroll of blinking?

I wouldn't have thought that would work. Glass walls block blink, as do trees. I woulda thought that applied to all things you can see though, but not walk though. I'll have to give that a try.

Edit: dang it, we have a limit on quote nesting. Where's the fun in that?

[galehar]

Statues can be circumvented with a scroll of blinking?

I wouldn't have thought that would work. Glass walls block blink, as do trees.

Blinking through statue works fine. Glass wall blocking blink is important for many vaults. On the other hand, I'm not sure why trees block blink. And when you try, you get a message that blinking through transparent walls isn't possible. So maybe it's a bug or the message is.

[danr]

I think it makes sense that you can blink past a statue - it has air space around it, there is a conceivable path. A glass wall is still solid and impermeable.

By that reasoning, trees should not block blink, unless there are so many that you can't see through them to the other side.

[Grimm]

You can't blink through the forest for the trees.

[Stormfox]

A single tree can block a blink in the same way that a rat on the floor can intercept an arrow that's meant for the harpy flying behind it.

[mageykun]

If you play a 'zerker, the first ring you find will be wizardry.

[joellercoaster]

If you start a new Earth Elementalist who then finds over a hundred stones on DL1, you will be killed by a hobgoblin who walks through seven of them without taking any damage and beats you to death with a club.

[mageykun]

The RGN will never produce a heavily enchanted, branded katana. Ever. Nor will Oka. Or Trog. You will always have to make one yourself.

[Zicher]

The RGN will never produce a heavily enchanted, branded katana. Ever. Nor will Oka. Or Trog. You will always have to make one yourself.

Counter-example!
From Trog I once received a +3,+11(!) katana. Not branded, but much, much more than "heavily enchanted".

[TwilightPhoenix]

You'll find everything you need to be perfectly prepared for Zot, Hells, etc. on the armor you find... if you're a Felid.

[Tiber]

The number of hydras you find in lair and the amount of heads they have increases when you specialize in long blades or axes, and the odds of one being flame branded decreases.

[pratamawirya]

When you have a long-term plan on a certain high-level spell, you just will NOT find any spellbooks containing that damn spell.

[joellercoaster]

Corollary: if you do find a spellbook containing the exact high-level spell you want on the floor of D:3, you will survive several more hours' play - just long enough for it to be at Cruddy learnability. Then you will die from something completely unrelated.

[Markizxd]

Likely there have already been 20 posts like this one but I have to do it...

Playing Felid is an amazing opportunity to find some unrandarts you'll never get playing anything else

Crown of Derovepreva


Then literally one minute later on the same level - Vampire's Tooth


I was prepared for something like 3 scrolls of enchant weapon III but this one knocked me off my chair

[Zicher]

If you have set of mutations out of which one is really dangerous (like teleportitis before doing Tomb) and you have two potions of cure mutation, quaffing will clear all the mutations except the really bad one. And you'll never, ever find another potion of cure mutation again.

(It's really that bad. I'm in Pan for more than 30k turns now, searching for a single one. No luck.)

[joellercoaster]

Corollary: If you have IDed potions of mutation by some other means (like Fulsome Distillation), then merrily quaffing inidentified potions will only turn up a cure mutation *after* Gain Intelligence, Gain Dexterity and Gain Strength.

(That sucks by the way... pan scumming sounds like absurdly hard work.)

[KoboldLord]

Have you tried quaffing your potions of mutation, too? Sometimes they'll clear up the bad mutations instead of giving you new ones. And it isn't like you can get much worse than teleportitis.

[Kate]

Teleportitis and berserkitis is worse than teleportitis.
Teleportitis and slow movement is worse than teleportitis.
Teleportitis and slow healing is worse than teleportitis.

etc etc

[7hm]

Teleportitis and berserkitis is worse than teleportitis.
Teleportitis and slow movement is worse than teleportitis.
Teleportitis and slow healing is worse than teleportitis.

etc etc

If you drink enough of them you'll usually fix your problems.

That's my normal solution. You will end up with OTHER problems, but probably ones you can live with (and you'll end up getting positive mutations to offset as well).

My guys normally end up as horribly disfigured wrecks.

[mad]

Mutation roulette is really fun when you've got a low level character, but if your caster eats a chunk and the only mutation they get is sapovore 1, you will be too terrified to quaff-id potions lest you lose it.

[mad]

I meant "specialised to eat meat" mutation, sorry. Not that it matters, I keep forgetting that Kenku have like half the hp of any other race and have them get killed by things that really shouldn't've been a problem.

[Grimm]

I hope every player gets to experience teleportitis + berserkitis at least once in their career. The combination provides incomparable, though brief, delight.

[danr]

If you drink enough of them you'll usually fix your problems.

This is right up there with the advice a while ago to drink alone (without monsters present) to be safe.

Crawl - the game where it's good to drink alone, and drink a lot. That will solve all your problems!

[joellercoaster]

The ghost of your XL12 predecessor with Stone Arrow will be more damaging than you at XL15 with Iron Shot.

[joellercoaster]

If you very rarely play weapon-using characters, eventually do on a whim, and find yourself approaching the Lair with a flaming blade in which you have decent skill (rubbing your hands with glee), you will see one hydra in the whole branch. And it will only have 4 heads.

Seriously, it's like they saw me coming!

[dolphin]

If you get a character that is doing well, and that you are feeling proud of, it can only die in one of two ways. Either its death with be embarrassingly brief (you were confident again, weren't you?), or it will be a drawn-out affair, where you almost recover and regain tempo over and over, until finally succumbing to the thousand natural shocks the virtual flesh is heir to.