health potions: my least favorite aspect of the game

[Stumblebum]

I play a Deep Elf Fire Elementalist and these have limited hit points. I am kind of sick of getting pretty far in the game (12 hours or so put in) and getting confronted with villains who can hit me faster than I can heal with health potions. The potions basically become completely worthless, because I have no idea how many points they will heal compared to how many points the villain is taking off of me with every hit --- they usually heal far less. Usually the villain will kill me while I'm drinking health potions every turn trying to survive (because there is no escape on foot). In role playing games, typically when you get to a certain point you start getting new health potions or new healing spells which can restore increased amounts of hitpoints to compensate for the increasing damage done by enemies. Not so here. I'm not really finding this fun.

[Sar]

Try training these: Dodging, Fighting, Armour.
Try not getting in situations where things are hitting you hard.

[Stumblebum]

Try training these: Dodging, Fighting, Armour.
Try not getting in situations where things are hitting you hard.

The Deep Elf Fire Elementalist guides I've read on this site say not to waste points on dodging because it is not effective beyond early levels, that I should channel all of my training into Conjurations and Fire Magic to keep upping the destructive power of those spells to match the increasing difficulty of enemies. Was that advice wrong? What does Armor training do when I'm wearing a robe in order to be able to cast spells? (Honest question, not sarcasm.)

The entire game is a situation where things are hitting you hard when you have the HP of a Deep Elf.

[Sar]

The Deep Elf Fire Elementalist guides I've read on this site say not to waste points on dodging because it is not effective beyond early levels

Those are really bad guides. On this site, really? Where?

What does Armor training do when I'm wearing a robe

Pretty much nothing, if you're wearing something like mottled dragon armour though I would usually get 10-11 in that skill eventually.

The entire game is a situation where things are hitting you hard when you have the HP of a Deep Elf.

Well you don't have to play DE. Draconians are often recommended as resilient and capable spellcasters.

[Stumblebum]

I appreciate this advice.

That said, it doesn't seem to address the main point of my opening post: health potions are useless for me. Your answer seems to be: don't get wounded so you don't need health potions. What is the purpose of carrying around all of these heavy health potions then? They're already a limited resource, so I don't understand why on top of that they have to be so lame in their effect.

[Sar]

Instead of wishing that potions recovered more HP per turn, you can reduce average damage you are taking per turn by training your defenses and minimizing amount of enemies you fight.
I believe it is not a design goal to let player escape any possible situation he got himself into by blindly quaffing healing potions (though it still works for me more often than not).

Hm, are you confusing heal wounds and curing potions, by any chance? The former restore little HP, but remove poison and other ailments. The latter restore decent amounts of HP.

[Sprucery]

If you are taking more damage than potions of Heal Wounds heal, you're doing something wrong. Either you have developed your character poorly, you're in the wrong place, fighting wrong battles or something else.

[cerebovssquire]

I appreciate this advice.

That said, it doesn't seem to address the main point of my opening post: health potions are useless for me. Your answer seems to be: don't get wounded so you don't need health potions. What is the purpose of carrying around all of these heavy health potions then? They're already a limited resource, so I don't understand why on top of that they have to be so lame in their effect.

Health potions are really useful at every single point in the game. If you don't get wounded a turn after getting wounded you can quaff a health potion and actually restore some health. Plus, Sar is also suggesting mottled dragon armour which will prevent a ton of damage from hits that actually do hit you. Unless you have a great robe or very few enchant armour scrolls, I would switch to using that.

[Leafsnail]

Ok, I removed health potions from the game to fix this problem.

[Sar]

Thanks Leafsnail, you are the best dev!

[Stumblebum]

I believe it is not a design goal to let player escape any possible situation he got himself into

The situation I got myself into (apparently the game had no responsibility for what happened within it) was that I was confronted by Azrael with tons of fire minions hell hounds etc. and I was able to barely escape with my life by blinking and running away and then I went back up the stairs to the level I had just completely cleared moments before to heal myself and right by the stairs was Arachne, who hadn't been there when I cleared the level. Guess she teleported in from outer space.

Hm, are you confusing heal wounds and curing potions, by any chance?

No, though I did use the wrong name in the title of this thread. I'm speaking of potions of heal wounds.

[Stumblebum]

Sar is also suggesting mottled dragon armour which will prevent a ton of damage from hits that actually do hit you. Unless you have a great robe or very few enchant armour scrolls, I would switch to using that.

In the game I was playing, I had cleared the entire main dungeon, entire lair except side quests, and entire orc mines and had started my first of the lair branches, and had not encountered a single mottled dragon, so there was nowhere to get one. If I had the opportunity to use one I guess I would have not done so thinking that it would interfere with my spell casting too much. I don't know if this is true or not -- I have no idea how I am supposed to intuitively know which armors are okay for me to use as a spell caster, really. Thought the main principle was not to use armor because it screws up your casting.

I know I could train armor and shield skill to make those useable with spells, but advice I had read on here said that the priority for a Fire Elementalist is to get Firestorm, so that I should avoid increasing my strength and concentrate entirely on raising intelligence, conjuring, and fire magic so that Firestorm's success rate would drop to a useable level.

[cerebovssquire]

Generally, armour as light as mottled or leather doesn't noticably interfere with your spellcasting success unless you are using a shield without appropriate skill. And EV is really good, characters can wear a robe and still have good defenses.
Also, your priorities are off. Firestorm isn't important. As a deep elf, getting it at some point in even a 3-rune game is acceptable, but there many things more important than fire storm once you have decent mid-level conjurations up and running (including: haste, controlled blink, AC and EV, Fighting skill, and some sort of low-investment melee option)

[Sar]

advice I had read on here said that the priority for a Fire Elementalist is to get Firestorm, so that I should avoid increasing my strength and concentrate entirely on raising intelligence, conjuring, and fire magic so that Firestorm's success rate would drop to a useable level

If you took time to read the thread that ""guide"" was posted in, you would notice people saying how that guide is bad and wrong.

[Stumblebum]

If you took time to read the thread that ""guide"" was posted in

Thank you for the insulting assumption. I thought this was a game, not the SAT. How many threads am I supposed to "take the time" to memorize in order not to feel after a 12 hour game that I have completely wasted my time because I was completely overwhelmed with no chance of escape?

[Stumblebum]

Generally, armour as light as mottled or leather doesn't noticably interfere with your spellcasting success unless you are using a shield without appropriate skill. And EV is really good, characters can wear a robe and still have good defenses.
Also, your priorities are off. Firestorm isn't important. As a deep elf, getting it at some point in even a 3-rune game is acceptable, but there many things more important than fire storm once you have decent mid-level conjurations up and running (including: haste, controlled blink, AC and EV, Fighting skill, and some sort of low-investment melee option)

Thank you for the useful suggestions. However, I'm still having trouble figuring out exactly how to balance shield training, armor training, dodge, stealth, with training conjuration, spellcasting, fire magic and how to balance improving my hit points with strength and fighting training with improving my intelligence and spells to increase my ability to kill enemies. It seems like there are a dozen plates that need to be kept in the air at the same time and someone just magically develops the ability to stop falling off the bicycle at some point and can't explain to someone who is still falling down what the trick was.

[cerebovssquire]

Well here's how I would play a DEFE:
Train fire magic and conjurations till sticky flame, then a little bit of spellcasting, then get fireball, then work on dodging until I have decent (20ish) EV. At this point, it becomes a little harder to figure out what to do, but the important things to do include:
getting some conjurations stronger than fireball (bolt of fire would be good, but branching out into, say, earth magic for Iron Shot wouldn't be the end of the either)
get Haste
get more Spellcasting
get some Fighting for HP
get a melee option (e.g. staff of fire or quick blade)
possibly get Armour if you find a good MDA (you can wear MDA without armour skill though, and if you do wear MDA you should train shields to 5 for your buckler)
get Controlled Blink
These are in approximate order of importance, but will vary greatly depending on what items and spells you find (e.g. you might never find cBlink). I wouldn't get fire storm before any of these.

You will be training Fighting, Spellcasting and Dodging multiple times throughout the game, including between some steps listed above. Basically, whenever you feel you don't have enough EV or HP and can't mitigate that by training more offense, Dodging and Fighting are useful, and Spellcasting is essential for spell slots, MP and to a certain extent, hunger.
Also, if you don't play a DEFE perfectly (I am sure my above order has some flaws as well) you can still win the game easily enough. In this case, if you had trained some Dodging and Fighting (you still don't want to raise strength) you would have had a much easier time.

[Stumblebum]

If you are taking more damage than potions of Heal Wounds heal, you're doing something wrong. Either you have developed your character poorly, you're in the wrong place, fighting wrong battles or something else.

Can you explain how to do it right? Or is the goal of "it's not the game, it's you" posts such as yours (which I see over and over in these forums when searching through it trying to figure out how not to die) not to help the person you're talking to but to defend the game's wonderfulness and celebrate your own elite skillz?

[Stumblebum]

Well here's how I would play a DEFE

A lot of helpful suggestions in there. I will give them a shot. Thank you.

I will now back out of this thread and avoid posting in it further as I realize some of my comments above were a wee bit abrasive and don't really see any way out of the path of the enraged monsters here other than a Blink spell.

[Sprucery]

Can you explain how to do it right? Or is the goal of "it's not the game, it's you" posts such as yours (which I see over and over in these forums when searching through it trying to figure out how not to die) not to help the person you're talking to but to defend the game's wonderfulness and celebrate your own elite skillz?

Sorry if my comment came out like that, I should've added "please post a character dump so you will get detailed help".

[Siegurt]

Also: No amount of skill training substitutes for proper positioning, most creatures in the game move the same speed as you do, and most attacks (And this is particularly true of high-powered spells) generate noise which will brings more creatures in to investigate.

Ideally you want to fight things with loud spells far away from areas that are unexplored. If you do fight things near an unexplored area, retreat into an explored area and explore in a different direction (That way you don't get mobbed while trying to rest)

Things you *can't* fight (i.e. higher-powered fire immune/resistance creatures when you're main/only attack is fire based) should just be run away from, as soon as you see them, anything less is a waste of resources, you don't have to kill everything on every floor, or even explore the entirety of every floor. The game is designed with the expectation that you'll avoid certain areas (or put them off until later).

Enemies do (sometimes) generate in explored areas, but also awake enemies do move, it's possible to explore an entire level and miss a wondering monster while you're moving around.

Heal wounds potions really aren't there to "get you back to full health while you're in combat" they're there to give you another action or two, and like most of the consumables in the game, aren't always the best solution to the situation you're in.

Priorities should be: 1. Avoiding nasty situations in the first place, 2. Knowing all your options for getting out of a nasty situation, 3. Taking the *lowest risk* way of getting out of a sticky situation, this is not always heal wounds potions (or is sometimes heal wounds in combination of something else (Like reading a teleport or blink scroll)
`

[Stumblebum]

Things you *can't* fight (i.e. higher-powered fire immune/resistance creatures when you're main/only attack is fire based) should just be run away from, as soon as you see them, anything less is a waste of resources, you don't have to kill everything on every floor, or even explore the entirety of every floor. The game is designed with the expectation that you'll avoid certain areas (or put them off until later).

That seems to be the big problem for me. I don't hit "teleport" or start running the absolute first turn I see the monster on screen, so that by the time I take two shots at them and figure out they are too strong to beat it is usually too late. This usually happens when I'm mentally a bit overconfident because I've been so outclassing all of my enemies up until that point, as was the case with this run, where I had really nice armor which had pumped up all my attributes from acquirement and luck. The other trap I fall into is trying to keep my Vehumet piety up at maximum level, which seems to require killing enemies on a regular basis. Usually what happens is that I complete all the areas of the dungeon which are within my ability and then end up in a situation where the only way forward is through enemies that are too strong so I can't usually skip them and go on to the next level because the next level will be even harder (or at least that's what I find myself thinking, it may not be true). I guess I should probably instead go back to the levels I already cleared and grind my attributes and training up by killing whatever scattered respawned creatures I can find.

Thank you for the advice.

[and into]

I guess I should probably instead go back to the levels I already cleared and grind my attributes and training up by killing whatever scattered respawned creatures I can find.

Don't do that. Not fun, and there are anti-scumming measures in the game that will screw you up if you do this sort of thing. Also the experience curve plus the rate at which enemies spawn means that even without those measures it simply isn't worth it. The game is intentionally designed so that scumming doesn't benefit you in DCSS, and this design goal is pretty effectively met.

Try following the advice Siegurt and cerebovssquire offered, and try to learn to "trust" your consumables and use them (other than healing potions). A major step is learning to identify which targets are threats early in an encounter, and how much of a threat they represent. If the threat is large, retreat—don't try to damage it first, that gives you a greater chance of getting in over your head accidentally. If you can almost certainly take the enemy or enemies in LOS, but they might take a non-trivial amount out of your HP in the process, then quaffing things like potions of agility can help minimize the damage.

[Moanerette]

I don't hit "teleport" or start running the absolute first turn I see the monster on screen, so that by the time I take two shots at them and figure out they are too strong to beat it is usually too late.

A rough rule is that if the monster's name is bright red, that means it is liable to be very dangerous. Of course, whether this is actually the case depends largely on the strengths and weaknesses of your character, the monster concerned and the terrain you are in, but if you proceed on the basis that red means danger, it may help you play more cautiously.

Remember that using uncontrolled teleport as an escape mechanism on a not-fully-explored level has the potential to put you into another sticky situation.

[Stumblebum]

A rough rule is that if the monster's name is bright red, that means it is liable to be very dangerous.

Does that apply to the "web tiles" version? I play online and just tried your advice and all of the monster names were in bright red. Even when I got so I could kill a quokka in one shot and had fireball spells at an easily castable level, the quokka was still bright red, just like the more dangerous monsters. What criteria does the game use to determine which are the very dangerous monsters?

[Bloax]

The situation I got myself into (apparently the game had no responsibility for what happened within it) was that I was confronted by Azrael with tons of fire minions hell hounds etc. and I was able to barely escape with my life by blinking and running away.

I hope by "running away" you mean "teleported as soon as possible", since hell hounds are both immune to fire and much faster than you.

And then I went back up the stairs to the level I had just completely cleared moments before to heal myself and right by the stairs was Arachne, who hadn't been there when I cleared the level. Guess she teleported in from outer space

Well - the stars aligned against your favour, but terrible luck doesn't mean that Potions of Heal Wounds are a terrible aspect of the game; they are extremely useful in conjunction with things like teleport.

[WalkerBoh]

Just a quick heads-up for the future: if you're looking for advice on improving your play, generally it's best to put a thread in "Dungeon Crawling Advice". I think you didn't quite get the feedback you were looking for at first because the thread title and placement were not quite in sync with what you really wanted. Crazy Yiuf's Corner threads are bound to get less serious and less helpful answers.

With regards to heal wounds potions, you can very easily get into positions in DCSS where the damage you are taking per turn is greater than or equal to the amount a heal wounds potion restores, especially as a fragile DEFE! These are what I like to call "bad situations". And in a lot of cases, it's better not to sit in that position and chug heal wounds potions and hope you will start taking less damage. Usually the best thing to do instead is to try to figure out how to get to a position where you are not taking so much damage; the most common means are by using teleportation or blinking.

As for your feeling that you burned a lot of time playing a character only for it to be unfairly screwed… this is a feeling that you will get familiar with. The important thing to understand is that in 99.9% of these deaths, there was some action that you could've taken that would've prevented the death. The key is recognizing what you could've done differently to survive and not making the same mistake twice (maybe it's a simple as quaffing brilliance or speed earlier, or reading that blinking scroll at 50% hp instead of 20% hp, or being more careful with your exploration, or putting on different gear with better resistances, or training more of a spell school to improve the fail rate, etc. etc.). This is where experience helps a lot, though if you're already putting together runs that last 12 hours, I'd say you're doing something right already.

[nago]

I believe it is not a design goal to let player escape any possible situation he got himself into

The situation I got myself into (apparently the game had no responsibility for what happened within it) was that I was confronted by Azrael with tons of fire minions hell hounds etc. and I was able to barely escape with my life by blinking and running away and then I went back up the stairs to the level I had just completely cleared moments before to heal myself and right by the stairs was Arachne, who hadn't been there when I cleared the level. Guess she teleported in from outer space.

A thing others haven't pointed out: it's never a good idea to fight with more than 1 enemy in LOS, unless the group can deal negligible damage to you, you can dispatch them quickly if things go south and so on (and other variables and general consideration, like fighting a pack of yak in a corridor is like fighting only 1 at time even if they're dangerous, as long as you are able to escape from them without getting surrounded and gored to death).

In that case, your mistake was to fight tons of enemies, all able to surely deal lots of damage to plus, teamed with Azrael, who can kill you in 2 turns. When you see an enemy you don't know, how strong he is, and if he comes in group or is alone, the right strategy is the same of when approaching a jackal pack on D:1 or a orc group on D:X: you don't rush to them, or you don't fight in the position you have spotted him, because in that way his comrade will be alerted by the noise of the fight or other dangerous thing who were lurking nearby by chance (weapons and especially most conjuration spell do enough noise to alert enemies outside LOS)- instead you let him notice you then you retreat in an explored (so virtually safe) location and kill him alone.

[Moanerette]

A rough rule is that if the monster's name is bright red, that means it is liable to be very dangerous.

Does that apply to the "web tiles" version? I play online and just tried your advice and all of the monster names were in bright red. Even when I got so I could kill a quokka in one shot and had fireball spells at an easily castable level, the quokka was still bright red, just like the more dangerous monsters. What criteria does the game use to determine which are the very dangerous monsters?

Yes, that does apply to Webtiles, and I don't understand why they would all show as red. As I recall a quokka's name ought to be in white even to a fresh, no-XP character; it should be in grey to a character that can cast Fireball. Sorry I can't help further.

[moocowmoocow]

A rough rule is that if the monster's name is bright red, that means it is liable to be very dangerous.

Does that apply to the "web tiles" version? I play online and just tried your advice and all of the monster names were in bright red. Even when I got so I could kill a quokka in one shot and had fireball spells at an easily castable level, the quokka was still bright red, just like the more dangerous monsters. What criteria does the game use to determine which are the very dangerous monsters?

Yes, that does apply to Webtiles, and I don't understand why they would all show as red. As I recall a quokka's name ought to be in white even to a fresh, no-XP character; it should be in grey to a character that can cast Fireball. Sorry I can't help further.

To clarify, the color coding applies to the "visible monster list", located on the right of the screen below stats and minimap. It lists the most dangerous monsters on top in addition to color coding names.

Things you *can't* fight (i.e. higher-powered fire immune/resistance creatures when you're main/only attack is fire based) should just be run away from, as soon as you see them, anything less is a waste of resources, you don't have to kill everything on every floor, or even explore the entirety of every floor. The game is designed with the expectation that you'll avoid certain areas (or put them off until later).

That seems to be the big problem for me. I don't hit "teleport" or start running the absolute first turn I see the monster on screen, so that by the time I take two shots at them and figure out they are too strong to beat it is usually too late. This usually happens when I'm mentally a bit overconfident because I've been so outclassing all of my enemies up until that point, as was the case with this run, where I had really nice armor which had pumped up all my attributes from acquirement and luck. The other trap I fall into is trying to keep my Vehumet piety up at maximum level, which seems to require killing enemies on a regular basis. Usually what happens is that I complete all the areas of the dungeon which are within my ability and then end up in a situation where the only way forward is through enemies that are too strong so I can't usually skip them and go on to the next level because the next level will be even harder (or at least that's what I find myself thinking, it may not be true). I guess I should probably instead go back to the levels I already cleared and grind my attributes and training up by killing whatever scattered respawned creatures I can find.

Thank you for the advice.

Overconfidence can kill any character in this game. Stats and equipment make life easier, but in the end they are far less important than when and how you fight. Skipping one floor shouldn't face you with enemies considerably harder than the last floor (RNG dependent of course). So don't be afraid to dive if something is too hard to kill... Azrael and all his minions could easily qualify as something to skip. On the other hand, packs of monsters can be broken up and killed one by one by using stairs and luring things.

Regarding health potions... I think the main effect of having a turn based game rather than real time is that time (turns) becomes a really valuable resource. Drinking health potion is trading a turn for some health. Normally that's not a big deal, but if you're in a situation where your health can be gone in one or two turns, you have to think about other ways you can spend your turn to get yourself out of that situation. Running for the nearest corner to break line of sight is often a better survival bet than standing there letting monsters close on you (of course blink scroll is even better... speed, fog, and invisibility can help too depending on the threat).

[Stumblebum]

Well, I'm back with a report -- thanks to the advice in this thread I've gotten farther than I've ever gotten, have two runes (Swamp and Spider Nest) and have completed most of Vault 3, currently still alive. I have the mottled dragon armor that was recommended and have trained my armor and shield skills to improve the spellcasting with that and the buckler. Have Firestorm at 4% or so, have Haste, and have Battlesphere, which helps a lot. The only element of the recommendations so far that I don't have is Controlled Blink, because Book of the Warp hasn't been made availalble to me. I'm also kicking myself a bit because Vehumet offered me Orb of Destruction and I didn't have enough spell levels to get it before he stopped offering it. I should have used amnesia to forget something I had in a spellbok.

The only problem I'm having right now is that for some reason the crawl.akrasiac.org webtiles server acts up on me from time to time and commands take forever to process, which could lead to dying if I'm not careful. Thank you everyone for the advice.

The things available for me to do after Vaults:4 (because I've read enough not to go to Vaults:5) are Slime, Elf, Depths, Hall of Blades, and Forest. I'm guessing from what I've read that Forest would be the one to do next.

Just a quick heads-up for the future: if you're looking for advice on improving your play, generally it's best to put a thread in "Dungeon Crawling Advice". I think you didn't quite get the feedback you were looking for at first because the thread title and placement were not quite in sync with what you really wanted. Crazy Yiuf's Corner threads are bound to get less serious and less helpful answers.

Makes sense to me. Basically when I posted here it was more of a frustrated rant than asking for advice, but people like you were nice enough to gently guide me away from the complaining into giving advice!

[Stumblebum]

duplicate post

[Stumblebum]

Oh, never mind. I died on Vault:4. Same situation as I complained about in the initial post. This Orc Warlord had taken me by surprise and hit me with a unique axe my hitpoints went so low that I couldn't read a teleport spell as I would have been killed while doing it. So I kept swigging health potions hoping I could get enough of a margin while he burned from sticky flame to enable teleport. I had forgotten that I had memorized uncontrolled blink in between the above post and this one. Might have saved me.

14 hour game this time. I feel sore from sitting at the computer. I kind of feel like I'm addicted to this. For a few months now. I have things I need to do to get my life on track and instead zone out clicking autoexplore.

[Hirsch I]

you should focus on the game. if you zone out, you will get killed.
nothing you need to do is more important than getting the orb of zot back to the surface, get your priorities straight.

[WalkerBoh]

14 hour game this time. I feel sore from sitting at the computer. I kind of feel like I'm addicted to this. For a few months now.

Welcome to the club. And hope to God you don't have anything better to do when a tournament rolls around.

[Scalding Steam]

Did you have any scrolls of blink/fear in your inventory? Might have saved you.

More importantly though, DON'T PLAY CRAWL FOR A CONSECUTIVE 14 HOURS! Being tired will severely hinder your judgement, not to mention your health!

[variouselite]

you can also forget spells by reading spellbook again but you have to sac the book

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

you can also forget spells by reading spellbook again but you have to sac the book

That is: if you "open the page" with the spell you've memorised, you can find a special command to literally tear the page out of the book and out of your mind. This makes you forget the spell, and destroys the book. Sif Muna does not like it, but some practical adventurers keep useless (for them) books only for this reason. There is a reason why they are hard to find even with the popularity of spellcasting.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Did you have any scrolls of blink/fear in your inventory? Might have saved you.

More importantly though, DON'T PLAY CRAWL FOR A CONSECUTIVE 14 HOURS! Being tired will severely hinder your judgement, not to mention your health!

After playing Faster Than Light, my advice is --

literally put a timer on your cellphone when you "dive into the game". An hour and a half should be more than enough for one moment.

Don't eat the box of chocolates in one sitting. Savor it, eat a bit every day, share with a friend (over Webtiles).
Unlike going through a Harry Potter book, going through the game in many sittings rather than one is better. =)

If you are afraid that you may forget an important detail between the sittings, jot them down on paper:

• your most important spells (battle, escape, buff),
• evocable abilities (breath attacks, jewellery abilities, invocations),
• useful escape items (scrolls of fog and tele-, wands of haste, good potions),
• swap items you have,
• dangerous enemies that are still bothering you by the end of the sitting (especially non-uniques that gave you a pummeling and may be a surprise in the next sitting),
• targets for the future (as in "buy the Book of Flames and learn Fireball"),
• things in your stash.

That way, you won't be as clueless as The Nameless One in his final incarnation when you get back into the game.

Jot down EVERY evocable ability or rarely-used spell you have right at the moment when you receive them or wear the items with them. The kind of regret you feel when your adventurer is slain because of your forgetfulness is especially bitter.

Whenever you enter a difficult situation, breath deeply for seven-thirteen seconds, then open your spells, inventory and invocable abilities screens -- one after another -- and look through them again. If you do not keep a list of things you can use, there is a chance you may have forgotten something. Use your "bullet time pause" effectively -- this is not a realtime game, mind you.

A bit off the topic: it is incredibly pleasant to see how everybody rushed to help the rookie player. My sincere and non-mechanical thanks to everyone involved. =)

[Siegurt]

That way, you won't be as clueless as The Nameless One in his final incarnation when you get back into the game.

Ah torment, that was such an awesome game.

[Stumblebum]

A bit off the topic: it is incredibly pleasant to see how everybody rushed to help the rookie player. My sincere and non-mechanical thanks to everyone involved. =)

I agree -- especially because I opened the thread with a whiny complaint about the game stating I thought something was wrong with it -- which might have made people defensive about something you love. Instead you all helped me out. Very nice.

(I tried to "thank" this post but got an "invalid thank" message from the board!)

[Grimm]

(I tried to "thank" this post but got an "invalid thank" message from the board!)

That happens sometimes. Don't know why. Try again later.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

You tried to thank it too many times. I am delighted. =)

[Hirsch I]

Did you have any scrolls of blink/fear in your inventory? Might have saved you.

More importantly though, DON'T PLAY CRAWL FOR A CONSECUTIVE 14 HOURS! Being tired will severely hinder your judgement, not to mention your health!

ignore this. if your health is being damaged, just quaff a some health potions and it is ok.
but seriously, playing this much in one sitting is probably the best way to have stupid deaths, not ascending, and losing some friends, job, girfriend , etc. very suboptimal.

[Grimm]

That just gives you more time for Crawl.