CSDC: Week 1, Season 4 NaWz

[byrel]

Please use this thread for discussion of all things pertaining to Week 1 of Crawl Sudden Death Challenges Season 4.

Week 1: NaWz (Naga Wizard)

Tier I Bonus: Collect a rune before entering any of Swamp/Shoals/Spider/Snake.
Tier II Bonus: Collect a rune before entering Lair.

Week 1 Gods: Ru, Dithmenos, Elyvilon, Yredelemnul

I don't have the google doc up and running yet; I'll have it up by the end of the week.

[triorph]

Cool, for those of you cool kids who use the IRC, I've setup some keywords and nicks for this CSDC stuff. The nick csdc4 has all the active players, and the keyword csdc4wk1 has week one's details. csdcwk is intended to follow the latest one.

With this you can do things like:

!locateall csdc4 csdcwk1

!csdc

!lg miek csdcwk 1

I might get around to doing some checks of the various conditions too, but I haven't build a complex bot like Kramell to work it all for you.

[greedo]

Awesome, love nagas <3 using greedo on crawl.s-z.org for all this.

Edit: heh, glad for the retry, D:1 splat xD

[WalkerBoh]

Cool, for those of you cool kids who use the IRC, I've setup some keywords and nicks for this CSDC stuff. The nick csdc4 has all the active players, and the keyword csdc4wk1 has week one's details. csdcwk is intended to follow the latest one.

With this you can do things like:

!locateall csdc4 csdcwk

!lg miek csdcwk 1

I might get around to doing some checks of the various conditions too, but I haven't build a complex bot like Kramell to work it all for you.

Most of these commands already exist, I have them set up from previous seasons. The only ones that don't exist are things for the weekly extra bonuses (which you have to develop each week), and the god champion points (which is new since I used the old google doc scoresheet).

[Kramin42]

Got my NaWz going, found singing sword on about D:4 and orange crystal plate on D:8, I also sacced dodging so I have 31 AC and -4 EV, Going pretty good

[mopl]

Double death on D:1, week over for me :'(

[triorph]

Got a decent one going, worshipped Ru and got the sac hand first, and then later found a book of changes so thought a NaTm might be nice (for some movement speed and all).

Found the vault with the gnoll fortress, doing pretty well, one comes around the corner and hits me with a disto spear. Next turn I try to do a poison spit on it (instead of wand of confusion as I should have done in hindsight), and it banishes me. Only 4 scrolls of teleport in inventory at XL9 and I'm in the abyss as a Naga. Wasn't long until it was game over.

At one point I did find a Lugonu altar though, so I probably should've just abandoned Ru and gone with that. Ah well. Week 1 over for me too.

[emikaela]

ugh, died to grinder waking up just after i hit level 5, killed me before tp kicked in

[mibe420]

i wont get to play my game until later tonight but i was wondering about this rule

4 Additionally each challenge includes a list of four gods. A bonus point can be earned upon reaching ****** piety with one of the listed gods (but only if it is the first god worshipped that game).

so...can i worship ely first, swap to zin for the mid game(ie before reaching 6*), and then swap back to ely and get 6* at some point later?

and what do you guys think about the tier II bonus? i guess abyssal is probably the most reasonable, idk might be too hard for me to straight up skip lair

[HenryFlower]

Strange string of luck. !bene-mut gave me breaths poison cloud, Veh gave me Ignite Poison. Well then. Then found a dagger of elec. This despite an epic swamprat +gnoll chase early on that an ogre joined in on.

[byrel]

4 Additionally each challenge includes a list of four gods. A bonus point can be earned upon reaching ****** piety with one of the listed gods (but only if it is the first god worshipped that game).

so...can i worship ely first, swap to zin for the mid game(ie before reaching 6*), and then swap back to ely and get 6* at some point later?

Dang. OK... I'm going with yes. You can.

and what do you guys think about the tier II bonus? i guess abyssal is probably the most reasonable, idk might be too hard for me to straight up skip lair

Abyssal is probably not the easiest for a NaWz; you're both MP dependent and slow. I'd probably go for a ton of stealth and maybe some T'loc and try for a pan rune. Especially with Dith or Ru it's probably quite doable.

[amalloy]

and what do you guys think about the tier II bonus? i guess abyssal is probably the most reasonable, idk might be too hard for me to straight up skip lair

Abyssal is probably not the easiest for a NaWz; you're both MP dependent and slow. I'd probably go for a ton of stealth and maybe some T'loc and try for a pan rune. Especially with Dith or Ru it's probably quite doable.

I'd rather do Abyssal than Pan, although I suppose if I got rF+++ I might try diving through Pan until I hit Cerebov and stealing his rune. A nice thing about Abyss is that you don't have to visit Depths to get there if you don't want to: just get Abyssed by an elf, or miscast Dispersal a few times or whatever. And who says --Wz is mana-dependent? I like to beat stuff to death after confusing it with Mephitic Cloud; my highest skill this game is polearms, not anything magical. But, I suppose we will let the scores speak for themselves. I've never had my first rune be anything but a lair-branch rune, so it will be interesting to see if I can swing this.

[tasonir]

Had a fairly interesting d:1, where I spawned directly in LOS of a short sword, so I figured I'd be able to dart-then-whack anything on d:1 easily...First monster I find is a completely isolated hobgoblin with a club, who takes 4 darts as if they were a massage, and then a poison spit, only to hit me for 6 damage on his first attack. I managed to finally take it down but I was at ~25% health against something that I wouldn't have expected to even get into melee range against me.

Didn't have much time to keep playing so I'm parked on d:3 still, but I have a pretty decent selection of basic weapons, currently going with a dagger of venom, a buckler for when I have the time to train it, and decentish magic skills. Still tempted to go chei but I might be more reasonable and take Ru.

[byrel]

and what do you guys think about the tier II bonus? i guess abyssal is probably the most reasonable, idk might be too hard for me to straight up skip lair

Abyssal is probably not the easiest for a NaWz; you're both MP dependent and slow. I'd probably go for a ton of stealth and maybe some T'loc and try for a pan rune. Especially with Dith or Ru it's probably quite doable.

I'd rather do Abyssal than Pan, although I suppose if I got rF+++ I might try diving through Pan until I hit Cerebov and stealing his rune. A nice thing about Abyss is that you don't have to visit Depths to get there if you don't want to: just get Abyssed by an elf, or miscast Dispersal a few times or whatever. And who says --Wz is mana-dependent? I like to beat stuff to death after confusing it with Mephitic Cloud; my highest skill this game is polearms, not anything magical. But, I suppose we will let the scores speak for themselves. I've never had my first rune be anything but a lair-branch rune, so it will be interesting to see if I can swing this.

Mephitic Cloud sounds like a really bad idea in Abyss... But a hybrid approach would probably work well.

[mibe420]

well i figured with +5 stealth a little exp would go a long way in the abyss and if you luck into a tele ring it seems like it would be pretty easy

i dont have much experience with wz but i figured id probably train a weapon basically as soon as meph/imp was online instead of going the conj route, to specifically avoid being mana dependent

maybe i should play a couple practice games off line first

[tasonir]

I would, in general, recommend having some melee earlyish. The tough part is defining earlyish - you probably want to learn the better Wz spells first, I'm not hardcore enough to suggest d:1 melee, and I even started with a decent weapon in LOS (short sword). After call imp/conjure flame/mephitic cloud is probably a good time, unless you found some very good spell book already by that point.

[wizzzargh]

I had a great run going with superb item and spellbook drops, Poison Arrow, etc, stupidly threw it away in an ice cave to a berserk polar bear.
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Wizzzargh/m ... 234217.txt

Training stealth up to 10 let me avoid a lot of nasty situations, but I was able to lean on Conjure Flame+Mephitic and Yiuf's +4 quarterstaff to get me through the earlygame without problems.

[tasonir]

Got repeatedly chased after by things I couldn't take - menkaure, orc warriors with chain mails, jellies were surprisingly resistant to magic darts, etc. Maybe I should have kept going on magic skills a bit longer, was trying to start get a trident usable since I was casting conjure flame a lot, but ultimately the fight that killed me was an orc warrior that I was out of mana to place a conjure flame with. Dragged it back, got some mana...failed to cast mephitic cloud. Ouch, you've been cleaved. Try an imp with my last 2 mana - it spawned behind the warrior, rather than behind me. No swapping. Ouch.

[Doesnt]

tried to skip lair for points, ran out of resources and got jugged while trying to flee from the fourth giant depths mob in a row

[greedo]

Yeah, think it pays to be cowardly and skip the challenges this round. Skipping lair would mean taking on abyss.. as an underleveled naga. Slime pits for tier 1 isn't much better.

[shnurlf]

I got bullied twice. Once by a Gnoll fresh out of the spawn vault. I open the doors, and there he was, staring at me. I used all my darts, spat poison at him twice and boy oh boy did I get three shotted. Then, as I casually trying to get out of D:1, some jackals start barking at me. I get swarmed before reaching cover and got eaten to bits. Man, Naga life or no life.

[amalloy]

I managed the tier 2 challenge this week, making this my only game where my first rune wasn't in the lair somewhere. Clearing Elf was surprisingly not that hard with Yredelemnul's Secret Service, but when I got banished prematurely I had a really bad time. Clawed my way back out of the Abyss, murdered the remaining elves, and spent the rest of my army on clearing a floor and a half of Depths. Then I switched to Zin to clear out another floor or so, and then: to the Abyss, on purpose this time! It went much better with a few extra XLs, and although I had to spend still more consumables to yoink the rune, I have earned myself entry into Valuts, which is a huge breath of fresh air. I'm hoping I may be able to get the lairless win this game, but even if I have to back down I'm very proud to have met this tough challenge, and happy with CSDC for presenting me with the opportunity.

[amalloy]

Mephitic Cloud sounds like a really bad idea in Abyss... But a hybrid approach would probably work well.

Oh sure, I didn't mean I'd be casting Meph in Abyss. Just that, since I'd use Meph+melee to level, with a focus on melee, I would be very dependent on MP in the Abyss. And so it transpired: my main spells are ozocubu's armour, blink, and shroud of golubria, with passage of golubria for tactical mobility. Worked reasonably well in Abyss, and I gotta say I love PoG in Vaults for getting back onto the other side of sealed doors.

[ventricule]

I managed the tier 2 challenge this week, making this my only game where my first rune wasn't in the lair somewhere. Clearing Elf was surprisingly not that hard with Yredelemnul's Secret Service, but when I got banished prematurely I had a really bad time. Clawed my way back out of the Abyss, murdered the remaining elves, and spent the rest of my army on clearing a floor and a half of Depths. Then I switched to Zin to clear out another floor or so, and then: to the Abyss, on purpose this time! It went much better with a few extra XLs, and although I had to spend still more consumables to yoink the rune, I have earned myself entry into Valuts, which is a huge breath of fresh air. I'm hoping I may be able to get the lairless win this game, but even if I have to back down I'm very proud to have met this tough challenge, and happy with CSDC for presenting me with the opportunity.

Congrats already! I will try to go for the Tier 2 as well with my stabber, but I am already having trouble clearing the end of the Dungeon...

[Kramin42]

I've set up Kramell again to keep track of stuff in ##csdc on freenode, it's working for week 1 now but might not be quite correct if you started your char already, just let me know and I can fix it.

byrel, would it be possible for me to have the next week's info a day early to pre-emptively set up the bot for that week? (I promise I won't use that day for practice ) Feel free to pm me on IRC or here if you're ok with it

[byrel]

Sweeet! Kramin, I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out.

[shummie]

Lol, well, that was embarrassing, quick game 1 where I landed on a teleport trap and saw like 4 jackals, 2 bats, and a rat or two, I actually almost made it out of that alive by randomly quaffing an agi pot. Game 2, I apparently can't kill a hobgoblin with a cursed dagger, and apparently didn't know how to cast magic dart appropriately.

But, looking forward to splatting 2 more next week!

[mibe420]

ive got a pretty sweet run so far...got super lucky with a d:1 ring of invis so ive become an invis stabber. also got lucky with a +4 short sword of venom fairly early

ive also found ozos armour, pass wall, p golubria, so combined with with zins imprison ive had a fairly easy time managing threats so far

this one made me feel dirty but a nagas gotta do what a nagas gotta do:

7961 | Temple | Entered the Ecumenical Temple
8024 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Elyvilon the Healer
8044 | Temple | Fell from the grace of Elyvilon
8044 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Zin the Law-Giver

i got a ring of tele too so with that and passwall i feel like tier II bonus is in my grasp and also lair-less most likely

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Mibe/Mibe.txt

[ventricule]

Things were going well yesterday (after a 1 point D1 splat), and instead of my usual "let's finish tonight" attitude I forced myself to get some sleep in order to avoid making silly mistakes. This is a sudden death challenge, better be careful, y'know...Then I started again today and died within 5 minutes due to not being focused enough.

Luckily I had the chat to comfort me:

<shnurlf> ventricule: I mean, might as well die to a sun demon when you're playing dith


4 points it is, then: http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/ve ... 183807.txt

[tedric]

that went exactly as poorly as i expected

[cerealjynx]

Ugh. Had the perfect plan. Sonja and her Distortion dagger in Orc 4, me with Dith and Shadow form almost online, along with a ring of teleport. Clear out the rest of D. Encounter with an Ice Dragon goes south, but I manage to Shadow form and gtfo. Deep elf conjurer comes out from around the corner, I've already got him constricted and poisoned. But somehow he miraculously burns through my last 10% of HP. I'm much more upset about this than I should be!

[greedo]

Well this is certainly an interesting artifact on this run:

-2 helmet of the Cities {*Corrode rF++ rC+++} (curse)

Kind of stuck wearing it too as I don't have any rF/rC, first time I've willingly worn *corrode

[mopl]

this one made me feel dirty but a nagas gotta do what a nagas gotta do:

7961 | Temple | Entered the Ecumenical Temple
8024 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Elyvilon the Healer
8044 | Temple | Fell from the grace of Elyvilon
8044 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Zin the Law-Giver

Just to be sure : you know that this WON'T give you the weekly god points ?

[amalloy]

this one made me feel dirty but a nagas gotta do what a nagas gotta do:

7961 | Temple | Entered the Ecumenical Temple
8024 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Elyvilon the Healer
8044 | Temple | Fell from the grace of Elyvilon
8044 | Temple | Became a worshipper of Zin the Law-Giver

Just to be sure : you know that this WON'T give you the weekly god points ?

It will. There was some discussion earlier on about the wording of "get 6* with a weekly god, as long as that god is the first one you worshipped this game" or whatever it was. The ruling was that, no, it doesn't matter if you worship some other god(s) in between starting worship and reaching champion. This is a disappointing ruling to me, in that it will lead to lame player behavior like this (not that I'm saying mibe should do otherwise! Do whatever you can within the rules to win!). I wonder if it would be possible to have stricter religious rules for the following weeks.

[amalloy]

I managed the tier 2 challenge this week, making this my only game where my first rune wasn't in the lair somewhere. Clearing Elf was surprisingly not that hard with Yredelemnul's Secret Service, but when I got banished prematurely I had a really bad time. Clawed my way back out of the Abyss, murdered the remaining elves, and spent the rest of my army on clearing a floor and a half of Depths. Then I switched to Zin to clear out another floor or so, and then: to the Abyss, on purpose this time! It went much better with a few extra XLs, and although I had to spend still more consumables to yoink the rune, I have earned myself entry into Valuts, which is a huge breath of fresh air. I'm hoping I may be able to get the lairless win this game, but even if I have to back down I'm very proud to have met this tough challenge, and happy with CSDC for presenting me with the opportunity.

Well, the game's over, and I won, including the once-only Lairless-win bonus. Getting banished wasn't the last terrifying part of this game, but it was the one I felt the least in control of. I breezed through Vaults 1-4, and then went back to Depths for another floor's worth of XP before attempting Vaults:5. Vaults:5 was awful, but I really wanted to do it before Crypt so that I could have Sanctuary in V:5, and still have all of Crypt for TSO piety. It took me four or five teleports to land anywhere manageable, and even then I was not really strong enough to clear. I ended up having to burn a bunch more consumables and fire off another few teleports (fortunately I was blessed with a lot of ?teleport and two /teleport this game) just to stay alive, and then...one of those desperate teleports landed me adjacent to the rune! So I popped off a sanctuary to grab it and rest up just a little bit, before going back through the teleport spin cycle. It wasn't long before I landed in striking distance of the exit, and with a mix of stealth, swashbuckling, and translocations, I slithered my way back up the stairs, leaving all the loot behind, locked up tight till the end of time.

But then...what third rune? I took TSO at this point and went into Crypt for piety. This went reasonably okay, and I got my holy wrath weapon in time to head into Tomb. Tomb:1 was extra tedious, with careful use of PoG to keep escape routes against gmummies. But when I tried stairdancing into Tomb:2 I got spooked by the damage spikes, and decided to try Hell (perhaps Tartarus?) instead. After a quick dip into Hell to see Geryon and Murray, I decided maybe Tomb was a better idea after all! And I did in the end have "only" one close call in Tomb, when I stayed downstairs one turn too long, and was at like 15 HP when I got back upstairs with a gmummy and a bennu, and silenced by a Zot trap. Once I navigated that, though, Tomb really held no terrors for me, and the rune was just a matter of patience.

I cleared Zot:1, hoping to get a little extra XP, but it was quite difficult and I was losing piety instead of gaining it, so after that I just dove down to Zot:5. From there, some PoG tricks helped me with an uneventful tele-ninja of the orb, and nothing much happened on the orb run itself: anytime something scary showed up, I shoved it out of LOS with Imprison or Dispersal. Kinda funny to be such an escape-oriented character given the 1.4 move speed, but it between Zin and Tloc it worked out pretty well.

Skipping Lair made this the most challenging game of Crawl I have ever played, and I look forward to similar challenges in the upcoming weeks. I also hope not to be the only one managing 10 points this week! Get crackin', guys!

[byrel]

Congrats!

Just to be sure : you know that this WON'T give you the weekly god points ?

It will. There was some discussion earlier on about the wording of "get 6* with a weekly god, as long as that god is the first one you worshipped this game" or whatever it was. The ruling was that, no, it doesn't matter if you worship some other god(s) in between starting worship and reaching champion. This is a disappointing ruling to me, in that it will lead to lame player behavior like this (not that I'm saying mibe should do otherwise! Do whatever you can within the rules to win!). I wonder if it would be possible to have stricter religious rules for the following weeks.

Yeah, this was brought to my attention earlier. I made the wrong call, but it sticks for this week anyhow. In the future challenges you will need to actually do what the OP says and get 6*s before god switching.

[mibe420]

yeah it felt kinda cheesy to me too but its not like i was actively scouring the rules for loopholes i just read that and thought "you know I like zin more than ely", figured id ask, and there we go. it was only later i noticed the clause that mentions you have to hit 6* first. oh well its just the way she goes

anyways gg amalloy ill try to follow in your footsteps but i seemed to have run out of food already. guess i shoulda just stuck with ely. this challenge conduct is WAAAY harder than i thought at first

[byrel]

No blame on you mibe! I should have thought about it more. Feel free to ask for any other changes you'd like too... even if they aren't currently in the rules.

Yeah, I tried for lairless DrBe once, and died in Gehenna getting my third rune: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/pblur ... 212142.txt That was pretty much my inspiration for the challenge; it was amazingly fun and hard. The Depths transition is super rough without Lair XP.

[Loynis]

I'm not very experienced player, and certainly I have very little Naga experience.

Anyway, my first run was cut short by some gnolls. My second attempt was a bit more succesful. I managed to survive till lair, going some weird stabber of Dith with Meph cloud sort of build. I then found an artifact +8 vampiric demon blade? and it was so tempintg to go for it. I adandoned lair due to the fear of hydras and went for orcs.

And it is when I felt powerful enough after clearing horde of orcs and ogres with mephitic+melee, I went to explore Orc 1 a little further and stumbled upon an orc warlord and it's band. I didn't expect that kind of threat that early. I tried to run away, dropped meph clouds on pursuers, but eventually succcumbed to smiting while waiting for tele to kick in.

http://underhound.eu:81/crawl/morgue/Loynis/morgue-Loynis-20151007-175909.txt

[greedo]

No blame on you mibe! I should have thought about it more. Feel free to ask for any other changes you'd like too... even if they aren't currently in the rules.

Honestly it doesn't matter much either way since wrath is usually suicide, and good gods are kind of designed to be switchable. I kind of think of ely, zin, and tso as the same god really. Maybe it would matter in a week where you made the god just xom, but then you can't champion xom xD

[mibe420]

well my run is over i died in elf:3 at level 16....but i managed to complete the tier 2 bonus before i died!

i got banished in abyss since i only had mr+ and used my pro abyss skills to grab the rune...

unfortunately i forgot to take off the tele ring after escaping and got teled outta the killhole. i then at some point fought a demonoligist wrong and ended up in a bad spot, failed my passwall, and died

in hindsight not only did i fuck up bad versus that demonoligist(i didnt even use divine protection), i made a major strategic error of continuing elf 3 after grabbing the rune, shoulda just went for vaults.

also i never even hit 6* with ely so i didnt get the bonus point anyways. it was a ton of fun and still a good scoring run since i got the tier 2 bonus!

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Mibe/ ... 065813.txt

[byrel]

Congrats!

[bel]

Got Tier I bonus by getting slimy rune. I thought I could try to get abyssal rune first for Tier II bonus, but a visit to Elf:3 convinced me that I was too weak. Played it safe by just going for Tier 1 bonus, and did Lair next.

Will probably continue this character later. Dump so far: http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/trunk/belag/belag.txt

[bel]

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Mibe/morgue-Mibe-20151008-065813.txt

It seems you didn't enter lair at all. After getting the tier Ii bonus, you could have just gone there.

[prozacelf]

Am I correct in assuming that the bot will only track games done within the ruleset? That is, if I waste my guy(or two) relatively early, I can go on playing other games of crawl without worrying about how it affects my csdc standings? Sorry if this was covered in an earlier post and I just skimmed past it.

[ldf]

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Mibe/morgue-Mibe-20151008-065813.txt

It seems you didn't enter lair at all. After getting the tier Ii bonus, you could have just gone there.

There is one time bonus for getting lairless win and if you got Tier2 bonus this week you have a good chance to get lairless also.

[amalloy]

Am I correct in assuming that the bot will only track games done within the ruleset? That is, if I waste my guy(or two) relatively early, I can go on playing other games of crawl without worrying about how it affects my csdc standings? Sorry if this was covered in an earlier post and I just skimmed past it.

Yes, the bot knows not to award you points if you're not eligible anymore. Feel free to beat NaWz on your own time.

[BugHunter]

Well, that was a quick first try. Found a short sword right off, which was nice. Killed a gecko and a newt, Ok so far. Then I saw a jackal, awake, but hadn't noticed me. As I backed away, a goblin came into sight, saw me, and shouted. Before I could slither away, he and the entire pack of jackals converged on me. I got the goblin and one jackal, but the others got me. Just 379 turns.

I played a few NaWz games offline for practice before my online game, and found the NaWz to be exceedingly fragile at the start. Its magic is weak at the start, with only 4 MP and #... in magic dart, not to mention a 12% fail rate. So it often can barely kill one monster with magic, and it has no melee combat skills. And being slow, it can't run away. In my practice games I found that if there's a pack of jackals on D:1, I was almost always dead. If the terrain is perfect, it might be possible to lure them one at a time, but if they're in a big room, they converge on the first jackal's location before a Naga can get out of sight. And once the pack has seen you, you just get overwhelmed. The magic isn't enough to handle their numbers, and you have no melee offense or defense.

Heck, even when I survived to level up a couple of times, it wasn't unusual for go through 6 or 7 MP against a lone hobgoblin with him still at about 50% HP, between miscasts and hits that did no damage. In one practice game I found a +3 short sword on D:1 and a +2 hat on D:2, and survived quite a bit longer. But without that kind of luck, I just can't figure out what to do with this combo. I'm impressed by those who made it to Lair or deeper.

[tasonir]

While you're 100% correct bughunter, and I had quite a scary first fight against a single hobgoblin, one thing you can do to help is always start a d:1 fight with poison spit. Then magic dart 2-4 times, which is about when your poison spit should come back, and spit again before trying to melee. Poison spit misses a lot so this isn't terribly reliable, but when you do land it, it should help save you a lot of damage, and maybe some mana.

[BugHunter]

Ahhhhhh, I completely forgot about spitting! D'oh! That would certainly have helped.

I tried a second game after my previous post (and before seeing tasonir's post), putting my experience into fighting and stealth (switching fighting -> short blades once i found a dagger) and got down to D:2 and leveled up. Was doing Ok until I turned a corner and found myself face to face with a wide awake adder. So much for stealth making things easier. Was very quickly lethally poisoned and dead. I don't really think spitting would have made much difference.

I think I'll go play a MiBe. :-/