n1000 wrote: Do you have any other stories, Uncle? Please tell another!
Well I have lots of stories. I find as I get older I have more old stories than current ones. The problem is just finding a way to tell these without them just being me talking about me. Anyway, I hope this is a gripping account of what happened next:
Before I took a break after the 0.5 tournament, I wanted to try playing different modes of crawl. The adom server had a culture
built around team games and competitions, so naturally I took to robins. I helped to found a number of robins, many of which
were also challenge games, including: elfrobin, coolrobin, skillrobin, antiskillrobin, mummyrobin, and dieselrobin. Because
zigs were new in 0.5, I also started zigrobin so we could each experience doing a bunch of zigs. At this time dpeg was still
in the channel (there was some kind of altercation while I was away and dpeg just decided dealing with players this much wasn't
worth it, to the loss of the channel), and he followed zigrobin with interest as he'd designed zigs. He noted that we'd
switched our discussions from talking about "I" to talking about "we." And in fact we developed a very cooperative culture,
as notable players like ogaz, daftfad, due (developer bookofjude), xyblor, clouded, elliptic, n7, and myself shared ideas. As
a whole we've tried to hang onto a lot of traditions to keep those experiences alive, which may have contributed to the
reputation of learndb being a mess of in-jokes.
I took a complete hiatus and came back at the end of 0.6, to some dramatic changes. 0.6 was a nerf version - a complete
laundry list of everything I had used effectively in 0.5 was nerfed, most of all heavy armour. Armour had been nerfed in armour
skill, individual pieces of armour, and in a virtual lack of any gdr. It was actually questionable to wear anything but a robe,
even on like a mdbe, and the strongest combos were typical robe-users like spen, mfie, habe, and ddne. This had an almost
irrevocable effect on players' attitudes towards melee, with most developing an irrational fear of it. I once observed a 'good'
player giving advice to someone of hasting so they can back off and kill an ogre with stones, when the character could have one
shot the ogre in melee. Seeing the negative attitudes towards melee, one of my favorite aspects of crawl, is what pushed me
to start giving advice and trying to teach players how to reach their potential. It's why I spent so much time in places like
tavern during those years.
Meanwhile, elliptic had handily won the third tournament, cementing himself and n7 as the two best players in irc--and as n7
rarely spoke much, the meta now revolved around emulating elliptic's play. At one point, I saw some new player asking how
his mibe was supposed to ninja zot without apportation. I responded by asking if I was the only person who still liked to kill
dudes. This is what 'killdudes' meant, actually killing dudes as opposed to ninjaing, and it represented my drive to balance
the meta. Now it apparently means 'bread and butter', which is ironic because that's a phrase I've always hated. It drains my
will to live a little bit each time I see it used that way. 'Diesel' apparently also just means some combination of defense numbers
instead of what I initially used it for, which was this Rhode Island slang for 'strong and tough'. A new player corrected me the
other day when I casually remarked that my character felt pretty diesel - he was like, no it's not, it needs 43 ac first. Old
people things.
So I played a couple games of 0.6 just to experience it (it was revolting), and a bit of 0.7. Mostly though I used Sprints and
challenge games to keep my skills sharp while I waited for the next tournament, which would be in 0.8.
Elliptic's team was Zinja and included casmith and marvinpa. I captained killdudes, and our roster included minmay, ebarrett,
and reid. We went into the tournament the two favorites to win it. I came out firing with first all-runer (a ghmo), but
elliptic had already stolen first win 90 minutes into the tournament. He just seemed too fast for me, but I stayed in
striking distance at second place (in what's come to be my tournament MO) through weeks of us chaining together frantic wins.
We looked for ways to squeeze as many points as possible out of our games. At one point we were even speedrunning characters down
D to suicide them for combo high scores.
Near the end, casmith told me to just give up. That I was tanking my winrate when elliptic was going to win anyway. I still had a plan.
I had one card left to play, but I couldn't play it too early or I'd have nothing left. None of my wins until then had been particularly fast
in turns or real-time, and I had only done two all-runers. So my last shot was a speedrun all-runer. I had saved 0.8's strongest combo
for this challenge, and in the middle of the last day, I started a DDEE. If i failed this game halfway through, I wouldn't have enough
time to start another one. But if I won I would have just enough points to pass elliptic. This was to my mind the best game of crawl I
ever played:
http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.8/mik ... 224903.txt. Unfortunately the ttyrec was lost, but I
remember much of it. I got all runes except for tomb and hells (unfortunately dropping some of them in D and forgetting them).
The irc community was engaged and behind me throughout much of it, and I felt particularly proud when jeanjacques told me
watching this game inspired him to play crawl. I also got a lot of support from an unexpected place as elliptic answered my
bombardment of minor questions about speedrunning (am I supposed to go to orc? how about this lab?). I never felt bad about
asking elliptic for help while directly competing against him. Time together with the same people in irc had instilled a
cooperative culture, and although I kept many techniques secret, I never kept information from elliptic. For his part, elliptic
had already won a tournament and possibly he didn't want to beat me over something as minor as my not getting answers to my
questions. Later I would do the same for theglow in 0.9 for the same reasons. When I won (with only 10 out of 15 runes), I found
that lawman's death at the same time also credited me with the last win of the tournament. I barely held an edge over elliptic
for first place. The rest of Zinja fought with me for the remaining minutes as they suicided my combo scores down D to try to put
him back in first. Elliptic just watched the culmination of the 16-day battle of wills between us.
mikee_ has won 166 times in 396 games (41.92%): 4xDSFi 4xMDFi 3xDDCK 3xDDEE 3xHOPr 2xDDHe 2xDDNe 2xDSBe 2xKeAE 2xMfCr 2xMfSt 2xMiAr 2xMiBe 2xNaTm 1xCeAr 1xCeAs 1xCeBe 1xCeEn 1xCeFE 1xCePa 1xCeTm 1xCeWz 1xDDAs 1xDDCr 1xDDHu 1xDDTm 1xDENe 1xDEWz