Vajrapani wrote:Just wanted to say that I've given Hellcrawl a try, and it's really fun to play with perma-buffs and demonspawn.(Along with no stairs/food
)
From reading past posts, Sif + Makhleb seem to be the top-tier gods in this fork(especially with the changed orb run) but are the other ones reasonably easy to win for a newbie hellcrawl player?
-Sif is good because a) she has Ash's skill boosts for spellcasting and b) the SP regen/+cast helps a lot when you have low max MP due to perma buffs. Sif is one of the gods that is esepcially helpful for branchless runs since the skill boosts make you mature earlier and the spellbooks can sometimes give you a key spell nice and early
-Mahk is good for the same reason as normal crawl and hellfire is good
-Qaz gives much more SH in HC (about +20) and does a good but more damage for less piety. Oddly no stair dancing is not as bad for qaz because any character can potentially run into a really bad zone in and Qaz has a solution for any problem; annihilate everything. It requires a very serious Invo investment but it can work quite well. If you know how to play Qaz I actually think its one of the easier runs.
-Oka is pretty good. Heroism skill boost help out nice and early and relieve some XP burden and since items are rarer in HC the gifts can turn out nicely. Having heroism means you can train spell schools more intensely so Oka is something you will see skalds take fairly often.
-Gozag can also be pretty useful and since food is not an issue less of a pain in the ass.
Oka and Gozag used to be top tier but I think that is less so now, I would say in general a skald-like Oka is better than a Trog guy. Trog is fine but Skalds work out pretty well in HC and Oka abilities really fits with the pared down nature of HC. So overall I would say Trog is de-emphaiszed in comparison to normal crawl
Most of the other gods are fairly similar to normal crawl for the most part but gods that take a long time to really get going or have effects that are not that useful until later etc, like Zin, tend to be used very little in Hellcrawl. Certain gods are obviously much more useful for a 9 rune game (i.e. shining one) than a branchless run.
Certain Gods, like Chei, are much worse than normal crawl in a relative sense simply because Haste exists as a perma-buff. Chei will perform similar to normal crawl but compared to Sif where you can permanently move 3 times as fast and attack/cast 1.5 times faster and get a decent boost to Charms and highly probably get the spellbook for it as well and it comes out much worse in comparison. Additionally Sif directly helps with the downside of perm-buffs by giving MP regen. A skald of Sif is safer and does more damage than a Skald of Chei simply because of Haste and the fact that the better stats just won't make up for the difference especially since you get skill boosts. In Hellcrawl even on a 9 rune run you are not gonna max out skills so skill boosts like Sif or Oka are always useful.
Zin is not really any worse in HC but its hard to make it work because you just get very little leverage for a lot of the game. Even if sanctuary is a very tempting skill to have you need more. I have tried to make Zin work a few times and I know a couple other good players (i.e. they have wins) and we were all underwhelmed even though a couple Zin features are tempting. He just doesn't work out well really. And while you need a lot of in invocations for Zin, unlike Qaz the pay off on the invo is not that straight forward. Qaz is still quite useful at 15 invo, but Zin is only kind of nice at 15 and is not really gonna make you perform that much better.
Keep in mind that strats like going Elvy or SO and then switching to Zin are not really viable in HC due to length of game and lack of ability to go back to an altar.
On the other hand I would say Chei really needs a buff because his balancing detriment of no speed increases is much much more penalizing in HC. I suppose you could make the stats go even higher, but i am not sure that is the best answer.
Hellcrawl itself is actually a little easier in the early levels since there are no ghosts and needles do not require blowguns (finding early curare is not that uncommon and is immediately useful unlike normal crawl). So gods like fedhas that people like in normal crawl for immediate reliable survivability are not as favored although there is nothing wrong with them per se. At the same time you can get gods earlier (I would say by d4 is average and relatively often on d2). So you can often get a God to a fairly decent midpoint by the time you start getting truly chellenged (like around d9 or so).
I am not sure about nemelex Hellmonk has been fiddling around with him a lot.