[PROTIPS] Secret Tricks

[KoboldLord]

Different poster made this comment, but if you are levitating then weapons with the electric brand will not proc when used on you. (Nick, and any other unique that happens to have that brand.)

This differs from what I said in the most important respect. Levitation and flight do absolutely nothing to protect you against Nikola. He has spell damage, not a weapon of electrocution. Levitation and flight protect only against weapons of electrocution.

[jejorda2]

Nikola actually does have a weapon of electrocution...not that you should care, since his spells are so much more powerful than his melee attacks that using a turn in his LOS to cast Flight is a bad use of a turn.

Flight and silence together can tame him, if you can pull that off.

[hayenne]

If you are playing Yred, I find Nergalle quite a good target for enslave soul invocation. She will gladly cast haste on your minions all the time, even out of combat. Think of permahasted profane servitors and bone dragons.

Edit: if you are undead, she will haste you too.

[Edit: added a bit of info]

[ventricule]

When playing Nemelex, stacking legendary decks of dungeons with the Water card on top is incredibly useful against :

- The Royal Jelly (but NOT NEAR THE STASHES)

- The army of executioners surrounding Gloorx Vloq (how else can a melee fighter kill 10 excutioners in a single turn ?)

- Probably lots of other things

[ventricule]

When ninjaing the orb with a violently underleveled hero, wielding a distortion weapon with good attack speed is very effective :

- Good chances to banish ancient liches and orbs of fire
- Even if banishment doesn't pop out, it provokes blink, which helps to open a path to the orb (I find it pretty useful since the corridors in the new orb vaults can easily be cluttered with orb guardians)
- You don't care about getting banished if you unwield it since you won't
- In case of big trouble, you can unwield it (works even better with lugonu, but then it's a nobrainer)

[TehDruid]

Not really a [PROTIP] imho, but...

Even though you can't butcher corpses with a Spear/Trident/Demon Trident, you can with a Halberd/Glaive/Bardiche, since they inflict slashing damage instead of piercing. This also means they multiply hydrae heads too, unless flaming branded, so be careful.

This also applies to Lajatangs, that unlike Staves/Quarterstaves feature slashing damage instead of crushing.

[XuaXua]

Autotravel does NOT stop when your flight/levitation (or haste or whatever) runs out and will keep traveling without it. While we are waiting for perpetual spells, we can fix this ourselves:

To fix this, edit your settings/runrest_messages.txt file to include the following (for flight/levitation) to remind you to renew it:

  Code:


# Refresh Spell Alert
#
stop = You are starting to lose your buoyancy.
stop = You float gracefully downwards.

Someone needs to provide the text for other spells (haste, swiftness, quick blade, etc.) as well.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

I guess Crawl is like Linux or like your car in Soviet Russia (sic). To make it look nice and be really useful, you must tweak it and keep an eye for its usual behaviour (which most people prefer to call glitches).

[dassem]

If you are summoning tough allies, haste them if you can.
I suspect that most people knew that already, but I've found out that it's a lot more awesome than I expected.
There are very few things that 2-3 hasted gold dragons or angels won't just rip through.

Although be aware that some allies are faster than your orb of destruction. Suddenly facing an angry horde of ex-allies that you just used your last MP to summon, while your god is sulking because you just blasted one of his angels, can be rough.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

So that is why some spells are targeted.

[Eaki Godsbane]

Nasty tricks with Nemelex! Who said destruction decks are the only ones having offensive cards?

Water Card (Deck of Dungeon)
Turns floor tiles around you into water, at high power turns a lot of tiles and some into deep water. Just like Fedhas' rain invocation, instantly drowns non-flying, non-aquatic, non-giant-sized creatures, Although you have to be careful with getting trapped and loot if you can't wade into deep water.

Swap Card (Deck of Escape)
Exchanges positions with a random monster, can be used in combos offensively:
* Levitation/Flight/Flight Card + Swap Card - while over lava or deep water
* Metamorphosis Card/Spider Form(Clinging)/Bat Form/Ice Form/Dragon Form + Swap Card - while over lava or deep water
* While in a Cold/Fire/Mephitic/Miasma/Poison Cloud + Swap Card
* Tomb Card + Vitrification Card + Swap Card - traps a monster in a glass cage for eternity, unless it has teleport or digging(someone confirm?)

Damnation Card (Deck of Escape)
Banishes random creatures within your vicinity into the Abyss, at high power it banishes a larger number of monsters. Ala Lugonu's banish but multi-target, randomized and risky since it can also banish the player. Great use if you are surrounded and without any means to escape: it either clears the room, or lets you escape into the Abyss(for better or for worse)

Anybody know more tricks?
Deal the decks and let's play cards!

[greepish]

Much more amusing than pillar dancing is the little known "revolving door trick".

A ranged monster is following you. You run away but it's 2 tiles away and there's an open door in between you and it.

You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.
You close the door. A fire giant opens the door.

[pratamawirya]

Eventually it will fail, when the monster gets double action (opening the door and moving towards you in the same turn).

[greepish]

I could be wrong, but it seems to also work the other way around. That particular incident ended with the door eventually getting shut, allowing me to make it to the stairs in the room.

[hayenne]

If you are swamped with a set of bad mutations (I had slowness 1, berserk 1, frail 1) and don't mind switching a god to a good one, you can go Zin, donate some gold (I spent ~6k, which very quickly built up my piety to ******), cure all the mutations and switch to TSO/Ely right away (as a bonus, you get the starting *** with them).

EDIT: spelling

[starless]

To ALWAYS obtain rods from Acquirement, wear any item which prevents spellcasting or worship Trog.
(And select e - Staff obviously)

[XuaXua]

PROTIP

If you're stuck wielding a cursed blowgun, club, spear, staff or other wooden (and likely useless) implement and you know Sticks to Snakes, CAST IT and don't forget to kill the snake with your now free hands.

OP will be updated momentarily up to this post (this is for my own records)

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Remember that you can forget the spells you don't need via destroying books.
Open a book with the unrequired spell (via 'r'ead menu), open the page with the spell and press Shift+f.
The spell will be gone, and so will be the book. Quite useful if you have identical copies or some randart books.

Remember that Sif Muna punishes destroying books.

[Jeremiah]

I don't know if this is worth putting here, but it's something I keep forgetting, that could have saved my life a number of times:

Many early game threats including ice beasts can't open doors, so if there's at least one empty space between you and it, if you can get to a door you should be able to escape.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

MyOtheHedgeFox: Silence?
MyOtheHedgeFox: Scroll or miscast?
Daydreamer: yep, deliberate cast
MyOtheHedgeFox: Deliberate?!
Daydreamer: yeah, I kpet miscasting p cloud and the annihilator blinked into melee
<...>
Daydreamer: but I'm way better at that than he is
MyOtheHedgeFox: Hm, so Transmuters BENEFIT from it!
Daydreamer: used it to shut down Boris earlier and it is fabulous in Tomb if you can kill the mummies in melee
MyOtheHedgeFox: Heh.
Daydreamer: I really like it with hybrids as long as you aren't in real trouble if your buffs run out

In short: Silence is useful if you are a transmuter, or any other hybrid caster who is experienced in dealing with others in melee.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Anyone know of a Connectbot setting that could fix this, or maybe a dcss config line that would change those particular characters?

You could use the feature option in your config file.

For example, if you want to use the unicode character 0x2240 (≀) for trees and 0x2211 (∑) for shops:

  Code:

feature = shop {x2211}
feature = tree {x2240}


THANK if you like it!

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

  Code:

<MyO> Hi, MarvinPA! Sorry for the question, but how did you manage to replace ---more--- with a nice red plus before the MOREd message?
<MarvinPA> there's an option for it, i forget exactly what it is
<MarvinPA> "small_more = true" maybe, i'll check
<MarvinPA> yeah, small_more it is


[tormodpwns]

When dropping potions/scrolls against monsters with cold/fire RANGED attacks, make sure that you drop and then move away because otherwise the cold/fire blast will destroy your items, even if they are sitting on the ground. Step away so your dropped items are out of the line of fire.

[Grimm]

Is that new in trunk? Items have never been destroyed on the ground before.

[srulz]

In places like Lair etc with lots of Plants, use Control+F and put . as input. It will show all items on your current level.

Or if you just want to search the whole branch in case you missed anything, use CTRL+F and put the branch name (eg: Lair) as the input.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Or you can just press [x] and hover the cursor over the plant with an item lying underneath.

[PerverseSuffering]

>Or you can just press [x]
And win!

[srulz]

Or you can just press [x] and hover the cursor over the plant with an item lying underneath.

Do you really want to hover your cursor over each plants in the area? If so, be my guest!

[KoboldLord]

Is that new in trunk? Items have never been destroyed on the ground before.

No, it's worked like that for many versions. Monsters don't intentionally aim at items, though, so it can only even possibly happen if you leave the items sitting right in the line of fire.

[srulz]

If you're playing offline tiles, set this in your \settings\tiles_options.txt :

tile_layout_priority = minimap, monster, inventory, gold_turn, command, spell,

(make sure monster is before inventory, and remove the # at the start of the line)

this will make your interface to be like this:



enjoy your increased monster awareness!

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Does it still make a separate tab for the spells this way?

[srulz]

Actually, I just found out that this is better:

tile_layout_priority = minimap, gold_turn, monster, inventory, command, spell,

as it will show the gold and turns as well, which may be important.

MyOtheHedgeFox:

just change the order of the items to your liking, and experiment!

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Zicher found a nice way of combining arrows and Vim-keys:

What works for me, is using the arrows for horizontal/vertical movement and "yubn" for diagonals.

This is quite useful for small keyboards with no numpads. Y-U-B-N are located just around the H key (here!).

>>> Thank him if you like it, please! <<<

[PerverseSuffering]

Zicher found a nice way of combining arrows and Vim-keys:

What works for me, is using the arrows for horizontal/vertical movement and "yubn" for diagonals.

This is quite useful for small keyboards with no numpads. Y-U-B-N are located just around the H key (here!).

Huh, I do it all day every day and never considered it as something people couldn't find out themselves - it's in the tutorial, after all...

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

For the new players who, just like me, can't understand what "to-hit" and those other weird DnDisms mean:

Those weapon pluses/minuses show how easy-to-use and how sharp (crushing) a weapon is.

First number is accuracy bonus, second number is damage bonus.

So if you see a -1, +2 whip, that means this whip is slightly harder to control than usual (it has bigger chance to miss), but deals slightly more damage.

Weapons made by certain races get certain bonuses "out of the box", even if they are not glowing or runed.
Orcish weapons tend to be quite cumbersome to use (slight malus to accuracy), but are usually decorated with crude barbs (noticeable increase in damage).
Elven weapons are very convenient to use, so to say (noticeable bonus to accuracy).
Dwarven weapons are usually well-forged (slight bonuses to accuracy and damage) -- that is what they are paid for, after all!

[rebthor]

You can easily remember the pluses thing by remembering that A[u]ccuracy comes before [u]Damage in English at least.

[Wereox]

The revolving door is also funny if you have a way of generating damaging effects on tiles, eg, conjure flame in front of the door, let the monster walk into it, slam the door on them, and keep closing the door as they open it.

They do indeed have a chance of double-acting due to action randomization (same as with pillar kiting). Still, so long as you are prepared to deal with that, it's often a handy way to deal with tough monsters.

[tormodpwns]

A scroll of torment can be used to deal high, unrecoverable damage instantly to the Royal Jelly, but watch out for "J" spawns in the double-digits.

Also, read a scroll of fog to break LOS with a Kraken and force its tentacles to retreat.

[hxy]

If you're a Polearms user, milk the spear traps for spears.
- they're good for throwing (seems to damage better than darts or stones)
- use them against jellys and avoid damage to your primary weapon

[Zicher]

Zicher found a nice way of combining arrows and Vim-keys:

What works for me, is using the arrows for horizontal/vertical movement and "yubn" for diagonals.

This is quite useful for small keyboards with no numpads. Y-U-B-N are located just around the H key (here!).

Just don't forget to switch to English QWERTY keyboard layout (standard Czech layout has Y and Z swapped, for instance).

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

True. And focus on to another window whenever you want to press Ctrl+Shift.
I wasted a scroll of acquirement like this. When I switched over to English, the game somewhy decided that I wanted to acquire a book.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

A very unusual way of preventing melee with a spellcaster:

MyOtheHedgeFox: Please unwield darts: you cannot melee your opponents with them.
Orshelack: I know, I want it to give me the warning if I try to melee

[smock]

Anything, Mennas included when you're not silenced, can be outrun with in wide corridors with evaporate + (uncontrolled) blink. This technique works best in corridors that are three squares wide, but in a probabilistic sense works anywhere.

First, evaporate a potion of water two squares away from you and toward Mennas. If Mennas is on top of you or near you, then evaporate the water so that steam blocks LOS on the other side of Mennas. Then blink. With LOS cut off, you will blink away from Mennas. Rinse and repeat.

At two turns, five MP per blink, and no magical contamination induced, you could repeat this many times. This is like a controlled blink that takes an extra turn to set up, but it has an advantage over controlled blink in that Mennas can't chase you so well through the steam. It might also be useful in situations where you want to cut of LOS anyway (eg, centaur packs) or when you have controlled blink but are already contaminated with magic (and a controlled blink would mutate you or something.)

Not sure if this is a "protip" but I just recently figured this out, so maybe it'll come in handy for someone else. I think the real lesson is that (semi-)controlled blinks are awesome but that evaporate can be added for extra awesomeness.

[XuaXua]

Anything, Mennas included when you're not silenced, can be outrun with in wide corridors with evaporate + (uncontrolled) blink. This technique works best in corridors that are three squares wide, but in a probabilistic sense works anywhere.

First, evaporate a potion of water two squares away from you and toward Mennas.

It's not just evaporate. You can use any cloud. Blink will never place you into a dangerous gas.

[galehar]

And even in old versions, the trick didn't work so well with evaporating anything other than water. Since other cloud types don't block LOS, an uncontrolled blink could put you on the other side of the cloud, next to the monster. The trick that did work was filling a corridor with poisonous or freezing cloud then blink. But at a much higher MP and skill investment cost, and only in narrow corridors. And now it doesn't work at all and is very dangerous.