15 Rune win #12 of 27 The quest continues

[bgfalcons]

Numerous years ago I had a crazy idea to get a 15-rune win with all 27 species and all kinds of god combinations. I tend to take long breaks in between runs, so this "quest" has continued through various versions of the game. I posted a year or so ago with 15-rune win #9. With the corona virus slowing the world down, I’ve had some time knock out a few more recently. I’m now up to 15 rune win #12 and have updated the list accordingly for any that are interested in the journey so far.

Win #1: DrWz of Vehumet Power Ranking: 10th
The run that started it all. It will always hold a special place in my heart. I ended up drawing a yellow draconian, which was a pretty neutral result. I remember I rushed firestorm and made heavy use of a staff of energy. I ranked him 10 not bc he was a bad build, but more so because it was my first serious foray into the extended game and I didn't really know what I was doing. I was inflicted with "must kill everything disease" which resulted in a pretty nail-biting firestorm duel with Cerebrov. I also remember not training any dodging.... This guy's high hit points pulled him through. You could also still learn haste as a spell at the time which definitely helped. Not my best run, but it was a win and taught me a lot.

Win #2: MfHu of [Oka to Shining One to Zin) Power Ranking 5th
Pretty standard run for melee character. Merfolk have great aptitudes. Picked up controlled blink and haste spells in the late game. Okawaru was great in the beginning for skill boosts and better gear. Saved the crypt for my switch over to the shining one. Enchanted my bardiche with holy wrath. Switched over to Zin (Zin quickly became my favorite of the good gods). All pretty standard stuff. You can find strategy guides for these types of characters all over. A good, strong, reliable character build.

Win #3: MuWz of [Ash to Sif Muna] Power Ranking 12th
Mummies suck. Like seriously suck. I thought not having a hunger clock and being immune to torment would be cool. It wasn't. It sucked. I easily died 50+ times getting this character through, but I'm too damn bull-headed to have given up on it. Luckily, most of those deaths came very quickly, so it wasn't a total time-suck. One thing this run did teach me was the value of Ashenzari as a god. The skill boosts were absolutely critical to finally getting this bum off the ground and into the end game where his intrinsics could come into play (although honestly, just play a regular character and learn lichform). Ashenzari is now one of my favorite gods for starting a spell caster. You have to learn to save up all your scrolls of remove curse to curse gear (and not be afraid to wear already cursed gear). Since you're a caster, getting your skills up fast is usually much more important than having phenomenal gear anyway. One downside though is that you won't be gifted any spells, so you have to be flexible and hope you can find or buy some good ones. Regardless, this mummy focused in earth magic and taught me to love the shatter spell.

Win #4: OgHu of Makhleb Power Ranking 9th
Talk about a glass cannon at the beginning. All that power but no defense. Used every resource and very cautious play at first. Then I found some dragon armor. After that, this guy quickly became an absolute beast. Picked up some of the same skills as usual, although I think by this run or the next the haste spell was removed. I was super psyched to get a branded giant spiked club (the most powerful weapon in the game I think). Stupid game refused to give me a single scroll of brand weapon, so I had to use a normal giant spiked club! Oh well, I bashed everything's face in anyway. I ranked him lower due to his weakness at the beginning, but don't be fooled. He turns into a monster once properly armored. Also, it was fun getting health for killing things with Makhleb, as he was very good at killing things.

Win #5: CeHu of [Oka to Shining One to Zin] Power Ranking 4th
This run was incredibly similar to the Merfolk run, but instead of using melee I was shooting a bow. Centaurs are built for ranged warfare, and their speed makes kiting everything very easy. I used the exact same approach god-wise. I gave this character the edge over the Merfolk Power Ranking-wise bc the sheer amount of kiting made this run relatively simple. Overall though, they were very similar power-wise.

Win #6: HoFi of Qazlal Power Ranking 2nd
This guy was awesome and so much fun to play! Hill Orc aptitudes are made for this character. Great weapon and armor, great Invocations. I completely ignored spell casting and just loaded him up with golden dragon armor and focused on Qazlal firepower. Before I made this run, I read somewhere that Qazlal is tough to worship bc basically every monster on the floor will hear you and come storming towards you. Don't buy it! This guy laughed in the face of the hoards and just obliterated anything that came his way. If there got to be too many enemies, upheaval would knock them down. If it was a huge hoard of enemies, disaster area would wipe them out. Anything else got the executioner's axe. His only real weakness was that I had no torment protection for him. So wiping out a huge group of enemies in the tomb actually pummeled him quite a bit. This was also my first character I took into a ziggurat. Made it to the last floor and then ran into a tomb theme, so I had to bail.

Win #7: NaWr of Che Power Ranking 3rd
Polar opposite of the last character. As with all nagas, he started off weak due to his super slow movement. The translocation spells helped him survive the beginning. Then I found him a bow and started worshiping che. Not much longer, he became downright deadly. Basically just peppered enemies with arrows, controlled blink to a safe distance, then peppered them again. Che's stat gains made the hybrid build easy, and slouch would decimate any large groups of enemies. Completely different build type, but also incredibly powerful. Also my first to fully complete a ziggurat.

Win #8: DeWz of Ashenzari Power Ranking 8th
I really thought I would enjoy this run more than I did. For one, deep elves are just too squishy for my tastes. Two, I wanted to use ice magic since I hadn't focused on that before. I also wanted to stick with Ashenzari all the way through. The game never gave me glaciate, which was very disappointing. I also couldn't find a staff of energy. I ended up having to switch over to earth spells and of course picked up lich form. I ended up just stealing most of the pandemonium and hell runes. Not surprisingly he had a lot of offensive firepower, but he always seemed just a few bad rng's away from a stupid death, so I ended up playing him pretty conservatively. Some people would probably enjoy this build a lot more, but to me it was just so-so.

RIP Samwise HaAk of Lugonu
Poor Samwise. I wanted to do ranged character that started with slings and then moved to crossbows as I haven't used those yet. I also wanted a new god in Lugonu. He picked up all 15 runes and then I went into Zot 5 with waaayy too much confidence. Yeah, it happened. A stupid death. Got surrounded by orbs of fire and some other nasties. Went to the abyss twice, but both times coming back immediately got mauled. Kept teleporting into even worse situations. Those stories you read about how Zot 5 can kill you even at the end of a 15 rune run? They're totally true. Ignorant overconfidence is, was, and will always be the mostly deadly thing in the dungeon!

Win #9: DsFi of Uskayaw Power Ranking 7th
Melee builds definitely tend to be my strong suit. So to keep it fresh I tried out Uskayaw. Definitely some different playstyle. I went with axes to build up the piety quickly, and picked the usual translocations. Also focused heavily in necromancy, and got all those top spells up and running too. Ironically, I didn't really use Usk's active abilities all that much. I typically just waited until he puts everyone to sleep and pain bonds everyone. Occasionally a situation would arise in which I would use the grand finale insta-kill. It was definitely a different experience, but a very fun build. The Demon Spawn mutations were also interesting, and I actually ended up getting a bunch of helpful regular mutations along the way as well. I don't think it's quite as strong as the "Oka to Good gods" build, but definitely was good for some variety.

Win #10: VpEn of Kikubaaqudgha Power Ranking 11th
Let me start by saying I’m not a fan of stabbing builds and didn’t really know what I was doing. This run was also after they originally simplified vampires some but not before they super simplified them a second time. After several splats in the early game, I quickly realized that you can’t rely on stealth for stabs. I then focused on hexes and did much better. However, turns out hexes stink in the extended game. I got a couple of characters that far and then they fell apart, which is a double whammy bc you burn a lot of time just to get to that point. After several combinations I figured out a plan for the extended game that worked. I worshipped kiku as soon as possible and did hexes in the early game while training some necromancy on the side. I also trained long swords exclusively as opposed to short swords (weird I know). This simultaneously gave me some levels in short swords and I was able to kill most stuff with stabs anyway. So while I started as a hexing stabber, by the time I got to the extended game I easily transitioned into a longsword-wielding necromancer that made full use of kiku’s summon corpses and raising the dead. It was basically a complete swap of character strategies midway through the game. It worked rather well except for Cerbrov’s Pan level and in Gehenna, as the zombies couldn’t hold up to all the fire attacks. Also, this guy got mutated… bad. He was a crawling, yelling, drippy mess when he finally escaped the dungeon with the orb. All that being said, this run crossed off vampires, worshipping kiku, specializing in enchantments, specializing in stabbing, and specializing in the raising the dead aspect of necromancy off my to-do list. I’m sure there are people that could have done this much better than me, so don’t look to this as a strategy guide. Stabbers just aren’t my cup of tea.

Win #11 OpTm [Yredelemnul to The Shining One] Power Ranking 6th
Oh the octopodes.. For some reason I was very excited to make a run with one of these. I also had never done transmutations, and the octopode’s 8 rings (which don’t get melded during a transmutation) seemed uniquely suited for the job. This character obviously sucks very badly in the early game, and I was also trying to use some new gods like the Wu Jian Counsel and Ru. After some early splats, I switched over to Yredelemnul, as his easy undead summoning and drain life are very powerful in the early game. Definitely helped cover for the weakness of the octopode early on. I relied on sticks to snakes and ice form early, and then really took off upon learning dragon form and statue form in the late/extended game. At that point, my weak little octopode turned into an absolute monster and I switched over to The Shining One. I mistakenly said my ogre with the giant spiked club had the strongest physical attacks in the game. I believe the club does 31 damage fully enchanted, and with a brand will probably do around 40 or so. To my knowledge, Dragon form with full unarmed combat does 65 base damage plus claws 3, plus a bite attack, plus a tail slap! What a beast!! I also ended up with around 20 or so armour and 20 plus evasion after all the artifact rings, so he wasn’t so terribly squishy in the end as I thought he would be. I ended up ranking him 6th because of his horribly slow start, but he was my deadliest endgame physical attacker by far and I had a blast with him.

Win #12 BaIE of Sif Muna Power Ranking #1
This guy turned out to be everything I was hoping my deep elf would be. This was also just after they updated a huge chunk of the spells. So I got to try out all the new ice spells, which I enjoyed much more than the old ones. Frozen ramparts and summon ice beast were clutch in the early game, and ozocubu’s refrigeration (which sif granted me with the first spell book) dominated the mid game. For the late game, I had absolute zero, tornado, controlled blink, necromutation (and also some ozo’s refrigeration yet too). Honestly, I’ve never had such a easy time in the late game. All the “bosses” were completely trivialized by absolute zero, and Sif muna, an amulet with mp regeneration, and a staff of energy damn near gave me unlimited mp. I even found boots of running to negate the barachi’s movement penalty. This guy and my orc of Qazlal were equally deadly, but unlike my orc, my barachi had no weakness against torment and/or mummy curses. He hardly even got touched in the end game until some later Ziggurat floors. Thus, he proudly steps into the #1 slot for my most powerful build!

Final thoughts:
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that little to no one is actually still reading this! If you are, thanks for sharing the journey so far! Next up on the agenda is a trog worshipper, which unlike many of the builds above should have a very easy early game. I’m not sure how it will hold up in the extended game though… might have to make a late game switch....

Happy Zot Hunting everyone!

[andrew]

HOFi of Qazlal was my first win, back in the day (0.15). Only 3 runes for me, though. Congrats!

[Sorcerous]

It has been a long time since you last posted, well done on getting another full win! Trog chars are certainly a hit or miss in extended, my best berserker did manage to take Pandemonium, but I never touched the Hells or Tomb. Pastebin link: https://pastebin.com/PyHjrh4M
With just the mechanics, the one massive drawback is the no magic ever conduct. A lot of evokable summons and some wands were removed, so you'll likely have an easier time winning in 0.24. or earlier. Switching away from Trog is extremely dangerous, and I've only survived wrath once before when abandoning Gozag. Trog, Okawaru, and even Sif wrath have destroyed very promising chars. Boss fights in extended are generally fine if you can get into melee quickly and slam a few hits with antimagic; most of their danger comes from the spells imo.

[bgfalcons]

Andrew, the Qazlal build was definitely one of my favorites! Now that you've knocked out a 3 rune win with one try a spin at 15 rune run. It's also a lot of fun, just be extra careful in the tomb.

Sorcerous, thanks for the Trog tips! I figure I'll stay with trog and see how long I can take him. If it starts to look hopeless I'll try switching over to one of the gods I haven't tried yet for the extended and hope I can survive the wrath. Not having controlled blink and the high level necromancy skills is definitely going to make things more challenging... I pulled it off once with Qazlal though, so I guess we'll see!

[andrew]

I still haven't gotten (or even really tried for) a 15-rune win with anyone. Most I've gotten is 8. And yeah tomb with Qazlal sounds crazy.

[bgfalcons]

The extended game isn't so bad once you learn what to expect. I typically go 2 lair runes and vault first. Then depths, all the optional areas you haven't already hit, abyss, slime pits and through zot 4 (If you have a planned god switch doing it during the crypt/zot 4 is a good time). By the time you get through all that you should have enough artifact gear and abilities to survive the end game. Go for all five pan runes first, then hit the hells/tomb. (This order can obviously change based on what character build you have).

Controlled blink and high level necromancy skills really shine in the late game and are worth branching off into in the mid game for most "normal" builds.

In hell don't worry about exploring, just get to the bottom of the branches fast to minimalize hell effects. For tomb, preferably have necromutation. You certainly can beat tomb without it, but necromutation makes it so much easier.

My first 15 rune attempts were learning experiences to be sure, but once you get a couple under your belt you'll have a pretty good handle on it. Plus, by the time you get through it all you can develop some pretty ridiculously strong characters. I typically only mess with the ziggarauts if I have a pretty dominant character that's breezing through things.

If you want to give it a shot, I recommend trying the Oka to Good Gods route first, as they're pretty simple builds.

Either way, good luck and have fun!

[bgfalcons]

Quick side note, if you do use the good gods you obviously have to skip the necromancy spells.

[andrew]

Well the run that got 8 was the beginning of a 15-rine attempt. Three Pan runes in, though, I finked (having almost died to Lom Lobon, and again in holy Pan) and went for the Orb instead.

Any advice as to which which characters should do Pan first, versus the hells?

[bgfalcons]

In my opinion... all of them.

The Pan levels mechanic is just that you can't get out right away if you go in. However, you basically get as much time in between fights to heal up like normal. The Hells mechanic is that every so many turns you get blasted by a hell effect which will either have some negative effect on you or summon a bunch of high level baddies by you. This makes it hard to just chill out in a quiet corner and heal up, as you continuously have bad things happen to you. The one nice thing is every stairs takes you out of the hell branch altogether, but then you have to work your way all the back down. In my opinion this makes the hells more of a challenge, although I'm sure there are some that might see it differently.

One thing to remember is, if you're having trouble with any particular "boss," you're under no obligation to fight them. In the pan levels in particular, just clear the surrounding area, and draw the pan lord out. If you have controlled blink (which you should unless your build prevents it), you can get around the pan lord in just two controlled blinks, pick up the rune, and teleport out (or controlled blink back out if your willing to eat the contamination or have a potion of cancellation). You don't even really need controlled blink (or scrolls of blinking) to steal one, it just makes it easier/safer. Also, another trick when you're fighting bosses with firestorm is to use a scroll of fog right before you fight them. The game won't let two clouds be in one spot, so this can protect you from a lot of damage. On some of my weaker characters, I didn't even bother killing any of the pan or hell lords, and some others I only killed some.

If you get yourself that far again and are having trouble I'm sure you could post it and people would be willing to help you out. Also, each run is a learning experience. Looking back, my first 15 rune win was pretty ugly, but you get a better feel for it the more you do.

[andrew]

Yeah I did apport Lom Lobon's rune easily; but then I still tried to fight it, which may have been a mistake. But don't they harass you during the orb run if you get the rune without killing them?

[petercordia]

I've stolen plenty of runes, and never had trouble with a Panlord I left alive. With most characters stealing the runes is the easiest way to get a 15-rune win. You just need Apportion.

I do think often 1 or 2 of the hells are less risky than Pan, just because you know what you're facing and you can always retreat. If you have Ice & Torment resistance... the icy hell. If you can deal massive cold damage... the fire hell. If you have good ranged burst damage and decent maxhp... the iron hell. I always find the shadow hell scary, but it isn't actually that bad. The vestibule is always easier than Pan.