To play DCSS, download it from
here. I recommend the graphical interface, but ASCII works fine too.
Now unzip, open it up, and let's get playing!
For your new char, choose a Deep Elf as your
species. They "have a strong affinity for all kinds of magic, but are very fragile."
Then choose the
background of Fire Elementalist. They basically focus of fiery death to all that oppose them.
Choose a name, or leave blank for a funny random one. I got Wesmeduo. Now you should see an
Entrance Vault. Press x to look around at the world around you. Arrows move the selection, and v lets you read a description of the stuff at the selectionthingie.
Now, if you see any monsters, stop. Go to "Fighting Stuffs" below then come back.
Otherwise, press o for aut
oexplore. You may have to escape out of the x-selection menu. You will automatically wander around the area, picking up stuff and stopping whenever you find new loot. I found some bolts. If you see any scrolls, wands, potions, or rings, pick them up. Otherwise ignore them, unless they look cool, or they're tomahawks. Press g to pick things up.
You can only pick up things in your tile. If there are multiple things in your tile, a menu will pop up. Press a letter to select the corresponding item (or stack). Then press enter when you're done, and you'll pick everything up that you selected.
FIGHTING STUFFS
When you see the words at the bottom "a whatstuff comes into view", that means there is a monster in view. In graphical mode, the demonic imp thing on the right is the monster menu, which has a monster to its left. I see a giant cockroach in my game.
To fight it, press z then a. z is the spellcasting button, and a is the button for your first spell (Flame Tongue). If you're on graphics mode, you can also press the picture of a hand throwing fire. It should be on the middle right, beneath the demonsymbol and to the right of a pentagram. (don't tell your mom or jack chick)
If the monster is within range of the spell, press enter to have the spell cast. Otherwise, it will say "you don't see any valid targets within view" or something like that. Press tab to walk toward it. Press z-a every step to see whether you can cast Flame Tongue yet or not.
If you cast it successfully, hopefully the monster is dead. If you miscast or it's not dead yet (you missed, or you found a tough guy), cast it again. If it kills you, start over.
So what is this spell? Press ? - / - s - Flame Tongue to ask the game what the
Spell named
Flame Tongue does. It should show this screen:
Flame tongue
Creates a short burst of flame.
Level: 1 Schools: Conjuration/Fire Fail: XX%
Power : ##...
Range : @-->..
Hunger: None
Noise : Almost silent
This spell will have no effect right now because you can't see any valid targets.
This spell can be found in the following books:
book of Flames
book of the Dragon
So basically, you're throwing a bit of flame at the monster, and hoping it dies in the heat. It has a range of three, and takes up a bit of power, and is really quiet. You might have a different fail rate, but mine is 10%. That means that 10 percent of the time, when I try to cast this spell, it will
miscast, contaminating me lightly with magic and not actually doing the thing I wanted it to. To avoid this, kill stuff for XP. This will level up
skills (more about skills later).
Now walk over to the corpse, using the arrow keys. There may not be a corpse, but there's probably some sort of loot. If there is a corpse, use c to butcher it and take the meat chunks. Take whatever loot it has, too.
Then press 5 to rest up. This is
very important - you have a limited amount of health and magic points, and you can regenerate them by resting. Resting means either "running around", "fighting", "sitting here", anything - but you don't want to be running around or fighting when you're near death! Only continue when your health
and MP (as seen on the upper right, the green and blue bars) are at full.
Now you should come across, at some point, another monster. Try to cast Flame Tongue, and go a bit closer if you're too far away. You might notice that the monster is asleep, and wakes up if you get too close or spend too much time around it. This is because you're unstealthy. It might shout if it sees you, if it has a mind, but insects and rats won't do that.
You also might have noticed that the monster went out of sight. It didn't disappear, it just moved out of your vision. Walk around for a bit until you see it.
Now you should have a scroll. (If you don't, read these instructions when you find them.) Find the nearest staircase and go there (X - > - enter). Then go down. If there's a creature near you, kill it. Then read the scroll (r). It will do something, and you will find out what kind of scroll it is. If it asks for an item, press any of the item you have. If it's an identify scroll, aim for identifying potions first. Then go back up.
Keep on exploring, fighting, and resting. If you run out of MP during a fight, either press Tab to punch it or run away by using the arrow keys. If it's a stupid beast, you can close a door with C to keep it away, but items will stop the door from closing.
At this point, you should level up. YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL TWO! it says, and press enter to leave the prompt thingie. Now press m.
This is all of your skills. Right now, they're mostly magic, dodging, and stealth. Pressing a letter toggles the skill from (don't train), (train), or (train lots). You only have so much XP, and you see the brown
percentages that each skill will get of the total XP you gain. The white or gray decimal after the skill name is the skill level, and the white signed number after the brown percentage is the aptitude. Higher aptitude means skills up faster. Focus on Fire Magic, Spellcasting, and Dodging by pressing their keys. Then press escape to leave.
STRATEGY: If you see a bunch of monsters, retreat NOW. Try to find a hallway so that you only have to fight one at a time.
Try to rest up in the
middle of explored territory, not near the edge.
Now it's time to learn a new spell. Press M to memorize a new spell. White names are spells you can memorize now, gray names are too advanced for you at this time. You are limited to spells below your XP Level. You also have a limited amount of Spell Levels, which you get by leveling up and training Spellcasting. They are used to memorize a spell, and can be gotten back by forgetting them. (More on that later.)
Press a to learn Throw Flame. Then press Y to approve the memorization.
Now use ? / s Throw Flame to figure out what it does.
Throw flame
Throws a small puff of flame.
Level: 2 Schools: Conjuration/Fire Fail: XX%
Power : ##....
Range : @------>
Hunger: ##.....
Noise : Quiet
...So it's basically a weaker form of Flame Tongue. Why do we want it? It has a higher range, so we can cast it at far-away enemies. When possible, though, use Flame Tongue instead of Throw Flame, since it's superior in every way. Less energy to cast, less hunger cost, less noise, higher chance of hitting, less chance of miscasting, and so on.
If you get hungry, you should automatically eat the chunks you
should have previously gotten. Whenever you rest or autoexplore, your char will deal with hunger by eating raw meat. But raw meat spoils, and will eventually rot away. There is permanent food, like pizza or fruit, to deal with this problem, but there's only so much throughout the dungeon, and it's much rarer than raw chunks of meat. So keep chopping those corpses!
You probably have some new armour now. But we're a caster! Try putting some heavy armour on - you can't cast well! Or at all! It takes a mighty mage to cast even the weakest spells while encumbered by plate armour. You're going to stick with your robe right now, but if you find gloves, a hat, leather armour, a cloak, or boots, carry them with you. Drop everything else.
Now wear every glove/hat/boot/cloak/leather armour thing you can find, UNLESS it's "glowing" or "runed." It will then have a blue name, as well as a unique thing on the screen. Only put on one of these if you've identified it (with a scroll) or you have a Scroll of Remove Curse handy. I've found a mundane Cloak, so I'll put it on now with the W button (not the w button, that's for wielding).
At this point, you might have found a dagger. If so, pick it up (or search for it using Ctrl - f (not Ctrl - F) and then dagger). Wield it with w. Now if you ever run out of magic, you can stab things.
If you have a "You are now level three! level up strength, dexterity, or intelligence?!" thing pop up, press i for intelligence. This makes you a better spellcaster.
At this point, I killed two uniques (Terence and Natasha) then died to an ogre.
Dammit.
Well, use the wiki. It's
here.
Author
Topic: Let's Play - Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (Read 2005 times)