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[Zireael]

Playing a DEFE in webtiles trunk and found a sling +2 of flaming on D:1. Matches the theme

[Dr Feelgood]

You know, occasionally I start suspecting I'm not as good as I believe I am.

Can someone spot the error in the following sequence of events, since I sure as hell couldn't, in the 0.05 seconds I devoted to each turn.

- Snake:5
- Get heavily poisoned fighting 100 000 nagas as a HoAs with 26 axes, 20 fighting and 15 armour skills and a +7 randart Exec Axe
- Randomly teleport next to the rune at 60 HP
- Run over to the rune
- Pick-up rune
- Read Teleport
- Quaff all your potions of Heal Wounds to stay alive
- Teleportation hasn't kicked in
- Quaff Cancellation to cancel the poison
- Somehow despite all this tactical genius die in Snake:5

Don't let yourself get heavily poisoned. Rest or use the cure poison spell a couple of times. Fight only one enemy at a time. Don't randomly teleport, unless you cleared most of the map already. Even then, don't teleport on levels with runes, unless you're inside the rune vault. And quaff a cancellation potion before using beneficial effects, like haste and teleport.

Escapes in Crawl are, by design, meant to be either limited and extremely valuable - Scroll of Blinking - or unreliable - uncontrolled blink, Teleportation, Scroll of Fear. Unlike, say, Tome 4, which takes a completely different approach with escapes and consumables.

Whether this is good design or not, and whether you personally like it or not is a completely different issue

I'll be honest, I'm used to them to the point I barely notice, the same way I barely notice DF's incredibly horrible interface. However Crawl's focus on more tactical combat and the importance of realising a bad situation is bad shortly before it going bad wouldn't really work if 100% safe and secure escape mechanisms were in.

Other escape items: teleport/invisibility wands, fans of gales, fog scrolls, teleport/invisibility rings (unlimited teleports/invisibility). I wouldn't count fear scrolls as unreliable. It works on all living, sentient enemies with low MR. It's useful for dispersing centaur packs, vault guards, draconian bands, etc.

There are slightly less scrolls and potions in the dungeon, but you don't have to consider item destruction anymore. Now, you can walk around with dozens of escape and healing items and very rarely find yourself in danger.

[Moron]

Wow, didn't know potions of cancellation could cure poison.

IIRC it is possible to get involuntarily teleported in Snake as some of the nagas (naga mage and greater naga?) have the spell. I was assuming this was what happened here as random teleports on rune levels are normally a big risk - though cancellation could have stopped it

[Damiac]

I don't think cancellation actually cures poison.

When I was new at crawl, I thought teleport kinda sucked, like you said, the 3 or 4 turns it takes to kick in is a long time when you need to escape.

But, if you use them when a situation looks ugly, rather than when you're just about to die, you can afford to use another (or 2) if wherever you land is bad.  So if you think they suck, you're probably just not using them early enough.   One of the skills you develop in dungeon crawl is recognizing when a situation is out of hand, and immediately working to get out of it.  This can sometimes happen even when you have full health(For example, autoexploring into LOS of a centaur in an open area, early in the game).  Teleport is basically a get out of jail free card in these situations.

I haven't tried the new nemelex, but I didn't like him/her/it before, and the new version just sounds more boring (But less inventory clutter at least).  The only purpose I see nemelex serving is if you've already decided you want high Evocations, and for some reason you don't want to spend XP on invocations.

[Retropunch]

When I was new at crawl, I thought teleport kinda sucked, like you said, the 3 or 4 turns it takes to kick in is a long time when you need to escape.

But, if you use them when a situation looks ugly, rather than when you're just about to die, you can afford to use another (or 2) if wherever you land is bad.  So if you think they suck, you're probably just not using them early enough.   One of the skills you develop in dungeon crawl is recognizing when a situation is out of hand, and immediately working to get out of it.

This is the biggest problem I see when I watch people play crawl. Instead of seeing the problem earlier on and realising there's going to be trouble soon, they start trying to get themselves out of trouble when they're already pretty much dead.

Teleportation can lead you into worse situations, but as long as you're not too badly damaged you should be able to handle wherever you land,as the chances of it being right next to an enemy is pretty slim (especially if you've cleared at least some of the level). If you're a dodgy character, try quaffing a potion of agility in the turns whilst tele is booting up - it does raise your survival chances quite significantly.

[EnigmaticHat]

So, learning to play trolls.  Thinking of running with a playstyle where I start training unarmed (makes the very early game rather trivial) and then transition into whatever I feel like, since Crawl seems to encourage that kind of play.

The only thing is I can't find a god that I like.  Most of them either limit corpse availability or restrict to a certain playstyle.  Is it viable to wait until you know what your build is, head back to the temple, and then pick your god?  Or should you always pick early?

[flame99]

Not exactly an expert, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but Ashenzari may be what you're looking for. Her later abilities make it fairly easy to switch focus quickly, since she can transfer EXP between stats. She doesn't limit corpse availability, either. The only real limiting factor about her is that you'll probably use a lot of scrolls of remove curse.

[EnigmaticHat]

So I found this staff of death early on.  "OK" I think to myself, I'll worship that god that grants necromancy books.  Trolls are only at -2 for necromancy, this should be easy to play.  Oh hey look, there's an altar to the death god!

...

...

Apparently in Crawl the there is not only a death god, but a separate necromancy god, both with names that are very difficult to remember.  FML.

Edit: I have found a book of alchemy, which contains a single necromancy spell, sublimation of the blood.  THIS CAN STILL WORK.  I've also got two artifact rings, and the impressively named "Robe of the Fifty Planets" which... grants a single level of poison resistance.  Yay.  The game also gave me a second death staff because its taunting me for my mistakes.  This all on DL 9.

Edit the Revengeance: I died but it was incredibly epic.  In addition to having a silly setup I descended to below my depth to escape enemies and then came across a giant nest of killer bees.  I equipped my rF++ ring, read a scroll of immolation... and then right before I killed the bee in front and detonated the entire mob, the queen swapped places with it (which I didn't even know was possible).  I ran away, remembered I had a scroll to charge my disintegration wand, and started popping bees left and right, sending meat chunks everywhere.  I died the same turn the queen bee exploded.

[IcyTea31]

Apparently in Crawl the there is not only a death god, but a separate necromancy god, both with names that are very difficult to remember.  FML.

You do know praying at an altar of a god you can worship pops up a description of the god?

[EnigmaticHat]

It sounded right.  Both of them have necromancy in the description.

[tompliss]

The easiest way to differentiate them from their description is looking at the list of gifts : One will give you the necronomicon or a pain branded weapon, and it is mentioned in that screen

But yeah, about trolls and gods :
You need to eat, but it won't really limit your piety gained from Oka/Trog. I don't play those too often with trolls, because Trolls don't need early power from their god (both offer this, when comparing to other gods, bu ta bit less options in the endgame).
My trolls usually end with high unarmed combat and fighting (and either armor or dodging), so what they need a god for are : ranged options, buff options, escape options.

Most characters can use spells for those, but if you don't have a god to help you as a troll, you may easily lack power to get all those online...

One of my solution is going with Qazlal. He offers nice ranged attacks (with small and huge zones), and the summoning power is an escape in disguise (because when you put 3-5 extra targets between the enemy and you, you get more time to flee). He's especially good when you want to wear heavy armor, because he's based on invocations (as most gods), so the failure rate is only based on your invocation. Makhleb is a bit like him (with the whole random-element powers and summons), except his summons are more powerful and his ranged powers either less powerful or more piety-consuming.

On the other hand, there are the magic gods (Sif, Vehumet, and Kiku). All those help you compensate for your lack of magic skill (reducing your failure rate or their severity), and offering you spells. Of course, Vehumet offers much less variety and may not be the best for a troll (he will not help you with (c)blink, switfness/haste, and other utilities)...
Ashenzari may also be considered a bit that way, with her skill boosts compensating you low aptitudes in magic as long as you curse your jewelry. You won't be able to curse your "weapon" if you go for unarmed combat and that may lower your initial piety gain, but as you have less armor slots, you need less curses (and items as gloves/boots/helmets are pretty rare) to be bound enough for her to be effective.

If you play on Trunk, Ru, the new god of sacrifice, may be fun with trolls too, as he's fun with everyone

[Damiac]

Makhleb (is that spelled right?) is a good choice for trolls, as are trog and oka.  I personally wouldn't go with a 'spellcaster' god like sif, vehumet, or kiku, as they don't really play to a troll's strengths.

Personally, if I wanted to win a troll as easily as possible, I'd probably go with trog. Train unarmed combat, and some throwing so you can hurl large rocks (which trog will gift you).  Berserk for early threats, Trog's hand for regen and magic resist, and brothers in arms for later threats. 

Basically, you'd train Unarmed, dodging, fighting, and throwing throughout most of the game.  If at some point you end up finding a nice dragon armor, train armor skill.  If you find a nice shield, train just enough shield skill for it (See the wiki for exact values needed). 

It's a very straightforward character, and quite powerful, although your defenses are a bit on the weak end, so your primary defense will be killing stuff dead quickly, which your large rocks and big claws should accomplish easily enough.

I don't think there's really any good reason to ever use a staff on a troll.  A staff of death isn't as good as your built in claws of death.

[tompliss]

Magic school staves boost those, or make their spell easier to cast, dont remember which one.

[EnigmaticHat]

I no longer require advice in the short term, as I've discovered the awesomeness of playing as a troll hunter and then starting with 5 large rocks in your inventory.

[tompliss]

Oh yeah, those large rocks (you get them as Ogre too, and I think you can get them as Arcane Marksman too).
They're really efficient to boost your early game, even though you still get the same god choice after a few levels. They lower the need of ranged power/spells quite a bit (and even quite a lot if you reach the levels where you can kill cyclops to steal their rocks), but they don't offer you extra utility nor survivability.