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[quinnr]

Darn, I had a Summoner who found an altar to Yer...something. He gives you necro-powars.
Would've been awesome, but only undead baddies contribute to your piety. So I was killing people with my Elec sword...when 6 orcs come up. I spawn spammals, but can only do one at a time. I run, but a kobold and snake blocked the corridor.

The end.

[Mr.Person]

@Robsoie: It'll probably help your future survivability if you turned off Fire Magic and turned on Dodging. I don't know how you managed to get down to D:15 with only 7 AC, 2 EV, and 51 HP. Only 2 branches? Did you skip Lair? Did you skip Orc? Why were you encumbered? Why were you only wearing one ring of magical power? Why did you have Dodging turned off and everything else turned on? All your spells were already at Excellent or better, and spell hunger isn't that big of a deal. Speaking of which, why weren't you wearing some kind of armor? What kind of failure chances did Greater Demon have, anyways?

(I'll understand perfectly if you can only answer with "I don't know" or "I wasn't paying attention" or whatever. I make stupid mistakes all the time, trust me. These are just things I'm seeing from the log that are problems besides the fact you didn't see the Red Wasp. And anyways, didn't you notice SOMETHING was making you lose a bunch of health, slow, and poisoned?)

[Robsoie]

@Robsoie: It'll probably help your future survivability if you turned off Fire Magic and turned on Dodging. I don't know how you managed to get down to D:15 with only 7 AC, 2 EV, and 51 HP.

My main priority was never being in a sword length, my global stratgey was to count on the imp and demons summons to do the shield meat for monsters that were too much for magicdart/throwflame/mephitic.

Why did you have Dodging turned off and everything else turned on?All your spells were already at Excellent or better

I prefered to put every skill points into magic abilities instead of fighting ones, as i always hoped to find by luck some extremely powerfull spells, skills into magic abilities would have then allowed me to learn them better instead of using those points in Dodging .

It seemed to work perfectly until i made the stupid mistake of not noticing there was a red wasp next to me.

Only 2 branches? Did you skip Lair? Did you skip Orc?

Yes i skipped those branches, i was just trying to go as low in the main dungeon as possible, as i never went there, this was not a strategy i just wanted to see what kind of monster i could see down there.

Why were you encumbered?

That is something i couldn't understand myself during that game, the fact is that i was never encumbered due to the equipment i was carrying, as i was forced to leave behind me some little things i discovered to avoid that.

But i noticed once some battles were started, it happened that the "Encumbered" tag appeared, like in this last battle.
Maybe to do with my character being in some area of effect (lot of demons and other monsters were throwing spells around) or due to the repeated stings hitting me.

Why were you only wearing one ring of magical power?

That was a stupid mistake as i noticed when reading the logs.
Earlier in a previous dungeon floor, i removed the second ring i was wearing to use the levitation one to move over a river, to cut the levitation effect once i was at destination, i removed the ring, and i just forgot to wear one of my other ones.

All your spells were already at Excellent or better
, and spell hunger isn't that big of a deal. Speaking of which, why weren't you wearing some kind of armor? What kind of failure chances did Greater Demon have, anyways?

I learned due to many death to never underestimate hunger, if food does not seem to be a problem at some point, it will always begin to be when i really need it.
Murphy always find its way for me in Crawl.

To avoid losing chances of success from the demon summons. Reading some time ago that miscasting that kind of demonology spell can lead some of the summons turning on you, as the demons were vastly more powerfull than my characters, i prefered to avoid that.
Same reason i didn't learned Summon Greater Demon, the demons summoned by the Summon Demon were already much more powerfull than i thought, so i prefer not to imagine what a greater demon would have been.
Especially when the description mention the control binding time is smaller than the greater demon life duration.
Having a greater demon turning after an unknown amount of time on my character was not exactly what i wished at the level i was, with perma-death i always avoid testing "how it will turn" when i begin to have a character that reach a nice level. Maybe if i had this in wizard mode i would have not been that reluctant to do that, but couldn't afford the risk in the perma-death mode.

And anyways, didn't you notice SOMETHING was making you lose a bunch of health, slow, and poisoned?

Well, no i didn't noticed, even the low hitpoints warning, as i was being more busy on supporting and circling around my troops to cast my own spells on the monsters that were unleashed from that room.
Another of those stupid mistakes from me.

But that's not worse than in my last fortress in DF, in which i just forgot to build a farm, being busy designing a tower... until i noticed dwarves dying from starvation

[Grendus]

Is there any way to equip arrows without equipping a bow? Is it really possible to summon snakes with arrows? I couldn't get them to summon with javelins.

Edit: nvm, figured it out. You can 'w'ield them, you just have to know their letter in your inventory.

[quinnr]

Or press * to display all items when 'w'ing.

[Grendus]

Interestingly enough, the arrows always produce two snakes, and in the case of poisoned arrows (which I got lucky enough to find) always produce poisonous snakes. Clubs so far have always produced one poisonous snake. I think I preferred the arrows.

[Leafsnail]

Even if they don't follow you down, you can still use em for the current level, or as backup if you need to fall back while being tailed. Nothing says HI THERE like 4 zombie snakes, specially when Siggy is following.

Two Headed-Ogre zombie from a Shadow Imp.  He killed three uniques.

Also, I generally choose Vehumet.  Because I really want a book of demonology.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Summon elemental is a unique skill. I wouldn't use it as a summoner, but as an elementalist it works wonders.

I actually like this spell because it allows digging if you can handle the earth elemental and as you said 5 lv in earth skill and your good anyway.

[Akigagak]

Hmm, after a string of 12 deaths, all to the man honoured in the thread title, I feel a need to say this.

Spoiler: Spoilered for profanity (click to show/hide)

FUCK YOU SIGMUND. FUCK YOU TO FUCKING HELL AND BACK. FUCK YOU WITH YOUR OWN FUCKING SCYTHE. FUCK YOUR BLONDE HAIR, YOUR YELLOW ROBE, FUCK YOUR SPELLS, FUCK YOU!

I WILL MAKE YOUR NEXT DEATH HELL. I WILL FIND A WAY TO HEAL YOU, JUST SO I CAN BEAT YOU TO ALMOST DEATH, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.

THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT, NOT ONE DROP OF BLOOD NOR THREAD OF ROBE NOR METAL OF SCYTHE. I WILL PICK ALL THESE THINGS UP, AND CARRY THEM TO HELL, WHERE I WILL DUMP THEM INTO THE LAVA THAT I FIND THERE.

THERE WILL BE NO EARTHLY TRACE YOU EVER EXISTED, FOR IF I EVER ESCAPE THIS DUNGEON, I WILL TRACE ALL YOUR ANCESTORS, THEN TREAT THEM THE SAME WAY YOU TREATED MY PREDECESSORS.

YOU WILL BE WIPED FROM EXISTENCE.

[Leafsnail]

Need a Familicide spell.  Sigmund would definately get a shot from that.

Actually, I find it funny to watch him get gnawed to death by small mammals.  He's designed to incapacitate and kill one target quickly - he really can't deal with a mob.

[Mr.Person]

Clubs and Giant Clubs can make really good snakes. Like Black Mamba good.

@Robsoie: It'll probably help your future survivability if you turned off Fire Magic and turned on Dodging. I don't know how you managed to get down to D:15 with only 7 AC, 2 EV, and 51 HP.

My main priority was never being in a sword length, my global stratgey was to count on the imp and demons summons to do the shield meat for monsters that were too much for magicdart/throwflame/mephitic.

Trust me, even if that's not the plan, you WILL get into melee range, or something will hit you with a spell, or you'll be facing against an opposing summoner, or whatever, but you will get hit. I think the Red Wasp that killed you is a good explanations: Not only will it be something fast, it'll be something nasty, too.

Then again, as you showed, you can get pretty deep into the dungeon with fragile characters, you just need to treat them as such. You can't let anything powerful in melee hit you. You have to be very careful in places with nasty ranged attackers (Elf, Vault:8 because of dragons, anywhere deep in the dungeon because of dragons and liches), but it can work. I just train Dodging because it's very, very hard to get fragile characters down deep.

I prefered to put every skill points into magic abilities instead of fighting ones, as i always hoped to find by luck some extremely powerfull spells, skills into magic abilities would have then allowed me to learn them better instead of using those points in Dodging .

You were pretty close to starting to get gifts from Vehumet, but I have to warn you: because your Conjurations skill was higher than your Summoning, it would of taken awhile before you started getting Summoning book gifts instead of Conjurations gifts. Vehumet's Summ gifts are ok, but you already had Demonology anyways. Mystic Blast and maybe Venon Bolt are the only spells worth getting from Vehemuts gifts that you could cast.

Only 2 branches? Did you skip Lair? Did you skip Orc?
Yes i skipped those branches, i was just trying to go as low in the main dungeon as possible, as i never went there, this was not a strategy i just wanted to see what kind of monster i could see down there.

Down in the dungeon? That's fair, I guess, but personally I would of suggesting getting the easy exp in Lair, Orc, and Vault:1-7 first. You would of been level 18 or so, more than ready to go to D:27 if you wanted to.

I learned due to many death to never underestimate hunger, if food does not seem to be a problem at some point, it will always begin to be when i really need it.
Murphy always find its way for me in Crawl.

Food isn't a problem in Lair, where nearly everything has clean chunks. Food is only a small problem in Orc, where everything has contaminated chunks. Besides, only INT and Spellcasting matter for spell hunger. The other skills determine your failure rate and power, but not spell hunger. At the very least, you should of had Dodging turned on.

To avoid losing chances of success from the demon summons. Reading some time ago that miscasting that kind of demonology spell can lead some of the summons turning on you, as the demons were vastly more powerfull than my characters, i prefered to avoid that.
Same reason i didn't learned Summon Greater Demon, the demons summoned by the Summon Demon were already much more powerfull than i thought, so i prefer not to imagine what a greater demon would have been.
Especially when the description mention the control binding time is smaller than the greater demon life duration.
Having a greater demon turning after an unknown amount of time on my character was not exactly what i wished at the level i was, with perma-death i always avoid testing "how it will turn" when i begin to have a character that reach a nice level. Maybe if i had this in wizard mode i would have not been that reluctant to do that, but couldn't afford the risk in the perma-death mode.

I can say this with experience: Abjuration is an extremely powerful spell. One cast will reliably get rid of any demon of 3 or less, demons of 2 are likely to be gone with one cast, and demons of 1 usually take two casts to get rid of them, so there's no need to fear the results of "Summon Demon". "Summon Greater Demon" sucks, based on my limited testing. There are better summoning spells, both because you won't have a hostile Executioner hit you a bunch of times and because a large number of tentacled monstosities hit harder anyways.

Eh, just pay more attention next time. Again, I'm very impressed you managed to get such a fragile character down to D:15, much less that you seemed to have nearly cleaned out a vault of some sort. The only things you really need to know are that Lair is really easy and that Dodging skill in valuable for everyone.

Aside: Edmund is Sigmund's brother. Take solice in killing his little bro.

[Robsoie]

Thank you for the detailled reply, that will be helpull in my future attempts to not get kiiled too soon

Is there an "ideal" dodging level you need to reach to not die too quickly with fragile character, or should i leave it turned on everytime ?
On some skills i am always puzzled on when to turn it off, when to leave it on, etc... to not lose allocated points into other skills i may need less later.

I really overlooked Abjuration, now you mention it i should have not, it seems indeed very good to remove those pesky hostile summons.
Thanks for the tip about it, that should come in handy in future expeditions.

I will keep the dodging turned on in mind, probably i would not have lost this promising character if i had some more dodging levels.
It is true that my "hit and run to stair" tactic served me well to stay away from contact, but i can understand now after digesting that failure that indeed it just needed a lack of attention in a specific moment to get this kind of character killed, as monster hit harder the lower i went.
And with bees that are able to cover lots of distance each turns, i should have been even more cautious.

[Mr.Person]

Bees in roguelikes mean death. Wasps mean super-death. Well, unless you've got rP, then they're just death, and bees are annoyances.

I only learned how good Abjuration is recently. To see it in action, go into wizard mode, do & M and type in "Deep Elf Demonologist", then wait for a few demons to show up. Hit & z and type in "Abjuration". Watch the entire hoard disappear. For added fun, note that Abjuration does not affect YOUR summons.

I usually turn Dodging, Shields, Fighting, and Armour off at the beginning of the game until I can kill an Ogre or Sigmund or something about that strong, then I turn off most of my skills when I start killing Yaks. As a FE, this is usually when I can cast Sticky Flame, but you'll have to adjust based on what spells you learn, what weapons you find, and what potions you get.

[Leafsnail]

I just found the book of summonings.

Man, that was lucky.  Now I'll get the demonology book as my first gift.

Hmm... I remember Canine Familiar being useful.  Would Shadow Creatures or Ugly Thing be useful?  Bear in mind I don't yet have the skills to pull of Horrible Things to an adequate standard.

[Leafsnail]

Update: ARGH GODDAMN BLINK FROGS... why were there so many on Lair: 1?

Although I'm slightly cheered up in realising that a Deep Elf Summoner is a DESu.