Topic: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND. (Read 1682921 times)

Zorgn · « **Reply #3795 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:16:40 am »

Just saw my first altar to Jiyva. Ever. It's on D:2

I am playing a mummy. Thanks, Xom.

Leafsnail · « **Reply #3796 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:01:17 pm »

Well, that's the Decaying Rune down. At level 17... I swear I'm normally lower when that happens. Hmm.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm thinking of doing Shoals next, since it's meant to be easy (and having Flight should make it even easier). After that... Vaults, I guess?

Mindmaker · « **Reply #3797 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:09:34 pm »

Spoiler: My recent character (click to show/hide)

I still have some problems with establishing a stash.
For example, how much food should I carry with me at all times (had 25 honeycombs as a spriggan)?
What are the must have potions and wands and how much should I take with me?
What else do I need?

DJ · « **Reply #3798 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:16:32 pm »

Just lost a decent HuWz. He just got Summon Demon and Haste before he died. My plan was to haste my summons. Anyone tried that, and how well does it work?

Also, how the hell am I supposed to train Earth Magic? There's like no low level Earth Spells. I really want to summon elementals, and earth elementals are the only ones realistically attainable (air has too high requirements, water and fire are never there when you need them).

Dr.Feelgood · « **Reply #3799 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:44:44 pm »

Quote from: Von Krieger on September 28, 2010, 10:44:25 pm

Well, wow. This is the furthest I've ever gotten a character. Swamp and Shoals were a total breeze, the Elven Halls, however, consumed almost all my resources. I think I need to go and gain some more XP and work myself up to casting Alister's Intoxication and Haste, but I'm not sure how to do that.

Can anyone offer me some advice on what to do now?

Suggestions:

- Try out Simulacrum. It's a really fun spell. Chop up a corpse, wield the chunks, and cast. Summoning several golden/shadow dragon, titan, or giant ice zombies at once is great.
- Turn off Maces & Flails, Armor, Short Blades, Shields, Stabbing, Stealth, and Poison Magic.
- Increase Air Magic to 5 or 6.
- Clear the Crypt.
- Train enchantments to 15.

Vault:8 should be easy for you, since you're immune to shadow dragons' draining attack. You may want rElec, since there are a few titans there. Do you have Clarity? Intoxication will confuse you too if you don't.

Quote from: Leafsnail on September 29, 2010, 01:01:17 pm

Well, that's the Decaying Rune down. At level 17... I swear I'm normally lower when that happens. Hmm.
I'm thinking of doing Shoals next, since it's meant to be easy (and having Flight should make it even easier). After that... Vaults, I guess?

Yeah, the Shoals and Vaults should be easy for your character. Good luck!

Quote from: Mindmaker on September 29, 2010, 01:09:34 pm

I still have some problems with establishing a stash.
For example, how much food should I carry with me at all times (had 25 honeycombs as a spriggan)?
What are the must have potions and wands and how much should I take with me?
What else do I need.

I go by 5s when it comes to food, potions, and scrolls. I always carry stuff that is useful for battles and leave everything else in my stash. Don't bother stashing books, manuals, and other stuff monsters never touch. You can search for them using Ctrl+f.

I suggest adding this to your init.txt (settings folder), if you worship Nemelex:

Code: [Select]

: if you.god() == "Nemelex Xobeh" then
   autoinscribe = weapon|missile:!D
: end

This will prevent weapons and ammo from being sacrificed.

Quote from: DJ on September 29, 2010, 01:16:32 pm

Just lost a decent HuWz. He just got Summon Demon and Haste before he died. My plan was to haste my summons. Anyone tried that, and how well does it work?

Also, how the hell am I supposed to train Earth Magic? There's like no low level Earth Spells. I really want to summon elementals, and earth elementals are the only ones realistically attainable (air has too high requirements, water and fire are never there when you need them).

It doubles their usefulness. Hasting bone dragons and tentacled monstrosities is awesome. Summon Demon (and most demon-summoning spells) kinda suck. I usually train Earth Magic by victory dancing with Sandblast, Stoneskin or Stone Arrow.

DJ · « **Reply #3800 on:** September 29, 2010, 01:51:43 pm »

Yeah, I think I mostly died at Snake 2 because I was casting Summon Demon. It's ridiculously awesome when you get that demon that summons an army of lesser demons, but sucks when you get most of the other ones. What sucks even more is when you get a hostile demon that summons demons, but luckily I had Abjuration for that. I really should've stuck with Shadow Creatures. It's kinda embarrassing to die to a Naga Mage after I killed Agnes, Nikola, Duane and Rupert.

Another thing I considered is making an army of abominations with Twisted Resurrection and then hasting them. Since they're permanent and can be taken across levels, I would be guaranteed to have a good army to buff with just one Recall.

Mindmaker · « **Reply #3801 on:** September 29, 2010, 07:02:29 pm »

Quote from: Dr.Feelgood on September 29, 2010, 01:44:44 pm

I go by 5s when it comes to food, potions, and scrolls. I always carry stuff that is useful for battles and leave everything else in my stash. Don't bother stashing books, manuals, and other stuff monsters never touch.

It's still too heavy

ChairmanPoo · « **Reply #3802 on:** September 29, 2010, 07:37:19 pm »

One of the things I love about transmuters is their inherent Sigmund resistance (which comes from having a mephitic cloud substitute from level 2)

Vampire transmuters are particularily good (even if they can only use the shapechanging spells while satiated, which requires lost of blood and rings of satiation to do for any practical ammount of time) because blood potions are quite good for evaporate: 33% chance you'll get mephitic, 33% fire, and 33% steam. I've found they work particularily well with kiku because summon corpses is nice in a pinch (for distillation or bottle blood, when applicable) and because the ease of accesing necromancy spells (in particular, vampiric draining and harm)

I cleansed elven halls (well, level 1) without a fuss with one of these vamps. THen died because I was not patient enough to mephitize Kirke before engaging her. AKA: death by hubris

... tbh, a good deal of my good characters (as opposed to the ones that die in level 1 or 2) tend to have hubris as cause of death...

Taxus · « **Reply #3803 on:** September 29, 2010, 11:17:23 pm »

Quote

Don't bother stashing books, manuals, and other stuff monsters never touch. You can search for them using Ctrl+f.

I humbly submit that it's nice to have your books in a place where jellies do not spawn, like the Hive.

I lay out all my books on Hive:1, with one book per square. That way, when I want to find a particular spell, I ctrl-f search for the spell name, and I can auto-walk right to the square that has the book with that spell. Plus it looks awesome.

Mindmaker · « **Reply #3804 on:** September 30, 2010, 07:39:07 am »

I've got the pestilence version of the swamp vault.
Great.

How the hell am I supposed to survive that?

Frumple · « **Reply #3805 on:** September 30, 2010, 07:58:06 am »

Depends on what resources you've got. One of my spriggans looted the place by leading 90% of its contents out of the inner core of the building, killing them in the general swamp area, then using blink (which won't land you in a miasma cloud) + teleport control to get past the clouds. Fireball around the corner killed the oklob, dispel undead and mystic blast took care of lingering enemies.

It was an absolute beast of a fight -- harder than when my winning SpEn took on vault:8 -- but it was doable. If you've got access to something that can destroy stone walls, you'll have an easier time, I think. No idea if LRD or Shatter (if by some miracle you can cast it at this point) would work on the vault's walls. Burning down some of the surrounding trees helped, too, though I don't remember why.

If you're some poor melee sucker, I guess throw rocks at things to lead them out and pray you have a decent holy weapon? The bone dragon's probably going to wreck the hell out of you. Once everything's dead, you can charge through the miasma clouds and get torn to shreds by the waiting oklob and whatever wouldn't let themselves be lured out. I'd probably suggest going and doing something else

You could burn a couple blink scrolls getting in and out, I guess.

Casters have an easier time, at least if they can outrun the vault's contents (Swiftness, haste, spriggan, centaur, blink + telecontrol) and have dispel undead and some high accuracy spell to deal with the wisps. You'll probably want decent rN, just in case the RNG decides to give you death drakes.

Looking back at the git branch maps, it's kind of a rip that there's one vault that's nothing but hydras and swamp drakes (a joke, at the point you make it to the bottom of the swamp), and then the pestilence and ice vaults, which can be harder to get through than V:8, Elf:7, and similar such nasties. These are not equivalent challenges $:-\$

Mindmaker · « **Reply #3806 on:** September 30, 2010, 08:11:23 am »

I was a spriggan artificer.

I hoped I could get some lucky cards out of my legendary decks of dungeons and deck of escape, but didn't.
I tried rushing in grabbing as much as I could and getting out of there, but I got surrounded, levitation ran out before the teleport kicked in and the I drowned.

It turned out I had 2 scrolls of holy word in my inventory...

I really liked that character and his short sword of speed +7, +7.
Here are the ressources I had:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh and is it worth to learn some spells with a spriggan artificer?
I thought Mephitic Cloud would be useful in some branches but I wasted a lot of points training it to excellent.

Frumple · « **Reply #3807 on:** September 30, 2010, 08:30:41 am »

Yeah... you were seriously not prepared to go taking on a rune vault. At all.

As a Nemelex worshiper, you should have had at least a couple of ornate (preferably legendary) summon decks and a five stacked ornate or better escape deck -- and/or two or more escape decks you could draw-three from in a pinch. You should have explored the entirety of lair before attempting the rune and probably got down to D:12-15 -- or deeper -- for more experience and loot.

Relying on non-castable levitation is generally a seriously bad idea; as you noticed, it will cut off at the worst time and kill you. You can't reapply the effect if you can't cast it; invokable items won't let you reapply mid-effect. Cutting off experience focus on conjuration and letting spellcasting go up would have let you cast most low-level spells with decent success and hunger rates; sprigs have poor aptitude for conjuration, but excellent apts for casting. Getting some casting ability is generally never a bad idea (Exception being high-end heavy armor, i.e. GDA.), and sprigs are pretty much perfect for utility dabbling, if they're not already a primary caster.

Turning off short blades would have been a good idea, probably right when you started the game. You were probably one round from being instakilled by the bone dragon wandering around in there. More HP (at least a hundred) via fighting and levels would have been a good idea. You also had basically nothing taking advantage of the whole evocations thing. You probably should have waited until you had a few decent rods, or at least a better windfall of offensive wands.

As a general statement, you were just seriously, seriously not prepared for what you tried to do. Actually succeeding and surviving would have been a small scale miracle. More HP, better defenses (At least rN++ and rPois for taking pestilence, regardless as to if you have clarity), more dakka, better escape options. Not having any blink scrolls for emergency escape should have been the first red flag among many that you shouldn't have been doing what you were doing. Pestilence is at the very least tied for the hardest swamp end, and you probably would have had trouble with the easiest one with your kit.

Sorry man, it was a sad end. You can do better, yeah. You will, at some point in the future /nod

Mindmaker · « **Reply #3808 on:** September 30, 2010, 08:39:18 am »

Well it always a bit hard to decide if I should just follow the dungeon, go into a branch or in a sub branch of it.
I was doing fine in the swamp so I continued going down that path.

I had a stash of rods, but I left most of the offensive wands behind, as I didn't found them that usefull and I simply couldn't carry them.

Frumple · « **Reply #3809 on:** September 30, 2010, 08:56:13 am »

Well, the big thing to remember is that you don't have to explore a branch to its end, just 'cause you're in it. As a general rule, you'll want to explore the dungeon until you run into the lair, which you explore to the very end -- or until something vicious (uniques, death yak swarms, etc) shows up -- or something dangerous blocking your way further into the dungeon. Once you've cleared out the lair and possibly the orc mines (and maybe parts of elf if you've got decent MR and rF+C) and gotten as far into the main dungeon as you safely can, then -- and pretty much only then -- do you start testing the waters on the rune branches.

Even with cleaning out rune branches, you don't attempt the rune until you've explored pretty much everything else you can to the fullest extent you're able, at least until you're seriously familiar with crawl and what you're able to get away with. I'm certainly not, even with a win under the belt, and so everything possible gets cleared out before any attempts on rune vaults. They're pretty much specifically set up to wreck you if you attempt them as soon as you possibly could -- and so you don't, until you're better prepared.

Do not be afraid to run away and go do something else. Just because things are going well does not mean they will continue to go well. You will run into situations you cannot overcome with your current resources, at which point you either go away until you can or you die. The former choice, cowardice, is preferred

Getting used to when you go to certain depths and branches is definitely one of the mid-upper level techniques of Crawl playing, though. Certainly takes time to get a feel for it.

Re: Wand stash; branch ends are basically the entire reason that you're stocking those things. Next time, if you've got wands in your stash when you attempt to take a rune vault, go back, pick up the better ones and then use them. You could have dumped most of your scrolls (ID, enchant, fog, etc; the ones that wouldn't have specifically helped you survive.), some of your potions (Agility, berserk rage), and most of your food (Sprig wouldn't have needed more than two rations to clean out a rune vault and get back to the stash) to make room for them. Swapping the poly wand for a higher-tier damage wand (especially fire or lightning, in the pestilence case) would have been a good idea. Definitely should have kept the better rods, whatever they may have been, around. The main point of running a Nemelex artificer is to use those rods to pump evocations through the roof and get ridiculous effects from the cards your dungeon vacuuming is producing.

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Author Topic: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND. (Read 1682921 times)

Zorgn

Re: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND.

Leafsnail

Re: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND.

Mindmaker

Re: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND.

DJ

Re: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. Or: THAT DAMN SIGMUND.

Dr.Feelgood

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DJ

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Mindmaker

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ChairmanPoo

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Taxus

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Mindmaker

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Frumple

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Mindmaker

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Frumple

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Mindmaker

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Frumple

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