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[zchris13]

Spriggan strategy:
Ninja everything, win at exp lvl 16.

[agatharchides]

It's true you have more options than just hibernation as an enchanter, and also true that they aren't that much use against, say, a pan lord or even a shadow fiend. Never done demonspawn, though to be honest, where enchanter types start to flag is about where Zot starts. If you want a 3 rune win a stealth enchanter is one of the best, for Pan I'd have to say they are pretty weak.

Of course, if you're doing Pan and the Hells and such, odds are you've branched out by then. A spriggan can easily branch out into other schools of magic, which... at least helps.

That is indeed the case. My original point was the dex characters who rely on stabbing are not OP or even effective in the late game. You can certainly turn a stabbing character into something else and win, but then he isn't really a stabber anymore.

[Robsoie]

Spriggan strategy:
Ninja everything, win at exp lvl 16.

Mentionning that, in the 2010 tourney i noticed some of the best players managed to get a win with the Spriggan Enchanter being only level 14 !
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Jaeger/morgue-Jaeger-20100829-034024.txt
http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.7/qwqw/morgue-qwqw-20100831-235518.txt

Rather amazing.

[ShadeJS]

Congrats. I'm impressed you pulled off a win with such sparse resistances, did you meet many orbs of fire?

I don't really have a reference point for 'many', since it was my first win. My full log says I vanquished 3 orbs of fire. I know I went around a few others. I had a few potions of cure mutations. I'm actually shocked I won with this character between my bad luck with starting air, and the bad luck with items.

[Robsoie]

Finally obtained with my mummy chaos knight of Lugonu a way to get to Abyss without being having to use the power : by killing Sonja and  wielding/unwielding her dagger of distorsion.
And with some luck i found a Lugonu altar very near, and my giant mace was branded.

Additionally, i found a few nice scrolls to enchant it further :

- a +3,+6 great mace of distortion (weapon)

What a very powerfull it is now, if an enemy is more powerfull than my character and can't be killed quickly, lots of chance the brand will either teleport it away or banish it to the Abyss, and even if unlucky the weapon does not kick the enemy out of the view, it can have some good damage bonus with this brand : my mummy have 2 shot-ed several hydras in my exploration of the Lair.

And talking of Lugonu, i noticed with a mummy chaos knight you actually get faith ranks rather quickly, as you don't have to eat, you can sacrifice everything you kill (you get faith from kill+faith from sacrifice), meaning you can get the highest Lugonu faith rank before Lair (as a chaos knigh you start already with this faith if you choose it so you gain a lot of time beginning to earn faith points right from the start of the game).

Corrupt is then rather quickly available to you, and it's definitively a very powerfull help.
I just got the Swamp rune thanks to it, the bunch of neutral demons that comes from the corruption can make short work of hydras and dragons (and a good weapon of distorsion will annihilate the survivors)


Corrupt helped me too in a dungeon floor in which there was a bit too much Ogres near the stairs.

Very fun to play such combo. I'm not sure if the increased GDR (from the website it is apparently doubled in 0. helped a lot, but as i have some very good armor items, with AC 33 currently, it can help the survival of a melee oriented character too.

Though, it seems my mummy is a bit too powerfull and lucky until now, it certainly means Crawl will find a way to kill it soon.

[agatharchides]

Congrats. I'm impressed you pulled off a win with such sparse resistances, did you meet many orbs of fire?

I don't really have a reference point for 'many', since it was my first win. My full log says I vanquished 3 orbs of fire. I know I went around a few others. I had a few potions of cure mutations. I'm actually shocked I won with this character between my bad luck with starting air, and the bad luck with items.

Last night I lost a character that in lich form had full resistance to cold, fire, negative energy, poison and electricity. Blast dispel undead.  I've never done Zot with less than 2 levels of fire resistance due to the orbs of fire, most of my endgame chars have at least 2 dots in each resistance category and resist mutation if at all possible. Of course I will give up a lot of AC for resistances, others preferences may vary. Still, well done.

[Leafsnail]

That is indeed the case. My original point was the dex characters who rely on stabbing are not OP or even effective in the late game. You can certainly turn a stabbing character into something else and win, but then he isn't really a stabber anymore.

I would have to strongly disagree.

For one thing, you can still knock out Demonspawn with Ensorcelled.

For another, Englaciation can easily put a golden dragon to sleep if your skill is high enough.

[ShadeJS]

Congrats. I'm impressed you pulled off a win with such sparse resistances, did you meet many orbs of fire?

I don't really have a reference point for 'many', since it was my first win. My full log says I vanquished 3 orbs of fire. I know I went around a few others. I had a few potions of cure mutations. I'm actually shocked I won with this character between my bad luck with starting air, and the bad luck with items.

Last night I lost a character that in lich form had full resistance to cold, fire, negative energy, poison and electricity. Blast dispel undead.  I've never done Zot with less than 2 levels of fire resistance due to the orbs of fire, most of my endgame chars have at least 2 dots in each resistance category and resist mutation if at all possible. Of course I will give up a lot of AC for resistances, others preferences may vary. Still, well done.

Oh, I also had a decent stock of potions of resistances, and wasn't shy about running back to Zot:4 to rest. I think I ate about 10 Royal Jellies (or whatever they were) in addition to chunks to clear all of Zot. This was the first caster where I got a medium shield off the ground while still being able to cast things (and I never found any decent robes so I was in leather), and I think the shield helped a lot. I burned a mountain of consumables across Zot.

I usually like Icy Elves (I <3 Freezing Cloud), so actually winning was a shock.

edit: The single most tedious part of this run was that I got stuck on 19 healing potions after clearing down to Zot:1 and I really wanted to get that Imp his 20 potions. I ended up Abyss scumming for it, found one, got some mutations, but never found the Abyssal rune.

[Narmio]

Dude, I seriously still don't know what you mean.

"There are choices here that make no fucking sense, [choices that would probably not be enjoyable for you to play, and] as to why you would ever in your right mind choose them... [Whatever.] So press this button to avoid those shitty choices. [-the dev team]"
I'm asking the question of why put the shitty options in there in the first place if you're going to straight-out tell me to avoid that, apparently, shit choice? Why not just display only the viable species and classes right off the bat.

But then i ask myself, why even have anything BUT character species and character classes that are viable? Then i posted here.

Are you saying if a game says you *can* be a Troll Wizard, but suggests it's a bad idea, it's broken horrible terrible game design?  You know in DF you can start with seven soapmaker/organisers and no items but precious gems.  And it won't even tell you that's a bad idea! Now, you can play like that, and prosper, but it'll be more challenging.  The word choice is a little innacurate, "recommended" would be better than "viable", but that's all it is. I can't help but feel that you're overreacting to what is a very common game design feature: letting you challenge yourself by starting suboptimally.

PS:  Everyone saying that you can't win with a melee user without spells, I posted a KoBe win literally three pages ago.  I used evasion-based melee, stealth, scrolls/pots/wands and Go Berserk/Brothers in Arms.  And in the Orb Chamber it was tricky to get much use out of the last two.  And that was my first win.

[Frumple]

PS:  Everyone saying that you can't win with a melee user without spells, I posted a KoBe win literally three pages ago.  I used evasion-based melee, stealth, scrolls/pots/wands and Go Berserk/Brothers in Arms.  And in the Orb Chamber it was tricky to get much use out of the last two.  And that was my first win.

Hello, you little berserky hybrid, you. Now try that without Trog.

Th'thing I'm harping on isn't that you can't win with a pure melee/tank build -- though if there's been a straight up melee + armor and/or dodging atheist/spell-less victor, I'd love to see that produced (I suspect it's not possible ) -- it's that everything outside of the gods and spellcasting doesn't get the same sort of progression that god-gifts and spells get. Gods, spells, and invocations have emergent behavior. Everything else does not. This could be made otherwise without noticeably impacting balance. For example, there's various cutoffs in the melee abilities after which th'speed boost literally does nothing -- stop pointlessly reducing speed delay and toss in some sort of appropriately themed ability instead. Or just toss in the ability anyway, whate'er.

It's an unnecessary asymmetry that prevents victoriously running thematically interesting builds (re: atheist non-caster tank). It's also showing that less love and attention is being given to the non-casters and godless (or god-limited) builds, which is both somewhat disappointing and a waste of potential. The devs could be fitting a lot of interesting mechanics in there, that meaningfully add to the breadth and depth of Crawl's gameplay. It's always kinda' disheartening to see potential wasted.

[beorn080]

Trimmed

I'd like to add to this quote and say there is a REASON demigods are considered one of the worst races in DC, despite stellar stats.

[Narmio]

PS:  Everyone saying that you can't win with a melee user without spells, I posted a KoBe win literally three pages ago.  I used evasion-based melee, stealth, scrolls/pots/wands and Go Berserk/Brothers in Arms.  And in the Orb Chamber it was tricky to get much use out of the last two.  And that was my first win.

Hello, you little berserky hybrid, you. Now try that without Trog.

Stealth I'll grant you is a hybridisation.  But god powers are just part of the game. Why try to win without them except as a challenge?  That's just not the game Crawl is.  You have your base damage-dealing method, then your other skills, most of which are buffs or means of escape.  Any extra means of escape you can get your hands on is of value, regardless of how slim your chances or bad your aptitudes.  Surely not taking advantage of them when it might save your life is just playing badly.  Or to put that less confrontationally: valuing your personally-imposed challenge restrictions above the life of your character.  Which is fine, go ahead and do it, but don't complain it makes things harder.

Th'thing I'm harping on isn't that you can't win with a pure melee/tank build -- though if there's been a straight up melee + armor and/or dodging atheist/spell-less victor, I'd love to see that produced (I suspect it's not possible ) -- it's that everything outside of the gods and spellcasting doesn't get the same sort of progression that god-gifts and spells get. Gods, spells, and invocations have emergent behavior. Everything else does not. This could be made otherwise without noticeably impacting balance. For example, there's various cutoffs in the melee abilities after which th'speed boost literally does nothing -- stop pointlessly reducing speed delay and toss in some sort of appropriately themed ability instead. Or just toss in the ability anyway, whate'er.

It's an unnecessary asymmetry that prevents victoriously running thematically interesting builds (re: atheist non-caster tank). It's also showing that less love and attention is being given to the non-casters and godless (or god-limited) builds, which is both somewhat disappointing and a waste of potential. The devs could be fitting a lot of interesting mechanics in there, that meaningfully add to the breadth and depth of Crawl's gameplay. It's always kinda' disheartening to see potential wasted.

Thing is, I don't compare "straight up melee" to "straight up spellcaster".  A better analogy is "straight up melee" to "straight up conjurer".  It's quite hard to win only ever memorising direct damage spells.  That's the limit you're imposing on yourself by going pure melee.  Melee + mid-game low-level buff spells is, to me, the same level of diversification as conjuration/summoning + low-level buff spells.  The idea of a character who does not use spells or activated magical effects at all is something you've imposed on the Crawl universe externally.  It's clearly not how the game is supposed to be played, regardless of our preconceived notions.  You're not expected to just focus on your damage-dealing skills at the exclusion of everything else (typically that's melee or conjurations, but let's not forget archery and summonings).

[beorn080]

Thing is, I don't compare "straight up melee" to "straight up spellcaster".  A better analogy is "straight up melee" to "straight up conjurer".  It's quite hard to win only ever memorising direct damage spells.  That's the limit you're imposing on yourself by going pure melee.  Melee + mid-game low-level buff spells is, to me, the same level of diversification as conjuration/summoning + low-level buff spells.  The idea of a character who does not use spells or activated magical effects at all is something you've imposed on the Crawl universe externally.  It's clearly not how the game is supposed to be played, regardless of our preconceived notions.  You're not expected to just focus on your damage-dealing skills at the exclusion of everything else (typically that's melee or conjurations, but let's not forget archery and summonings).

Except said conjurer can still have zero in other casting skill and still be able to bust out blink or butterflies or spammels since it has a high spellcasting skill. The fighter, even with 27 fight skill, gets no new means of escape it can pick up easily. It either has to branch out to evokations, invocations, or spellcasting to get escape abilities, unless you count trog.

[Virroken]

The idea of a character who does not use spells or activated magical effects at all is something you've imposed on the Crawl universe externally.  It's clearly not how the game is supposed to be played, regardless of our preconceived notions.  You're not expected to just focus on your damage-dealing skills at the exclusion of everything else (typically that's melee or conjurations, but let's not forget archery and summonings).

Counterpoint: MDFi.

[Soadreqm]

Except said conjurer can still have zero in other casting skill and still be able to bust out blink or butterflies or spammels since it has a high spellcasting skill. The fighter, even with 27 fight skill, gets no new means of escape it can pick up easily. It either has to branch out to evokations, invocations, or spellcasting to get escape abilities, unless you count trog.

Couterpoint: Any character can learn enough magic to bust out blink or butterflies or spammals. That's what hybrids are all about.

Anyway, I think that making magic powers an integral part of the game is an entirely valid design choice. Being able to warp the laws of nature with your mind makes the game easier, and that's just how the world works in this particular instance.