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[Mr Space Cat]

Taking a break from my orc priest since managing an orc horde can get old fast. Plus a bunch of my awesome knights drowned from confusion in the water branch, no biggie.

Tried playing some random chaos knights. Xom can actually be pretty helpful. The first knight I got was a troll, I died pretty fast after Xom got bored and spawned a bunch of demons. Then I got a felid knight. Died twice to some orc priests blasting me.

Currently got a demonspawn chaos knight. Chaos Knights seem like they'd be hardest in early game since Xom could easily screw you over. Once you get good gear and some wands, potions, or scrolls for panic moments it can be (relatively) smooth sailing. Plus my demonic mutations help keep Xom amused and keep me at minimal risk of crazy shenanigans. Otherwise I keep some unidentified scrolls or potions to use to ward off Xom's boredom. From my experience Xom's boredom always leads to some sort of dangerous crap.

[lemon10]

I have to disagree. It seems to me that his danger is a function of time. If you are getting into a dangerous situation, then there is a chance Xom will change it from survivable->OH CRAP really fast. He probably won't in any given one (or any given 5), but as you get into more over time, the odds that this will happen increases.

For example: Back in the last tourny a pretty well known player was fighting one of the hell bosses on a 15 runer, and he got transmuted into a ice beast and got instakilled cause he lost all his fire resistance.

Yeah, stuff that bad is fairly unlikely but stuff nearly that bad will probably happen, and even with lots of survival options in regular circumstances you can easily get into situations where you are trapped without any way to survive.

[Graven]

Aw man I wanted to tell about 78291's Icebeast death.

But yeah, generally the safest gods are the most predictable ones - Trog/Okawaru, the holy gods and Sif/Vehumet. Xom is probably the most dangerous god to worship on longer runs.

The funny thing about resistances are that you can actually do any pre-endgame branch in the game without its respective resistance [and you can certainly do post-endgame - I saw a dude run a Demigod hunter with 0 fire resistance through Gehenna] - the hardest is, of course, Elf without magic resistance, but I've done it [worked like a charm. Yep. Absolutely no quadruple-abyssings in a row. No surree] - you just need to minimize risks and maximize kill-dudeing per AUT.

The recommended resistances are : rPoison for Spider, rMagic for Elf, rN+ for Crypt [the new crypt monsters are balls]
The "I actually want to have fun in this branch" resistances are : rPois for Lair [spiny frogs and mambas], Snake, Swamp; Clarity for Spider; rN+++ for Vaults:5 [shadow dragons], rCorr for Slime.

Other than that, the generally accepted new-player advice to facilitate less pre-temple deaths is :
- Don't fight enemies in unexplored territory.
- Weaken enemies via ranged attacks [carry all the clubs and knives to throw, needles are great with 0 skill, etc etc]
- rest until healed after every fight - screw the turncount, it only comes into play when you actually win.
- General branch order : Dungeon till Lair; Lair till L:8; Dungeon till Vauls OR Orc till Orc:4; the other one, Dungeon till D:20, Branches till branch ends; branch ends; Dungeon till D:27.
- General principle : advance into your chosen branch until you start meeting serious threats, then leave and do another branch till you start meeting serious threats - this maximises experience and item gains while minimizing risk.
- Learn what is dangerous no matter how strong you are [Ettins in melee, Erolcha, Louise, Mara, Mennas, etc] and deal accordingly.
- RUN
- Use ID wands, there shouldn't be any permanent damage from IDing wands on yourself in a controlled environment anymore
- Wait until you have a stack of 3+ potions and drink ID until discovering Curing and Heal Wounds, scroll-ID the rest [you'll learn pain when you realise you quaff-IDed the only potion of cure mutation the game decided to generate this run]
- Read ID scrolls - 3 scrolls only require items - Identify/Enchant Armour/Recharging.
-  http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/bots

Also somewhat late post, but Tompliss, be careful wield-IDing weapons because both Trog and Okawaru are especially fond of their treasured Distortiongifts.

[tilkau]

@ Mr Space Cat:
You may want to try playing trunk, because in trunk the 'Priest' class has been replaced by the ability (via 'a') to convert to Beogh whenever an orc priest is in LOS, if you're a Hill Orc or Lava Orc, regardless of your class. Or to put it another way, any orc-species build can become Orc Jesus, rather than being constrained to the Priest start. I haven't tried this option yet because I find permanent allies annoying, but there's quite a few good looking options.

[forsaken1111]

Does Orc Jesus turn blood into wine?

[Gamerlord]

@ Mr Space Cat:
You may want to try playing trunk, because in trunk the 'Priest' class has been replaced by the ability (via 'a') to convert to Beogh whenever an orc priest is in LOS, if you're a Hill Orc or Lava Orc, regardless of your class. Or to put it another way, any orc-species build can become Orc Jesus, rather than being constrained to the Priest start. I haven't tried this option yet because I find permanent allies annoying, but HOHe seems like a particularly complementary combo to use for it.

Lava Orc has... problems with orcish followers. Namely, their tendency to die from the heat. Are monster Lava Orcs in the game yet?

[tilkau]

^ Nope, you're playing an old build. LO heat aura is permanently suppressed if you're Orc Jesus. Which is kind of weird, but it works. And you still get the other benefits of heating up like rF.
No enemy LO yet.

^^ No, but he does walk on water at *****. piety

[Gamerlord]

Oh, cool.

[joemoben]

I have been playing the hell out of Djinni lately as Necromancer and Summoner and I love and hate the species so much. It can take so many more hits than other species, but at the same time can take much less. It's a catch twenty-two: Cast more because you are in a tight spot, but if that doesn't work out, you are in a much tighter spot.

[Gamerlord]

Djinni fighters work pretty damn well for me, since the potions of mana/magic/whatever that are useless for other fighters work like healing potions for them.

[joemoben]

Sometimes I feel sad because I don't ever want to play fighters for some reason, and yet I rarely (if ever) see a a caster that has won the game in logs. Hell, I'm lucky if I get to D:10 in my games. I've been playing this game for over a year damn it, it should be get easier at some point right?

[tompliss]

You should try some "fightery" characters sometime, as some of them are pretty "castery" :
The Minotaur Monk (of okawaru, TSO, or other classic god), and I think the Deep Dwarves, are fun with their high evocation skill.
You get a tanky melee character, with 10 wands and other special item (efreet bottle, disc of storm,...) that let you do anything you want

[Gamerlord]

I wish 'chaotic magic' was a thing. Like, having a set of effects (Damage, Buff, Debuff, Fire, Ice, Air, Earth) and each casting randomly choosing one of those spells. It would also be awesome if more weapon artifacts had an evoke thing.

[tompliss]

Oh, by the way, is there any thing about the "random" brand of weapon and Xom ?
I'm thinking about getting some staff-oriented fighter, stealing the staff of chaos from  Crazy Yiuf

[vogonpoet]

Crazy Yiuf's staff is quite hard hitting, but it also hastes and makes invisible your enemies, which is not great. Its fun for a while, but ultimately, choas is not a good brand at all. The good new is, vanilla quarterstaves are awesome, and will do you fine until you meet Fannar, or preferably, Agnes.