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[Antioch]

How hard are the shoals? It is the only dungeon branch I have never been to.

[Frumple]

Hrm, almost forgot, heh.

Daily Death-gest, though a few hours late:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Minotaur Healer: Sigmund. Actually, the dying started when I did something silly and backstabbed (well, attempted to slow) an enslaved Edmund, which caused Elvy-whatever to get ticked. Oh well.

Naga Crusader: Hobgoblin about 20 turns into the game. Also a giant gecko and a second hobgob more or less waiting right outside the starting room.

Round two dies to a giant bettle, mostly due to sleep deprevation and not remembering -- or checking -- on what wa in my inventory. Shame, it was going pretty well...

Kenku Paladin: Slave. Guess I shoulda' pulled out the frost wand when my hp got low, or somethin'. S'kinda' annoying considering I'd killed two other ones without really taking damage. Bright side, fellow got the last fruit I needed for the basket. Meaning in death?

Human Monk: Orc Wizard, apparently. I'unno what happened.

Ogre Ice Elementalist: Signs point to jackel. No bloody clue.

Deep Elf Paladin: Wrecked early on by a... hobgoblin. Didn't even make the 200th turn.

Demonspawn Fighter: Dowan, spitting a 20 damage icicle (I guess). The D-siblings and sigmund were both of D:4. Got Siggy and the sister, then Dowan flipping and wasted me. Was a shame (And potentially preventable, had I chilled and recharged the venom rod I found), dude found some neat loot for that point in the game. Duv-whatever marks another unique, at least.

Demonspawn Wanderer: Snake. Forget how, I think.

DS Wanderer round two: Gnoll'd. There were probably eight of the bloody things on D:4, and th'poor blighter couldn't kill one at the time, much less more than that. Naturally, they were between me and stairs down, too. Argh.

Naga enchanter and paladin go down pretty quickly, to a player ghost (argh) and Jessica, respectively. Ghoul warper gets ate about five seconds in by a hobgoblin

Most of my runs have been were fairly ignoble today yesterday. Got a human wizard that's trucking along, though. Can't bloody wait for Vehemut to give me some freaking books. My primary magic damage is still through throw frost and magic dart, and I'm hitting midway lair, I think. I've got fireball too (which's been helping on things that resist the cloud), but it eats too much food still to use it often; it's the only spell I've got memorized that causes hunger at the moment. The real killer for this'un's been a bloody blowpipe, though, and probably >100 poisoned needles, mulched down 55 or so. Feels bloody flimsy, and damage is starting to lag horrendously. Sucks to burn most of my mana to kill a single critter. Still, enough spell variaty to take most things I've ran into, so far, and get the blazes away from everything else. Now if only I could find a source of resistance... any resistance.

Re: Shoals, I'unno. Never been there, but the wiki page sounds scary. EDIT: Naturally, after saying that, it's the first lair branch I find. No, wait, I found the swamp first. Still argh, though. Wiki says it's supposed to be tougher than th'pit.

Ninja edit: Mystic blast is now hungerless. This is freaking delightful.

[Empty]

Being inside the ##crawl channel on freenode is a great help during crawling.

You can ask up a lot of tips about monsters/items/spells/abilities/branches/etc by putting ?? before what you're interested in.

For example ??sigmund or ??shoals or ??tome of destruction
Sometimes there are multiple tips. For the seconds or third or etc just put

• behind the command. (replace x with number)

You can get the actual monster data by using @?

for example @?sigmund or @?orc priest

[Antioch]

I died running from mara, after which I ran into a horde of centaurs in an open field, after which I ran into an ice dragon, who I managed to paralyze and then ran into margreth who finished me with a firebolt.

[Blyxx]

I've found the end of shoals to be harder than the other lair branches except slime.  There are a lot of javelin throwers and "aquamancers" who shoot balls of steam, throw icicles, and knock you around with waves of water.  The crowning pain there is the unique Ilsiuw (sp?), who can do the aquamancer stuff plus flood the level alarmingly fast, plus turn invisible.  When I find shoals, I look for the rune asap, it will be in one of the little "rooms" you'll find.  Each room seems to have a single piece of fairly good loot in it as well.

Watch out for the kraken!  If you see it, try to get away from water asap.  If you want to fight one, position yourself so only one water tile is adjacent to you and be ready to chase it down over deep water to kill it because it will flee very quickly once low on hp.

[LASD]

I died running from mara, after which I ran into a horde of centaurs in an open field, after which I ran into an ice dragon, who I managed to paralyze and then ran into margreth who finished me with a firebolt.

If it's any consolation, your ghost almost killed me just now. I laid the unlucky fellow to rest with dispel undead afterwards though.

2 points for Blacksmiths. 

[Robsoie]

Usually, when i walk back into my wall then in its back, the hydra is stopped by the wandering mushroom and fight them, supported by my casting of magic darts.
It has worked very well in Lair.

But in Swamp, i found a smart hydra, so smart that it understood that to kill me it should circle around my wall of wandering mushroom, something i never saw happening with all the hydra i killed previously
And of course doing that it hit me once, so i moved in the other side of my mushroom guys, and the hydra circled again to attack me.

Convenientely it was the time my wandering mushroom decided to be totally ineffective, as the hydra was always nearly at full health despite the barrage of punches.

So i thought to let that bunch of stupid fungus there and use my blink spell to get out of the hydra way.

Then you know sometime when you need to input a command and there are already several message so you need to press a key to see more, sometime i could swear the game forget to give me my turn and give a free 2nd turn to the attacker, i believe this happens most of the time when i am attacked on a stair.
And it was exactly a time like this except i was not on a stair, the hydra made its attacks, the mushroom did theirs, "press key for more", and instead of me being able to actually do my action, it was again a whole bunch of free attacks from the hydra.

And of course result was death.

I should have gone to Orc Mines to make a few more levels before Swamp and this damned "smart" hydra.

At least that was my highest score so far, unfortunately nothing i did in this good run added anything to the team score.
Always need a rambutan to complete my fruit basket.

[Blyxx]

The slimy rune is mine!  I didn't let the Royal Jelly get close, haste plus 8 shots from a wand of fire (while I backed away) and 7 shots from a wand of lightning (while he fled) killed him, and I backed into his little cave and melee'd his spawns to death there.  It's worth noting that the inner walls of level 6 of the slime pit are not acidic like the rest of the walls.  I also cleared out the vestibule of Hell, adding Geryon to my collection of Unique heads.  I think I'm going to head into Zot and get as much use as I can out of my remaining curare needles (and hopefully use the Manual of Fighting I found to get some extra HP under my belt), then switch to TSO and clear out Crypt and Tomb. *eyes stash of flaming sling bullets*  Burn, mummies, burn!

[Robsoie]

Wow, getting the slime rune and killing the royal jelly with all those acid splashes everywhere is impressive, congratulations.

[Soadreqm]

How hard are the shoals? It is the only dungeon branch I have never been to.

I think the upper levels are fairly reasonable, assuming you can fly. Then, on the bottommost floor, you will be torn to tiny bits by merfolk aquamancers.

And congratulations on your slimy rune. I've been too afraid of the Royal Jelly to even contemplate trying to get it.

[Daenar]

Good job all - keep it up!

I've just snagged my first rune of the tournament (from Swamp) with a MiBe, but then I delved too deep looking for some form of rPois for Snake, and ran into Mara.  I don't believe I've ever met her before - and I'm not likely to forget that encounter. 

For some reason I'm having a tough time finding poison resist with all of my characters.

Being inside the ##crawl channel on freenode is a great help during crawling.

I second the ##crawl suggestion - the bots also helpfully let everyone know when characters achieve certain things (enter a branch / kill a nasty unique / get a rune, etc) - and when characters die (and how/where).

There are also more advanced commands to pull statistics, get characters reports, play replays on FooTV, etc - but I don't know them all yet .

--
Daenar[Sildraith]

[LASD]

Oooh yeaaah!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was way earlier in the tournament than I would've expected. Also, Apportation for the win (the rune was on the other side ).

The sad part is that in Snake I'm faced with Mara and in Vaults with Boris. I rather take on Boris, but I'm not sure if dispelling him will work. Having a line of sight to him means he can blast me to pieces with orbs of destruction.


Anyway, congratulations to all the recent rune-getters! And to others, I wish good luck!

[Blyxx]

Grats on your swamp rune, I've never seen the fiery swamp ending before!

My understanding of Orb of Destruction is that it does more damage the further away you are from the starting point (correct?).  I can think of no reason why Dispel Undead wouldn't work on Boris, he seems pretty undead to me.  I would draw him around a corner and deal with him up close, preferably with a wall at my back to eat the orbs that miss (otherwise I think they can turn around and come back, right?).

[Dr.Feelgood]

Oooh yeaaah!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was way earlier in the tournament than I would've expected. Also, Apportation for the win (the rune was on the other side ).

The sad part is that in Snake I'm faced with Mara and in Vaults with Boris. I rather take on Boris, but I'm not sure if dispelling him will work. Having a line of sight to him means he can blast me to pieces with orbs of destruction.


Anyway, congratulations to all the recent rune-getters! And to others, I wish good luck!

The best way to kill Boris is to haste yourself and spam Dispel Undead, which will kill him in 3-4 hits. If you kill Boris twice in a game you get a banner.  You may want to wait until your HP is higher, just in case he manages to launch an orb at you before dying. Do you have Revivification or Summon Butterflies?

Grats on your swamp rune, I've never seen the fiery swamp ending before!

My understanding of Orb of Destruction is that it does more damage the further away you are from the starting point (correct?).  I can think of no reason why Dispel Undead wouldn't work on Boris, he seems pretty undead to me.  I would draw him around a corner and deal with him up close, preferably with a wall at my back to eat the orbs that miss (otherwise I think they can turn around and come back, right?).

Nope. The monster version is superior to the player version. His orb deals up to 136 damage, which is nearly as powerful as crystal spear. During my last 15-rune game he almost killed me with it.

[Robsoie]

Sometime i REALLY wonder if the random number is as random as it is said to be, because i can't believe what just happened.

I had a good Hill Orc Berserker wasting lots of opponents, the help of the Brother in Arms is great too, saved me from a wasp nest as those flying pests are hitting really strongly without even mentionning the poison, without the help of a few Brother in Arms (that went down fighting, wasps are much of a serious threat than they look) i would have never managed to clean it.
Funnily the wasp queen went down in just 2 hits, while the regular wasps were taking lot of hits before going down .

Anyways, soon after i ran into an Orc nest, fortunately got few problems, if it was not for 2 Orc priests that were spamming smiting from afar.
Once i was near them for some reason despite i hit them as much as i could, it was a collection "you miss" and very low damage output from my great axe (how convenient)
So i had to use berserk despite usually i never need that to kill an Orc priest quickly, and 2 more corpses were on the ground.

Once i got out of berserk, i was slow and damaged (repeated smiting can take a lot of health), and again convenientely it was the time a green slime appeared near, way too near, with the slow affliction i had, it was impossible to outrun it, and i doubt the 1/4 health i was at this time would have allowed me to fight with a chance to win, slimes are often very surprising when dealing damage and resisting it.

So i used a teleportation scroll.

Of course, you all know how not biaised toward putting you into death trap the teleportation is... i ended into a room , surrounded by orcs and a green troll.
Immediately i used another teleport scroll, hoping the effect would occur before the troll would have hammered the few health i remaining (those things hit hard).


And guess where the new teleportation sent me ?
Right in front of the green slime, that just one shotted me.

I know luck in crawl is definitively not my thing, but i begin to suspect there is a line of code somewhere that influence the random numbers each time it detect that i am playing the game lol.

But at least that Hill Orc managed to find that elusive rambutan that was missing from my fruit basket, at least it was not a complete disaster