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[Robsoie]

They should just remove the "rapid" from the spell name because unless you're lucky you're not going to have a rapid wall removal, or better change the whole spell name into a variant of "fragmentation" because it progressively fragment the wall, throwing shrapnel to the close monsters and after several tries it finally destroy it.

Managed to defeat every of the Vault:8 stair guardians, not an easy battle as usual, as those guardians had support from several stone giants, a few yaktaur and even a shadow dragon.
So it was obvious that just blinking away and staying to fight on Vault:8 would be plain suicide, though ranged attackers around + the heavy hitters from the stair guardians.

My tactic was to surround myself with imps (wasted 2 acquirement scroll but finally got a book with this) and the zombies i animated from Vault:7 , go down, then immediately go up and hope that Crawl would not have pulled huge damage from just getting down/up with a few monster following.

Then once back upstair, blink away, poison cloud (i have not found any poison resistance yet, so i can't even use it while i'm close) and help my zombies and imps to deal with the guardians with mystic blast.

Worked nicely, though the yaktaur arrows and stone giants rocks nearly killed me in one of the up/down stunt.
But the guardians once killed makes very good zombie helpers.

screenshot of the Vault:7 stair i used for my attack, after having finished the stair guardians of Vault:8 :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Really a pity you can't get the guardians zombies with you, i would really have a need of strong meat shield if i want to survive Vault:8 and with the complete lack of summon book from everywhere i explored, i can't even count on Shadow Creature that would be a very powerfull spell to have in Vault:8

Edit : forgot to put this screen of the stairs of Vault:8, it's a mess there too, an incredible amount of yaktaur has been moving there from every direction.
It was a battle of attrition to get them down, it took so much time that i even had to get back to my Lair stash to refill my food stock.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I explored a bit Vault:8 , surprisingly cleared 2 of the 4 vaults (unfortunately the rune was not in those), got an army of zombies+imps, lost them all in difficult battle.
But more importantly i lost a level due to the several elf draining spells and a few shadow dragon around (having only 1 ring of life protection does not help much unfortunately), only recovered this level by cleaning the 2 vaults.

So always be carefull of draining monsters if you don't have full life protection.

[baruk]

I got the decaying and serpentine runes, though it cost me a lot of resources. Decided against trying to fight the Lernaean hydra. I found the book of the sky on D: 16, the silence spell (plus the freezing cloud rod) may give me the edge I need to clear Elf: 5. Then I can try going for either the abyssal (if I find swiftness) or silver rune. Robsoie's demigod is way ahead of mine, it will be a struggle for me to finish in a couple of days. I have the shadow creatures spell available, so perhaps I should diversify into summons to make the going easier.

[Robsoie]

Nice to see you're using a Demigod and doing great too, maybe they're more powerfull than i thought.

Shadow creature is extremely powerfull in end branches, i wish i had it in Vault:8 as my Imps have been of limited help (but much better than the nothing i had before)

And i just got the Vault rune another premiere for me in an online Crawl game !

it was in the last of the 4 vaults i explored and a though battle as there were several shadow dragon i had to kill myself (the Imps being very bad against dragons) with Mystic Blast (nearly full power) , but the few dragons that left a corpse helped in next battles.

I could have learned Iron Shot (with a very good power), but this spell being inaccurate is a definitive no considering how much magic it costs, Mystic Blast maybe less powerfull, but its accuracy is not wasting the magic invested like Iron Shot does
 
But it sadly cost me lots of experience due to the constant shadow dragon draining (as i said having only 1 level of life resistance does not really help), but i managed to keep my level with the XP gained from the destruction of such monsters (though i believe i should be at one more level if i give a look at all the experience drained since i explored Vault:8, i wish i had found some usefull artifacts with negative resistance)

I have not took everything from the last vault, only used apportation to the rune as there were 2 storm dragons and i had no zombie support anymore and mostly out of magic.
Maybe i'll be back to see if i can fetch a few more XP to help me for the next step.

[Meanmelter]

Dang Robsoie, your mopping up all these runes. I need to catch up.

[Robsoie]

I'm rather surprised myself, not only offline i never managed to keep a demigod alive to more than middle of Lair, but getting 4 runes online looks like some kind of a miracle.

I'm afraid Crawl will soon notice my character is doing a bit too good and will throw him into some horrible inescapable situation.

But at least, if it's too difficult my character can always recycle himself into a shop keeper :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Meanmelter]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Damn.

[Robsoie]

I couldn't believe it myself, the first time i played a demigod that lived that long, even offline when playing more confortably, they usually at max died before mid-Lair on me.
And then suddenly


Could it be ?


Yes it is ! It is not late night playing with my eyes.
But getting back was not that easy, if it was not for my awesome control teleport spell


Looks like even the big kahunas of the place were running after me


But i was running quicker, some may say that fear gives you speed , but i believe the boot of running helped

The gate was there, i just checked they were not fake gates that suddenly Crawl would have spawned and that would have led me in some horrible place, but no they were genuine.


And this concluded the first online win of Robsoie, very surprised that it occured with a Demigod character.




That's all folks
The debriefing

[Meanmelter]

Congrats Robsoie! I've bumped in every now and then to watch. Hopefully I'll get a win in the August Tournament.

[Robsoie]

Thank you,

This win definitively confirmed that finding good equipment early makes all the difference in term of survival and experience gain for the character (as by example if you have a fighter character and find an offensive wand early you will not be forced to run away from an Ogre, you'll kill it and level up from the experience gained)

And luck plays an immense part, i think all my previous games used all my bad luck, that's certainly why this time Crawl let me win.

Certainly meaning i'll be unable to reach Temple for the next hundred games

And good luck for everyone playing.

[Meanmelter]

Skill plays a huge roll as well. You don't seem to be dying as much and you appear to get more points. I mean yeah, you'll have characters screwed over every now and then, but I'm sure skill still plays a huge roll.

[Robsoie]

It's true that tactics are helping when you are used to how the game works , it helps a bit to avoid some situation that will lead your character to become crippled or worse.

Additionally, having played enough to develop an understanding of the overall strength of each individual enemy is important, to see if you have a chance to destroy them or if you should better run away to avoid a possible YASD.

Experience by example tells you that while it's a good idea to have a full Fire Resistance when facing an Orb of Fire in Zot, it is not enough because the Orb of Fire will mutate your character a lot, crippling it and leading to his death in Zot , having played enough (and looking in some spoilers like the Crawl bot for monster description) would then have you wearing an amulet of mutation to avoid losing the character.

Or for the 1st Ogre you meet, you can understand with a look to your character equipment (found an offensive wand by example) or power (berserk by example or some poison or ranged spell etc...) if you have a chance to kill it (and usually levelup from just killing it at the point you meet one) or if your only chance to continue playing is running to the nearby stairs.

There's a nice page with usefull help for the players :
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Category:Strategy_Guides
like the escaping guide and hints&tricks ones

The Lets Play from Dr Feelgood on this board is a great source of information too

[Meanmelter]

My biggest mistakes are forgetting that I have wands.
I also have huge issues dealing with magical ghosts (Seeming most Dungeon Crawl players use a magical character.)

[Robsoie]

If you can, get a character to learn Dispel Undead, it's a ghost killer (and a lich and ancient lich killer too)

Basically after some Necromancy skill training, this spell will be your best undead (and so ghost) destroyer.

On my victory, i cleaned Crypt thanks to it (Crypt:5 had legions of skeletal warriors that were going down in roughly 2 shots of Dispel Undead), 3 or 4 shots destroyed the ancient lich that was hiding in the main vault, and even those very powerfull Bone Dragons go down with 6 or 7 shots.

Just avoid to fight too many monster + the ghost at once, so you can focus your magic point in hammering the ghost that annoy you.

[Meanmelter]

I mainly use melee characters, and they rarely ever get a magic skill. Unless I read a crapload of scrolls.

[Robsoie]

With melee character, i understood as you mention that unless i find a wand (and as you say it's important to remember you have one, i often forget too as i'm used to play with the offline tile interface that display the inventory everytime on the screen) running away is the only option when you meet ghost early.

Even when the ghost is of lower level than the character i'm playing with.
I once lost a mountain dwarf fighter at only level 2, then i met this ghost with a mountain dwarf that hit level 3 and had a good axe of chopping with some accuracy/damage bonus on it (the ghost was supposed to have the starting non bonus axe)

And the battle was one sided, my character hits on my ghost were very weak, and his own were atomizing my character in no time.

So definitively a wand is needed for early ghosts when you have fighting character.
That or a berserker that usually does wonder with ghosts (though you need to wait them at a corner, to avoid having large distance between him and you, as you said spellcasting ghosts are very dangerous)