|
they got rid of skald? My 70+ attempts to win as a merfolk skald shall remain an unfinished monument to my stupidity. Any advice on a good rc file to steal? Do I even need to do that anymore now that food isn't a thing?
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2023 06:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 16:54 |
|
|
Scored a new personal best today with a HOCA - http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/offering/morgue-offering-20230328-210535.txt It's a combo high score, though I don't expect that to last too long. Found a few powerful unrandarts that made me think very carefully about my build. One was the Dark Maul (52 base damage but mindelay 1.6), which I skipped because the speed penalty would make me too vulnerable to being surrounded and blocked from reaching a torment caster. Swapping over to an axe would have been an option, but didn't want to level both skills. The seven-league boots were a more difficult call. Rampaging any distance seems incredibly powerful and good for turn count too. I think a better crawler would have taken them, but I felt like I didn't have the mental resources to not screw it up. The scenario I was worried about was closing fast and revealing more enemies than I could handle. Though I guess that can be avoided by backpedaling into a hallway. I also didn't understand how they would interact with attacks of opportunity or clouds. The other unrandart was an Amulet of Air, which I tried for a little bit, but gave up in favor of a simple regen amulet. Seemed like I was actually missing more often, which I didn't care for, and I didn't think repel missiles was going to be that big in the remaining branches (Tomb, Dis, Tart).
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2023 01:30
|
|
|
Heh, I had a browse on your morgue (something I rarely do) and had a small chuckle at the small bit of storytelling about the plate armour:code:
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2023 02:19
|
|
|
The +9 chain mail "Zauromai" {Slay+5} made my armor progression a little more interesting. In the series of failed HOCA games leading up to this plate would take over around XL 12.
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2023 15:48
|
|
|
A game I was in a bit ago I found a +9 chain mail! ... with Slay-5 
|
|
#
?
Mar 29, 2023 15:59
|
|
|
Hey so I have been playing this on and off since 0.5.2, hail to the old days of Resist Slow Mino berserker nonsense, and I fell off some time around 0.16 or 0.17 or something. I know a lot has changed since then. I downloaded this and was trying to do console with the replacement character set that turns the walls into solid blocks, think it was the IBM charset, and it seems that no matter what I change now, I can’t get that charset back. I know most of you probably play tiles, but would you know how I might get that back? Running on Win11, using the built-in Win Console, fyi.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2023 15:54
|
|
|
I got my first win after not playing for quite a while. Trunk is still a lot of fun and overall feels like it’s moving in a positive direction. I played a Tengu Reaver of WJC. General thoughts below: -WJC still feels awesome. It’s a lot more streamlined than before, and I do miss the crazy stuff the jankiness let you pull off, but it’s strong and really fun to play. I swept through all of V:5 (not just the ambush, the whole floor) in one heavenly storm. The new spell, Vhi’s electric charge, along with WJC martial attacks is particularly satisfying. -Vhi’s electric charge is really awesome. With a heavy (replaces the vorpal brand, basically like dark maul as a brand) greatsword I was one-shotting enemies throughout the game from several tiles away. The mobility and damage are really good, balanced by the fact that you’re not as safe as fighting in a corridor. -Tengu feels quite a bit stronger than it used to. You get permanent flight (this no longer has any downside), fast movement and an evasion boost from XL 5. The fast movement makes you immune to attacks of opportunity from normal speed enemies, which is really, really strong. I had rock solid defenses in fire dragon scales by vaults jon top of hitting like a truck and having some really good support spells. -I don’t like reaver much at all. Kiss of death is okay, but momentum strike feels way too dangerous to use when it counts and hailstorm’s animation is annoyingly slow. The background sets you up to skill in ice, translocations and necromancy, which are all good hybrid schools, but conjurations itself was not very useful. I picked up freezing cloud in mid game and it did help, but I’m not sure if just investing more in defenses wouldn’t have been better. The game really needs a mid-high level conjurations spell for hybrids, particularly now that dex is a solid competitor to int for stat investment. -Speaking of which, all in on dex is really good now for a long blades character. You get a lot of EV and damage out of it, and spells like Vhi’s electric charge and manifold assault make magic a really strong force multiplier for melee.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 13:33
|
|
|
Heithinn Grasida posted:-WJC I think wjc stops the enemy from getting those new attacks of opportunity on you too? Also momentum strike is risky as hell, but the damage is huge for a level 2 spell. Smite targeting too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
Mortimer Knag posted:I think wjc stops the enemy from getting those new attacks of opportunity on you too? I think they protect you from attacks of opportunity when you use the special martial attacks (the god would be unusable otherwise) but otherwise don’t just let you kite or reposition freely. I could be wrong about that, though. Even if momentum strike felt good mechanically, the fact that you have to wait after every fight for the -move to go away makes it not worth it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2023 02:51
|
|
|
Trying to make my early game a little more reliable - how do you handle training? Obviously it differs from game to game, and depends on race/class combo, but I'm looking for general guidelines. In particular I want to make my early game more reliable. Let's say I start as a Tengu Fighter. By default, you start training Fighting, your weapon skill, Armor and Shields... and no points in Dodging. What I typically do is turn off Shields and turn on Dodging, at least until I get a level or two in it. I try to get at least a level or two in Evocations after D3 or so, and if I take on a god that uses Invocations I'll get at least three levels in it ASAP. Some advice on the wiki indicates (paraphrasing) that for early-game characters (like pre-D5), character death usually ends up being a matter of not killing quickly enough rather than not being tank enough - there's advice to not really train any defensive skills for a bit, in order to get your combat skills going ASAP, in particular for spellcasters. I've tried this a few times to, varying success. What about Fighting/Spellcasting? I know Fighting gives a small boost to accuracy, and increases HP, and Spellcasting generally boosts spell success/power and MP - is it important to put points into them for the first few levels? e: in a similar vein, one of the things I've kinda settled on in games is getting to D:15, or as deep as possible if I encounter some particular nasties, then getting into Lair. Typically by Lair my defenses are good enough that I can dump all my XP into whatever my weapon skill is, in an effort to get down to mindelay ASAP. Wise strat, or silly? death cob for cutie fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Apr 6, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 18:47
|
|
|
death cob for cutie posted:Trying to make my early game a little more reliable - how do you handle training? Obviously it differs from game to game, and depends on race/class combo, but I'm looking for general guidelines. In particular I want to make my early game more reliable. typically you'll see people start out by training nothing but their primary weapon skill or spell school until their weapon reaches minimum attack delay (for melee characters) or until casting their starting spells will no longer explode in their face so much (for spellcasters). training armour early on isn't super useful since it gives you the most return only when you've found heavier armour, and iirc the same goes for shields. training fighting and spellcasting are always good but you'll probably be training them on and off for the whole run, so you don't have to focus on them right away. the faster you can get your primary method of damage in a fast and reliable spot, the better off you'll be in the early game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 19:02
|
|
|
Yeah mindelay is fuckin huge esp if it’s like it was way back when where getting the biggest fuckoff twohander you could realistically wield was the go-to for anything that used melee. The other stuff I always just kinda felt out as I went. Wasn’t strictly optimal but it felt like it usually worked out okay.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 21:48
|
|
|
the other thing to remember is that single levels in any given skill barely do anything for you. remember that they go up to 27. putting one level into a bunch of skills means you've spent a bunch of skill xp on almost zero benefit. figure out what you want to do as early as possible and specialize this benefits the midgame too, because if you already have your weapon or spell skills at comfortable levels then you'll have a much easier time training invocations or evocations or the odd spell school because you won't be getting your rear end beat so much
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 22:14
|
|
|
Conversely, play a gnoll and hope you get good enough gear to carry you to extended where you become an absolute monster.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
dolphinbomb posted:Conversely, play a gnoll and hope you get good enough gear to carry you to extended where you become an absolute monster. this is basically how i got my first ever win so yeah do this
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2023 22:58
|
|
|
I'll echo what was said above; that advice has never served me wrong. There's been a lot of effort to buff stuff like fighting since (with re-scaled hp gains, etc), but I doubt it's changed the gist of it: Manually turn off everything and exclusively train your kill-dudes skill. When it's up to snuff, swap to the don't-die skills, until the next tier of gear drops, then swap back to pure kill-dudes. (Perform minor sanity checks to see if you can actually use the next tier before trying to rush it) An example would be training the weapon skill of your starting weapon until it hits mindelay, then pausing it and getting fighting and armour/dodge while waiting for a better axe to drop. Same with spell schools vs spellcasting. Being able to competently murder stuff is the most consistently useful skill in DCSS, especially early game. At some point around- or post- lair you can afford to dip into utility skills, such as invocations or transloc spells etc.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 05:45
|
|
|
I feel the need to emphasize fighting too. Once you get your weapons to mindelay/spells castable, more HP is one of the best defensive tools you have as it protects you from nearly everything, and fighting is the way to achieve that. Practically every character wants high fighting, though it's extra good for melee characters as it's raising your offenses as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 06:41
|
|
|
I cannot play DCSS online, no matter what server - site is stuck on "loading", anyone had such issue before?
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 08:23
|
|
|
I’ll go against the consensus here and say that depending on your specific weapon, beelining for mindelay can leave you really squishy. I go for about 10 first in a weapon skill, then a few points in defenses pre-lair, then back to mindelay for my weapon. Once you get into the teens, it starts to take a lot of xp to go up one point in a skill, and you’ll usually get higher returns from the very cheap first few points in fighting/shields/armor/dodging. Fighting gives both damage and defense, so going to 5 or so pre-lair can really help. Skill planning on book starts is really different depending on the background, but there you can end up delaying defenses further if your book requires multiple schools and high spell power to function. Getting your higher tier spells online is often a bigger improvement in your chance to survive than a few points in defenses because the lower tier spells just stop cutting it in lair. But even there it really depends on your species and what you’ve found in the dungeon. In terms of early game exploration strategy, I typically clear the dungeon to D: 12, then go to lair. Usually that gives you enough xp that lair threats are manageable. Late D can have stuff that’s way worse than typical lair enemies (death knights with undead packs, wizards, fire and ice dragons, skeleton warriors, etc.) I save D: 13-15 until after orc. Sometimes even D:12 can be too spicy for pre-lair characters to handle, so it really depends.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2023 11:37
|
|
|
You can literally tab down to d12-15 on most the strong combos, training just fighting evocations and armor/dodging/stealth or whatever else you want, and no weapon skill with just smart use of tools, certain low level spells even with high failure rates, smart consumable use, certain god powers, etc. Finding a fast weapon with venom or draining or elec or whatever can clear orc mines level 1 and 2 with those other tools which let's you see what the shops have on offer. That's what Ive been doing as a bit of a challenge whenever I don't know what build I'm going towards, or if I'm a demon spawn or something. It's not really hard either with the melee or hybrid backgrounds, just keep any weapon with a brand, use your wands and your misc items, carry and use all the darts and boomerangs and javelins, blind quaff potions early in a fight, start fights by casting spells even at 60% failure rates as long as you read what the worst miscast can do first. A wand of charming and an unbranded spear can carry you to orc by themselves even. But yeah, getting down to 1.0 aut per swing asap is the optimal play (unless you're a caster), getting to min delay asap would depend more on your combo and if you can delay defenses for a couple levels.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2023 03:26
|
|
|
unseen horror simulacra are, rude
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2023 13:17
|
|
|
it took me way too long to realize that warpers are literally devil may cry characters
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2023 20:19
|
|
|
back in my day you could serpent lash onto a mimic and pick it up for loot it will always be the best god ability and I will never reveal more of its secrets
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2023 23:21
|
|
|
EightFlyingCars posted:it took me way too long to realize that warpers are literally devil may cry characters Warpers are so much fun. They're definitely my favorite start in the current version. My latest fun with Vhi's electric charge: using it on a demonspawn with the demonic magic mutation and an orb of guile. You can charge something, paralyze all the weak-willed enemies around you and then just bounce around between them killing them with stabs while they're helpless to fight back. Draconian packs in Zot were completely shut down by this. Lesser beckoning also works nicely, since demonic magic applies after the effects of a spell, so you suck an enemy in, paralyze them, then stab them. It's not really a strategy against high will enemies, but you can still throw crystal spears or whatever and opportunistically charge-stab anything that does get paralyzed. Related question: what's extended like these days? I'm tempted to take this character into extended, but it's been a long, long time since I've done it and I'm not sure what to expect. Also, does Hep hold up in extended? The hexer absolutely trashes things when idealized and I'm taking hits, but melts fast if it gets focused by just about anything. Should I expect it to just constantly get damnationed out of existence?
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 13:34
|
|
|
Heithinn Grasida posted:Warpers are so much fun. They're definitely my favorite start in the current version. My latest fun with Vhi's electric charge: using it on a demonspawn with the demonic magic mutation and an orb of guile. You can charge something, paralyze all the weak-willed enemies around you and then just bounce around between them killing them with stabs while they're helpless to fight back. Draconian packs in Zot were completely shut down by this. Lesser beckoning also works nicely, since demonic magic applies after the effects of a spell, so you suck an enemy in, paralyze them, then stab them. It's not really a strategy against high will enemies, but you can still throw crystal spears or whatever and opportunistically charge-stab anything that does get paralyzed. pandemonium was pretty boring the last time i played it but the hells are a lot tougher now. you're guaranteed to eat a mystical force every time you move down a floor so you wanna make your trips count. anyway today i learned that yara's violent unravelling works on uskayaw paralysis 
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 19:10
|
|
|
EightFlyingCars posted:pandemonium was pretty boring the last time i played it but the hells are a lot tougher now. you're guaranteed to eat a mystical force every time you move down a floor so you wanna make your trips count. works on tons of stuff. curare comes to mind
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 23:04
|
|
|
EightFlyingCars posted:pandemonium was pretty boring the last time i played it but the hells are a lot tougher now. you're guaranteed to eat a mystical force every time you move down a floor so you wanna make your trips count. Turns out Pan was a little too boring and I just went to win after wandering around forever and only getting one rune. To answer my own questions above, Hep Hexer was still really good. His hexes themselves were less relevant, but antimagic really messed things up and his damage output was through the roof when idealized. Mass confusion did come into play in a big way a few times. He killed all the hellions on hellion island by just making them jump into the lava. He (or I) also paralyzed a number of pan lords. Demonic magic remained surprisingly powerful. It locks down chaff, trivialized demonspawn, shut down tormentors, neqoxecs, and hellions entirely, and would occasionally give me free kills against tougher enemies. Pin-balling around charge stabbing enemies will never get old. Enfeeble was also way better than I expected. It was another way to shut down nasty but weak willed enemies as soon as they appeared and made fiends and pan lords far less threatening.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 04:15
|
|
|
speaking of pandemonium, i hated every single second i spent getting all five runes in there. thank zin for the angel floor that finally gave me a way out. made out with ten runes, my highest count yet! http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Tommu/morgue-Tommu-20230424-054556.txt this was a stupid strong character. i might never play anything but a warper ever again. i probably could have managed a branch of hell or two, or maybe tried my first ziggurat, but i already came literally within 3 HP of losing this whole run in cerebov's joint and i felt like the game was getting tired of my poo poo. EightFlyingCars fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Apr 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2023 06:53
|
|
|
For anyone who missed it, the tentative tournament start date is May 5th.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 18:11
|
|
|
I'd like to join a team of similarly terrible people. I've only won twice, once with a MiBe and once with a Centaur, rest in peace.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 18:33
|
|
|
I will probably run a team for terrible folks unlikely to win, although I am constantly aspiring to. Now I just need a team name... now that I use "death cob for cutie" as my username here, naming my team the same thing feels a bit egotistical
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 18:44
|
|
|
Just name it that, or the traditional “Ogrecoming Adversity.” I will again commit to trying to play during the tourney only to get swamped at work and playing one character to lair during the whole tournament.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 19:02
|
|
|
Arcane Barkspersons and we only play gnoll hexslingers
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2023 21:01
|
|
|
Well, feel free to tell me if you want in to "Death Cob For Cutie", as I am an unoriginal hack and a massive egotist aside and couldn't find a race/class combo to make a good pun with Do note that while I'll be trying my best I am not likely to ascend, so if you think you're gonna be putting serious Points on the Board feel free to spin up a more serious team
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2023 17:56
|
|
|
I typically play Gooncrawl but with no development in years it seems like a tourney would be a great time to check out the modern game. I'll miss eating purple (eating anything?) and Charms and whatever else. If you're OK with me playing my rando class/race combos while I learn 0.30 and die a lot then feel free to add me: PakistaniPitt on CKO (do we have to be on the same server?) it looks like I need to add your name to my RC file?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2023 20:21
|
|
|
I might need to come up with a different solution for the Hydra problem on my Troll.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2023 21:43
|
|
|
put me in coach, i'll get us a win or two add me as Tommu in the roster! EightFlyingCars fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2023 23:04
|
|
|
Time for Zot, or should I backtrack to fill in gaps in my equipment? https://cbro.berotato.org/morgue/Vadun/Vadun.txt
|
|
#
?
May 6, 2023 23:48
|
|
|
I'd probably clear out Elf for the xp alone, but I'm not sure what gaps you feel you're gonna be able to fill with so many restricted slots. Maybe a rN++ item? Likewise Slime is an xp extraveganza if you can handle it safely - no need to take on the vault if you don't want.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 00:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 16:54 |
|
|
I don’t think equipment is really an issue, though rF++ for orbs of fire would be really nice. More xp would be really nice as well, as would a chance for some scrolls to enchant up your armor.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2023 00:31
|
|