Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: Now with 50% more Sigmund

[Cogwheel]

Spoiler

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The first five screenshots have been lost to the bulk upload function on Photobucket or, as I prefer to think of it, the infinite depths of madness. Madness. I'm also an idiot, so I deleted all my screenshots before realizing this. What this means is that you're missing out on five dull screenshots of me doing things. The highlight of this is my finding a ring. I put it on, and it has yet to kill me. Oh, and this update? I finished all but the last screenshot before my computer acted up and wiped it. Fun times.



Kobolds are annoying. They may have slings or darts, and I'm fine with that. This one had darts. The problem begins when they have a blowgun and ludicrous quantities of poisoned or, worse yet, curare needles. It gets old fast.



End of the floor, with a few more potions and so forth. Time to read those scrolls in the vain hope that one of them will identify this ring.



No luck. Two scrolls remain a mystery, and one gave me the Tele status, teleporting me randomly in a couple turns. Another is blank - useless in Stone Soup, unlike some Roguelikes. You probably don't care about that. You're probably wondering about the butterflies. That's understandable. It's a scroll of random uselessness - often, it just produces weird messages. Sometimes, it instead summons a bunch of butterflies that stay around for a bit, then vanish in a puff of smoke.



Floor 3. What you see here used to be a goblin, two hobgoblins and a rat. None of them were a threat, and with this character, they probably never were.



Corridors - a Crawl player's best friend, unless you have an army of your own. I lie, of course. Crawl is no one's friend. Incidentally, the pair of gloves you see below are not available to us. The claws see to that.



Ah, a magical sabre. How nice. It's things like this that make me wish I didn't punch/claw things for a living. It's not a cutlass, by the way, and trolls are hardly stealthy, so hold off on the pirate-ninja jokes.



Worms. Worms are slow, but hit hard for the level they show up at (as early as floor 1) and have tons of HP - again, for this point in the game. This makes them rather harsh, and they should be treated carefully by melee characters up to level 3 or 4. Casters should be very careful or flee in terror until level 5 or so, depending on the particular type of caster. Some can take them on earlier than that. Of course, anyone large, green and hideous has no problem eviscerating them at level 3. By the way, worms are edible, unlike many insects, who are typically poisonous.



Introducing, amidst the corpses of my enemies, the quokka. Quokkas are basically rat palette-swaps, who are very, very slightly superior. To a troll at this level, they're merely adorable and delicious. To this day, I'm still rather disturbed by quokka zombies, though they're weak and fairly common.



Too full to eat, with a rat chunk to spare, and I never yet touched my rations. It's a good thing trolls have food issues, really. Though to be fair, it's the armour/XP restrictions that balance them in practice.



Can anyone tell me why trolls are denied helmets as well? It just makes no sense at all. Ah well. I'll be over here. Weeping bitterly at the loss of my headgear. And then punching things. Mostly the punching, really.

Anyway! I found this scroll. Surely, this shall identify my ring.



That's funny, game. You're funny. Cursed items can't be removed until the curse is gone. It could be worse, but still, it's annoying. On the other hand, there's a scroll that did nothing earlier and may help now...



Yep, remove curse. Figures, really. The other is probably enchant weapon, detect curse, or fear. Probably.



Oh. Houston, we have a problem. On second thought, nevermind. Stone Soup's version of Houston probably wants to kill me anyway. Ghosts are dead characters, with their old gear, but not inventory. And their old spells etc. Quite nasty. This one was a minotaur fighter, and level 6. Not fun.



I didn't expect to survive that. Thank the wall below me - running around one of those and only attacking when you regenerated enough health is another common tactic, albeit only usable when fighting a lone monster at the same speed as you. Being a troll makes the regen part easier. In any case, while ghosts leave no loot, I'm level 5 now.



A wand! Wands contain some sort of magic, with a limited amount of charges. Generally blasting. Here's a guide to (somewhat inefficiently) identifying wands. First, find a creature. Not an undead one. Second, zap the wand at it. If you get a blast of energy, good. You've identified it. If it resists, it's a single target effect. Try a few more times, or wait for an identify scroll if you want to save charges.

If nothing happens, it's either empty or, most likely, a wand of digging. Point it at a wall to find out.



And that's it for floor 3 and this update. To recap, I have a ring, identified a few scrolls, picked up a whole lot of potions, killed a ghost and hit level 5. It's nice being overlevelled, especially with a race that has an XP penalty. The XP system is kinda self-correcting, though, and higher levels are slow going anyway, so I won't stay this way for long.

[vampire2948]

*begins taking bets on your posts left till death*

[Gorgondantess]

I bet he'll die on... level 5. Trolls are awesome early game, but the going starts getting tough fast when you're still pulling the same old tricks just about as well. They rely on static abilities, rather than progressive abilities- and the progressive abilities they do have don't progress too damn much, except for strength and hp.

[Cogwheel]

Largest update yet, this time. 40-some screenshots, I believe.

Spoiler

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Floor 4. Testing this wand! Generally, make sure you have some distance between you and the target when using a wand. Point blank fireballs are a stupid way to die.



Interesting. This wand teleports anything I zap it at, much like the scroll does for me. I can teleport myself, of course, or I can (after a few turns) make something go away. Neat, if not particularly great. The hobgoblin was brutally eviscerated before it could teleport. Corpses of such creatures don't teleport, by the way.



The inventory's looking up. 186 gold (probably enough for two packets of mustard at this point) and more potions than any sane person could want. Several are likely harmful.



A cloak. Now, a cloak has no effect on AC unless enchanted. But really, what hero is complete without the cape?



Light blue, too. Matches the robe, so there. Look, it could have been magenta. As the sleeping quokka shows, despite being a troll with one rank in stealth (the official stealth rating is "unstealthy"), I'm disturbingly good at sneaking up on sleeping creatures without even trying. No clue why. Luck, I assume. Rest assured, the adorable gerbil thing was torn to shreds and eaten by our hero. He's a hero. Do try to remember that.



See that? Kobold with blowgun and 19 poisoned needles. That would've been annoying, had the kobold been awake. It's really a pity that zombified kobolds never seem to use their blowguns.



A gold wand! More to test. In case you're wondering, items in Crawl can't be sold. This is part of the game's attempt to discourage grinding/farming.



This is the result of reading a random scroll. Three scrolls take you to the inventory screen - identify, enchant armour and recharging (wands, in case you're wondering). I was going to try using it on the ring in case it's identify, after taking the screenshot. Turns out that pressing irrelevant keys - such as one might do, when taking a screenshot - cancels the scroll's effect, wasting it. Funny how that works.



Ok, that worked better. Sustain abilities cuts all temporary statloss in half, rounding down. This is helpful. It also makes me immune to statloss from sickness, deterioration (a horrid mutation that damages a random stat every once in a while, randomly and without mercy, until removed) and, if memory serves, quasits and shadows, as each of these only deal 1 damage at a time.



Platemail. On floor 4. Runed platemail, at that, though the screenshot doesn't show it. Why do you taunt me, game?



Ogres. Common cause of early-game death, nasty even a while later on. They're unarmoured and fairly easy to hit. However, they have high HP, and hit ridiculously hard. Even in scale mail or something, they can easily hit for over 20. Not fun to be around.



I got the drop on it, have decent enough EV to dodge all the hits, and here you see the results. The boost went to dexterity this time, with strength going up automatically from being a troll. By all means, feel free to vote on stat allocation in future.



Giant mites. They're a bit nastier than roaches stat-wise, but move at normal speed. Also their attack and corpse are both poisonous. Doesn't matter, they never stood a chance. Or got a hit in.



Next up, the Ooze. Immune to acid and poison, marginally better damage than a roach, and double the HP. Very slow, though. They're a bit of a pain for casters in the first level or two, who need to plink away at them. If you're a venom mage, get ready to hate them until you learn Magic Dart or something.


Snakes. Horribly annoying in the first few levels, potentially fatal even alone for early-game casters. They're somewhat faster than you, so you can't outrun them. They don't hit especially hard or have that many HP, but they dodge fairly frequently, and have poison. Strong enough poison to kill any mages, in most cases.

Rest assured, it died without landing a hit, in the finest Casualty traditions. Nothing has put up much of a fight so far, honestly, barring that ghost.



Went down to floor 5. Zapped the wand at a bat, who was immediately charmed. Useful wand, this, though I don't use it much.



Book of necromancy! Too bad I won't even get the necessary spellcasting skill until I read lots more scrolls. And even then, trolls are terrible casters, have next to no MP, and make bricks look smart in any case. I'm noticing a bit of a pearls-before-swine tendency with the loot here.



I do this in protest of your high prices, food store. Casualty would rather eat raw hobgoblin than shop here. It's like a hunger strike, only entirely unlike one. You might say that it's hardly a hunger strike at all. Really, you might. And you would be wrong.



Show of hands, Stone Soup players who cringed at the sight of this screenshot. Orc priests are horrid things. They typically have fairrly hefty weapons and a decent amount of HP. They also have four spells. One makes them stronger, one heals them, one deals about 7 damage at a range, and the last is Smite. Smite deals about 10~17 damage, typically, at a range. Line of sight and fire mean nothing here. If an orc priest can see you, it can smite you. Oh, and you can't resist smiting. Nor will AC help mitigate the damage in the least.

Orc priests are, naturally, a common cause of death.



While the priest is confused enough not to know where I am, I lure its friend, this one orc, into a passage and kill it. Essentially, our hero lures people into dark alleys, rips them to pieces and eats them. Hero. Do try to remember that.



We meet again, green-robed pigfaceperson.



Above: Why I hate smites.



This is an orc wizard. They have about the same amount of HP, and can do a variety of things: toss fire, magic darts and possibly frost at you (not sure about the last one), blink, turn invisible, haste themselves, slow you, or hit you with whatever weapon they want. The sprite holds a staff. Do not be fooled.

Overall, they're not as nasty as priests. Still bad, though, and fire attacks destroy scrolls in the inventory.



Introducing yet more monsters. Stone Soup has many. The hound is another vanilla creature. Marginally faster than you, hits hard, fair amount of HP, generally dangerous to flimsy classes at earlier levels. Zombies, however, are watered down versions of living monsters. They have lower stats and are slower, in exchange for undead immunities (and weaknesses). Easier to handle than the real thing, certainly, especially as they lack the special abilities of their living counterparts.

Gnolls are just more humanoids. Tougher than normal orcs, but with no variety, and an inordinate fondness for polearms of any sort, as well as flails.

The gnoll was killed, as were several other gnolls in the vicinity. The zombie dog went to a farm, where it'll be happier.



Heading down to floor 6, richer by some coins and yet more potions, plus a few mystery scrolls. The spellbook is being kept because it may be useful later, but I can't be certain.



Long swords are rare, and perhaps the most powerful weapon type, overall. Only paladins even start with any skill in them. Finding one on floor 6 is quite unusual.

Not shown: Irritation.



Giant ants are another tough early-game monster, with HP that's only topped by ghosts and ogres at this stage, plus a certain type of orc you'll see later (correct me if I'm wrong), fast speed, and a poison bite. Surprisingly enough, they're edible. In fact, they're delicious. Like everything else. This only applies if you're a troll, but the point stands.



What.

Ok. Calm down. They're mostly minor monsters. The orc warrior there, however - the one with the chainmail - is essentially an ogre with armour. Heavy armour and a good weapon. This does not bode well.



Solution: Back into corridor, charm orc warrior (twice), using it to soak up a few hits and eradicate everything else with terrifying ease.



This thing is essentially like the ghost from earlier, only worse. A few laps around the corridor, however, eventually kill it. Far from easy, though.



Appropriate rewards were had.



A scimitar and a second suit of plate. Why can't the game shower me with good items I'm capable of using? Aside from spite, I mean. I know there's a lot of that, but this is getting a tad excessive.



That's hardly helpful at all.



This is a big kobold. They are, in many ways, identical. The main difference is that, unlike normal kobolds, they are big. Being big, you might say, is their defining characteristic. Hence their title as big kobolds. Because they are, in fact, big and kobolds. Kobolds that are big. Big kobolds, if you will.



This is the start of a kobold warren. A large room, typically 6x6 or so, where every tile has a kobold or big kobold on it. At this stage, they've already noticed me and poured out of said room. My only choice is to back up into the corridor, and slaughter my way to glory.



Pictured: Slaugher.

Not shown: Glory.



Pictured: Glorious slaughter.

I believe there were about 30 of them. Got to hit level eight as a result of that.



This is a Phantom. Stat-wise, imagine an undead worm that moves at normal speed and randomly blinks. A pain in general, at lower levels, especially to casters who rely on cold, poison or pain damage (necromancy) to kill things, as it's immune to all of those.



This is a floating eyeball. It wants to kill me. I'll give you a while to digest the fact that this is a game where floating eyeballs exist and want to kill me despite having no reason or direct means to do so.

Done? Good. Floating eyeballs float. They're not particularly tough, but have a ranged attack (which uses smite-targeting) that paralyzes you for a couple turns. They can stack this to extend the duration. Not fun, if you happen to be near other enemies at the time too. Not fun at all. I managed to sneak up on this one, and kill it. Nothing else was around, which helped.

Floating eyeballs are edible and, while doing so is not strictly harmful, it's revolting and probably not going to help Casualty's severe PTSD should he survive this dungeon, so I won't do that. No, NetHack fans, you don't get anything special for eating floating eyes in this game, or any other corpse.



Jellies. Jellies are nasty. They hit hard, have a decent amount of HP, and split a few turns after moving over an item, which is then irrevocably destroyed. Oh, and while slow, they have an attack that corrodes armour, reducing its bonus or even turning it into a penalty (it's reduced by 1 each time). Attacking them does the same to your weapon, and splashes you with acid if it was a slashing attack. Oh, and unarmed attacks on them deal lots of damage to you unless you have gloves on. As someone who can't wear gloves and deals unarmed slashing damage, I need to give jellies a wide berth. This one was teleported away.



You're probably curious about the ostentatious golden staircase surrounded by fountains. Were I crueler - and I am - I would keep it a secret for precisely this reason. But hey, since it's instrumental to my survival, I might as well go here.



Behold, the Ecumenical Temple!

Not pictured: Ham.

There are altars here. To the Shining One, Yredelemnul, Makhleb and Vehumet, from top to bottom.



Trog the Wrathful, Elyvilon the Healer, Nemelex Xobeh (the names get worse) from left to right...



Sif Muna the Loreminder, Warmaster Okawaru, Xom and Kikubaaqudgha (told you) from bottom to top.



And lastly, we have Zin the Law-Giver.

The swimming pool of the gods - I assume that's what it is - in the middle cannot be accessed. Well, not normally. If you readers demand it, I'll return with some means of levitation and a wand of disintegration at a later point, and take the pool by force.

For now, please choose a god for Casualty. Votes will be tallied up as soon as I run out of patience. If you're unfamiliar with the gods, read the spoiler/everpresent infodump below.

Spoiler

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Firstly, Beogh and Lugonu are not available at the Ecumenical Temple. Just saying.

Elyvilon is one of the three good deities, and the goddess of healing. You gain piety over time rather than losing it (chaotic, neutral and evil gods make you lose piety with time, while you gain it with good gods. This is balanced by non-good gods being easier to please). You learn to heal yourself and other creatures, get rid of status effects, and so forth. Healing creatures can potentially make them neutral. You may gain piety by destroying weapons. On the ground, mind, so you can't just blow up that ogre's club.

The Shining One is the second good god, and the god of paladins. You're given abilities such as a halo that makes you easier to hit but provides see invisible, the ability to heal and gain piety from killing undead/demons/evil priests, and summoning shields to protect you/summoning daevas/smiting via holy fire, and so forth. It's worth noting that piety gain with any good god is slow. The Shining One appreciates the sacrificing of evil items on his altar, and bans the use of sneak attacks, poison and evil items.

The third good god is Zin. Zin is preachy, and advocates avoidance of mutations, as well as not butchering or eating sentients, polymorphing things, drinking blood, attacking holy or neutral monsters (even hostile holy monsters), use of evil items or magic, letting your allies die... and so forth. He appreciates offerings of large sums of gold, and killing "spawns of chaos", including any shapeshifters, creatures with a mutating or polymorphing attack, and so forth. Abilities include preaching at things, with a variety of effects, protection from mutations, creating a sanctuary around you, and feeding you at the cost of piety when you're starving. Zin is... not that great.

Kikubaaqudgha is the ancient demon god of necromancy. You gain piety from killing something. Anything. He's also fairly open-minded, and doesn't object to anything you might do, short of abandoning him. Abilities given include recalling all undead slaves to you, protection from necromancy miscast effects, permanently enslaving enemy undead, summoning reapers (tier 2 demons, out of 5) and gifts of spellbooks, including the Necronomicon. Decent, if not amazing (the Necronomicon is the main selling point), but only for necromancers in practice.

Makhleb is, again, easy to please. You gain piety both from killing and sacrificing things, and don't lose piety from anything. Abilities given are minor destruction (random elemental attack), lesser servant of Makhleb (summons a minor demon, occasionally hostile, depending on your Invocation skill), major destruction (ranks up to fireball, lightning bolt etc.), and Greater Servant of Makhleb, which summons tier 1 demons. He also lets you gain HP and MP from killing things. A good set of backup abilities for melee characters, though there's the matter of needing a decent MP score and invocation skill for him to be useful. Still, invocation skill ranks raise MP, and minor destruction is a good way to grind skill, so don't write it off.

Nemelex Xobeh is something of an oddball. He appreciates the sacrificing of items. Of any kind. The more valuable, the better. If he's particularly pleased, he will grant you a deck of cards, according to the type of item you sacrificed (usually). Decks contain a number of cards, which you draw at random while wielding the deck. These are generally helpful. Nemelex is pleased when you use cards or use up decks, and gives you piety for this. He also has some abilities that make using decks easier.

Okawaru is simple and to the point. Kill things, sacrifice them, gain piety. Make sure not to attack allies (even temporary ones) or let them die. In return, you're given Might first - +5 strength and +1d10 damage on top of that, as an activated ability. Second, you get Haste. Both cost MP and piety, but not much. Oh, and he showers you with gifts of armour and weapons, after a while. Since the last bit is a large part of the motivation for picking him, he may not be the best pick for a monk.

Sif Muna is the miscellaneous caster god. He appreciates the practicing of casting skills (I.E. casting spells at all) and dislikes nothing. You're given the ability to trade in nutrition for MP, then the ability to forget spells, and finally protection from any miscast effects. After this point, Sif Muna will start giving you spellbooks, often tailor-made to contain exactly the sort of magic you use, but not spells you know already.

Trog is the god of violence, anger and so forth. He hates spellcasters. Kill something? Piety. Sacrifice it? More piety. Killed a spellcaster? Even more piety. Oh, and your first ability is to turn a spellbook into a pillar of fire. Makes for a nice temporary roadblock and, yes, piety. He gives you Trog's Hand (MR and regen), Brothers in Arms (summon a large, tanky monster) and, most of all, Berserk. Berserk doubles your max and current HP, and gives you the haste and might effects. If you got it from Trog, it also gets extended when you kill something.

The catch? When your berserk ends, you're slowed for a while, and lose a good deal of nutrition in the process. There are ways to counter the nutrition loss (having lots to eat, as trolls do) and the slowing (appropriate amulet), but until then, use it with care. Oh, he also gives weapon gifts.

Vehumet is the other magic god. Not necromancy or knowledge, but using magic for the express purpose of blowing things up. One can only assume it's the patron god of the A-team. You gain piety and (later) MP for killing things, your summoning/conjuration success chances are improved, and you're eventually given a sort of protection from summoned creatures, though it's not foolproof. After this, you're given a bunch of spellbooks for summoning or conjuration, whichever you're better at, ending in books you can only get from Vehumet (much like only Kiku can give the Necronomicon).

Xom is... well, go back to the part about him in the first post, under the chaos knight section. Basically, he's chaos incarnate, with a personality somewhere between the Stone Soup RNG, and the Director from Left 4 Dead. If he gets bored, horrid things will happen. He can do a bunch of tiresome or deadly things, and generally make a mess of your character. The flip side is that if you survive it, the gifts are (mostly) worthwhile. He's a tricky, but more or less viable-ish god.

Lastly, we have Yredelemnul. He also has a silly name. Wait until you see Ynoxinul and Neqoxec demons, though. In this game, evil is unpronounceable. Anyway, you gain piety from killing, but no sacrificing things. He starts off small, letting you animate corpses for 1 MP, as zombies and skeletons. You can then recall undead to you, or reflect damage (at the cost of piety) while praying. He later lets you animate all corpses in an area, drain life from everything in sight, enslave undead temporarily, and turn monsters into permanent, powerful undead copies of themselves (not watered down, and will follow you up/down stairs). He also gives frequent gifts of undead, of varying quality.

Yredelemnul is offended by the use of holy items, which are few and far between. He also suffers from the same issue as Makhleb - the need for a good invocation skill, at least eventually, which can be remedied by animating everything you see - and being MP-hungry. The second part is, again, fixable in the same way, but Yredelemnul's abilities eat up a good deal more MP than Makhleb's, in the end. Drain Life, for instance, costs as much MP (or possibly more, I forget) than Greater Servant of Makhleb, and it only gets more expensive from there.

Mega-update over. That was waaay too much work >_> Mostly the infodump on the gods.


Edit: Gorgon is wrong and right. I didn't die yet, but for the reasons he mentioned, trolls have a fair bit of trouble later on. Monks in general do, honestly. Gods help mitigate the static-ness a little, though.

[Gorgondantess]

Actually, monks can do quite well, if you play your cards right and get lucky. Generally in making a monk, I like to play kinda like I do in nethack: focus on tools, worship nemelex xobeh, grab a bunch of wands, use a race with really good evocations/invocations skills. They can become quite powerful later on, with that.
As for the god, I'll be merciful: nemelex xobeh, one of the few that can actually aid a monk. Actually, I'll put in 2 votes: nemelex xobeh and the shining one. Both come with their perks, and their drawbacks.

[Cogwheel]

That's an interesting idea... never really considered Nemelex for anything but Artificers. Should have, but I didn't. Pity trolls have a horrid invo/evocation skill. Ah well.

By the way, I typically choose Trog for my troll monks, and ignore the abundance of weapon gifts. I've considered Makhleb and even Yredelemnul on occasion, but never chose them.

[Gorgondantess]

That's an interesting idea... never really considered Nemelex for anything but Artificers. Should have, but I didn't. Pity trolls have a horrid invo/evocation skill. Ah well.

By the way, I typically choose Trog for my troll monks, and ignore the abundance of weapon gifts. I've considered Makhleb and even Yredelemnul on occasion, but never chose them.

Makhleb would actually be a good idea: at least you can use all of his gifts. I tend to avoid gods like Trog or Okawaru, though, as a monk: the gifts of weapons, normally such a joyous occasion, just feels like too much of a slap to the face.
Speaking of which, in that case, best not choose SHining one... unless you can bless your hands. Why don't you replace my vote for that with makhleb: he's fun, and easy. Really easy.

Another good choice for a monk would be lugonu: of course, you're not very likely to stumble upon one of her shrines...

[Milskidasith]

I say you go with Xom. I was once a teddy bear of Xom starting from level 1... 'twas fun. Also, whenever my demon mutated, he would mutate me more for extra bonuses, so at level 2 I had already gotten the T3 scale mutation (+3 AC, woo!)

[Lord Herman]

Trog would seem like the obvious choice for a big, brutish character. I'd vote for the Shining One seeing as Casualty is a Hero, but he might disapprove of our less orthodox feats of heroism, like ripping a fleeing foe to pieces with our bare hands claws.

I like the narration, by the way. Funny, informative and not excessively verbose.

Oh, and as for the betting pool: I think Casualty will be killed by an orc priest at dungeon level 9.

[Gorgondantess]

Oh, also, I forgot to add: Cog, you say cloaks don't add anything to AC unless they are enchanted. Look at your AC before the cloak was put on... then look at it after it was put on.
That's hats and wizard hats you're thinking of.

[Cogwheel]

Gorgon: Boots and gloves too. But yes, good point on the cloak, never noticed that.

Herman: One vote for Trog, than. Though as Gorgon said, there's the matter of weapon gifts being worthless. Now, the Shining One? He just doesn't understand Casualty. I have a sneaking feeling he's just not heroic* enough. Also, I didn't realize I was doing anything more than failing at being funny. Nice to know.

Mil: So you want me dead. Understood.

Hm... you know, a Makhlebite monk would be interesting. I could be a large, green martial artist in robes tossing energy blasts all over the place. Like this guy.


*Heroic (adj): One who eviscerates and consumes their enemies with terrifying gusto. Heroism optional.



Edit: So far, one vote each for Trog, Makhleb and Xom. I think. Gorgon and Herman's posts were a tad vague, so the Makhleb/Trog votes may have been for Nemelex or the Shining One.

[Raroy]

Go with Trog. You are the hero here, so get with the heroic blood frenzy knowledge destroying chaotic tyranny.

[Cogwheel]

Go with Trog. You are the hero here, so get with the heroic blood frenzy knowledge destroying chaotic tyranny.

That's a second vote for Trog...

Incidentally, berserk rage becomes broken with an amulet, or other means of resisting slow effects. Not only do you ignore the slow effect from after you berserk, but haste effects are extended, so you remain hasted for some time after your rage ends, instead of being slow and useless. Nice, no?

Of course, such combos rarely occur.

[The Dark Fiddler]

I'd say the first one, the healing one that likes you destroying weapons.

After all, you can't use them.

[Cogwheel]

So...

Elivilon - 1
Trog - 2
Makhleb -1

[Lord Herman]

Edit: So far, one vote each for Trog, Makhleb and Xom. I think. Gorgon and Herman's posts were a tad vague, so the Makhleb/Trog votes may have been for Nemelex or the Shining One.

Yes, my vote was for Trog. Sorry for being unclear.

[Cogwheel]

I should probably mention to those voting for Elyvilon that Elyvilon discourages violence and a great deal of other things. Specifically, piety is gained over time, from destroying weapons and healing things into submission.

List of things that offend Elyvilon...


- casting any necromantic spell
- hitting things with a draining or vampiric weapon
- using any form of evil magic, including wands of draining
- attacking or killing neutral or holy creatures
- killing allies or even letting them die
- drinking blood, even accidentally
- cannibalism, likely a non-issue
- Butchering corpses or killing living creatures during prayer.

Elyvilon is quite easily upset, as you can see. None of these cause mere piety loss. Instead, it causes penance - Elyvilon will not grant powers until I've done enough of the appropriate acts to raise piety, thus removing the penance. During this time, she may choose to dull my weapons. Not a problem, for a monk.

Simply put, Elyvilon does not understand heroism. That said, don't let me stop you. I bow to the will of the people etc. etc.

[Johnny Blade]

Nemelex sounds interesting, and at least sacrificing shouldn't hurt you much, so that's where my vote goes.

[nooblade]

I'd also like to vote for Nemelex. Berserk sounds awesome, but seeing if this new thing works at all sounds better.

Plus, you know, this is the first opportunity for forum input to lead to death! This is exciting. I have replaced the RNG!

[Vitruviansquid]

Imo, trolls do not need a God that forces them to consume more food. I vote is for TSO.

[Cogwheel]

Two votes for Nemelex, two for Trog, two for Elyvilon (Vampire made a vote through MSN) and one for the Shining One. Hm.. now I'm curious to see what we end up with.

Edit: For what it's worth, food is a non-issue. I get by just fine with gods that spend a lot of nutrition on abilities and support sacrificed corpses, such as Trog.


Nooblade: No, you have not. Close, though. Basically, 90% of my readers are Xom.

More edits: Another off-screen vote (bit of a pain to tally these) brings it up to 3 for Trog. While this breaks the tie, you probably have a few hours until I end voting.

[Arcanoi]

I downloaded the game, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to convert the thing into Tiled Mode. Is it obvious and I'm just failing utterly?

[Vitruviansquid]

IIRC, you have to download the tiled version to begin with. When you get to the list of versions you can download, download one of the files that says "tiles" in it.

[Arcanoi]

God damnit, that was far too obvious for me to ever figure out. Thanks a bunch.

[Cogwheel]

Make sure you take the tutorial, by the way.

Edit: Voting has now closed, as I'm going to start on the next update. We're going with Trog.

[Cogwheel]

Spoiler

Show

So. The people have spoken.



Trog, the angry.



Trog recognizes Casualty's exceptional heroism, I guess.



Now, you may be wondering why I saved up those books when Casualty isn't a caster, and is probably illiterate anyway.



Chekhov is delighted!



Giant frogs. Essentially, they're slightly weaker than ants and lack the poison. Nothing too serious. Still, I feel like I should be introducing every new monster, for some reason.

I'd say it's edible and quite delicious, but you probably guessed that anyway.



Meet the first of the uniques. Crawl has a bunch of randomly spawned named adventurers. The notion of teamwork (and survival) are foreign to them, and so they act as unusually tough monsters, often with a variety of items and abilities. I'm surprised that the first one we run into is on floor 6, honestly. Blork would be bad for anyone else, but as usual, he doesn't present much of a problem to Casualty. That's not to say he's a pushover, but still.

Since I failed to screenshot it: Blork wears a robe and, in this case, uses a longsword. He's a caster, capable of hasting himself, slowing you, turning invisible and generally being an orc mage with a big sword and more HP. The description given is "A particularly fat and ugly orc. He appears to have scavenged a pair of rainbow suspenders from somewhere. They're not helping."




This is a longsword of Pain he's got. The pain brand means a weapon does extra pain damage according to how good the user is at necromancy. The weapon of choice for necromancers and casting-based death knights, naturally, but fairly harmless in Blork's hands. Still, it's a longsword.



As I said, not too bad. Did I mention that Trog hates magic users? Because he does. A lot.



Imps insult you. That.. that's almost all they do, actually. They use butchered shakespearean English, and sacrifice sense-making for more creativity. Oh, and they blink, regenerate quickly, have high EV, and are immune to pain/poison/fire. This makes them very annoying for low-level meleeists, and several kinds of casters. They only become a credible threat, in practice, if they pick up a weapon.

Incidentally, this is an example of tier 5 demons. Demons, like undead, leave no corpses.



Floor 7. This could get a little tricky...



Or maybe not. Note the loot: Yet more potions, a couple scrolls, and a ring.



Scorpions. Scorpions have reasonable AC/EV, move at your speed, have ant-class HP and damage, and also pack some fairly nasty poison. So, like giant ants in many ways, but worse overall (in my eyes), even though they're not as fast. Oh, and the thing you see below it is a Choko, a rather bland and tasteless vegetable. Related to pumpkins and so on, I believe.



Another wand! And, rather more pressingly, a warrior and a priest. Time to run into that corridor, past the spear trap.



An orc warrior whacking away at me, while the priest smites me from behind cover. This could get bad really quickly. Clearly, there is only one solution to this.



Heroism.

Quite some stat changes there, no?



Wiped them out in 7 turns.

You know, Trog just needs to market things properly. If he told people that all-consuming fury and bloodlust leads to hunger and thus weight loss, he'd be the most popular god around.



So, the wand. Now, where were we? Now that I finished slaughtering and looting everything in sight, I mean. Oh, right. Going to new places and then slaughtering and looting everything in sight.



Low blow, game. Low blow. Any item with bright white text and an adjective that isn't embroidered/runed/shiny/some others I can't remember, like this crossbow, is an artifact. Typically a random artifact, or randart - randomly generated and not always good, but usually very powerful. Artifacts can't be degraded in any way, or upgraded. They also have at least one unique property. Often, they have more than one - something only possible for artifacts. It's also possible to get properties on items where you wouldn't normally find them, like an axe that grants See Invisible.

If anyone wants me to ignore the horrid aptitude trolls have for ranged weapons and grab the crossbow anyway, I'll go back to it. On the bright side, I have a new wand.



Snozzcumbers, the most disgusting and rare vegetable in the game. Don't ask, I don't know either. Even trolls are disgusted by it - no amount of heroism can make snozzcumbers delicious, curse them.



Time to test out those wands on a hapless victim, I think.



Handy at times. You can't see the kobold because it went out of view, not because I mined it to death or something.



I can get behind that kind of firepower. Mostly because there's no way I'll be caught in front of it. In case you're wondering, a fireball does large fire damage in a 3x3 area, centered on the tile you target. Handle with care.



Not as ludicrously powerful, but it has its uses. Dispatching jellies, for instance, or anything in water (you'll see, you'll seeeeeeee). No, really. Water creatures are annoying. Crawl vets, you know the one I'm thinking of.

As you can see, altars are sometimes located outside the temple as well. They're just typically in enclosed spaces like that, which makes them hard to get to. Plus, you know, we've got Trog. Though I have a feeling Trog and Vehumet would get along rather well if it wasn't for the magic-hate.



It has come to my attention that trolls are, for whatever reason, incapable of wearing boots. What madness is this?



Identified the ring. Teleport control is nice - whenever you'd be randomly teleported, you can pick a location instead, and it'll take you there, with a margin of error of two tiles. Should this margin of error put you inside a solid object, the teleport is just made random instead. Most Roguelikes are not so generous, and would cheerfully telefrag you instead.



At some point in all this massacring, Trog gave me a new ability, Trog's Hand. It costs piety, and while it doesn't eat up nearly as much nutrition as Berserk (pun unintentional), it does give magic resistance and regen. On top of troll regen. Just be careful with sequencing this - being berserk means you're too angry to, among other things, switch weapons, equip things, evoke items, use abilities or drink potions. Yes, you're too angry for beverages. Unless it's Trog-patented Dr.Angry or whatever it is that berserkers drink these days.



On to floor 8. The phantom of the opera... No, wait, it's just some mook. Carry on.


And that's it for this update, there will likely be a bonus update consisting of a potion/scroll testing binge later on.

[Balketh]

Posting to avoid Cog tripleposting and also to express joy and enjoyment of this thread.

Thumbs up!

[Cogwheel]

So, about that mini-update I mentioned.

Spoiler

Show

Right. So. Got a phantom to dispose of before I can begin testing. It blinked away for a moment, so I just need to chase it, and...



Oh.

Prince Ribbit is one of the game's nastier uniques. Basically, he hits almost as hard as an ogre (sort of. Ogre damage becomes less severe with times, while PR's attacks don't seem as affected by AC, which might just be me), has tons of hit points, blinks, turns invisible and tosses bolts of cold/magic darts. He's unpleasant, is the point I'm trying to make. And yes, he's a prince transformed into a frog.



Killing the Phantom brought me to level 9, where I picked a strength boost. Does the strength boost message make anyone else think of TNO's level up message from Planescape, or is it just me?



This is what comes from two hits by Prince Ribbit. Two. See why I fear him?



In hindsight, this was only a close call because I forgot to use Berserk or Trog's Hand. Stupid of me, really. PR was generous enough to do nothing but sit there and attack me, though. No magic or anything. He was summarily sacrificed.

And now for the great ID binge of 2010. Don't attempt this at home, go to a neighbour's house first.



From left to right: Potion of healing, potion of heal wounds, potion of might, potion of confusion, potion of invisibility, potion of restore abilities, poison, two unidentified potions (since I only have one of them), 3 remove curse scrolls, 2 teleport, 2 identify, 2 and 3 tried but unidentified. There was also a scroll of random uselessness or.. something in there that had dust which glowed purple, followed by making my claws glow blue on the second try. But I already identified RU scrolls, so it makes no sense.

Oh, and a scroll of noise. It makes a lot of noise, thus waking up everything nearby - at least 6 monsters, judging by the barks, shouts and so forth - and making them home in on my location. The next update should be horrific and brutal. Just, you know, not for me.



Memo: Healing potions heal single-digit to 12 HP or so, but cure slowing, confusion, poison, sickness and other unpleasant things. Heal Wounds does none of this, but heals 30 or 40. Since healing doesn't get better than this, in the late game, healing items are a bit pitiful. You know what Might does, of course, and invisibility is clear enough (you still make noise, so stealth matters). Attacking doesn't break invisibility. Restore abilities is handy, as it erases any ability damage you currently suffer from. I'll hold off on the other potions, as there's a very real chance of one of them being Mutation.

[Gorgondantess]

I say you should pick up the randart anyways. I always do- while you might not want to fight with them, it might be, say, see invisible, resist X, +5 AC. So, it'll be useful as a protective item.
Of course, make sure you're packing a detect curse/ remove curse.

[Cogwheel]

I'll go and pick it up, than. Good point there. Next update may be up some time tonight, my time (currently GMT+2).