A New DCSS Server for the US West Coast

https://lemy.lol/post/64976556

[DCSS] At last, Pandemonium runes are mine

https://lemmy.world/post/45739965

[DCSS] At last, Pandemonium runes are mine

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue file for those who can read it

While winning in DCSS is fun, what I find even more enjoyable is to win in a sub-optimal (but fun) way. This run is a great example of what I mean:
- I have sacrificed my hand, my courage and my armor to get my deity’s powers earlier. No shield, no armor, and I suffer a debuff every serious battle.
- I am a shapeshifter, in a form that can’t use weapons and any armor. Except for my form’s innate resistances, I have only a bit that I could get from my amulet and one ring (as you can only wear ring per hand).
- I am a spellcaster with 7 innate Intelligence. Yes, I sacrificed some of my brain matter too. Brain mattern’t.

And I am a god-slaying tempest that no one can defeat. Even under heavy debuffs from my cowardice, I kill everything in one-three shots. With 74 evasion, nothing can hope to hit me. And I move to my next victim in a moment. How come?

Storm talisman. Make Shapeshifting a focus of your whole run and you can kill even the Pandemonium lords in three hits. Or die a miserable death to a spell you couldn’t dodge.

This run had a good progression of talismans: first, Rimehorn that turns the early game into a peaceful walk; then, Serpent that’s… kind of similar to Rimehorn honestly. Really strong, plenty defense, enjoy your strong midgame (though, to be fair, I did struggle with it a bit in Vaults). Now that Serpent can wear two helmets, it has some endgame potential too.

I admired this potential for a bit longer than I expected to… my two potential upgrades were Granite talisman that I’m not fond of and Riddle talisman. I tried to make the latter work but, no matter what, it gave me less defense than Serpent so I stuck with being a snake. To give myself some advantage for my slithering endgame I started training summoning magic. At first, it wasn’t very impressive but once I got Mana Viper and Forest online, my XP investment started to pay off.

Then, right after getting the third rune and preparing myself for the final showdown at the Realm of Zot, I found it - Storm talisman! And you know the rest.

Can’t wait to learn which of the Hell branches will kill this character!

[DCSS] A plant lady cosplays a wolfie for her Demon-God

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue file for those who can read it.

Reasons

Vine stalkers spread any damage they take between their health and their mana. Losing mana from big damage spikes is horrible on most gods as you need mana to cast your “save me” abilities. Some of the gods don’t care about mana at all but they also give you no incentive to train skills that will raise your mana in the first place.

And then there’s Makhleb. Their abilities cost health instead of mana (and their costs take a percentage of your maximum health so frail Vine stalkers are on discount!) and they love high Invocations skill that will bring your mana to respectable levels. To add to this, Vine stalkers have a naturally fast health regeneration so they can spam Makhleb’s abilities more often.

How it went

So, after brainstorming this build, I wanted to win with it. And, after 3 unsuccessful attempts, I did exactly that.

This build has two central points: Unleash Destruction and Antimagic Bite.

Unleash Destruction is Makhleb’s ability that costs a fraction of your health and… nothing more! It’s completely spammable - as long as you can survive spamming it of course. And oh just how spammable it is on Vine stalkers! Why fight enemies one by one when you can destroy them with your burning/freezing/draining/corroding hatred? Get your enemies victims in a hallway and shoot your hellish lasers or whatever!

As it is a full range penetrating beam, it can manage summoners and the shining eyes very well too. So, while it’s usefulness caps at Shoals and Swamp, it will still be useful all the way to Zot.

Antimagic Bite is a Vine stalker’s special. You hit an orc wizard with a swift but weak dagger and they lose half their health and their voice can’t cast the spells anymore for some reason. This is the reason Vine stalkers rule. Naturally, you want to maximize bite’s damage potential by triggering it more - thus the need for a fast weapon. I started this run with an assumption that I will go with short swords and rapiers but the game had its own plans…

8096 | D:9 | Encountered Amaemon

Demon whip is no joke. While it’s not as fast as a quick blade it has a higher base damage and it scales with strength which is exactly what we need. Also no “20 skill to reach mindelay” nonsense lmao.

And this is a big deal as Vine stalker’s aptitudes aren’t great… take a look at our main skills:

• Fighting (-1) and Evocations (-1)
• Armour and Dodging (-2), Shields (-1)
• Invocations (0)
• Maces&Flails or Short blades (-1)

Sure, it’s not Mummy-level bad but still quite meh. What do you mean “you have 10 Dodging in Crystal armor”?? That’s…. that was very important….

So anyway, some other stuff this build has or should get online:

• Infernal Servant: Makhleb’s second ability and a glorious “meh whatever” from me. Demonic friends are nice early on but they don’t scale well into late-game. Wow, a green death?? Well thank you it’s poison will surely help deal with liches and orbs of fire! I HAVE MAX INVO MAKH YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE!!! …If you see a mark that replaces Infernal Servant don’t hesitate you won’t miss it.

• Marks: while we’re at it, let’s talk marks. Makhleb gives you a choice of three marks once you reach their final rank. Marks can never be rerolled so you’re stuck with what you’re given for the entire run. Here’s my thoughts on the four marks I’ve gained on my attempts:

  • Mark of Atrocity: the obvious. Makes Unleash Destruction extremely strong… and extremely costy. The moment you get it, you must stop spamming it. It proved to be too hard to manage for me so I splattered because of it.
  • Mark of Execution: as if your bite wasn’t enough. You were already great at melee but now you’re a beast. The mark has no downsides too so you can pick it if you’re afraid of others’ costs.
  • Mark of Annihilation: no more demonic friends. And now you have Orb of Destruction with explosions! Pretty nice I’d say. Highly situational as it doesn’t do well with hallways but it can deal with crowds just fine.
  • Mark of Celebrant: what enables the stupid (me) to win. The closest you get to a panic button on Makhleb. If it activates you are in trouble and must figure out how to survive. I won with this one.

• Lupine talisman: this build rests on two tenets: spend health and hit really fast. Being a werewolf makes you regain your health quickly and stack up a fixed bonus to each of your attacks. C’mon 50 damage per whip’s swing, you don’t wanna? You aren’t even risking much with your Will already being so high. Footwear is overrated anyway…

I still hate guardian spirit btw :)

[DCSS] I have identified the last magical staff

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

I forgot just how painful it is to play a pew-pew caster in Crawl so the game decided to remind me. With endless supply of mana (thanks to Sif Muna) you’d think it should be easy. Ha! Funny.

Mana management is the worst part of playing a pew-pew caster for sure but it’s not the only problem. All late-game spells are noisy as hell meaning you will constantly bring in attention from the floor. Your failure rates will never reach 0% on spells that matter. 1% chance to miscast? Three times in a row, please.

Resistances become a pain in the ass near the end. Don’t have Orb of Destruction or Bombard by Depths? Prepare to suffer :)
I’m not even gonna mention Zot - the Orbs are absurd!

[DCSS] How the scroll of butterflies from the hunter start saved my run in Zot:5

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

It was a normal frog archer run with my fearsome amphibian and their battlemage ancestor shooting and conjuring their way through the dungeon. Between my huge damage output (thanks Harm!) and my constantly Idealized ancestor, the run was extremely easy. Thus, I entered Zot:5.

After clearing the rest of the floor, I switched my Harm amulet to another one with -Tele to prevent teleport traps and got to the Hall of Zot. Unexpectedly, orb guardians weren’t alone at the entrance - a draconian gang settled there too. That confused me and my ancestor died. Which is fine, it’s not like its the first time (battlemage is squishy!). I just need to reset the encounter by going to the staircase.

So, I hopped and, as I was merely two tiles from the stairs and enemies were pretty far away, I just walked to the stairs. And then…

55054 | Zot:5 | HP: 1/204 [Orb Guardian (54)]

OUCH

I didn’t notice there was a moth of wrath among the enemies, and the closest orb guardian to me was zerked. Total misplay but still…

Think, now! What can I do to guarantee survival? I can’t hop as it’s on cooldown, can’t blink as I’m under -tele, can’t use Transference as my ancestor is dead. Throwing net, mephitic cloud, wand of paralysis all have a chance to fail. Invisibility and Leda’s Liquefaction won’t prevent their attacks.

My gaze lifted upon scrolls of summoning that were chosen over scrolls of butterflies by the RNG this run. “If only I had these…” I thought when I noticed a scroll of butterflies right there in my inventory. Unused since the very beginning of the game when I decided to play as hunter instead of hexslinger. The only scroll of butterflies I could have for this entire run.

A gentle wind pushed the orb guardian away from me as colorful insects filled the space between us. Thanking Xom for this beautiful coincidence, I went upstair and healed up to full health, and then eventually cleared the rest of the last floor and escaped with the Orb.

🦋❤️

A New DCSS Server for South America

https://literature.cafe/post/30109932

[DCSS] An angry dragon stormed through the dungeon, or how I got my squishiest win

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue for those who can read it

My usual experience with meld-all shapeshifters in midgame is as follows: find the dragon-coil talisman in Lair, upgrade to it by S branches and effortlessly destroy them, enter Vaults and almost die to the first group of monsters, rush shapeshifting for the storm talisman in panic and forever abandon the scaly monster I was never meant to be.

NOT THIS TIME!

I started this run with a clear goal: experience the draconian’s dragon form glory. That means, no storm form, no sphinx form, definitely no statue form.

The plan started to feel grim from the get go: protean talisman transformed into medusa. And… I mean, medusa isn’t necessarily bad. It’s good when you are a gladiator with a nice trident! But when you are an unarmed shapeshifter who rushed Shapeshifting skill to 6, it SUCKS! All other forms can handle most threats effortlessly with no UC skill. Medusa can’t, you must rush some UC or switch to weapons…

Then I found the spider talisman. I never played with it before, it just tends to appear in Elf 3’s end vault or some other absurdly late place. And, from my first experience, I must say it’s good! You are squishy as hell of course but you get so much EV from it (much more than wellspring!) that it’s not that big of a deal. Rampage is nice, hop is basically a free blink and you ensnare your foes on hit too. I wouldn’t do Spider Nest with it of course but Shoals and Swamp seem doable to me.

Trog helped with survivability a bit too. Berserk was nice early on, and then Trog’s Hand and occasional Brother in Arm can help in bad situations (though it helped me the most during the orb run). The only problem I had with them was…

Trog gifts you a weapon!

Read the room, man!

Now, finally, dragon form. It is a glass cannon kind of talisman. Like scarab, like spider. It gives a lot of health, some AC and resistances but… in the end it’s still extremely squishy. Yet I feel like the form is at its worst at lower shapeshifting. As I went from 17 (the minimal for it) to 20 and beyond, I felt like low health syndrome wasn’t as prevalent. Not to say I turned into a tank but I think my struggle was over after early Vaults floors.

Well, I am a draconian so the dragon form is stronger than on other species. Bonus AC, faster recharging breath attack, tailslap. But, at least on one species, dragon form can handle Zot without much struggle. Even with these orbs…

Orbs of Entropy. It was my first time dealing with them. They corrode, they drain, they doom. I actually got a bane of paradox thanks to one of them. The orb run was fun… OoE is the scariest variety of orbs for me.

About the orb run. Usually it’s easy, with some orb guardians and other pests. Maybe a panlord or an executioner will appear but you’ll escape easily. Not this time. Panlords and pan-level demons at nearly every Zot and Depths floor. An orb guardian with Manifold Assault (thanks OoE…). Doesn’t help that this seed was particularly low on ?blink and !haste. Got the win through sheer Will… thanks Trog’s Hand for the Will btw :P

0.34 Tournament Results

https://lemy.lol/post/61648571

[DCSS] My experience with 0.34 after two successful runs (and numerous splats)

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Note that I said “successful runs”, not wins. Because only one of these was a win (morgue file for the curious). Another one was… well, I didn’t pick up the Orb after apporting it to me, successfully performed the Orb run, realized my mistake and returned to Zot and died on my second ascend. So, a successful run, yet not a win.

I will shortly explain the changes but if you want to read the changes yourself, you can do it here.

Unlimited inventory

Inventory was sorted in four groups: gear (items you can equip and throwing implements), potions, scrolls and evocables (wands and rechargeable items like the phial of floods). Each group has a limit of 52 items - which basically means that you will never run out of free space in your inventory. The only affected screens are [i]nventory and [d]rop. Also, most consumables now have a default shortcut (e.g. if you have a scroll of teleportation identified, it’ll always be on ‘t’, so reading it is always r+t).

Personally, I am a tidy player who hates clattered inventory so I never had problem with inventory management in crawl. Dropping 2 potions of attractions never was a run-ending decision. With that said, I do appreciate the default letters for consumables and the added convenience of looting timed portals (yaay, no more dropping all wands and potions before entering a trove!). Unfortunately, dropping potions of moonshine now takes twice as much keypresses. Literally unplayble!

Doom and ostracize, reworked Troves

Ah, mutations… who doesn’t love getting Teleportitis after had the audacity of missing a shining eye with your silver javelin twice? Drinking all your potions of mutation to end up with no helmet slot (bye-bye, see invisible!) while Berserkitis still is sitting comfortably in your list of mutations… well, 0.34 invites you to forget about all this nonsense at the small, TINY cost of (maybe) giving Manifold Assault to a juggernaut~

Doom is a new mechanic that replaces stat drain and takes place of malmutation in a few cases (malmutate is still in the game but it’s not as common now). It’s a counter that goes from 0 all the way to 100%, giving you a random bane - an unpleasant effect that must be cured with gaining experience. A LOT OF IT (like literally two levels worth of exp)!

Doom-inflicting enemies start appearing as early as third floor, thanks to drudes, tanky demonic pieces of shit with resistances tailored specifically against alchemists and fire elementalists. Later, you will also find draugr, rare kind of zombies who inflict doom and can wield weapons even if their initial form couldn’t (imagine a bear with a halberd), and ravens who can inflict doom with a ranged attack. Learn to love playing summoners, I guess :)

Another long-term damage effect is Ostracize: it temporarily reduces your maximum piety until you gain some amount of XP (roughly comparable to the banes’ requirements). Unlike Doom, Ostracize doesn’t appear on many enemies but it can appear as a requirement for entering troves!

And troves also got a rework. No more stupid demands like “27 scrolls of blinking”. Now, the more likely demands (in my experience) are suffering a pre-announced bane or Ostracize yourself for your whole piety, or showing the slimy or abyssal rune. The interiors of troves were also reworked, now having a theme built around in-game named characters (wizards or artifact owners) while also giving you much better items! My personal favorite trove is “Ozocubu’s Refrigerator”.

Throughout all my games, I only suffered two banes and only once did Ostracize do something bad to me. All three of these were due to troves. So, while the new doom-inducing enemies sound really scary, banes are very avoidable even with my sloppy play style. The two banes I experienced were:

• Bane of lethargy, reducing your movement speed. Having to suffer the Chei’s treatment is scary but is very manageable as long as you don’t forget about it. Especially since I already had experience with playing a Cheibriados character.

• Bane of claustrophobia, which must be truly scary for a melee brute but I was an Airstrike spammer so no big problem😎 If this bane appears as a trove requirement and you’re scared of it, accept it right before going into Swamp/Shoals. No walls - no problem!

As for Ostracize, I got it on my Yredelemnul run, unwisely picking it before Orcish Mines. That was tough. I still reap zombies out of my kills but all the abilities are gone and the Mines is a challenging place. Worked off some of it at the dungeon but going all the way down is scary so I was still forced to deal with orcs. And I did. I died much later, in the Snake Pit (fucking electrosnakes!!).

Overall, troves have a much more interesting cost but the rewards are really worth it (plenty of acquirement-level artifacts)!

Slime Pits

It’s Extended now!!!!!

No, not really.

Slime got new scary as hell enemies, have bigger floors overall, while also preventing you from returning to upper levels until you either kill The Royal Jelly or devote yourself to their acidic grace, Jiyva the Shapeless.

There are two consolations though: first, you get to enjoy faster HP and MP regen whenever you go downstairs. So it’s not like you’re just thrown into the middle of gurgling and staring hell with no help. Second, floors 2-4 are guaranteed to generate a Jiyva altar in case you realized limitations of your inflexible body.

Now, I was in the Pits only once - as a mage with powerful mass destruction spells. These kinds of characters will definitely have an easier time in Slime compared to melee brutes. With that said, comparing Jiyva’s domain to the likes of Dis is bizarre to me. It’s hard, even harder than Vaults for some characters. Yet still easier than Zot.

Harder Realm of Zot

As everyone knows, there’s only one reason for a game developer to increase difficulty of their creation: hatred burning in their cold unbeating heart.

Jokes aside, Zot did become harder and it kinda sucks for players who already struggled with getting a win. With that said, the additions are great and contribute a lot to !FUN!

First change is that scrolls of blinking aren’t perfectly accurate in Zot (and during the Orb run) - they function like a barachi’s jump, with a destination being randomly chosen 1-2 tiles away from your desired destination. I am actually a bit surprised that it wasn’t the case in previous versions given just how powerful these scrolls are. It is, sadly, a difficulty spike.

Second change concerns the orbs. Now, the game chooses randomly between three types of orbs: orb of winter with massive cold attacks and Ostracize (the only monster with that spell that I’ve seen), orb of entropy with acid and negative energy attacks and a ranged doom attack and the good ol’ orbs of fire, unchanged. You’re informed of what type of orb waits for you by statues near the temple’s entrance so you can prepare for it.

I haven’t encountered orbs of entropy yet but I’ve dealt with orbs of winter in my almost-win run. They have Ozocubu’s Refrigeration. A screen-wipe cold magic. Say goodbye to all your summons, and your own health if you didn’t get cold resistances. Ostracize wasn’t scary at all - it never blocked a single ability for me. Maybe I’m just lucky but either way I much prefer it to OoF’s malmutate. Even if they removed berserkitis, I don’t care!

And finally, the most controversial addition in this version. Boundless Tesseracts. It has the worst attack of all monsters - carelessness-inducing death clock!!!!!

Or, to stop being so dramatic, Boundless Tesseracts are a pair of summoners which you must kill until they flood the floor with orbs of instagib. The thing is, their summon rate is very slow, summons always appear beyond your vision and you must only kill one Tesseract that isn’t a real enemy - it can’t attack or do anything to defend itself. You need to get in one of the lungs, all buffed up and prepared, kill everything that can stand in your way and punish the summoner.

How much time do you get? Well, when I was doing it for the first time, I took my time fighting in the lung, suffered some damage, retreated to a safer place and healed to full. I don’t know how many new enemies appeared but it wasn’t bad at all. Like, maybe 5-6 new enemies scattered around the floor. It’s fine!

Just, please, for the love of Cheibriados, don’t go into the middle of hell with no buffs in hope that you will manage Tesseracts before fireballs and crystal spear make a short work of you. It’s Zot. These are no mere critters.

That’s it for the highlights of 0.34. There are still many additions which I didn’t cover like all the new enemies, armor egos, weapon brands and types of orbs (not enemies, items). Each DCSS version is huge and full of changes worth discussing. Feel free to ask about other aspects of the game.

Happy gaming and don’t forget to train your stealth~