I played the game since 0.29 (released in August 2022) splatting hundreds of characters in all sorts of ways. One of them even touched the Orb but didn’t live long enough to escape (ironically, it was another mountain dwarf). This run, I did something different: I actually started using my god’s abilities in any viable situation.
It was a fun run, and I’m really surprised that the escape sequence isn’t that difficult! For some reason I thought it would be really difficult. With that said I did it with 10 !haste and 11 ?blinking so maybe I’m just lucky :D
The hardest parts were probably Depths and Zot (although amusingly Z:5 was pretty easy) because the lack of resistances (particularly rElec and rCorr) was VERY noticeable.
I didn’t want to do any late-game optional branches except for Elf (because Depths is scary and I rather grind a bit before it) but I found the dreamshard necklace and figured it’d be more useful on the run than my amulet of faith so I went to Crypt to grind Nem’s piety a bit (wasn’t needed at all in the end).
Anyway, here’s my character file for the curious: https://pastebin.com/6NhHY03U
Happy new year crawlers!!
Congrats. I play a lot of crawl, and have pretty regularly since v0.16 or so. There’s been a lot of changes (there used to be food! Spells made you hungry!) but the core of it remains very good.
At one point I had a win with every species, but they added new ones and removed some since then.
Minotaur Berserker was my first win. Can’t go wrong with screaming and headbutting, I say.
Gargoyle Earth Elementalist was also fun. If you get Shatter online it can delete a lot of stuff outright. You just need another solution for flying stuff and jellies.
I think it’s an Ice spell now, but the one that takes a couple turns and then just kills the nearest creature was amazing. Did the extended endgame with that. Blew up so many pandemonium lords.
I don’t usually do the extended anymore. Hell is, appropriately, unpleasant. Pandemonium isn’t as bad, but there’s always the risk of popping in next to a very bad crowd.
Also the tomb can get fucked.
The ascent with the orb is usually pretty safe, with the occasional heart stopper. I’ve lost at least two dudes on the way up. One gargoyle ate a high damage spell from one of those hell sentinels. Should have blinked or fogged or something. One felid ate a pan lord’s chain lighting that was more than his max health.
Hm I’m rambling. Great game. Highly recommend.
I want to try older versions someday but the lack of QoL features from modern versions is scary. I still remember my Vine Stalker who was sent to Abyss by a elf necromancer with a chaos dagger that I overlooked in logs. I’m SO glad that distortion brands are now marked on screen.
I never dived too deep into Earth magic but had a powerful ice mage with Permafrost Eruption, destroying entire screen worth of enemies. Then a unique caught me on the Spider’s entrance and I realized too slowly that I need to escape. YASD
I’m curious about extended but I also prefer my runs to be pretty short… I’ll probably manage to get a few big runs to explore Pan and Hells and whatnot but can’t see myself sticking to it. Short and sweet is great!
They’ve really shortened the game. Lair used to be 8 floors. Orc was 5. I think they shortened hell, too.
The qol stuff has generally been pretty solid.
The only change I actively dislike is the opportunity attacks you suffer when moving. I added a “blink the screen yellow when it happens” to my config to alert me, but I just think the mechanic isn’t fun.
Ok, I do kind of miss the yellow wands (heal, haste). And being able to learn Controlled Blink as a spell. That stuff was nice.