CRAWL Stone Soup (roguelike)

[pilonv1]

Bored at work, wanted something to do so after some dudes at Q23 forums recommended it I thought I'd give it a try. I managed to get to level 4 before I thought I was god and got slain by a bunch of hobgoblins

Get it here

http://crawl-ref.sourceforge.net/

You can play it on some servers too and they record scores and stuff.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/recent.html

There's like 28 professions too

http://www.digital-eel.com/13steps/

Start playing and post your scores. My best was 414 but I had no idea what I was doing.

[Van Cruncheon]

i have been pimping this for awhile, and YES it is awesome

[pilonv1]

i haven't seen you pimping it, i should pay more attention

its fucking AWESOME though. i always die doing something stupid and for some reason i love trying out unknown pots+scrolls.

[Enl]

I just lost by going up the stairs and expecting to enter a town to sell my loot. Seems just like Angband but with a better interface. I'll definitely be giving this more time tomorrow.

[pilonv1]

: I've done that too. There are shops somewhere apparently...

BTW the best thing about this is "o" - Auto Explore. Runs around till you find something you haven't explored. fucking brilliant.

[Kara]

Kobold Chaos Knight of Xom   

[Enl]

Feeling a little rusty at the moment. After the several failed freak attempts at resurrecting Trumpy, I decided to bring a real man into the battle. While he lasted a bit longer apparently he still wasn't man enough for the task.

[pilonv1]

Human Fighter is the easiest to start with. Apparently the magic users get fucking awesome later on.

[Enl]

After the failures of Splint Chesthair and Crunch Buttsteak, Fridge Largemeat stormed the dungeon more than tripling the previous score before getting swarmed by a cult of orc priests. I think I'm now going to work on some other classes and see how they hold up. Also I noticed that the stores seem to appear at random, but you'd have to get lucky to find the right one you're looking for (in my case the one I got sold only fruit).

[pilonv1]

Sticking with my human fighter for now and cant get past the 400-500 point barrier. There's always something like a guy named Terrence with a venomous blade. Last game I got a +5 DEX ring early too

[Van Cruncheon]

the ghosts of previous characters are rough

[Enl]

Damn, my Merfolk Enchanter, Punch Rockgroin, was doing pretty decently until he ran out of food and resorted to devouring the corpses of orcs and rats. Also I love the variety in the locations. One of the early levels had a hellish, fiery area full of smoke and strong beasts, and in another area there was a lake full of zombie fish people.

[BlueTsunami]

I got kind of far with my Draconian Chaos Knight... then I ran into an Ogre

[Enl]

I got kind of far with my Draconian Chaos Knight... then I ran into an Ogre

Same thing just happened to me. I brought back Fridge Largemeat (minotaur fighter), had him up to level 7, stocked up on a bunch of food, killed wight and claimed a great sword of freezing, took up the Shining religion, then I met an ogre and got my brains bashed in.   

[BlueTsunami]

I'm guessing with Ogres you need kickass equipment or be a spellcaster that can whittle its HP down from afar.

With that said, I've started getting used to the Assassin class. Dart/Blowguns plus the stealthiness is a nice combo... I died of hunger on my last run though :/

[Van Cruncheon]

oh man, my demonspawn gladiator got firebreath at level 3. i am cornholing EVERYTHING

[Enl]

I died of hunger on my last run though :/

Death by hunger can come easily if you get unlucky with finding food. I've noticed from several playthroughs that if you can make it to the 5th floor then there should be a food shop somewhere in it (at least everytime I've made it there did). Ghouls on the other hand can't eat basic food (like the pizza I found), but in order to keep yourself from rotting away you have to consume nearly everything you kill.

[pilonv1]

im too scared to try a non-fighter class, im having enough trouble as it is

[BlueTsunami]

I died of hunger on my last run though :/

Death by hunger can come easily if you get unlucky with finding food. I've noticed from several playthroughs that if you can make it to the 5th floor then there should be a food shop somewhere in it (at least everytime I've made it there did). Ghouls on the other hand can't eat basic food (like the pizza I found), but in order to keep yourself from rotting away you have to consume nearly everything you kill.

I like how the Vampire class has you drinking blood from the corpses of your enemies. They are very stealthy too, so backstabing (downed defense) single hits are possible. Low defense though and quite vulnerable. I love how each Race has interesting negative and positive quirks that actually matter in gameplay. I'm currently fugging with Vampire / Assassin.

im too scared to try a non-fighter class, im having enough trouble as it is

Its sort of like the Thief / Assassin class. You gotta be cautious entering large areas and cast shit from as much a distance as possible. As you get stronger you can become bolder (though, that usually ends with the gamer becoming too bold and dieing )

[Van Cruncheon]

welp, my demonspawn died of starvation -- apparently every use of his breath weapon massively drained my hunger level. rolled a dwarven gladiator and OMG OMG OMG LEVEL 4 LUCK GET!



that, my soon-to-be-envious friends, is a spear of distortion and it is an instant kill on ogres and named enemies in these early levels

now watch me starve to death AGAIN

[pilonv1]

im going to choose something non-human/fighter for my next game. i think one of my first games was demigod/death knight but i had no idea what i was doing

[Van Cruncheon]

swarmed and poisoned to death by killer bees on level 7. score was 1118. enl still leads!

[pilonv1]

we should have a prize giveaway for best CRAWL score in march.

[BlueTsunami]

Argh, I was doing good with my Mountain Dwarf, then I had to run into a named magic user who casted Invisibility on himself and proceeded to rape me.

Edit: Finally hit 700, Magic Caster are still a huge thorn in my side. Gotta find a way to deal with them.

[ToxicAdam]

Finally got around to playing last night. Rolled a Gladiator and made it to level 5 (ass raped by three hounds). Fun game.

[pilonv1]

just realised you can choose what you want to level in. id been speading my xp around

[pilonv1]

stupid question - can i sell any of my shit?

[pilonv1]

Terrence asks "do you want it fast or slow?

[BlueTsunami]

Nope, I was going through the documents and got to the area about design principles. Apparently they don't allow selling of equipment due to the anticipation of people trying to exploit the game by staying on a single level and racking up equipment (even though the Hunger system keeps this in check too).

I was doing good for a bit with a High Elf Air Enchanter until an Ogre got close up to me (need a good buffer to get some spells off). He raped my Elf hole. With that said, there was an Air ability that looked like it may have been useful (I believe Quick?). I could have casted that and possibly created buffer room by moving faster than the Orge, then spam magic. Something for my next playthrough.

Magic is pretty powerful, you just need to build up the levels for the specific ability (Earth, Fire, Air etc) and Spellcasting. Also wearing lighter armor apparently raises the successful casting of a spell (I think the doc said).

[pilonv1]

just broke 1000 with carlosthedwarf, a mountain dwarf beserker. would have been more if i didnt try to kill a troll

[pilonv1]

I fucked up severe here. took the stairs to the orcish mine where there were 20 odd orcs and a bunch of orc wizards. I tried to pull them seperately up the stairs, got one first. Then I tried again and pulled 8 of them out of the mine

[Enl]

The reincarnation of Fridge Largemeat as a Centaur was a great success. He had the strength of a horseman and the speed of a manhorse. But the gods were cruel to him. Despite having a ring of sustenance there was a severe lack of food to be seen anywhere. So for about 5 floors Fridge lived off of rats, bats, jackals, and other creatures.

By the time he reached level 9 he was practically unstoppable with his wand of disintegration. But, he took up the Shining religion and the gods got pissed at him for killing griffins and polar bears for food. So they took away all sources of nourishment and he died of starvation. Don't take up religion kids.

[BlueTsunami]

oh man thats sick

My personal limit is sitting at 700... god 3000!

[pilonv1]

wow thats awesome, I love how the religion aspect comes in.

can non-magic users wield wands? i had two with my beserker but never used them

[BlueTsunami]

I think you need to use a race thats good at Evocations? to wield wands well enough.

[Enl]

My centaur was doing just fine with his wand. He was blasting ogres and polar bears left and right. Funny, the next game I created I obtained an amulet that lets you eat almost any kind of non-poisoned meat without getting sick. Even when you're full and and the meat is rotting. To bad he got swarmed by enemies.  :'(

[pilonv1]

in my 1600pt game I had some awesome gear, a poison balde, a +3 chain mail, some ring of fire resistance and a bunch of scrolls/pots. but no healing

[BlueTsunami]

I just cleared out a whole fucking room of Orcs and 5 Orc Warriors with a Wyvern in the back. Now that was fucking epic. Fortunately the way to the room was a single tile width tunnel, so it acted as a choke point. I used my berserk ability then starting mowing down each regular orc one by one. Once i got to the Orc Warriors, it started to get scary (they were taking off chunks of health). I drank down some Health potions and a Potion of Might. Killed some more orcs then I used a wand I found on the Wyvern (wasn't sure what it did). It was a wand of Lightning and fucked the Wyvern up. Holy fucking shit.

[pilonv1]

beserk mode/potions of might are awesome, they upped my strength to like 25 and I could take down enemies really easily. the only downside is the period of slowness after.

[BlueTsunami]

I have a +4 Ring of Strength My Strength without any buffs (and just the ring) is sitting at 30 right now

[BlueTsunami]

BAM!



I got sent to a floor that was completely open and full of enemies. I was already starving and low on health, it was just a matter of being surrounded. I tried to make a last ditch effort of putting on a Ring of Teleportation but I got teleported to an area with more monsters!

The religion with Trog is awesome, you get Berserk, Regeneration and Reinforcements skills. He also starts giving you gifts after you get all the skills. He actually gave me an Hand Axe of Poison then when I appeased him again, a Hand Axe of Vampire (leeches a little bit of life from the enemy and returns it to me).

[Enl]

 

  Arnold S.

[pilonv1]

holy fuck, what a score. but if you look at the top scores below, no one is even close

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/top100.html

going to read the Crawl thread at SA, its 109 pages and I might get some tips

[pilonv1]

jesus the opening post of that thread is awesome.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2902303

Trog will occasionally extend your berserk's length, as long as you're still fighting/killing monsters. He also allows you to burn books for piety. You can play with this, and turn books into mines. Drop a book and lure an enemy on it, then 'a'ctivate Burn Books and char the enemy in a funeral pyre - especially useful for Sigmund! Later you get Brother-in-Arms which lets you summon various giants to fight by your side.

[BlueTsunami]

Geez at 300,000, ;_;

[pilonv1]

yeah I'm up to page 2 and some guy is like "My brother made it to D16 on his first try"

how do stealth characters work? do you just move around as normal but more sneakily? do you have a seperate "stabbing" attack?

[BlueTsunami]

Tried to go again and The Ghost of Mustafah fucked me up. The element of the ghosts of past characters is cool, I just don't want to run into Arnold S.

[ToxicAdam]

1317 Ooga the Ruffian (level 7, -2/67 HPs)

             Began as a Troll Berserker on Mar 23, 2009.

             Was a Priest of Trog.

             Slain by an orc warrior

             ... wielding an orcish great mace (7 damage)

             ... on Level 9 of the Dungeon.

             The game lasted 00:30:18 (3661 turns).

Troll Beserker is a lot of fun. You get good regen skills (plus I found a regen ring) and you can eat raw flesh for nourishment. Even if you get poisoned, your regen abilities counteract it.

[pilonv1]

I just found out that beserkers have beserk+some regen abilities. i never used them before

[Enl]

Wow, post level 10 the increase of monster gets pretty insane.

[BlueTsunami]

Falling back when there's a hoard of enemies is the only way to deal with the fuckers. I was actually doing pretty good on a run I was going through right now but I had to stand toe to toe with a Troll without going Berserk. UGH. I had found an Ancient Flail too (which gave real good perks)

One thing I've been learning though is that its good to use your scrolls when you first find them. Scrolls of Identify are extremely useful for identifying Rings and Amulets that seem like they have no properties (they usually do).

[pilonv1]

http://i38.tinypic.com/30ben9g.png
http://i37.tinypic.com/2exm14w.png

check out the name of the jewelery shop

[pilonv1]

[Enl]

With the grace of Trog, the centaur berserker, Chubby Longcocking, bashed and gnashed his way through 12 floors of doom. Throughout his trek he survived on the corpses of his victims (including snakes with a poison resistant amulet), fought the ghosts of several past warriors (including Ergh and Fridge), and sacrificed hundreds to his god until he got too ambitious and met his fate by an arrow of one of his own.

[BlueTsunami]

The self sufficient races that feed off of the dead (Troll and Vamps) are real fun to play. My Vampire character is a bitch though (as a Chaos Night). They aren't strong enough to be a melee character.

[Enl]

I played a troll for the first time today too. Fun, but he can get hungry real quick. For regular classes, once I get hungry I would start feeding off of rats, wolves, and bats for as long as I can before consuming any of my inventory's food. Also, as was stated before, it's best to use you scrolls and potions one time as soon as you get them. Save your teleports and blinks for the gang bangs, keep your identifies for rings and amulets, and save your detect curses when you have many items. 

Also beware with the teleport. On one of my games I accidently teleported into a small room with no stairs or extra teleportation scrolls. I was pretty much forced to start a new character.

[pilonv1]

The self sufficient races that feed off of the dead (Troll and Vamps) are real fun to play. My Vampire character is a bitch though (as a Chaos Night). They aren't strong enough to be a melee character.

The SA thread has a big bit on Vampire Necromancers saying they're fucking awesome due to the fact you never get hungry

[BlueTsunami]

ARGH. I was on a roll. I had a Mountain Dwarf Berserk (which I seem to do well with). I had a Ring of Sustenance AND the amulet that allows you to eat and digest Raw Meat AND A RING OF REGENERATION. I would have been unstoppable but the level I died on had a stupid amount of Killer Bees

The self sufficient races that feed off of the dead (Troll and Vamps) are real fun to play. My Vampire character is a bitch though (as a Chaos Night). They aren't strong enough to be a melee character.

The SA thread has a big bit on Vampire Necromancers saying they're fucking awesome due to the fact you never get hungry

I have to try this, the Vampire race has intrigued me from the beginning I just could never get a hang of it

[pilonv1]

Vamp stuff from SA

I'd like to discuss a combo that I rarely see mentioned here, the Vampire Necromancer. They are very easy to get off the ground, and very fun and relaxing to play! I highly recommend them, specifically Vampire Necromancers of Sif Muna.

-As a vampire you never have to worry about starvation. You don't need food, you can drink blood from fresh corpses with "e". A well fed vampire has high enough regeneration to make you effectively immune to poison. A bloodless vampire is immune to poison, draining, mutation, and torment. They don't regenerate naturally but there are ways around that.

The lack of any risk of starvation gives you infinite time in which to do what vampires do best: live forever mastering all sorts of spellschools and weapon techniques until you are ready to make your move and punish all your complacent foes.

-As a Necromancer you start with one of the best spellbooks in the game. Begin by using Pain to kill everything in sight, resting to recover your health and mana between murders. Crank as much exp into Spellcasting as you can until you get Vampiric Draining, then go for Dispel Undead next. If you don't have Dispel Undead, you WILL get slaughtered by a phantom or one of your own ghosts.

Next, Regeneration is your best friend. Cast it any time you can to pump up that sweet sweet Enchanting skill and to regenerate through poison. Around this point you should be at the Ecumenical Temple. Here you want to pick Sif Muna, because...

-As a Sif Muna worshiping vampire you have eternity to jealously hoard your arcane knowledge and gain access to every single spell in the game. You can invoke "Channel Mana" in combination with Regeneration to regain mana and health at an insane pace. You can also forget any spell you get sick of in order to swap in better spells for the situation. And you know how sometimes you want to go crazy casting that new spell you found in a spellbook but it has major hunger associated? Who cares, you're a fuckin' immortal vampire. Throw lightning bolts around as much as you want, you won't run out of mana very quickly and you certainly won't starve.

As an added benefit of becoming bloodless your Stealth skill goes through the roof and you can turn into an adorable little vampire bat, so you can go back to Lair 1 and suck on some rats if you want.

-After prostrating yourself before the god of heavy ass spellbooks, you'll be wanting to gain some Fighting and weapon skills and hopefully find a buckler too. So get your melee on whilst buffering your health with Regeneration and Vampiric Draining. See an ogre? Pull him towards you with 3 or 4 casts of Pain, then as soon as he's in range hit him with Vampiric Draining until he is dead. This works on everything but undead and demons.

At some point you will want to learn Animate Dead, the last good spell in the book of Necromancy. Cast this spell after you kill trolls, giants, snakes, spiny frogs, 11 headed hydras, titans, and golden dragons to turn them into your eternal bodyguards. If you want to have a full scale zombie army, you'll probably want to eventually learn the recall spell to summon them around at any time.

-The first book Sif gives you should be Death, around the time you are in the upper Lair. Go after Agony first, then probably Bolt of Draining, which can strike through multiple targets like a shadow dragon's breath.

And then you can take it from there. You probably want to focus on either ice or fire, air or earth. I'm currently throwing around mephitic clouds, agony, sticky flame, petrification (just to try it out since I never have before) and am building air magic towards the good stuff.

[ToxicAdam]

3046 Beastly the Nimble (level 9, -1/86 HPs)

             Began as a Troll Berserker on Mar 24, 2009.

             Was a High Priest of Trog.

             Slain by a killer bee (4 damage)

             ... on Level 9 of the Dungeon.

             The game lasted 00:52:25 (4934 turns).

Beastly the Nimble (Troll Berserker)                Turns: 4934, Time: 00:52:25


HP  -1/86        AC 14     Str 25      Exp: 9/3915 (81), need: 1949

MP   3/3         EV 13     Int  4      God: Trog *****

Gold 306         SH  0     Dex 16      Spells:  0 memorised,  8 levels left



Res.Fire  : . . .   See Invis. : .   r - +2,+4 dwarf eveningstar (protect) {god gif

Res.Cold  : . . .   Warding    : .   b - +0 animal skin (curse)

Life Prot.: . . .   Conserve   : .   (shield restricted)

Res.Poison: .       Res.Corr.  : .   (helmet restricted)

Res.Elec. : .       Clarity    : .   i - +2 dwarf cloak

                                     (gloves unavailable)

Sust.Abil.: .       Rnd.Telep. : .   (boots unavailable)

Res.Mut.  : .       Ctrl.Telep.: .   (no amulet)

Res.Slow  : .       Levitation : .   (no ring)

Saprovore : + + .   Ctrl.Flight: .   l - +3 ring of dexterity

God damned killer bees. Killed 2 of them, but the other three got me in an open area (after teleportation).