CRAWL Stone Soup (roguelike)

[BlueTsunami]

Killer bees swarm like a motha fugga, definitely makes Auto Explore a dangerous thing to do. When I hit a certain floor, I'll start exploring via the keys keeping to the walls (in case I need to fall back).

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.

I'm so psyched to try this out I don't know why I didn't exploit the ability to not starve to death.

[pilonv1]

I'm starting to get the shits with this, every time I get a good character down to level 8-9 I get pack raped by a bunch of orcs with a wizard.

[BlueTsunami]

I'm doing the Vamp/Necro and its good but hard when you have to go toe to toe with something. I guess I need to teleport away from a melee enemy but I've run into past ghosts and they are unaffected by my spells. Imps are also a huge pain the ass. I guess I need to start raising the dead so they can help me physically.

[Van Cruncheon]

my best run on yet, but i am still not in the 3000 club yet :'(

[BlueTsunami]

Handheld version of this game would be sooooo good. Its almost like Disgaea in that when your in the meat of it, its good to play in short bursts (especially in this game since longer playthroughs seems to compromise my judgment).

[pilonv1]

would be awesome on a sexy psp screen

speaking of which, why the fuck cant anyone make a decent modern day roguelike besides something like diablo/titan quest?

[pilonv1]

I AM UNSTOPPABLE

Thanks to my +6 DEX ring



And I got this on the 3rd floor



I am killing centaurs and shit with no difficulty

[pilonv1]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK I died.

Teleported away from a beetle into a room of magic users

Got to 3000 though

[BlueTsunami]

The Vamp Race is definitely the race you want if you want to grind your skills (mainly Magic). I got 30,000 points but I was using the Tiled version of this game.

Centaurs = HATE. At a certain point, the game started throwing 3 of them at me (just one already being a pain in the ass). That's how I died.

With that said, Necromancer + Spellbook from Sif Muna that has Agony (which requires a high Necromancy skill to cast without failure) = Ogres/Hill Giant and other high HP enemies pwnt.

The biggest problem with this gettup though is that I was hurting for AoE spells. I'm good, one on one but throw me into a mob and I'm outta there (bat form hoooooo)

[pilonv1]

my character above was smoking through centaurs.

i just got over confident and ended with some bad teleports into a bunch of dudes

[BlueTsunami]

Mountain Dwarf Berserk is sooo good. Now that I'm more experience with the lower level enemies from the Vamp/Necro, I think I'll do a Dwarf Berserk run again.

[chronovore]

I used to love Nethack and Rogue, but now it just feels like masochism. There are SO FEW ways to win, and so many ways to die.

[Van Cruncheon]

these games are not played to win, they're played to survive!

[ToxicAdam]

I just love the feeling of being an invincable god on level 9 and then ass-raped on level 10.

[pilonv1]

I just love the feeling of being an invincable god on level 9 and then ass-raped on level 10.

Me too, there's no gaming experience liking it. You go from fragile aids patient to overpowering god to japanese rape victim within 2 levels. It's more an exercise in awareness and patience than skill.

[chronovore]

I just love the feeling of being an invincable god on level 9 and then ass-raped on level 10.

Me too, there's no gaming experience liking it. You go from fragile aids patient to overpowering god to japanese rape victim within 2 levels. It's more an exercise in awareness and patience than skill.

I shouldn't have laughed, but I did.

[BlueTsunami]

I was just playing as a Spriggen Assassin and omg, a High Stealth and Stabbing skill = FUCKING AWESOME. I was one shotting a lot of strong enemies. Also, Poisoning an enemy is way stronger than I had thought it was. I would poison Hill Trolls (very very strong) and keep stepping a few tiles away until it died on its own. This is a very fun character to play since you build up your Stealth and Stabbing skills very quickly (assuming you use it constantly). It takes a bit to get over the preliminary difficulty hump though).

[BlueTsunami]

I used a Spriggen Assassin again and I think I'm near the bottom of the Dungeon...

He went Super Saiyan when he had acquired the ability to cast spells. That allowed me to learn Slow which is sick when mixed with the Venom sword I currently have (stick and move). They'll be slow as hell, poisoned and I can kite them around an open area or tunnel. This doesn't work too well with groups obviously but its fantastic for the big monsters.

I'm still weak against large groups and the undead. If I had the Book of Necromancy I would be able to learn Dispel Undead which would take care of the latter issue. With large groups I have to use the "fall back to a tunnel" method. The stair method is too unreliable (in regards to taking up enemies you may not want).

I also think I'm a little under leveled for the area I'm currently at (Level 13). I saved and quit though, I've been playing this run for a good while and I know I'm going to do something stupid, I'll tackle it later.

[Enl]

 

Keep up the good fight BlueTsunami! I can't even imagine what horrors lie in the depths of lvl 13. My crawling sessions for the past couple of days haven't been so good. The best I got was in 4th place with my berserker Butcher Pete. I think I'll try out the Spriggen Assassin combo today and see how that goes.

[BlueTsunami]

Keep up the good fight BlueTsunami! I can't even imagine what horrors lie in the depths of lvl 13. My crawling sessions for the past couple of days haven't been so good. The best I got was in 4th place with my berserker Butcher Pete. I think I'll try out the Spriggen Assassin combo today and see how that goes.

Be forewarned, its a bitch to get up and going. As I'm sure you know, the game likes to throw Gnolls at you early in the game and those were a huge pain in my ass (since they travel in groups). There's similar monsters like them.

I pretty much trained Stealth and Darts fairly quickly... those two skills are what help a lot in the lower levels (I can literally back stab a group of monsters if all goes well). I believe my Stealth level is at 12 or 13.

[BlueTsunami]

(((((((((((((((((((((((

Fucking Deep Elves are the DEVIL

Spriggans are awesome but they are extremely limited when it comes to wearable armor. That was a huge pain in the side when it came to head to head battles with groups... Deep Elves travel in packs. 

[Enl]

Holy crap! 

Suddenly my warriors seem so puny. It's cool to see that there's different styles of dungeons in this.



Here was my most recent run. Trumpy, the Spriggan Venom Mage, did fairly well. His biggest flaw was going up against the undead. My biggest flaw was that I had completely forgotten I had an Amulet of Rage that I could've used to go berserk on creatures like that.

[BlueTsunami]

Undeads are very tricky. I usually try to use a wand against them... or if I have magic use that. They are usually bitches to kill when your not strong enough though (Vamp/Necro spoiled me, I was able to blast them with two Dispel Undead).

[Enl]

Look at what I found!

Having my best game right now. Currently going through the lair and picked off a Naga who was guarding all this loot. I'm also using a Spriggan Assassin (lvl 11) and have both Poison magic, identify magic, and a hoard of wands. My only problems right now is scarce food and trying to manage my items so I don't get too over encumbered.

EDIT:

And as soon as I say something I die.   :'(



Stupid fish.

[pilonv1]

my last dozen games have all been under 1000, dont know whats going on

[Enl]

Yeah some of my games today have been quite evil to me as well. Ogres and centaurs on level 2?!? Um yeah, no thanks.

This game is really making me want to go back and play Angband again, but I now wish that game had the same interface as this one. Angband was a much deeper experience, but I am finding Dungeon Crawl easier to pick up and play again and again after a loosing battle. If they combined the best of the two... 

[ToxicAdam]

I've been experimenting, but never get past 3000 (level 10 grrr). I've been trying to "grind up" on levels 7-8 ... but I usually run out of food.

[Enl]

I've been experimenting, but never get past 3000 (level 10 grrr). I've been trying to "grind up" on levels 7-8 ... but I usually run out of food.

Just try to focus on chopping up rats, lizards, small snakes, bats, and other small rodents even when you're not hungry. As you do that you should eventually be able to stock up on your inventory's food (unless the game is being overly cruel to you). Only begin eating "real" food as a last resort (when you get Very Hungry). Also keep your eye out for rings of sustanance and poison resist. If you can find the poison resist charm then you'll be able to eat poisonous snakes and kobols too.

[ToxicAdam]

Had my best run yet. Had 2 god drops. Access to 6 different stores and made it down to the third level of the orc mines. Crazy amount of monsters (and gold) down there. I'm just cruising along ... spam my "rest" button to get some extra HP's and in that time (probably 30 clicks), 20 orcs pop up and rape me. @!#^!

t - the +0,+6 war axe of Cloemp (weapon) {god gift}
   (Trog gifted it to you on level 8 of the Dungeon)   
   It emits flame when wielded, causing extra injury to most foes and up to
   double damage against particularly susceptible opponents.
   It affects your dexterity (+4).

I killed 148 orcs. lol

[BlueTsunami]

I personally leave the Orc Mines till I get down to the level where The Lair is accessible. The Orc Mines has two different kind of mages that are crazy hard (ones a summoner).

[pilonv1]

i haven't had a god gift yet

where do you see how many of each race you killed?

[BlueTsunami]

i haven't had a god gift yet

The easiest gods to appease are the Evil ones that want you to kill and sacrifice. Trog particularly. The God Gifts can be freakin awesome. They usually have multiple factors attached to them. Sif Muna? I think her name is gifts you with Spellbooks (which is good for the Vamp class which doesn't really suffer in any area).

[pilonv1]

I've been doing that but nothing yet. Highest score tonight is 717

[ToxicAdam]

Wooo 10,000 club.


After 2 hours of playing I started to get bored/sloppy. I probably should have saved and played later. Went through 10 levels of the dungeon, 4 levels of the mines, 6 levels of the lair and  a few levels of the swamp. I got to a level that had  minatour's labyrinth ... but it was on a timer to find it  (then it closed). I missed out.

Had about 4 god drops, but they were all crap weapons. I wish he would drop amulets/rings.

[pilonv1]

I got to 2500 tonight. Lucked out early with a +6 ring of evasion and another +2 evasion from an amulet. got the amulet of the gourmand too and was rocking along until i tried to teleport away from a bunch of orc mages right onto the other side of them