Hello folks. After being bogged down by work, I am now starting my attempts at attaining glory in the 0.31 tournament. At the very least, I will aim to escape with the Orb in a standard 3-rune game, which I believe is possible due to the achievements that I have made in not only DCSS, but in various other roguelikes as well. However, my knowledge is rusty, and I do not have a lot of knowledge with the game’s latest versions.
This is currently my roguelike resume:
Outstanding Nethack experience: Managed to ascend every role at least once in 3.4.3, and still have an excellent playing record in the 3.6 versions.
Exceeds Expectations ADOM experience: Achieved several ultra endings back when it was free and before Steam came into the scene. Haven’t played the Steam version due to pricing though.
Exceeds Expectations DoomRL experience: Fully won the game several times, but only up to the Ultra-Violence Difficulty (I like being able to save my games, thank you very much, so hard pass to Nightmare) and even managed to obtain two Diamond Medals from my efforts there.
Acceptable Angband experience: Killed Morgoth after 5 attempts (all 5 characters of which were generated with random stats rather than a point-based roller).
Acceptable ZAP’M experience: Won a couple of games, but I got bored of that real fast.
Acceptable Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup experience: Escaped with the Orb in a 3-rune game as a Demigod Fighter after 4 attempts with randomly generated characters in version 0.23, and subsequently escaped with the Orb in a 3-rune game as a Tengu Elementalist in a 0.28 trunk version.
Acceptable Brogue experience: Escaped with the Amulet of Yendor once after 10 tries.
Acceptable Rogue experience: The deepest I got was level 16 I think.
Poor PRIME experience: Haven’t made it into the robot town.
Poor Elona+ experience: The farthest I made it was in Act 1 to Lesimas: 30 after 4 tries in Loss mode. Much of that was due to the difficulty understanding the mechanics as well as the inability to deal with its stupid thirst mechanic.
Poor IVAN experience: The farthest I ever made was the first level of the Gloomy Caves after 4 tries.
Poor Sil experience: 350 feet was the farthest depth that I reached after 4 tries (all four characters had randomly generated stats, races, and house however due to my inner nature). I basically got owned by the difficulty of Sil’s monsters.
Dreadful Pixel Dungeon experience: I did not even reach the first boss after 4 tries, as I was only able to reach Depth 3 before getting killed in humiliating ways.
In this series, I will attempt to win a game by playing a randomly generated character. In this series that I am starting, the number before the hyphen signifies the attempt that I am playing, and the number after the hyphen signifies the goal that I have finished. I will be playing online for these challenges under the same name (wizard44). All characters I post will have started by having reached the Ecumenical Temple to get rid of very early deaths caused by inexperience. Other than that, the milestones will be the same as that of my previous “Complete N00b’s Journey” series. For this first character, I randomly generate a Ghoul Wanderer for my first character. The starting loadout provides me with a club, a scroll of teleportation, a leather armour, a potion of curing, and the Sting, Summon Small Mammal, Call Canine Familiar, Ignite Poison, and Leda’s Liquefaction spells. With that, I bring you:
0.31 Tournament Attempts: Part 1-1
I decide to start out by training Unarmed Combat, Fighting, Stealth, and Dodging, with a focus on the first two skills. On D:1, I end up using my potion of curing to survive a dual attack against a hobgoblin and a bat. I decide to learn the Sting and Summon Small Mammal spells to give myself a distance attack against other foes on D:1, and to turn off training on Dodging and Stealth while turning on training on Summonings until skill level 2 is achieved while I clear the rest of D:1.
On D:2, I get a +1 dagger of draining, a +6 ring of dexterity, and a Book of Touch, while D:3 provides me with a book of Debilitation, an amulet of faith, a staff of death. It is there that I use a scroll of teleportation to escape from 3 gnolls after killing one. Unfortunately, the scroll of teleportation puts me next to a gnoll bouda and 2 gnolls, forcing me to use another scroll of teleportation to barely escape from the horde. I then escape back upstairs to heal up, and explore another part of D:3 to find an altar of Yredelemul.
Upon reaching D:4, I read my unknown scrolls, and find that I have a potion of ambrosia and 2 scrolls of revelation. Before I can check out much of the level, though, a malevolent force sends me down a shaft to D:6. Reading a scroll of revelation reveals the entrance to the temple in addition to the upstairs. I get ambushed by an orc wizard, a hound, and an ufetebus, forcing me to use a teleportation scroll, which puts me in the middle of an orc and 2 ice beasts. Fortunately, I make it to the upstairs without taking too much damage. Once at D:5, I read my last scroll of revelation to find the upstairs, which I make it to after a tense moment with an ogre that takes me to 22 HP. I find a scroll of identify that I use to discover that I have 2 potions of invisibility on the way up. Once back at D:4, I find a wand of light, prompting me to train the Evocations and Armour Skills to a skill limit of 5. I also discover altars of the Wu Jian Council and Dithmenos as well as the +2 spear “Gakyotuh” [freeze, rElec Str+3}. I take out a black bear with a wand of light and discover a player vault that I leave alone for now.
A proper exploration of D:5 yields a ring of willpower that I take. D:6 gives me a book of Frost, the +5 sling “Kaahe” {heavy, rElec}, a +1 rapier of venom, Great Wizards, Vol. VII, a wand of charming, a ring of flight, and altars to Makhleb and Xom. I also run into Jeremiah, Barachi Dreamer and run from him. I then clear out a small player vault before entering the Temple.
I am leaning towards either selecting Gozag, Okawaru, and Makhleb as the god to worship in that order of preference. I heard these three gods would be good for this type of character, but I am willing to entertain other options.
Do I try training up to cast any of the spells that I have learned so far, or should I forget about spellcasting entirely? I can go back up to get lighter armor if any of the spells prove useful.
Are any of the weapons in my inventory I have so far a better fit than going unarmed? Or should I fully commit to Unarmed Combat? In particular, the randart sling deals about 2 more damage than what my character’s bare claws can do.
Which skills should I set for training? Right now, I am actively training Fighting, Unarmed Combat, Evocations, and Armor, with an emphasis on Fighting and Unarmed Combat. I am considering training Dodging at this point if I can help it, and having Unarmed Combat be the sole focus.
The next goal for this guy is to clear the dungeons up to D:11 and prepare for the Lair of Beasts. My current character’s status is posted here. Let me know of any other tips that I should at this point.
My dump can also be found here.