Hey everyone,
I just updated my troll fighter guide for 0.31. Statue Form is dead, long live Statue Form.
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Repo_Troll_Guide,_TrFi^Wu_Jian
I’ll get some sleep now. Will join the tourney tomorrow.
As always, happy crawling.
Great guide! I used it to take a TrFi through three orbs back when 0.31 was trunk and, seemingly, talisman drop rates were higher.
Now that 0.31 is stable the talisman drop rates seem lower and it has been a little dicey finding a granite talisman reliably. I’m currently applying the guide to an Oni, which is straightforward, and even perhaps more optimal because they can more easily transition into spells instead of shapeshifting if need be.
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I just followed this guide through to the serpentine rune and it works really well! i got lucky with an early Wu Jian altar, and a shop in Snake 2 has a granite talisman and a death talisman, so now the build is all there! i didn’t have the time/energy to finish the game before the tournament end, so i’m gonna put the game on pause and maybe aim for some extended runes when i come back to it!
the build is really fun so far—i really appreciate your level of detail about how to maximize the use of the Council’s abilities
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Nice guide! I appreciated the breakdown of the martial abilities and their synergies with statue form as well, and walljump/teleport synergy. Thematically that last one is pretty sweet as well.
It made me want to try Barachi WJC too!
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YAVP just to say this build is legit. Just got my first 15 rune win: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/ForkInBrain/morgue-ForkInBrain-20240220-171715.txt
I was slightly worried – I didn’t find a Granite Talisman until Vault:1.
Vhi’s Electric Charge and Blink get a Repo Troll out of a tight spot when swarmed. WJC followers really want to be on the edge of a pack, not the middle.
I got a lucky amulet of Vitality drop, and later a GDA +8 drop. With that I ran around in statue form leveling up Armor so I could switch to GDA+death form for the torment and mutation heavy late game.
I almost thought I screwed myself by clearing Zot:5 early. Ended up with mutations and burned through enough potions that I was nervous about the late game. Turns out a Repo Troll doesn’t really care too much about a pesky -20% HP mutation, at least while still in Statue Form, but next time I’ll heed the guide and finish Zot later.
I might also hold out and leave Slime for later, too, since Jivya is another way to handle the mutation problem. I wonder how this build would fare with the loss of whirlwind and heavenly storm, replaced by Jivya?
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Just got my second 15 rune win with this guide. (First was with a DsFi^Usk.) I got lucky with an early lair stone talisman and orc:2 hat of the alchemist, and then a nice artifact death talisman later on. I even got to storm form all the way down in Cocytus! Your writing is really entertaining.
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Thanks, everyone! Nice to know you enjoyed the guide.
Slime Troll is a different build, really. Might be fun, too. But harder to pull off than Wu Jian, imho. Scrolls of fog help, when you don’t have access to Heavenly Storm. You might try Storm Form for the cleaving. Jiyva’s regen and moving at normal speed should keep you alive, even without a shield. But there’s no substitute for Serpent’s Lash.
First time winning any sprint (Red Sonja here) after reading over your guide. First time with statue form, wow! Pumped STR instead, and no magic, but that works well also 
‘Amusingly’ Gohi died when I walked away from the computer for a bit, came back later, and mistook Lerny for a gold dragon until it was too late. Oops.
On to the Violet Keep!
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The Violet Keep of Menkaure took many tries but this was the second run I saw a granite talisman.
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The Ten Rune Challenge, again the second time I saw a granite talisman. The first time TRJ got me.
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Are the trailing decimal targets all tongue in cheek or is there some mechanic I don’t know about that makes e.g. 9.9 better than 10 or 23.3 better than 23?
It’s mostly tongue in cheek. I don’t know how to mathematically optimize skills. But 23.3 is slightly better than 23.0, and slightly more expensive. Unless there’s some hard cap like 25.0 Shapeshifting for the granite talisman, the fractions count.
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