NOTE: If you are a DCSS developer, stop reading this post immediately. For all intents and purposes, this thread does not exist to you. You have already forgotten it.
Feel free to share techniques of your own in the comments.
God Techniques
- As a worshipper of Uskayaw, read a scroll of Torment on a crowded screen to instantly apply mass-paralysis. The damage dealt by the scroll is enough to give 3 stars instantly, making it an amazing escape tool if you are in a situation such as “Royal Jelly and all its allies surrounding me and I have 10 HP left”.
- As a worshipper of Yredelemnul, if you ever see an Undying Armoury equip its allies with a ranged weapon, prepare yourself to use Bind Soul. Undying Armouries are allowed to violate equipment restrictions, meaning you could find yourself with a permanent ally with a +9 triple crossbow of distortion.
- As a worshipper of Hepliaqkana, inside a Gauntlet, “park” your ancestor with a “t”-“r” command to stay outside. As you are clearing the Gauntlet, should you ever find yourself outmatched, or simply want to gather loot from a different path, use Transference on yourself to return to the safe outer area.
- As a worshipper of Nemelex Xobeh, use the Tomb card to spawn walls on top of floor traps. Once the walls despawn, the traps will have disappeared, which is useful for defusing Zot’s 1-tile entrances to the lungs.
- (This is getting patched soon and probably won’t be around in 0.34’s release) As a worshipper of Beogh, curse yourself with the Bane of Paradox and the Bane of Warding by allowing a drude to hit you. The next time you fight an apostle, they have a chance to receive these rare buffs, which remain after they have been recruited. Enjoy your permanent ally with Manifold Assault and which is immune to damage from non-adjacent sources.
- As a worshipper of Okawaru, Duel an easy enemy to safely unwield a distortion weapon, as Okawaru does not tolerate banishment in their arena.
- As a worshipper of Xom, use Yara’s Violent Unravelling to detonate the hordes of butterflies you generate every time you take a big hit, making this spell actually useful for doing damage.
- As a worshipper of Qazlal, use any ways to reduce your Line-of-Sight range, such as being a Kobold or a scarf of Shadows. This will “compress” your Disaster Area, heavily increasing its damage output.
Spell Shenanigans
- Discord, which frenzies enemies, can be used in tandem with Dispersal, which teleports enemies away, to catapult OP haste-mighted melee enemies across the floor, and remotely annihilate uniques and other enemies you have never seen before.
- Gell’s Gavotte will not move a Malign Gateway, meaning enemies can be thrown into the tentacle segments for gruesome damage.
- Manifold Assault alongside a Riddle talisman allows for remotely hitting enemies with 8 tiles of air around them, which is normally impossible in regular melee. This maximizes the airstrike attack damage, resulting in ludicrous oneshots left and right.
- Death’s Door negates the max-HP penalties of talismans, for a time. This has niche use with the Storm talisman, which allows for use of the Blinkbolt for escapes with 0 Shapeshifting skill, as well as the Sanguine talisman, which allows for bat transformation and the associated bonus movement speed.
Miscellaneous
- To safely unequip a ^Contam artefact, use a Death talisman with 0 Shapeshifting skill, making you immune to mutations while the contamination fades away.
- As a mage who doesn’t care about body armour, shield, gloves or held item, train Shapeshifting to level 5-12, and use a Flux bauble. Never attack in melee, thus enjoying a permanent +6 to +16 EV.
- Mostly a Felid-specific trick, but usable by others such as Draconians as well.
- If in Death form and you crucially need to drink a potion or use Death’s Door/Borgnjor’s Revivification, use a Flux bauble to untransform in one turn. You can End Transformation from the (a)bility menu afterwards.
- Use a wand of Charming on Pikel to instantly remove all his lemures.
- Use a wand of Polymorph on yourself to escape enemies in the early game. You will either turn into a melee-capable form (Tree, Wisp, Fungus) or a speedy form to run away (Bat, Pig).
- If lethally poisoned with seemingly no way to survive, use a wand of Polymorph on yourself as a last resort. If you turn into a Wisp, you will lose all your poison.
Intentional Miscasts
- As a heavy-duty melee tabber, memorize a Summonings spell with a 100% failure rate.
- If you have a polearm, inside a 1-tile hallway where difficult melee enemies are coming towards you, miscast the Summonings spell. Sandwich the Nameless Horror between you and the incoming enemies. Since a Nameless Horror is a lot less dangerous in melee than whatever it is that was coming towards you, you will get free turns to poke with your polearm while tanking the Horror.
- If you worship Wu Jian, miscast the Summonings spell between battles to artifically extend your Heavenly Storm and keep it going throughout an entire floor.
- Memorize a Translocations spell with a 100% failure rate. If a Wyrmhole has afflicted you with the !Tele! status, miscast the spell, blocking the hostile teleportation effect without having to spend a teleportation scroll.
- This has additional middling usefulness to stop being shaken around wildly by a dispersal trap.