Yeah, blink frog summed this up perfectly. Shatter is the one spell that will majorly modify your surroundings. Several times now I’ve gone down to zot feeling like a god, only to shatter a vault full of nasty enemies that shatter cannot handle properly. So I try to save up at least 5 rev scrolls to read as I go down stairs to make sure I don’t let out anything nasty.
Maybe I’m missing something: rev show you the entire map in blue, not enemies, right?
?Rev (Rev now exists as its own thing separate from the scroll) will briefly reveal everything within your normal LOS square in addition to revealing the map. So you can see through walls and invis but just for a turn.
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Trying seeded games I found out how much RNG and strategy count.
RNG: sometimes bad luck or good luck can really change the results of a situation. In current seed I’ve got a red unique in D3, the best option is to run away (he can kill in 3 or 4 cast) but the times I fought him the result of the fight depends totally by RNG (if he hit you, if I hit him and how much damage)
Strategy: in my case rHubris would be perfect. 90% of times I die in mid/late branches is only because I feel that “I can explode everything”. Last run? I was purging easly the Spider branches when I see, alot late, that a little red-named one was creating his own prisms … alas they killed me, only because I was spamming OTR and my prisms without take a look to where I was and what I had around …
Yea, one thing that helps survival is to get used to the idea that “in Crawl, you don’t have to kill everything you meet (at least, not when you first meet them).”
I believe the Devs let Sigmund and Grinder spawn early as one way to teach that lesson. Along with purple/green orc packs and Iyjb with a nasty wand.
To reduce the risk of RNGs ending your run, leave them behind and move on. After you get a few levels, you’ll be strong enough to smash them easily, if you want to bother going back.
Unless they had an item you really want, not killing them will have no impact on your success. Look at it this way, Sigmund and Grinder are worth less than two Yaks’ of xp. Two Orc Wizards/Priests are worth one Bullfrog. The “xp loss” of passing them on is negligible in the long run.
Another way to look at Crawl is this: all of the monsters in the first 5 floors of the dungeon are jellybeans. Say, there are 300 of them. Of these 300, 20 are a disgusting flavor and colored red. The other 280 are really tasty and colored green. Your goal is find 250 tasty ones. In this context, obviously you’ll just toss away a red one every time you find it, right? You don’t need them to reach your goal of 250 tasty beans.
The monsters you need to kill to get the xp to level up to advance further into the game are the tasty beans. Things like Sigmund and Grinder are the nasty ones. You can reach your goal of 250 without having to bite into every red bean, right?
Biting a bean is like fighting. Don’t bite the beans you don’t need. Don’t fight the monsters you don’t need.
Ofc, Crawl is more complicated than a pile of just red and green beans. It has purple, yellow, pink, cyan, mauve, lavender, burnt ciana, etc etc etc.
Identifying which of all these hundreds of colors are tasty and which are nasty is “good threat assessment.”
Folks here, Reddit, Discord can help your improve threat assessment. So can the LearnDB, wiki, some YouTubes, and ? / in game. I’m sure there are others. Once you are good at threat assessment–and develop the habit of passing up all those nasty beans–the risk of dying goes down significantly.
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While I agree with your general point, if you have the tools at your disposal to kill an early Sigmund (or any other nasty unique) with only minimal consumable use (or even no consumable if you’re lucky), you should 100% do that. Because while he is worth very little xp in the long run, in the short run the xp boost will help tremendously with the orc bands and other fights where running away isn’t always practical.
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Sigmund usually gives 2 levels when you kill him, it’s alot of experience in that point of the game!
But I confirm what Subbak said: “if you have the tools” to kill him safely, because if you are at risk 75% of the times you’ll die in few hits.
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Yeah, I kill sigmund pretty much every time I see them within a dungeon lvl or two of seeming them. They are really nice in terms of XP gain.
About the revelation thing. If you cast revelation it will reveal where ghost vaults are. I almost always skip ghost vaults until later in the game (the lone exceptions are if the loot is exceptionally useful). Zots ghost vaults are very very nasty and casting shatter on them will royally screw you unless you are prepared for it.
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At the moment I’m in Snake pit, I did D/L/O
https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Yukuai/Yukuai.txt
I think that I’m not skilled bad (if someone want to comment feel free to tell me what I did wrong), a thing that I don’t understand: I’ve got firestorm, 41% miscast, with 22 Cj and 12.5 Fire, how much I need to train to have it useful?
A little update: I did D/L/O/S-branches/U/Crypt/Slime/V4
Now I’m in doubt about go V5, or go Zot
At the moment I’m feeling quite strong enough for Zot, and I fear V5 due to the guardians lock that disable stair dance. My primary source of damage is the Fire Storm spell, and obviously prism for the rest. I’ve got either Erynia Bog + ignite poison, Igniton (lol at poor TRJ).
V5 could be nice, but I really don’t know why I have to risk going down there instead of doing Zot.
Suggestions?
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I don’t know why, but I barely ever struggle with Sigmund, and Grinder isn’t usually that bad for me (partly because I often play gargoyle, that free rN+ helps), the unique that I really struggle with is actually Jeremiah, especially when I’m playing a melee. Blinks, smites, reaches, and butterflies, they seem designed to annoy.
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Jeremiah is really annoying to get rid of. Also, monsters that blink are somewhat viable to run away from, which makes Grinder easier to not deal with, and also Jeremiah but his butterflies stay all over the place. I think every time I tried to kill Jeremiah I had to make multiple tries at getting him and using positioning to a greater extent than when trying to kill other monsters.
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Finally!
what a funny ride … this game is awesome 
https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Yukuai/morgue-Yukuai-20241024-132220.txt
Thanks to everyone in this post that helped me, and thanks to Caelrath that followed me in Z levels helping me understanding some things I did wrong !
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Holy shit congrats!!!
You don’t really have to worry about much once Firestorm is up. Just equip rHubris and get your win. I try to get some other spell up as well, but Firestorm kills everything in a 3 runer.
I’m also super pleased that your first win was a DECj. It is a great combo.
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Thanks, you did alot to help me (even the seed I used was yours :-D)
Yeah, firestorm is really a pleasure, even OoF can die in 2-to-3 shoots, and is loudy too! So useful to kite enemies from everywhere…
Once I reached U/Z I started playing alot alot (alot) alot careful: from the stairs, using Firestorm as noisemaker, aggroing everything and keep me safe near stairs.
Alas was a seeded game, so nothing is recorded, but now I can play more calmly
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Congrats on the win, seed or no seed!!! Looking at the logs, you did great!
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Yeah, seed or no seed a win is great. You probably have the xp now to do a nonseeded game. The main strategic issue with casters is spell selection and skilling. I think pretty much every game is winnable with a DECj, it is just selecting the best skill path and playing well tactically that matters. You get all the tools you need in every game.
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The only thing that I think I did wrong is about dodge: Calrath, a player who’s following my game in Z, told me that it was really low and I needed to push up it.
He said that 20 is quite a mandatory value of EV, for a caster, in Z, and even AC 20 could be good (I was 21).
As far as I saw the difficult part with DECj is to reach middle game, after that your spells are quite powerful to kill everything and you only have to have rHubris to survive
At the moment I’m doing an SpHu^Hep run, I’m curious about how a ranged character could do something in levels with alot of enemies …
Spriggens are the gods of running away. So make sure you lean into that. I’ve never actually won with a SpHu because I got so bored with kiting (I had similar issues when centaurs were a playable race). I have won with SpEE^Dith before. Passwall sets up guaranteed stabs because there is 0 time between emerging from a wall and the next move. And petrify also is great for stabbing. But I think that passwall was nerfed so that you can’t go truly ridiculous amounts of distance at high power anymore.
If you want to try a ranged character with a similarly nuts endgame to DECj, I highly recommend DgHu. They are pretty difficult to get running because of the lack of gods. But they just become untouchable gods of death by the end of the game. Just max dex at all points, train ranged to min delay (with some dodging, evok, fighting), and then train dodging and fighting whichever is cheapest. If you find a hand cannon, find a shield. The last one I won with at the end of the game had 73 ev, 34 sh, and was doing like 100 damage a turn at the edge of los.
Thanks for the tricks.
Maybe I’ll open a “Hunting games - asking tips for beginner hunter” tread because I sense that I’ll need some kind of help
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