Same here, except I usually clear Slime:4 as an escape.
I clear everything I can, except certain early uniques (usually Grinder, Siggy, sometimes Yuif, Psyche, Iylb if the RNGs hate me). I do Slime 1-3, if I have Prism to block Shining Eye LOS. Like bobross, I’ll clear Slime 4 for safety. Hall of Blades might be an exception too, if I don’t have the right tools.
Clearing everything in D, U, and Z gives me xp for skills, possible loot, and a clear(er) escape path if I manage to snag that Orb. That said, on the ascent, I do try to kill any uniques I left alive on my way down. Firestorming Siggy is fun. Heh.
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I’m way too paranoid to do that on ascents… I’m just trying to get out alive (I’ve only died once on an ascent (60+ wins on my main account)). But I will go through and clear things I’ve excluded, ghost vaults, and the like before tackling zot most games unless I’m worried about turn counts.
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Heh, that’s probably why you have 60 wins!
You’re right, hunting uniques on the way up is a bad idea. Yukuia, don’t do that. I’ve lost a 15 runer to Gloorx that way… Still, it was fun! 
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Sorry, that message was in response to someone saying that they never use Makhleb’s abilities and just use them (thanks for the correction on gender, wasn’t sure on that) for the lifesteal.
Thanks for the replies.
I don’t fully understand the Slime:4 question: is another way to escape?
I only reached the Orb once, and I was brutally killed just few turns after 
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So the Royal Jelly is waiting for you on Slime 5. When you hurt it, it spawns a bunch of jellies around itself. Those will mob and kill you if you are not careful. The Royal Jelly won’t ever use stairs. But the spawns can and will, if they are next to you.
There are 3 sets of stairs from Slime 4 to Slime 5. Stairdancing is one way people use to break up the jelly mob and kill them in small groups. But you don’t want something waiting for you on Slime 4 when you dance. That’s why it may be prudent to wipe out all of Slime 4 before going to hunt down the Royal Jelly.
As an aside, stairdancing Slime 5 used to be pretty safe. Now it can not work at all. The reason is Rock Slimes. They are like elephants: they can knock you off the stairs. I’ve seen characters get killed that way. They are on the stairs, planning to dance, the mob approaches. Just as they try to ascend, Rocky knocks them back a step. Now the mob swarms over the stairs and there’s no way to get back up. Not good.
So if you see Rockie closing in, either put something behind you so it can’t knock you back (hard to do) or kill it if you can or teleport away and use another set of stairs.
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Thanks for the clarification.
Yesterday I tried ^Ash for the first time, I didn’t fully understood how to use this god so I ask here some clarification:
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Ash piety works on curses, ok. More curses, more piety, more passive bonus. I’m a noob, so I don’t understand why these passive are so “good”: passive map and detect mobs? Identify items? sInv? I don’t see why these are so useful, sInv is the only one but I can easly have it in some item. Clarity is the only one that I find really good.
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Curses grants bonus on skills, this is great and I think the mayor advantage of this god, am I correct?
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I think that the curse is not a big problem because I can shatter it (and the item), without any contraindications, or I’m missing something?
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How you plan to use the curses? I mean: you follow some kind of logic or you curse the first item you have?
Sorry for all these questions!
Both the skill bonuses and the foreknowledge powers could be useful, I won’t comment on which one would be more useful. You should know that the skill bonuses increase greatly (non-linearly) the more curses you put with that skill, and the more the skill is actually trained in the ‘m’ key screen, so if you see a tiny skill boost by Ashenzari, don’t misunderstand it as if this god is weak.
The thing with Ashenzari is that you either immediately curse items that you know they’re “garbage” and immediately gain access to the skill boosts and foreknowledge powers (something you know you can shatter confidently without losing an important item (you’re not at a further disadvantage if you curse and then uncurse an item except losing that item, there’s no punishment for doing this)), or curse an item you know you’d stay with for the rest of the game (something you know you won’t ever want to shatter).
In return for the advantages you get, you lose the ability to quickly swap weapons and rings mid-combat if they’re cursed and you might be wearing “garbage” equipment for much longer compared to other gods/atheist if you follow the strategy above, and scrolls of acquirement/enchant armour/enchant weapon/brand weapon become even more important than usual.
I consider Ashenzari a nontrivial god (like Xom and Cheibriados, for example) because the intuitive strategy forces you to wear “garbage” equipment for longer, and because you don’t get any powers useful for escaping bad situations or handling tough monsters.
The Ash powers are all extremely useful, and I suggest rushing the first curses you get even if you can’t use them. With 3 or 4 slots uncursed you’ll be immune to malevolence and still able to play ring and weapon swaps.
Sinv and clarity are both excellent and don’t need much clarification.
Area mapping, item and monster detection help setting up the battlefield and avoiding potentially bad situations.
All that being said, Ash enables you to pivot your build to pretty much anything that you need. With a curse or two even poor aptitude skills can be quickly pumped to the 9-15 sweet spot and heavily stacking curses can get you into the mid 20s for 2H mindelay or L9 spells. Even without a T shape skill you can get a tone of mileage from skilling broadly through the lower teens to give you options to cover specific threats you’re otherwise unprepared for with you “main” archtype (e.g. a fire elementalist struggles with crystal golems but LRD ends up being cheap with ash).
It did take me a few years to get comfortable with Ash though, so zikada is probably right about being a harder god and I’m just not remembering when I couldn’t figure them out.
The only thing I have to add to the good advice above is that I consider AutoID a massive power boost.
A lot of D9ish/Lair death morgues show inventories with unidentified scrolls/pots that could have saved that character’s bacon. Fear/Poison/Haste/Tel/Blink/Summon/Inviso/Lig/Silence/Vul/Berserk/Enlight/Cure/Heal are all game changers, esp that early in the game.
Showing you all your options is how Ash provides early game combat boost & escape abilities.
I know, I’m a newbie but sorry I need some clarification about Ash:
https://underhound.eu/crawl/morgue/Yukuai/morgue-Yukuai-20240926-115617.txt
last game I’ve got 6 cursed items
**** piety with Ash
I was an XL14 and with a single curse in Conjuration (example) I had 14.3 in the skill.
in a normal run (DjCj) at XL14 the skill level is 12.
How these 2 levels in Conjurations make the difference?
I mean: with a DjCj I receive free spells at odd levels, I never be able to find a spell L9 since XL25.
I understand the big difference with armor/figthing/shields, but what about the different magic schools?
Another question, I cursed the items with this strategy:
- if I’ve got +0/+1 items, I curse them whatever kind of curse Ash give me
- artifacts/items that I know can stay alot with me: I curse them with a curse that I know it’ll be useful
Am I doing right?
Your curse strategy is spot on.
As far as skilling goes, there are two approaches and you can use both at the same time for different skills. Broad or deep.
First thing to know is that higher skills cost more skill points than lower skills but because of how most of the formulas are set up a 3 skill level increase from 6-9 has the same net effect on your final stat (damage, accuracy, shield, etc.) as going from 15-18…. But the three skill points from 15-18 cost almost as much skill as going from 0-12 (not exact numbers here, wiki can help you find the exact cutoffs if it’s important to you).
With that established we can consider what 12->14 conjuration (or any spell school) gives you: realistically we’re talking maybe 10-15% improvement in spell success on an L5-L7 spell and it could be enough to make that spell dependable. Also you’d get like 10-15 spell power for an extra point or two of average damage/success. Those last 2 skill points cost quite a bit though compared to what else you could spend them on… 12->14 is about the same cost as 0-9 which is a major improvement in any of the support skills you need to round out a build. This is basically the foundation for broad skilling with Ash. A little goes a long way… 9 points into armour and dodge is like 6 total defense, 6 points in throwing gives you min delay on darts and 1.0 on boomerangs - and 6 in stealth makes atropa/datura somewhat useful in the early and mid game.
Same applies to spell schools as well, the current spell sets give you options to deal with 99% of the threats I a 4-rune game without needing more than L5 spells. These all become extremely cheap with a couple curses and you can easily have LRD, Arcjolt, Dispel/Animate Dead, OTR and Ignite Poison all rocking on a hybrid with solid defenses. 12-14 skill is usually where you’re hitting <10% with average Int on these level spells.
This broad skilling is all great and it’s winnable and gives you options for everything, but then Ash also lets you go deep which is where you turn into an unstoppable tab/p machine. Once you stack 3+ curses you’re getting a ton of free skill and things that are otherwise impractical in a 4-rune game become easily achievable. For most characters, pushing for an L9 spell in a 4-rune game is going to make things harder because for the cost of taking one skill from 15-24 you could take two support skills up to 15 and increase your survivability. But with Ash and a few curses that 15-24 might have a real cost of 15-21’s worth of skill points which is about half the cost letting you skill up another support skill… but since you probably have a curse or two across support skills its actually like 1.5 support skills. Anyways, you don’t have to plan a whole run around a 2H or L9… You find something in late S-branch, Ash let’s you flex and have it online by the time you’re halfway through Vaults.
There’s some good posts in the past on reddit that you might be able to track down that get much deeper into the details and check out the skill points wiki article for the cost table. If you’re into that sort of thing feel free to math out and whatnot with aptitudes, but I’ve found leaning on Pareto and just comparing the base values from the chart to be good enough for playing a game.
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wow, this is an answer.
I need to re-read it because is not easy to full understand, but thanks for all of these infos!
(just to vent a little bit: I fucked up a run with a bad mutation that teleported me in the middle of hard fights …)
I’m trying different things to avoid being bored of the same DjCj so I tried a DjAl^Yred and I found it really good (until I tried to face a Death Knigth all by myself).
A question about Yred bind invo: this could be done on every enemy, am I right?
Reading the wiki it tells me that the target must stay in my LOS, but I didn’t understand if it needs to stay in my LOS since the casting time or only when it dies: someone can explain it to me?
It can be done on pretty much anything you care about. The game should warn you if you can’t bind it.
To successfully bind, you have to kill it before you lose sight of it. Once it is a bound soul, it can be anywhere. Though if you leave it alone, say, guarding a “cleared” area behind you, it is possible that something will wander by and kill your pet. So you might want to bring it along most of the time.
Thanks for the clarification.
I think that a DjAL^Yred is quite fun, you can spam radiation and meph while your horde of minions shield you against enemies … the only “problem” is that it take a while to be able to use OTR and Meph without miscast them
Don’t forget to spam Torch! You lose 500 pts for ever charge of Torch left when you leave a level!
WTF
I didn’t know that!
I’m joking! I’m joking!
(But seriously, spam the cr*p out of Torch!)
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