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I’ve been playing since Linley’s back when I was in college. I did pretty well in the tourny. I was trying real hard to win, so my win rate was probably 8%. But my average according to DCSS Stats is less than 2% right now.
For the amount of game time I have, I’m aggressively mediocre. But honestly, the best part of the game is pre vaults when you are getting your build up and running. So dying doesn’t really bother me.
I’ve been working on getting my winrate up while trying to get other achievements like grand player and tiamat, but with around 4000 games played it’s slow going. Still, my winrate within the last 30 days is noticeably better than overall, so progress is technically happening.
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I’ve been playing online since 2008. I think I played offline in 1997, when Angband was the first title I recognized in the school Sunstation’s /usr/bin/games listings, and webcrawler named Linley’s crawl when I searched for “like angband but better.”
10k games and 20 wins, so mediocre is probably kind. My goal since 2020 has been to win a berserker with all the species listed as “Simple” on the species select screen. MfBe took 522 attempts. Only gnoll remains.
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I feel like GnBe would be a hard combo. They really excel late game with all the magic school available to them.
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Update: I’ve achieved Tiamat and my winrate within the last 30 days is more than double my overall winrate, so maybe it’s time for me to stop complaining.
next up: finish off grand player
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Congrats! Very impressive!
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Congrats!
Draconians haven’t ever really gelled for me. I got a win with them, probably a blaster caster because they are my go to. But I haven’t really figured them out, so Tiamat is very impressive to me. Congrats
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I will say that, aside from playing them as a caster with free no-body-armor AC, and playing as a shapeshifter hoping for dragonform, I’ve found long blades dex heavy draconians to be strong.
You get to have the EV advantages of no body armor while still gaining some AC, and long blades scale with dex for damage instead of str and you don’t care at all that being low str is bad for heavier body armor. Four of my recent drac wins used long blades heavily as a result.
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I don’t think I’ve ever used a Protect brand past mid game. Was that intentional or did you just not find any brand scrolls?
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I did find brand eventually, but I felt comfortable with my damage so I just left it as is.
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Today I stepped in water to extinguish sticky flame for the first time. I’ve been playing for fifteen years, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in sight of a water tile when I’ve been hit by sticky flame before.
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I have 1700 or so online games and a significant number of offline games, 0 wins, only saw the orb twice, only held it once. First online game in 2012, first offline game was probably 2010.
It has bothered me a bit on occasion - I took a break from the game for a while - but I came back largely because I really enjoy the randomness, and because the idea of being able to “play” pretty much any combo is more appealing to me than actually working through endgame enough to get better there. It’ll happen eventually (I feel better at midgame progression now), and in the meantime the ability to at least be tolerable at the unfavorable combos comes in handy at tournament time.
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Joining a team for a tournament is great for finding mentors. I know last tournament we had a person that did their first 15 rune run while a bunch of the really good players watched and gave pointers. Everyone was super excited about it and stayed up all night.
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0.95% and I feel like I’ve only been getting worse lol. Let’s see how I do this tournament xD
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It’s been about 12 years, my winrate in the tournament was 4.76 (4 wins, 83 games) so maybe I’m good enough, ish? Dunno. I definitely am willing to splat 5 minute characters just to run through the early dungeon, and two of my 4 wins were on races that are a tough start, felid and octopode. Although the felids were berserkers, so that probably doesn’t really count, berserk is OP. Honestly I don’t think it’s fair to call new felids a challenge race anymore.
I did lose a few characters who had runes, which I really could have saved, and if I had my winrate could have easily been around 10%. But I’m generally willing to take risks and I enjoy playing (somewhat) fast in real time. For example, I got the speed demon 3 banner this tournament without intentionally trying. It still takes roughly 2-3 hours a win (and my 15 rune wins were 5 and 6 hours, each), but I try to keep up the pace 
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I got speed demon three too without trying, but it was just because of the power of my build (average win is like 5 hours). I was playing a TrMo and happened into a slime temple. It was my first go with a Slime Troll and they are amazingly OP.
I have been playing, off and on, since 0.7, and have never one. A couple times I had runes and was heading back up, but didn’t make it. Love this game.
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