Has anyone here suffered a crisis of confidence while on a longer than usual losing streak? I momentarily did after losing a FoEE^Yred on D:15 earlier tonight because it extended my current losing streak to 7, and it’s been two weeks since my last win. For reference, the only other time since I came back from a hiatus that I went that long between wins was my previous losing streak of 4 games and 17 days (admittedly, a lot of that is because the win is one of my slowest ever since my early days, and two of the losses reached the S-branches).
Anyway, having only one win in the span of a month when I normally get 3-5 in a month left me wondering if I’ve lost skill, especially since I relatively quickly came up with something that might’ve saved my most recent run (a wand of acid on the boggart(s) would’ve gotten rid of some of the monsters and helped me get to the flayed ghost that was dealing massive temporary damage). Essentially, I chalked my death up to turning my brain off, but my late game success has been lacking lately, hence the crisis of confidence.
I called it momentary because I then realized that I’ve been playing some difficult combos lately. Over the past month, I’ve played the following:
- 2x GnIE: The first one had an early death, then the other one took Kiku in what must’ve been an attempt at polytheist progress (Kiku is an unwon god for me) and died in Snake:2.
- OpDe^Dithmenos: This one tried Abyss as the third rune. The Abyss teleported me out of the first rune vault, then I was doing fine in the second before I failed to take a dread lich seriously, and it summoned 2 balrugs that I couldn’t handle. Op is an unwon species for me BTW.
- DECj^Xom: This was week 1 of the CCSDT. The Lair entrance had so much that I was forced to take a downstair, and I think I might’ve gotten alarmed either by a trap or malevolent force, which led to a fight too big for me.
- DrCj^Nemelex: This was my win, but multiple alarms in Zot:5 brought a lot of monsters from the vault to the outside, which was wide open. I had to stairdance multiple times, then detour to Crypt because I was running out of cards. At least it was an unwon color, leaving 3 more for Tiamat.
- OpEn^Gozag: This was week 2 of the CCSDT. This one made it to Lair but couldn’t handle a large pack of yaks and possibly other stuff.
- MuFi^Makhleb: This was another unwon species that tried and failed to get an Abyss 3rd rune. There was some chatter on Discord about Abyss being the recommended 3rd rune after changes to it and Slime, but the rune vault that killed this character had a big fight with a bunch of unusual monsters, which Abyss has plenty of anyway. I’ll make a note to myself to make the case for Vaults as a 3rd rune later, but that’s beyond the scope of this thread.
- OnAE: This was week 3 of the CCSDT. I felt weak throughout the game before dying in a Sewer. I later got a suggestion to use Static Discharge on AE because it can hit multiple targets and bypasses AC and EV.
- 2x DeHs: I was trying ranged DE but died early both times.
- MDFi^Ru: I was ambushed by a big fight and an alarm trap when entering Vaults and couldn’t handle it.
- FoEE^Yred: This was week 4 of the CCSDT. I already discussed how I lost this earlier, but I’ll add that I pivoted to melee due to an early halberd and Yred altar.
