Caught another break, a faded altar on D:1 became Jiyva, so I got a quick rune and gem, but as a KoHW I ran into the usual HW problem and couldn’t get to any decent AoE spells. Made it down to Swamp:4 but didn’t feel good about navigating it, went back up to Snake but got sandwiched between a black mamba and a shock serpent, they got too many attacks in before I could jellify either one.
Just need one more for Gelatinous Body 2, which is generally my high-water mark in a tournament. I have an outside shot at Explorer 2 but I need to either get through Shoals/Swamp or get a really lucky break somewhere else and I think my abyssal rune was that break.
Well, i’ve had a streak of good fun characters with annoyingly avoidable deaths
I think the most fun one was my AtHW of Uskayaw; with Passwall, Confusing Touch, and Mephitic Cloud I was stabbing my way around every level. Rampage is really good for stabbers. I had never played this much with Usk and I can see how they’re great at complementing a stabber build, since stabbers tend to excel at 1-on-1 but struggle with groups, Usk shores up the weakness by incentivizing you to fight larger groups. Unfortunately I died stairdancing the mobs of Spider:4
Currently have a DjCK that converted to Lugonu when Xom banished me in the early game. Doing great with spells and a +8 Double Sword. Gotta try to reallllllly focus on not dying when I boot the game up.
@sanka Sometimes it is like that – I suspect you’ve had much less time to play than I have this time around. I did luck out finally on a low turncount VSFi attempt (Oka gave me a crazy crystal plate and quick blade); couldn’t quite pull it under 30,000, and nowhere near my best ever, but fun to have the stars align for once!
wow, nice! what general tactics changes do you do when you do low turncount? i always run from branch to branch collecting consumables and/or visiting shops around the time i’m clearing depths or zot, which i’m sure adds tons of extra turns
@kerplinkittyplunk Let me clarify that I am not much of a speedrunner - it is mostly RNG on a specific attempt at a faster TC that does it. That being said, I do try not to ever backtrack unless absolutely necessary, including doing Lair branches when coming out of Lair instead of going done to D:15 first.
based on DCSS Stats, xfalz went through a GnSk phase back in 2019… i wonder how ghosts get picked/generated in game and how far back they can be drawn from
The wiki has a pretty good description of the generation process, probably straight from the source code. Since this was on cko and it goes back to 0.18, I would guess there are a large number of old player ghosts to draw from. The code to map their old spells and abilities to new ones should be pretty interesting … if you don’t have to fight the ghost, that is.
I’ll have to keep an eye out for that on cao - at some point I might have seen an older player ghost but I probably didn’t notice.
Phew, i got my win. it was actually kinda sad to grab the orb; i was so lucky on gear and spells i feel like the character could have done a good bit of extended…fire storm and shatter, summon horrible things and malign gateway, even borgjnor’s revivification as an emergency button. but it’s been a long time since i went to pandemonium or the hell branches and i’m sure i would’ve died haha.
knocked out four games with runes in January, then the calendar flipped to February and I hit a wall, keep getting runs that are fine until it’s time to hit a rune branch and then nothing. Better than usual, though. Probably have time for one more decent shot, the end of the tournament comes up pretty quick on USA time
Agreed - lots of fun again! Hard to believe another tourney is done. Best one yet for me in some ways - a strong turn count run with non-DD for the first time (glad not to have to try Meteoran anymore!), and pretty far up on the piety chart. Thanks again to Moanerette for being captain.
and I think my abyssal rune was that break.
