Work in progress Beogh guide: Spade's Guide to Orcish Crusading (MDFi^Beogh)

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This is a work in progress guide I’m doing for an MDFi of Beogh. it seems to be decent as a beginner guide. Anyone have ideas to refine this?

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Introduction

Have you gotten tired of boring old Minotaur Berserkers?

Have you died one too many times, unable to spawn allies to defend you because of Okawaru’s “honourable combat?”

Have you ever wanted to see this happen?

Bladwarg goes berserk!
Bladwarg hits the vampire knight from afar with the +9 trident of Asitoafa!
You slice the vampire knight!!
The vampire knight is almost destroyed.
You closely miss the vampire mage.
Bladwarg hits the vampire knight from afar with the +9 trident of Asitoafa!!

Or, you want to try the god you keep getting asked to join by that early orc priest?

Enter what may be one of the most well rounded brawlers you can play in crawl: the Mountain Dwarf of Beogh.

While other melee characters may have the power to double their swing speed at any time, or the ability to hurl raw, unending blasts of energy using their own flesh and blood, we (you?), a mountain dwarf fighter of Boegh, have a more refined set of skills. No need to tear at your own flesh to hurl destruction.

Whether you’re a new player or just want to experience New Testament Beogh, a Mountain Dwarf Fighter of Beogh isn’t exactly a beaten path most follow, especially when Okawaru, Trog, and the Shining One are right there.

Note

This guide was written for 0.34 and 0.35a.

Main Menu

First things first, pick Mountain Dwarf (it’s under the Simple section, for good reason). Then, pick Fighter as your background.
We’ll be picking War Axe as our starter weapon of choice, but some may prefer the reaching of polearms, or some other weapon. However, Axes are fun. Linley said so himself.

Item Choices

  • Mountain Dwarf - Mountain dwarves are in a unique position of being potential battlemages, but they make potent melee fighters and fire spellcasters too. Unlike Minotaur, they learn Throwing much slower, but are good with Invocations - a nice +3 amplitude, in fact, a core of this build.

  • Fighter - Fighter is very generic. You swing stuff, hard. The main selling point of Fighter is mostly the buckler - being able to block attacks from turn one comprises half your defense, and negates all damage that comes from that attack. They also get a starting potion of might - an extra 1d10 per hit never hurt anyone.

  • War axe - “(axes are fun)” - Linley Henzel, quickstart.md

    Axes cleave. It means they can damage any enemy surrounding you for 70% damage This is nice as an insurance policy for when things surround you.

    About the only bad part is that axes cut hydra heads. We’ll get to that part later.

A Quick Side Gig

Welcome to the game. Before you go anywhere, or even do anything, press m to open your skilling menu. Switch from automatic to manual skilling - automatic is fine, but we can do better. It also has a tendency to train Stealth. We don’t need that.

Axes should be on C, if you didn’t change anything in your RC/init.txt. Press capital C to train only axes; press =, C, type 11, and press enter. You have now set a skill target for axes at 11 levels. While definitely not the most optimal way to skill a character, it works. Your strength should compensate.

Additionally, press \ to open your autopickup menu. Toggle on stones, boomerangs, javelins, and darts. While we likely won’t be training Throwing too much, carrying a ranged option is never a bad choice.

Vermin Cleaning (D:1)

Now for real this time. Start exploring; while you can explore carefully, the o key allows you to autoexplore, but does it in a random manner, which you may not want. While cautious exploring isn’t required for winning, it is helpful.

You’ll want to pick up scrolls and potions as you explore, plus any throwing items you encounter. (Our autopickup settings will autopickup any of those we find as we autoexplore.)

While you may not know the effects of scrolls or potions right now, we’ll cover that later.

You’ll also obviously want to fight monsters. The simplest way to do this is to press Tab for the game to do so automatically (taking a step forward if need be).

However, the optimal way to fight when surrounded is to take a step back, so that 3+ enemies are not thrashing your half-size frame every turn. Here. # is a wall, . is air, @ is the player, and E is a enemy waiting to try their luck against you.

    #.#
 ####E# < can't attack
 ..@EE# < only one enemy can attack you, the guy behind him cannot
 ####E# < can't attack
    #.#

Don’t do this:

    #E# < can't attack
 ####E# < can attack
 ...@E# < can attack
 ####E# < can attack
    #.#

Vermin - D:1

  • Gnolls are nasty to face one-on-one, especially if they’re your first enemy as an XL 1 MD. While they deal a base damage of 6, they use weapons; even a weak spear will turn this into 12 max damage, enough to two-shot a standard dwarf.

    Weapon users can use any special weapon abilities a player can. For example, axes still cleave your allies wielded by an enemy. More importantly, polearms can reach from two tiles. This changes their counter significantly, which will be covered later.

    Don’t be afraid to quaff might after just one nasty hit. This is the time to use it.

  • Quokkas are a lesson in monster speed. As fast (>100% speed) monsters, they occasionally get an extra turn. You may need to start moving backward into a corridor immediately upon sighting one. Due to their extra speed, they’ll eventually double turn, using the second turn to get in your face. That’s when you start attacking.

  • Jackals are also fast, but they come in packs of up to 4. If you see even one jackal, back into a corridor immediately - see above for an example.

Eventually you’ll hit XL 2, maybe XL 3.

More Axework (D:2)

D:2 is generally safer than D:1 due to staircases - three of them, in fact. Staircases take 2.5 turns to go up or down. Any monster adjacent to you when you start climbing up can follow along, possibly getting 2-3 turns against you. Yikes.

You also start seeing escape hatches. They are the same thing but one-way. You’ll recognize them by their orange color.

Big Vermin - D:2

  • Adders are nastier quokkas. In addition to biting harder and having more health, they poison. Poison hurts - you could lose half your health just from the poison. You can probably take one down - you’re a dwarf, you can deal with it! - but risks are risks. If you have stones, open with those first - press f to target with your quivered item, Q to quiver something, and F to specifically select what to fire. This is another good place to use might, if you need to.

    Should you be lethally poisoned, start drinking potions blind. Curing is most common, followed second by Heal Wounds.

    By the end of D:2 these adders should be no threat.

  • Gnolls start using nastier weaponry, and start to come in packs. You’ll need a change in plans for a gnoll pack; should a gnoll pack (we’ll mark reaching enemies with R) come up to you, all with spears, you need to be more careful, only letting two of them hit you.

    Some gnolls will now have halberds. Halberds are even worse than spears due to their increased damage. Also notable (and possibly more dangerous) are throwing nets - considered unusual items for good reason, you’ll need to struggle out of them over a few turns - during which your evasion is reduced to zero. You don’t want 0 EV with halberd gnolls in range. The game will automatically mark all unusual-item-carrying monsters in a purple outline on tiles.

 Horrible.          |  Better.
 4 enemies can hit  |  2 enemies can hit
 #####R#            |  #####R#
 ...@RR#            |  ..@RRR#
 #####R#            |  #####.#

  • Ribbon worms spit webs - another form of throwing net. Nasty if you’re not in a corridor - and yet another reason to corridor fight.

  • Orc priests are nasty for most characters, especially on XL2, but this guide is specifically looking for them. As soon as you see one, get your HP reduced below 2/3 maximum and convert (a then Y then Enter). We’ll cover Beogh later on.

    On first worship, Beogh does almost nothing except flame you when a human enemy kills you. Let this be encouragement to not die.

  • Sigmund the Dreaded is infamous for ending many aspiring characters. They are unique - they only appear once, and they have a unique name (Sigmund, Robin, Natasha, etc…). What’s nasty about Sigmund is that he has a few nasty things:

    • A scythe, a reskinned halberd. It hurts for a maximum of 14 damage, which at this point is almost none half your healthbar. Ouch.
    • Magic Dart, which can finish off a fleeing character.
    • Throw Flame, which we can consider another Magic Dart (it hits for 3 damage higher, but that barely matters).
    • The funny, which is confusing you so you can’t do anything meaningful except wander around until he chops/shoots you to death.
    • Invisibility. It lets him turn invisible. This is nasty, as you cannot see the location of an invisible enemy (bumping into them will make you attack them, so do that)

    Sigmund intentionally spawns this early, and there are many ways to defeat him; most notable is just running away. However, should you be forced to fight, quaff might and swing away. Hopefully you win.

At XL 3 you’ll get a choice to boost a select stat. Pick strength. It helps with armor and damage. You’ll get the choice again at XLs 9, 15, 21, and 27. Pick strength, each time, every time.

Decrypting Arcane Secrets (Identification)

It helps to know what you have. While I prefer to save identification to D:4, as Temple can possibly spawn there, Beogh worshippers can encounter their first priest as late as D:6-D:8, so earlier identification is fine. You can identify at any time, following the standard identification method.

Read scrolls you have 2+ of on top of an upstairs leading to a cleared floor, preferably without enemies in sight.

Additionally, if you read summoning or butterflies, then Immolation, go upstairs immediately.

If you read identify, identify scrolls first. Slowly identify the remainder of your inventory as you find identify scrolls.

There are some important items to identify, also some of the most common:

  • Scroll of Identify itself, for obvious reasons.
  • Scroll of blinking, which allow you to perform a controlled blink.
  • Potions of curing, which heal a minor amount of health, plus cure poison and confusion.
  • Potions of heal wounds. What else do you need but healing? Earlier on, curing will be more effective.

D:3-D:6

This is where you start to encounter nastier threats.

The Temple spawns between D:4 to D:7. You may want to take a look inside - Beogh altars are quite rare, however, so the Temple isn’t as of much use.

Orcish Enemies, D:3+

  • Orc priests remain a primary target, either to gain piety for Beogh or to convert in the first place. In the former situation, they remain nasty threats simply because of their 7-17 damage smite. Remember: they can do it from anywhere on screen and do not need line of sight to do so. Most orcs tend to be in bands - if you see a large amount of orcs, chances are orc priests…

  • or orc wizards, or both, are nearby. Orc wizards have the same spell set as Sigmund (Invisibility, Confuse, Magic Dart, Throw Flame). Without the halberd or durability of the unique, they’re easier to take care of. Still, beware of confusion.\

  • Orc warriors are better orcs. Need I say more? They hit harder. They take more time to kill.

The Start Of A Journey (God Choice)

This is rather hard to place within a guide, due to how volatile first orc priest appearance locations can be. I’m assuming you started worship somewhere in the Temple spawn area (D:4-D:7).

The god we will be picking, if it wasn’t already obvious, is Beogh, the Shepherd. Unlike other gods, you must find a orc priest to worship them. However, Beogh offers straight, direct benefits to a Mountain Dwarf:

  • A free ranged attack at 2*, compensating for the MD’s -2 Throwing amplitude, instead scaling with a very strong +3 Invocations amplitude.
  • Free allies, if you can defeat them, with power scaling throughout the game.
  • A panic button in Blood for Blood, to instantly surround yourself in allies.
  • Water walking, useful at all times.
  • The trivialization of half of the Orcish Mines. An invaluable help.

Nasty Foes, D:4+

  • Ogres wield giant club (max 37 damage; 39 for spiked version), but swing slowly. If you can get two-shot by an ogre, don’t risk it.

  • Sleepcaps release spores at you to induce sleep. Monsters deal bonus damage against you when you sleep, plus you can’t move. You probably don’t want to take said damage, especially if the one doing it is an ogre. Nasty when with others; okay alone.

  • Phantoms are undead and thus have a load of resistances, but they couldn’t afford to bring rAxe. However, they have a unique “blink with” attack that will blink you andd the phantom to somewhere in the phantom’s line of sight, possibly into unexplored territory or worse.

  • Bombardier beetles aren’t too bad, but they spray liquid fire on you. The status goes away six times faster if you’re moving - so, obviously, move. They are slower than you - running away is an option.

  • Most other uniques are boss monsters. I won’t go over them - there are too many to list. Always x v them to inspect their ability. They are usually nasty for the level they spawn in.

Dodge This Filthy Casual (Smiting)

As soon as you read You can now smite your foes. on your screen, allow yourself a moment to breathe.

About 2-3 floors after you worship Beogh, you will likely be at 2* of piety. With this, you will get the ability to smite your foes. Yep, the same smiting orc priests use on you. Smiting has four things going for it that make it the defining ability of a Beogh crusader:

  • It doesn’t care about AC.
  • It doesn’t care about EV.
  • It does not require line of fire (hence the term smite-targeting).
  • It has no power cap. More invocations = more damage.

All you have to pay for this is a little divine favor and some training in beseeching the one true god.

As soon as you get this ability, focus train Invocations to a skill target of 7.

Note that using Smiting also delays orcish challengers, which can kill you if you don’t have a way to deal with them. If you’re feeling weak, keep your piety below 3* until you can face a challenger.

Additionally, if you do decide to use Smiting, use it early. This goes for all abilities - use them early and often.

Mid Dungeon (D:5-D:7)

Threats here start to utilize some more devious tricks.

  • Centaurs have bows. Thus, they will stand in place and pelt you with deadly arrows. While you have a shield, it will only block some of said arrows. Defeat these lowly cheats by going around a corner, as seen below. This technique can also be used to limit smiting.
  #C# < Centaur can't see you
###.#
.@..#
###.#
  #.#

  • Water moccasins should not be a threat to you, unless it spawns very early (D:5 is relatively early). They are adders but better. Hopefully, you have curing if axing them doesn’t work out.

  • Hornets are nasty nasty nasty enemies that are fast, apply poison, and can PARALYZE YOU ON HIT. A hornet can lay on upwards of 80 damage (not including poison) during said paralyze. Wands and curare darts can assist in taking one out.

  • Killer bees kill (duh). They hit hard, they hit fast, and they come with poison. Not horrible in corridors. DEADLY in swarms. AGAIN:

   DO THIS.         NOT THIS.

 ######....#    |   ######.EE.# 
 .@EEEEE...#    |   .......@EE#
 ######....#    |   ######...E#

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1 Thank
2

Great so far! Makes me want to play one!