https://crawl-br.roguelikes.gg/morgue/NephilaWeaver/morgue-NephilaWeaver-20260909-225606.txt
Pretty decent run. We think we hate new Zot 5 though. Tesseract feels awful as a mechanic, it’s so annoying to get a bad entrance and ending up perpetually cornered by summons from all sides. We don’t think we had fun in zot 5 a single time in every win we’ve gotten since the change. It’s not that hard, we think Slime is quite a bit harder than Zot 5, but Zot 5 just gives that “ugh just kill my character already so I don’t have to deal with this bullshit” feeling.
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I sympathize. Though with the Singing Sword, summons should not pose so much problem, but I ain’t aware of the details. Trust me to seek the Ttyrec later.
About new stuff. I think ye hath discovered more than I ever know. Ye hath won a 15 rune Oni. Congratulations. How was the Nether realms? I never did go so far. I did Pan and Abyss in .32 I think (online that is 
)
Oh, this zot was just us getting frustrated after having to retreat for the 10th time and throwing the run because we were just so tired. Like, Crawl is a tiring game, and having such a massive ordeal of patience right at the end is not good for spiders. It was perfectly winnable by a more patient player.
The Oni was a really fun run. We actually zoomed so much we got #3 15 rune speedrun for OnSh we think? Because it was just so comfortable to play, so tanky and powerful, easy to get in the zone. Favorite character we’ve had in ages and we’d love to revisit it after we’re done with our greatplayer quest.
Honestly, extended is just strictly easier than 3 runes. If your character is powerful enough for it, the mechanics themselves are fine, you have tools to deal with anything already, it’s just keeping it in mind. Exception being Ereshkigal and tomb, which will chew you up and spit your gristle. Tomb ending is way closer to what new Zot 5 is, just an intense test of diligence and consistency.
Swords are an interesting choice (as they are dex based), I would have gone for any of the strength based weapons as you have a lot more strength than dex. I saw you found the screaming sword very early but I suppose in the last third of the game a strength based weapon with matching weapon skill would have given you more damage.
I recently lost a char on Zot 5 as well but only after taking out the tesseracts. I feel like I never had too many issues with their summoning because I know where they are and took them out fairly quickly after killing the first orb guardian.
Damage was never a problem for a single second. Singing sword does a lot of it, and a lot of it is flat damage which doesn’t care about stats. training dex also gives some extra shield and ev which is incredibly nice specially considering we already had like 70 AC, so it shores the defenses we’re actually missing. There was nothing really wrong with the character, we just got annoyed, didn’t take a break, and punted the run.
I just got a glimpse at the morgue. A great character again. Nice run 
(looks like they renamed the Singing Sword into Screaming Sword)
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They didn’t rename it! When it’s at the maximum Tension, the name changes to Screaming Sword as it powers up. One of many reasons it’s one of the coolest unrands LOL
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Since they introduced the Tesseract, I’ve always gone in for a all-out all-buffs all-or-nothing run at the big gems. No retreat, you either win or you die.
It’s been moderately fun. Very exciting when you make it.
Rather frustrating when I have a borderline character of which I don’t have faith they’ll survive, but still probably the best approach for those characters.