https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20250925-125151.txt
This comes at the end of a 48-game dry spell (the “high” point of which was a HaCj who replaced rF gear with rN for Tomb and then forgot the plan and immolated the W:2 ambush; a greater mummy polished me off but essentially I blew myself up) so is a bit of a relief, although it got very nasty in Pan and could easily have been lost there.
Spriggan has +4 Charms so at least is a good fit with the background, and it was easy to get spells online - although having learned Song of Slaying on D:1 I almost immediately decided that was a mistake, being more interested in being stealthy than prolonged fights. It still took a while to get Regeneration online with it being level 4 and a low Necromancy apt.
The early game wasn’t all good; HP 2/22 from an orc wizard, 2/25 from Blork the orc, and 2/25 from a hobgoblin (how, when it had no ranged attack?); so I could easily have lost it then and there.
I took Ihp’ix (our archer god) from the Temple on D:5. This was also a mistake; Sp being small meant I couldn’t use a triple crossbow or longbow later, and Sp’s low Strength meant anaemic damage with the weapons I could use. I first got Ihp’ix home on KoAs, which perhaps misled me into how effective it would be - the Ko had over double the Str with +16 points on gear. In the middle game I’d use an arbalest for a bit to squeeze out more damage, but losing my buckler was pretty painful. Yes, I could kite forever, except that I was covering a lot of ground and risked running into other monsters while doing so.
The other painful bit was while I found a fustibalus in an ice cave off Lair:5, I only got a brand weapon scroll in a shop on V:5… and got venom, which is definitely falling off when you’re thinking about extended runes. Ihp’ix issued me a +8 fusti of velocity after V:5 but the reduced piety gain from a divine weapon made it hard to use Piercing Shots as much as I would like.
I’d seen an amulet of guardian spirit in a D:2 shop and bought it around the time I found the Lair on D:10. I’d use this all game (and master Spellcasting) but of course it was more effective early on when I wasn’t casting many spells. I never found any more compelling amulet and of course with 50MP and guardian spirit, a potion of magic becomes a poor man’s heal wounds.
Lair was fine because almost everything there is melee-only and not particularly high AC. I identified 2 scrolls of acquirement on D:12 getting a +1 hat of magic resistance and a ring with {AC+4 Slay+2}. I’d use the ring most of the game and it often seemed to make the critical difference between being able to deal with the conditions or not; I’d be unhappy when resistance needs made me take it off. Orc was less fine, but still tolerable, and the shops had a decent set of consumables to buy - and since I now had a huge amount of gold, I could afford an expensive wand of digging.
Cleared down to D:15 - I fancied neither Snake without rElec, or Swamp without rPois. After that I decided Snake was the least worst, and shock serpents didn’t collect me before getting a +1 robe with {rElec Regen+ Dex-2 Stlth+}, not great apart from, crucially, letting me not be killed by shock serpents.
I looked into Swamp and almost immediately got confused by a poison blast from a swamp drake, decided it was clearly mad not to just buy the ring of poison resistance on Snake:4, bought it, went back to Swamp, and almost immediately opened up a swamp dragon getting its scales, so back to my favourite ring. After than Swamp was fine and I had two runes.
I started on Vaults, learning Ozo’s Armour (very effective given +4 Charms and that other factors made me master Charms), Deflect Missiles (amnesiaed out almost immediately, with Ihp’ix’s protection it was not worth tying up the MP, why did I learn it?), and Invisibility (not as useful as I expected because the contamination stacks up rapidly, and I managed to malmutate myself by careless use of it).
I hit a Desolation on V:2, learning BVC and Irradiate (both good choices) and a ring with {rPois Int+5 Dex+2} which let me swap to acid dragon scales for the later game. The Desolation got a bit nasty in places, but they always do. The rest of V:2-4 had a fairly prolonged fight with Mara and a near miss with a lich.
Elf was next with huge MR, with nothing but the E:3 room of bastards causing any serious worry. I did find “the Compendium of Dhcmrlchtdj” (and “Pilolaus’s Tome of Combed Thunderclap” and “Diezalep’s Papyrus of Plaster Cramp”) which makes me wonder if the authors of randbooks are OK. E:3 also gave a ring with {rN++ Int+4 Dex+2} which, well, wasn’t a great rN swap but it was the rN swap I had - and a terrible rElec swap.
I dipped into Depths surviving both HP: 13/114 from a vampire knight and being surrounded by 5 caustic shrikes, but this was clearly a pretty bad plan compared to having a go at Slime. Depths did give me the Vampire’s Tooth; this was not as good as it seemed. It let me win a melee fight against more or less any living opponent, but it took forever giving other opponents a chance to arrive - and since it was topping up HP not MP (which guardian spirit was taking off) they’d arrive when I was dry on MP.
It was a struggle to get to Slime:5 and TRJ gave me considerable trouble even with immolation and Piercing Shots, but it went down - giving me some consumables and more XP. Depths was still going to be pretty awkward, but I muddled through it - and I gambled on buying a randart rapier on U:2 for 900 zorkmids which was +9 with {pierce, rElec Dex+6}. At first I’d use this only as my first good rElec swap, but it gradually became clear to me it was much more effective than shooting - short blades favour Dex in Stoat Soup, rapiers riposte, and it pushed my EV through the roof. Once I realised I should actually favour melee with it (and with Invisibility if possible), combat became much easier.
I had mastered Charms by U:4 in order to cast Haste (which, taking after Gooncrawl, returns as a level 9 spell - it’s good, but so are most level 9 spells) although for a while I’d need brilliance to use it; as Spellcasting reached maximum it would get easier. In the end I had 15 casts and finished with 10 potions of haste, so it’s not clear it did me a tremendous amount of good.
Next was V:5 - I hatched down and found myself on the north side of the map and had a fairly long running fight as monsters trickled in. This wasn’t great, especially at the points Sojobo and Margery’s packs turned up - a lot of kiting down one of the edge corridors to meet something coming the other way - but obviously I survived.
Pan seemed like the least worst option for an extended rune… which still think was true, but was still very bad, with my anaemic damage really unable to cope with demonspawn warmongers and the like - Tzitzis and Fiends at least had low enough AC that stuck down with BVC they could be disposed of. I kind of expected to die there but in the 5th pan level hellion island turned up - easily cleared with ranged weapons and a bit of caution, except for one Hell Sentinel who just couldn’t be picked apart from range. So fly over? I found to my dismay I’d brought neither a ring of flight nor a potion to Pan, so ended up casting Blink repeatedly next to the island, rather tedious, and was not best pleased to find a hellion I’d missed hanging about.
Still, I had an extended rune and I sure as hell wasn’t messing around with any more. I pondered a bit over what to do about orbs of fire - I had one pip of rF and that would not be good with spriggan HP and it taking a while to kill them - but then I realised I could learn Ring of Flames and pack an antimagic rapier. However, I came up with a better plan involving not fighting any orbs of fire at all…
Zot:1 had the door vault which I stayed well away from; other than that Z:1-4 were mostly OK aside from a few nasty curse toe moments.
Z:5! I thought, well, I’m pretty fast, I’m pretty evasive especially with the Dex+6 rapier, do I need to fight anything? I did clear the area outside the orb vault in case I had to teleport if it went south, but then put Ring of Flames up, cast Haste (why did I burn 9MP when I had ten potions?), and ran for it. This worked - about as fast as orbs of fire (who then got left behind in the press of Orb Guardians) and when I grabbed the orb I was at full HP (albeit little MP) and hadn’t killed anything. The exit wasn’t quite so easy with monsters stacking up at the entrance to the orb room but with Evocations 27 I could blast away with wands and misc evokables and clear a path in no time.
The orbrun had nothing at all scary enough to be noted in the morgue, but there were a couple of Fiends that couldn’t be evaded.