https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20240930-220635.txt
When I started playing random combos until I got each one to the Lair, I hadn’t thought about what would happen if a Laired-but-unwon combo came up again. Skip it? Play it until I get a rune? I came down on the side of playing it until I got a rune… unfortunate since the combo in question was Mummy Chaos Knight.
We have the bcrawlism that Xom always meddles with a Chaos Knight, so I knew Xom would be messing with me all game no matter what I did, and of course this is old Ash.
(I’m afraid this writeup is going to be a bit unclear; I played the game across the course of several days.)
Ash turned up on D:4 and was a very obvious pick with clarity and the ability to work around mummy’s terrible aptitudes. However, I instead took an altar to Ihp’ix, our archer god, a pretty baffling decision - the best explanation I have is that the altar to Ash was in the middle of a terrible fight with a two-headed ogre (on D:4!) and Ijyb and by the end of that I’d forgotten I’d seen the Ash altar. Later on D:4 I’d find a +1 hunting sling with {velocity, *Contam rN+ Int+3} which… was an improvement for now on a +0 sling and by the time I knew it had *Contam, well, I was wielding it. D:4 also had a manual of Summonings, a nice find if I could get some spells to go with it (I’d get spammals on D:5, appropriate since it was just before fighting Eustachio).
However, D:6 had the Singing Sword. I’d started in Long Blades and notwithstanding the noise this could be a huge offensive upgrade; then the Temple turned up on D:7 and I started to seriously consider abandoning Ihp’ix. They don’t have wrath per se, but they scoop up any ammo you see and the use of that ammo is reserved for the faithful, so while that could be very painful late in the game, here it mostly just meant the temporary loss of the use of my +0 sling (but I could go back and pick up boomerangs and darts (Ihp’ix forbids Throwing) and I’d found some curare). Now, of course, I found out there had been a perfectly good Ash altar on D:4 all along. Sigh.
Joseph gave me serious trouble on D:8 (I killed him some 900 turns after spotting him) but then on D:9 Xom gave me an amulet with {Spirit rN+ Str+4 Int+2}. Guardian spirit was just what the doctor ordered for a mummy whose one good aptitude is Spellcasting, and the stats were just a bit of gravy. D:9 also had a shop with a +2 leather armour with {*Drain rF++ rC+ Dex+4} which I bought immediately - who cared about *Drain, I wasn’t planning on taking it off. This came in very handy when that lovable scamp Xom polymorphed an orc high priest into a fire dragon shortly afterwards.
D:9 had had Orc, and I cleared it, getting the gold for some boots of running - not without quite a bit of trouble on O:2, although fortunately Erica dropped a scimitar of flaming on O:1 which I had the scrolls to immediately make +9, more than good enough to stop using the Singing Sword. Learned Aura of Abjuration, which would come in handy on the occasions when I remembered it existed. On D:10 I hit ** piety and finally was getting a skill boost - my own fault given I missed the D:4 altar the first time around.
Xom was feeling especially perverse on d:11 and polymorphed a cyan ugly thing into an emperor scorpion which I just had to park for later… and then Abyssed me to A:2. This got horribly unpleasant (particularly raiju with no rElec) and while I got out alive, my scrolls were badly depleted.
After that I was off to the Lair. Xom helpfully turned Rupert into a shadow dragon and then a fire giant… which could have killed me, but so could unpolymorphed Rupert. The rest of Lair was not so bad; volcano on L:5; but I was becoming more and more aware that while Ash was an excellent pick, I had very few panic buttons with no potions and nothing from my god. Every fight could become a crisis if a monster got a lucky hit in.
Lair:6 had a -2 dwarven roundshield with {rElec MP+9 Str-4 Stlth+} - better than no shield but I was glad to replace it with an ordinary kite shield shortly afterwards.
The rest of the Dungeon was OK and then it was off to Spider. That was OK too; got an Ice Fiend ice cave in the middle of it, but an Ice Fiend is less of an issue if you can’t be tormented. I was starting to find more spells and get them online, although with guardian spirit making up a big chunk of my effective HP I didn’t use them as much as I might have. I did decide to try and get Ring of Flames online, mostly because it was an amusing thing for a mummy to do - this wasn’t a good idea (it basically let me fight orbs of fire easily and almost get myself killed in Gehenna) but the Fire Magic meant I could use Ignition later, so it paid off in the end.
Next was Shoals (not too bad apart from Ilsuiw and her friends); Elf (acquiring a scarf with {CldImm, Int+9 Dex+3} which I would use all the way to getting the dragonskin cloak in Zot), Abyssed on E:3 - I don’t usually try for the Abyssal rune, it’s a nuisance to get, but I landed right on top of the rune vault - and getting some decent stuff in the E:3 treasure vaults, a +4 kite shield with rCorr and a +7 chain mail with {rElec Str+3 Dex+4} which I’d want later.
Into Vaults, then dipped into Depths:1 (why?), back to Vaults, clearing down to V:4 with no real trouble except the minor detail of finding Mennas on V:2. I left him as a problem for later… but I ran into him on a trip back to Vaults soon afterwards. I read a summoning and then spammed Haunt at him; the horde of summons meant I could mostly stay out of his silence radius and while he was killing undead at a prodigious rate they did eventually nibble him to death.
Cleared the rest of Depths without trouble, then Slime - immolated TRJ and friends. V:5 was much less easy - immolated the reception committee and that was fine, teleported away, but I was just being worn down under circumstances where a non-mummy would quaff an ambrosia or two in a breathing space.
Next the question was what extended rune to get. It seemed like Tartarus would be relatively straightforward with immunity to torment (aha, no) and Gehenna tolerable with Ring of Flames (also overoptimistic on my part).
Tartarus, well, Tzitzimitl have dispel undead and any fight with them could become a crisis very quickly - and doom hounds could start Tzitzis dropping on me any time. The worst of it was HP: 14/215 on Tar:7 which while it looks bad enough misses the bit where I’m two steps from the stairs and Xom yoinks me across to the other side of the level. It’s pure luck nothing killed me at that point.
However, at this point I had a bit of a think; dispel undead has limited range and instead of trying to beat them flat as quickly as possible in melee, I could back off hurling orbs of destruction. This was at least better (when hell effects didn’t drop them in my lap) and while it took me some attempts to get to (and kill) Ereshkigal, I survived. Then I found the rune was nowhere near her and had to search a bunch more of Tar:7 fearing another crisis.
So, Gehenna should have been easy compared with that? By and large it was but hubris meant I never should have gone; I had no really good option for the final fight with Asmodeus and that came down to “I’m going to swing at him and hope he dies before I do”. I got away with it, but what a mess!
After that Zot was no trouble… until Xom decided to teleport me into the Orb room, the second time this has happened to me. This time I was at near-full HP, though; grabbed the Orb, read teleport, and hammered away at Orb Guardians until it kicked in. This landed me in a lung (both were unexplored); permanent teleport trap to the other lung; permanent teleport trap to, phew, near some stairs. This is how I arranged to see six OOFs and four ancient lichen and kill none of them.
After that very nervous moment the orbrun was easy apart from a panlord on D:15 who brought some Tzitzi friends. I evaded with some difficulty and then I was home.
Next is DEWn. I’ve already splatted one, putting me back in my natural state of “no-streak”.