Morgue: https://cbro.berotato.org/morgue/Patrick2011b/morgue-Patrick2011b-20260412-215504.txt
I decided to try crossing off Felid for greatplayer this week, and when I looked at my previous attempts, and the only felid I ever got a rune with was a FeCK^Xom that got statue form online by the S branches. That one managed to complete Spider and take 1 extra life to Shoals:4. Unfortunately, that run died twice in Shoals:4, but I’ve never been able to complete the midgame with any other felid, so I decided to see if Xom could carry me further this time.
What I didn’t realize was that Xom was nerfed quite a bit since 0.32 trunk. Xom was getting bored a lot near the end of floors, and it often gave me badmuts as a result. The devs eventually toned down end-of-floor amusement loss and eliminated orb run boredom, but it was too late for me to benefit much from the former, and the latter was pushed during the orb run, so I actually paused the orb run for a day so CBR2 could build that change.
The early game had a few deaths (D:5 to a wyvern, D:10 to Fannar, and Lair:5 to an elephant), which isn’t exactly unusual for a felid. Orc:2 had a bazaar close to where I entered it, which brought a big power boost in the form of an amulet of wildshape. I already had several high-tier talismans and was building in that direction as talismans are one thing I had no trouble finding early. I did the rest of Orc in dragon form and switched to storm form by the S branches. I stayed in storm form for the rest of the game, and after training other skills for a while, I eventually went back to Shapeshifting so I could wildshape with regeneration, which I didn’t find until Vaults:5, where I died for the 4th time.
The amulet of regeneration made Abyss viable, so I did that next so I could open a trove. The Abyss went quick, but the trove turned out to be a bust. I then dove Zot, which I now regret because that makes Xom teleport more dangerous on the orb run. I got orbs of fire, but I had to give up a lot to get rF, as the only regen amulet was plain, storm form melds resistance mutations (my set was really bad anyway), and the only randart rF ring also had rElec (which storm form gets for free) and +5 EV (which is less valuable than Dex with max Dodging and very small size). The situation god bad enough that I had to run out of !haste and !resistance and use almost all of my blink scrolls to ninja the orb after dying in Zot:5.
The Orb Run
There was a teleport trap next to the orb, so I stepped on it, and while I went to the outside, I had parked several OOFs there, so I had to PoG and spend my second to last blink scroll to get to the stairs, and even then, an OOF followed me, and I was at low HP and debuffed. I should mention at this point that I was very unlucky with consumables this game. As mentioned before, I had no haste or resistance potions. I also had no might or digging, and I had only 1 blink scroll. Anyway, I asked the Discord for advice, and players suggested I use ?butterflies and gravitambourine to get the OOF out of the way, but binding doesn’t stop attraction, so this almost failed. I was able to close the door and reach Zot:3.
That’s when Xom acted like a final boss. I had a relatively short path to the stairs, though it would’ve been a lot shorter if I had a wand of digging. i got close to the stairs, then Xom teleported me to an unexplored vault that included an OOF and some other monsters. I used my last blink scroll and got pretty close to the stairs, only for Xom to teleport me again! This time, I was farther from the stairs, so I paused as previously mentioned to let CBR2 build the orb run boredom removal, then I read ?tele, but I took a lot of damage while waiting, mostly from a protean progenitor casting Irradiate. The teleport took me deeper into the aforementioned vault with a progenitor and ghost moth in view. I asked for advice on Discord and was suggested to charm the progenitor after reading ?vulnerability. A curse toe came into view when I read the scroll, but I managed to charm the progenitor on first try, and it targeted the curse toe. A shadow dragon then came into view from the direction I wanted to go, so I blinkbolted to it. Unfortunately, there were several other monsters there, so I had to use ?tele, !ambrosia, and my last ?butterflies to get out of there. Fortunately, I got a really good teleport that time, and the rest of the orb run was manageable.
I’m so glad I got through that orb run because felid being weak-except-for-extra-lives is not something I enjoy. For greatplayer, I still need to win Mummy, Naga, Octopode, and Poltergeist. I’ve taken each of those species to the late game at least once, so I’m hoping to get it done this year. I also have Brigand, Necromancer, and Summoner left for greaterplayer, but I think the remaining species will be a bigger challenge.