https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20251121-233123.txt
Naga Enchanter took me four attempts, although 12 kitty wizards and an OgWn mean my winrate is once again on the way down. The first three were pretty standard “can’t run away, now what” deaths to a big kobold, an orc warrior, and Robin.
Pretty standard start - learned Ensorcelled Hibernation and Tukima’s Dance, hoped not to run into a centaur too early, Spat Poison at everything - and Gozag turned up on D:3 as the first viable god. After that I don’t seem to have too much trouble and D:7 blessed me with a scarf with {rC+ rF+, rElec Str+6 Int-4} which even with the Int malus I’d use all game (especially since at this point I was wearing heavy armour, I wasn’t casting many spells, hence the three total casts of Tukima’s) - and two scrolls of acquirement, netting me a naga barding of cold resistance and a big pile of gold.
D:11 had the Lair and Orc - and an upstairs vault to D:10 with two rust devils. Normally these aren’t too much trouble when you meet them, but if you’re at this stage in the game with no rCorr they are absolute murder. I killed one (draining gold) and fled the other. The Lair entrance had oklobs on it so I dived into Orc first (maybe I should have gone to D:12, but I’d seen a cyclops on D:11 and that was scary enough).
This was the absolute low point of the game - I was drained badly by Josephine so spells didn’t work and melee/throwing was feeble. I ran into a huge number of orcs with arbalests and used up all my gold on Potion Petitions - which saved me, but I was still in trouble and could easily have lost it here (HP: 1/110 [orc warrior/uncursed great mace (19)]); I quaffed potions of desperation and identified degeneration - but also heal wounds, which also was just enough to save me. The one high point was realising since they all had arbalests or polearms I could immolate them with impunity, which was very satisfying and chewed up a large number of them, but there were still more arbalests at the back of the flame cloud. In desperation I escaped into Elf and by pure luck there was no-one waiting for me - finally I could heal up and rescue the situation.
Even after that debacle there was enough gold left on Orc to buy a +2 partisan of piercing, and gradually things improved after this, managing the difficult transition naga has between being just slow and “slow but also hard as nails”. This was enough to go and beat the surviving rust devil flat - very satisfying - and clear the oklob off the Lair.
Lair was fine by comparison - unsurprising with the XP from Orc under my belt - and I got a ring with {rElec rC+ MR+ Str+4} which I’d use for a while and a +3 randart leather armour with {Int+6}. Farewell, brigandine! I swapped into this and used it for the rest of the game, letting me cast spells in spite of, eventually, the Int-4 scarf and Ignorance. Lair:6 had a volcano which got a bit worrying, but a ghost turned up and helped polish off the red draconian which was the nastiest thing there.
Cleared down the Dungeon - Nessos could have been nasty, but I read a fog and let him come to me. Next was Spider, which with OTR online was relatively easy going; I got the Ice Fiend ice cave on Spider:4 but holy worded it and was able to polish it off.
Shoals was a bit nastier with a little unique party (Nikola, Ilsuiw, Kirke, Polyphemus) on Shoals:2 but I was able to meet them and polish them off one at a time, albeit when I fought Ilsuiw I’d seen hogs so I was pretty nervous about Kirke turning up. The rune vault on Shoals:4 was pretty bad and in particular it was not a strategic masterstroke to quaff a tree potion when someone could promptly drop a steam cloud on me.
Elf next. E:1 gave me a +10 war axe of Painful Death {chop, +Rage rPois} which seemed good enough to train some Axes for… which worked out nicely when Arga appeared in the treasure vault. Surely I was done with Polearms? I got a manual of Fighting at some point and I think it was here too.
Vaults was next - shafted on V:2 to V:4, which was a bit nervous with no line of retreat, but it worked out, collecting Frederick, Jory, and Margery. Slime seemed worth a go with rCorr and plenty of javelins of penetration (and Throwing, which I was training just as much as anything); I had to teleport away after killing TRJ but no serious worries other than that and I netted the ring of Robustness {HP+10 AC+6}.
Depths was next - nothing too bad there, not even the crystal wall encompass vault which is usually a bad sign. Then to V:5 - with no hatch, immolated, made tremendous amounts of noise on the stairs, then teleported away. I got Ignorance here - not that I wanted the Int-4 but I was feeling like a very large target and a +10 tower shield was just the thing to hide behind. I was also pretty short of good rN items and extended was starting to come into view. However, the big find on V:5 was Wyrmbane. Perhaps I was not done with Polearms after all.
Next was Crypt - I had rN++ which would do, and I knew there’d be plenty of undead dragons there to finish powering up Wyrmbane. Easy stuff.
Next was the tricky extended rune question. I did Hell last win and Tomb felt like a bad idea on this character with relatively limited options for dealing with seas of mummies. So, it was off to Pan, hitting the demonic rune on the very first level and then only finding an exit through the Abyss on Mnoleg’s level. Mnoleg was not too bad even if they are a giant sack of hitpoints, and I was out via a quiet trip through Abyss:1.
Here I got arguably overambitious and plunged back into Pandemonium. With the demonic rune I was just skipping levels as soon as I found an exit, so quickly found Gloorx Vloq. The curse skulls could be handled with javelins of penetration (I had got Statue Form online by now so torment was not as annoying as it could be) and the panlord themself could be hammered flat with Wyrmbane.
I thought, well, let’s carry on and try and collect Cerebov or Lom Lobon. Shortly after, however, “HP: 1/287 [Hell Sentinel/damnation (33)]”. This was our old friend hubris - one Hell Sentinel left after a huge fight which had gone OK, and I’d beat Hell Sentinels already, combined with our old friend pisspoor luck - a Hell Sentinel that kept chucking damnation was much nastier than one who hammered away at my huge AC. Arguably I was saved only by Robustness, although of course another ring might have let me kill it faster. Failure to recognise a crisis in time meant when Gozag offered me a Potion Petition with no heal wounds in it I was in serious trouble. More generally, also with 28,000 gold in reserve at the end I could have been bribing Pan… but bribing Pan chews through bribe money at an astonishing rate.
However, I survived - just - and I’ve a strict rule to stop playing silly buggers with extended runes at the first scary moment, and that was as scary as they come, so it was off to Zot. Z:1-4 were no problem and once I got to Z:5 I started handing out bribes; I bribed Zot a total of 3 times. With that I could make quick progress and grabbed the Orb without any of the usual horrible fights.
On the way out I saw panlords on Z:3, U:2, U:1 (evaded two, killed one), D:14 (evaded), and D:10… where just as I’d concluded I’d have to fight one of the sods, another one turned up from behind. However, I had plenty of holy words for just this sort of event and got out of it without too much trouble.
Spells-wise I put too much XP into getting Deflect Missiles online - with a +10 tower shield (and reflection), it offered fairly modest benefits. The same can’t be said of Statue Form, which I didn’t want all the time but was extremely useful when I just had a lot of melee to hammer away at.
Next is OpNe.