Lesser Beckoning was cast 733 times. Yeah.
Not my first attempt at a merfolk shapeshifter, or a Chei worshiper but definitely the most successful. Here’s the full morgue for the curious.
Some notes on this run:
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My shiftermon evolution chart: beast form → rime yak → statue → sphinx → statue again → storm.
I had no rPois by Snake so I turned to Statue form, which with Chei was scary (2 turns of paralysis per every step is no joke) so I shifted to Sphinx for the rest of the midgame (Swamp, Vaults:1-4, Depths, Elf) returning to Statue again for Crypts (for rN+), Zot:1-4, Abyss and Slime (for rCorr on my randart talisman). Then I finally found the storm talisman and took it as #1 priority to switch to it. At the end of the game I killed orbs of fire and panlords in ~3-4 hits and had 77 EV, my record number. -
I didn’t want to branch into magic this run but seeing my int goes up by Chei’s influence I forced myself to train some magic - which was a mistake as, aside from Lesser Beckoning, I didn’t really use my spells that much.
As to why Summoning school specifically: dungeon gave me several strong spells for Forgecraft, Summoning and Necromancy. The moment I decided to focus on Forgecraft, I got a manual for Summoning magic. Oh well. -
As for Chei’s abilities, I relied mostly on Slouch as a strong AoE to rid the screen of moths of wrath and other stinky pests. Bend Time seemed just bad. Tried using it early on and the effect was underwhelming. I’m not wasting my turns on THAT if I’m surrounded!
Step From Time is a great panic button that saved me at least four times. I never used Temporal Distortion in this run.
Overall, Chei grew on me and I enjoyed their playstyle a lot.
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This was my first time getting the abyssal rune. I trained 6 stealth just for this. My first visit to Abyss was accidental - a vampire with distortion weapon caught up with me. The rune was in my vicinity but it was surrounded by undiggable stone from all sides and, as I was circling around trying to figure out how to enter it, I got teleported away and then opened a way out of Abyss.
After that I entered it again, on my own this time. It didn’t take me long to locate the rune and this time I could enter the rune chamber. There were some scary enemies - whom I don’t recall because I spammed Slouch until most of them disappeared. And just in time a portal out spawned so I got the rune and left immediately. I didn’t expect things to go so smooth! -
Slime Pits had very convenient layout: downstairs very close to upstairs, very little enemies around… blue slimes hit like a truck but I had a rC+ ring just for this occasion.
The Royal Jelly almost destroyed me. I know about the trick with ?immo but I decided to be unique and try to overwhelm it with summons. Stupid idea! Ended up running for my life and then doing the ?immo trick anyway lol. -
Vaults:5 was after the other 4 runes and even Zot so it was really easy.
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Zot was…
Zot:1 Parghit, Tiamat
… MOSTLY fine. (I’m exaggerating, I just skipped the floor for the most part and never fought these two.)
Malmutate is terrible as always. Another run where berserkitis appeared several times (this time I couldn’t get rid of it, kept it til the end). I also got one mutation that promised future bad muts, and for some reason I thought I will get these until the very end now (my first time suffering this mutation). Only on the orb run I learned that this mutation gives you only two muts. I skipped the vestibule of hell and early ziggurat because of that :D
The orb run was tough, I couldn’t leave Zot:5 for some time until I realized I could just destroy anything that was trying to stop me - panlords included.
Anyway, that’s it! Despite me getting more runes and playing a more involved build (shapeshifting, Chei) this win is the fastest I’ve achieved so far (4 hours), especially if compared to 6 and a half hours of draconian magical shenanigans. Melee brutes are just built different.