https://hasteb.in/5FDrqvmZ4nW3fIs
A grueling 15 and a half hour run… but I managed to snag a 15 rune win with my favorite god and one of my favorite species! I’m a pretty new player but I don’t see formicids brought up much at all, such a nice species. Detecting monsters is so nice, digging holes makes the early game so much more consistent, shafting is a serviceable emergency option, they’re immune to all sorts of nasty effects, their aptitudes are excellent, and they can use two handed weapons with a shield. You’ll miss scrolls of blinking for sure but… they’re just so nice.
Cheibriados seems to be much scorned among veteran players… Obviously they’re my favorite god as I mentioned, but I never really understood the common perception of Chei as a challenge god. The slowness is certainly a much stronger downside than any god other than maybe Ru is gonna give you, but I find that Chei gives me everything I need to succeed. The stats enhance every aspect of yourself, putting you ahead of the curve when it comes to casting and letting you be much more durable, and the invocations are fantastic. Temporal distortion has a million great uses, I feel like I find a new one every run, slouch tears through scary hordes in the mid game, and step from time is a pretty great emergency option that is very much appreciated as a formicid. I often struggle with other gods I like such as Gozag and Ashenzari just cause I feel so anemic in the midgame unless I get something really powerful online, but Chei always helps me bridge that gap. Realistically it’s probably an issue of me not finding good enough ways to enhance myself or simply play better during that stretch but… Chei always got my back.
As for the run itself, it was pretty harrowing. I’ve made a few attempts at 15 runes before, I tried the classic MiFi^Oka/TSO first which splatted horribly on my first fight in pan, then a GrEE^Veh who got 8 runes but got brutalized by death curses in tomb, I even had a VSFi^Usk who managed to get 14 runes before yet again succumbing to tomb… This time I was ready for revenge. OTB + ignite poison cleared midgame, scraped by odd fights with irradiate and yara’s, eventually got fulsome fusillade online and started cranking necro/ice to get rimeblight + refridgeration. My offenses honestly weren’t great this run, I didn’t even get orb of destruction up until midway through the hells so I was lacking a generic offensive spell except irradiate. However, I did notice that I picked up a necronomicon and I already had necromancy trained. This was my taste of death’s door… what a ride. I don’t think I’d bother getting it online for a 3-rune but man did it save my ass, this character would not remotely have lived if I didn’t decide to invest for both it and borgnjor’s revivification. That being said I managed to scrape through most of pandemonium without it, although I did almost splat to Cerebov because thought I could take him down with mostly evocables after getting sapped by a warmonger. I could have solved all my problems with a simple potion of cancellation, but I ended up having to hope I lived to quaff a potion of magic on 55 hp right next to a hasted Cerebrov in the middle of his fire storm so I could cast death’s door. Thankfully I had excellent defenses thanks to Chei so I easily lived.
After pan it was time for me to take my revenge on tomb. I waltzed right into hordes of mummies and cleared them with lignification + attraction + immolation + fusillade + death’s door. It was really scary and I had to pop a couple revivification’s but I successfully avenged my fallen characters. Little did I know hell would be the real challenge for this run. A VS^Usk can kill anything if it doesn’t die (that one in particular had a quick blade of distortion), and obviously a GrEE^Veh has superior offensive capabilities to a caster whose best offensive spell is fusillade. I started off with Gehenna since i had fridge up, it got hairy because I made too much noise on the fourth flour and had to retreat from lack of mana. I had to return heavily drained but thanks to death’s door it wasn’t an issue, and the rest of it was pretty easy. I went to Cocytus next, even with my mediocre output on cold immune enemies there wasn’t much to prove a threat. I tried out Dis after conquering Cocytus, but the smaller number of elementally immune enemies with tons of hp made a poor match for my spell lineup. I had LRD for the applicable enemies, but the hell sentinels and iron giants were not amused. The quicksilver elementals also kept high rolling me for 50+ damage off their unblockable bolts. I cleared a few levels but it got too much and I had to flee and try my luck in Tartarus. Formicids have a unique advantage here thanks to their natural immunity to paralysis, removing the scariest threat from the whole branch. They can’t even be slowed by eidolons or shadow wraiths. You still have to be careful of petrification but there are numerous ways around that, and getting mesmerized hardly matters when you’re a Fo^Chei. Still, constant torment and some beefy enemies isn’t a walk in the park, but this was probably the easiest branch for me. Only one rune remaining in my path, I was feeling good until I walked right into the terrifying ambush on Dis:6. Immediately surrounded by liches and giants with the rest of the map closing in, I popped death’s door IMMEDIATELY and started thinning the horde. I was scared at first but I had a secret weapon up my sleeve: the figurine of a ziggurat from tomb. If my death’s door was about to end I could just pop it and leave! Or so I thought, as I’d never even gotten one of these things before, I’d just heard that you could use them as a two-turn escape option. As it turns out, this is very much true… as long as you’re not standing on a dungeon feature such as a stair. As a Fo^Chei dealing with an ambush, I did not have any time to move. The look on my face as I read “You cannot place that here!” must have been priceless, and I totally panicked. I was still able to use the portal out at the cost of heavy draining, and thanks to revivification, I was reaching felid levels of HP. Still I could clean up the scraps with death’s door and move on to the final floor. I’m not exactly sure how the AI works, but I swear the enemies kept coming after me one at a time the whole map, which made it pretty easy to deal with despite me getting few opportunities to rest. Dispater went down pretty easy too but things weren’t over yet, just two final obstacles in my way.
I had already cleared out most of Zot beforehand, and I was more than equipped to deal with it, but after finally grabbing all 15 runes I was overeager for that victory. I got into tight spots two separate times on Zot:5, barely scraping by thanks to evocables and step from time. The orb run was chill thanks to Chei slowing down the monster spawn rate… until a pan lord spawned and I carelessly tried to break for the staircase instead of just killing it. A complicated series of death’s door, step from time, and shafting myself managed to break me free. Pro formicid tip: if you dig a zigzag, you’ll not only limit your line of sight to one enemy at point blank range at a time, but monsters wandering the hallway will rarely ever find you either, it makes for easy resting, invaluable during the orb run. I didn’t end the run with any particularly exciting items, though resting at 68 INT as a species that starts with 7 is pretty insane.
I doubt I’ll do extended again unless it gets shaken up… there’s a ton of cool stuff with the unique artifacts and bosses, and some pretty interesting levels, but it’s just so long and the enemies aren’t very rounded. So much ignores evasion, basically everything has demon resistances so a ton of stuff either doesn’t work or isn’t effective, and there’s a big emphasis on large hordes of enemies. Still, it was a super fun run that I won’t soon forget.