First time posting here. I’ve been playing DCSS for ten days now, my rule is zero wikiwalking and zero spoilers until my first win. and on day four I reached Tomb 3 with 15 runes as a cute lamia with Chei the slowpoke. I decide what to play based on how cute it is! The tomb in that run was a nail biter the whole way, through bad teleports, a hell sentinel and at least 5 bennus chasing me to the ends of the earth as a vampire. I was actually going to make it, on 1 hp at several points, until I accidentally fat fingered a bad input. It was very sad and I’ve been trying to write some lua macro that will prevent that in the future. I pinged the CPO (australia server) admin for the replay since there’s something wrong with the ttyrec system for the server, but unfortunately they didn’t reply - as I am writing this the CPO server is actually down which is a little bummer too.
But in the meantime, I decided that Tangela is pretty cute, and I hadn’t tried a dexterity build before, so elected to play a vine stalker enchanter. Big credit to Oneirical for sticking around with me through it in spectate and having lots of fun conversations about the gameplay planning. It was only upon being told that confusing touch is a staple spell that I actually learned it (oops!) after clearing a few floors. And I can see why - I used it and it made an orc warrior burst out in tears crying in front of me! I was near some water… and a lot of them drowned. Then there were two huts filled with a dozen trolls at a bridge on a lake, and I drowned almost every single one. I realised this character is starting to become a little inhumane.
I haven’t tried most of the gods yet so I decided to go with Makhleb, it seemed like they liked to sacrifice health which would synergise with tangela’s innate health regen, which it did. Those destruction volleys were getting crazy! I got Tartarus and the mark of destruction and absolutely decimated Lair. It felt a little inhumane.
There was a problem though, almost every fight I was taking, I was dropping to 20% HP or less because I loved these little orbs of inhumanity so much. However, it replaced my dagger as my main damage source and I urgently needed to find a replacement because I wanted to switch off gods - I could see already in the Swamp that if I get unlucky with damage type rolls or simply miss the orbs I can be in huge trouble with a low health pool. My plan was to level translocation for Gell’s Gavotte, use that to clear the floating weapons in Elves, get a few more points in hexes so I can use Enfeeble on any executioners Makhleb spawns, clear queen slime for some loot, transition to another god and manage Makhleb’s wrath in the Vaults, which my last visit there found it to be a fairly easy and simple floor with lots of spacious areas.
Initially I was going to switch to Lugonu, so I used a distortion weapon to go to the Abyss, immediately found the rune there, and made my way towards it. But then - surprise! - makhleb summons turned on me and I only barely got out with a well placed tambourine, leaving the rune behind.
The plan was mostly going well, except there was one very dicey encounter in Elves that took a lot of contemplation to get out alive. An antimagic lajatang ambushed me and before I knew it I had no mana and almost no health, there were invisible enemies everywhere and I could not see invisible, and I had to use everything at my arsenal to escape.
Queen slime got absolutely destroyed by my inhumane orbs, perhaps as Makhleb’s last ditch effort to beg me to stay, but I had already decided against it.
At that point I was better equipped and decided to go again for the Abyss rune. Getting there, I changed my mind on Lugonu - nope, I think, I’d like to do Uskayaw! The rune was also fairly easy to find and I was starting to squeeze out all of Makhleb’s piety before I switched. Crypt of the necrodancer faction, and that’s one of my favourite games. I had no idea what any of the abilities did, though, and it took a little figuring out.
The first real use of Uskayaw was upon finding a recalled Mennas, Asterion, Boris and Balrug, among others, trying to ambush me. Immolation and Uskayaw made short work of them. Uskayaw was starting to feel rather inhumane with all that paralysis, but little did I know how much worse it would get.
I’d cleared all of the firsst four floors of Vaults by then and decied to go to Depths. It was brutal! My first stairs had me ambushed by chonchones that immediately ripped me off, plus a miscast that locked movement. I did manage to get out, though.
The other stairs down were also nasty looking ambushes which I did not clear and decided to go to Ziggurat to get enough levels to put on my wellspring talisman of Vavvilin {rPois rC+++ Will- Str-4} since my build was feeling very squishy with only melee attacks. The plan was to later get summoning points for Sphinx sisters, but I had to decide to do only one at first. I’d only visited the Ziggurat once before up to level 5, and, yep, I went up to level 12 this time! And let me tell you! Floor 6 was mummy royals! Haste, brilliance, might, immolation and manifold assault pulled me through with a surprisingly high health total.
Then I saw this halo and got really worried:
Is it angels? Or is it some dork holding an orb of light? I pre drank all my potions and prepared for the worst. It was: abyss monsters! Not a pushover but a big relief.
Then it was time to do the Vaults. I had cleared the first spawn camp but there was another one waiting and it was terrible. I pre read tele scroll, only to get teleported… One tile down! It was nasty and it took several teleports and careful planning to eventually find a safe zone to start clearing outward from.
It was terrifying to clear the rest of it, but I did, slowly and carefully. Then it was time to deal with the Depths 2 ambushes. In a twist of strategy, I used a potion of attraction with my signature wellspring talisman inhumane drowning attack! It was very inhumane.
The rest was pretty smooth sailing, I got sphinx sisters on shortly after and then found Malign Gateway in a spellbook and learned that shortly after. I used them the rest of the game to great effect and it marked the transition point where I was directly taking far less damage that my summons could soak. Off to Pandemonium, one of the first places I found is this angel fortress, I’d never seen an angel hideout before. I was careful about it and it ended up not being too much of a challenge.
Then, my arch nemesis, Lom Lobon. They killed me on a previous run as a gargoyle earth elementalist! I am out for blood, and it was inhumane. In Pandemonium I made liberal use of Usk’s grand finale to knock out most of the bosses.
However, I reserved a special fate for Cerebov. I am the Vine Stalker the Inhumane Drowner, after all.
The entrance to Hell, I was going to pre drink, but after being adviced against it, I didn’t. And I sure regretted it!
After carefully exiting and dodging smites, damnation and all manner of other things, my second entry was with pre drank invisibility, and I made myself a little Luigi dig which worked to great effect with my wellspring talisman and Sphinx Sisters.
The hell branches were pretty intense, too. Cocytus I did first since I considered it the easiest from my last try, and it was not as bad as the hell ambush, but it wasn’t trivial either. Gehenna was easy, no ambushes. Tartarus I got a few nasty ambushes, one of them was right next to these metal grates which I love so much - my wellspring talisman can melee through them! My vinestalker manasteal bite works with wellspring attacks! Good positioning got me through a lot of torment and damnation casters there.
And then there was Dis and Dispatcher. It was mostly okay until the seventh floor. Passage of Golubria got liberal value until I accidentally teleported two screens away due to a decaying portal! Combined with many bad teleport scrolls, but by a minor miracle, I got a good one eventually which landed me on the opposite side of the map. Only for dispatcher to reach me there 50 turns later! Fortunately for me, a steady trickle of enemies meant they were ready to get a grand finale like all the others.
Finally I had reached the tomb. It was such a great challenge! I stuck with wellspring, had tons of blink and teleport scrolls and other consumables, and I was dead set on avenging my lamia. The first real jumpscare was inside one of the hidden passageways:
Fog and silence really pulled its weight, and when I was getting low I teleported out. Into another hidden corridor with more royals! I had tons of silence scrolls to burn which helped tremendously.
The final challenge, so I was expecting, was the third level of tomb. My first pass through landed an alarm trap and I quickly got overwhelmed, and it was not looking good on my second ascension. But I instantly burned a blink scroll to reposition on the second visit, I burned many fog scrolls, and finally got good use out of my Discord hex spell I’d been aching to use. That and vulnerability scrolls wiped the floor with a steady trickle of royals in the room.
I had a breath of relief. There were none left! The loot in there was pretty spectacular but I never wound up using any of it. The only thing left was Zot, which was frankly a total pushover. I’d never been there before, and I just wiped the floor with everything. I had no idea what would happen when I took it - I was hoping for some big spellcasting bonus, or a great ending cutscene, nope! Just some lame aura… and enemies come after me? It was really trivial at that point to make my exit.
Vine stalker the Inhumane Drowner lives to see another day (and drowning?) - my next attempt at winning in dcss, I think, is going to be a mummy!
[edit: I can add the images back in now]