https://crawl-br.roguelikes.gg/morgue/NephilaWeaver/morgue-NephilaWeaver-20260903-152410.txt
Absolutely hilarious run. Oni are really strong! Their apts are so good, and if you get a decent form early you don’t even need to train UC until after Lair, making it really easy to build up good defenses. Ereshkigal almost ended our run, but through the power of dealing 130 damage with .5 delay we clutched it! Incredibly fun.
Storm form is great fun! I need to spin up a OpSh again sometime soon.
OpSh is really good. Just don’t make the mistake of training UC early, 3 UC is enough to get you through lair and you reaaaaaaally benefit from having your defenses up by then.
Very nice. What shapes did you use throughout the game?
I had one shapeshifter troll winner but I felt he mostly won because unarmed troll fighting is super strong and was constantly struggling whether the gains from a shape are worth the sacrificed equipment slots. Only used quills in the beginning and then spore for the rest of the game.
We did a very smooth progression, quill > spore > dragon > storm. Spore and Yak were the ones we hoped for from the protein talisman, though we’d be happy with medusa. We feel like losing equip slots really isn’t that big a deal If you train for it, but that might be just oni being busty
My troll shapeshifter found a dragon talisman as well but I also had an artifact gold dragon armor and wearing the armor gave essentially the same benefits as dragon form but much fewer drawbacks. Maybe a artifact talisman with extra stats would have been more attractive.
Well, the form also increases your HP by 50% and gives you a powerful ranged attack option. It’s definitely about what the sacrifice is, of course!
How is a Shifter of Dith? My intuition would be that you don’t gain as much from the shadow clones, because their damage is based on your base damage, and UC base damage is generally bad. But I might be mistaken, seeing as you did win this one?
Dith is good for everyone. We don’t know how the shadow clone damage works, it seemed to apply our form’s damage pretty well, but even if it didn’t, you’re a punchy guy with good stealth, a really good escape tool and a really insane escape tool. It’s solid. Note that when you’re an oni in dragon form (and later storm form) you could be intentionally putting yourself into penance for funsies, what are they going to do, kill the massive fuck you dragon?