https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20240916-184003.txt
OgHu was a surprisingly difficult combo to get home (12 attempts, and since I play random combos until one hits the Lair, you know I splatted 11 before the Lair - and the most ignominious death was to a leopard gecko) given that it seems it should be pretty easy starting with large rocks, nets, and a bundle of HP - sure, you can’t wear most armour but most people won’t have much armour early on either.
This one found Hep on D:2. Now, I haven’t won with Hep in years, Og has plenty of HP to give up 10% of, and one thing that struck me trying to get MuCK home was that of course the Hep ancestor’s strength does not scale with your character at all - you could be a one-legged kobold and the ancestor would be just as strong. So, Hep it was, notwithstanding the difficulty in using ranged attacks with allies.
What I hadn’t considered was that we had taken the 0.27 vanilla change that lets you shoot through your ancestor (but not the corresponding one that lets them shoot through you). This makes Hep amazing with ranged attacks, notwithstanding a bit of confusion around habits of moving to keep my own line of fire open which of course weren’t necessary.
Nasty moment with an orc pack and Robin on D:3, but then had Amurritum the ancestor up to a battlemage on D:5. Why battlemage? No real reason besides that I felt like it. Another tight squeeze with a centaur on D:6 but then pretty easy going (and it is very satisfying to net Harold, let’s see how he likes it) to a D:9 Lair. I would have liked a better weapon than a +2 flail of protection, but melee was my backup option anyway.
Lair:1 had a labyrinth which got me into serious trouble with Sonja and blink frogs trying to find it; I must have searched most of the level on half HP with the clock seeming to tick down at tremendous speed. I did find it, though, and by comparison the minotaur was easy.
Lair also gave me a ring with {rC+ MR+ Str+3 SInv} which I’d use all game, and Beastly Appendage. This seemed worth getting online in spite of moderately terrible apts - after all, I was never going to fill its slots with aux armour - and as it turned out even when I finally found a GDS I would eventually be able to keep on using it, so it gave me a nice little offence boost for most of the game.
D:11 gave me the ratskin cloak which I used mostly for its rPois; Orc got pretty nasty on the O:1 entrance (I think because Fannar was there and quickly went down to large rocks and so I relaxed a bit… not a good idea with orc sorcs and high priests summoning who-knows-what). O:2 was easy enough - not a lot of good stuff except a +2 amulet of reflection, which since my main defence was a tower shield was very amusing for a while.
Clearing D:12 and then Spider was next. Once again uniques (Jorgrun and Arachne) went down easily to large rocks but ordinary monsters gave me more hassle - particularly emperor scorps which remain just ridiculous sacks of of HP. This’d be a theme all game.
Shoals posed no real trouble - javelineers, fauns, and cyclopes would all self-destruct on the shield - and I saw Bear Spirit in a shop. I was pretty pleased to get Shoals (usually I hate it) because I came out with a lifetime supply of javelins. After that I’d clear down the main dungeon, IDing acquirement on D:14 and getting a +4 demon whip of electrocution, a huge upgrade especially since I could make it +9 immediately.
V:1-4 was next, collecting the first of two Borisses and one Frederick. No problems there, and to Elf; that got a bit nasty disengaging from the room of bastards, but did give me enough gold for Bear Spirit, solving my MR issues… and had the Dark Maul in a shop on E:3. I was seriously tempted even though I could tell it was an obviously bad idea - if I really wanted to hurt someone at melee range I’d cast “large rock” at them. It didn’t help there was a manual of M&F in a shop… but I wasn’t going to do it until I had better body armour than a robe.
Depths was next - Saint Roka was easy but could well have died in an encompass vault on U:2; loads of spark wasps and no rElec. I only saw two potions of resistance all game… one of which I left in a shop, not a clever decision. After that things eased up, scoring a second Boris and a ring with {rF+ Str+4 Slay+3}.
U:4 dropped another acquirement; with none of the other options good, I took an amulet with {Harm +Blink rElec Slay+5 Stlth-}, not that I really wanted Harm (I did not lack for offensive power) but I really wanted not to die to the next lot of spark wasps.
I immediately then tripped over a single vault with a ring with {+Noise rElec Dex+5} and two amulets with {Spirit rElec MP+9 Dex-2 Stlth-} and {Gourm rElec Int+4}. Sigh. I’d use the gourmand amulet for a while (gourmand is good in Stoat Soup, as in bcrawl) but use the ring as a swap later.
Hatched down to V:5 which got pretty nasty at one point - titan, shadow dragon, and tentacled monstrosity. I’d hoped to find GDS here (well, I’d hoped to find them beforehand) and I did - weirdly, not on the outside of a GD, but lying around on the floor. V:5 also had a huge amount of gold so I bought the dark maul, the manual of M&F, and headed off to Crypt.
This was fun, undeniably (“You beat the phantasmal warrior like a drum!!!”)… but fellow Stoat Soupie hilarita had pointed out just how bad an idea it was and after a while I accepted if I could throw a large rock in about half the time and do about half the damage, and hide behind a +8 tower shield while I was doing it, this was just going to be a complicated way to get killed.
After going back to the demon whip I cleared Crypt (Jory and XTAHUA dying to rocks to the face) and then Slime. TRJ was easy enough (lamp of fire and javelins of penetration), not even having to teleport away from the resulting jellies. I got a scarf with {CldImm, MR+ Dex+5}; I wasn’t sure about replacing a +2 cloak with this giving up 3-4 AC, but I did, and in practice the cloud immunity came in very handy later. I also got an amulet with {Reflect MR+ Str+3 Int+2 Dex+3 SH+3} which was just what I wanted - it’s around here I got Beastly Appendage back online.
Next was the Vestibule, which was no trouble; then Pan. I cleared two random levels but then hit holy Pan (which I seem to have been seeing a lot recently); daevas were no problem, the seraph went down to javelins of penetration, I got a randart +8 tower shield with {Str+3}, a nice little upgrade, and then I had my extended rune and could go off to Zot.
Z:1-4 were no problem; Z:5 had three ancient lichen and two orbs of fire, but that was controllable… but on the orbrun I saw (and killed) two panlords before I got out the orb vault, one more on Z:1 (evaded), and two more on Depths:5 (killed) - one with Glaciate which could have got pretty nasty but fortunately the ancestor took the brunt of it.
I did not make much use of Hep abilities. I had full piety for much of the game and should have made more use of Idealise. I didn’t see many opportunities for Transference, quite unlike MiFi where I used it 21 times.
One unresolved question is this: I play each random combo until I get it to the Lair. If an unwon (but Laired) combo comes up again, do I skip it, or play it until I get a rune?