https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20231015-095442.txt
Won again, using archery for almost the entire game.
My demonspawn mutations were horns (completely useless since I wasn’t meleeing, and removing a hat with {rPois MP+9 Dex+2} - bloody nuisance), thin skeletal structure (and, while I’m not complaining, I do wonder why that doesn’t make you frail), demonic guardian, augmentation (handy), and spirit shield.
I started with a hand crossbow and 27 bolts. As such, when Ihp’ix (the Stoat Soup archer god) turned up in a D:4 Temple I took them… and then of course had to ration those bolts until some more ammo turned up. On D:5 I bought a scale mail from an antique shop which turned out to be +8 {rPois rC++ rCorr Str-3} - pretty nice and this saw a lot of use not least because rPois and rCorr (and MR) were in pretty short supply - later in the game I was going between a cloak of MR and one of poison resistance based on which lack I thought was more likely to get me killed.
I learned a lot of spells which then didn’t see very heavy use (oops), mostly because they had to compare favourably with shooting two arrows from Zephyr at whatever was annoying me. Yara’s, BVC, Irradiate, Aura of Abjuration, Cause Fear - all got online, and even Yara’s only got 13 casts. Some of that XP could probably have been better spent on Evocations.
Although there were some hairy moments in Tomb and one very nasty panlord on the orbrun, the best performing monster was surely the adder that had me at 4/30 HP on D:2 - but I’d started with a potion of curing, without which this woudl not be a YAVP. Psyche Abyssed me on D:8, and that too could easily have killed me.
After that it was pretty plain sailing for a while, with Ihp’ix granting a +7 fustibalus of velocity on Lair:6 - demonspawn’s Invo aptitude let me get good divine weapons early, and I’d take Invo to 27 for the duration on Piercing Fire. I’d use that and a buckler for a while but Ihpixies are almost always going to go two-handed eventually, and the point came where I’d enchanted up a longbow then found Zephyr on E:3 (a boon not just for its lethality, but for SInv which otherwise was being a nuisance).
Snake was hardly any trouble. Swamp:4 got a bit nasty owing to a spriggan druid - Lernie turned up too but it turned out I could fill Lernie full of arrows faster than it could walk over to me. Went to Elf next - irritatingly, hitting a bazaar with almost no money. Besides Zephyr I found the OCPA (which I did consider using, but resistances were a struggle and I’d have had to turn off spells that were making me harder to kill) and a +5 ring mail with {*Drain rC+ Str+6 Dex+2} (which I did use when the resistance situation was better for the stat boost).
Hit a Desolation on V:2 - I have never died in one, but I also have rarely had an entirely comfortable time, and this one got pretty unpleasant. Around here I was training a lot of Crossbows out of concern that I’d run out of arrows - which didn’t happen, somewhat to my surprise. (Ihp’ix doesn’t grant ammo or change the mulch rate, although they do stop missiles falling into water or lava - and Zephyr, of course, does its extra damage by firing more arrows). Crossbows crosstrains Bows (and Slings) with Ihp’ix, but in retrospect there was XP to be saved here.
I ducked immediately into Crypt when it turned up on V:4… which was fine until Mennas showed up on C:3. I left in a very big hurry and would only return to kill Mennas much later. Finished V:4, went to Depths - no horrible encompass vault full of caustic shrikes, which was a nice change. Teleported on V:5, finding a fairly defensible spot and clearing it without too much trouble. I found the amulet of the Air here which I’d use but I think that was a mistake - I had other rElec and Ihp’ix provides some defence against fired missiles and a lot of defence against thrown ones. However, I had few other good amulets - but I could have used the one with {MR+ Regen+} and not been juggling cloaks of MR and rPois.
Cleared the Vestibule, but with rN+++ I thought I might have a crack at Tomb. By this point I could kill Mennas with a chunk of consumables, and after buying a stack more went into Tomb. The log doesn’t tell much (it’s all “noticed a greater mummy, killed a greater mummy”) but there were nasty moments against the Tomb:2 ambush and in the corridor of bastards on Tomb:1, and an extended series of teleports on Tomb:3 to find a defensible spot. This is the first Tomb run where I made heavy use of tree potions to become immune to torment - a pity to lose the stats on the body armour, but of course it did make me into a really giant sack of hitpoints.
With that, it was off to Zot. One OOF on Z:3 went down encouragingly easily (of course, OOFs are often hard to kill largely because of their very solid resistances - Zephyr, like IOOD, doesn’t care) and clearing out Z:5 was not too bad except for finding a Zot trap on both lung entries. I’d blink across on the way in, then teleport on the way out.
The orbrun was not uneventful - a panlord on Z:4 who hit very hard (and as a demonspawn, my usual approach of reading holy word and running away was less attractive). Evaded that one; another panlord on Z:1 (evaded), two on U:5 (both killed), D:15 (killed), D:10, and D:8. I don’t think I have seen seven panlords on the orbrun before.
What’s next? DsFE, says the RNG.