Zot Clock

The Tavern Dungeon Crawling Advice
1

Locked me out of Shoals and Spider thanks to the Zot Clock getting activated in the Lair. I’ve been stashing things in Lair 1 old DCSS style and exploring floors, but looks like this is no longer the way to play.

Notes
Turn   | Place    | Note
-------+----------+-------------------------------------------
     0 | D:1      | Ahotaurr the Demigod Air Elementalist began the quest for
                  | the Orb.
     0 | D:1      | Reached XP level 1. HP: 14/14 MP: 5/5
    73 | D:1      | Reached skill level 1 in Conjurations
   595 | D:1      | Reached XP level 2. HP: 20/20 MP: 1/7
   655 | D:1      | Learned a level 2 spell: Static Discharge
   659 | D:1      | Reached skill level 3 in Air Magic
   861 | D:1      | Found Naixkoz's Magic Scroll Shoppe.
  1794 | D:1      | Bought a scroll of identify for 26 gold pieces
  2269 | D:2      | Reached XP level 3. HP: 26/26 MP: 5/8
  2634 | D:2      | Learned a level 3 spell: Swiftness
  3455 | D:1      | Bought a scroll of identify for 26 gold pieces
  3590 | D:3      | Reached XP level 4. HP: 19/33 MP: 1/10
  3919 | D:1      | Bought a scroll of teleportation for 39 gold pieces
  4214 | D:3      | Reached skill level 4 in Air Magic
  4392 | D:3      | Reached XP level 5. HP: 34/38 MP: 5/11
  5664 | D:1      | Bought a scroll of identify for 26 gold pieces
  5750 | D:4      | Noticed Sigmund
  5925 | D:4      | Found a runed translucent door.
  5965 | D:4      | Found a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple.
  6012 | D:4      | Reached XP level 6. HP: 44/45 MP: 6/13
  6340 | D:4      | Found a runed translucent gate.
  6341 | D:4      | Found a runed translucent gate.
  6342 | D:4      | Found a runed translucent gate.
  6345 | D:4      | Noticed Ahotaurr's ghost (amateur DgAE)
  7110 | D:4      | Reached skill level 5 in Air Magic
  7788 | D:5      | Entered Level 5 of the Dungeon
  7963 | D:4      | Reached XP level 7. HP: 50/50 MP: 2/15
  8863 | D:5      | Learned a level 4 spell: Airstrike
  8908 | D:5      | Reached skill level 12 in Air Magic
  8908 | D:5      | Reached XP level 8. HP: 57/57 MP: 16/16
  8914 | D:5      | Learned a level 4 spell: Summon Lightning Spire
  9341 | D:5      | Identified the +9 flail of Gallantry {freeze, rElec rN+}
 10272 | D:5      | Reached skill level 1 in Summonings
 10957 | D:6      | Noticed Edmund
 11154 | D:6      | Noticed Maggie
 11311 | D:6      | Reached skill level 1 in Fighting
 11924 | D:6      | Reached XP level 9. HP: 64/64 MP: 10/18
 13514 | D:7      | Noticed Jeremiah
 13529 | D:7      | Killed Jeremiah
 14092 | D:7      | Reached skill level 5 in Stealth
 14665 | D:7      | Found a transporter.
 14668 | D:7      | Found a one-way gate to the infinite horrors of the Abyss.
 14668 | D:7      | Noticed Oroos's ghost (novice OpSh)
 14803 | D:7      | Found a transporter.
 14804 | D:7      | Noticed a toenail golem
 15907 | D:8      | Noticed a two-headed ogre
 16263 | D:8      | Killed a two-headed ogre
 16490 | D:8      | Reached XP level 10. HP: 74/74 MP: 15/20
 16748 | D:8      | Reached XP level 11. HP: 81/81 MP: 20/25
 17180 | D:9      | Noticed a death knight
 17180 | D:9      | Noticed a rakshasa
 17182 | D:9      | Noticed a deep elf pyromancer
 17191 | D:9      | Noticed an arcanist
 18142 | D:9      | Reached skill level 13 in Air Magic
 18193 | D:9      | Found Paal's Antique Weapon Boutique.
 18297 | D:9      | Found a staircase to the Lair.
 19066 | Lair:1   | Entered Level 1 of the Lair of Beasts
 20240 | Lair:1   | Found a runed translucent door.
 20241 | Lair:1   | Noticed Nurghuero's ghost (journeyman DgAE)
 21695 | Lair:1   | Noticed a boulder beetle
 22172 | Lair:2   | Noticed a skyshark
 22303 | Lair:2   | Noticed a harpy
 22314 | Lair:2   | Killed a harpy
 22752 | Lair:2   | Found a staircase to the Shoals.
 24197 | Lair:2   | Killed a skyshark
 25041 | Lair:3   | Reached XP level 12. HP: 74/92 MP: 10/28
 25628 | Lair:3   | Reached skill level 5 in Fighting
 25628 | Lair:3   | Reached skill level 14 in Air Magic
 26661 | Lair:3   | Found a hole to the Spider Nest.
 31156 | Lair:3   | Learned a level 3 spell: Mephitic Cloud
 31160 | Lair:3   | Learned a level 3 spell: Dazzling Flash
 31394 | D:4      | Noticed Crazy Yiuf
 31399 | D:4      | Killed Crazy Yiuf
 31724 | D:4      | Noticed Pikel
 31728 | D:4      | Killed Pikel
 31834 | D:4      | Killed Sigmund
 31982 | D:6      | Killed Edmund
 32204 | D:6      | Killed Maggie
 32391 | D:10     | Entered Level 10 of the Dungeon
 32900 | D:10     | Learned a level 1 spell: Apportation
 32930 | D:10     | Got the Papyrus of Hyperthermia and Direction
 32963 | D:10     | Got the Thoughts on Tectonic Causimancy
 35028 | D:10     | Found a staircase to the Orcish Mines.
 35861 | D:1      | Bought a scroll of acquirement for 676 gold pieces
 35861 | D:1      | Acquired the ring "Haiduul" {rElec rCorr Dex+3 Slay+3 SInv}
 36106 | Orc:1    | Entered Level 1 of the Orcish Mines
 36106 | Orc:1    | Noticed an orc warlord
 36111 | D:10     | Reached skill level 1 in Fire Magic
 36543 | Lair:1   | Killed a boulder beetle
 37238 | Lair:4   | Reached XP level 13. HP: 103/103 MP: 21/30
 38470 | Lair:4   | Learned a level 5 spell: Fireball
 42700 | Lair:4   | Found a staircase to the Slime Pits.
 43001 | Lair:4   | Reached skill level 5 in Fire Magic
 43175 | Lair:5   | Entered Level 5 of the Lair of Beasts
 47022 | Lair:5   | Noticed Kirke
 47030 | Lair:5   | Killed Kirke
 47031 | Lair:5   | Reached XP level 14. HP: 114/114 MP: 11/32
 48596 | Lair:5   | Reached skill level 10 in Stealth
 50835 | Lair:5   | Reached skill level 10 in Spellcasting
 51150 | Lair:5   | Identified the +0 plate armour of Repulsion {Harm rF++
                  | Slay-6}
 52967 | Lair:5   | Glimpsed the power of Zot.
 53063 | Shoals:1 | Entered Level 1 of the Shoals
 54522 | D:9      | Got the Elucidation of the Eternal Void
 54558 | D:9      | Learned a level 6 spell: Plasma Beam
 54957 | D:11     | You fall into a shaft and drop 2 floors!
 55937 | D:12     | Noticed Nergalle
 55945 | D:13     | Killed Nergalle
 58799 | D:13     | Noticed an ironbound preserver
 58807 | D:13     | Killed an ironbound preserver
 59046 | D:13     | Reached XP level 15. HP: 124/124 MP: 15/34
 59246 | D:13     | Found a gate to the Vaults.
 59370 | D:13     | Found a portal to a secret trove of treasure.
 60036 | D:14     | Reached skill level 10 in Fire Magic
 60133 | D:14     | Noticed Frances
 60136 | D:14     | Killed Frances
 61266 | D:15     | Entered Level 15 of the Dungeon
 62072 | D:15     | Found a staircase to the Depths.
 62668 | D:10     | Slain by a sun demon
2

That sucks. I’ve rarely hit zot clock pressure and auto explore every floor.

I don’t stash like I used to though, now it looks more like dumping the random stuff I found in lair at the top of the lair entrance. Same with Orc, etc. But even then I don’t.

Otherwise, it’s just on big fat HP sponges like Ogre/Oni without regen+ (or one time slowly clearing Tomb) that ever get Zot clock to pressure me.

3

Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever triggered the zot clock and I explore every nook and cranny and have played a lot. But I haven’t done any stashing since… well like 15 years ago. I just drop stuff when I run out of space and search for items if I need them.

2 Thanks
4

Happened to me a few times:

~/.crawl/morgue$ grep "Glimpsed the power of Zot" *
morgue-Ahotaurr-20240723-003000.txt: 52967 | Lair:5   | Glimpsed the power of Zot.
morgue-Gycin-20240709-100725.txt: 30870 | Lair:1   | Glimpsed the power of Zot.
morgue-Gycin-20240709-100725.txt: 88814 | Orc:1    | Glimpsed the power of Zot.
morgue-Kezi-20240504-224159.txt: 47712 | Spider:1 | Glimpsed the power of Zot.

I read somewhere that (paraphrased) “the clock is set to 3x the average time to clear a branch”. Not sure how that average is calculated. Somehow it feels that the post-hunger, since-zot-clock game is tuned to a certain fast style of playing.

5

I fully explore every floor, backtrack for various vaults, shops and items and generally don’t rush anything anywhere (rest fully before exploring etc.), and yet I have never seen a Zot warning, didn’t change any of my habits from before Zot clock where a thing either.

At a guess, excessive stashing might be the culprit here. There haven’t been an in-game reason to have a stash for a looong while, enemies can’t pick up items that your character have seen (seen as in “looked at” even through a glass wall) and there’s no item destruction at all. If you want to find a specific item you can always use a very robust search function (Ctrl+f) and just go pick it up whenever you want.

If you want to have a big hoard-y stash for purely aesthetic reasons, then I guess you’ll have to try and be more efficient with your fighting/exploration or complete a Ziggurat, which turns the Zot clock off (or play in exploration mode which lets you turn the clock off).

4 Thanks
6

Thanks for the tip. I tried this. This works - provided you remember what you dropped, and drop them in the main dungeon, and not in smaller/“transit” branches like say Orc.

Also transiting through smaller branches to take out excluded tougher parts remains a problem very frequently. For instance I usually clear Elf3’s final chamber and Elf2’s hall of weapons later in the game because of a lack of means, and had to constantly keep an eye on Orc’s Zot Clock to ensure that my transits did eat up too much time.

Just for the fun of it - this would be barring un-equipping with the new “Ruenzari”, and the perils of Jivya worship, or did I get that wrong?

Anyway, off to the dungeon.

1 Thank
7

Just for the fun of it - this would be barring un-equipping with the new “Ruenzari”, and the perils of Jivya worship, or did I get that wrong?

This would be barring those, yeah. Technically you can also drop items into lava or deep water :).

This works - provided you remember what you dropped, and drop them in the main dungeon, and not in smaller/“transit” branches like say Orc.

The search looks in every branch you’ve visited, including side branches, shops etc. essentially in every place you have access to. More than once I’ve left enchant weapon scrolls lying all over the place when playing a caster and then had to run through all the branches to gather them for a trove or such.

As for remembering about stuff, it’s never been a problem for me. Like, I know I want rPois, rF+, rElec and ideally Will+ for Snake Pits, so that’s what I search for, if I don’t have any on me. Search function is quite flexible you can do “rf+” for all fire resistance items, “will” for all Will items, “long b” for all Long Blades, “ranged” for all ranged weapons, “hat” or “helm” for headwear, or just “aux” for all non-body armours, “ant we” for all enchant weapon scrolls etc. and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, you can do more complicated search strings for, say, all magical mace&flails weapons and such (I don’t use the more complicated searches, but some people do).

4 Thanks
8

Examples of more complicated searches that people do:

# I run something like this before I hit Zot:5, just show me the potions and scrolls I care about
<< scroll || potion >> && !!<< ligni || enchant || brand || attract || mutat >>

# Just the floor trash from orc:2, not the shop items which I presumably have already eyeballed and added to my list
orc:2 && !!gold

# after I finish ever single floor, let me see what dropped
.

# I need a new weapon, but I'm not sure if I should transition from short blades to long
<< quick blade || long blade >> && one-handed && !!falchion

Disclaimer: that last one might not work as expected as I built it from memory and didn’t test, might need to play with the groupings

2 Thanks
9

You can also search “art” if you are looking for artifacts (I think this picks up spell books as well). When I’m casting I’m always ctrl-fing for the spells I’m looking for. I very frequently am surprised that I missed a spell that I wanted in a shop or something.

2 Thanks
10

I think what was meant was there’s no destruction of items in your inventory, which used to be possible and is much of what made stashing desirable.

We’re no fans of the Zot clock, predictably, but from the morgue you seem to have played a huge number of turns (in the old days, OOD monster spawns would try to collect you) and also to have made it into the Shoals.

11

Honestly I don’t get how you are getting such high turn numbers. Could you provide a recording of one of your games? Looking at my games ( I do press 5 a lot and stairdance), I tend to reach Lair (with clearing D10 or even D11) at 13k turns, compared to your 19k. Starting in Lair you start taking thousands of turns per floor, but those floors don’t have much loot so what’s going on?

2 Thanks
12

I don’t record my games, so don’t think I’d be able to. If there’s anything from the morgue etc. that can help I’ll share that.

13

I’m just curious what’s taking you so long? I often shout lure stuff, run back and forth to pick up stuff yet my games end at 76k turns on average for 3 runes. You almost hit that before full clearing pre S branches! Like what is the gameplay loop you are doing? Do you run back to the stash after every fight? Do you re-explore cleared levels looking for that 1 remaining enemy many times?

4 Thanks