ARCHIVED Djinni Warper guide to Arena of Blood (Sprint)

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The following article is a character guide. This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised. Read at your own risk and alter to fit your play style as necessary!

This is a character guide for playing a Djinni warper in the Dungeon Sprint Arena of Blood map. It is a work in progress.

Features of the Game

• All monsters are ridiculously powerful. The easiest is The bag of meat which carries a +9 axe and sports a +30 ring of slaying. It is a melee only character with 400HP.
  • The monsters will hit you, burn you and torment you as well as slow and confuse you.
  • They swarm you. You will die if you just stay in one place for five turns and not defend yourself.

• Your character will be a regular Djinni.
  • You will have a the regular starting equipment for a warper. You will not have access to any other equipment except for the axe and rings mentioned below.
  • There is no way to upgrade your armour as there is none in the map and no character wears armour.
  • There are two rings of protection from fire and two rings of see invisible in the map. There are lots of rings of slaying up to +250, but these are useless.
  • Waiting at the entrance to the dungeon is The Axe of Woe. This will be your weapon for the game and it has essentially +infinity slaying. It cannot miss and it will always kill.
  • The only altars in the map belong to Mahkleb. You will be worshiping him and relying on his HP and MP for kills to regenerate.

Djinnis are special

• rF++ and resist poison. Two of the biggest elemental damages seen in the map.
• rC- is not a handycap as there are no cold based attacks in the map.
• Spells do not take time to memorize. They just appear. Any other character would always be interrupted when trying to learn a spell.

Warpers are special

• Manifold Assault allows the "Axe of Woe" to be used as a multi-target ranged weapon. You can guarantee four monsters will be killed.
• Blink is always good to have when you have no other options to get out of trouble
• Unfortunately Gell's Gravitas, Lesser Beckoning, and Teleport Other are not really useful unless you are just at the start of the game. It is better to just kill the monsters.

Outline Of Play

Start

• • Select Dungeon Sprint Arena of Blood map. You select the Djinni species and the warper background. Select the axe as your weapon. It will be the only one you use.
  • On the skills screen set up manual mode.
    • Set the following skill targets. axes=24, fighting=16, spellcasting=16, dodging=16. Only enable axes for now.
  • Set auto-pickup off and keep it off for the entire game.
  • On your first turn (w)ield the Axe of Woe straight off the floor. Do not waste a turn to pick it up.
  • Head south 3 squares Mahkleb's alter and (>) float and (J)oin his religion. Monsters may already have appeared, but will not be able to stop you from praying at the altar.

Your first kill

• You will probably already have one or more bags of meat in sight. Select the closest one and approach it carefully. It is the same speed as you so you can plan your moves to get the first swing in.
• You will die if you get hit!
• You will kill it. That is what it will be like wielding the axe of woe.
• You will level up to level 9.
  • Always select INT as the stat to upgrade.
  • Enable the fighting skill while keeping on the axes skill. (You may already have reached your axes skill of 24.)

Your second and third kill

• Your character is still not hardy. You will probably die if you are hit.
• Actually never take a hit. Always kill monsters next to you. Don't worry if there are more than one monster as the axe will cleave and kill all monsters next to you without fail.
• Mahkleb will be refunding you HP and MP by the time you have killed your third monster.
• When you need to enable skills because your goals have been reached:
  • Reenable fighting and focus on that skill. At the same time enable spellcasting.
  • When you need to enable skills next, reenable and focus on spellcasting and enable dodging.
  • When the dodging goal has been reached, focus on dodging, enable axes and invocation.
  • When you need to enable skills next, you will already have all the skills you need. Just enable everything.

The road south

• Your next goal is to head south for the ring of see invisible.
• You will kill with your axe until the spell "Manifold Assault" is online at less than 5% failure and at more than 75% power.
  • At INT=23 and spellcasting=27 you should have 1% or less failure and 100% power.
• How to kill and when to move
  • Use "Manifold Assault" if there are four or less monsters in sight.
  • If there are more than four and some are adjacent to you swing and kill them.
  • If possible move south if there is a square that you can enter without being hit, or be hit by only one meat bag. Don't get hit by any other monsters.
  • Be wary of Meat Berserkers. They can move one square and then attack you on the same turn.
  • Don't quaff your potion of heal wounds. You will get more healing by killing monsters.
• New monsters on the road
  • Add list what monsters that you will see and any special considerations when they are in your sight.
  • Follow the guide for fighting mentioned in the section of second and third kills.
  • You will be spending about 2/3 of your turns killing monsters. Only 1/3 of the time will you be moving south to the ring of see invisible. It should take about 40-50 turns to reach the ring.
  • When you get there, stand over it and (P)ut it on straight from the floor.
    • Wielding weapons or putting on rings straight from the floor saves you one turn. The time it will take will be 0.5 for both actions. The time taken to pick an item up then equip it will be 1.5. By now you will appreciate not wasting time otherwise you will just have more monsters to fight.
• Always review your spells.
  • Attack spells are useless. LCS is garbage. You will not be able to kill monsters with it. Your axe of woe and manifold assault are the only way you will be killing things.
  • Use passage of golubria if you have a spare turn to speed up your travels south.
  • Animate Skeleton, Animate Dead, Borgnjor's Vile Clutch, Simulacrum, Haunt, Borgnjor's Revivification, Necromutation, Death's Door, Death Channel, Summon Guardian Golem, Summon Forest, Summon Mana Viper, Malign Gateway, Summon Horrible Things, Dragon's Call, Summon Hydra, Spellforged Servitor

The road back to the entrance

• This trip will feature the harder monsters seen going south and a few more that you have not seen.

Useful Spells

Movement

• Blink is useful, but the 2 scrolls of blinking are better for traveling north to the entrance.
• passage of golubria is good for heading south or back north.

Gathering summons

When moving south or north, you may take a turn to summon monsters to act as a shield. Only use the spells that get you more than one summon as summons will usually die after one or two hits.

• Death Channel is the champion of these spells. When active all the monsters you slay will come back as spectres. You will generate a lot of summons for little time.
• Summon Horrible Things, Dragon's Call, Simulacrum, and Haunt are good on the way back up north.
• Summoning while waiting for the MeatLord can be almost any summon. Good ones are: Summon Hydra, Spellforged Servitor, Summon Mana Viper, Animate Skeleton, Animate Dead, Summon Guardian Golem, Summon Forest

Utility spells

Borgnjor's Revivification, Necromutation, Death's Door for when you get in real trouble.