CrawlWiki - User contributions [en]

Fangs

2014-04-12T14:07:47Z

Snyrand: mentioned vine stalkers' starting rank

{| cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" border="1"
|- style="font-style:italic;"
|Rank||Effect||Flavor
|-
|1||[[Auxiliary]] bite attack.||You have sharp teeth.
|-
|2||Improved [[auxiliary]] bite attack.||You have very sharp teeth.
|-
|3||Superior [[auxiliary]] bite attack.||You have razor-sharp teeth.
|-
| colspan="3" |
'''Species notes:''' [[Vampire]]s and [[Felid]]s start with rank 3. [[Vine Stalker]]s start with rank 2.
|- style="font-style:italic;"
| colspan="3" |
[[Good_mutations|Good mutation]], [[Demonspawn mutation]]
|}

[[Category:Mutations]]
[[Category:Good Mutations]]

User:Snyrand

2013-12-10T20:10:04Z

Snyrand:

I've been playing DCSS since around the last days of version 0.8, and I've had a couple of wins since. I've played some other Roguelikes such as Rogue, Adom and Zangband, but Crawl is the only one I've really dived into because of its superiour sophistication and "logicalness". I hail from South Africa, and so I play Crawl offline only; the lag to overseas servers is absolute killage.

Also, I believe in the text terminal interface. Graphical tiles is for wussies!

Though I've dabbled extensively with a bunch of different backgrounds, I've only had great success with Naga venom magi so far, and I can proudly say that I got 5 runes on my very first win over a year ago. So at the moment I'm focusing on only one thing: perfecting my NaVm of Chei hybrid building technique. Besides the fact that I like to tackle challenges systematically, the simplicity of focusing on one build for a long time helps me retain some of my sanity in this... ''wonderfully complicated'' game. (also, it's hilariously [[Mephitic Cloud|difficult to get past early venom mage ghosts]] if your character lacks innate poison resistance)

I intend to write a thorough beginner/intermediate Naga Venom Mage guide. Once I have a better grasp on it, that is. In the meantime, I think I'll make some smaller improvements to the wiki whenever and comment on stuff. Here's hoping I make some worthwhile contributions. This, of course, comes with no guarantee against screw-ups, but correcting my mistakes is what the friendly neighborhood wiki admins and other editors are for, riight? ;-P

== Wins ==
Out of more than a hundred losses, I've made a few ascensions:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Score !! Month !! B/g !! Vers !! Char Name !! #Runes !! Turns !! Comments
|-
| 6782098 || 2013-12 || NaVM || 0.12 || Luzr || 13 || 207088 ||
Yes, the name turned out to be awesomely ironic. Lots of firsts. Notably: my first non-experimental time in Pan, first time I got more than freaking half the runes, the first game I ever managed to learn and use a level 9 spell ([[Fire Storm]]) and of course the first time I defeated three lords of hell and three of pan (not Cerebov and Asmodeus). What a blast!
|-
| 2539416 || 2013-08 || NaVM || 0.11? || Ezmi || 6 || 182851 ||
Heh, I vastly underestimated TRJ from last time, and neglected to bring fire power ([[Ignite Poison]] is un/surprisingly under-rated after all). Corrosive punishment repeatedly ensued before finally squashing the thing and slithering away ''like hell''. Second time in the Tomb was again very scary, but at least I knew beforehand which tools should work. I missed projecting noise.
|-
| 2479673 || 2013-02 || NaVM || 0.10? || Asban || 6 || 184513 ||
First time I defeated TRJ. Practically excavated (with [[Dig]]) the entire [[The Slime Pits|slime pits]] for fear of touching those friggin walls (they could corrode equipment back then). Bringing down Jellobus Inc was made possible using ignite poison cloud, which, along with [[Projected Noise]], [[Statue Form]], [[Summon Elemental|air elementals]] and [[Scroll_of_magic_mapping|mapping]] later served me extremely well during my first time in The Tomb. Oh and btw: double sword of anti-magic is ''total friggin dope'' for dealing with [[Orb of fire|those things that otherwise make me cry tiny drops of blood]]
|-
|2161225 || 2012-05 || NaVM || 0.10? || Nas || 5 || 155539 ||
First time I went for the Abyss rune. Mind numbing! At least the Helliphants-and-lava rune vault was fun if not frightening. Later I was at 1HP on Cocytus:7 at some point after teleporting away from Antaeus when an Ice Fiend spawned next to me. Fortunately I was able to make extremely quick work of it with my blade. Yes, it's a little crazy that I dived into a Hell branch without at least considering The Tomb or Pan (or even Slime!) but looking back on it choosing Cocytus next wasn't a terrible choice and I really learned a heck of a lot from it.
|}

User:Snyrand

2013-12-10T20:02:55Z

Snyrand:

I've been playing DCSS since around the last days of version 0.8, and I've had a couple of wins since. I've played some other Roguelikes such as Rogue, Adom and Zangband, but Crawl is the only one I've really dived into because of its superiour sophistication and "logicalness". I hail from South Africa, and so I play Crawl offline only; the lag to overseas servers is absolute killage.

Also, I believe in the text terminal interface. Graphical tiles is for wussies!

Though I've dabbled extensively with a bunch of different backgrounds, I've only had great success with Naga venom magi so far, and I can proudly say that I got 5 runes on my very first win over a year ago. So at the moment I'm focusing on only one thing: perfecting my NaVm of Chei hybrid building technique. Besides the fact that I like to tackle challenges systematically, the simplicity of focusing on one build for a long time helps me retain some of my sanity in this... ''wonderfully complicated'' game. (also, it's hilariously [[Mephitic Cloud|difficult to get past early venom mage ghosts]] if your character lacks innate poison resistance)

I intend to write a thorough beginner/intermediate Naga Venom Mage guide. Once I have a better grasp on it, that is. In the meantime, I think I'll make some smaller improvements to the wiki whenever and comment on stuff. Here's hoping I make some worthwhile contributions. This, of course, comes with no guarantee against screw-ups, but correcting my mistakes is what the friendly neighborhood wiki admins and other editors are for, riight? ;-P

== Wins ==
Out of more than a hundred losses, I've made a few ascensions:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Score !! Month !! B/g !! Vers !! Char Name !! #Runes !! Turns !! Comments
|-
| 6782098 || 2013-12 || NaVM || 0.12 || Luzr || 13 || 207088 ||
Yes, the name turned out to be awesomely ironic. Lots of firsts. Notably: my first non-experimental time in Pan, first time I got more than freaking half the runes, the first game I ever managed to learn and use a level 9 spell ([[Fire Storm]]) and of course the first time I defeated three lords of hell and three of pan (not Cerebov and Asmodeus). What a blast!
|-
| 2539416 || 2013-08 || NaVM || 0.11? || Ezmi || 6 || 182851 ||
Heh, I vastly underestimated TRJ from last time, and neglected to bring fire power ([[Ignite Poison]] is un/surprisingly under-rated after all). Corrosive punishment repeatedly ensued before finally squashing the thing and slithering away ''like hell''. Second time in the Tomb was again very scary, but at least I knew beforehand which tools should work.
|-
| 2479673 || 2013-02 || NaVM || 0.10? || Asban || 6 || 184513 ||
First time I defeated TRJ. Practically excavated (with [[Dig]]) the entire [[The Slime Pits|slime pits]] for fear of touching those friggin walls (they could corrode equipment back then). Bringing down Jellobus Inc was made possible using ignite poison cloud, which, along with [[Projected Noise]], [[Statue Form]] and a few scrolls of mapping later served me extremely well during my first time in The Tomb. Oh and btw: double sword of anti-magic is ''total friggin dope'' for dealing with [[Orb of fire|those things that otherwise make me cry tiny drops of blood]]
|-
|2161225 || 2012-05 || NaVM || 0.10? || Nas || 5 || 155539 ||
First time I went for the Abyss rune. Mind numbing! At least the Helliphants-and-lava rune vault was fun if not frightening. Later I was at 1HP on Cocytus:7 at some point after teleporting away from Antaeus when an Ice Fiend spawned next to me. Fortunately I was able to make extremely quick work of it with my blade. Yes, it's a little crazy that I dived into a Hell branch without at least considering The Tomb or Pan (or even Slime!) but looking back on it choosing Cocytus next wasn't a terrible choice.
|}

User:Snyrand

2013-12-10T20:02:29Z

Snyrand:

I've been playing DCSS since around the last days of version 0.8, and I've had a couple of wins since. I've played some other Roguelikes such as Rogue, Adom and Zangband, but Crawl is the only one I've really dived into because of its superiour sophistication and "logicalness". I hail from South Africa, and so I play Crawl offline only; the lag to overseas servers is absolute killage.

Also, I believe in the text terminal interface. Graphical tiles is for wussies!

Though I've dabbled extensively with a bunch of different backgrounds, I've only had great success with Naga venom magi so far, and I can proudly say that I got 5 runes on my very first win over a year ago. So at the moment I'm focusing on only one thing: perfecting my NaVm of Chei hybrid building technique. Besides the fact that I like to tackle challenges systematically, the simplicity of focusing on one build for a long time helps me retain some of my sanity in this... ''wonderfully complicated'' game. (also, it's hilariously [[Mephitic Cloud|difficult to get past early venom mage ghosts]] if your character lacks innate poison resistance)

I intend to write a thorough beginner/intermediate Naga Venom Mage guide. Once I have a better grasp on it, that is. In the meantime, I think I'll make some smaller improvements to the wiki whenever and comment on stuff. Here's hoping I make some worthwhile contributions. This, of course, comes with no guarantee against screw-ups, but correcting my mistakes is what the friendly neighborhood wiki admins and other editors are for, riight? ;-P

== Wins ==
Out of more than a hundred losses, I've made a few ascensions:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Score !! Month !! B/g !! Vers !! Char Name !! #Runes !! Turns !! Comments
|-
| 6782098 || 2013-12 || NaVM || 0.12 || Luzr || 13 || 207088 ||
Yes, the name turned out to be awesomely ironic. Lots of firsts. Notably: my first non-experimental time in Pan, first time I got more than freaking half the runes, the first game I ever managed to learn and use a level 9 spell ([[Fire Storm]]) and of course the first time I defeated three lords of hell and three of pan (not Cerebov and Asmodeus). What a blast!
|-
| 2539416 || 2013-08 || NaVM || 0.11? || Ezmi || 6 || 182851 ||
Heh, I vastly underestimated TRJ from last time, and neglected to bring fire power ([[Ignite Poison]] is un/surprisingly under-rated after all). Corrosive punishment repeatedly ensued before finally squashing the thing and slithering away ''like hell''. Second time in the Tomb was again very scary, but at least I knew beforehand which tools should work.
|-
| 2479673 || 2013-02 || NaVM || 0.10? || Asban || 6 || 184513 ||
First time I defeated TRJ. Practically excavated (with [[Dig]]) the entire [[The slime pits|slime pits]] for fear of touching those friggin walls (they could corrode equipment back then). Bringing down Jellobus Inc was made possible using ignite poison cloud, which, along with [[Projected Noise]], [[Statue Form]] and a few scrolls of mapping later served me extremely well during my first time in The Tomb. Oh and btw: double sword of anti-magic is ''total friggin dope'' for dealing with [[Orb of fire|those things that otherwise make me cry tiny drops of blood]]
|-
|2161225 || 2012-05 || NaVM || 0.10? || Nas || 5 || 155539 ||
First time I went for the Abyss rune. Mind numbing! At least the Helliphants-and-lava rune vault was fun if not frightening. Later I was at 1HP on Cocytus:7 at some point after teleporting away from Antaeus when an Ice Fiend spawned next to me. Fortunately I was able to make extremely quick work of it with my blade. Yes, it's a little crazy that I dived into a Hell branch without at least considering The Tomb or Pan (or even Slime!) but looking back on it choosing Cocytus next wasn't a terrible choice.
|}

User:Snyrand

2013-12-10T19:51:15Z

Snyrand: moar win and moar commentary

I've been playing DCSS since around the last days of version 0.8, and I've had a couple of wins since. I've played some other Roguelikes such as Rogue, Adom and Zangband, but Crawl is the only one I've really dived into because of its superiour sophistication and "logicalness". I hail from South Africa, and so I play Crawl offline only; the lag to overseas servers is absolute killage.

Also, I believe in the text terminal interface. Graphical tiles is for wussies!

Though I've dabbled extensively with a bunch of different backgrounds, I've only had great success with Naga venom magi so far, and I can proudly say that I got 5 runes on my very first win over a year ago. So at the moment I'm focusing on only one thing: perfecting my NaVm of Chei hybrid building technique. Besides the fact that I like to tackle challenges systematically, the simplicity of focusing on one build for a long time helps me retain some of my sanity in this... ''wonderfully complicated'' game. (also, it's hilariously [[Mephitic Cloud|difficult to get past early venom mage ghosts]] if your character lacks innate poison resistance)

I intend to write a thorough beginner/intermediate Naga Venom Mage guide. Once I have a better grasp on it, that is. In the meantime, I think I'll make some smaller improvements to the wiki whenever and comment on stuff. Here's hoping I make some worthwhile contributions. This, of course, comes with no guarantee against screw-ups, but correcting my mistakes is what the friendly neighborhood wiki admins and other editors are for, riight? ;-P

== Wins ==
Out of more than a hundred losses, I've made a few ascensions:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! Score !! Month !! B/g !! Vers !! Char Name !! #Runes !! Turns !! Comments
|-
| 6782098 || 2013-12 || NaVM || 0.12 || Luzr || 13 || 207088 ||
Yes, the name turned out to be awesomely ironic. Lots of firsts. Notably: my first non-experimental time in Pan, first time I got more than freaking half the runes, the first game I ever managed to learn and use a level 9 spell ([[Fire Storm]]) and of course the first time I defeated three lords of hell and three of pan (not Cerebov and Asmodeus). What a blast!
|-
| 2539416 || 2013-08 || NaVM || 0.12 || Ezmi || 6 || 182851 ||
Heh, I vastly underestimated TRJ from last time, and neglected to bring fire power ([[Ignite Poison]] is un/surprisingly under-rated after all). Corrosive punishment repeatedly ensued before finally squashing the thing and slithering away ''like hell''. Second time in the Tomb was again very scary, but at least I knew beforehand which tools should work.
|-
| 2479673 || 2013-02 || NaVM || 0.11? || Asban || 6 || 184513 ||
First time I defeated TRJ. Practically excavated (with [[Dig]]) the entire [[slime pits]] for fear of touching those friggin walls (they could corrode equipment back then). Bringing down Jellobus Inc was made possible using ignite poison cloud, which, along with [[Projected Noise]], [[Statue Form]] and a few scrolls of mapping later served me extremely well during my first time in The Tomb.
|-
|2161225 || 2012-05 || NaVM || 0.10? || Nas || 5 || 155539 ||
First time I went for the Abyss rune. Mind numbing! At least the Helliphants-and-lava rune vault was fun if not frightening. Later I was at 1HP on Cocytus:7 at some point after teleporting away from Antaeus when an Ice Fiend spawned next to me. Fortunately I was able to make extremely quick work of it with my blade. Yes, it's a little crazy that I dived into a Hell branch without at least peering into The Tomb or Pan (or even Slime!) but looking back on it choosing Cocytus next wasn't a terrible choice.
|}

Conjurations

2013-09-23T08:58:50Z

Snyrand: added Throw Icicle to level 4 conjurations

{{version012}}
'''Conjurations''' indicates a character's skill at controlling damage-dealing spells of various types. While some spells are pure Conjurations (e.g. [[Magic Dart]]), most damage-dealing spells combine this skill with an elemental school or other skill (e.g. [[Throw Flame]], [[Sting]]).

== List of Conjurations spells ==
{| cellpadding="5" border="1"
|-
| '''Lvl 1'''
|-
| [[File:Flame tongue.png]] || [[Flame Tongue]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Magic dart.png]] || [[Magic Dart]] || Conjurations
|-
| [[File:Shock.png]] || [[Shock]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Sting.png]] || [[Sting]] || Conjurations/[[Poison Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 2'''
|-
| [[File:Force lance.png]] || [[Force Lance]] || Conjurations
|-
| [[File:Throw flame.png]] || [[Throw Flame]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Throw frost.png]] || [[Throw Frost]] || Conjurations/[[Ice Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 3'''
|-
| [[File:Conjure flame.png]] || [[Conjure Flame]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Dazzling spray.png]] || [[Dazzling Spray]] || Conjurations/[[Hexes]]
|-
| [[File:Mephitic cloud.png]] || [[Mephitic Cloud]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]/[[Poison Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Static discharge.png]] || [[Static Discharge]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Stone arrow.png]] || [[Stone Arrow]] || Conjurations/[[Earth Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 4'''
|-
| [[File:Iskenderun's battlesphere.png]] || [[Iskenderun's Battlesphere]] || Conjurations/[[Charms]]
|-
| [[File:Iskenderun's mystic blast.png]] || [[Iskenderun's Mystic Blast]] || Conjurations
|-
| [[File:Sticky flame.png]] || [[Sticky Flame]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Throw icicle.png]] || [[Throw Icicle]] || Conjurations/[[Ice Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 5'''
|-
| [[File:Bolt of magma.png]] || [[Bolt of Magma]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]/[[Earth Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Fireball.png]] || [[Fireball]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Fulminant prism.png]] || [[Fulminant Prism]] || Conjurations/[[Hexes]]
|-
| [[File:Lightning bolt.png]] || [[Lightning Bolt]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Venom bolt.png]] || [[Venom Bolt]] || Conjurations/[[Poison Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 6'''
|-
| [[File:Bolt of cold.png]] || [[Bolt of Cold]] || Conjurations/[[Ice Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Bolt of draining.png]] || [[Bolt of Draining]] || Conjurations/[[Necromancy]]
|-
| [[File:Bolt of fire.png]] || [[Bolt of Fire]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Freezing cloud.png]] || [[Freezing Cloud]] || Conjurations/[[Ice Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Iron shot.png]] || [[Iron Shot]] || Conjurations/[[Earth Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Poison arrow.png]] || [[Poison Arrow]] || Conjurations/[[Poison Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Poisonous cloud.png]] || [[Poisonous Cloud]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]/[[Poison Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 7'''
|-
| [[File:Conjure ball lightning.png]] || [[Conjure Ball Lightning]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Delayed fireball.png]] || [[Delayed Fireball]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Orb of destruction.png]] || [[Orb of Destruction]] || Conjurations
|-
| '''Lvl 8'''
|-
| [[File:Chain lightning.png]] || [[Chain Lightning]] || Conjurations/[[Air Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Lehudib's crystal spear.png]] || [[Lehudib's Crystal Spear]] || Conjurations/[[Earth Magic]]
|-
| '''Lvl 9'''
|-
| [[File:Fire storm.png]] || [[Fire Storm]] || Conjurations/[[Fire Magic]]
|-
| [[File:Ice storm.png]] || [[Ice Storm]] || Conjurations/[[Ice Magic]]
|}

==Conjurations aptitudes==
From [[Dungeon Crawl]] [[Stone Soup]] [[0.12]] in-game documentation:
{{#invoke:Apt|skill_table|Conjurations}}

==History==
*[[0.12]] introduced several new, non-elemental Conjurations.
*In 0.13, the level 2 spell [[Searing Ray]] will be added, and Force Lance will be moved to level 5.

{{Skills}}
[[Category:Conjurations|*]]
[[Category:Magic skills]]
[[Category:Crystal Ball Articles]]

Strength weight

2013-09-18T21:47:26Z

Snyrand: rephrase of "strength is all that really matters when using it"

Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons benefit more from [[strength]] than from [[dexterity]], and also tend to require more strength to use properly. '''Strength weighting''' (abbreviated "str weight") is a game mechanic that determines relatively how much a character's strength and dexterity affect a given weapon's damage output.

A given str weight value can be viewed as a quotient expressed as a percentage; the "amount of effect" that strength has on a weapon, divided by the total amount of effect that strength and dexterity together have on it. So a str weight of 100% (such as with a [[giant club]]) implies that strength affects the weapon far more than dexterity does. Conversely, 0% (eg. [[quick blade]]) implies that strength has a very small effect on how well a weapon performs.

Almost all weapons fall somewhere in-between the two extremes. The weighted average of strength and dexterity affects both damage potential and [[to-hit]], the former being affected more by strength and the latter being affected more by dexterity. Thus, note that that even 0% and 100% strength weightings don't imply that either stat has no effect: more dexterity always implies better to-hit and more strength always implies higher per-hit damage. A 50% str weight still implies that dexterity has a bigger effect than strength on to-hit, and conversely with strength and damage.

== Formulas and source ==
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/itemprop.cc#L163 In the source]
strength weight fractions are represented by integers from 0 to 10, representing 0% to 100% respectively. In the formulas below, '''W''' denotes strength weight as a fraction, ie. W=0.0 for quickblade and W=1.0 for giant club.
=== Melee ===
In the 0.12 source, melee damage is calculated a bit differently for
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5274 monsters]
and player characters. Player damage potential is
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5367 based on weapon base damage] and, among other things,
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L1606 amplified by a stat value]
which is taken as a
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5494 blend between the player's Str and Dex]:

<tt>'''Melee damage blended stat''' = 0.5×Str + 0.5(W×Str + (1-W)Dex)</tt>

Stats are blended [https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5149 similiarly for to-hit]
but conversely to damage calculations, dexterity counts twice as heavily towards to-hit as strength does:

<tt>'''Melee to-hit blended stat''' = 0.5×Dex + 0.5(W×Str + (1-W)Dex)</tt>

=== Launchers ===
The [https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/throw.cc#L1346 code for player-fired missile]
damage and to hit is even harder to decypher than for melee weapons. Strength and dexterity
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/throw.cc#L545 primarily affect]
the launcher "speed". "Speed" is a misnomer though: it means the amount of in-game time taken to fire a shot, not the rate at which shots are fired. Roughly:

<tt>'''Turns taken''' = ( launcher_base_attack_delay_percentile - player_skill×(W×Str + (W-1)×Dex)×4/25 ) / 100</tt>

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

Talk:Strength weight

2013-09-18T21:41:57Z

Snyrand: added my comment

I like it! As IonFrigate mentioned, there was a strength weighting page on the old Wiki, but it wasn't terribly useful or worth salvaging. This is much better. Two things I notice though:

1) "Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons benefit more from strength than from dexterity, and '''also tend to require more strength to use properly.'''"

You had this sentence when you first wrote the page, except that you listed armour and shields in it as well. With armour the bold section makes sense, but when it comes to weapons, that seems to imply a minimum strength requirement that isn't there.

2) "So a str weight of 100% (such as with a giant club) implies that '''strength is all that really matters when using it'''. Conversely, 0% (eg. quick blade) implies that strength has a very small effect on how well a weapon performs."

Could we rephrase this to reflect the fact that improving strength / dexterity really does improve damage / accuracy for all weapons? The effect is definitely watered down with these extremely light or heavy weapons, but everyone gets that 0.5×Str or Dex there. --[[User:MoogleDan|MoogleDan]] ([[User talk:MoogleDan|talk]]) 20:06, 17 September 2013 (CEST)

----

Hey, glad you like the page so far. 1) is definitely not clear and correct in retrospect, and I see someone has edited it already. 2) is also a good point, perhaps I should rephrase a little. Hopefully the formula cookies I attempted to bake help clear any confusion. [[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 23:41, 18 September 2013 (CEST)

Strength weight

2013-09-17T16:06:12Z

Snyrand: added formulas. dived and referenced the convoluted source. then did some algebra to get the formulas in a hopefully more palatable form (doesn't this wiki need Tex?) I leave it to other editors to decide whether this is horribly overdone or inaccurate

Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons benefit more from [[strength]] than from [[dexterity]], and also tend to require more strength to use properly. '''Strength weighting''' (abbreviated "str weight") is a game mechanic that determines relatively how much a character's strength and dexterity affect a given weapon's damage output.

A given str weight value can be viewed as a quotient expressed as a percentage; the "amount of effect" that strength has on a weapon, divided by the total amount of effect that strength and dexterity together have on it. So a str weight of 100% (such as with a [[giant club]]) implies that strength is all that really matters when using it. Conversely, 0% (eg. [[quick blade]]) implies that strength has a very small effect on how well a weapon performs.

Almost all weapons fall somewhere in-between the two extremes. The weighted average of strength and dexterity affects both damage potential and [[to-hit]], the former being affected more by strength and the latter being affected more by dexterity. Thus, note that that even 0% and 100% strength weightings don't imply that either stat has no effect: more dexterity always implies better to-hit and more strength always implies higher per-hit damage. A 50% str weight still implies that dexterity has a bigger effect than strength on to-hit, and conversely with strength and damage.

== Formulas and source ==
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/itemprop.cc#L163 In the source]
strength weight fractions are represented by integers from 0 to 10, representing 0% to 100% respectively. In the formulas below, '''W''' denotes strength weight as a fraction, ie. W=0.0 for quickblade and W=1.0 for giant club.
=== Melee ===
In the 0.12 source, melee damage is calculated a bit differently for
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5274 monsters]
and player characters. Player damage potential is
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5367 based on weapon base damage] and, among other things,
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L1606 amplified by a stat value]
which is taken as a
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5494 blend between the player's Str and Dex]:

<tt>'''Melee damage blended stat''' = 0.5×Str + 0.5(W×Str + (1-W)Dex)</tt>

Stats are blended [https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/melee_attack.cc#L5149 similiarly for to-hit]
but conversely to damage calculations, dexterity counts twice as heavily towards to-hit as strength does:

<tt>'''Melee to-hit blended stat''' = 0.5×Dex + 0.5(W×Str + (1-W)Dex)</tt>

=== Launchers ===
The [https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/throw.cc#L1346 code for player-fired missile]
damage and to hit is even harder to decypher than for melee weapons. Strength and dexterity
[https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/source/3fb7fd9f23f7f93a1e85b39c3ba46f27e91505f3:crawl-ref/source/throw.cc#L545 primarily affect]
the launcher "speed". "Speed" is a misnomer though: it means the amount of in-game time taken to fire a shot, not the rate at which shots are fired. Roughly:

<tt>'''Turns taken''' = ( launcher_base_attack_delay_percentile - player_skill×(W×Str + (W-1)×Dex)×4/25 ) / 100</tt>

[[Category:Game mechanics]]

User:Snyrand

2013-09-17T11:55:49Z

Snyrand: added disclaimer :P

Str weight

2013-09-16T09:08:05Z

Snyrand: added redirect to strength weight page

#redirect [[Strength weight]]

Strength weighting

2013-09-16T09:07:07Z

Snyrand: added redirect to strength weight page

#redirect [[Strength_weight]]

Current projects

2013-09-16T08:58:01Z

Snyrand: /* Current Projects */ noted that consolidating Multizapper's Handbook with Multizap is probably already done

{{Community}}

CrawlWiki is growing in size with over [[Special:Statistics|1,000 registered users]]. To track what we are doing, we have created this list of current projects. 

== Current Projects ==

{|class="prettytable"
! Project !! Goal !! Contributor(s) !! Status
|-
| '''0.12 Update Project'''
| See [[Current_projects/0.12_update_project]]
|
|Active
|-
| ''Missing pages''
| [[Special:WantedPages]], [[Special:WantedTemplates]], [[Special:WantedFiles]], [[Special:WantedCategories]]. Usually these require some simple redirects or imports from the old wiki.
| Anyone
| Ongoing
|- 
| ''Weigh in''
| Go to [[:Category:Under Review]] and give us your thoughts on what should be done. Any input is appreciated!
| Anyone
| Ongoing, as long as there are pages in the category
|-
| Game Mechanics Pages
| Creating a more comprehensible and comprehensive collection of pages on fundamental game concepts. Started with [[Movement]], now progressing to [[Actions]]. Ideally, this project will lead to a series of macro-level pages that provide a portal to more detailed pages (e.g. [[Spellcasting]] should introduce all the topics, but link to [[Spells]], [[Spell Schools]], [[spell power]], [[Spell hunger]], [[Spell success]], [[Damage type]], etc.)
| Jk, more contributors appreciated.
| In progress
|-
| ''Racial & background attributes''
| Add racial [[stats]] to each [[species]] page and stat modifiers to each [[background]] page. Note that the tables on the stats and [[class attribute modifiers]] pages are badly out of date and should be updated first.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Renames''
| Change the link of everything that has been renamed: for instance [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Dragon armour]] and [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Potion of healing]] -- the pages listed there should have their links changed to [[Fire dragon armour]] and [[Potion of curing]]. This is optional, as there are redirects from the old terms, but it would be nice if the wiki used up-to-date terminology on all pages.
| [[User:spudwalt]]
| Finished potions of curing; will take care of dragon armor soon
|-
| ''Updating''
| Go through http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=log (2/14/2012 and earlier) to see what parts of the code have changed and update the wiki accordingly. This can be done even without code-reading skills as the summaries are plain English; make a list of clearly important changes and leave it to code readers to figure out and fill in the specifics.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Mutations''
| Make sure every mutation in the game is on one of the [[List of mutations|mutation pages]] and that there is a redirect (uppercase and lowercase) to the section where it is documented. Don't bother with numbers after the mutation (e.g., just do [[Deformed Body]]/[[deformed body]] instead of [[Deformed Body 1]] etc.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Unstub-a-dub-dub''
| Add anything you can to any of the pages in [[:Category:Stubs]]. If you add a lot of stuff, remove <nowiki>{{stub}}</nowiki>.
| Anyone
| Ongoing
|-
| ''Habitat-tat''
| Rewrite [[habitat]] to properly describe the habitats LAND, WATER, AMPHIBIOUS, LAVA, and "fake amphibious".
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Half staff''
| Add [[Template:Item]], [[Template:Flavour]] to the [[:Category:Magical staves]] pages. Some [[:Category:Wand]] pages are lacking flavour too.
| [[User:Seriser6]]
| Done - most of this was already done, I only had to flavour up a few wands
|-
| ''Splitsville''
| Split all items on the [[evocable items]] page onto their own pages, leave behind overviews and links to the individual pages.
| [[User:MoogleDan]], though help is welcome
| Started
|-
| ''Practical magic resistance''
| Add a chart of what the bell curve for random2(100) + random2(101) is to the [[MR]] page. The scale would be spell power minus MR, with the low bound being -100 (0% success); midpoint -1 (I think?) (50% success); and high bound 100 (100% success). Could just be a table of values in increments of 10, not a graph, though the latter would be fancy.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Update/expand portal and vault pages''
| Go through the [http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=tree;f=crawl-ref/source/dat/des/portals;h=9e10d9a155f11176301498aa37de2847b493ef75;hb=HEAD portal] and [http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=tree;f=crawl-ref/source/dat/des/variable;h=11076c55fdb8ab29193aee32649733cbc27b55f1;hb=HEAD vault] source pages to update/expand our coverage of said dungeon features.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Merge portal pages''
| [[Portal]] and [[Dungeon_branches#Miscellaneous_Portals]] overlap heavily; merge any useful info from the branches page into the specialized portal page.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Add spell info''
| Peruse the [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhvL_CFCw7ajdEZ5Q3JoOS1tdUxta1NaWTZ1MVNqbXc#gid=6 DCSS spell lab] -- click on the "Spells" tab -- to add basic stats about spells to our spell pages. Especially damage figures.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''[[Resistances]]''
| Edit the [[resistances]] page to broaden it to mention monster resistances. Currently it is totally player-centric.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Import info''
| Go through [http://crawl.akrasiac.org/learndb.html Henzell's learndb] and copy any useful info to appropriate pages (or create new ones).
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Resistible enchantments''
| Create a list of things (spells, wands, scrolls, etc.) that are resisted by monster [[magic resistance]]. Give the formula for how effective a given amount of resistance is vs. each thing so you know when to give up on using that wand of confusion & suchlike.
| vacant; may need some [[source diving]] skills
| not started
|-
| ''Merge candidates''
| Consolidate [[Multizap]] and [[The Multizapper's Handbook]]. Unnecessary to have two pages on the same basic subject, even if one is more technical and the other more strategic.
| vacant
| probably done?
|-
| ''A template in every pot''
| Make sure all [[:Category:Spells]] are using [[Template:Spell]], all [[:Category:Items]] are using [[Template:Item]].
| [[User:Seriser6]]
| In progress, slow and tedious.
|-
| ''Establish new version update procedures''
| We need some sort of routine in place -- at the very least, a checklist -- to follow when a new version is released, so we can keep the wiki up-to-date. This should include rerunning our autogeneration scripts and uploading the results. Potentially tricky, since the scripts may need updating from version to version and people don't hang around for years. So we need a plan of succession for our script maintainers/guru(s).
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Update spell table pages''
| [[List of spells/parse-spl-data]] was used to generate the following pages:
* [[List of spells]]
* [[List of spells by level]]
* [[List of spells by school]]
* [[List of spells by flag]]
* [[List of spells by book]]
We could try extending it to update all our spell-related pages, including individual spells and spell books.
| [[User:CommanderC]]
| not started
|-
| ''Outdated spell table pages''
| [[List of attack spells and beams by maximum damage]] and [[Table of attack spells and beams by maximum range]] need updating. Maybe Neil's script can be extended to redo them.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Fill in spell damages''
| Someone needs to do some source diving to fill in what the damage, duration, etc. are for several different spells: [[Tornado]], [[Ice Storm]], [[Fire Storm]], [[Freezing Cloud]], etc. We could potentially grab some of this from [[List of attack spells and beams by maximum damage]], provided the figures haven't changed too radically.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Merge community, community portal pages''
| [[Community]] and [[CrawlWiki:Community Portal]] pages have overlapping purpose. Merge community to community portal and update the [[CrawlWiki|main page]] to reflect the updated community page and its content.
| vacant
| not started
|-
| ''Review categories''
| Rename any obtuse or long names, merge duplicates
| [[User:Flun | Flun]]
| DONE! There is still some stuff to do with the categories (i.e. placing categories into appropriate parent categories, but that will be for another time)
|-
| ''Fix some redundancies''
| Consolidate redundant/out-of-date tables & info in [[stats]], [[species attributes]], and [[player]]. Current stats can be found in http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=blob;f=crawl-ref/source/ng-setup.cc -- bearing in mind that you must add 2 to all those figures. Also note that that page is from [[trunk]]; MD has been removed and Op is in.
| Vacant!
| Not started
|}

== Past Projects ==
{|class="prettytable"
! Project !! Goal !! Status
|-
| ''A template in every book''
| Create a [[Template:Spellbook]] and convert all [[:Category:book|spellbook pages]] to use it, for ease of maintenance and consistency of styling.
| {{Done}}
|-
| 0.11 Update Project
| See [[Current_projects/0.11_update_project]]
| {{Done}}
|-
| ''Update info on monster pages''
| The monster stats were extracted from the source and uploaded in bulk a couple of years ago. Update the extracting script ([[User:Wideshanks/monsterparse.rb]]) to handle changes to the source; expand its functionality as much as possible to include stuff like what spells monsters have (and how much damage they do) and to reflect resistances not in mon-data.h (like negative energy, torment, confusion, etc.). Also figure out way to automate upload of new data to the wiki.

The source code of the program we are currently using can be found [https://gitorious.org/crawl-wiki-monster-bot/crawl-wiki-monster-bot here]. Based on the same program used by the IRC bots.
| {{Done}}
|-
| Monster Group Pages
| Create separate pages for a monster, the group of monsters, and if needed, the player race. For example, see [[Spriggan (monster)]], [[List of spriggans]], and [[Spriggan]]. In the list page, make sure to add the [[:Category:Lists of monsters]] at the bottom. We should also add reference links to the list page to every monster on that list. For example, [[Spriggan (monster)]] has a link to [[List of spriggans]], we should do it for [[Spriggan druid]] etc... Other pages that need to be done included [[Merfolk]], [[Gnoll]], [[Deep elf]].
| {{Done}}
|-
| ''What was that?''
| Update [[spell noise]] with the info on [[Talk:spell noise]]. Optional: add detailed spell noise info to individual spell pages (via an expanded [[Template:Spell]]?).
| {{Done}}
|-
| 0.10 Update Project
| See [[Current_projects/0.10_update_project]]
| {{Done}}
|-
| ''Expand attack flavour''
| [[Attack flavour]] needs filling in.
| Done.
|-
| ''Attack types''
| Do some source diving to figure out what all the different [[attack type]]s do (sting, butt, shoot, etc.). See http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&target=Attack+type&namespace=10 for a list of the wiki's attack type templates.
| Done.
|-
| ''Armour time-to-wear''
| All body armour takes AC+1 turns to wear or remove; see [[Armour#Wear_and_remove_times]]. Add the weartime parameter to all armour templates.
| Done.
|-
| ''Monster zapper''
| Add the formula for what spell power monsters get when they use wands to the [[wand]] page. Old formula was "30 + 2d([[hit dice]]). The part over 40 is halved (a power of 80 thus becomes a power of 60). Final power is capped at 70." Is it still correct?
| Done; current formula seems to be 30+[[hit dice]], although it's not clear what value is used for most enchantments.
|-
| ''0.9.2''
| Add info about the [[0.9.2]] release to the wiki. See [http://git.develz.org/?p=crawl.git;a=blob;f=crawl-ref/docs/changelog.txt;h=b3cef7b43014f705443ce9d636bfadd6302a3b78;hb=33895e9a0446bc438a5dec2b39a335824ce23bf6].
| Done.
|-
| ''Merge [[megabat]] and [[bat]]''
| [[Template:Monster]] is a complication here; the uploader of all our current tiles changed it to ignore the "tile" parameter and instead automatically use pagename. The monster page updates, below, should clear the way for fixing the tile parameter.
| Done.
|-
| '' Fix size templates ''
| Move the templates in [[:Category:Size]] to [[:Category:Size templates]]. Also edit these templates so that they add the category "Foo monsters" instead of just "Foo" to the page. For example, Template:big will categorize monster pages with this flag to "Big monsters" instead of just "Big". Finally, verify the old category (i.e. [[:Category:Big]]) to see if there are any monsters that were not using the template and fix them.
| Done!
|-
| ''Add flavour to pages''
| See [[:Category:Articles_Without_Flavour]]
| Done.
|-
| ''Crawl graphics''
| Upload Dungeon Crawl's graphical tiles and place them in the relevant articles.
| Done.
|-
| ''Style guide''
| Create a style guide.
| Done.
|-
| ''Redirect messages''
| Redirect all in-game messages to appropriate articles.
| Not completed / Do we want to do this?
|-
| ''Crawl documents''
| Create pages for all Dungeon Crawl documents.
| Finished for Stone Soup, original Crawl versions are needed.
|-
| ''Source code''
| Upload wikified source code for all major versions.
| Hell no, that's what the git repository is for.
|-
| ''Items''
| Represent every Dungeon Crawl item with its own article, including an infobox.
| Done.
|-
| ''0.7.0''
| Create articles on 0.7.0's new features.
| Done.
|-
| ''Categories''
| Separate categories and articles.
| Done.
|-
| ''Crawl versions''
| Create an article for every version of Crawl.
| Finished for Stone Soup, original Crawl versions are needed.
|}

[[Category:Community]]
[[Category:Maintenance]]

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

2013-09-15T23:10:24Z

Snyrand: created appropriate redirect

#redirect [[Dungeon Crawl]]

Strength weight

2013-09-15T23:03:54Z

Snyrand: improved a bit based on knowledge base entry. I hope this is all correct and useful!

{{stub}}
Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons, armour and shields benefit more from [[strength]] than from [[dexterity]], and also tend to require more strength to use properly in the first place. '''Strength weighting''' (abbreviated "str weight") is an attribute that determines relatively how much a character's Str and Dex affect a given weapon's damage output.

A given str weight value can be viewed as a quotient expressed as a percentage: the "amount of effect" that Str has on a weapon divided by the total amount of effect that Str and Dex together have on it. So a str weight of 100% (such as with a [[giant club]]) implies that strength is all that really matters when using it. Conversely, 0% (eg. [[quick blade]]) implies that strength has an very small effect on how well a weapon performs.

Almost all weapons fall somewhere in between the two extremes. The weighted average of strength and dexterity affects both damage potential and [[to-hit]], the former being affected more by strength and the latter being affected more by dexterity. Thus note that that even 0% and 100% strength weightings don't imply that either stat has no effect: more dex always implies better to-hit and more str always implies higher per-hit damage. Ergo, 50% str weight still implies that dex has a bigger effect than str on to-hit, and conversely with str and damage.

Strength weight

2013-09-15T22:50:14Z

Snyrand: Created page with "{{stub}} Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons, armour and shields benefit more from strength than from dexterity, and also tend to require more strength to use properly..."

{{stub}}
Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons, armour and shields benefit more from [[strength]] than from [[dexterity]], and also tend to require more strength to use properly in the first place. '''Strength weighting''' (abbreviated "str weight") is an attribute that determines relatively how much a character's Str and Dex affect a given weapon's damage output.

A given str weight value can be viewed as a quotient expressed as a percentage: the "amount of effect" that Str has on a weapon divided by the total amount of effect that Str and Dex together have on it. So a str weight of 100% (such as with a [[giant club]]) implies that once the weapon scores a hit, strength is all that really affects the damage that it deals. Conversely, 0% (eg. [[quick blade]]) implies that strength has neglegible effect on how well a weapon performs.

Almost all weapons fall somewhere in between the two extremes. Also note that even 0% and 100% strength weightings don't imply that either strength or dexterity have no effect at all: dex affects to-hit while more str always increases weapon damage (this scales with weapon base damage).

Divination

2013-09-15T22:11:52Z

Snyrand: Redirected page to Divinations

#redirect [[Divinations]]

Divination

2013-09-15T22:09:55Z

Snyrand: created redirect to Divinations

#redirect Divinations

Yrak, Naga Poison Mage

2013-09-15T21:44:28Z

Snyrand: /* D5 */

{{diary}}

So this is the second diary I've done after "The Sibylline Spiel of Hogswald Pfifflebottom III the Malodorous," which, you can probably guess, was... silly.

But this one is serious and I would appreciate comments, advice, telling me what I did was idiotic (as long as you mention what I should have done), anything you want to say, because I've never actually beaten Crawl and want to some day.

== D1 ==
Really nothing special. Found a nice +1 Dagger of Electrocution, gave it another +1, +0 trying scrolls. Found an uncursed amulet, no idea what it does. Stinging is going well, but I've heard a lot about PR monsters later on. I've never actually had a poison character make it that far, but I plan to keep a lookout for a conjuration spellbook or something.

== D2 ==
Found a +0, +2 runed quarterstaff of speed, not sure if it's better or worse than the dagger. Using it anyway, because as a mage, I'll probably end up using a magic staff of some sort if I make it decently far.

Enemies unusually mundane; So far the worst threats are hobgoblins. Found a fluorescent wand, itching to try it out on something big and angry. Granted since it's only D2, It's most likely magic darts or something, but oh well.

I used the wand on a snake. It turned out to be a wand of hasting. That fight was fun. If I were to use it on myself, I could probably manage normal speed- Woo!

== D3 ==
Memorized Mephitic Cloud, poison weapon being useless with a Quarterstaff of Speed (I don't like temporary brand spells anyway for no good reason) and cure poison being useless for a Naga. (I wouldn't have learned it anyway and saved the spell levels) Cast chance is "Good." Gooooood. Not that I'll use it for a while, I don't have enough magic.

Found a notched marble ring. Upon Identifying (found a strange amount of those so far), It's a ring of protect from cold. Good enough for me. Also found an amulet of the Gourmand! Oh goody, now I begin the slow transformation into happy civilized intelligent naga into fleshmonger mindless cannibal naga. Traveled around the level, eating everything that left a body. Got sick from eating a jackal, but otherwise it went just fine. I didn't get full, though.

== D4 ==
Tactics so far have been hit with sting until death of the enemy or I run out of mana. It seems to be working fine. I haven't actually had to bust out Mephitic yet. Found a pair of gloves, yay. The extra 1 AC is always welcome.
Found the ghost of one of my earlier characters, a Deep Dwarf Necromancer. (one of my favorite classes) Ran away, it didn't notice me. I couldn't have hurt it except by clubbing it to death, which would not have been smart.

Found a +2 animal skin, which made my AC 5, pretty decent for a caster of level 5. The Ghost found me again, and noticed me before I could slip away. Thinking I was doomed, since even with the wand of haste I could only match its speed, I grimly waited for it and took it on in melee combat. To my great surprise, I killed it and barely took any damage.

The next highlight was an ogre, who I zapped with an unidentified wand. It turned out to be a teleport wand. After exploring the level, realized I only mapped 2 up stairs and 2 down stairs. This of course means I had another section of D4 to explore. Very little was inside the second section. I found some giant geckos and a goblin. I never found that ogre.

== D5 ==
A giant frog attacked me while I was butchering a rat. And so I killed it. Still have not cast mephitic cloud. Found a giant frog zombie, which worried me, (anything immune to poison worries me) but I killed it. After fighting two more zombies and wondering where they were coming from, I found another ring. Identified, it was a cursed +6 ring of protection. I put it on, and used one of my remove curses on it, I think unnecessarily.

Got attacked by an imp, possibly the enemy I hate most. I beat it to death though. Found a second ring of protection from cold.
Found a scroll of curse armor. This irritated me into action, and I dumped it and all other junk scrolls into a neat pile on the floor. One thing I do hate about .5 is it picks up junk scrolls and potions on autoexplore.

== D6 ==
Phantom sitting on what was probably the entrance to the temple, judging by the four fountains around it. Ran upstairs to plot and write this. Dumped the phantom upstairs with the scrolls and proceeded to the temple.

== Temple ==
I picked Sif Muna as my god over Vehumet, (Pretty much the only two I ever pick for non-necromancer spellcasters, probably dumb.) because I'm interested in her giving me spellbooks, though I do know Vehumet will do this also. Usually I prefer Vehumet, because he doesn't care how I kill, only that I do, which is nice when I'm decent at melee too. I don't know, I just don't know about gods.

== Back on D6 ==
I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas, accompanied by a group of orcs. I killed it with a wand of magic darts, not waking up the orcs. Then I woke up the orcs. Violently.
Turns out they had backup from an orc warrior. I do love mephitic cloud. It made the warrior easy prey, and I could mop up his minions without trouble.

I read a scroll of Immolation, (just reading scrolls is my strategy for Identification) and somehow did not damage myself. It attracted a giant frog, who did hurt me. But not as much as I hurt it. In short sucession, I then ran into an Ice Beast, (who turned out to be immune to poison) 4 gnolls, and 2 orc warriors. I nearly died from the second one. I realized I needed a better damage spell, and memorized Venom Bolt, which I've never used before. I tried it out on a sleeping orc, miscasting twice and then one hit killing it with sting. My cast rate with Venom Bolt is 'Very Good.'

Found a Mummy, who didn't find me. I ran away, not wanting to deal with melee and being cursed. Eventually, I ran into it again and it saw me. I then casted venom bolt in desperation, moderately damaging it. Perhaps spells dealing poisoning also deal 'regular' damage? Perhaps mummies aren't immune to poison? Could be either or both. I never found out what the mummy cursed, just used remove curse and moved on.

== D7 ==
Fought and easily killed Blork the Orc, then Edmund, (during the fight I miscasted Venom Bolt, causing a huge explosion Edmund was just outside the range of. Damn!) then, hilariously, Ijyb. Got skill 1 in air magic, and turned it off. I didn't want to narrow my horizons too much till I found a second spellbook. Found a necrophage, and ran. I didn't want to rot. I had a change of heart when I saw I had 6 potions of heal wounds. It only rotted me a little bit.

== D8 ==
Found 'A Hardcover Book!' Wonder what's inside... the book of the Earth is what it is. Hmm. I decided not to make use of it, since I would then have to learn Transmutation and Earth Magic, which conflicts with Mephitic Cloud, and I couldn't use the first spell, given I had an already-branded weapon. (A now +2+2 Quarterstaff of speed. It still serves me well.) I'm not interested in magic mapping or dig, either. So earth is a no-go.

Found a +4 ring of protection, and switched it for my ring of protection from cold. I'm a sucker for stat boosts. Now AC 17 EV 10 SH 0. Sif Muna gave me the power to forget spells, but since sting still works fine on weaker enemies, I didn't make use of it.

Suddenly, I heard many, many distant slurping noises! NOOO! NOT MY LOOT! The level still mostly unexplored, I was forced to retreat downstairs by a massive group of Jellies.

== D11/10==
I found myself in D11, I think due to a shaft trap. But I was in the company of a Troll and a Five-Headed Hydra, neither of which would be much fun to fight. I ran up the nearest stairwell to D10 and began looking for a way to D9, to normalize things a bit. It was then I opened a door to this:

Exp Pool: 1 Place: Dungeon:10
#.###@######## Wp: o) +2 quarterstaff (speed)
#. #J# Qv: d) +2,+1 dagger (elec)
#. JJJ Very Full
#. #JJf#
#. fJJfJ J _ giant amoeba
#.#fJJJJ# JJJJJJJ 10 jellies
.#ffJJf# J 7 oozes
##JfJ##
J.f

EEP! Not knowing what else to do, I hasted myself and ran upstairs again.

== D9 ==
I then ran into an orc priest and warrior, dipatching them fairly easily. Trying out potions for the first time in a while, I drank a potion of rotting and lost a good 20 hitpoints. Soon after it told me the level was fully explored. Crap. That meant I had to go either downstairs and face the jellies, or two levels down, to dance with a troll and a hydra. I'll see if I can manage the Jelly problem.

== D10, Again ==
Slowly, very slowly, I picked off the Jellies, only corroding my staff once. I then found a yellowed book, the Book of Transformations. Cool. I picked up the spell spider form, since an average of my transmutation and my poison skills would be 6, and the spell is level 3. It'll be irritating to re-equip myself when the spell's effect ends, though. After trying the spell out, it seems to work fine (especially as an escape ability) and they fixed the .4.5 problem of having to re-equip everything. Still, it isn't what I wanted. It's still a poison spell, and I need to get a fire conjuration or something like that.

And just like that, I'd cleared and looted D10, meaning I had to face my fears in the form of hydras and trolls. I've never actually fought a hydra before, you know.

== D11 ==
The hydra was waiting at the staircase, along with the troll and a giant bat. Dropping a mephitic cloud took care of the troll, but the hydra seemed immune. I tried out my many unidentified wands on it. None did anything, and it killed me. Anticlimatic, I know, but that's how most Crawl games are.

--[[User:Incomp|Incomp]] 14:05, 13 July 2009 (MDT)

== Comments ==
I know this dairy page is really old, but I'm going to go ahead and make a few comments I that think are still relevant to playing NaVM in 0.12. Heh, I need some place to practice non-trivial wiki editing/making comments where I can't cause any real damage (so if this happens to be entirely useless I'd just consider it an exercise). I'm no expert at Crawl, but NaVM has been my focus for a while and I've gotten quite good at it. Here goes:

[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

=== D1 ===
Great dagger that. You might as well go ahead and level short blades to 2 or 3, after you got Sting's spell power up a bit and can cast Mephetic. I personally prefer to switch to long blades as soon as I can find a Falchion or a most lovely Great Sword, and investing a little in short blades earlier doesn't hurt that strategy.

As a rule of thumb I try not to test-identify potions, scrolls, weapons and especially jewellery during the early game. Scrolls tend to be safer but I still prefer to start try-IDing most of them only a little later on in the game.

Yeah, poison resistant monsters. Those be some beliggerent bitches. However, they are very rare this early on (except for the Ooze, which can actually still be killed with poison, especially poison spit) and this early on it is imperative to specialize in poison first. Using all of the starter Venom book spells, especially Mephetic Cloud (DONT FORGET TO USE IT) you can dominate most things. Those you can't, avoid for now. This is what makes venom mage a bit of a tightrope in the early game: you alternate between "easy victims" and "impossible predators".

=== D2 ===

Hm, that's certainly a great quarter staff but I'd leave it once I start needing skill points in weapons. Quarter staves don't mix with shields, which work fantastically with any kind of Naga.

As for wands: OK, trying out a wand on a monster right away is generally safe, but as with everything in crawl you should constantly be weighing the risks in the back of your head. I generally id my wands by zapping at walls or myself when I'm safe and secluded. Though I've sustained some nasty injuries this way, I've never come close to dying. So yeah, you were unlucky there but outright zapping that adder was a ''little'' imprudent ;)

But you got a wand of hasting, yay!

=== D3 ===
Mephitic Cloud is dope. In any given fight after D5 or so I try to never drop below 3MP so that I still have a backup escape plan in case an Ogre suddenly comes waltzing onto the scene.

Also, after a lot of dying with NaVMs I've determined that getting a point or three into Conjurations, one or two into Air once I have Mephitic, and then getting Spellcasting up to 5 (yes, five) as soon as possible is a very good strategy. The extra spellcasting gives a larger mana reservoir allowing generous use of Mephitic and making miscasts far less painful (and less frequent anyway).

Oh man, Amulet of Gourmand on level 3. Wow. That is almost as dope as Mephitic cloud itself. Munch away!

=== D4 ===
Ok, it seems you've been forgetting something very important about Nagas (or maybe the version you played didn't include it yet), that being the fact that they can spit poison (its their "breath attack"). Look in the abilities menu (A). This thing is a small but very significant part of your arsenal. It acts like a shorter ranged and more powerful version of Sting. After about D4 it becomes powerful enough to damage and kill Oozes even though they are poison resistant.

Ah yes, ghosts. Some of the most dangerous poison-resistant foes early on. Running away is generally wise, but by killing it you've probably seen how viable melee can be on a caster. It is also in my opinion extremely important for a NaVM to become melee-savvy at some point (not too early though, but greatly later on). I'd often return to higher levels a little later once I've got some melee and a long blade to slice the XP out of some crimson imps, ghosts and even Grinder. Choose your engagements wisely. Nagas' natural stealth is invaluable to this end.

Yeah, it's good to check one's up and down stairs and clear missing sections. I usually do "triple entry" anyway: as a slow Naga it is especially important to know where the upstairs on the next level are.

=== D5 ===
Killing a giant frog without using Mephitic Cloud even once? Man, what are you trying to prove? :P

"anything immune to poison worries me" hahaha, that be the truth. Early when I'm weak at melee I fight most zombies and skellies using stairs (when I'm sure there's nothing else around of course). They can't regenerate, so when I drop to around half health I just go down or up the stairs and regen.

Important thing though: Very strong zombies (trolls, hill giants, even beetles) will kill you. Avoid, silently if you can.

Don't be overzealous at removing curses. A single scroll of remove curse will dispel curses on every cursed item you currently have equipped. Ex: Found an otherwise nice helmet with a curse on? You really don't have to remove that curse until you find a better helmet (though you might do so before that because you really need to remove a cursed ring of hunger).

A ring of +6 protection is really fantastic at this point anyway, because NaVMs have lots of trouble getting AC early on, and that usually bites them in the ass a little later on when push comes to shoving in melee against poison resistant monsters.

I think killing an imp by D5 indicates distinctly better than average melee ability for a mage.

=== D6 ===
Dumping blink-prone opponents upstairs for the win!

=== Temple ===
Although I should probably show rationality, restraint and unbiasedness when it comes to deities, I'm going to take this oppertunity to say:

'''''CHEIBRIADOS! I'M A TOTAL NAGA HOAR FOR CHEI! WOOT CHEI WOOT CHEI EVERYDAY WOOT EVERYDAY IS CHEI DAY'''''

I do adore all of Sif Muna's abilities and book gifts, but I find she generally lacks the ''punch'' that Cheibriados gives. Not to mention two mega ace-up-the-sleeve abilities: Step From Time and invocations-independant irresistable damage from Slouch. Anyway, Sif lends to a more cautious and magic-focussed play styl, while Chei's gigantic passive stat boosts are the foundation for a powerful and robust hybrid build, making Chei much more appropriate for Naga Venom Mages.

Choosing Chei has, distinctly, its disadvantages such as no hasting and weapons of speed. But once you get over how absolutely terrible that seems, I'm sure you'll barely notice the absence of such vanities. ;)

=== D6 again ===
"I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas"

I will remember to quote that truth in the future.

Yep, wands are a just about the only workable tactic against jellies at this point ''however'' I have killed countless of them in the pre-mid game using Venom Bolt and a little poison spit, even though this only works once you really can cast Venom Bolt but this isn't impossible to get right early-ish with a Naga. Reliably casting Venom Bolt is also your silver bullet for dealing with orc warriors. Later on it makes for a good, easy to cast, all round, row-ripping poison damage conjuration that kills the non-PR dudes most efficaciously.

Anyway, you used Mephitic Cloud on a pack of orcs. ''Now'' you're getting the hang of this :P You know, if the orcs and jelly happened to be in a fairly tight formation and not-completely-open area then I would have woken up them all with Mephitic. There is actually a fair chance for the orcs to block and even kill the jelly in such situations while you slither away silently.

When miscasting more mana intensive spells a few times in a row and you haven't waken up your opponents yet, just step outside their line of sight for a moment and rest up before trying again. It's generally unwise to pick a fight this early on if you're missing 10 MP.

Mummies are such a pain. As are Ice Beasts. Both are poison resistant, but Venom Bolt, like poison spit, deals a small bit of physical (conjurations) damage so can go some way towards softening them. And once again, don't be overzealous uncursing stuff.

=== D8 ===
The book of Earth is dope, but only much later on. Dig is nice to have, especially in Orc, Slime, Abyss and even Zot. Statue Form (along with Dispel Undead and some AoE damage spells) turns the Tomb from terrifying to doable. I rarely if ever go for Earth-based conjurations though because they are so terrible range-wise which sits badly with mobility-impaired nagas. But yeah, Earth and Transmutations much later on because right now you need to get Mephitic Cloud and Venom Bolt better and start thinking about improving your melee and armour (or alternatively shield if you can find a buckler).

AC 17 by D8? Sheesh dude, that's fantastic. Be prepared to switch to a ring of cold when facing Ice Beasts though. They be nasty poison resistant critters.

So you have the power to forget spells? Heh, that's what you get for following Sif Muna :P By now Chei would have given you some stat increases that help both melee and spellcasting, and the ability to slow down adjacent enemies (though, annoyingly, you'd need some Invocations for this to work).

=== D11/10 and D9 ===
Oh shit, this is bad. The presence of a Hydra likely indicates the lair approaching, which is mixed good and bad (bad mostly because of, well, hydras). But at least you've got stealth at level 5+ to help cover your ass while you search your way back whence you fell, am I right? Riiiiight?

Ok, so that jelly vault is real bad luck, too. Though it's no sure-fire solution, Stealth can help a lot when happening upon those vaults, so even if a few of them notice you you can still close the door and they won't follow you because their oblivious friends block the way.

Potion of rotting. This is why I don't quaff-id potions. Well, that and the freaking countless number of times I've gotten good, bad and ugly mutations even before D6.

=== D10, again ===
Taking on the Jellies is brave. Definitely not stupid, but still somewhat optimistic. Even so, your character has shown above average melee damage output so maybe it's not even much of a stretch. You could have softened up Jellies a lot with Venom Bolt, one on one or in corridors.

Personally I would have tried to clear one or two levels below the level of the troll and hydra, then come back for the jellies and then maybe consider luring the troll downstairs and hitting it with Mephitic. That hydra is just such an enormous risk, and like with Grinder I'd usually entirely skip a level until much later if it has a hydra on it.

Spider Form is nice for running away with, but most of the time I'd rather take Summon Scorpions, and I usually don't take even that. Still, that's just me; one can play this game in so many different ways.

Yes, at some point you will need to get other conjurations. Iskenderun's Mystic Blast coupled with the more recent Battlesphere are utter dope during the first half of the lair. After that Battlesphere falls out of the bus but Mystic Blast can remain a part of your kit for the entire game.

=== Fatality ===
Well, confusing the Troll is a great idea, but...

Hydras are poison resistant (so Mephetic does nothing). Hydras are fast. Hydras regenerate quickly. Hydras can't be dealt with using non-flamey edged weapons, in fact at this XP level no weapon will help you deal with a hydra (although later on fiery blades become a hard counter against hydras -- protip: [bottled] Efreets are a great source for flamey swords). In short: for how early they appear, hydras are an absolute terror.

I have, however, killed many of them using only Venom Bolt. This is not easy at all. I much rather reccomend the aforementioned Iskenderuns' spells to take them out, if you can find them.

This scenario of two or more very dangerous opponents would have been a great place to drop Chei's Slouch ability repeatedly. Slouch is the other thing I've killed many hydras with once I get to the lair. However it is unlikely you'd have levelled Invo or Piety high enough to cast it effectively yet by this point. So this brings me to what I think you undoubtedly should have done in this situation:

(that is, besides not going down a stair in range of a hydra in the first place -- use Shift-X and then E to place exclusions on the level map, I always use this on dangerous sleeping enemies or areas)

=== Likely alternative solution ===
Zap yourself with that teleport wand, maybe even run upstairs, and then find some downstairs to get the fuck past that hydra. You could even have dumped the hydra there on D10 by teleporting yourself this way and then going back downstairs via a different route. Either way 17 AC says that you could have been able to survive long enough for at least one teleport to kick in.

There you have it. I admit this turned out way more long-winded and verbose than I expected. As a somewhat salted NaVM user it was fun for me to write down my thoughts on your playing, and hopefully my analysis will prove useful to whoever else comes by to read it.

Good luck, have fun, and keep on crawling!

[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

Yrak, Naga Poison Mage

2013-09-15T21:24:58Z

Snyrand: /* Comments */

{{diary}}

So this is the second diary I've done after "The Sibylline Spiel of Hogswald Pfifflebottom III the Malodorous," which, you can probably guess, was... silly.

But this one is serious and I would appreciate comments, advice, telling me what I did was idiotic (as long as you mention what I should have done), anything you want to say, because I've never actually beaten Crawl and want to some day.

== D1 ==
Really nothing special. Found a nice +1 Dagger of Electrocution, gave it another +1, +0 trying scrolls. Found an uncursed amulet, no idea what it does. Stinging is going well, but I've heard a lot about PR monsters later on. I've never actually had a poison character make it that far, but I plan to keep a lookout for a conjuration spellbook or something.

== D2 ==
Found a +0, +2 runed quarterstaff of speed, not sure if it's better or worse than the dagger. Using it anyway, because as a mage, I'll probably end up using a magic staff of some sort if I make it decently far.

Enemies unusually mundane; So far the worst threats are hobgoblins. Found a fluorescent wand, itching to try it out on something big and angry. Granted since it's only D2, It's most likely magic darts or something, but oh well.

I used the wand on a snake. It turned out to be a wand of hasting. That fight was fun. If I were to use it on myself, I could probably manage normal speed- Woo!

== D3 ==
Memorized Mephitic Cloud, poison weapon being useless with a Quarterstaff of Speed (I don't like temporary brand spells anyway for no good reason) and cure poison being useless for a Naga. (I wouldn't have learned it anyway and saved the spell levels) Cast chance is "Good." Gooooood. Not that I'll use it for a while, I don't have enough magic.

Found a notched marble ring. Upon Identifying (found a strange amount of those so far), It's a ring of protect from cold. Good enough for me. Also found an amulet of the Gourmand! Oh goody, now I begin the slow transformation into happy civilized intelligent naga into fleshmonger mindless cannibal naga. Traveled around the level, eating everything that left a body. Got sick from eating a jackal, but otherwise it went just fine. I didn't get full, though.

== D4 ==
Tactics so far have been hit with sting until death of the enemy or I run out of mana. It seems to be working fine. I haven't actually had to bust out Mephitic yet. Found a pair of gloves, yay. The extra 1 AC is always welcome.
Found the ghost of one of my earlier characters, a Deep Dwarf Necromancer. (one of my favorite classes) Ran away, it didn't notice me. I couldn't have hurt it except by clubbing it to death, which would not have been smart.

Found a +2 animal skin, which made my AC 5, pretty decent for a caster of level 5. The Ghost found me again, and noticed me before I could slip away. Thinking I was doomed, since even with the wand of haste I could only match its speed, I grimly waited for it and took it on in melee combat. To my great surprise, I killed it and barely took any damage.

The next highlight was an ogre, who I zapped with an unidentified wand. It turned out to be a teleport wand. After exploring the level, realized I only mapped 2 up stairs and 2 down stairs. This of course means I had another section of D4 to explore. Very little was inside the second section. I found some giant geckos and a goblin. I never found that ogre.

== D5 ==
A giant frog attacked me while I was butchering a rat. And so I killed it. Still have not cast mephitic cloud. Found a giant frog zombie, which worried me, (anything immune to poison worries me) but I killed it. After fighting two more zombies and wondering where they were coming from, I found another ring. Identified, it was a cursed +6 ring of protection. I put it on, and used one of my remove curses on it, I think unnecessarily.

Got attacked by an imp, possibly the enemy I hate most. I beat it to death though. Found a second ring of protection from cold.
Found a scroll of curse armor. This irritated me into action, and I dumped it and all other junk scrolls into a neat pile on the floor. One thing I do hate about .5 is it picks up junk scrolls and potions on autoexplore.

== D6 ==
Phantom sitting on what was probably the entrance to the temple, judging by the four fountains around it. Ran upstairs to plot and write this. Dumped the phantom upstairs with the scrolls and proceeded to the temple.

== Temple ==
I picked Sif Muna as my god over Vehumet, (Pretty much the only two I ever pick for non-necromancer spellcasters, probably dumb.) because I'm interested in her giving me spellbooks, though I do know Vehumet will do this also. Usually I prefer Vehumet, because he doesn't care how I kill, only that I do, which is nice when I'm decent at melee too. I don't know, I just don't know about gods.

== Back on D6 ==
I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas, accompanied by a group of orcs. I killed it with a wand of magic darts, not waking up the orcs. Then I woke up the orcs. Violently.
Turns out they had backup from an orc warrior. I do love mephitic cloud. It made the warrior easy prey, and I could mop up his minions without trouble.

I read a scroll of Immolation, (just reading scrolls is my strategy for Identification) and somehow did not damage myself. It attracted a giant frog, who did hurt me. But not as much as I hurt it. In short sucession, I then ran into an Ice Beast, (who turned out to be immune to poison) 4 gnolls, and 2 orc warriors. I nearly died from the second one. I realized I needed a better damage spell, and memorized Venom Bolt, which I've never used before. I tried it out on a sleeping orc, miscasting twice and then one hit killing it with sting. My cast rate with Venom Bolt is 'Very Good.'

Found a Mummy, who didn't find me. I ran away, not wanting to deal with melee and being cursed. Eventually, I ran into it again and it saw me. I then casted venom bolt in desperation, moderately damaging it. Perhaps spells dealing poisoning also deal 'regular' damage? Perhaps mummies aren't immune to poison? Could be either or both. I never found out what the mummy cursed, just used remove curse and moved on.

== D7 ==
Fought and easily killed Blork the Orc, then Edmund, (during the fight I miscasted Venom Bolt, causing a huge explosion Edmund was just outside the range of. Damn!) then, hilariously, Ijyb. Got skill 1 in air magic, and turned it off. I didn't want to narrow my horizons too much till I found a second spellbook. Found a necrophage, and ran. I didn't want to rot. I had a change of heart when I saw I had 6 potions of heal wounds. It only rotted me a little bit.

== D8 ==
Found 'A Hardcover Book!' Wonder what's inside... the book of the Earth is what it is. Hmm. I decided not to make use of it, since I would then have to learn Transmutation and Earth Magic, which conflicts with Mephitic Cloud, and I couldn't use the first spell, given I had an already-branded weapon. (A now +2+2 Quarterstaff of speed. It still serves me well.) I'm not interested in magic mapping or dig, either. So earth is a no-go.

Found a +4 ring of protection, and switched it for my ring of protection from cold. I'm a sucker for stat boosts. Now AC 17 EV 10 SH 0. Sif Muna gave me the power to forget spells, but since sting still works fine on weaker enemies, I didn't make use of it.

Suddenly, I heard many, many distant slurping noises! NOOO! NOT MY LOOT! The level still mostly unexplored, I was forced to retreat downstairs by a massive group of Jellies.

== D11/10==
I found myself in D11, I think due to a shaft trap. But I was in the company of a Troll and a Five-Headed Hydra, neither of which would be much fun to fight. I ran up the nearest stairwell to D10 and began looking for a way to D9, to normalize things a bit. It was then I opened a door to this:

Exp Pool: 1 Place: Dungeon:10
#.###@######## Wp: o) +2 quarterstaff (speed)
#. #J# Qv: d) +2,+1 dagger (elec)
#. JJJ Very Full
#. #JJf#
#. fJJfJ J _ giant amoeba
#.#fJJJJ# JJJJJJJ 10 jellies
.#ffJJf# J 7 oozes
##JfJ##
J.f

EEP! Not knowing what else to do, I hasted myself and ran upstairs again.

== D9 ==
I then ran into an orc priest and warrior, dipatching them fairly easily. Trying out potions for the first time in a while, I drank a potion of rotting and lost a good 20 hitpoints. Soon after it told me the level was fully explored. Crap. That meant I had to go either downstairs and face the jellies, or two levels down, to dance with a troll and a hydra. I'll see if I can manage the Jelly problem.

== D10, Again ==
Slowly, very slowly, I picked off the Jellies, only corroding my staff once. I then found a yellowed book, the Book of Transformations. Cool. I picked up the spell spider form, since an average of my transmutation and my poison skills would be 6, and the spell is level 3. It'll be irritating to re-equip myself when the spell's effect ends, though. After trying the spell out, it seems to work fine (especially as an escape ability) and they fixed the .4.5 problem of having to re-equip everything. Still, it isn't what I wanted. It's still a poison spell, and I need to get a fire conjuration or something like that.

And just like that, I'd cleared and looted D10, meaning I had to face my fears in the form of hydras and trolls. I've never actually fought a hydra before, you know.

== D11 ==
The hydra was waiting at the staircase, along with the troll and a giant bat. Dropping a mephitic cloud took care of the troll, but the hydra seemed immune. I tried out my many unidentified wands on it. None did anything, and it killed me. Anticlimatic, I know, but that's how most Crawl games are.

--[[User:Incomp|Incomp]] 14:05, 13 July 2009 (MDT)

== Comments ==
I know this dairy page is really old, but I'm going to go ahead and make a few comments I that think are still relevant to playing NaVM in 0.12. Heh, I need some place to practice non-trivial wiki editing/making comments where I can't cause any real damage (so if this happens to be entirely useless I'd just consider it an exercise). I'm no expert at Crawl, but NaVM has been my focus for a while and I've gotten quite good at it. Here goes:

[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

=== D1 ===
Great dagger that. You might as well go ahead and level short blades to 2 or 3, after you got Sting's spell power up a bit and can cast Mephetic. I personally prefer to switch to long blades as soon as I can find a Falchion or a most lovely Great Sword, and investing a little in short blades earlier doesn't hurt that strategy.

As a rule of thumb I try not to test-identify potions, scrolls, weapons and especially jewellery during the early game. Scrolls tend to be safer but I still prefer to start try-IDing most of them only a little later on in the game.

Yeah, poison resistant monsters. Those be some beliggerent bitches. However, they are very rare this early on (except for the Ooze, which can actually still be killed with poison, especially poison spit) and this early on it is imperative to specialize in poison first. Using all of the starter Venom book spells, especially Mephetic Cloud (DONT FORGET TO USE IT) you can dominate most things. Those you can't, avoid for now. This is what makes venom mage a bit of a tightrope in the early game: you alternate between "easy victims" and "impossible predators".

=== D2 ===

Hm, that's certainly a great quarter staff but I'd leave it once I start needing skill points in weapons. Quarter staves don't mix with shields, which work fantastically with any kind of Naga.

As for wands: OK, trying out a wand on a monster right away is generally safe, but as with everything in crawl you should constantly be weighing the risks in the back of your head. I generally id my wands by zapping at walls or myself when I'm safe and secluded. Though I've sustained some nasty injuries this way, I've never come close to dying. So yeah, you were unlucky there but outright zapping that adder was a ''little'' imprudent ;)

But you got a wand of hasting, yay!

=== D3 ===
Mephitic Cloud is dope. In any given fight after D5 or so I try to never drop below 3MP so that I still have a backup escape plan in case an Ogre suddenly comes waltzing onto the scene.

Also, after a lot of dying with NaVMs I've determined that getting a point or three into Conjurations, one or two into Air once I have Mephitic, and then getting Spellcasting up to 5 (yes, five) as soon as possible is a very good strategy. The extra spellcasting gives a larger mana reservoir allowing generous use of Mephitic and making miscasts far less painful (and less frequent anyway).

Oh man, Amulet of Gourmand on level 3. Wow. That is almost as dope as Mephitic cloud itself. Munch away!

=== D4 ===
Ok, it seems you've been forgetting something very important about Nagas (or maybe the version you played didn't include it yet), that being the fact that they can spit poison (its their "breath attack"). Look in the abilities menu (A). This thing is a small but very significant part of your arsenal. It acts like a shorter ranged and more powerful version of Sting. After about D4 it becomes powerful enough to damage and kill Oozes even though they are poison resistant.

Ah yes, ghosts. Some of the most dangerous poison-resistant foes early on. Running away is generally wise, but by killing it you've probably seen how viable melee can be on a caster. It is also in my opinion extremely important for a NaVM to become melee-savvy at some point (not too early though, but greatly later on). I'd often return to higher levels a little later once I've got some melee and a long blade to slice the XP out of some crimson imps, ghosts and even Grinder. Choose your engagements wisely. Nagas' natural stealth is invaluable to this end.

Yeah, it's good to check one's up and down stairs and clear missing sections. I usually do "triple entry" anyway: as a slow Naga it is especially important to know where the upstairs on the next level are.

=== D5 ===
Killing a giant frog without using Mephitic Cloud even once? Man, what are you trying to prove? :P

"anything immune to poison worries me" hahaha, that be the truth. Early when I'm weak at melee I fight even strong zombies and skellies using stairs (when I'm sure there's nothing else around of course). They can't regenerate, so when I drop to around half health I just go down or up the stairs and regen.

Important thing though: Troll zombies will kill you, because unlike Trolls you can't Mephitic them. Avoid, silently if you can.

Don't be overzealous at removing curses. A single scroll of remove curse will dispel curses on every cursed item you currently have equipped. Ex: Found an otherwise nice helmet with a curse on? You really don't have to remove that curse until you find a better helmet (though you might do so before that because you really need to remove a cursed ring of hunger).

A ring of +6 protection is really fantastic at this point anyway, because NaVMs have lots of trouble getting AC early on, and that usually bites them in the ass a little later on when push comes to shoving in melee against poison resistant monsters.

I think killing an imp by D5 indicates distinctly better than average melee ability for a mage.

=== D6 ===
Dumping blink-prone opponents upstairs for the win!

=== Temple ===
Although I should probably show rationality, restraint and unbiasedness when it comes to deities, I'm going to take this oppertunity to say:

'''''CHEIBRIADOS! I'M A TOTAL NAGA HOAR FOR CHEI! WOOT CHEI WOOT CHEI EVERYDAY WOOT EVERYDAY IS CHEI DAY'''''

I do adore all of Sif Muna's abilities and book gifts, but I find she generally lacks the ''punch'' that Cheibriados gives. Not to mention two mega ace-up-the-sleeve abilities: Step From Time and invocations-independant irresistable damage from Slouch. Anyway, Sif lends to a more cautious and magic-focussed play styl, while Chei's gigantic passive stat boosts are the foundation for a powerful and robust hybrid build, making Chei much more appropriate for Naga Venom Mages.

Choosing Chei has, distinctly, its disadvantages such as no hasting and weapons of speed. But once you get over how absolutely terrible that seems, I'm sure you'll barely notice the absence of such vanities. ;)

=== D6 again ===
"I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas"

I will remember to quote that truth in the future.

Yep, wands are a just about the only workable tactic against jellies at this point ''however'' I have killed countless of them in the pre-mid game using Venom Bolt and a little poison spit, even though this only works once you really can cast Venom Bolt but this isn't impossible to get right early-ish with a Naga. Reliably casting Venom Bolt is also your silver bullet for dealing with orc warriors. Later on it makes for a good, easy to cast, all round, row-ripping poison damage conjuration that kills the non-PR dudes most efficaciously.

Anyway, you used Mephitic Cloud on a pack of orcs. ''Now'' you're getting the hang of this :P You know, if the orcs and jelly happened to be in a fairly tight formation and not-completely-open area then I would have woken up them all with Mephitic. There is actually a fair chance for the orcs to block and even kill the jelly in such situations while you slither away silently.

When miscasting more mana intensive spells a few times in a row and you haven't waken up your opponents yet, just step outside their line of sight for a moment and rest up before trying again. It's generally unwise to pick a fight this early on if you're missing 10 MP.

Mummies are such a pain. As are Ice Beasts. Both are poison resistant, but Venom Bolt, like poison spit, deals a small bit of physical (conjurations) damage so can go some way towards softening them. And once again, don't be overzealous uncursing stuff.

=== D8 ===
The book of Earth is dope, but only much later on. Dig is nice to have, especially in Orc, Slime, Abyss and even Zot. Statue Form (along with Dispel Undead and some AoE damage spells) turns the Tomb from terrifying to doable. I rarely if ever go for Earth-based conjurations though because they are so terrible range-wise which sits badly with mobility-impaired nagas. But yeah, Earth and Transmutations much later on because right now you need to get Mephitic Cloud and Venom Bolt better and start thinking about improving your melee and armour (or alternatively shield if you can find a buckler).

AC 17 by D8? Sheesh dude, that's fantastic. Be prepared to switch to a ring of cold when facing Ice Beasts though. They be nasty poison resistant critters.

So you have the power to forget spells? Heh, that's what you get for following Sif Muna :P By now Chei would have given you some stat increases that help both melee and spellcasting, and the ability to slow down adjacent enemies (though, annoyingly, you'd need some Invocations for this to work).

=== D11/10 and D9 ===
Oh shit, this is bad. The presence of a Hydra likely indicates the lair approaching, which is mixed good and bad (bad mostly because of, well, hydras). But at least you've got stealth at level 5+ to help cover your ass while you search your way back whence you fell, am I right? Riiiiight?

Ok, so that jelly vault is real bad luck, too. Though it's no sure-fire solution, Stealth can help a lot when happening upon those vaults, so even if a few of them notice you you can still close the door and they won't follow you because their oblivious friends block the way.

Potion of rotting. This is why I don't quaff-id potions. Well, that and the freaking countless number of times I've gotten good, bad and ugly mutations even before D6.

=== D10, again ===
Taking on the Jellies is brave. Definitely not stupid, but still somewhat optimistic. Even so, your character has shown above average melee damage output so maybe it's not even much of a stretch. You could have softened up Jellies a lot with Venom Bolt, one on one or in corridors.

Personally I would have tried to clear one or two levels below the level of the troll and hydra, then come back for the jellies and then maybe consider luring the troll downstairs and hitting it with Mephitic. That hydra is just such an enormous risk, and like with Grinder I'd usually entirely skip a level until much later if it has a hydra on it.

Spider Form is nice for running away with, but most of the time I'd rather take Summon Scorpions, and I usually don't take even that. Still, that's just me; one can play this game in so many different ways.

Yes, at some point you will need to get other conjurations. Iskenderun's Mystic Blast coupled with the more recent Battlesphere are utter dope during the first half of the lair. After that Battlesphere falls out of the bus but Mystic Blast can remain a part of your kit for the entire game.

=== Fatality ===
Well, confusing the Troll is a great idea, but...

Hydras are poison resistant (so Mephetic does nothing). Hydras are fast. Hydras regenerate quickly. Hydras can't be dealt with using non-flamey edged weapons, in fact at this XP level no weapon will help you deal with a hydra (although later on fiery blades become a hard counter against hydras -- protip: [bottled] Efreets are a great source for flamey swords). In short: for how early they appear, hydras are an absolute terror.

I have, however, killed many of them using only Venom Bolt. This is not easy at all. I much rather reccomend the aforementioned Iskenderuns' spells to take them out, if you can find them.

This scenario of two or more very dangerous opponents would have been a great place to drop Chei's Slouch ability repeatedly. Slouch is the other thing I've killed many hydras with once I get to the lair. However it is unlikely you'd have levelled Invo or Piety high enough to cast it effectively yet by this point. So this brings me to what I think you undoubtedly should have done in this situation:

(that is, besides not going down a stair in range of a hydra in the first place -- use Shift-X and then E to place exclusions on the level map, I always use this on dangerous sleeping enemies or areas)

=== Likely alternative solution ===
Zap yourself with that teleport wand, maybe even run upstairs, and then find some downstairs to get the fuck past that hydra. You could even have dumped the hydra there on D10 by teleporting yourself this way and then going back downstairs via a different route. Either way 17 AC says that you could have been able to survive long enough for at least one teleport to kick in.

There you have it. I admit this turned out way more long-winded and verbose than I expected. As a somewhat salted NaVM user it was fun for me to write down my thoughts on your playing, and hopefully my analysis will prove useful to whoever else comes by to read it.

Good luck, have fun, and keep on crawling!

[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

Yrak, Naga Poison Mage

2013-09-15T20:51:25Z

Snyrand: /* Likely alternative solution */

{{diary}}

So this is the second diary I've done after "The Sibylline Spiel of Hogswald Pfifflebottom III the Malodorous," which, you can probably guess, was... silly.

But this one is serious and I would appreciate comments, advice, telling me what I did was idiotic (as long as you mention what I should have done), anything you want to say, because I've never actually beaten Crawl and want to some day.

== D1 ==
Really nothing special. Found a nice +1 Dagger of Electrocution, gave it another +1, +0 trying scrolls. Found an uncursed amulet, no idea what it does. Stinging is going well, but I've heard a lot about PR monsters later on. I've never actually had a poison character make it that far, but I plan to keep a lookout for a conjuration spellbook or something.

== D2 ==
Found a +0, +2 runed quarterstaff of speed, not sure if it's better or worse than the dagger. Using it anyway, because as a mage, I'll probably end up using a magic staff of some sort if I make it decently far.

Enemies unusually mundane; So far the worst threats are hobgoblins. Found a fluorescent wand, itching to try it out on something big and angry. Granted since it's only D2, It's most likely magic darts or something, but oh well.

I used the wand on a snake. It turned out to be a wand of hasting. That fight was fun. If I were to use it on myself, I could probably manage normal speed- Woo!

== D3 ==
Memorized Mephitic Cloud, poison weapon being useless with a Quarterstaff of Speed (I don't like temporary brand spells anyway for no good reason) and cure poison being useless for a Naga. (I wouldn't have learned it anyway and saved the spell levels) Cast chance is "Good." Gooooood. Not that I'll use it for a while, I don't have enough magic.

Found a notched marble ring. Upon Identifying (found a strange amount of those so far), It's a ring of protect from cold. Good enough for me. Also found an amulet of the Gourmand! Oh goody, now I begin the slow transformation into happy civilized intelligent naga into fleshmonger mindless cannibal naga. Traveled around the level, eating everything that left a body. Got sick from eating a jackal, but otherwise it went just fine. I didn't get full, though.

== D4 ==
Tactics so far have been hit with sting until death of the enemy or I run out of mana. It seems to be working fine. I haven't actually had to bust out Mephitic yet. Found a pair of gloves, yay. The extra 1 AC is always welcome.
Found the ghost of one of my earlier characters, a Deep Dwarf Necromancer. (one of my favorite classes) Ran away, it didn't notice me. I couldn't have hurt it except by clubbing it to death, which would not have been smart.

Found a +2 animal skin, which made my AC 5, pretty decent for a caster of level 5. The Ghost found me again, and noticed me before I could slip away. Thinking I was doomed, since even with the wand of haste I could only match its speed, I grimly waited for it and took it on in melee combat. To my great surprise, I killed it and barely took any damage.

The next highlight was an ogre, who I zapped with an unidentified wand. It turned out to be a teleport wand. After exploring the level, realized I only mapped 2 up stairs and 2 down stairs. This of course means I had another section of D4 to explore. Very little was inside the second section. I found some giant geckos and a goblin. I never found that ogre.

== D5 ==
A giant frog attacked me while I was butchering a rat. And so I killed it. Still have not cast mephitic cloud. Found a giant frog zombie, which worried me, (anything immune to poison worries me) but I killed it. After fighting two more zombies and wondering where they were coming from, I found another ring. Identified, it was a cursed +6 ring of protection. I put it on, and used one of my remove curses on it, I think unnecessarily.

Got attacked by an imp, possibly the enemy I hate most. I beat it to death though. Found a second ring of protection from cold.
Found a scroll of curse armor. This irritated me into action, and I dumped it and all other junk scrolls into a neat pile on the floor. One thing I do hate about .5 is it picks up junk scrolls and potions on autoexplore.

== D6 ==
Phantom sitting on what was probably the entrance to the temple, judging by the four fountains around it. Ran upstairs to plot and write this. Dumped the phantom upstairs with the scrolls and proceeded to the temple.

== Temple ==
I picked Sif Muna as my god over Vehumet, (Pretty much the only two I ever pick for non-necromancer spellcasters, probably dumb.) because I'm interested in her giving me spellbooks, though I do know Vehumet will do this also. Usually I prefer Vehumet, because he doesn't care how I kill, only that I do, which is nice when I'm decent at melee too. I don't know, I just don't know about gods.

== Back on D6 ==
I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas, accompanied by a group of orcs. I killed it with a wand of magic darts, not waking up the orcs. Then I woke up the orcs. Violently.
Turns out they had backup from an orc warrior. I do love mephitic cloud. It made the warrior easy prey, and I could mop up his minions without trouble.

I read a scroll of Immolation, (just reading scrolls is my strategy for Identification) and somehow did not damage myself. It attracted a giant frog, who did hurt me. But not as much as I hurt it. In short sucession, I then ran into an Ice Beast, (who turned out to be immune to poison) 4 gnolls, and 2 orc warriors. I nearly died from the second one. I realized I needed a better damage spell, and memorized Venom Bolt, which I've never used before. I tried it out on a sleeping orc, miscasting twice and then one hit killing it with sting. My cast rate with Venom Bolt is 'Very Good.'

Found a Mummy, who didn't find me. I ran away, not wanting to deal with melee and being cursed. Eventually, I ran into it again and it saw me. I then casted venom bolt in desperation, moderately damaging it. Perhaps spells dealing poisoning also deal 'regular' damage? Perhaps mummies aren't immune to poison? Could be either or both. I never found out what the mummy cursed, just used remove curse and moved on.

== D7 ==
Fought and easily killed Blork the Orc, then Edmund, (during the fight I miscasted Venom Bolt, causing a huge explosion Edmund was just outside the range of. Damn!) then, hilariously, Ijyb. Got skill 1 in air magic, and turned it off. I didn't want to narrow my horizons too much till I found a second spellbook. Found a necrophage, and ran. I didn't want to rot. I had a change of heart when I saw I had 6 potions of heal wounds. It only rotted me a little bit.

== D8 ==
Found 'A Hardcover Book!' Wonder what's inside... the book of the Earth is what it is. Hmm. I decided not to make use of it, since I would then have to learn Transmutation and Earth Magic, which conflicts with Mephitic Cloud, and I couldn't use the first spell, given I had an already-branded weapon. (A now +2+2 Quarterstaff of speed. It still serves me well.) I'm not interested in magic mapping or dig, either. So earth is a no-go.

Found a +4 ring of protection, and switched it for my ring of protection from cold. I'm a sucker for stat boosts. Now AC 17 EV 10 SH 0. Sif Muna gave me the power to forget spells, but since sting still works fine on weaker enemies, I didn't make use of it.

Suddenly, I heard many, many distant slurping noises! NOOO! NOT MY LOOT! The level still mostly unexplored, I was forced to retreat downstairs by a massive group of Jellies.

== D11/10==
I found myself in D11, I think due to a shaft trap. But I was in the company of a Troll and a Five-Headed Hydra, neither of which would be much fun to fight. I ran up the nearest stairwell to D10 and began looking for a way to D9, to normalize things a bit. It was then I opened a door to this:

Exp Pool: 1 Place: Dungeon:10
#.###@######## Wp: o) +2 quarterstaff (speed)
#. #J# Qv: d) +2,+1 dagger (elec)
#. JJJ Very Full
#. #JJf#
#. fJJfJ J _ giant amoeba
#.#fJJJJ# JJJJJJJ 10 jellies
.#ffJJf# J 7 oozes
##JfJ##
J.f

EEP! Not knowing what else to do, I hasted myself and ran upstairs again.

== D9 ==
I then ran into an orc priest and warrior, dipatching them fairly easily. Trying out potions for the first time in a while, I drank a potion of rotting and lost a good 20 hitpoints. Soon after it told me the level was fully explored. Crap. That meant I had to go either downstairs and face the jellies, or two levels down, to dance with a troll and a hydra. I'll see if I can manage the Jelly problem.

== D10, Again ==
Slowly, very slowly, I picked off the Jellies, only corroding my staff once. I then found a yellowed book, the Book of Transformations. Cool. I picked up the spell spider form, since an average of my transmutation and my poison skills would be 6, and the spell is level 3. It'll be irritating to re-equip myself when the spell's effect ends, though. After trying the spell out, it seems to work fine (especially as an escape ability) and they fixed the .4.5 problem of having to re-equip everything. Still, it isn't what I wanted. It's still a poison spell, and I need to get a fire conjuration or something like that.

And just like that, I'd cleared and looted D10, meaning I had to face my fears in the form of hydras and trolls. I've never actually fought a hydra before, you know.

== D11 ==
The hydra was waiting at the staircase, along with the troll and a giant bat. Dropping a mephitic cloud took care of the troll, but the hydra seemed immune. I tried out my many unidentified wands on it. None did anything, and it killed me. Anticlimatic, I know, but that's how most Crawl games are.

--[[User:Incomp|Incomp]] 14:05, 13 July 2009 (MDT)

== Comments ==
I know this dairy page is really old, but I'm going to go ahead and make a few comments I that think are still relevant to playing NaVM in 0.12. Heh, I need some place to practice non-trivial wiki editing/making comments where I can't cause any real damage (so if this happens to be entirely useless I'd just consider it an exercise). I'm no expert at Crawl, but NaVM has been my focus for a while and I've gotten quite good at it. Here goes:
[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

=== D1 ===
Great dagger that. You might as well go ahead and level short blades to 2 or 3, after you got Sting's spell power up a bit and can cast Mephetic.

As a rule of thumb I try not to test-identify potions, scrolls, weapons and especially jewellery during the early game. Scrolls tend to be safer but I still prefer to start try-IDing most of them only a little later on in the game.

Yeah, poison resistant monsters. Those be some beliggerent bitches. However, they are very rare this early on (except for the Ooze, which can actually still be killed with poison, especially poison spit) and this early on it is imperative to specialize in poison first. Using all of the starter Venom book spells, especially Mephetic Cloud (DONT FORGET TO USE IT) you can dominate most things. Those you can't, avoid for now. This is what makes venom mage a bit of a tightrope in the early game: you alternate between "easy victims" and "impossible foes".

=== D2 ===

Hm, that's certainly a great quarter staff but I'd leave it once I start needing skill points in weapons. Quarter staves don't mix with shields, which work fantastically with any kind of Naga.

As for wands: OK, trying out a wand on a monster right away is generally safe, but as with everything in crawl you should constantly be weighing the risks in the back of your head. I generally id my wands by zapping at walls or myself when I'm safe and secluded. Though I've sustained some nasty injuries this way, I've never come close to dying. So yeah, you were unlucky there but outright zapping that adder was a ''little'' imprudent ;)

But you got a wand of hasting, yay!

=== D3 ===
Mephitic Cloud is dope. In any given fight after D5 or so I try to never drop below 3MP so that I still have a backup escape plan in case an Ogre suddenly comes waltzing onto the scene.

Also, after a lot of dying with NaVMs I've determined that getting a point or three into Conjurations, one or two into Air once I have Mephitic, and then getting Spellcasting up to 5 (yes, five) as soon as possible is a very good strategy. The extra spellcasting gives a larger mana reservoir allowing generous use of Mephitic and making miscasts far less painful (and less frequent anyway).

Oh man, Amulet of Gourmand on level 3. Wow. That is almost as dope as Mephitic cloud itself. Munch away!

=== D4 ===
Ok, it seems you've been forgetting something very important about Nagas (or maybe the version you played didn't include it yet), that being the fact that they can spit poison (its their "breath attack"). Look in the abilities menu (A). This thing is a small but very significant part of your arsenal. It acts like a shorter ranged and more powerful version of Sting. After about D4 it becomes powerful enough to damage and kill Oozes even though they are poison resistant.

Ah yes, ghosts. Some of the most dangerous poison-resistant foes early on. Running away is generally wise, but by killing it you've probably seen how viable melee can be on a caster. It is also in my opinion extremely important for a NaVM to become melee-savvy at some point (not too early though, but greatly later on). I'd often return to higher levels a little later once I've got some melee and a long blade to slice the XP out of some crimson imps, ghosts and even Grinder. Choose your engagements wisely. Nagas' natural stealth is invaluable to this end.

Yeah, it's good to check one's up and down stairs and clear missing sections. I usually do "triple entry" anyway: as a slow Naga it is especially important to know where the upstairs on the next level are.

=== D5 ===
Killing a giant frog without using Mephitic Cloud even once? Man, what are you trying to prove? :P

"anything immune to poison worries me" hahaha, that be the truth. Early when I'm weak at melee I fight even strong zombies and skellies using stairs (when I'm sure there's nothing else around of course). They can't regenerate, so when I drop to around half health I just go down or up the stairs and regen.

Important thing though: Troll zombies will kill you, because unlike Trolls you can't Mephitic them. Avoid, silently if you can.

Don't be overzealous at removing curses. A single scroll of remove curse will dispel curses on every cursed item you currently have equipped. Ex: Found an otherwise nice helmet with a curse on? You really don't have to remove that curse until you find a better helmet (though you might do so before that because you really need to remove a cursed ring of hunger).

A ring of +6 protection is really fantastic at this point anyway, because NaVMs have lots of trouble getting AC early on, and that usually bites them in the ass a little later on when push comes to shoving in melee against poison resistant monsters.

I think killing an imp by D5 indicates distinctly better than average melee ability for a mage.

=== D6 ===
Dumping blink-prone opponents upstairs for the win!

=== Temple ===
Although I should probably show rationality, restraint and unbiasedness when it comes to deities, I'm going to take this oppertunity to say:

''CHEIBRIADOS! I'M A TOTAL NAGA HOAR FOR CHEI! WOOT CHEI WOOT CHEI EVERYDAY WOOT EVERYDAY IS CHEI DAY''

I do adore all of Sif Muna's abilities and book gifts, but I find she generally lacks the ''punch'' that Cheibriados gives. Not to mention two mega ace-up-the-sleeve abilities: Step From Time and invocations-independant irresistable damage from Slouch. Anyway, Sif lends to a more cautious and magic-focussed play styl, while Chei's gigantic passive stat boosts are the foundation for a powerful and robust hybrid build, making Chei much more appropriate for Naga Venom Mages.

Choosing Chei has, distinctly, its disadvantages such as no hasting and weapons of speed. But once you get over how absolutely terrible that seems, I'm sure you'll barely notice the absence of such vanities. ;)

=== D6 again ===
"I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas"

I will remember to quote that truth in the future.

Yep, wands are a just about the only workable tactic against jellies at this point ''however'' I have killed countless of them in the pre-mid game using Venom Bolt and a little poison spit, even though this only works once you really can cast Venom Bolt but this isn't impossible to get right early-ish with a Naga. Reliably casting Venom Bolt is also your silver bullet for dealing with orc warriors. Later on it makes for a good, easy to cast, all round, row-ripping poison damage conjuration later on.

Anyway, you used Mephitic Cloud on a pack of orcs. ''Now'' you're getting the hang of this :P You know, if the orcs and jelly happened to be in a fairly tight formation and not-completely-open area then I would have woken up them all with Mephitic. There is actually a fair chance for the orcs to block and even kill the jelly in such situations while you slither away silently.

When miscasting more mana intensive spells a few times in a row and you haven't waken up your opponents yet, just step outside their line of sight for a moment and rest up before trying again. It's generally unwise to pick a fight this early on if you're missing 10 MP.

Mummies are such a pain. As are Ice Beasts. Both are poison resistant, but Venom Bolt, like poison spit, deals a small bit of physical (conjurations) damage so can go some way towards softening them. And once again, don't be overzealous uncursing stuff.

=== D8 ===
The book of Earth is dope, but only much later on. Dig is nice to have, especially in Orc, Slime, Abyss and even Zot. Statue Form (along with Dispel Undead and some AoE damage spells) turns the Tomb from terrifying to doable. I rarely if ever go for Earth-based conjurations though because they are so terrible range-wise which sits badly with mobility-impaired nagas. But yeah, Earth and Transmutations much later on because right now you need to get Mephitic Cloud and Venom Bolt better and start thinking about improving your melee and armour (or alternatively shield if you can find a buckler).

AC 17 by D8? Sheesh dude, that's fantastic. Be prepared to switch to a ring of cold when facing Ice Beasts though. They be nasty poison resistant critters.

So you have the power to forget spells? Heh, that's what you get for following Sif Muna :P By now Chei would have given you some stat increases that help both melee and spellcasting, and the ability to slow down adjacent enemies (though, annoyingly, you'd need some Invocations for this to work).

=== D11/10 and D9 ===
Oh shit, this is bad. The presence of a Hydra likely indicates the lair approaching, which is mixed good and bad (bad mostly because of, well, hydras). But at least you've got stealth at level 5+ to help cover your ass while you search your way back whence you fell, am I right? Riiiiight?

Ok, so that jelly vault is real bad luck, too. Though it's no sure-fire solution, Stealth can help a lot when happening upon those vaults, so even if a few of them notice you you can still close the door and they won't follow you because their oblivious friends block the way.

Potion of rotting. This is why I don't quaff-id potions. Well, that and the freaking countless number of times I've gotten good, bad and ugly mutations even before D6.

=== D10, again ===
Taking on the Jellies is brave. Definitely not stupid, but still somewhat optimistic. Even so, your character has shown above average melee damage output so maybe it's not even much of a stretch. You could have softened up Jellies a lot with Venom Bolt, one on one or in corridors.

Personally I would have tried to clear one or two levels below the level of the troll and hydra, then come back for the jellies and then maybe consider luring the troll downstairs and hitting it with Mephitic. That hydra is just such an enormous risk, and like with Grinder I'd usually entirely skip a level until much later if it has a hydra on it.

Spider Form is nice for running away with, but most of the time I'd rather take Summon Scorpions, and I usually don't take even that. Still, that's just me; one can play this game in so many different ways.

Yes, at some point you will need to get other conjurations. Iskenderun's Mystic Blast coupled with the more recent Battlesphere are utter dope during the first half of the lair. After that Battlesphere falls out of the bus but Mystic Blast can remain a part of your kit for the entire game.

=== Fatality ===
Well, confusing the Troll is a great idea, but...

Hydras are poison resistant (so Mephetic does nothing). Hydras are fast. Hydras regenerate quickly. Hydras can't be dealt with using non-flamey edged weapons, in fact at this XP level no weapon will help you deal with a hydra (although later on fiery blades become a hard counter against hydras -- protip: [bottled] Efreets are a great source for flamey swords). In short: for how early they appear, hydras are an absolute terror.

I have, however, killed many of them using only Venom Bolt. This is not easy at all. I much rather reccomend the aforementioned Iskenderuns' spells to take them out, if you can find them.

This scenario of two or more very dangerous opponents would have been a great place to drop Chei's Slouch ability repeatedly. Slouch is the other thing I've killed many hydras with once I get to the lair. However it is unlikely you'd have levelled Invo or Piety high enough to cast it effectively yet by this point. So this brings me to what I think you undoubtedly should have done in this situation:

(besides not going down a stair in range of a hydra in the first place -- use Shift-X and then E to place exclusions on the level map, I always use this on dangerous sleeping enemies or areas)

=== Likely alternative solution ===
Zap yourself with that teleport wand, maybe run upstairs, and then find a downstair to get the fuck past that hydra. You could even have dumped the hydra there on D10 by teleporting yourself this way and then going back downstairs via a different route. Either way 17 AC says that you could have been able to survive long enough to teleport away at least once.

There you have it. I admit this turned out way more long-winded and verbose than I expected, and I'm learning from that. As a somewhat salted NaVM user it was fun for me to write down my thoughts on your playing, and hopefully my analysis will prove useful to whoever else comes by to read it.

Good luck, have fun, and keep on crawling!

[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

Yrak, Naga Poison Mage

2013-09-15T20:37:07Z

Snyrand: Added my analysis in a Comments section

{{diary}}

So this is the second diary I've done after "The Sibylline Spiel of Hogswald Pfifflebottom III the Malodorous," which, you can probably guess, was... silly.

But this one is serious and I would appreciate comments, advice, telling me what I did was idiotic (as long as you mention what I should have done), anything you want to say, because I've never actually beaten Crawl and want to some day.

== D1 ==
Really nothing special. Found a nice +1 Dagger of Electrocution, gave it another +1, +0 trying scrolls. Found an uncursed amulet, no idea what it does. Stinging is going well, but I've heard a lot about PR monsters later on. I've never actually had a poison character make it that far, but I plan to keep a lookout for a conjuration spellbook or something.

== D2 ==
Found a +0, +2 runed quarterstaff of speed, not sure if it's better or worse than the dagger. Using it anyway, because as a mage, I'll probably end up using a magic staff of some sort if I make it decently far.

Enemies unusually mundane; So far the worst threats are hobgoblins. Found a fluorescent wand, itching to try it out on something big and angry. Granted since it's only D2, It's most likely magic darts or something, but oh well.

I used the wand on a snake. It turned out to be a wand of hasting. That fight was fun. If I were to use it on myself, I could probably manage normal speed- Woo!

== D3 ==
Memorized Mephitic Cloud, poison weapon being useless with a Quarterstaff of Speed (I don't like temporary brand spells anyway for no good reason) and cure poison being useless for a Naga. (I wouldn't have learned it anyway and saved the spell levels) Cast chance is "Good." Gooooood. Not that I'll use it for a while, I don't have enough magic.

Found a notched marble ring. Upon Identifying (found a strange amount of those so far), It's a ring of protect from cold. Good enough for me. Also found an amulet of the Gourmand! Oh goody, now I begin the slow transformation into happy civilized intelligent naga into fleshmonger mindless cannibal naga. Traveled around the level, eating everything that left a body. Got sick from eating a jackal, but otherwise it went just fine. I didn't get full, though.

== D4 ==
Tactics so far have been hit with sting until death of the enemy or I run out of mana. It seems to be working fine. I haven't actually had to bust out Mephitic yet. Found a pair of gloves, yay. The extra 1 AC is always welcome.
Found the ghost of one of my earlier characters, a Deep Dwarf Necromancer. (one of my favorite classes) Ran away, it didn't notice me. I couldn't have hurt it except by clubbing it to death, which would not have been smart.

Found a +2 animal skin, which made my AC 5, pretty decent for a caster of level 5. The Ghost found me again, and noticed me before I could slip away. Thinking I was doomed, since even with the wand of haste I could only match its speed, I grimly waited for it and took it on in melee combat. To my great surprise, I killed it and barely took any damage.

The next highlight was an ogre, who I zapped with an unidentified wand. It turned out to be a teleport wand. After exploring the level, realized I only mapped 2 up stairs and 2 down stairs. This of course means I had another section of D4 to explore. Very little was inside the second section. I found some giant geckos and a goblin. I never found that ogre.

== D5 ==
A giant frog attacked me while I was butchering a rat. And so I killed it. Still have not cast mephitic cloud. Found a giant frog zombie, which worried me, (anything immune to poison worries me) but I killed it. After fighting two more zombies and wondering where they were coming from, I found another ring. Identified, it was a cursed +6 ring of protection. I put it on, and used one of my remove curses on it, I think unnecessarily.

Got attacked by an imp, possibly the enemy I hate most. I beat it to death though. Found a second ring of protection from cold.
Found a scroll of curse armor. This irritated me into action, and I dumped it and all other junk scrolls into a neat pile on the floor. One thing I do hate about .5 is it picks up junk scrolls and potions on autoexplore.

== D6 ==
Phantom sitting on what was probably the entrance to the temple, judging by the four fountains around it. Ran upstairs to plot and write this. Dumped the phantom upstairs with the scrolls and proceeded to the temple.

== Temple ==
I picked Sif Muna as my god over Vehumet, (Pretty much the only two I ever pick for non-necromancer spellcasters, probably dumb.) because I'm interested in her giving me spellbooks, though I do know Vehumet will do this also. Usually I prefer Vehumet, because he doesn't care how I kill, only that I do, which is nice when I'm decent at melee too. I don't know, I just don't know about gods.

== Back on D6 ==
I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas, accompanied by a group of orcs. I killed it with a wand of magic darts, not waking up the orcs. Then I woke up the orcs. Violently.
Turns out they had backup from an orc warrior. I do love mephitic cloud. It made the warrior easy prey, and I could mop up his minions without trouble.

I read a scroll of Immolation, (just reading scrolls is my strategy for Identification) and somehow did not damage myself. It attracted a giant frog, who did hurt me. But not as much as I hurt it. In short sucession, I then ran into an Ice Beast, (who turned out to be immune to poison) 4 gnolls, and 2 orc warriors. I nearly died from the second one. I realized I needed a better damage spell, and memorized Venom Bolt, which I've never used before. I tried it out on a sleeping orc, miscasting twice and then one hit killing it with sting. My cast rate with Venom Bolt is 'Very Good.'

Found a Mummy, who didn't find me. I ran away, not wanting to deal with melee and being cursed. Eventually, I ran into it again and it saw me. I then casted venom bolt in desperation, moderately damaging it. Perhaps spells dealing poisoning also deal 'regular' damage? Perhaps mummies aren't immune to poison? Could be either or both. I never found out what the mummy cursed, just used remove curse and moved on.

== D7 ==
Fought and easily killed Blork the Orc, then Edmund, (during the fight I miscasted Venom Bolt, causing a huge explosion Edmund was just outside the range of. Damn!) then, hilariously, Ijyb. Got skill 1 in air magic, and turned it off. I didn't want to narrow my horizons too much till I found a second spellbook. Found a necrophage, and ran. I didn't want to rot. I had a change of heart when I saw I had 6 potions of heal wounds. It only rotted me a little bit.

== D8 ==
Found 'A Hardcover Book!' Wonder what's inside... the book of the Earth is what it is. Hmm. I decided not to make use of it, since I would then have to learn Transmutation and Earth Magic, which conflicts with Mephitic Cloud, and I couldn't use the first spell, given I had an already-branded weapon. (A now +2+2 Quarterstaff of speed. It still serves me well.) I'm not interested in magic mapping or dig, either. So earth is a no-go.

Found a +4 ring of protection, and switched it for my ring of protection from cold. I'm a sucker for stat boosts. Now AC 17 EV 10 SH 0. Sif Muna gave me the power to forget spells, but since sting still works fine on weaker enemies, I didn't make use of it.

Suddenly, I heard many, many distant slurping noises! NOOO! NOT MY LOOT! The level still mostly unexplored, I was forced to retreat downstairs by a massive group of Jellies.

== D11/10==
I found myself in D11, I think due to a shaft trap. But I was in the company of a Troll and a Five-Headed Hydra, neither of which would be much fun to fight. I ran up the nearest stairwell to D10 and began looking for a way to D9, to normalize things a bit. It was then I opened a door to this:

Exp Pool: 1 Place: Dungeon:10
#.###@######## Wp: o) +2 quarterstaff (speed)
#. #J# Qv: d) +2,+1 dagger (elec)
#. JJJ Very Full
#. #JJf#
#. fJJfJ J _ giant amoeba
#.#fJJJJ# JJJJJJJ 10 jellies
.#ffJJf# J 7 oozes
##JfJ##
J.f

EEP! Not knowing what else to do, I hasted myself and ran upstairs again.

== D9 ==
I then ran into an orc priest and warrior, dipatching them fairly easily. Trying out potions for the first time in a while, I drank a potion of rotting and lost a good 20 hitpoints. Soon after it told me the level was fully explored. Crap. That meant I had to go either downstairs and face the jellies, or two levels down, to dance with a troll and a hydra. I'll see if I can manage the Jelly problem.

== D10, Again ==
Slowly, very slowly, I picked off the Jellies, only corroding my staff once. I then found a yellowed book, the Book of Transformations. Cool. I picked up the spell spider form, since an average of my transmutation and my poison skills would be 6, and the spell is level 3. It'll be irritating to re-equip myself when the spell's effect ends, though. After trying the spell out, it seems to work fine (especially as an escape ability) and they fixed the .4.5 problem of having to re-equip everything. Still, it isn't what I wanted. It's still a poison spell, and I need to get a fire conjuration or something like that.

And just like that, I'd cleared and looted D10, meaning I had to face my fears in the form of hydras and trolls. I've never actually fought a hydra before, you know.

== D11 ==
The hydra was waiting at the staircase, along with the troll and a giant bat. Dropping a mephitic cloud took care of the troll, but the hydra seemed immune. I tried out my many unidentified wands on it. None did anything, and it killed me. Anticlimatic, I know, but that's how most Crawl games are.

--[[User:Incomp|Incomp]] 14:05, 13 July 2009 (MDT)

== Comments ==
I know this dairy page is really old, but I'm going to go ahead and make a few comments I that think are still relevant to playing NaVM in 0.12. Heh, I need some place to practice non-trivial wiki editing/making comments where I can't cause any real damage (so if this happens to be entirely useless I'd just consider it an exercise). I'm no expert at Crawl, but NaVM has been my focus for a while and I've gotten quite good at it. Here goes:
[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

=== D1 ===
Great dagger that. You might as well go ahead and level short blades to 2 or 3, after you got Sting's spell power up a bit and can cast Mephetic.

As a rule of thumb I try not to test-identify potions, scrolls, weapons and especially jewellery during the early game. Scrolls tend to be safer but I still prefer to start try-IDing most of them only a little later on in the game.

Yeah, poison resistant monsters. Those be some beliggerent bitches. However, they are very rare this early on (except for the Ooze, which can actually still be killed with poison, especially poison spit) and this early on it is imperative to specialize in poison first. Using all of the starter Venom book spells, especially Mephetic Cloud (DONT FORGET TO USE IT) you can dominate most things. Those you can't, avoid for now. This is what makes venom mage a bit of a tightrope in the early game: you alternate between "easy victims" and "impossible foes".

=== D2 ===

Hm, that's certainly a great quarter staff but I'd leave it once I start needing skill points in weapons. Quarter staves don't mix with shields, which work fantastically with any kind of Naga.

As for wands: OK, trying out a wand on a monster right away is generally safe, but as with everything in crawl you should constantly be weighing the risks in the back of your head. I generally id my wands by zapping at walls or myself when I'm safe and secluded. Though I've sustained some nasty injuries this way, I've never come close to dying. So yeah, you were unlucky there but outright zapping that adder was a ''little'' imprudent ;)

But you got a wand of hasting, yay!

=== D3 ===
Mephitic Cloud is dope. In any given fight after D5 or so I try to never drop below 3MP so that I still have a backup escape plan in case an Ogre suddenly comes waltzing onto the scene.

Also, after a lot of dying with NaVMs I've determined that getting a point or three into Conjurations, one or two into Air once I have Mephitic, and then getting Spellcasting up to 5 (yes, five) as soon as possible is a very good strategy. The extra spellcasting gives a larger mana reservoir allowing generous use of Mephitic and making miscasts far less painful (and less frequent anyway).

Oh man, Amulet of Gourmand on level 3. Wow. That is almost as dope as Mephitic cloud itself. Munch away!

=== D4 ===
Ok, it seems you've been forgetting something very important about Nagas (or maybe the version you played didn't include it yet), that being the fact that they can spit poison (its their "breath attack"). Look in the abilities menu (A). This thing is a small but very significant part of your arsenal. It acts like a shorter ranged and more powerful version of Sting. After about D4 it becomes powerful enough to damage and kill Oozes even though they are poison resistant.

Ah yes, ghosts. Some of the most dangerous poison-resistant foes early on. Running away is generally wise, but by killing it you've probably seen how viable melee can be on a caster. It is also in my opinion extremely important for a NaVM to become melee-savvy at some point (not too early though, but greatly later on). I'd often return to higher levels a little later once I've got some melee and a long blade to slice the XP out of some crimson imps, ghosts and even Grinder. Choose your engagements wisely. Nagas' natural stealth is invaluable to this end.

Yeah, it's good to check one's up and down stairs and clear missing sections. I usually do "triple entry" anyway: as a slow Naga it is especially important to know where the upstairs on the next level are.

=== D5 ===
Killing a giant frog without using Mephitic Cloud even once? Man, what are you trying to prove? :P

"anything immune to poison worries me" hahaha, that be the truth. Early when I'm weak at melee I fight even strong zombies and skellies using stairs (when I'm sure there's nothing else around of course). They can't regenerate, so when I drop to around half health I just go down or up the stairs and regen.

Important thing though: Troll zombies will kill you, because unlike Trolls you can't Mephitic them. Avoid, silently if you can.

Don't be overzealous at removing curses. A single scroll of remove curse will dispel curses on every cursed item you currently have equipped. Ex: Found an otherwise nice helmet with a curse on? You really don't have to remove that curse until you find a better helmet (though you might do so before that because you really need to remove a cursed ring of hunger).

A ring of +6 protection is really fantastic at this point anyway, because NaVMs have lots of trouble getting AC early on, and that usually bites them in the ass a little later on when push comes to shoving in melee against poison resistant monsters.

I think killing an imp by D5 indicates distinctly better than average melee ability for a mage.

=== D6 ===
Dumping blink-prone opponents upstairs for the win!

=== Temple ===
Although I should probably show rationality, restraint and unbiasedness when it comes to deities, I'm going to take this oppertunity to say:

''CHEIBRIADOS! I'M A TOTAL NAGA HOAR FOR CHEI! WOOT CHEI WOOT CHEI EVERYDAY WOOT EVERYDAY IS CHEI DAY''

I do adore all of Sif Muna's abilities and book gifts, but I find she generally lacks the ''punch'' that Cheibriados gives. Not to mention two mega ace-up-the-sleeve abilities: Step From Time and invocations-independant irresistable damage from Slouch. Anyway, Sif lends to a more cautious and magic-focussed play styl, while Chei's gigantic passive stat boosts are the foundation for a powerful and robust hybrid build, making Chei much more appropriate for Naga Venom Mages.

Choosing Chei has, distinctly, its disadvantages such as no hasting and weapons of speed. But once you get over how absolutely terrible that seems, I'm sure you'll barely notice the absence of such vanities. ;)

=== D6 again ===
"I ran into a Jelly, the most evil creation ever to desecrate the upper levels of the dungeon, more so for the slow nagas"

I will remember to quote that truth in the future.

Yep, wands are a just about the only workable tactic against jellies at this point ''however'' I have killed countless of them in the pre-mid game using Venom Bolt and a little poison spit, even though this only works once you really can cast Venom Bolt but this isn't impossible to get right early-ish with a Naga. Reliably casting Venom Bolt is also your silver bullet for dealing with orc warriors. Later on it makes for a good, easy to cast, all round, row-ripping poison damage conjuration later on.

Anyway, you used Mephitic Cloud on a pack of orcs. ''Now'' you're getting the hang of this :P You know, if the orcs and jelly happened to be in a fairly tight formation and not-completely-open area then I would have woken up them all with Mephitic. There is actually a fair chance for the orcs to block and even kill the jelly in such situations while you slither away silently.

When miscasting more mana intensive spells a few times in a row and you haven't waken up your opponents yet, just step outside their line of sight for a moment and rest up before trying again. It's generally unwise to pick a fight this early on if you're missing 10 MP.

Mummies are such a pain. As are Ice Beasts. Both are poison resistant, but Venom Bolt, like poison spit, deals a small bit of physical (conjurations) damage so can go some way towards softening them. And once again, don't be overzealous uncursing stuff.

=== D8 ===
The book of Earth is dope, but only much later on. Dig is nice to have, especially in Orc, Slime, Abyss and even Zot. Statue Form (along with Dispel Undead and some AoE damage spells) turns the Tomb from terrifying to doable. I rarely if ever go for Earth-based conjurations though because they are so terrible range-wise which sits badly with mobility-impaired nagas. But yeah, Earth and Transmutations much later on because right now you need to get Mephitic Cloud and Venom Bolt better and start thinking about improving your melee and armour (or alternatively shield if you can find a buckler).

AC 17 by D8? Sheesh dude, that's fantastic. Be prepared to switch to a ring of cold when facing Ice Beasts though. They be nasty poison resistant critters.

So you have the power to forget spells? Heh, that's what you get for following Sif Muna :P By now Chei would have given you some stat increases that help both melee and spellcasting, and the ability to slow down adjacent enemies (though, annoyingly, you'd need some Invocations for this to work).

=== D11/10 and D9 ===
Oh shit, this is bad. The presence of a Hydra likely indicates the lair approaching, which is mixed good and bad (bad mostly because of, well, hydras). But at least you've got stealth at level 5+ to help cover your ass while you search your way back whence you fell, am I right? Riiiiight?

Ok, so that jelly vault is real bad luck, too. Though it's no sure-fire solution, Stealth can help a lot when happening upon those vaults, so even if a few of them notice you you can still close the door and they won't follow you because their oblivious friends block the way.

Potion of rotting. This is why I don't quaff-id potions. Well, that and the freaking countless number of times I've gotten good, bad and ugly mutations even before D6.

=== D10, again ===
Taking on the Jellies is brave. Definitely not stupid, but still somewhat optimistic. Even so, your character has shown above average melee damage output so maybe it's not even much of a stretch. You could have softened up Jellies a lot with Venom Bolt, one on one or in corridors.

Personally I would have tried to clear one or two levels below the level of the troll and hydra, then come back for the jellies and then maybe consider luring the troll downstairs and hitting it with Mephitic. That hydra is just such an enormous risk, and like with Grinder I'd usually entirely skip a level until much later if it has a hydra on it.

Spider Form is nice for running away with, but most of the time I'd rather take Summon Scorpions, and I usually don't take even that. Still, that's just me; one can play this game in so many different ways.

Yes, at some point you will need to get other conjurations. Iskenderun's Mystic Blast coupled with the more recent Battlesphere are utter dope during the first half of the lair. After that Battlesphere falls out of the bus but Mystic Blast can remain a part of your kit for the entire game.

=== Fatality ===
Well, confusing the Troll is a great idea, but...

Hydras are poison resistant (so Mephetic does nothing). Hydras are fast. Hydras regenerate quickly. Hydras can't be dealt with using non-flamey edged weapons, in fact at this XP level no weapon will help you deal with a hydra (although later on fiery blades become a hard counter against hydras -- protip: [bottled] Efreets are a great source for flamey swords). In short: for how early they appear, hydras are an absolute terror.

I have, however, killed many of them using only Venom Bolt. This is not easy at all. I much rather reccomend the aforementioned Iskenderuns' spells to take them out, if you can find them.

This scenario of two or more very dangerous opponents would have been a great place to drop Chei's Slouch ability repeatedly. Slouch is the other thing I've killed many hydras with once I get to the lair. However it is unlikely you'd have levelled Invo or Piety high enough to cast it effectively yet by this point. So this brings me to what I think you undoubtedly should have done in this situation:

(besides not going down a stair in range of a hydra in the first place -- use Shift-X and then E to place exclusions on the level map, I always use this on dangerous sleeping enemies or areas)

=== Likely alternative solution ===
Zap yourself with that teleport wand, maybe run upstairs, and then find a downstair to get the fuck past that hydra. You could even have dumped the hydra there on D10 by teleporting yourself this way and then going back downstairs via a different route.

There you have it. I admit this turned out way more long-winded and verbose than I expected, and I'm learning from that. As a somewhat salted NaVM user it was fun for me to write down my thoughts on your playing, and hopefully my analysis will prove useful to whoever else comes by to read it.

Good luck, have fun, and keep on crawling!

[[User:Snyrand|Snyrand]] ([[User talk:Snyrand|talk]]) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)

User:Snyrand

2013-09-15T17:06:41Z

Snyrand:

User:Snyrand

2013-09-15T16:43:16Z

Snyrand:

User:Snyrand

2013-09-15T16:11:47Z

Snyrand: added a little info on myself