Yrak, Naga Poison Mage

This page is a Diary of a Crawler, the journal of an individual character. This page probably contains spoilers.

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.

--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:

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!

Snyrand (talk) 22:37, 15 September 2013 (CEST)