User:Patrick2011b/0.31 Tournament

This tournament ran from January 19, 2024 to February 4, 2024. The tournament page can be found here, while my profile for the tournament can be found here.

This was my first tournament, so I came into it just trying to get a win. I soon realized that with categories and banners, there's a lot more to a tournament than wins, though the first win is still a major milestone. I did manage to get a win, but it was with a build poorly suited for tournament points (caster = more real time taken, low spellpower = more turns taken, Foxfire + Fulminant Prism = more kills). Now that I've done a tournament, I think the key to improvement is to do better in the early game so I'd get more uniques, piety points, and banners. I'd also like to get a melee win, or at least a win with a more points-friendly build. Less than 20% of tournament players get a win, so just getting a win is pretty good by itself, but more deep runs would help.

Stats

The tournament had a total of 2,731 players with 454 of them getting at least 1 win. The total win rate for the tournament was 1.9%. I had 27 games in the tournament with 1 win (win rate 3.7%). The leaderboards compress ties, but the ranks given here won't compress ties. For example, if there's a two-way tie for 14th in something, the next lower score will be considered 16th. Here are my scores and ranks for some key categories as well as overall:

• Overall Score: 25,247 (340th)
• Best High Score: 1,799,189 (363rd)
• Lowest Turncount Win: 58,128 (148th)
• Fastest Real Time Win: 08:57:09 (401st)
• Most Pacific Win: 2,759 (366th)

Wins

This section contains a log and brief writeup for each of my winning characters. The altar in each entry shows what god the character won with, which matters for the piety category. Essentially, each distinct god won is worth 400 tournament points unless the god was either never championed or was Gozag, Ignis, or Xom (those gods don't use the standard 6* piety system), in which case it's only 200 tournament points. The wins are given in chronological order.

• GrFE^Vehumet (3 runes): This was a pretty standard blaster caster with Plasma Beam acting as the bread and butter starting in the S-branches. By the time I was getting close to 20 each in Fire Magic and Conjurations, I noticed Fire Storm was (barely) online, so I decided to go for Sif Muna's tier 2 banner, which was to win with all skills below level 20. Zot:1 had an unlucky ambush, adding several thousand turns to my run as I decided to do Elf:3 in the hopes of getting loot and consumables. The only useful find there was a wand of digging, but the rest of Zot was manageable. I did get a bunch of bad mutations from a Zot trap, so I couldn't use Fire Storm in the orb chamber. With my lack of relevant consumables at the end, it's a good thing the orb run was uneventful.

Notable Losses

This section contains a log and brief writeup for each losing character that I consider notable enough for a writeup. If an entry has an altar in it, it means the character championed that god (i.e. reached 6* piety at some point). Essentially, each distinct god championed is worth 200 tournament points, though Gozag, Ignis, and Xom don't use the standard 6* piety system and therefore can't be championed. The games are given in chronological order.

• MiFi^Vehumet: This character illustrates a key difference between tournament play and normal play. I would normally never take Vehumet on a MiFi, but I found a really early faded altar and figured I could go for the Hepliaklqana banner, which has winning with a faded altar as its third tier. As expected, I didn't get that far, but I at least got a tier 1 banner for doing Orc before Lair.
• MiFi^Hepliaklqana: This was my first champion of the tournament. I found a Hep altar on D:2 and figured it was good enough to take rather than wait for the Temple. I went with a knight ancestor, presumably for tankiness, though a hexer or battlemage might be better for a melee character. I managed to get the Lair gem on this character as well as 2 runes, but Elf:3 didn't go well for me. The character felt reasonably strong, even if resistances were lacking, so the death probably made me fear Elf:3 more than I needed to for a while.
• MfGl^Makhleb: This was another attempt at a faded altar. I reached Lair this time for tier 1, but I was stuck with a +0 long sword the whole time, and that wasn't enough to win a big fight in Lair:1. If I could've separated the monsters, that might've helped, but I can't tell from the log whether I had the tools to do that or if I needed to modify the branch order.
• DjHu^Dithmenos: I played 3 Djinni Hunters as a Nemelex' Choice combo, and this was the only one to reach XL 9. I once again took a faded altar, and like the MiFi^Vehumet, it resulted in a poor god choice (Dithmenos is considered a sucky god in 0.31 but is up for rework in 0.32). I played a ranged Djinni in 0.31 trunk and took it to the late game, so I figured DjHu would be a good way to go for the Nemelex banner. Unfortunately, I had early game deaths on all 3 attempts, this one dying in a bailey.
• DsMo^Trog: This was yet another faded altar, and it was also my 5th species and background to reach XL 9, getting me tier 1 of the Jiyva banner. My gear was unimpressive on this character, and the mutations were a mixed bag, but I at least had a triple sword, which dealt plenty of damage. Looking at the log, it seems that I underestimated a demonic crawler and tried to fight it in Spider instead of switching to Shoals, which might've been a better first rune given my lack of resistances and ability to get willpower when needed.
• OnGl^Makhleb: This one ended up being a GSC+Manifold Assault build that almost became my second win despite having really low defenses (AC+EV+SH=30). Winning this game would've really helped my score, as it was notably better than my other win in all the main categories. Unfortunately, I fought too many OOFs and other monsters at once in Zot:5 with only 1 pip of rF. I did manage to get the Elf gem, and I tried to fight Geryon for a trove, but I was taking too much damage in the Vestibule of Hell, so I bailed out of that.
• FoMo^Ignis: Ignis came from a faded altar here, so I got another chance at winning with a faded altar, but Azrael put a stop to that in Orc:2. I already had some really good items by that point, so I was disappointed with not going further with this character. In non-tournament play, abandoning Ignis at some point would probably be correct, but sticking with Ignis has plenty of value in a tournament.