Joel the Sludge Elf Transmuter
Summary: SETm, experience level 18, collects the Serpentine Rune before running away from Mara in the Vaults straight into the arms of Boris in the Dungeon.
I've not been playing Crawl long, but have already managed to kill off about a hundred characters without making much headway beyond XL10 or so. This game appears to be going better though, so I might as well start writing a diary to absolutely guarantee a horrible death as soon as possible.
DISCLAIMER: I've ascended Nethack and SlashEM characters quite a bit. I stopped counting after 20, then just kind of stopped playing several years ago and now don't remember exactly. Whether this makes me better or worse at Crawl (which I have just discovered), I'm not sure.
I have my early-stage Transmuter game fairly well sorted - memorise Fulsome Distillation first up, wander around D:1 beating up goblins and bats until reaching XL2, then learn Sticks to Snakes and Evaporate to give me some ability to survive running into anything just a little bit hairy.
The major discovery for me this time around was victory dancing. Ruthlessly gaming Transmutation (mostly via Sticks to Snakes, collecting clubs and quarterstaves) made a huge difference to the next bit: having a reliable Spider Form. Mostly the next bit was pretty cruisy, except for tough enemies that were either poison- or confusion- resistant (or both), like player ghosts. Then the spider legs came in handy again for the running away :)
Had a major stroke of luck finding an artifact ring with Int bonuses, pushing up the success rate of spells, which became a cycle of positive reinforcement that soon had Transmutation on the right side of 10.
Found the Ecumenical Temple (annoyingly surrounded by steam clouds!) and converted to Cheibriados. Converted one's robe to Ponderous in order to make everything faster than me, and it was time to start (very slowly) building up. Each point of piety rank snowballed into more ponderousness, more piety... and suddenly I was feeling pretty bulletproof.
Ice Form! Nothing was standing in the way for long in the Lair. Until it did... had my first Near Death Experience getting overrun in a Spider Nest near the bottom of the Lair, somehow escaping with a couple of HP and scrolls of blinking.
By the way, how awesome are scrolls of Blinking?
Realised my hoarding of !oC/!oP was completely unnecessary. Between the Hive and the Orcish Mines, I was never going to run out. So amused myself with Evaporate rather a lot.
Had trained Invocations up a bit now (Bend Time on empty squares) and Slouched my way through the Hive in about eight seconds flat. Couldn't figure out the way into the alleged Wasp Vault.
Speaking of Slouch... how do people deal with Unseen Horros any other way? I can never go back.
At this point there was a bit of an oversupply of options. Lots of spellbooks were starting to turn up, and caused me to make some less- than-excellent spell choices (Ignite Poison, I'm talking to you). By the time I found the Volume of Shapeshifting And The Mountain and realised what I wanted to do with my life, it was a bit too late. Fortunately one of them contained the forget spell... can't wait until I'm level 16 and have enough spell levels spare to learn it and get rid of Ensorcelled Hibernation and friends.
Another option is that I've found a nice randart bow with SInv, Reaping and sundry bonuses. And I *have* been getting annoyed with meleeing monsters to near death then having them turn round and easily outrun my Ponderous ass. Hmm. Maybe it's time for archery practice.
At the bottom of the Snake Pit, heeding the warnings of its scariness but curious, I meet Kirke and her hogs. She lasts about two seconds, and I'm disappointed that none of her little piggies leaves me any bacon. Then around the very next corner is Norris...
Even poisoned and being run through the Blade Hands Moulinex a whole bunch of times, he seems to take a *long* time to go down. But go down he does, casting spells the whole time. Suddenly I have a *lot* of XP to victory dance with, and the sneaking suspicion I may have gotten away with something.
Unfortunately, hiking back up to my stash to do some sorting sees all that XP go to Unarmed Combat, so I guess we'll never know. Back down, and the Naga Mages and Greater Naga are indeed tough. My improvised defences of Ice Form and swapping out one of my randart rings for a =oPResist seem to be holding out, but stair dancing ensues. Fortunately they keep hasting themselves and bringing Slouch into play, or it would be more of a bastard. At least one of them has dropped a Robe of Reistance (now poetically named the Robe of the Mountain).
About the worst thing that happens is a Greater Naga teleporting me back into the main room as I'm running for the stairs, but that's what scrolls of teleportation are for. Which is great because by the time it kicks in, I'm in bad shape due to all the poison arrows.
Eventually see off a few more and grab the Rune, but fighting the spellcasting nagas is less fun than it looks like and I retreat back upstairs to juggle my spells around. Feeling Earthy, I pick up Dig and Lee's Rapid Deconstruction to see what they're like.
(a bit later)
Near Death #2: Azrael kicks the stuffing out of me. My blink doesn't get me far enough and for some reason my teleoprts keep failing. I can't teleport him away either, and he seems unimpressed by my little Step From Time technique... eventually a teleport works when I'm down to 2hp. Crikey. Maybe it's time to go see about some of those other branches...
The Shoals sure are pretty. The tides are interesting. Krakens are hilarious! Sirens, not so much.
I realise that making things Ponderous straight away ensures you can't later enchant them. Hmm.
Lee's Rapid Deconstruction annoys me with its lack of both damage, and wall destruction. I think it might have to go.
Run into Louise on Shoals:3. She hasn't noticed me yet (I've been letting Stealth build up and this happens a lot), so I tiptoe back and peep into the Slime Pits. Straight away mobbed by Slime Creatures and get a good beating, so that doesn't look so crash hot... back to the Dungeon.
This time I'm ready for Azrael with better fire resistance and ambush him in a tunnel. He still scorches me up pretty good but goes down.
Lee's Deconstruction actually pretty good when you get the hang of it.
D:19 brings the entrance to the Vaults. Crap. Mara.
D:21 has the entrance to the Vestibule of Hell. Jolly good.
It also has Boris. Who, because I am Ponderous, nails me with a pair of Orbs of Destruction that I can't run from (I'm out of Blink scrolls). So much for that game, though it was my best by far.
Epilogue: What should I have done differently? I may have wasted a turn looking at Boris and not immediately teleporting away, but my feeling was that he killed me in two turns, which wasn't enough time for the instability to take effect.
Should I not have been that deep in the Dungeon yet? Basically my only other options were the Slime Pits, or taking on Louise in the lower Shoals. Mara sounds like he's just as bad as Boris, and was blocking my access to the Vaults by lurking right at the entrance. I was a bit stuck.
Other lessons learned:
1. Pick a spellcasting idea and stick to it. I didn't help myself dicking around with Enchantments and Fire Magic and whatnot and never getting good at anything.
2. Don't stress too much about permafood. Food is actually pretty plentiful in the middle game, just eat it and don't panic trying to find corpses. The same goes for hoarding masses of potions.
3. Dig is absurdly useful.
