Onei's 3-rune Interdimensional Feline Kidnapping Walkthrough - FeSu^Gozag/Jiyva

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

Did you know 100% of deaths in DCSS are the result of taking damage? The common melee brute builds may appear efficient at first, but they suffer from a critical flaw - they let the enemy hit you. Every single time an enemy applies its claws, club, arrows, or reality shattering magic to your sensitive skin, you are exposed to the leading cause of mortality in the Dungeon. I therefore propose an alternative that will make your journey down into the depths 50% less painful, 100% less lonely, and most importantly, 300% fluffier.

The Felid Summoner (of Gozag, and potentially Jiyva later on).

Cats have a terrible reputation for being, supposedly, a “challenge race”, a “tedious ordeal of optimal play” or even an “unfun experience I’d never do again”. I’m here to inform you that this is all baseless canine propaganda, and I hope you too will learn to bow before your true feline masters as you read through this guide. As a cat, you will be able to laugh in the face of paralysis (due to your high willpower), laugh in the face of invisible enemies (due to your intrinsic SInv), laugh in the face of opportunity attacks and melee enemies (due to your high speed) and even occasionally laugh in the face of death. This all comes at the high price of having the lowest amount of hit points in the game, and the inability to use any item besides consumables, evokables and jewellery. Thankfully, you won’t need any of the baubles inferior humanoids depend on, as you will delegate most of the dirty work to pathetically obedient underlings.

This guide was written for 0.29 (trunk, at the time of writing). Do not attempt this in 0.27 or lower, or your fate will be swift and very, very sad. The target audience here are players who have already won at least once, and would like a kind of build that’s a bit off the beaten path of the tried and true brute/caster duality, or even their first Felid victory. However, if you’re still looking for your first victory ever, there’s nothing stopping you from attempting this! I got my first win ever as a Felid, and I believe that the caution and focus that one learns from playing this race is valuable on any character, and will help you grow as a player.

Travel Preparations (optional)

If you care about quality of life, I suggest editing your rc file (in online mode, it's the button right next to the "Play trunk/Play (current version)" button, and in offline mode, it's under the settings folder > init.txt). Add these at the very bottom, on new lines (though this is entirely optional - if you don't think constant confirmation prompts will bother you, feel free to proceed to the next chapter):

default_manual_training = true
show_more = false
fail_severity_to_confirm = 0
fail_severity_to_quiver = 5
tile_player_tile = tile:felid_3

In order, these will:

1. Prevent the very useless and dangerous Auto-training feature from working.

2. Will help you not press "Enter" every 5 seconds while 99 allies and enemies are fighting on the screen.

3. Will allow you to cast dangerous spells without a confirmation prompt.

4. Will allow you to quiver dangerous spells without a confirmation prompt.

5. For the reasonable among you, this will turn the very ugly yellow default Felid sprite - which you may somehow find cute if you suffer from an utter lack of taste - into the objectively superior black counterpart. Secretly grants bonus Willpower from the sheer confidence your glossy black fur will exude (not scientifically tested). For those visually challenged by the black-fur-on-black-floor lack of contrast, tile:felid_6 or mons:natasha are also acceptable. Offline players can also press “-” and cycle through available sprites with left and right arrow keys while ingame.

Points 3 and 4 may be slightly controversial. The reason for this is simple - the "danger rating" of spells is based off your maximum HP, and as Felid has the lowest max HP in the game, even the actually very safe spell Call Canine Familiar will be labeled as "astonishingly dangerous" and constantly ask "are you sure????" when it's actually very safe, and in fact required for progression.

An Agonizing Introduction (XP Level 1)

As the title suggests, pick Felid for your species (ignore the “Advanced” difficulty: that’s merely a ploy to hide true power from your grasp). Pick Summoner for your background, as is wisely recommended by the game.

Upon starting your run, you will be met with the following:

• 7 pitiful HP points, enough to get two-shotted by a quokka.
• Complete lack of any items (except a measly consolation magic cocktail), weapons, or armour, and only three equipment slots for jewellery only. Felid culture prohibits equipping rings on your rear-limbs, as this is symbolic of the time one spent caged by their (now rightfully eviscerated) master.
• The pathetic ability to call forth fuzzy critters from the unfathomable depths of the eldritch cosmos.
• A deranged repartition of default skill training. Press “m”. If you haven’t set up your rc file as explained in the beginning of the tutorial, set training to “manual” mode (press “/” to do so). Then, turn off every skill except Spellcasting and Summonings.

All of this is, to put it bluntly, utter trash. The good news is that XP level 1 and 2 are the only thing separating you from supreme feline domination. Please refer to the following advice to avoid becoming a delicacy in the next hobgoblin feast.

• Try to avoid being in melee range of something that isn’t a “trivial creature” - bats, rats, frilled lizards or ball pythons. In the latter case, if a ball python hits you with the “Constrict” status, do NOT continue fighting and attempt to retreat until you have been cleansed from the status. If you are cornered without MP and forced to fight, do so, but be aware that this is very likely your end. You may take one step in a foe’s reach to reposition, but always remember that most of the denizens of D:1 can two-shot you.
• Cast Summon Small Mammal twice for every encounter (press “p” to do so). Bats are almost useless, rats are mediocre, and quokkas are somewhat passable. If you happen to pull forth one of the latter two from your interdimensional nonexistent hat, you may direct them to get their furry heads bashed in at the nearest available enemy. This is done by pressing “t” to bring up the ally command menu, and then pressing “a” and selecting the enemy you wish to submit to death by a thousand adorable critter bites. If your fuzzy friend meets an unfortunate end at the tip of a kobold’s dagger, there’s always more where that came from - bring on the onslaught until all opposition has been reduced to quokka food. You can have up to a maximum of 2 mammals simultaneously - replace the fallen with more units eager to die in your name. While your summons fight it out, feel free to press “.” to allow the battle to unfold, occasionally shooting a “t”-“a” command to direct firepower. Trying to join the action is a certain way to die - remember, do NOT melee non-trivial creatures!
• Remember the golden rule of summoning: what you can’t see cannot be seen by your summons either. No ally can attack outside of Line-of-Sight (LOS) distance. The opposite is not necessarily true: while your feline senses let you see invisible enemies, all of the critters in your starting spells (except those from Call Canine Familiar) are not as fortunate.
• If you run out of MP, retreat (towards known territory, if possible, as delving into the unknown will result in a swift death) and rest up to recharge your reserves - unless you are being chased by jackals, in which case you should drink your starter Potion of Magic and resume gathering your furry army to avoid being ran down. As a Felid, you are faster than most creatures, which makes it easy to outmaneuver foes while you scrape the mammalian demiplane to bring in more friends. Remember, do NOT attempt to melee non-trivial creatures at level 1. You WILL get your snout slapped faster than you can say “YASD”.
• Keep an eye out for branded weapons! A single hit from either of these is enough to go from a pristine, full health scruff to a game over screen showing 3 unidentified scrolls of acquirement. Your summons can tank stones and other missiles for you if you stand behind them, but this is extremely unreliable (projectiles continue their trajectory if they are dodged). Branded melee weapons are handled in the same way as dangerous creatures of D:1, that is, drowned in pettable fluffballs until the threat is vanquished and drops their dangerous item (possibly a +34 triple sword “lol you can’t use this play minotaur next time” {flaming, Slay+12, AC+10}).

Interdimensional Battle Tactics 101

All enemies of DCSS, from the gurgling jelly to the mighty Pandemonium Lord Cerebov, are extremely unintelligent. In a situation like:

@....
.....
..S..
...E.
.....

(where @ is you, S is a friendly summon, E is an enemy and . are floors), foes would rather hammer their way through your friend (which may be an eight-headed hydra) to reach you, and certainly won’t think about just circling around to one-shot the squishy cat behind. You will need to abuse this as much as possible. Try to always ensure you are shielded behind your loyal servants. This, for example, is not acceptable:

..@..
.....
..S..
...E.
.....

Since the enemy can directly trace a line between you and their position (imagine they’re trying to fire a Magic Dart at you - if they can hit you, you’re not positioned correctly), they will ignore your ally and charge directly at you to slice themselves some fresh feline cutlets. In a situation such as this, it is preferable to either A) send out more summons to return to a more favourable state

..@..
.....
.SSS.
...E.
.....

Or B), retreat to a hallway.

1-tile hallways are your saving grace as a Summoner. Look at the following situation, where # represent walls:

Situation 1

#####
.S.@E
#####

The enemy is possibly an ogre about to bash you into a bloodied furball. Casting your summoning spell placed your unit behind you. Simply walk backwards to swap places with your unit, watch the fight unfold (preferably from a distance), and if your soldier perishes in honourable battle, your MP should have regenerated while they were battling it out: simply send out a fresh combatant eager to finish the job.

#####
@..SE
#####

Zero risk, zero worry. If you run out of MP, simply use your swift cat paws to return to the upstairs, regenerate and try again. Most enemies in the game won’t be able to catch you. Here’s another interesting case:

Situation 2

#####
@E..S
#####

Here, you got unlucky, and casting your spell spawned your unit behind the foe you are attempting to introduce to your friends. You could walk backwards until you have a 1-tile gap with your enemy, then cast your spell again, hoping it lands in the right spot this time around:

#####
@.E..
#####

Casting your spell here may bring you back safely to Situation 1. However, Situation 2 is not entirely unfortunate: fast allies, like Hounds, Quokkas or later Mana Vipers, are capable of biting the enemy while you are running away. If you are in Situation 2, your summon is Fast, and your enemy does not have Fast speed, you may simply walk backwards, kiting this enemy desperate to reach you while your loyal pet bites them from behind every 3 turns or so. It may eventually despawn, but that is simply an invitation to recast the spell.

Of course, if you foolishly end up cornering yourself in a dead end, use a Teleport Scroll. It’s often the second-most common type of scroll.

If all this sounds complicated, do not worry: while it may take a few early D:1 splats to get the hang of it, it will become second nature after just a few battles.

A Devilish Upgrade (XP Level 2)

• Most of the Level 1 advice still applies, but you now have room for one mistake. As soon as you level up and find yourself in a safe area, immediately memorize Call Imp by pressing "M", your new very mischievous addition to the roster. Press "z" then "b" to meet your new demonic friend. The unspeakably dark forces of Hell will be delighted to deliver you a glorified quokka who loves to blink a lot (and expose you to the melee range of enemies unamused by these antics). Occasionally, you may instead pull out a different coloured demon, which are all, relatively to the crimson imp(otent), absolute rampage machines. White imps in particular will play the game for you. Imps will also occasionally compliment you and call you their “pillow-pawed master”, which is a step up from the blank stares of rats. Disregard these attempts to appeal to your nonexistent mercy, and send them to die in your name with more liberal usage of “t”-“a”.
• At any moment, I encourage you to bring forth assistance from your previous, less talkative and much fuzzier friends! You may do this by either clicking the spell in the side menu (in offline mode) or pressing "p" again (in online mode). The total gang of three summons is now sufficient to circle enemies and dish out quick justice to anything on D:1. Keep being careful until you reach level 3. If D:1 fails to provide enough experience for this, carefully descend to D:2 to finish the job, but know that dealing with any of the D:2 new enemies that weren’t featured on D:1 is extremely risky - especially adders and orc priests/wizards. Try to focus on foes you are already familiar with, and use a different staircase if your chosen means of descent places you next to something you haven’t killed yet.

Quite an agonizing experience so far, no? Are you beginning to doubt me? Do you lust to return to a race that starts with HP in the double digits? Foolish! This is where the fun begins.

Canine Thralls vs. The Interdimensional Police (XP Level 3)

Increase (I)ntelligence, and only do so every single time you will be prompted with this choice in the future.

Find a safe area. Memorize Call Canine Familiar, immediately (press "M"). This is the real deal. There are very few creatures in the early dungeon which can survive having three hounds dumped on them one after the other (the summon cap is one, do not recast the spell if your loyal pet is still alive, unless it wandered off and you wish to obtain a fresher, closer and potentially more obedient specimen). Not only can you just stand back and watch the carnage, you do not risk getting hit, and can effectively watch adders get slaughtered from Line-of-Sight (LOS) distance. Even the infamous D:2 Sigmund is powerless before canine brutality! Hounds, like imps, occasionally try to look cute and print out endearing messages in the text log. Again, do not let this affect you - remember that the canine race is lesser before feline glory, and heartlessly send them to their doom (“t”-“a”) while they obey with unfaltering zeal.

You can look (and cast) any of your memorized spells at any time by pressing "z" then "?". If it says, for example, "c - Call Canine Familiar", pressing "z" then "c" will welcome your new canine unit without having to bring up the menu every time. I would advise not doing this just for fun when nothing is around, because...

There is one small problem.

Every time you attempt to call a canine slave friend, there should be a ~7%-9% chance of a miscast, which will reduce as you progress through the arts of Summonings. Miscasts in other schools of magic are generally not too dramatic (given that the caster is not trying to sever reality itself right after learning how to say “pick a card, any card”). However, your constant telemarketing calls to the eldritch cosmos asking “Who wants to die in the name of feline supremacy?” have begun to get on the nerves of some eldritch monstrosities. TentacleMail may therefore rarely deliver you a Nameless Horror instead of your ordered furry companion. Instead of filing a complaint, start to run. The bad news: a single hit from these things is often enough to cut your HP AND MP in half, they will only leave after you have managed to kill them, and they will occasionally return your summons back to their home realm, so they may meet their family again instead of dying for a cat in a dungeon. The good news: you’re much faster than these terrible abominations.

FAQ:

What do I do if I incur the wrath of cosmic aberrations?

It depends on your kit. If you have damaging wands that aren't Mindburst and there are no real threats around, feel free to gun them down. If you are in a safe location, kiting them around an empty level and spamming hounds on them will eventually destroy them (after a very long time). If you are in immediate danger, leave through the nearest up-staircase without getting hit by the Nameless Horror (that means, do not walk into a tile adjacent to the Horror), and take a different staircase to enter the level in which this horrifying creature is now roaming loose. If you are FORCED to walk in melee range of their tentacles, try to minimize your exposure to their reach - do not linger for too many turns, for a few unlucky rolls is all it takes for you to meet your doom! If the Nameless Horror isn't marked as "extremely dangerous" (it will be marked by a red square around it if it is) and you have HP to spare, you can ascend with it to a cleared floor, and park it there for later. Maybe the end of your run, at which point it will tremble before the GOD you have become.

What if I accidentally spawned some all over the level?

First, you are very unlucky. While the miscast chance may initially be 9%, the risk of a nameless horror answering a miscast is even lower. Second, you should simply skip D:2 and plunge into D:3, returning later once you have the ability to show these tentacled bullies the power of feline might.

How can I minimize my chances of being investigated by the interdimensional kidnapping police?

The Summonings school is not to be messed with. It is strongly advised that you never try to cast a spell with a failure rate higher than 10%, as the consequences may be disastrous. Only violate this rule in desperate emergencies. Hounds should be safe to be called upon as soon as you unlock them, but later spells may require more training before you should even consider trying them out - even in an open, clear space. Only the truly overpowered Dragon's Call spell, which you may get much later on, is worthy of risking a cosmic amber alert.

How can I possibly lose with such loyal followers?

Orc priests, my noble feline acolyte. These green-robed menaces have the ability to inflict undodgeable, instant and two-shotting damage from full LOS range. Right now, no amount of summons could protect you from their devotion to the god of the Orcs. If you see one - or, Xom have mercy, two or more, do not even attempt to test their mettle. Press “x”, move the cursor towards them, and press “e” to set up an exclusion - this is your way of telling the game “NOPE”. Remember, you are much faster than them. If they stay visible on your screen for 5 turns or more, you are asking to die. Leave through the nearest up-staircase, and attempt a different portion of the level (or descend to D:3 if the level is truly doomed), leaving these dissenters alive for later. They will suffer the consequences of their insolence in due time.

I have no MP, no friends and I am going to die. What do I do?

First, if nothing chasing you is Fast or has ranged attacks, consider running away, or even running in circles around a dungeon wall, pillar or feature - this should give you back some MP to dial up emergency help. If that is impossible, look at your wands - wands of acid, mindburst and iceblast are particularly efficient, although flame can do in a pinch. If that is not an option, read your scrolls hoping for a Teleport/Blink/Fear, possibly quaff potions to stay alive should you find it, and pray. Remember, once you have found the Scrolls of Identification (often the biggest stack of scrolls), you should be using them as soon as you find them (and it is safe to do so)! Don’t procrastinate!

The Delicate Art of Explosive Incineration (XP Level 4)

You now have an extra life! Such is the privilege of feline supremacy. As a proud member of the most blessed race in existence, death is not the end for you. Still, you should pretend it is - it will help you take better strategical decisions. If you do meet an unfortunate end, stay focused, take a break if you are feeling frustrated, and continue to play carefully as if you hadn’t died. Most Felid runs die around 3 to 9 times in an average 3-rune run, so do not feel too bad. The loss in XP level is also practically insignificant, considering your skills stay intact. Felid lives are meant to be used like rare, powerful consumables, and many Felid 3-rune or even 15-rune wins have 1 or 2 deaths as early as D:3.

Do not quit a Felid run because of an early death! With the way the system is designed, it's almost as if you are supposed to die in early Dungeon. It's much easier to level up early on than in the late game. A life lost on D:4 is gotten back on D:7, but a life lost in Pandemonium may take a full clear of all 4 Hell branches to get it back.

I will repeat it again. Do not quit a Felid run just because you died twice in a row to the same enemy. Save your game and go do something else instead. I know it's infuriating, but that would be like using a blink scroll and then quitting because you're mad about using a lifesaving item. Lives are consumables. Playing a Felid without dying is like playing an Octopode with 2 rings. You are supposed to die.

Press “E” to see how long it will take to get your next life. Press "%" to see how many lives you have (look in the top right of the popup!)

Once again, as soon as you find a safe place, immediately add your new friend to your roster - the Guardian Golem. Do not even think about casting it yet! Soon enough, it will be below 10% fail rate, and you may then use it safely. Tweak your skills as follows - turn on Hexes, press “=” to set a skill target, select Hexes, and set it to 5.0. While you're at it, you should also set a target for Spellcasting at 10.0, and Summonings at 10.0. You should also turn on Fighting and Dodging, and set a target to 19.0 for Dodging, and 15.0 for Fighting. Do not turn these two off until they have reached this level, no matter what.

Starting from D:3, the Dungeon loves to throw at you fast, high-damage, or sometimes even fast and high damage enemies before you are ready for them. You may therefore encounter water moccasins, ogres, killer bees, dangerous Lair enemies (wyverns & hornets are a classic), among a variety of other nasty creatures. However, you will laugh in the face of these pitiful attempts at stopping the march of progress, oneshot them with what is probably the most overpowered level 3 spell in the game, and witness the XP trickle down like cat treats. This is what you were suffering in D:1 for - whereas your average MiFi or DECj would meet a swift end against a swarm of light speed enemies that make your healthbar have more red than green (or sometimes yellow), you will sacrifice unholy amounts of expensive machinery, and will probably make the interdimensional inventor shipping these to you very frustrated.

The Guardian Golem does zero melee damage and only knows how to take hits. Nearby summons may occasionally transmit some of their wounds to the Golem instead, but this is barely noticeable. The real reason you summon a Guardian Golem is to BLOW IT UP.

As a Remote Detonated Bomb Guardian Golem gets close to death, a red icon may appear in the corner of its sprite, and the message log will mention it is “overheating”. Once this happens, do NOT stand in melee range of the Golem. It’s going to EXPLODE, INCINERATE everything adjacent to it (including you, if you are incapable of following basic safety protocols), and leave behind CLOUDS OF BLAZING FLAME to block passage and allow you to leave, rest, and recuperate.

Do NOT stand in melee range of your Guardian Golem when it has that fire icon on its sprite. You WILL be oneshotted.

If you HAVE to brace for an inescapable blast, or must walk through flame clouds to reposition away from an orc with a +99 Halberd of Feline Culling, consider briefly putting on a ring of Fire Protection/a ring of Fire! This is very fast (less than one turn) and will halve the damage, allowing you to survive. Also consider simply recasting the spell to get a fresh, less explosive specimen if the current Golem is directing their murderous intent towards you.

Here are some diagrams of potential ways you can commit feline war crimes with this improvised explosive. @ is you, the one and only genius fuzzball, E are your foolish enemies, and G is your trusty golem. . represents floors, and #, walls.

Hallway Exit Triple-Blast

.EEE.
.#G#.
.#.#.
.#.#.
.#@#.

Outsmarting Lesser Beings in Open Spaces

.EEE.
..G..
.....
..@..
.....

Yes, this actually works. The enemies on the sides won't even swerve around, captivated by the shining metal of your loyal robot. Do note that one step forward will put you in the blast zone, and that one step back will disrupt the captivation of your foes and have them rush to attack you.

Cheering on the Sidelines

...EE   EE...
...G.   .G...
.....   .....
..@..   ..@..
.....   .....

Super Final Destination Crematorium

.EEE.
.EGE.
.EEE.
..H..
..@..

In which case "H" is your very distressed Hound, or any other summon that can tank the hits while inevitable explosive doom approaches. Of course, it's rare to get the full value octo-blast, but getting 4 to 6 kills in packs of orcs or yaks is absolutely doable.

From now on, the plan is as follows:

• Summon a Hound for every single trivial-to-medium difficulty battle. Make use of “t”-“a” to direct focus, and do not hold back until the entire canine demiplane has been sacrificed to mitten-pawed glory.
• Demolish every single high damage or out-of-depth (OOD) enemy by letting them uselessly punch a robotic time bomb over and over until it inevitably burns them to a crisp. Ice beast? Boom. Ogre? Boom. Bullfrog? Boom. Wyvern? Boom. Water moccasin, yak, two-headed ogre, gnoll sergeant, any Unique creature, hornet, ugly thing, scorpion, troll, orc warrior? BOOM. They will not survive, and if they somehow do, you can simply bring out more golems for your foes to commit the same mistake. So much for having “human”-level intelligence - clearly, the humanoids are hopeless, dull-witted morons before feline genius.
• Stuck in a pinch with no MP and a really angry dude invading your personal space? Getting turned into a porcupine by a very merry centaur? Use wands! They are the guns of the fantasy world, and will dispose of any pesky denizen of the Dungeon. The bolt ones, like Quicksilver, Light or Acid, are especially effective. If you use Charming, you can "t"-"r" the mind-controlled foe to get away from you, then use that distance to execute a swift, zero-risk retreat!
• If you end up in a terrible situation, use a consumable. A teleportation scroll will often get you out of trouble in just a few turns. They are the second-most common type.
• In the semi-common case where you encounter the unique siblings Dowan and Duvessa, always slay Duvessa first, preferably with an incinerating payload.

Try to abuse the 1-tile hallways described earlier in Battle Tactics 101! This guarantees your foes will not attempt to circumvent your units to instead give you a very uncomfortable petting session. You are extremely frail, and lingering in melee range of anything that isn’t a basic orc or a D:1 creature is bound to result in your doom. Constantly use your turns to reposition and ensure you are always behind your summons - any turn spent not moving is a turn not spent using your speed advantage! If your summons lose, you will be the next target on the list, and you will NOT survive should you stand your ground with tooth and claw. Run, rest and try again.

It is advised to not send Golems against low-damage enemies - most of the time, this will cause them to despawn before they can blow up, resulting in MP waste.

Anarcho-Catpitalism (God Choice)

You have only three equipment slots to fulfill Ashenzari’s bondage fantasies, no time to learn the ways of Invocations, and would not benefit from weapon gifts with your lack of opposable thumbs. As the lead of an interdimensional kidnapping startup, you should delegate EVERY task to your staff and never do any work yourself.

Ru is technically quite viable for you, but as you don’t care for employee wellbeing, in-office buddhist yoga sessions are not at the top of your schedule. Plus, you will need both of your paws to play with the Orb of Zot like a ball of yarn.

It is therefore in your advantage to strike a divine partnership with Gozag. Unlike those pesky other deities who consider you their servant, Gozag sees you as an entrepreneur, and will only make its presence known if you wish to form a trading partnership with their divine realm in times of need. Gozag is utterly indifferent to the wellbeing of your employees, and will allow you to maim, manipulate and abuse them as you wish. At this stage of your journey, you should only try to gather some funds for your startup - the only divine ability you should currently consider is Potion Petition, and only in times of absolute emergency. For a modest sum of 400 gold, you will be injected with a wide variety of experimental drugs to replenish your magical reserves, regenerate your flesh, increase your IQ, turn invisible and become hyperactive all at the same time. Side effects may include increased ego, and a desire to TAB your promising run into its doom. Try to not use this, and favour using your array of consumables instead - but if the need arises, it’s there.

I know this guide suggests an eventual conversion to Jiyva, but do not convert to Jiyva this early! You will find yourself with zero scrolls, potions and spells, and will curse the slime keeping your worn-down body alive as you try to send forth quokkas against Orbs of Fire in Zot. Don’t let this happen to you!

OPTIONAL: If you find altars to Elyvilon or The Shining One before Gozag’s, consider giving them a half hearted prayer, with the devious intent to betray them later once you find that ornate, golden altar you are after! Both of these gods come with significant advantages - the former will occasionally heal your summons, protect you from killing blows, and grant you to ability to heal yourself, or remove poison/petrification/confusion like a free potion of curing. The latter will similarly grant healing and durability to your friends, increase their accuracy through the radiant halo around you telling them where to hit, and also occasionally protect you from death.

Both of these gods are also professionals of anger management and will not become enraged once you give up their crusades and focus on your booming business instead.

Elyvilon and TSO will give you the option to train Invocations. Do not. Learning how to deliver an impactful sermon will be utterly useless when your crowd of disciples is more interested in using its vast array of tentacles and toothed maws to wreck havoc throughout the dungeon.

The sad part of serving the “righteous” forces of demon genocide is that they won’t be amused by seeing you open hellish portals to summon imps from the depths of Gehenna - thus, Call Imp will become a forbidden spell. If you are a fan of having White Imps playing the game for you, you may remain free of religious servitude until Gozag is found. If you do decide to complete this temporary conversion, though, as soon as you identify Scrolls of Amnesia, read one, and remove Call Imp (and also Summon Small Mammal) to free up the spell slots.

Despite popular belief, however, these “good gods” are perfectly fine with you sending Golems to their explosive doom, and burning the fur of nearby Hounds to a crisp as they yelp in agony. Just average honourable and chivalrous things.

Murder and Electrical Engineering (D:3 to Lair)

You should have collected a nice array of scrolls by now. The biggest stack is very likely to be Identification - find it, and proceed to use each one to label your possessions respectively as "potion of Save Felid" and "scroll of Rage Quit". From now on, every single time you discover an Identification Scroll, use it immediately, as soon as it is safe to do so.

Between level 6 and 8 (variable depending on your dungeon adventures), the ability to memorize Summon Lightning Spire will be made available to you. This is the big gun, the heavy artillery, and other militarily pleasing expressions. Whereas the Guardian Golem granted the power to slay individual high-level threats, the Lightning Spire welcomes a little bit of ranged combat to the battlefield. This stationary turret has zero chill, and will electrocute anything breathing the same air as you in record time, only stopping once you and your allies are the only thing left standing. However, it occasionally likes to sleep on the job, so make sure to wake it up with more ample usage of “t”-“a”. Remember that neither the Golem nor the Spire have vision as refined as yours, and will completely ignore invisible enemies - most commonly orc wizards. You can still direct fire on a visible enemy, and if a sneaky invisible trickster is in the way, they will still get zapped!

To tap into this immense electrical power, open up your skills menu with “m” - notice that your Hexes should be at 5 and disabled, or close to 5. Now, turn on Air Magic, and set a target to 7. Remember, do not attempt to cast a Summonings spell above 10% fail rate!

There are two main issues: first, the Spire is highly considerate of your wellbeing (which is nice, for the velvet-pawed deserve utmost comfort) yet also just as compassionate towards your other summons (which is less nice, as they are disposable and unimportant lesser beings). It will therefore not shoot if its piercing, bouncing bolt would cause harm to you or to any of your loyal servants. Strangely, it seems to hold a grudge against the Guardian Golem, and will occasionally zap it anyways, but this is uncommon - most likely, the Golem dimension played an amusing prank on the Spire dimension before you ripped both of them from their home realm to perish in unspeakable agony. Just kidding. They’re constructs. They don’t feel anything.

The second issue is that unlike other units, the Lightning Spire is incapable of moving out of your way or swapping places with you. This is problematic if you cast the spell in a hallway, potentially blocking your escape route.

#####
.S@.O
#####

You can’t walk backwards to escape the ogre (O), and the (S)pire won’t do anything, too afraid of daring to disrespect you (@)!

Instead of trying to melee an ogre with 0 Unarmed Combat skill, I propose an alternative - a disciplinary paw-scratch. Hold Ctrl, and move in the direction of your Lightning Spire. This will attack it, and immediately one-shot it no matter what, allowing passage again. An alternative is to recast the spell, though this is risky - it may simply land in an equally unfortunate position.

With all of that said, you should be set for clearing floors until you find the entrance to the Lair. Your faithful trio - Hound, Spire and Golem - can take on pretty much anything. In addition, you may occasionally notice Call Canine Familiar will now send out much more effective Wolves instead of Hounds! This guide will still refer to this unit as a “Hound” for convenience. You should honestly send the entire trio for every battle - they will make quick work of anything the game may attempt to impede your progress with. Remember to also put on any jewellery you may find (press capital "P") - Intelligence, Wizardry, and Magical Power are the best rings you could hope for (in that order), and Magic Regeneration, Regeneration and Reflection are the best amulets (also in that order).

If you find a runed door vault with a ghost in it, this could be an opportunity for instant acquirement of three degrees from the Summonings College! They are worth boatloads of experience, but can range from trivial to lethal. Inspect them with "x"-"v", and check their kit - if they have Conjurations that could annihilate you or dangerous Summonings spells, they should be left alone. If they, however, only have a few joke cantrips or only know how to o-tab like a Minotaur Berserker, then it is time to guide them to eternal rest. Once the floor is fully cleared, gather up all your friends, open the door, and make them bash golems, eat electricity and be eaten by wolves until they die (for the second time in their existence).

The true threats are ranged attackers - centaurs, steam dragons, electric eels, or big packs of orc priests (speaking of, if you left enemies (such as orc priests) or nameless horrors behind on upper floors, now is the time to come back and dispense a rightful whooping!). Since Spires have almost zero evasion, they will gladly tank arrows for you (unlike those scumbag canines), so they may be of great use should you face off a centaur - hide behind them, and let the ranged battle unfold. Which will win, wooden sharp sticks, or thousand-volt lightning bolts? Spoiler alert: the latter.

However, keep in mind:

..@..
..S..
.....
.....
...E.

This is not a safe way of hiding. The centaur (E) will still turn you from a cat to a porcupine while the Spire will desperately attempt to dish out damage before you die in an anxiety-inducing Damage Per Turn race. First, consider Wands - polymorph is especially effective, as wielding a bow is quite hard without opposable thumbs. As you may have discovered yourself. Otherwise, you can spawn more summons - if a hound gets in melee range, the centaur will panic and stop shooting. Consider a Scroll of Fog or Summon Butterflies if things get too dire. Of course, the classical melee brute tactic of hiding behind a corner/closing a door and waiting for the centaur to get closer remains efficient here. If you have Tukima's Dance (explained below in the next section), you may use this spell to instantly regress these threats from run-ending doom to the laughable sight of a horseman crying as they gets shot by their own bow over and over. Anguish will also annihilate them with terrible regret over their act of justified self-defense.

As for electric eels, they can prove to be quite dangerous. These living death traps are resistant to your Spire, and will three-shot you. To add insult to injury, they’re worth almost no experience - for comparison, a single scorpion rewards you with about 53% more experience than one eel. Thankfully, there's a trick: a zap from a wand of flame will oneshot or twoshot them, due to the steam clouds this technique will spawn. If flame is unavailable, iceblast and mindburst will make short work of them.

Steam dragons are deceptively dangerous. Their breath weapon will turn the heat up in every sense of the word, and may even twoshot you should the dice be animated by murderous intent. Thankfully, there is counterplay - a ring of fire protection. If you can give yourself a + of rF, this battle will go from terrifying to laughable. If rF is not available to you, tread lightly, and be ready to retreat out of their sight the moment you are hit.

If you’re unlucky enough to encounter a Meliai, know that they are practically cyber-augmented orc priests. Just one isn’t that bad, but they often hang out with their friends, and you do NOT want to be the centre of attention of bee-witch gossip. Eating a quadruple smite in one turn can happen, and it will kill you. Potions of Invisibility work, and so do Wands of various kinds - or have them be zapped one at a time by your spire before they notice your presence, and they should fall relatively quickly. Otherwise, pushing a Golem in their faces may make them lose turns using less of their celestial magic, and more of their venomous stingers.

Should you be so hapless as to encounter the unique slug mage Gastronok, you must immediately try to avoid empty spaces. Hug walls, surround yourself with allies - if you find yourself with 4 or more completely empty tiles, you WILL be oneshotted with an insanely powerful, irresistible Smite ability. If you have found a scroll of Silence or even somehow have the Silence spell already, I highly recommend using it as soon as you’ve churned out a few friends to help take him down. If you do not have silencing abilities, keep him at the edge of Line-of-Sight while the battle unfolds, hug walls and potentially some Small Mammals, and be ready to step away the second you are smited by Airstrike. Even with wise positioning, all it takes are 2 casts to detonate you into an unrecognizable mess of gore and fluff.

Once the Lightning Spire is below 5% failure rate, if you found some of the spells described in the section below, you should get a little bit more Spellcasting to make room for them -- consider around 1.5 skill levels above 10 per Trinity Spell in the list below that you wish to add. For example, if you want Cactus Giants and Mana Vipers, set a target to 13. This is an imprecise approximation, considering how many variables there are here, like your number of deaths. Train more if you need more spell slots, stop training if you have enough.

For the rest of the run, don’t ever have rF- or rC- no matter what. Yes, even if it means giving up an Int+10 ring (you can also wear rF+/rC+ to cancel out the rF-/rC- if it’s really good). Vulnerabilities will be your doom: 50% extra damage is plenty to oneshot you before you even realize what has happened.

Interdimensional Recruiting Interview (or how to spend your spell slots).

As you progress through the Dungeon, you may pick up a few books lying around, or perhaps even find a bookshop. Most of them are completely useless to you - Conjurations would only harm your loyal servants in the blast zone, and many are random low level spells meant to carry one through the Dungeon, much less effective than your blessed role of Summoner. However, there are three schools which you should be looking out for: Summonings (duh), Transmutations, and Translocations. Press Ctrl-F to start a search, and try looking up “summ”, “transm”, and “transl”. Also, press “M” (case sensitive), and browse through your spell library for interesting additions. Here is a list of medium level spells which you should be considering at this stage of the game - you do not have to read all of this, only the paragraphs relevant to the spells you may have discovered or will discover.

The Holy Trinity

Getting one or two out of Viper, Forest or Cactus Giant is pretty much a guaranteed first rune. These spells are insane. If you are lucky enough to find it, the standard Book of the Wilderness has all three, and immensely increases your odds of winning the run the moment you touch it.

Summon Mana Viper (LV 5 Hex/Summ): If you thought your current army was powerful, this spell just rockets the Dungeon into easy mode. If you find it at any point before entering your first S-branch, you should absolutely open your skills, turn on Hexes again, and bump up the target to 10 (press “=” to do so). It’s very fast, deals immense damage (relatively to the early game), and occasionally silences spellcasters. As you progress, it will settle comfortably into a status of "your Hound but better". For the magically-attuned uniques like Fannar, those snakes will be their doom! Even the notoriously lethal Elven Halls, a mid game area where magic is abundant, gets absolutely ravaged by the Viper's dastardly mana-sucking venom! Maximum Summon Capacity: 1.

Summon Forest (LV 5 Transloc/Summ): The supreme destroyer of the Lair and the Orcish Mines, and still useful even in the depths of Pandemonium. If you are fortunate enough to find this, turn on Translocations (you have +4!), and set the target to 10. It requires open space to be casted, so this spell is completely unusable in hallways - which the Lair and Mines are interestingly very scarce in. Successfully using this spell results in a maze-like formation of tree-walls, which are immune to damage, block Line-Of-Sight, and deal heavy melee damage to nearby foes. Feel free to run around the maze while pursued by an angry pack of animals - they will simply bring about their doom. The main downside: all this offensive power depends on the Dryad at the centre, which has suicidal tendencies and will gladly run into melee range of a Komodo Dragon. If she is slain, the spell will abruptly end. To prevent this, make use of “t”-“r” or "t"-"f" to remind the Dryad that her life is worth living, and make her fall back to safety. Keep in mind that barking out such orders will also cause your other allies to run in fear alongside her, so cast Summon Forest first, then use "t"-"r" if you do not need immediate support, and then dispense the rest of your army. If you can keep her alive long enough, snapvine tentacles will eventually start to spawn, which will utterly decimate anything still alive. They also constrict enemies, making them easier to hit by your other summons! If you quiver this spell with "Q", you will be able to see on the sidebar when the spell has enough space to be casted (the text will be coloured). Maximum Summon Capacity: 1.

Summon Cactus Giant (LV 6 Summ): An interesting upgrade over the Guardian Golem. Its role is very similar - stand in hallway, tank hits, eventually destroy the attacker with immense damage. The melee damage of the Cactus Giant is mediocre, but each hit it receives inflicts heavy reflection damage. It’s perfect to use against those pesky hydras, and should be your go-to 1v1 spell against high damage melee targets, just like the role the Guardian Golem once served. It has a great synergy with Summon Forest: while foes take damage bludgeoning their way through the Giant, they take even more punishment from the berserk trees surrounding them! You will need around Summonings level 14 to use this spell. Maximum Summon Capacity: 1.

Support Spells

Unlock extra escape, damage or disable options here!

Summon Ice Beast (LV 4 Ice/Summ): A very mediocre summon, and the ugly duckling of the otherwise outstanding Summonings school. Still, if you found nothing else, you may want to consider it - the slowing effect it has on the reptiles and amphibians of the Lair can be useful. If you decide to use this spell, enable Ice Magic, and set it to a target of 5. If you found any of the spells above, however, definitely use those instead. Maximum Summon Capacity: 1.

Blink (LV 2 Transloc): A generally great escape spell. Set Translocations to a skill target of 5, turn it on, and remember to use this spell if you ever find yourself cornered.

Swiftness (LV 3 Air): Perfect for closing that distance separating you from the upstairs without getting constantly bitten from behind by a black mamba. Still, keep in mind it slows you after it runs out - and you do NOT want to be slowed in a place filled with snakes, hydras and other creatures viewing you as a delicious treat. Castable without training.

Passage of Golubria (LV 4 Transloc): Quite possibly one of the most underrated spells in the entire roster. This is a scroll of blinking with a small margin of error, but it is unparalleled in terms of “get me out of this situation, now”. If the portal spawns a few steps away, simply move towards it - and if it spawns under you, simply press > as you would with a staircase. Do keep in mind that enemies can also use the portals, destroying them in the process, so if you truly are cornered by multiple bullies eager to chomp/impale/incinerate you, consider using Blink instead, and Golubria only once there is little risk of the entry portal spawning on top of the enemy you’re trying to distance yourself from. For reliable usage, set Translocations to a skill target of 10, and turn it on.

Inner Flame (LV 3 Fire/Hex): Do you like the Guardian Golem? Do you still think your run is lacking in the “EXPLOSIONS” department despite repeated use of it? This smite-targeted spell afflicts the creature of your choice with the same “kill everything around me when I die” curse the Golem suffers from. The obvious usage here is to cast it on one of the members of a yak pack, kill it in some fashion (bonus coolness points if you use a Golem), and incinerate every single one of its friends. If you’re really eeeevil and sadistic, you can also cast the spell on your own summons, turning them into Golems that can actually do damage. An Inner Flamed-Cactus Giant is quite probably the most impenetrable rampart you could ever hope for at this stage. If this sounds fun, enable Fire Magic, and set it to a target of 4.

Anguish (LV 4 Hex/Necro): You may have noticed that there are a lot of things in the Dungeon that are trying to kill you. This is beyond comprehension, for you and me both know no intelligent creature would ever dare disturb the hallowed quadrupedal march of fuzzy majesty. Through the use of this simple spell, which you should invest into with level 5 Necromancy and level 8 Hexes, this travesty will end. Successfully using it will place a terrible curse on ALL enemies who failed their saving throw and had their Willpower overpowered. From now on, all damage they inflict will cause them to shrivel up in soul-devouring anguish, reflecting an equal amount of damage back onto them. Normally, this spell will be reserved for the masochistic and vulgar "hybrid" casters who want to jump and the fray and kill the opposition by literally just standing there, but you musn't resort to such painful strategies. You have a limitless supply of minions ready to be bashed instead. With the help of Anguish, even a single quokka becomes a monstrous force as your foes are consumed by horrible guilt as they reminisce their senseless murder of innocent fuzzy animals! This works especially well with summons that are meant to be hit, mainly Guardian Golem and Cactus Giant.

Tukima's Dance (LV 3 Hex): If you were to ask me what is the unique I hate the most in ALL of DCSS, it would be Vashnia. If I was prompted to assemble a list of all the unpleasant things I want to do to Vashnia, it would contain more words than this entire guide. At the top of said list, you would find "read a scroll of Vulnerability, then cast Tukima's Dance". You see, crossbow, sling and bow users are the kryptonite to a Felid, as they disrupt the entire strategy of "sacrificing your friends to not take any damage". If you've played a few runs of FeSu, you've probably come to hate ranged enemies with a burning passion. This is where Tukima's comes in: it will disarm centaurs, centaur warriors, orcs with crossbows and sling-wielding nasties like Joesph, rendering them helpless as your army converges towards them (said army now including their own weapon animated with murderous intent). Later in the game, enemies will start to earn massive amounts of Willpower, which will make disarming them difficult, but a Scroll of Vulnerability can fix that. If you kill Vashnia with Tukima's in your game, then splat later, you may not have officially won, but in my eyes, you are a truly victorious feline acolyte. Castable without training.

To make room for all of these great spells, you may have to train some Spellcasting to improve your memory. Simply turn on Spellcasting, and turn it off once you have enough slots to fit in all these great additions. It's strongly recommended to have at least level 10 Spellcasting by the time you enter Orc:1 if you are using non-starter spells. If you still have the pathetic spells Call Imp and Summon Small Mammal, remember that they should be forgotten as soon as you stop relying on them with Scrolls of Amnesia. Their respective demiplanes will thank you for ceasing your kidnappings.

Tired of pressing zazbzcpp every time someone notices your existence? Try macros! Ctrl-D will bring up the (slightly intimidating) menu. Hit a key you wish to bind - I like the number row at the top of the keyboard. For example, press "1". A field will appear: enter "z", then the letter ID of the spell you wish to bind. Say Guardian Golem is "d" when you bring up the "z?" menu. Enter "zd" in the field. Close the menu. From now on, pressing "1" will summon a Guardian Golem! A favourite layout of mine is 1 for Imp, 2 for Hound, 3 for Golem, 4 for Spire, Summon Forest/Viper/Cactus on the "Q"uiver (casted with "p"), and maybe linking a support spell like Blink with a macro on "e".

You may have also discovered some of the following Big Spells, which require a much more significant investment, but may wish to start training for now: Malign Gateway, Summon Horrible Things, Haunt, Summon Hydra, Monstrous Menagerie, or even the fearsome and coveted Dragon's Call. The great news is that all of these spells use Summonings, which you have already been training. Furthermore, in the case of Malign Gateway, the secondary skill it requires is second nature to the blessed feline race, which you are a proud member of - +4 for Translocations!

If you have not found Form spells (Storm Form/Statue Form/Dragon Form) - covered in the following section), turn on that secondary skill, and set a target to 15 (if it’s Translocations) or 12 (if it’s Necromancy)! In your screen, you should now be training Fighting, Dodging, Summonings, and the secondary skill, if it is needed. Press "*" while the skill screen is open to show all possible skills in the game, if the secondary skill you want to train isn't showing up in the default list.

If you have found a Form spell, leave the Big Spells to rot in your library for now. Focus on the Form - follow the instructions in the chapter below.

If you have not found any of these spells, do not worry. The Sacred Trio of Golem, Spire and Hound is perfectly sufficient to clear up the Lair (though you may need to play with care, use a few consumables, and potentially lose a life or two). You will find these awesome spells in due time. If you are afflicted with this magical draught, keep training Fighting and Dodging alongside your Summonings and other relevant skills waiting to reach their target. This survivability will help you get through these hard times.

Recreative Mutagenic Self-Transformation (or how to cure single-digit AC syndrome)

It is HIGHLY recommended that you get online either Storm Form (preferably), Statue Form or Dragon Form at some point in your run. No matter how majestuous, fluffy and charismatic your fleshy form is, it's not exactly arrowproof. Nor swordproof. And certainly not reality-violating-magicproof.

If you are particularly lucky, you may discover the fearsome, most potent and actually not that rare Inescapable Atlas. The spells it contains are as follows: Blink, Manifold Assault and Storm Form. Combined, the latter two are enough to carry you from the moment they go online to all the way down in the depths of Pandemonium (which you don’t even need to go to for a three-rune game). If you do not find the fabled Atlas, the Book of the Sky and the Book of Spatial Translocations will provide you with the spells it contains in a DIY-Atlas strategy. Random artifact spellbooks can also occasionally contain the Atlas’s spells. Dragon Form and Statue Form appear in a variety of books as well, if you do not find Storm Form.

Throughout this entire run, refer to this:

Starter Spells > at least one out of Forest/Cactus/Viper (optional replacement: Malign Gateway) > one Form Spell (then, Manifold Assault & Unarmed Combat after getting the Form) > level 7+ Summonings > other spells.

Before dreaming big, you must get all your starter spells below 5% failure rate, and if you've discovered one or multiple members of the holy Forest/Cactus/Viper trinity, at least one must be pushed to below 5% failure rate (of course, if you never find a Trinity spell, ignore this).

If you fill all these criteria, you should start working on studying your Form, and doing so immediately, to the best of your ability.

This means - turn off Summonings (again, ONLY if you are done getting all your Starter/Trinity spells to be reliable), and apply the following skill targets:

• Storm Form (the mobility Form - my favourite by a landslide) - Turn on Transmutations and Air Magic, and set a target to 16.0 for both of them.
• Dragon Form (the offensive Form - insane damage, but be wary of icy attacks!) - Turn on Transmutations, and set a target to 16.0.
• Statue Form (the defensive Form - greatly increases midgame survival odds) - Turn on Transmutations and Earth Magic, and set a target to 12.0 for Transmutations, and 7.0 for Earth Magic.

DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT FOUND A FORM. Never train "in advance" for spells you do not have yet. Press "*" (asterisk) while the skill screen is open to show all possible skills in the game, which you may need to do to begin your Transmutations research without actually knowing a single precept of the delicate arts of form-changing.

If you were so blessed by RNG you have found the Big Spells from the previous section AND a Form spell - ignore those little cantrips! Focus on the Form.

The only spells that are more important than Forms are your starters, and the trinity of Viper/Cactus/Forest (Summon Forest gets a special mention, as Translocations work towards Manifold Assault too and are blessed with a +4 aptitude). Malign Gateway also gets a shoutout for relying on Translocations as well, despite being a "Big Spell", and can be trained for before a Form. If you are stuck with puny starters while some overpowered powerhouses like Summon Forest or Summon Cactus Giant are rotting in your library, get those Trinity Spells to a good success rate BEFORE you begin studying a Form.

If it's not obvious by now, I will always favour Storm Form over the other two. If you find the Atlas in a shop, buy it. If you find the Book of the Sky and the Book of Spatial Translocations, buy them. You will not regret it. All that matters is surviving until these spells are castable, and then, the Orb of Zot itself will roll towards you from the depths of the dungeon, begging for mercy. Once a Storm Form + Manifold Assault combo is truly online, bonus points will be granted to the brave cats who forgo their safety and dare to equip an artifact amulet with the Harm property, and live out the true meaning of ONESHOT OR BE ONESHOTTED. Stack Slaying bonuses on your jewellery, memorize the Wereblood spell, and prepare for the goriest meat grinder you’ll ever see.

Even if you start fighting with Unarmed Combat in your Form, your summons are not made irrelevant in any way; in fact, you should keep using them all throughout this run - ESPECIALLY the screen-covering ones, like Summon Forest or Malign Gateway. Even if their damage output falls behind due to your negligence, any HP they lose is HP you didn’t have to lose. Just ignore their pleas for mercy.

Employee Tour at the Zoo (The Lair)

If you play your cards right, this shouldn’t be too hard. Summonings builds shine when put against fast, melee-only enemies, and the Lair is filled with those. The Golem (or Giant, if you found it) decimates black mambas, spiny frogs, komodo dragons, polar bears and hydras. The Spire will annihilate packs of yaks, killer bees, wolves, blink frogs, and even death yaks (though those make take a few castings and a bit of kiting, alongside the occasional Golem). Hounds are a general-purpose summon, which should be brought out in unchallenging battles. Cactus Giant and Forest will crush pretty much any Lair enemy, the former being superior for 1v1s, and the latter for big groups. Still, you have MP to spare - in times of need, just use all of it to bring out a good army, and if things go wrong, just run! Unless the enemy is some type of snake, bee or frog, nothing will be able to catch you.

Blink frogs in particular can get annoying, as they tend to escape ambushes by blinking frenetically. Do not hesitate to send a few zaps of your wands they way to teach them some discipline. Catoblepas have a love for garden ornaments, and would delight in turning you into one of them - do not ever stand 2 turns in a row in their calcifying breath. Lightning Spires are immune to petrification. If you see the message "You are slowing down" and you're put against a lonely Basilisk, feel free to spawn a few friends and have them handle everything while you stand there as a pretty feline statue. However, getting petrified in dangerous screens is a death sentence, and you should read a scroll of teleportation or quaff a potion of cancellation before you turn to stone.

Prioritize wearing an Amulet of Magic Regeneration to replenish your forces quickly - Regeneration is the second best option, Reflection, the third, Acrobat, the fourth, Faith, the fifth (It's useless. On Demigods, it will print a message saying "You feel a surge of self-confidence", but there is no such message for Felids, because they already have maximum self-confidence), and Guardian Spirit, the worst possible option (enjoy losing access to all your summons because you took one wrong step). If you somehow find the Amulet of Vitality, congratulations, you have won the game - it is disgustingly powerful on a Felid.

As for rings, +6 Intelligence is the best you could ask for and is superior to all other options. Otherwise, Wizardry helps getting the big spells castable faster, and Magical Power grants an enhanced ability to kidnap more innocents from other dimensions before you find yourself exhausted. Take the former if you’re looking to get a mid-to-high level spell online, or the latter if you are not. If you have found none of these, Poison Resistance is always useful, Protection grants a very noticeable increase in your pitiful AC, and Evasion/+6 Dexterity can help mitigate a few big hits. Fire Protection will save the more careless souls among you from accidental Golem mishaps. Positive Energy is almost completely useless to you at this time. Rings of Fire and Ice will get you killed by rime drakes and lindwurms, respectively, but can be swapped on (and removed afterwards, do NOT forget) if you need emergency resistance to an element. All other rings are of mediocre quality, and are pretty much interchangeable.

Ensure you are equipped with the most important resistance of all, rHubris! You may be tempted by seeing a yak pack die in 3 turns to lightning bolts to attempt the same experiment with 16 berserk killer bees from that one nasty vault. Resist. Use your movement speed to reach choke points, and line up your opponents for devastating zaps of your Spire. Even decked out with Cactus Giants and Forests, you will not survive going down a staircase, seeing 20 enemies, and refusing to retreat to instead plop down every single one of your spells. Be careful, don’t deal with more than 8 enemies at a time, pick on little groups, and consider escape hatches if every other descent leads into poisonous, sharp-toothed doom.

You may encounter some dangerous uniques in the Lair. Urug, Fannar, Gastronok and Nessos in particular may destroy you before you even realize what just happened. The counter to each one of those is, respectively, Amulet of Reflection for Urug, Ring of Cold Resistance for Fannar, scroll of Silence for Gastronok and Wand of Polymorph for Nessos (and potentially Amulet of Reflection). If you possess the counter, use it, and then feel free to test their mettle against your faithful friends, but if you do not have this counter, set an exclusion with “x”-“e” and do not come back until you have cleared Lair:5. In the case of Gastronok, I outlined some strategies earlier in this section.

In emergencies, remember you may have the Blink, Passage of Golubria or Swiftness spells! Additionally, most creatures of the Lair will not resist a well placed Scroll of Fear (and will begin rightfully running for their lives away from a small kitty). Scrolls of Teleportation are always useful to get you out of trouble, and Scrolls of Fog may assist you if the threat worrying you is using ranged attacks. Gozag’s Potion Petition may get you the little oomph you need to unroll another fresh batch of summons to clap that 9-headed hydra, but it should be the penultimate option on your “oh no I’m screwed” list. Scrolls of Blinking are extremely powerful, but rare, and should be your last resort before sacrificing a life.

If you happen to find a timed portal to a Volcano, please note that they are highly lethal and have very little loot you can actually use. You may enter for a peek, but the moment you see an enemy in there that’s wearing red or has red skin, it’s time to leave. IMMEDIATELY. No "oh but I can just kill it with cactus". NO. LEAVE. Ice Caves are death traps for a Felid, and you should not even attempt them, EVER. Do NOT even enter them. Gauntlets’ difficulty vary on the enemies you find inside - if you see a valuable book containing some of the Trinity Spells, Big Spells, a Form, or even the Atlas, I encourage you to try your luck, but otherwise, it is not worth battling Abyss enemies in a cramped space that will probably not allow you to use Summon Forest. You can inspect a Gauntlet's contents by fully autoexploring the level, then doing a Ctrl-F search with "@" as the input, which will list all items in the Gauntlet.

If you do decide to challenge the Gauntlet, it's a great idea to bring a Phantom Mirror, if you found one! The minotaur's evil twin is a bit of a cat person, and will gladly eviscerate the real minotaur with javelins to grant you passage to the loot stash.

No Pity System to be Found Here

In Lair:1 and Lair:3, it’s time to play some Gozag gacha, with the minor peculiarity that you will be fishing out reality-shattering incantations instead of Japanese waifus. Open your Gozag Gacha Lootbox by pressing “a”, then “Call Merchant”. Book shops are the best, with the hope of pulling out some of the Trinity Spells, Big Spells, a Form, or even the Atlas. The hierarchy is Books > Jewelry > Scrolls > Potions > General Stores > Antique Stores. Only open one lootbox per Lair level, for a total of 2. If you do not have enough gold (probably due to using Potion Petition, or because you bought an interesting item in a previous shop), open your lootbox as soon as you have enough. If you obtain the Atlas or its spells, refer to the relevant section and follow the instructions outlined there. In book stores, inspect every single book to view if they contain one of the coveted spells you are after.

Assessing Options

If you are ever one of the highly fortunate felines to discover one of the outstandingly rare Potions of Experience, do not drink it if you still have 2 lives! You should wait, and consume this delightful drink only once you have recently died. The experience it will then grant will count towards regaining your lost life. Personally, I like to wait until I have zero lives left before consumption, at which point the Experience Potion can be a run saver. In case you have forgotten, press "E" to see how much leveling is required to reach your next life. Press "%" to see how many lives you currently have, in the top right of the popup.

Once you have fully cleared up Lair, if you were training for one of the level 7 Big Spells, it may start to reach castable range at this point. Summon Horrible Things and Dragon’s Call may still be quite far away, though. If you were a student of Transmutations, your Form should be around 50% or less now.

If you were unlucky with spells, your Fighting and Dodging should be plentiful enough to make a big difference in your defenses. I advise getting another Gozag Gacha Lootbox if you are stuck with starter summons, or at most have only a single member of the Trinity to assist you. If you still have no luck, the next destination of your journey, the Orcish Mines, will probably either save you or execute you on account of your bad relationship with RNGesus. I thought cats were supposed to be a symbol of good luck. Though I did advise playing a black one in the beginning of this guide... hmm...

Tentacle Rampage Inc. (Advanced Spells)

These may not be castable yet, depending on when you started your training. Still, I believe it’s important to know what kind of interdimensional horrors you’ll soon be bringing into this plane of reality. Once again, I strongly suggest not gambling with high fail rate spells - Summonings miscasts remain as dangerous as ever, and Translocations miscasts will prevent all forms of movement for a few turns. You do NOT want to have your paws locked in place while getting slapped by the eldritch tentacles of a Nameless Horror. Read only the paragraphs relevant to your current kit, if you so desire. Once again, to make room for all these awesome additions, you may need to train some Spellcasting, and to use Scrolls of Amnesia to remove your obsolete spells.

Remember, do NOT train "in advance" for spells you do not have yet. Get more Fighting/Dodging or, to a lesser extent, Spellcasting if you have maxed out everything you have. Always remember the training order:

Starter Spells > at least one out of Forest/Cactus/Viper (optional replacement: Malign Gateway) > one Form Spell (then, Manifold Assault & Unarmed Combat after getting the Form) > level 7+ Summonings > other spells.

Do NOT move to training another category if you have not mastered everything in your library from the previous tier. If you have maxed out everything you have, get more Fighting/Dodging or, to a lesser extent, Spellcasting.

Big Spells

Spells that follow your initial gameplan, adding more special friends to the mix.

Malign Gateway (LV 7 Transloc/Summ): A spectacular spell, not so unlike Summon Forest. You will also require some open space (no casting in hallways). If possible, cast Malign Gateway before Summon Forest, if you have both, or the trees obstructing space may prevent you from summoning a Gateway. The Gateway will initially appear quite a distance away from you, so it is best used to initiate a battle, and not as emergency support. After a few turns, a very long tentacle will slowly protrude out, curious to prod at the world around it. Its little taps do immense damage, probably the highest out of every Summonings spell. There are extremely few creatures in the entire game who can 1v1 a Gateway, and they are locked in the depths of Hell and Pandemonium. The downside is that the tentacle remains tethered to its portal, and is quite slow - it is therefore good practice to distract a powerful enemy with lesser summons while squiggly doom slowly unrolls behind their back. You can also run towards it, and pass through it diagonally while being pursued by an angry horde. The Gateway is immune to Abjuration, so it’s a good way to say “parry this, you filthy casual” after your entire army has been unsummoned, or to prune out those pesky Nameless Horrors. There is only one little twist - the tentacle becomes hostile to you once the spell ends. This is sudden and unpredictable, so do NOT stand in melee range of your Gateway after it has been around for ~10 turns. You WILL be twoshotted. If you quiver this spell with "Q", you will be able to see on the sidebar when the spell has enough space to be casted (the text will be coloured). Train up for this spell with level 15 Summonings and level 16 Translocations. Maximum Summon Capacity: 1.

Summon Hydra (LV 7 Summ): It’s a normal speed unit that does BIG damage. It's the next tier above chaff that won’t cut it anymore like Ice Beasts or Hounds. Stacking spell power grants more heads to your hydras, increasing their damage output. Unlike most Summoning spells, you can have two at a time, and they are extremely effective against enemies wielding bladed weapons for the same reason that may have caused the unfortunate end of one of your previous, inferior non-feline characters in the Lair. They can pull their weight against groups, as once some of their heads have slain an enemy, the heads that have not attacked yet will direct the damage to the next target in a single turn. However, their summon duration is extremely short - approximately 9 turns - thus, this is the "burst" spell of the Summonings school, and is used for assassinating close targets very fast, only for these ninja-hydras to dissipate into thin air before any witnesses notice the slaughter. I would advise against churning out these reptilian terrors when your target is far away, as you'll only have ~9 turns to make them shine. Train for this spell with level 16 Summonings. Maximum Summon Capacity: 2.

Monstrous Menagerie (LV 7 Summ): The upgrade to the Lightning Spire, if you will - all creatures summoned by this spell dispense damaging ranged attacks, in addition to being reasonably talented at melee combat. Manticores and Lindwurms are decent soldiers, and at the very least add their bodies to the pile of allies separating you from doom. At high spell power, you may occasionally see a Sphinx, with immense debuffing power to support your other friends. This remains semi-rare, even at level 27 Summonings, so this spell isn't as spectacular compared to other potential additions to your roster. Still, it remains worthy of its level 7 title, and should be considered if you have spell slots to spare. It's certainly better than Summon Hydra. Get this spell online with level 16 Summonings. Maximum Summon Capacity: 2.

Haunt (LV 7 Summ/Necro): The “this must die, now” spell - it lets you point and click any enemy on the screen, and begin amassing deadly shadows around it. These undead special forces have a great sense of punctuality, and will immediately be spawned next to the single target you wish to annihilate by the cold caress of the grave. Their damage output is acceptable, but the affected victim will be effectively paralyzed by the swarm, forced to struggle tooth and nail every turn, in addition to becoming slowed by the hits of wraiths - all these summons are laser focused on their objective and will disregard anyone else. Once the horde has finished its grim work, it will have a few turns to get a few hits in to other enemies they were previously ignoring, before fading out of reality shortly after. Gather up level 12 Necromancy and level 16 Summonings to get those ghosts up and running. Maximum Summon Capacity: 8.

Summon Horrible Things (LV 8 Summ): THE meatshield spell. The damage on this is not especially splendid, though tentacled monstrosities can dish out interesting amounts of rib-crushing damage with their constriction ability. However, the real reason you cast this spell is to surround yourself in tanky units that will give you big warm hugs with their mucus-coated appendages. The summoning cap on this is 8, which is just enough to surround your frail and vulnerable body entirely. You may have to cast it twice to ensure you are fully protected, and recast it as the battle progresses once your cuddle-hole starts getting pierced by the barrage of conjurations and sword-slicing. It has a small chance of draining away one point of intelligence on every cast, but it is quickly regained by accumulating a little bit of experience, and is mostly only for thematic effect... mostly. Do not use eldritch horror summoning as your way of saying hello to every soul you encounter in the dungeons. You WILL find yourself with 3 Intelligence (quite close to you, the player's, actual stat in real life, if you disregarded my objectively correct advice) and have all your spells uncastable. Dying will thankfully restore your stats to their original values. Expect level 19 Summonings to even consider casting this spell. Maximum Summon Capacity: 8.

Dragon's Call (LV 9 Summ): The big one, the apex of everything you’ve been working towards, the motherload, to cut it short - a game-winner. Here’s a complete list of things in a three rune game who can survive taking a bath in dragons: - and that’s it. This is a pure offense spell, as it spawns units adjacent to enemies, getting them in the fight right away. Despite the advertised 9 MP cost, the actual cost is much higher - for every dragon summoned, 2 to 3 extra MP will be consumed. This continues until either the spell ends, or you run out of MP - which is one of the major reasons of wearing an Amulet of Magic Regeneration, as the constant supply will allow you to endlessly keep pumping out residents of the draconic demiplane. The spell continues spawning dragons EVEN if you get silenced after casting it, giving this a fantastic synergy with the Silence spell. If you go to the extended endgame with this build, you will find yourself using pretty much only this spell and Summon Horrible Things, in conjunction with high power Transmutations, and the occasional Malign Gateway/Summon Forest for zone control. You will probably only get this in castable range in your second S-branch, or even in Vaults, but once it is online, it is hard to lose the game. Sadly, this spell is very rare to find. As the capstone of all Summonings, don't even dream of casting this until level 24 Summonings is reached. Maximum Summon Capacity: As long as the spell lasts, and as long as you have MP - it’s not rare to have 10 dragons at the end.

Form Spells & Friends

Discard the weakness of flesh and ascend beyond feeble mortality. It is HIGHLY recommended to get one of the three Forms (again, my favourite is Storm Form) at some point in your run. Mix with Manifold Assault and Unarmed Combat skill to dominate the game! Please note that all Form spells remove your bonus speed while active. Use the "a"bility menu to undo your transformation if you need to run away from a pure melee enemy.

Storm Form (LV 7 Transmut/Air): A hypermobile, cleaving, electricity branded and highly evasive powerhouse to dish out immense damage while dodging everything that comes your way - arrows, javelins, deadly elemental bolts, the responsibilities you’re neglecting by playing DCSS - almost nothing will get through! The addition of hits that land can eventually hurt, but that is exactly why you’re using summons! The big synergy here is that the Blinkbolt free ability granted by this spell lets you teleport to any creature, friendly or hostile. This means that you can plop down a massive swarm of summons, lead the charge in heroic battle, then simply blink back to the backlines once you’re hurt, brutally electrocuting one of your loyal employees in the process (they won’t mind, they are so subdued and zealous at the thought of serving a feline overlord that they will remain as obedient as ever). Then, it’s simply a matter of regenerating behind your army, until you’re ready to attempt another electrical rampage. Please do not attempt this strategy with your Malign Gateway, though. It’s not as… docile as the rest. Storm Form has immense scaling with spellpower, unlike the two other Forms below - you will want to stack as much Intelligence, Transmutations skill and Air Magic skill should you decide to use it. Blinkbolt is a wonderful strategic tool - effectively behaving like Dithmenos’s Shadow Step, but completely free. Use it to escape, use it to engage, use it as much as you can! If you wish, take note of the letter that appears besides the Blinkbolt in the “a” menu. Let’s say it’s “f”. Press Ctrl-D to set a macro, map one to the key of your choosing (I like Space), and write “af”, replacing the “f” with the letter shown in your game. You may now press Space (or the key you mapped it to) to instantly Blinkbolt! This Blinkbolt ability still works on electricity resistant creatures, by the way - while the game may not auto-target them, moving the cursor towards them will still allow you to blink, just without the damage. Oh, and finally, remember that, sadly enough, your Felid speed is removed in Storm Form, reducing you to normal movement delay. Level 16 Transmutations & Air Magic are required for this spell.

Statue Form (LV 6 Transmut/Earth): Ugh. I’m not the biggest fan of this spell, but I can’t deny its effectiveness. To put it simply, this is a “tank” spell - massively increase defences at the cost of enduring a permanent Slow status. Again, there is a great synergy with summons here - you may be a lethargic garden ornament, but the tentacles mauling your foes are still very, very lively and fleshy, and are not afflicted with this slowness. This Form is the definition of “boring, but practical”, and its only reedeming factor is how adorable the Felid sprite for this spell is. I will say that this is a great "transition" spell - if you only have this out of the three Form spells recommended in this guide, train for it with level 12 Transmutations and level 7 Earth Magic (it can be 1 or 2 levels less if you have Int+6/Wizardry rings). It will carry you for a long time, perhaps until you finally become blessed with Storm Form. Do NOT turn into Statue Form when enemies with Lee's Rapid Deconstruction are around. You WILL be oneshotted.

Dragon Form (LV 7 Transmut): Two words: glass cannon. The most important thing to remember while using this spell is that Cold-elemental attacks will utterly annihilate you, unless you have rC++ at least. Otherwise, it’s a massive single-target melee blaster at the cost of getting hit by nearly everything that comes your way. Remember to use your breath weapon, it’s free! In the end, being in this Form is still better than kitty-mode with 3 AC, so consider battling alongside your allies, and retreating once things get dire - Passage of Golubria and Blink aren’t only good for the Lair! Level 16 Transmutations is required for this spell.

Manifold Assault (LV 5 Transloc): Not a Transmutation, but… A game-winner if you get this alongside Storm Form, and still effective with the lesser Statue and Dragon Forms described in this section. That's right, this entire guide was all one big ploy to get you to play a Manifold Assault combo. Pure Summonings is definitely viable, but it simply cannot match the power of non-euclidean ear scritches. The unfortunately abbreviated Man Ass allows you to melee attack from maximum range. If you’ve played classic melee builds, it’s kind of like using a polearm, except your spear is 3 metres long, cuts spacetime to hit 4 targets at once, and trivializes any challenge the game could ever throw at you. A character with decent Unarmed Combat skill (>10), in either Storm or Dragon Form, who spams Manifold Assault until their mana bar is emptied is pretty much guaranteed to clear the screen unless it was truly crowded. Quiver Manifold Assault with “Q”, and press “p” to unleash the power. Forget o-tab; this is o-p town now, and it really is OP. The problem is the ridiculous mana cost... which Jiyva can assist you with. This stupendously good synergy will be addressed in a later chapter. Level 15 Translocations and level 15 Unarmed Combat are advised to get this spell to respectable power. Do NOT memorize this spell without a Form.

Wereblood (LV 2 Tmut): All Manifold Assault users should try to get this! Secret technology taken from the canine headquarters, now made available for all of the cat-kin to enjoy. This spell turns DCSS into an SSS-combo-stacking fighting game, giving you +1 Slaying for every kill while the spell lasts, up to a maximum of 9. Do not be fooled by the low level of this spell - just like Blink, it is always useful from the Dungeon to everything beyond. It can be annoying to cast it before every fight in addition to casting Storm Form, but a macro set by Ctrl-D can help with that. Hardcore power-users can even set a macro that casts both their Form and Wereblood at once, by writing something like "zfzb" in the field. It’s very easy to rake up 9 kills in the later, more foe-infested parts of the game, effectively granting you free damage at the cost of making a lot of noise with your cringe werewolf roleplaying. Who cares, the sounds of battering lightning paws will help silence it. Castable without training.

Corpse Rot (LV 4 Necro/Air/Poison): The worst spell in the game somehow finds redemption in pillow-pawed greatness. This is normally complete and utter unusable trash, as it surrounds your character with intoxicating fumes of pestilence and disease and prevents you from moving while enemies pelt you at range with stones/arrows/comments on your intelligence for deciding to memorize this spell. However, it just so happens that users of Storm or Statue Form are beyond the feeble mortal need of "breathing". This means that casting this spell before every battle (similarly to Wereblood) will generate an aura of slowness and poison that will assist the annihilation of any living creature. It is a great help in places such as the Elven Halls, the Vaults, the Depths or against the draconian packs of Zot, but the effectiveness of this spell is inversely correlated with how bad your enemies smell - the rotting corpses of the Crypt and the cackling demons of the extended endgame won't be impressed. I would have normally not cared about this spell, but due to your Air Magic training, it is practically free even without knowing a single precept of the necromantic or intoxicating arts. Feel free to bind it to the same macro as Wereblood and your Form. Castable without training.

Support Spells

Spells that may be worthwhile additions to your kit as useful miscellaneous tools.

Silence (LV 5 Hex/Air): A very situational spell that can kill you if you aren’t careful with it, as it disables all your spells too. Demons draw their power from the depths of the nether realm and not arcane might, so this is ineffective against them. However, nasty mages (especially any flavour of lich, mummy, draconian or elf) will be left in a state of “I have no mouth and I must scream” as they are forced to battle your tentacle swarms with their puny arms instead of their annihilating conjurations. Remember to cast Silence only after you’ve dispatched all your forces, and should you mess up, quaffing a potion of cancellation will stop your Silence early! To check if an enemy is vulnerable to Silence, simply inspect them - and this is important, for an entity capable of magic will not necessarily be neutralized by shushing them. Orbs of Fire are a good (and terrifying) example, as they use pure DCSS developer sadism instead of sound to fuel their devastating spells. Bring this to the Elven Halls and never fear getting impaled by crystal spears ever again! Castable without training.

Dispersal (LV 6 Transloc): Have you ever gotten repeatedly slapped by a turbo speed boosted melee dude sticking to you no matter how many speed-enhancing drugs you pumped into your bloodstream? I have! Dispersal is the ultimate answer to situations such as this. It simply removes every monster in a two tile radius of you, either shooting them elsewhere across the map, or occasionally simply placing them a short distance away, depending on their Willpower. Crowded staircases and nasty ambush welcoming parties are the best moments to use Dispersal, just remember you have it, unlike me! Level 12 Translocations is required for this one, which you may already have.

Maxwell's Capacitive Coupling (LV 8 Air): A very boring spell that literally does infinite damage. It will oneshot anything, from a slug to Antaneus, Lord of Cocytus. The twist is that it will only hit the enemy closest to you at the end of the spell, so this is completely hopeless to use against summoners of any kind, who will make you waste your charge on their minions. You must wait with “.” for a few turns to complete casting this spell. For any other character, this is often a death sentence, but as a summoner, you can simply hide behind a wall keeping up steady damage output while you’re getting the big finisher ready. Use it against the super-nasties of the game, like Orbs of Fire or dangerous uniques. This is a lategame spell, only used by Storm Form wielders after they reach the Depths. Level 18 Air Magic is required.

Yara's Violent Unravelling (LV 5 Tmut/Hex): It’s like Lee’s Rapid Deconstruction, but for magic instead of rock. On the tin, this would seem quite useless for a non-Hexes specialist… However, do not be fooled: this is an excellent tool to have on ANY character capable of magic. An immense amount of DCSS enemies rely on self-buffing to destroy you (haste and might are especially common), and this simple smite targeted spell lets you point your paw at them and say “Nope.” in addition to doing considerable damage to them and any adjacent friends they may have. Most of the little status effect icons that appear next to enemies can be used to fuel Yara’s, although this spell is powerless against the wrath of the free market and any buffs your enemies may then receive (should you abandon Gozag, more on that later). Additionally, enemy summons (and your own, for the sadists out there) will ALWAYS be instantly one-shotted by this spell, no matter what, even if they are not currently under a status effect, and then explode in a flurry of radioactive magical energy right onto the creature foolish enough to be messing with interdimensional convoking. YOU are the summoner, and none shall usurp your title. Castable without training (if you have a Form),

Ozocubu's Armour (LV 3 Ice): An extremely tedious and annoying, but sadly highly effective defensive spell. Upon use, you will gain a constant bonus to your AC, usually around +10... except it is instantly removed the moment you take a step. This means that the "theoretically optimal felid" will be casting this before every single battle and abusing its benefits until movement is required. A Storm Form mass-scritch dispenser can therefore sit still like a snowman in the middle of a Vaults room while the yaktaur arrows go tink tink tink on your ice shield. However, if you are reading this guide, you are not the "theoretically optimal felid", you are the "practically insane felid". Using this spell is an instant -10 coolness points. Train Ice Magic to level 5 if you are pathetic enough to want to cast this.

Leda's Liquefaction (LV 4 Hex/Earth): In brief: this is a flat +25% chance for all melee attacks (with some odd exceptions, such as flying or insubstantial enemies) except your own to miss. BuT… BuT iT sLoWs mE!11! You could not care less, for everything else in the radius is even more slowed. The only dangerous parts of this spell are getting peppered by arrows/spells from a foe outside the range of the spell, or still being attacked when the liquid reaches the one-tile radius when it only affects you and no one else. Vehumet-devouts and blaster-casters will be quick to dismiss this spell as a sacrifice they are not ready to make, but your high EV in ADDITION to +25% chance for any melee attack (again, except flying/insubstantial nasties) to miss will generate a feeling of invulnerability. This is invaluable in the Vaults, the Depths, and Zot. Mix this with Summon Forest to create a muddy swamp: slower steps means more time to get slapped by branches and roots! It is however advised to not use this alongside other allies, who will also be affected by the muddy water in their eyes making them miss a quarter of their attacks - this is a support spell for unarmed fighters with a high level Form, not pure summoners. Castable without training.

Pig-People and Pig-Iron (Orcish Mines)

After the Lair, it’s time to head into the Orcish Mines. Clear the Dungeon until you find the entrance if you haven’t done so already, then delve into the brown-hued staircase. Sometimes, the entrance may be… relatively spicy. Try to not be stuck out in the open, and don’t hesitate to leave the staircase to reposition in such a way that you aren’t surrounded. Summoners are very poor at stairdancing. If you already have a Form at 30% or lower, though, feel free to gamble a few casts on top of the staircase (rest between each failed cast - do not accumulate too much of the Contam status effect! If you reach yellow contamination, use Potions of Cancellation.), and then descend once it has succeeded, tabbing through all of the fools gathered for your welcoming party. Watch out, though, for anything marked by a red-danger-square is not to be messed with here. Ettins, orc knights, or even a fearsome orc warlord if you’re truly unlucky may be found as early as Orc:1. All three should go down to repeated zaps of your Spire as you kite them around the open space - but don’t ever let them even breathe on your scruff - orcs are not especially renowned for gentles caresses.

The Orcish Mines is not exactly a verdant natural space, but you can fix that. If you have the spell Summon Forest, it will also wreck havoc here, due to the large open space. Malign Gateway is also fun to cast here for the same reason, and the orcish onslaught will quickly generate profits for Tentacle Rampage Inc.

If you see a knight or a warlord with a crossbow, be very scared. Whip out your Tukima's Dance if you have it, but if you don't, you will have to be extremely careful with your positioning. Use a Scroll of Summoning or Summon Butterflies, if you have those!

Orc:2 is a gigantic arena, containing an immense amount of “popcorn” foes, with the occasional truly threatening threat. Orc priests, and their meaner cousins, the orc high priests, are as dangerous as ever. Orc sorcerers aren’t any more pleasant, but you’ll at least be able to laugh off their paralysis due to your feline willpower. It’s preferable to not eat 3 smites or elemental bolts in one turn - direct your minions to focus fire on these walking YASDs with “t”-“a”. There are many possible layouts in Orc:2 - one in particular is peppered with centaurs of all types, and is extremely risky to clear - make ample use of fog scrolls, chokepoints, and corners. A few other layouts will invite the attention of Saint Roka herself, which you should only ever duel when she is alone. A particularly entertaining vault is filled to the brim with dozens upon dozens of ogres, and while it's quite terrorizing for most characters, you will laugh it off and collect enough gold pieces to replace the gravel in your litterbox.

Think about using the Silence spell, or scrolls of Silence! They will render all of the orcish upper caste incapable of blasting you with Beogh's fist, demons or elemental wrath. Even Saint Roka will be forced to rely only on her sword (fair warning: she knows how to use it).

The Interdimensional Police, Redux (Abjuration)

After the Lair, enemies with their own Summonings spells will become commonplace. Instead of engaging in a nice and friendly Zotémon battle with you, they would much rather cheat and unsummon your entire army with a very nasty ability, Abjuration, which every summoner enemy has a chance of casting even if it isn’t on their spell list. When using “t”-“a”, try to focus summoners first so your friends remain bound to your service a little bit longer. Orc sorcerers will be the first Abjurers you will encounter beyond the basic Nameless Horrors, but there will be many more sources of Abjuration after this. In cases where it gets truly dangerous, try reading a silence scroll, or casting the Silence spell (described above)! They will be forced to let Zotémon critters clash against each other and do nothing but watch! It’s super effective!

Or, if you’re a bit of a jerk, you can use Yara’s Violent Unravelling, and have every little friend the enemy summoner tries to bring out explode in a burst of irradiated gore right on their face. That works too. Abjure THIS, casual.

Assessing Options 2.0

If you were fortunate enough to start studying a Form very early and found some Wizardry or Intelligence bonuses, you should be able to occasionally cast your Form down in Orc:2. In the case of Storm Form, Blinkbolt to the sorcerers, priests and high priests with “a” (or your Space macro), but don’t melee the high-tier threats - use the Golem/Spire or a Trinity Spell instead. Once your Form is at 15% fail rate or lower, ONLY if you have Manifold Assault, start training Translocations and Unarmed Combat in conjunction with your Form skills. Set a target of 15 for your Translocations and Unarmed Combat.

If you’re stuck with starter spells, the Spire is still enough to demolish the hordes, with the occasional Golem to send against Wargs, Knights and Warlords.

At the end of Orc:2, you will find 4 lootboxes shops. My personal previous experiences has shown them to be useless most of the time, but with a stroke of luck, you may find a Form, the Atlas, great spells, a scroll of acquirement or at least a selection of nice consumables. If you’ve still not found a single Big Spell nor a Form, open up Gozag Gacha Lootboxes until you run dry. Yes, all of them. No mercy for your coin - you want to be at the top of the Gozag Leaderboard, do you not? Crack open your wallet. If you still can’t find anything and are stuck with your starter spells… wow. I get that RNGesus giveth and taketh away, but seriously, wow. Keep trying to progress with your brave Spire, Hound and Golem at your side. They will serve you to the death, no matter what. Perhaps fortune will smile on you on the next floor!

In all other cases, I suggest grabbing one Lootbox at the end of the Orcish Mines to see if you can pull out something neat.

Once you have finished clearing the Orcish Mines, carefully clean out the final Dungeon floors, giving particular attention to centaur warriors, yaktaurs, or giants of any types. All of these are massive nuisances - in the case of the former two, a Blinkbolt will let Storm Form-users close the gap. Other characters can treat them like a level-appropriate version of early centaurs, except the Polymorph trick won't work as often. Giants should be flooded with summons after you have equipped a ring granting resistance to their element. Summoners can make use of Haunt to eliminate high-level threats, but unleashing an array of Trinity Spells will usually get the job done.

Lethal Scenery (S-Branches)

I insist again that it is highly recommended to get either Statue Form, Dragon Form or Storm Form online if any of the three have been found (though the latter is obviously the one favoured by this guide). If these are rotting in your "M"emorization library and you haven't started training for them now, you should consider doing so as soon as possible.

If you’re too underpowered, this is where you die. “Underpowered” here is defined as not having any Trinity, Big or Form spells. Even Summon Forest with nothing else will still be trusty enough to do wonders in the Swamp - in fact, it will berserk all off the trees in LOS, effectively mauling anything that’s close to a wall. It will also prevent Spriggan Druids from calling the forest to their aid, as it is already serving you, and slapping their little leafy bodies with the wrath of the entire plant kingdom combined. Definitely make extensive use of Summon Forest in the Swamp, should you possess that spell and have rolled that branch. It's almost a free rune.

If you possess an Atlas with castable Storm Form, this should be easy. If that is the case, Begin training Unarmed Combat if you haven't already, and set a target to 15. Manifold Assault should be getting there, too. Once the Combo™ is online (both Atlas spells), spamming Manifold Assaults while in Storm Form will kill anything - if that doesn’t work, Blinkbolting will finish them off, and if that still doesn’t work, meleeing them to death should fix the problem. Storm Form is immune to poison, constriction and petrification (which are the biggest threats of the S-branches). It also has high EV, which is crucial against the javelin rains of the Shoals. Pick off a few targets at a time, nuking them from the edge of LOS with Manifold Assault, don’t get too cocky, and cash in your double-runes. Other Form users also have a boatload of resistances to greatly aid their conquests. Statue Form users in particular don't even need Unarmed Combat necessarily, they can just abuse their ridiculous defense while their employees do all the work.

If you do not have a Form, but have a fresh batch of tentacles to unload, then you also have a lot of potential, but will need to play slower.

As for the order, I advise you to follow this list: Snake Pit > Swamp > Spider Nest > Shoals. An exception can be made if you have Summon Forest and Swamp is available - then, you can start there instead of Snake Pit. Rolling Spider Nest and Shoals is unfortunate, but rest assured, all 4 branches are equally capable of murdering you.

Some extra tips:

• At some point during the S-branches, you should hit your targets of 15 Fighting, 19 Dodging - do NOT turn them off until these targets have been reached. Your (virtual) life depends on it.
• If at any point you get confused or highly poisoned in any of these branches, sip on a potion of Curing at once!
• Again, do NOT go into an Ice Cave, EVER, even at this point in the game. NO peeking, NO greed. You WILL end your run. I'm not joking.
• In cases of emergencies, remember you have Potion Petition! It is truly an amazing panic button.
• Finally, I suggest getting one Lootbox when you reach the second floor of each S-branch. I usually buy shops until I got the one that costs 2000 gold, then I stop.

Shoals

This is, in my opinion, the hardest of all S-branches. Be scared.

First, you should learn to fear Merfolk Javeliners and Impalers. With a few unlucky rolls of the dice, these two bullies will Alt-F4 your entire health bar. The Javeliners in particular are really, really mean, because their projectiles will pierce a clean hole through all of your friends - and if you are currently using a Form and the javelins are silver branded, prepare to know what it feels like to be a werewolf dining with silver cutlery. They cannot see invisible, at least, so your potions (or Potion Petition) can help. Amulets of reflection can occasionally block the terrifying javelins, but I'd rather have MPRegen/Regen juice deliveries 24/7.

Merfolk Aquamancers aren't any better. Ice damage, steam damage, anti-felid damage - I have no idea where they pulled their magic but I think their teachers weren't much of a cat person. If you're in their line of fire and don't expect to be out of there (or for them to be deleted) in the next 5 turns, get rF AND rC rings as soon as possible. A Resistance potion also works.

Watch out for Alligator Snapping Turtles, who are sneaky enough to resemble their lesser cousins while bearing a tenfold higher threat level. You can Haunt them, you can Cactus them, hell, you can even Golem them, but if you try for an honourable melee duel like Storm Form users may be tempted to do, prepare to have your life expectancy be plowed into the ground.

Finally, Water Nymphs have some cheating mega-smites that would make orc priests pale in jealousy. They can only use them if you are placed on a water tile, but they can fix that by spewing water everywhere they go, even covering up stairs to remove escape options. Nuke them from a distance if you can.

Spider Nest

Ghost Moths are the signature enemy of this branch that gets the DCSS community trembling in fear, mainly because of their undodgeable gaze instantly deleting your entire MP bar. Do note that the DCSS community is also filled with fans of conjurations and blaster spells. As a proper gentlefeline, your much more subtle and intellectual magic isn’t limited to the turn it was cast. Tentacles keep wriggling long after the initial summoning, and lightning keeps crackling long after the initial transformation. Still, a potion of invisibility will stop their MP-draining ability in a pinch!

Culicivora are the healers of the arthropod world, and should be focused first. Don't let two of them stall you by healing each other until the stars die. Or rather, you die. I think I know which one will happen first.

Melials are as horrifying as they were in the lower parts of the dungeon, and should be dealt with as swiftly as possible - note that their willpower is very fragile when faced with a scion of the One True Pillow-Pawed race, which makes them vulnerable to Polymorph/Charm wands or Anguish.

Spark Wasps are basically envoys of the Atlas sent on a mission to eliminate all pure summoners. If you have a Form (especially Statue/Storm), they will be much less threatening, but if you are a fleshy kitty... the optimal thing would be some artifact jewellery you may have found with rElec on it, but if that's not possible, they are a high-threat target to take out with everything you have and preferably not with a big group around. Consider a potion of Resistance to lessen the risk.

Orb Spiders are highly annoying pests that will challenge you to a game of dodgeball without consent. The ominous purple Orbs of Destruction they will hurl at you inflict extreme, undodgeable damage, and should be avoided at all costs. The easiest way to neutralize them is to have any creature eat the Orb for you - enemies work too, but the most reliable choice is any summoned unit - even a quokka from the start of your journey works! Blinkbolting through an Orb is also effective, considering you aren't really "passing" through it. You probably look like an anime protagonist while doing this.

Broodmothers are nasty and will challenge you to a Zotémon duel, and they're a big fan of the Poison Type - Yara's Violent Unravelling can help. Otherwise, almost everything is pure melee here, except for...

Sun Moths. These little nuisances either do zero damage or delete you from existence, no inbetween. It's incredibly annoying how ineffectual they look when suddenly, a lonely one rolls 2 maximum damage energy beams and twoshots you. If you intend to reach them in melee range, I highly suggest planning for their death very soon, as their 1-tile halo makes you much easier to hit.

Swamp

It's better than Shoals, but don't expect this to be easy. I repeat once again that Summon Forest in this branch will decimate all opposition.

You will learn to fear Bunyips, a small, bestial juggernaut. It seems like they found an extra digit to stick onto their damage rolls, and will usually do immense damage or even oneshot you - they however have a very lethargic attack speed, so having them waste their devastating bite against a volunteer of any kind from your grimoire will render them vulnerable.

Goliath Frogs/Spriggan Riders all have reach attacks, which makes them the cybernetically-augmented version of halberd gnolls. Just keep this in mind when trying to summon-swarm them, and don't press "." while they are ignoring your cactus and splitting you in half from afar.

Swamp Worms are mostly harmless, but for some reason, in the rare case where they manage to harpoon you into collision with one of your summoned units, you will be vaporized. Just mind your positioning - either kill them without any ally assistance, or ensure there's no allies between you and them. The shot passes straight through your friends.

Always remember that Hydras of all flavours gain extra speed in water tiles. Do NOT retreat with normal steps away from hydras with water around, you WILL be demolished by attacks of opportunity.

Will-o-the-wisp are raw AC statchecks. I think they were placed there just to see if you were listening to me - that is, get a Form as soon as possible. If you are a 3 AC kitty, they will remote detonate you without a thought. If you are in Storm, Statue or Dragon Form, you can simply laugh as they do literally nothing and die. If you were too unlucky to get one among the Holy Trinity, you can try to tank up with rings of Protection/Fire Protection, or lure them with fog scrolls into a narrow space, where they will be much less effective and have their shots blocked by allies.

Eleionoma, finally, are an IQ check. Do not let them be adjacent to trees or they will nuke you with an extremely damaging bolt, heal to full health by whispering to her tree friend about how stupid you are, then finish the job and rocket you back to the character selection screen. Just lure them away from the tree-walls, even if you have Summon Forest active, and they become pushovers.

Snake Pit

The easiest S-branch! That doesn't mean anything, by the way. This part of the game is hard no matter what.

Salamander Tyrants are the new Orc Priests, in fire flavour! Don’t let there be more than one on your screen at a time, and consider equipping rF+ jewelry - remember, ring swapping is very fast. They can be hard to differentiate with Mystics, but they have a much richer, deep orange colour.

Naga Sharpshooters, like most ranged enemies, are your bane as a Felid. Cut corners to lure them in close range, and don’t let them get too many free shots. These archers have the added power to teleport projectiles on you, so just hiding behind a wall of allies won't be effective. Fight fire with fire - or snakes with snakes - with a Mana Viper, which will disable their spacetime-distorting abilities.

Guardian Serpents have a nasty "AAAA EVERYONE IS AROUND ME AAAA" ability, which is actually a good thing for Storm Form fighters. Other characters may want to use Blink or Dispersal to thwart the ambush.

Shock Serpents should NOT be scratched in melee if you do not have Storm/Statue Form. You WILL be electrocuted with the might of a thousand nuclear reactors. Watch out for their Spire-like electrical bolts, too - if you do not have a Form, a ring of rElec may assist you, but if that is not possible, treat them like the Spark Wasps of the Spider Nest and take them out with everything you have. Once again, a Potion of Resistance may assist you if you are placed in a dangerous battle with them and potential friends.

Finally, there's a bunch of enemies in the Snake Pit that mostly only know how to move fast and do big damage. If you have Summon Cactus Giant, you can easily bottleneck black mambas or basic nagas/naga warriors through corridors only for them to meet a thorny doom.

The Big Ones

The unique monsters of the S-Branches are ridiculous. Vashnia, Mara and Nikola in particular are all capable of demolishing your run by their simple presence. A Disciple of the Atlas, or one of its 50% off Dragon/Statue variants, can perhaps annihilate them through their useful tools - a Blinkbolt into Vashnia to close the gap (make sure her sharpshooter friends are NOT around), some well placed Manifold Assaults to destroy Mara’s clones, and the ability to damage Nikola from the edge of LOS. Do NOT Blinkbolt Nikola. You WILL be oneshotted - unless you are an evil genius and whip out your Scroll of Silence, or your Silence spell, in which case he will be annihilated with zero risk. A Summoner should not even try to battle against Mara - having all your allies turned against you will not be a fun time. Nikola should always be kept at the edge of LOS as you fight - the closer he is, the sooner your doom will arrive.

Should you face off the unique Jorgrun, he is not that dangerous as long as you follow these two rules: do NOT stand next to walls, and do NOT be in Statue Form. End your transformation with the "a"bility menu in the latter case, or you WILL be twoshotted.

An extra word about Vashnia: I hate her, I hate her so much, and so will you. Not even summon-walling will save you, she will literally teleport her 40 damage arrows on you like some First Person Shooter hacker. Mana Vipers will disable her spells, making her much more manageable, and the classic centaur tricks of door-closing and corner-waiting are highly effective. An amusing cheese strategy is, as I mentioned much earlier, to read a scroll of Vulnerability to cut through her insane Willpower, then using Tukima's Dance to disarm her and reduce her to uselessness.

Other S-Branch uniques aren’t so terrible, ESPECIALLY if you have Yara’s Violent Unravelling. Asterion in particular falls extremely quickly with this spell in paw. Blow up his executioners in scythe-blade-bursts, and remove his Haste every time he tries to put it back. Donald isn't that much more fortunate.

To Storm Form users: even if Storm Form is at 1%, you should still keep cranking up Transmutations and Air Magic until they both reach level 16. That spell requires utmost devotion, and will repay the faithful with immense damage and defence. Many make the mistake of “getting it online”, keeping it at a pathetic 33% spellpower, and then wondering why their hits are like static electricity shocks. Don’t make this mistake. Power up with Intelligence - even the basic +6 rings are insanely good, relevant skills and the Ring of the Mage/Amulet of the Air, if you somehow find those, until every paw-punch hits like a small-scale hydroelectric dam.

Knife-Eared Folks and their Floating Knives (Elven Halls)

This area is completely optional, but I encourage you to clear at least the first two floors to acquire bonus experience. There is little to say about the first two floors: enemies here are almost all about ranged attacks, so Manifold Assault reigns supreme. Summoners will enjoy using Haunt and their ranged artillery, like Monstrous Menagerie or even the basic Lightning Spire.

Dancing weapons are very sneaky creatures. They tend to blend in with floor items, only differentiable by the little music note icon on their sprites. Some are utterly trivial (+1 trident of holy wrath) while others will be your doom (+9 executioner’s axe of antimagic). Don’t fight too fast, and check the brands and enchantments of what you are faced against. If it has enchantments of +4 or more, or is branded with Flaming, Freezing, Antimagic, Speed or Distortion, it’s a threat. The ABSOLUTE WORST kind that you can encounter is Protection - it makes the weapon nigh untouchable while it 3-shots you - but this protection is only triggered once they score a hit, so take them out from range. Their HP is very low, but their damage output can be ridiculous, sometimes even bordering on 2-shot kill territory. You can go peak in the Hall of Blades (marked by the presence of runed gates) for some extra experience if you want, but it’s a truly treacherous place. You will be tabbing away, taking zero damage, for one second, and be rocketed back to the title screen the next. Pay attention to what you are facing! Summon Cactus Giant, should you have acquired it, is their kryptonite. There is absolutely nothing a floating sword can hope to achieve when a titanic cucumber-man stands in the way of their hopes and dreams.

You can also find a timed portal here! Wizard Laboratories are pretty cool. I encourage you to try them - with the exception of Doroklohe’s Tomb and Tukima’s Studio. Should you enter those ones, you should leave immediately - they’re not impossible by any means, but they’re extremely difficult, and it’s not worth risking the run for loot you will probably not be able to wear thanks to your quadrupedal anatomy. A Bazaar is nice, and you should read Magic Mapping to find it - it disappears quickly, and you may find a few spells or some good jewelry to iron out the last flaws in your build.

Do NOT go to the Death Trap Desolation of Salt. That is asking to die. If you hear a “distant wind”, don’t even think about it. It's even worse than the Ice Cave. Clear the floor normally. It’s best if the gate disappears before you get to it, in order to ensure you don’t get tempted.

In Elf:3, there are a wide variety of professionals with PhDs in kitty-murder. The valedictorians here are:

• Master Archers: Do not let them get free shots. Use Blinkbolt to close the gap, or Summon Horrible Things for effective meatshields. Don’t be misled by your overconfidence - you may be purring in mockery as 5 arrows whiff past you one after the other, then turn into Porcupine Form the next moment as a single shot cuts away 50% of your HP.
• Sorcerers & High Priests: Damnation hurts. Being adjacent to them will make them hesitate, as they’re not masochistic enough to blow themselves up. Let’s be honest, though, being adjacent to them probably implies being in close proximity to a whole lot of other individuals, and that’s bad news. Like any natural or undead mage, they are vulnerable to Silence, the Mana Viper, and to space-bending lightning-paws.
• Annihilators: With your high EV, most of the time, they will miss, but when they don’t, ouch. Their worst spell is the Crystal Spear, but it has thankfully limited range, so keep your distance, as opposed to the previous two.
• Blademasters: It’s an elf, but with +99 daggers of kitty-slaying and rocket-boot thrusters. Only a mighty Form master with minimum 10 levels of Unarmed Combat could hope to rival them in melee, and even then, it’s risky. Get them to chew through a wall of summons, or make them eat a few Manifold Assaults, and they should go down fairly easily. They are particularly dangerous if you do not have a form-changing spell, in which case, you should attempt to constantly keep your distance by spamming Passage of Golubria and Dispersal while you weave in an occasional summon. Do NOT melee a blademaster while other enemies are around.
• Elementalists: Unthreatening on their own, but they will spam so many earth elemental summons the monster list will overflow from your monitor. However, killing them will immediately make all of their army disappear - use Blinkbolt, Haunt or Airstrike to do so. Limit your exposure to their icy clouds.

Archers and Blademasters can be disarmed with Tukima's Dance, but their high Willpower makes this difficult. Consider using a Scroll of Vulnerability if that is your selected approach.

The rest aren’t so bad. Death Mages have unthreatening spells, but they can revive fallen allies, which can suck if that ally happens to be something extremely dangerous. Thankfully, all these bullies are hidden in their big fortress somewhere in Elf:3, and can be dealt with in little groups at a time. Approach the final vault, lure in a few volunteers, dispose of them, rest, and return, until the flood stops. Dashing in, battling all of them at once, and expecting to win is extremely foolish.

If you have Summon Mana Viper, it can have impressive results here! Antimagic-biting an Annihilator to force them to use their puny arms instead of their reality-shattering conjurations is very effective. The Silence spell (or scrolls) are extremely effective, especially if they are used after your army has been rolled out, but don’t get yourself in a pinch where you can’t summon anything or cast your Form. Remember, a potion of cancellation will remove your own silence!

Unlike the lesser humanoids, Banishment is very unlikely to happen to you here. If it does happen, stay calm. The first instinct of many players is to start walking in diagonals to find an exit, but you should not be doing this with this build. You have the ability to organize a nice little fortress with your summons, and fend off invaders coming from all sides. After proving to Lugonu your fighting prowess, you will be let out without complications. Feel free to pick up some of the gold pieces littered around your makeshift arena if you find the time, and do not hesitate to spam Potion Petition and your consumables as much as you need. Dying in the Abyss is very undesirable, as you will simply respawn in another equally dangerous location of this infinite plane of madness.

The Clanging of Steel (Vaults)

Turn on Fighting and Dodging, and set a target to 21 for both of them. Users of Manifold Assault should crank up their Unarmed Combat to the target of 21.

You should probably be studying the Atlas (or its variants) by now. If you aren’t, you’re either loaded with so many allies the enemies can’t ever reach you, or, you’re struggling and have somehow managed to make it this far with the fury of the desperate. Perhaps you even have the dreaded Dragon’s Call.

You don’t need the Atlas to win. Dragon’s Call, or an assortment of other Big Spells, can suffice on their own. Statue Form/Dragon Form are great on their own. If you are a “pure” summoner and you see Dragon’s Call’s fail rate is starting to drop, you should probably focus on getting it castable, even if you have just found the Atlas. You can work on that Atlas after Dragon’s Call is in working order (<10%).

Vaults:1-4 should be the easiest moment of your entire run. If you’re using the Atlas build, spamming “o” and “p” with the occasional “tab” should be sufficient to clear everything here with little stress.

I'm joking, of course. This place is extremely dangerous, but should you survive it, true apotheosis awaits you. Here’s some quick advice:

• If an Ironbound Frostheart is in view, do NOT stand in a space adjacent to walls. Or, if that is impossible, silence them. These are EXTREMELY dangerous, do not underestimate them.
• If an Ironbound Thunderhulk is in view and you are not in Statue or Storm Form, try to either be adjacent or one tile away from them. Any further distance will result in easing lightning bolts from the… roof? This doesn’t matter at all for Atlas users, as they’re made out of lightning anyways, and Statue Form users can also rest easy knowing garden ornaments aren't very conductive. On the other hand, squishy flesh-cats and the dragon-kin should be careful.
• If an Ironbound Convoker begins channeling their recall (indicated by a little red flag on their icon), try to delete them before they can finish, lest you find yourself the main guest of a surprise party. Blinkbolt is effective to cut time, and summoners can use a well-placed Haunt, or perhaps forget strategy and obliterate through brute force with Dragon’s Call. If you have Yara’s Violent Unravelling, you can, funnily enough, dispel their “recalling” status effect AND have it explode in their face.
• If a Vault Sentinel curses you with a Mark, retreat through the nearest upstairs, and rest until it has vanished. If the stairwell is too far, you can consider fighting through it if half the floor is already cleared. However, if you’ve been marked on a new floor and the stairwell is out of reach (this can happen after a shaft trap), a potion of cancellation will remove the Mark (and your active Form; be careful!).
• Finally, you may also encounter Vault Wardens, the big bosses that rule this place. They are most known for their door-and-stair sealing abilities, but frankly, you don't care about that. What you do care about are their +99 glaives of felidbane. Be extremely careful, because clearly, the developers threw in a few extra dice that weren't supposed to be there when calculating their damage output.

There can be some relatively interesting uniques here, too. They won’t survive paradox-kitty-punches or a rain of dragons/ghosts, but some of them have a lot of close-range burst. In particular, try to keep your distance from Frederick (and his trusty Servitor), Jory, Mennas, Boris and Nikola. Silence works like a charm against every single one of those, except Mennas the Menace, who will turn the tables and be the one to silence you.

Do NOT melee Mennas without potion buffs. You WILL be annihilated faster than you can say "Deus Vult".

Mara is always a threat, but you should be better equipped to handle him here - just retreat if things get out of hand, and your evil twin business competitor is trying to promote their suspiciously familiar startup Pseudopod Annihilation Inc. You can always return later, and everything will have despawned, except Mara himself.

This is common knowledge, but, just in case… do NOT go to Vaults:5. Not even a peek.

Economical Reform (Jiyva)

If you are not using a high-level Transmutations spell in conjunction with Manifold Assault, skip this section. It’s already hard enough surviving as a 3 AC kitty, and you don’t need berserk enemies dropped on your scruff. If you get the Atlas online (or one of its variants) at some point in the future, come back to this section.

If you press “Ctrl-F”, search “jiyva” and nothing comes up, you will have to make a decision. Yes, there is a guaranteed Jiyva altar at the bottom of the Slime Pits, and while a strong assortment of Manifold Assaults and Blinkbolts will get you to the bottom (I must admit it is very fun to try for this deep dive), there’s a low, but non-zero chance it will just end your run - knowing what to expect by having visited the Slime Pits on previous runs helps a lot. If you’re up to gamble, you are a true feline acolyte, and I gladly invite you to read the advice paragraph at the end of this section. I advise doing this dive at around XP level 18-21, after clearing Vaults, at which point a lot of the danger will be trivialized. If you want to remain on the safe side, keep in mind that your run will lack the core puzzle piece that makes this build truly incredible, but Gozag and their bribes will still win a 3-rune game.

If you are a master of spacetime-bending lightning-fast strikes, and have discovered an altar to the Slime God (most likely in Lair:5 or Lair:6), it is strongly advised to fight back against abusive capitalism and institute anarcho-slimism instead. Just sticking with Gozag is definitely viable, but if you want to unlock the true power of the Atlas, I am sorry to say this apotheosis can only be achieved under Jiyva.

It’s often said that abandoning gods is a huge no-no in DCSS, with the rare exception of converting to The Shining One for the extended endgame, at a point where your character is so overpowered that getting drowned under Trog’s trolls and giants isn’t so terrible a prospect. However, Gozag’s wrath is not that bad, especially at this point in the game, which might seem odd considering the long-term benefits one may gain from Gozag Gacha Lootboxes. It will distribute either haste, berserk or might to a portion of the next enemies you meet - and also will occasionally make you waste a turn if you try to drink a potion (33% chance). This guide uses a trick to make this wrath palatable, of course - by forcing these buffs to be only applied on undead foes, the berserk effect, which is the most dangerous, will never appear. If you’re running the Atlas build or one of its variants, you will be able to Manifold into origami boats any berserk private security squads capitalism may throw in your general direction.

When to revolt against the plutocracy

If you have just finished clearing the Vaults, and are going to the Crypts, this is the perfect time. This wrath will last from Crypt:1 to Crypt:3 (with some minor overflow, but it will be 80% of the wrath done at that point) which is very manageable, as the various popcorn undead (An adder zombie comes into view.) aren't that much more threatening when roid-juiced from divine injections. As for the actual threats, their lack of blood prevents them from going into a murderous berserk rage, which, again, is easily the most dangerous part of Gozag's divine retribution! I find the Crypts to be a fantastic place to burn off Gozag's wrath if you have a strong Manifold Assault + Storm Form setup, and some decent levels of Intelligence (33+ is good at this stage).

Why you should complete this rather dubious action

In return, the benefits are extremely significant. Jiyva will grant immense amounts of regeneration in both HP and MP, allowing supreme durability in combat, and the ability to take a few steps back to heal should you take any big hit. Many mutations will be granted upon you, including even more regeneration, increased spellpower on Storm Form (and all other spells), increased HP/MP capacity, and an array of useful resistances. As a Felid, every hit you take is a BIG HIT, resulting in a constant spawn-swarm of free high-end jelly summons. As long as you can survive the wrath of the free market, a successful conversion will ensure victory is in the bag. At the time I am writing this, Felid Summoner of Jiyva has around a ~45% winrate out of 100+ games in 0.28 and 0.29 combined (see here and here) with multiple 15 rune wins, in a game where 2-3% winrates are commonplace. I hope that suffices to convince the more statistically-minded among you! No, it's not just my own runs, I promise.

If this power tempts you, at the cost of a slight increase in danger over the next 3-4 floors, I strongly encourage you to try your luck, even if you’ve never played with Jiyva before! Tread carefully in the next few battles, and ensure buffed enemies don’t stay on your screen for too long - nuke them quickly. Keep in mind your potions may not be relied on 100% of the time, but that is no reason to not try for a quick sip to buff up before a difficult battle. In the case of an immediate emergency, do NOT rely on potions for healing (unless you are silenced and have no other choice). Do not even try, do not even gamble. You WILL die, and you WILL regret that you didn't use a spell or scroll. To check how much wrath remains, press, in this order, “?”-“/”-“G”-“G”.

If you decide to convert, first, finish purchasing all interesting items from your Gozag Gacha Lootboxes (they will all be expired and unavailable once you convert, but naturally generated shops will remain), and enter the Slime Pits, which will be completely passive and lack any form of danger whatsoever. Get to Slime:5, and auto-explore a bit to let the slimes at the centre scatter a bit around the arena (the reason for this is to secure the loot in the central vault and ensure it won't be instantly digested once you return with 6* piety). The Slime God has not received the attention of anything sapient in a very long time, and will be so overjoyed to see you your favour will rise extremely quickly once you resume your quest.

Diving the Slime Pits (slightly dangerous, but fun, will pay off significantly should you succeed)

Equip any piece of jewelry that has rCorr on it. Press Ctrl-F and search “rcorr” to see if you missed any. If they don’t exist in your run, but you have potions of resistance (at least 3), you can try your luck. If you have no potions of resistance or rCorr rings, please give up.

Anything that isn’t a solitary slime creature, a quicksilver ooze or something with “eye” in its name will slap hard. Feel free to tab through the little green puddles (cleave-storm-form is very helpful here), but do NOT mess in extended melee with acid blobs, merged triple-or-higher slime creatures, azure jellies, and rockslimes. If you see these at a reasonable distance, have full HP/MP, and are standing close to a stairwell, you can probably Manifold Assault it into a first-grader slime-making experiment. Azure Jellies inflict a ton of cold damage, so it is recommended to swap to an rC+ ring if they start getting uncomfortably close. Eyes of devastation can be painful, but can be blinkbolted to with ease. Minimize the time you spend here - all that matters is diving down to the next downstairs (use Passage of Golubria/Swiftness to hasten your speed), and to do so quickly. Don’t care too much about bad mutations, Jiyva will fix you up once you let the Slime God touch upon your genetics. Use Dispersal to clear the way, or if you get cornered. Remember, a full round of Manifold Assaults can kill one of the more dangerous specimens, but you will be left vulnerable once you have gotten the kill - quickly retreat upstairs. Try to clear a small area above the Slime:5 downstairs, as to ensure retreat is possible. Carefully explore Slime:5 towards the centre, either taking on a few enemies at a time, using Manifold Assault to dispose of them from a safe distance, then stairdancing back up to replenish your reserves. When the Royal Jelly comes into view, it is time to leeroy-jenkins-rush the centre with a potion of haste and Passage of Golubria - or, if you do not have Passage of Golubria, you can try using a different staircase to Slime:5. Once you see the central vault walls, Passage of Golubria your way inside, and use Blinkbolt/scrolls of Blinking to get to the altar (it’s in the absolute centre). If the altar is covered by some angry goop creature refusing to budge, use Dispersal or slay it. As soon as you convert, all attacks will cease.

Killing the Royal Jelly will also kill Jiyva and remove all of the god’s altars, so, uh, don’t do that. Unless you changed your mind about your stance on economical politics and think capitalism is great. It's a really dangerous piece of jello anyways, I suggest not even trying to scratch it. Do NOT use Maxwell's Capacitative Coupling on this thing. You WILL flood the screen with 999 overpowered jellies.

I’ve written some more advice on the Slime Pits in the “The Final Lock” section further below, but it is aimed towards a pure summoner aiming to grasp the rune through brute force. You may read more about the enemy types I have outlined there, if you are lusting to hear more of my advice in regards to this branch.

Underground Zombie Drug Den (Crypts)

If you are a pure summoner without a form-changing spell, skip this section.

You are about to delve down a mausoleum of boundless suffering, agony, abomination and death. Average day. Please put on a source of rN+ at least if you care about your beautiful fluff and do not want to see it rotten and diseased by necrotizing dark magic.

This is the perfect moment to abandon Gozag, if you are an adept of Manifold Assault! Remember, nothing has a droplet of blood down here, and nothing will ever receive the terrifying Berserk status effect.

The portal to this underground amusement park is found somewhere in the Vaults. The spooky ride will begin with a vast assortment of varied undead: most are not dangerous in any way (in fact, the Crypt is pretty much a popcorn factory). However, this is only a trap to lead you to let down your guard when an actual threat does show up.

These are:

• Curse Skulls: They loooove to spam nigh infinite amounts of summons, and to torment you, instantly cutting your HP in half. This cannot directly kill you, but their little gang of friends will be more than happy to finish the job. These bony menaces must die ASAP. Blinkbolt/Haunt/Dragon’s Call are effective at tearing through their armies, but if you are caught off-guard, retreat - their friends can’t travel up or down stairs with you.
• Revenants: You may be able to dodge a speeding bullet bolting towards the tip of your spark-tail, but you cannot dodge is unholy explosion composed of the screams of the damned. Spectral fireballs will hit you 100% of the time, and they will hurt. I'm talking around 30 damage, here, and there's a possibility they will hit you every turn while you are standing in deadly clouds of ghost-dust. Revenants are squishy, so you will truly benefit from nuking them ASAP with Manifold Assault or Blinkbolt, but keep them on your screen with a direct line of fire, and your meows will soon join those haunted wails.
• Profane Servitors: These are not that dangerous on their own - they will rush you at mach speed, whap you with their whip, and o-tab you until they fall. If there's just one, you can easily win the 1v1, but when they are mixed in with other enemies, things start to get spicy as they will constantly reduce your accuracy while you stand in their gloomy aura. Thankfully, everything else in this branch is fairly lethargic, so kiting back the Servitor away from the horde (preferably using Passage of Golubria or Blinkbolt) will allow you to test their mettle safely. In a pinch, if those angels of death are sticking to you like leeches, Dispersal will scatter them a bit to give you time to reposition.
• Khufu and mummy friends: A run-ender… for the lesser humanoids. You, on the other hand, will be using those bandages as a scratching post. If you just spotted them, Maxwell’s Capacitative Coupling can vaporize them before they can react, but if they start showing you their entomological collection, it's time to shush them with Silence, or use Yara’s Violent Unravelling to dispel these pesky arthropod swarms. If you get multi-tormented, retreat with Passage of Golubria (or just walk, if there isn’t much danger - that means, if you can manage to stay above 17 HP, as that is the smiting kill-threshold) until Jiyva repairs you with bountiful regeneration.
• Juggernaut zombies: These are very rare, but get a special mention. If some member of the walking dead looks like it has a bit of meat on em', take no chances and confirm that it's not a juggernaut zombie. Your HP bar will thank you. If it is... just don't let it touch you. Please. Most of the time, it will still be fine as their attacks are easy to dodge, but a oneshot is never fun.

Otherwise, with an Atlas build powered by Jiyva (in fact, your piety with this Slime God will begin building up as you explore the Crypts), this branch is usually unchallenging, even through Gozag's wrath. There can be occasional visits from the Depths liches on a tour to visit their grandchildren - use Silence as your first priority, but if you do not have it, make summons eat the Orbs of Destruction and keep your distance to not get impaled. In case of spicier moments, use consumables.

In Crypt:3, you will find the entrance to the Tomb. It is the hardest branch in the entire game, filled with all kinds of mummies who will be very happy to bash your hubris into the ground with endless torment spam, then cackle as you respawn in the death trap between their walls only to die again and be met with “Welcome, Idiot. Please select your species.”

That is exactly why I suggest you go in once Crypts has been fully cleared.

Bring Your Jellies to Egypt (Tomb:1)

Yes. I am serious.

Skip this section if you are not worshipping Jiyva.

Don't worry, this will not be an indepth exploration, just a friendly safari tour. Dip in, see some cool hieroglyphs, dip out.

The reason I suggest this is because Jiyva particularly enjoys massive, wide open spaces. I think they are starting to find the Slime Pits to be a bit cramped and are looking for new housing. Your piety is bound to skyrocket in this place, because revealing floor tiles is how you gain standing with Jiyva, and this floor is literally a giant parking lot.

Walk around the perimeter, circling the entire outskirts of the massive temple at the centre. Dispose of any stragglers with Manifold Assault on sight. Each mummy you use as your walking scratching post has a small chance to explode your HP bar on kill with Torment - do not panic, as this will never be lethal, and retreat, using Jiyva's regeneration to replenish your reserves.

Eventually, you will find a Sphinx gang, which can easily be deleted in a few turns by spamming Manifold Assault.

However, I strongly advise against entering the temple in the centre. The only reason to come here is to cash in ** of slime-god favour and burn off the last few ticks of Gozag wrath without risk, nothing more. If you wake up the old geezers inside their eternal retirement home and they start to pour out the entrance telling you to get off their lawn, you should really listen to them. Especially if they are wearing red and are named "Royal Mummy". If one is particularly insistent, you can use Silence to annihilate them in melee, or Yara's Violent Unravelling to blast their buggo friends - mind the torment burst they will unleash on death.

As soon as the perimeter is fully explored, leave and do not come back.

Blizzards and Brimstone (Depths)

Before entering the Depths, ensure resistances (rF+ and rC+) are in your inventory, if possible. You may even equip them now, if you wish: it’s worth replacing a +6 ring of Dexterity, but it’s not worth replacing a ring of the Won Run (Int +9, rN+++, Wiz). Use judgement.

Press I twice, and look at the spellpower of your various spells. If you are using Storm Form and it is between 40% and 66%, very good. If it is lower than 40%, it is WEAK and you probably did something wrong (such as not trusting me on my every word). If it is somehow higher, you are a true believer in the Atlas, and you get bonus points from me. Other Forms' spellpower is mostly insignificant.

Manifold Assault may not be at 100% power. However, you want it to be, to ensure 4 targets are smitten by fuzzy spark paws on every cast. Turn Translocations back on if you still need to scale up to that glorious triple-digit-power. I can’t say for sure how many extra skill levels you’ll need (that depends on your Intelligence), but check back every so often, turning off Translocations once it hits 100%. For the rest of the run, get your skills up to their final targets: Fighting (target 21), Dodging (target 21), Unarmed Combat (target 21) and Spellcasting (target 15). If you have somehow finished all that and don't know what to train, get more Unarmed Combat, up to the maximum of 27.

For pure summoners, spellpower is not that important. All it does is draw out some of the “better” units one can get in each interdimensional kidnapping, such as sphinxes instead of manticores, increase the duration of Dragon’s Call, or allow you to bring in forests that have Amazonian jungle area of effect instead of the puny cucumber gardens you were growing in the Lair. However, the damage output remains mostly the same, so you are better off getting more Fighting (target 24), Spellcasting (target 15) and Dodging (target 24) once your main spells are castable (<5% fail rate). If they aren't, train relevant skills.

For Manifold Assault users aligned with Jiyva, the Depths are an o-p-tab-fest. For pure summoners who have Dragon’s Call, it is similarly quite forgiving. If you are neither of those, Malign Gateway, Summon Forest and the other spells suggested in this guide can pull their weight here, though you may need to kite some enemies into open spaces, or down into narrow corridors to unleash Forests/Gateways/Horrible Things (for wide spaces), or Cacti/Hydras/Menageries (for narrow hallways).

The real threats here are:

• Deep Troll Earth Mages: Do not stand next to walls. They don’t do that much damage even if you disrespect this once or twice, but completely disregarding this advice is not wise, as if you give them the opportunity, they will play Minecraft with you until you lose a life. If you are a user of Statue Form, do NOT be in Statue Form with them around. End your transformation with the "a"bility menu. You WILL be twoshotted.
• Giants and Titans: They do massive damage in melee, and they shoot bolts of tremendous punishment. Equip rF+ or rC+, depending on their element, and try to use Manifold Assault/Haunt/Dragon’s Call to dispose of them from a distance. Otherwise, sending the entire squad and staying in the backline works too.
• Spriggans of all types, including the Enchantress: Despite their diminutive size, they either have immense melee damage (berserkers), nigh-impenetrable armour (defenders), or smite-targeted non-negligible damage (air mages). The Enchantress is a unique mistress of Hexes, but with feline willpower, she should not be too dangerous - her gang is what’s really worrying here. All of them aren’t too bad in melee (with the exception of a berserk Berserker), so a Form user shouldn’t have too much trouble.
• Liches: They have Crystal Spears and Orb of Destruction, and those aren’t pleasant to be impaled/blown up by. Silence does wonders here, but otherwise, keeping your distance works too, similarly to Deep Elf Annihilators.
• Juggernauts: Quite rare, but extremely dangerous. Fast on their legs (enough to catch up with you), they have enough damage to oneshot you in a single melee attack - however, their attack speed would make Cheibriados pale in envy at their sheer slowness. Get them to waste this precious strike against one of your unfortunate volunteers, then drown them in Manifold Assaults or allies.
• Flayed Ghosts: Panic inducing - they seemingly deal immense smite-targeted damage without you being able to do anything about it, but killing them will instantly heal all of the pain they inflicted. They are priority targets - the longer they stay in your line of sight, the more dangerous they become.
• Golden Dragons: Big, beefy, and with multi-elemental breath weapons. A Form user can shred them up in melee, but it’s best to take them on one at a time. If they go berserk (usually due to a moth of wrath), it’s time to LEAVE.

If you converted to Jiyva earlier, you should have maxed out your piety around Depths:3-4. Return to Slime:5, and dash to the centre with Passage of Golubria. Take the most interesting choice bits from the hoard before it all goes churning in jelly cytoplasm.

The Final Lock (Third Rune)

If you are a pure summoner (preferably with Dragon’s Call, Summon Horrible Things and/or Malign Gateway), go to the Slime Pits.

If you are allied with Gozag and a user of the Atlas/a high-level form, go to the final floor of the Vaults.

If none apply, your best buddy Jiyva already gave you a rune for free! Skip this section.

The Slime Pits

Remember how you utterly demolished the Lair? It’s simple logic, really - even 100 AC cannot compete with the power of friendship. Every turn an enemy spends scratching your loyal servants, they spend it not scratching you. Therefore, pure melee foes are rendered helpless before your genius tactics of “nobody’s wellbeing matters except my own”. Well, the Slime Pits is a melee damage fiesta. Yes, there’s some death rays here and there, or perhaps a few acid cannons to melt your scruff off, but that’s nothing to worry about, I assure you! Just… wear rCorr, please. Or, at the very least, quaff a Potion of Resistance should you encounter an Acid Blob.

Since you don’t have a Form on your side, the key here is to not get surrounded. Pretty much everything here that isn’t a floating eyeball hits hard, and hits fast. You won’t last a second. Use Horrible Things to constantly wrap yourself in meatshields, dispose of high-tier threats (acid blobs, mainly, as they have a ranged attack) with Haunt, if you have it, and spam Dragon’s Call as much as you can.

Don’t linger in each floor! There’s no loot to be found here - it’s all gently gurgling inside the serene jellies ruling this place, and most of it has been turned into colourful goo. Don’t be so sad, what would you have done with those +87 gold dragons scales of Absolute Epicness [rF+++, rC+++, Slay+10, Str+20]? Use them as a sleeping blanket? Just keep diving down when you see a staircase.

Here’s some of the more dangerous gooey friends you’ll find here. Despite their squishy and play-dough-like countenances, they pack quite the chemical punch.

• Azure Jelly: A very simple enemy: they have chill-touched pseudopods with unholy damage output, move at the speed of sound and will chop off your health bar into bite-sized cubes. Just like your average DCSS player, they know only two things: moving and melee attacking. It is therefore only right that you grant them the demise an o-tabber deserves - drowned in infinite armies until their hubris finally collapses them into a chilly puddle.
• Quicksilver Ooze: Even faster, and with infinite Willpower (you couldn’t care less about that part, unless you were relying on Anguish as your main damage source). The big twist: letting them caress you will have them flood their slime in every alveoli of your lungs, causing damage over time and silencing you from spellcasting. To avoid unpleasant mental imagery, do not ever let them in melee range - ALWAYS try to be surrounded by allies!
• Shining Eye: They do zero damage, but their gaze will nastily violate basic biological knowledge, and rearrange your muscles to shrink in mass (?), grant you panic-induced illiteracy (??), or even warp your brain in such a way that it will randomly distort spacetime and bring you into the nearest death trap (???). As your feline body is already perfect in every way, any change would be a net downgrade. However, unlike you, your obedient units are not as feline and fluffy, and therefore would greatly benefit from a few minor readjustments. Leave them to be warped into pulsating flesh masses, shielding you from the mutagenic radiation - if the Shining Eye couldn’t fire a Magic Dart at you, you are safe. If you unfortunately get hit with a genome-warping invisible beam, try Potions of Mutations to get rid of the negative effect, ESPECIALLY if it's random teleportation or inability to read scrolls.
• Eye of Devastation & Acid Blob: The latter is effectively a more dangerous version of the former. They are the only ranged damage threats in this entire branch, but they hit hard. Fortunately, they have the IQ of a MiBe, and will gladly waste all of their shots on easily replaceable dragons woven from the strands of the cosmos. As said earlier, Haunt does wonders against them, and so does Dragon’s Call - but if you have neither of those, use “t”-“a” to direct focus towards them first, as they are number one threats.

In Slime:5, you will find the Royal Jelly. Despite its intimidating stature, speed, and damage, it also only knows how to o-tab. Oh, and spawn summons like you when it takes damage. This is the true Zotémon final boss, the Summoner’s War, the test on who can really catch em’ all. The answer to such high firepower, of course, is to whip out more firepower. Try to cast EVERY spell in your library, until the screen is FLOODED with units. Watch the battle unfold. If things start to look dire, it’s time to sorrowfully violate the Elyvilon Convention, and end the war with a weapon of mass destruction: a Scroll of Immolation. As both your forces AND the wobblies will be affected, the result will be a fireworks show that all the Guardian Golems in the world could never hope to match. It is advised to not stand in the blast zone (that means, adjacent to anyone) if you care about not being pulverized instantly. Use Dispersal if you need to build yourself a quick nuclear fallout shelter!

After asserting dominance, you are free to browse the Slime Pits’ treasure. Most of it is constituted of very expensive scratching posts and randart robes to tear to shreds, but you may find a few nice drinks, or some good reading material.

Vaults:5

First, while standing on the door to the entrance of the Vaults, open up your "a"bility menu, and use Bribe Branch, only once.

As you may already know, there is a surprise party waiting for you right as you descend into the Vaults:5 entrance. It would be very impolite to not bring quality liquors and fun games for the whole family. That is why, standing on the Vaults:4 downstairs, you will, in the following order:

• Quaff a potion of brilliance;
• Cast your Form;
• Quaff a potion of haste;
• Read a Scroll of Teleportation;
• Go down to receive your surprise.

You’ll only have a few turns at best to celebrate with the Vault Guards at the entrance. You may do a few tests to find out if long swords can conduct electricity into the body of its wielder, but you will be yanked into a completely random location shortly afterwards.

What you see in this moment can vary wildly. It could be a cozy little chamber, or the worst screen of DCSS you have ever seen. In the latter case, remember you have a lot more spacetime distorting-magic stored inside your fluff (where do you even hide all this stuff???). Read another Teleport Scroll, and hope for a better result. A scroll of fog can buy you time, and prevent a shooting range execution if you landed in an unfortunate location. With your Form, a nice array of support spells (Passage of Golubria and Leda’s Liquefaction are especially useful here!), random vault guards shocked by your feline grace and betraying their squads, and potentially Potion Petition, you will surely survive until the magical roulette brings you where you need to be - that is, either a closed room with one or a few 1-tile chokepoints, or the very edge of the map. If you aren’t sure where that “edge” is, a scroll of Magic Mapping will greatly aid you to take in your bearings.

From then on, it’s a matter of taking it slow, passing each denizen of the Vaults through your border inspection booth between the frontiers of Living and Being Dead. All of their papers should be in order to complete their immigration quickly, but there’s a few who might be attempting to replace you in your role of Cat of Life and Death:

• Titans, Golden Dragons, and Giants in general to a lesser degree: Besides the ranged beam and breath attacks, which are most of an annoyance than a threat, meleeing them is a gamble. You will probably dodge everything, but if you don’t, there will be a lot of red on your screen. Manifold Assault is preferable, and if caught in a tight spot, Blinkbolting to a lesser enemy should place the necessary distance for survival.
• Anything that has “lich” in its name: You have been acquainted by grandpa Liches already, but for the true family gathering surprise party that is Vaults:5, the great grandparents have exceptionally joined the occasion. Lesser humanoids would tremble in their boots at the thought of being paralyzed, but your utter self-conviction in the unquestionable superiority of the feline race will grant you enough innate Willpower to escape this terrifying ability in almost every situation. Demon summons are annoying, but nothing a few localized Yara’s Violent Unravelling nukes can’t fix. Crystal Spears, however, are horrible, and are the main reason you should try to not get within 3 tiles of one of these decaying archmages. Silence will render them helpless, but be aware that you may find yourself equally helpless after you have disposed of them if your Storm Form runs out while you are still silenced. A potion of cancellation can fix this!
• Quicksilver Dragons: Quite possibly the meanest bully on this floor. Their breath can knock you out of Storm Form, which will result in disastrous consequences if your tabbing frenzy brings you to use a lot less lightning thunder-claws, and a lot more pillow-paw-pads. Take it one turn at a time when they are in sight, ensuring you transform again should their breath hit you, only to then resume your scheduled rampage of all that breathes (and also of that which doesn’t).

Eventually, the horde’s onslaught will subside. Grasp the Silver Rune, cry a little bit before all these nice artefacts you can’t use, accumulate gold (those coins will make a nice replacement for the gravel in your litter box), and scamper onwards to the final step of your journey.

Worst Disco Ever (Zot)

Manifold Assault users should train Unarmed Combat up to maximum level 27. This will grant you the final Felid-unique title of "Sabretooth". I think it's pretty appropriate. If you manage to master Unarmed Combat, Atlas users should train Transmutations and Air Magic until victory, to squeeze out a little bit of extra damage and defense from Storm Form.

Summoners with Dragon's Call can feel free to juice up their Summonings up to level 27, which gives the "Planerender" title. I also think this one is neat.

If you are still with Gozag AND have at least 6000 gold, stand on top of the Realm of Zot’s entrance, and Bribe Branch with 3000 gold. This will utterly trivialize most of the challenge down here, as you will walk caressed and pampered by the bony and scaly hands of liches and dragons, with the occasional warm tendrils of Orbs of Fire to warm your heart. Check back on your funds every now and then with “^” (then switching to the “Extra” tab with "!"). If you start to run low, dump in another 3000! All donations towards the Bring Your Kitten to the Death Trap Foundation are appreciated. Though, try to keep at least 3000 gold on you for Zot:5. If you have less than 6000 gold and are allied with Gozag, wait until starting Zot:5 to use your bribe.

One of the pre-designed vaults for this branch is literally called “player_shredder”. I think that says everything you need to know about this place. Bring rF+ at least if you don’t want to be one-shotted by the fearsome Orbs of Fire. Yes, even if it means swapping out that ring of the Won Run (Int +9, rN+++, Wiz) from earlier. If you ring/amulet is really that good, you can keep it on, swapping to rF+ once you encounter one of these insubstantial bullies. Do not forget.

Zot is unlike everything else in DCSS. Whereas the Lair is animal-themed, the S-branches are water-and-poison-themed, or the Crypt is undead-themed, the Realm of Zot is “I am going to kill you”-themed. It is meant to seize victory from your paws at the very end, and its devious design has been carefully revised over decades of development to create the most tense experience imaginable.

In case you’ve been playing older versions of DCSS, remember that Scrolls of Blinking are now 100% reliable here, and that Passage of Golubria still functions (albeit with slightly reduced accuracy).

Unlike previous branches where I would name a list of Things That Will Kill You, Zot is more about deadly combinations of foes rather than single overpowered enemies. The exception to this rule are the infamous Orbs of Fire, which are the product of a truly machiavellian developer team. Manifold Assault, without buffs, is actually not that effective; unless there’s a bunch of other enemies on the screen, I don’t recommend spending ALL of your magic on it - this may bring the Orb of Fire down to half-health, and bring you down to zero health in exchange as you are blasted with explosions on every turn. Inject yourself with might-haste roid rage, maybe a potion of Resistance for good measure, and punch them into the ground. Alternatively, Malign Gateway is their kryptonite - the tentacle is IMMUNE to fire, and will block fireballs while it annihilates these spherical bullies with eldritch rage. You can also build yourself a fort of summons, and try casting Maxwell's Capacitative Coupling, giving them a taste of their own oneshot medicine. These terrors can also be handled with Haunt and Mana Vipers, which will disable their magic, and eat a good amount of fireballs before the blazing barrage has you next on the list. OoF can malmutate you just like the Shining Eyes of the Slime Pits, and getting random teleportation right now is a death sentence - but if you can sacrifice fluff-balls (or tentacles) to the genetic pyre, your cells will be safe. Like with the Shining Eyes, if you still get a gene knocked out of its rightful place, a Potion of Mutation or two will fix you up.

Then, there’s moths of wrath and their berserk friends. Anything in this game gets 500% scarier when it gets mad, but this is especially true if that “anything” is a Golden Dragon. Do NOT melee a berserk golden dragon, EVER. You WILL die. Use MANIFOLD ASSAULT, and FOLD them into AN ORIGAMI DUCK. (Why am I speaking in caps? Was I bitten by a moth of wrath too?). If it gets in melee range and you are allied with Jiyva, you can try to Slimify them from your (a)bility menu.

There’s also some amusing, normally deadly combinations that you will laugh at before annihilating with extreme prejudice. The first thing that comes to mind are Draconian Shifters, who think it’s really funny to blink all of their friends into adjacent melee-range to you. For a weak Vehumet worshipper (except Vehumet’s most prized avatar, Iskenderun herself, and creator of three very popular Conjuration spells - did you know she was a Felid?), this is a death sentence, but you do not care, for if you have given your all to the Atlas, you possess the ability to delete each and every single one of these discount dragons with a few presses of TAB, proving the supremacy of fluff over scales. This is especially funny with Draconian Scorchers/Stormcallers, respectively, who are very scary at range with their damnation-pelting/upheaval-spamming (respectively), but begin crying all over themselves when adjacent to you, as they have a terrible fear of blowing themselves up with their own spells. Weaklings. Psyche in the Dungeon has no problem blowing herself up with Iceblast if it means another new player rage quits DCSS for good.

Tentacled Monstrosities are also a joke. Have fun watching them trying to constrict their tentacles around your insubstantial body and-

Oh, right, there’s a non-zero possibility you’re still somehow unblessed by high voltage grace and have never touched the Atlas. In this case, Dispersal will be your saviour, your love, and your most trusted friend. Use it to escape constriction, use it to dispel the draconian-ambush, use it to get berserk golden dragons off your scruff! Remember, it works every time. Unless you miscast. But you won't. You're a feline master of non-euclidean geometry.

There’s Killer Klowns, too. Despite only wielding clubs, these weapons have obscene levels of enchantment (+12 is not rare) and some of the most annoying brands in the game. The pies they throw have a wide variety of random effects, which I will summarize as follows: “they suck”. Maxwell’s Capacitative Coupling is not wasted here, but they do love to blink around a lot, which makes them very vulnerable to Manifold Assault.

Zot:5 is the ultimate floor of the game. It has a tendency to be very difficult for most characters, but you are not “most characters”. FeSu is very much make-it-or-break-it. Most runs that would have died in Zot:5 have perished much earlier. If you are here now, there’s a very high chance you will succeed, but still, proceed with caution. First, read a scroll of Magic Mapping, and clear out the peripheral area that does not look like five oval chambers connected to each other. You will find there an assortment of creatures you’ve already seen in the rest of Zot - repeat the same strategies, with the exception that you should IMMEDIATELY remove a Mark if it is placed on you. A potion of cancellation works, and climbing back up a staircase to a previously explored levels does as well, and even Yara’s Violent Unravelling on yourself will function if you have high HP and wouldn’t be threatened by this action.

These oval chambers, referred to as the “lungs” of Zot, are extremely dangerous. Zot has a very bad lung infection, and it’s your job to help them with the surgery - however, the parasites responsible for Zot’s illness are not happy to budge. Prepare for Orbs of Fire galore, at least five liches of assorted kinds, a few sprinkles of the worst dragon types here and there, a circus-full of Killer Klowns, and to top it all off, a metric ton of Orb Guardians with fast movement and heavy attacks. Fortunately, 1-tile choke points are guaranteed down here. Before entering, if you are still allied with Gozag, throw 3000 gold their way to remind them of their place in the racial hierarchy - that means, lesser than divine felids, who rule above all. Proceed slowly, disposing of each threat one by one with Manifold Assault (for those that don’t have the red danger-square) or Maxwell’s Capacitative Coupling (for those that do). If you’re a pure summoner, use Dragon’s Call, Horrible Things and Haunt in absurd amounts. Your true pocket weapon, however, is Malign Gateway - even an Orb of Fire is powerless before the curious tummy-scritches of Cthulu!

Divide and conquer, taking one step back to step forward three. Eventually, the Orb of Zot will appear in all its pinkish-hued glory, ready to be rolled and toyed with like a ball of yarn.

Interdimensional SWAT Team (Orb Run)

Grab the Orb, and either walk into the nearest teleportation trap, or read a scroll of Teleportation. Whichever is faster.

You will now be pursued by Heaven and Hell combined. This matter got a lot more serious than the kidnapping of a few dogs and quokkas. They want kitty blood, and they are fully equipped to draw it.

Fighting is foolish. Make a run for the stairs, with zero regards for your consumables. Use them ALL. Use potions of haste on an empty floor if you have a couple to spare. Blink-scroll to a staircase at full health if something weird just spawned next to you. Sip on your potions of might just because you like the taste. Every single time a Pandemonium Lord appears, inspect them; some are utter pushovers, and some are terrifying angels of death with rocket-boots and a burning desire to squash your hopes as they are about to be materialized. In my personal opinion, the ones that don’t have any spells in their set are always the worst. I fear a lot less the demon who has mastered Bolt of Cold than that which has mastered Fist in Your Face. Rarely, a Pandemonium Lord may have Glaciate, in which case you should be very, very scared. Escape out of their sight imminently, or get as much rC+ if that is impossible.

Tormentors are particularly nasty. Use Manifold Assault, Haunt, or a Scroll of Fog to remove them from your Line-Of-Sight. Otherwise, eating three torments in a row will easily place you into kill range which an Executioner suddenly appearing in your snout will be happy to claim.

Blinkbolt is especially useful in the Orb Run! If the Pandemonium Lord “lol u die” spawns next to you, blinkbolt to a stray Orb Guardian to escape your whooping into oblivion with 75 damage strikes.

Exploit your wand of Digging, if you have one, to speed things up. To auto-calculate the shortest path, you can press Ctrl-G, and write “D0”. This will automatically bring you towards victory, stopping you as soon as a threat appears.

Eventually, the outside world will finally return to your sight. Feel free to inject all possible potions and toxins you possess into your bloodstream, or try to stack as many status effects as possible before leaving, as is tradition. You did it! Do not forget to try cleansing your bad mutations as you ascend, as it would a shame to be an immortal demigod-cat with a few extra limbs and a cancerous tumour.

When you start your next game, die to a 3-floor shaft into a hornet zombie, be demolished with zero counterplay, and go do something more productive than putting .pngs on a grid close to each other until one of them disappears.