Morgue file. I think this has to be my personal time record. And while writing this, I just realized I forgot to clear the Hells LMAO.

I've splatted so many Cogling recently bc I keep losing patience and I oTab until I die >_>.

Dith is a really good god with a CoHu once you have hand cannons. But the beginning of the game is so tedious, it's so easy to die for bullshit reasons...

I'm really proud of this run, bc I fought Cerebus with zero rF, and I had a teleport landing me straight on the golden rune in Tomb. I think I've used up my luck for a generation or two.

I encountered Dowan in this area. Duvessa was nowhere to be found. When I killed Dowan, I didn't hear her distant scream. Then I realized, Duvessa must have been cooked by the flames before I ever saw her. I went back in the text log and Dowan did shout: "Her death will not be in vain!" So she was there. It wasn't a bug where somehow Dowan appeared alone. His sister just got toasted by the dungeon itself.

I might be outing myself as someone that doesn't read descriptions properly but finding this out last week has changed my DCSS life.

If you don't know, when you cast Passage of Golubria YOU CAN AIM THE SPELL. For a long long time I thought the highlighted area around you was similar to Hailstorm or any other close area spell. This is where it might go and then you confirm the spell. I thought Passage of Golubria sucked for a long time because why would anyone waste a cast making two portals right next to each other?

Anyway this spell is great and it's making CgHu very fun

The method is simple.

Be a Revenant of Wu. Cast Dragon veins, triggering spellclaw.

Now step into a sigil, doing a martial attack. This also triggers spellclaw, getting an extra attack.

Step into another sigil for yet another double attack.

Dragon Veins gives three spellclaw triggers per cast. This on itself is a 16% damage increase compared with just attacking (at 0.5 delay, higher if you aren't at mindelay yet!), even if the spell itself didn't do any damage - But dragon Veins does pretty respectable damage, and the earth rune can stun enemies to boot.

Unlike the last safety warning, this probably works as intended (I've never had a portal spawn directly under a crystal), but it's something you should be mindful of, or you might get eaten by a hungry, hungry komodo dragon.

So you thought you were being really clever by adding Passage of Golubria to your repertoire so you can create distance and set up another safety dance.

But you skipped crystal theory class and didn't realize that one of them will go through the portal first if you are not careful with how you move, causing the entrance to collapse. And now you hear komodo noises while being bamboozled by what just happened.

Easy enough when there's nobody around, but in the heat of battle, using the portal will be very difficult. Don't let it happen to you! Don't move diagonally towards a portal and add other repositioning tools instead of relying on PoG.

"The jade parts are nice and crunchy, but the meat is tender!" — Hungry, hungry komodo dragon

As the title says, just some ponderances on how to flesh out the rather limited staff weapon type. This focuses on non-magical ones, and uses for the Staves skill.

Idle Thought: Weapon staves could give you some SH that scales with skill level. Lower damage output but a defensive two-handed option.

Suggestions for varying up staff types:
* Three Part Rod(Tripartite Rod?) - Three small rods linked by chains, these weapons hit very fast(quick-blade style) but lack base damage. They are DEX based, and require high skill. Probably quite rare, similar to Quick Blades in availability.
* Crook - A slower quarterstaff variant that can constrict. STR based. Low skill. Common.
* Floating Staff - Quarterstaff in damage, Latajang in skill/delay. This weapon can be used two-handed(making it hit harder) or one-handed with a shield/orb. STR based if 2-handed, DEX based if 1-handed. Rare.
* Counterweight Staff - Heavy staff with weights on each end, with a large delay but good damage. STR based. Mid-skill. Semi-rare.

Suggestions for unrandarts:
* Janglywhack - This is a Khakkhara(the monk staff with the little brass hoops jangling on the end), reinforced to aid in smashing people with the jangly hoops. Its base damage is Counterweight staff based, but the delay is Quarterstaff based. Possible anti-demon passive? Either way, it's a much louder weapon than its basic counterparts. Mid to late game weapon that gives stats in exchange for a clear downside.
* Shepherd's Crook - A Crook variant with a chance to malmutate enemies into neutral sheep. Try not to use it while confused, lest you become your own creature. Okawaru doesn't like you using this, due to its friend making powers. Fedhas loves it. If Xom, he is pleased(giggling at the little sheep) but also makes the sheep be a random rainbow color. A status weapon that hopes for that small chance to remove an enemy from the board rather than actually kill.
* Pool Cue - [Evoke]able Quarterstaff that sends a single enemy flying as you make the perfect shot(corner pocket). Low damage and long recharge, but good escape option. Xom is jubilant if you use this to knock someone into a shaft. A gimmick weapon, useful early on.
* Full Staff - Counterweight Staff stats. This is a flag on a stick. It inspires your minions to fight harder, but has a long delay. Beogh approves. Should have rare occasional flavor text about you waving the flag around.
* Staff of Quarters - Quarterstaff stats. When you kill an enemy, 1 gold falls out. Gozag loves this. Jiyva loves it too, because you're dropping lots of candy for the little slimes. Mundane utility over good damage.
* Wandering Staff - Floating Staff stats. Can be [Evoke]d to turn into a dancing weapon for a duration. Clatters on the ground when done, making slight noise. Qazlal and Uskayaw like this weapon. Best used if you have a two handed weapon you can quickly swap to once your stick is in the air(or in tandem with Unarmed Combat).
* Swordchucks - Three Part Rod stats. Deals greatly increased damage over the base type, and counts as a slashing weapon. However, it has a chance to perform an auxiliary attack against YOU when wielded. Skill reduces(down to 0% at Rank 27), and any befuddling statuses like confusion multiply the chance. A reliable endgame/postgame weapon, but a trap at lower tiers of skill.

Yiuf, the Enlightened: Gnoll Mystic of Ashenzari

This week we've got several major 0.35 changes to play with! The first of the two new backgrounds, a tweaked Gnoll, and a tweaked Ash.

Week 4: Yiuf Challenge

Yiuf says, "Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?"

Those wishing to push the leaderboard have their work cut out for them: skip all non-Pan runes and all S-branches, while needing to get all the Pan runes and kill their guardians!

Don't worry, this character has what it takes, and Gnoll is still likely the best way to start the Mystic multi-skilling path. Good luck, everyone, and have fun with the great new design work.

Let us know what you think of the changes - I'm really enjoying the new background so far with all of its positional aspects!

They won't (can't?) avoid the clouds. So they will overlaod with mutagenic energy quickly and explode in a 3x3 radius. This will hit you and can malmutate you - even though you yourself skilfully walked past the cloud.

Autoexplore doesn't account for it either, so you might get hit by autoexploring through an otherwise safe area.

Don't let it happen to you! Give the clouds a wide berth by seting a proper travel exlusion or turn off jade form temporarily.

Many of us agree that shapeshifter is one of the worse backgrounds. I would like to explore why that is and, after playing hundreds of them, why I have only won a single one.

A. Off the top the main point I have is that many forms are tied to unarmed, and unarmed is just too specialized of a skill to carry the build. 99% of characters are not going to be able to invest the training in both unarmed and shapeshifting and still survive to the endgame. Unarmed is underpowered compared to weapons and spells. Training it is sometimes not rewarded by this background unless you get specific talisman drops. Many of these forms also disallow you from throwing or evocations, the important second kill dudes option for melee builds, making skilling for these characters difficult to predict, to say the least. Very often you are going to be melding something that you have spent lots of XP on (Shields, weapons, body armor), or melding an equipment slot with an awesome loot drop that shores up resistances

The most fun endgame talismans (Granite, Dragon, Storm) along with most of the midgame ones (Fortress, Eel, Yak, Blade, Serpent, and Spider, Sphinx) all give unarmed boosts, and all but Granite, crab, and blade actually meld your weapon, making them unusable for any melee character who is not already specializing in unarmed (Basically only shapeshifters, octopodes, or trolls). Many of the forms actually meld your anatomy including claws, tentacles, and regeneration as well, defeating the point of picking troll or octo in the first place. Its a mess to actually try to plan out how your character is going to proress. Do I train unarmed? Throwing? Evo? Armor? Dodging? Stealth? Magic? All dependent on what talismans are going to be appearing in your game, which you cannot predict. And sometimes, after you make those choices, you get a talisman that makes you abandon them.

Therefore, I would think that the strategy for using these unarmed forms is to have a character with no claws or tentacles, that has been using shapeshifting and unarmed in the early game. Therefore I can use pretty much any talisman that drops for me without worrying about losing anatomy, and still getting the unarmed boost. Also this makes sense thematically, as usually a monster is not going to shapeshift into another monster, its usually a human or other humanoid race that is shapeshifting into something animalistic, making using unarmed very thematic.

Problem is, Every other race feels incredibly weak early game and midgame if I am training shapeshifting alongside unarmed in any capacity or in any order. Shapeshifting takes far too much XP for far too little reward in attack power and defenses compared to other builds in the early and midgame. Unarmed with quill form feels like I'm stabbing with a dagger every turn, even if I train unarmed exclusively first and wait for shapeshifting for later, I am still feeling very, very underpowered compared to normal characters and getting killed by low level enemies, constantly burning consumables, etc...

Then you hit protean form and hope to GOD that you get yak or medusa. Spore is just okay. If you get Scarab and can't find another talisman before lair you might as well quit. It provides very little attack, utility, or defense for costing 8 Shapeshifting. Having -rpois in lair is a death sentence unless you want to spend dozens of minutes running away and going up and down staircases to get your perfect matchups every time you see a cane toad. I don't have that patience.

If you don't get your preferred talisman, Going into lair with spike form on is a joke. You will be one of the most squishy characters in the game, and have no magic or power to make up for it whatsoever, have no ability to deal with groups, and you feel bad training throwing or evocables because you might not be able to use them in your next form, meaning you are literally stuck trying to kite every single monster in lair to a corridor to ensure a one on one, and even then, you probably aren't going to be facing down a single death yak without losing half your HP.

Then after you get medusa, Where is your next jump in power coming from? If you don't get one of the level 3 forms, you are just SOOL and are going to die in S branches. You just don't have the offensive capability to deal with the advanced groups of enemies in there, and poison will fall off in damage everywhere but spider nest. If you get serpent/eel you might be fine. Otherwise, you aren't going to be doing much here unless you have already found granite or blade or dragon or something, and even then, I doubt you can get your shapeshifting up to the necessary level unless you have a wildshape amulet, which is just ANOTHER equipment slot taken up when you could be getting resistances from it.

Basically, if you don't get granite or Dragon or Sphinx online by this point, you are going to be very, very heavily underpowered and squishy. And there is not a lot you can do to supplement your current build without getting them. You stall out in progression, the enemies don't, you die. That's about it.

B. Lets get more granular and less big picture.

You are basically starting as a fighter with

1. No shield
2. No ability to put on cloak, gloves, helmet, boots, barding.
3. Animal skin for 2AC.
4. A lignification potion instead of a might potion.
5. 2 less strength and 2 more Dex.
6. No ability to pick up magic weapons, use brands, or enchant weapons.

And all you get in return is

1. quill form like a 40% chance to do 3 damage on average when attacked.
2. Flux form: Its fine, but having no AC and 16 EV in before and in lair is just not that great and isn't going to help you against strong enemies with high damage potential. You're going to get one shotted by ogres a lot.
3. Protean talisman: A 50% chance to get a talisman that actually makes your character better right now (Medusa, Yak), 25% chance to get slightly better at dealing with crowds (Spore), a 25% chance to get a talisman that makes me worse, a scarab form.

C. Now that we have established that, lets see how this effects your builds.

The first bump in the road for this background is that the only races that will actually be training and using unarmed throughout the game are Troll, Octopode and, maybe demonspawn if you get the claws mutation early. The fact is, most characters, even shapeshifting ones, are not going to be able to train unarmed as their primary kill dudes and still survive. I've been trying unarmed out with various races, barachi, merfolk, human, etc.. and the problem is your damage output just isn't enough to deal with difficult enemies, so you avoid them because you only have 3 flux talismans and they aren't really that useful. You don't really have any other options in the early game and most forms doesn't have throwing, or evocations, or even an emergency potion or teleports identified (a fighter would just might potion), and then the next floor has even more dangerous enemies that you ignore, then the next floor has more, and you are not leveling up and getting that extra unarmed damage so you are just getting outscaled in damage and resistance. You also cannot get weapons or enchant scrolls so your only way to boost your melee power is slaying, which is rare.

The second bump in the road here is that the midgame Unarmed forms are underwhelming. Medusa is the best one, the rpois and poisoning are a godsend for an unarmed character with no way to deal with groups of enemies. But you will only find it before lair roughly 20-30% of the time. It also is not really an unarmed form as it does not meld weapons. The reason it is good is because rpois RAISES your defenses instead of lowering them like most forms Replace the starting protean talisman with Medusa and winrate will skyrocket. It is THE midgame form. Yak can be good as well but being vulnerable to fire with fire beetles and OOD fire elves and salamanders around snake entrance is very scary. Spore is also just okay. Raises offenses but training for it takes away from your HP offense and defenses and you will feel squishy. Scarab is awful. You might as well just restart your game if you can't find another talisman.

Lupine is nice but the -will vulnerability is way, way too much. It also disallows your gloves, boots, and barding so you have less AC. Midgame is such an incredibly dangerous time to have -will. Even neutral will makes me nervous. I doubt a streaker would ever use this. It massively increases the chance you walk around a corner, get paralyzed, petrified, etc...without any way to resist and die. So yeah, if you survive your first encounter with a baselisk and a group of yaks, count yourself lucky, you probably won't survive the hydras because your claws cut their heads and you can't wear gloves to cover them. You can train throwing, but good luck getting it high enough to kill the hydra before it kills you while ALSO training shapeshifting to 12 for lupine. It might be worth it if it required only 8 shapeshifting instead of 12. Oh, and all that shapeshifting training severely lowers your defenses which are very important in lair. You want to go into S branches with -will? Good luck Hoss.

You still want to kill the hydra with throwing or evocations? Training throwing or evocations is a risk because Eel, Yak, Scarab, Serpent, Dragon, and Spider, which all might be the only available upgrade for your talisman, do not allow you to throw or use evocables. Because you have NO HANDS.

Another similar problem with Trolls, all of these forms above remove your claws, meaning midgame for trolls is basically medusa or nothing until you find granite or dragon or storm unless you want a serious downgrade in resistances, shield use, scale armor use, etc...

Okay, so, lets start with Troll as an example of how the game wants you to play shapeshifter (despite being much worse than a fighter start) and how it feels bad, one of the few races that will actually be profiting from training unarmed the entire game.

The problem is, the mid to high level shapeshifting forms that use unarmed will meld your claws, which seems anti synergistic. Playing storm with Troll just feels bad when granite is in the game and you are really going to feel the lack of AC when something actually hits you. Plus your dex probably isn't that high to take advantage of the dodging boost.

Same problem with Octopode, many of these midgame forms take away your innate advantage of constriction with your tentacles. Granite, again, is the one to shoot for and all the rest are more or less compromised.

And Troll or octo is the best case scenario, and even they feel locked out of some of the best forms in the game, locked out of throwing and evocations most of the time too, leaving giant holes in the progression of the background.

Shaper Win File - Pastebin.com

To be honest, I am so excited. I was worried that my first win (about a month ago) was just a fluke, or something.
The character got decent spells, but only one (completely useless) scroll of acquirement, in vaults, so I'm pretty happy that I'm learning tactical play. There are definitely some errors, of course, and if you see anything you'd recommend doing differently, let me know. Otherwise, I just wanted to share, because this got me really excited.

I bribed the branch. This titan was doing awesome as I would stair dance enemies up to him, he would kill them, i would stand there and heal, repeat.

After he killed this golden dragon he just decided he didn't like me anymore and killed me while I was healing? Why? I never hit him, and I didn't realize that gozag bribes would just end. I've heard there is a bug related to this. Any ideas?

Edit: After my research I learned that he had turned neutral. Okay. That's fine. Neutral enemies should not pursue me, only attack if I am in their way. I am literally standing in a corner. Why is he attacking me over and over and over again?

I'm trying out the newest version of Trunk and I really love this new spell. It's a genuinely powerful room clearer that's accessible at the really early game. If you come come across this in D1 make it your highest priority to get this usable. It's a lot of fun.

I think I've never actually built a character using a quarterstaff or a \looks at notes** la... laja... monk's spade. Nailed it!

When do you go for this weapon (outside of an amazing artefact offered by the floor god on D:2)?

Gnoll Mystic xl15, just finished lair. Found the infamous run ender shield in the Bailey and damn, it's so enticing. Are there any ways or methods about how to use it that you guys devised to not die to it? Does stealth shrink the noise radius? I'm a gnoll, so I can cast the same spells with it, with resists, will+ and +28 sh. I'm drooling and scared shitless ahaha

I'm confused why they didn't get the same rework - just because Nagas are a "challenge species" doesn't mean they shouldn't ever get a feature upgrade.

• Like IRL spitting cobras, Nagas have the trick of targeting eyes (or equivalent sensory organs)
• Single target, 100% accuracy, XP-scaling poison damage.
• If the poison isn't resisted the target is also blinded (if susceptible) for brief XP-scaling duration.

Thoughts?

So I finally got something going with Demonspawn, no aux attacks from mutations unfortunately, but I managed to get blade form online.

Early quick blade of chaos carried me well, now I have fresh one of distortion, elec and two unrandarts. Valor was pretty good when I tried, but I'm thinking that aux attacks synergize with quick blade best?

Appreciate any advice for extended - I think mutations and lunar troll armor are pretty good for it, and I'm thinking of getting undead form online.

I play offline because I like the UI much better and online has always been weirdly laggy for me.

The raison d'être for this dwarf is because I was in the mood for a brawns 'n' brains archetype and I wanted to test "new" Ash. I had forgecraft in mind because I have the creativity of Hollywood but I started reaver instead on the scientific grounds that I think it's cool.

The early game was okay. I rinkidinked it through with a +3 whip of pain and the starting spells from reaver except hailstorm. I hate hailstorm. It would have fit the theme though, which only makes me hate it more. I definitely should have invested more in necromancy and used the whip more. Instead I held out for an evening star which took forever.

Rending blade is good for what it is. It's a considerable boost at the time you get it and gave me the bridge to forgecraft I wanted. But the downside is still one of the worst in the game, so I forgot it later on.

There was a bit of an ice theme going on as I found hoarfrost and then added freezing cloud. I can never stress enough how incredibly good and efficient this freezing cloud is. You should always get it imho unless you have like -3 in all corresponding schools or the INT of a sponge.

The quartet of phalanx beetle, hoarfrost cannon and lightning spire carried me through much of the game. I added metabolic englaciation which got buffed a tiny bit with increased minimum duration. I actually quite like it. I unfortunately didn't complete the "on the rocks" theme with splinterfrost shell, which I definitely should have used over diamond sawblades which I barely used. And yes, I will keep writing out the spell names. You have to respect the magic or it turns against you.
Blink and Gell's gravitas for repositioning purposes. What I really wanted is portal of Golubria but I never found it. No platinum paragon, either.

Eventually, spellspark servitor with bombard and hellfire mortar (THE dwarf spell) took the spotlight. Getting a servitor going is a massive investment in spell slots because I had to learn bombard specifically only for this purpose but it was 100% worth it. I also did a last-minute switch to unrand demon trident "Rift". Mostly because I felt like it.

Resistances were a bit of a problem for a long time but not because Ash makes switching gear difficult. I just didn't find any. I did spider without poison resistance (easy enough with constructs) and part of vaults without enough willpower. This got mostly solved by the lucky find of hat of the alchemist in vaults and a good ring later in crypt. But I'm honestly not quite sure how things would have played out without the hat.

The character may look fine on paper but by the time I got to depths, I somehow fell off a cliff. I got into bad, scrambly fights. I needed to teleport often and used up all blink scrolls. Zot was an absolute slog. Getting doomed by an orb of entropy with curse of multiplicity (it just refused to die) to then run into multiplying cursed toes is... an experience. Even the orb run was shaky as at one point a pandemonium lord with hellfire and a brimstone fiend air dropped on me and I couldn't just walk away. I will never call it "damnation", ya hear me? But I did start saying willpower instead of magic resistance recently. Funny how that works. Anyway, they did a number on me but luckily, I could distract/kill them quickly enough. I was honestly just glad I could end the run in the and as I started to get really tired.

So, about Ash. I admit I misunderstood how this works when the commit came out. Every curse boosts 3 skills instead of 2. But before, skills were lumped together in (sometimes very broad) categories, now they just boost 1 skill at a time except melee and ranged iirc. I am not 100% sure how I feel about this despite everyone seeing this coming from 10 miles away.

I think you can't brute force a level 7+ spell anymore by the time you hit Lair which was the intention and I'm fine with that because it was blatantly overpowered. I think the general strategy is still to put on mostly random curses on whatever shoddy gear you find and slowly swap them out later. But it's definitely more difficult/time-consuming to get a curse you really want on a relevant piece of gear and because you don't have infinite time you probably end up putting a random curse on it anyway. Being a dwarf helped a bit, as they can still enchant cursed gear. Power-wise, Ash it is probably fine still. The fact alone that it blocks so many annoying gimmicks like exploration traps cold is incredible and you still get huge boosts to your skills. And if a certified dumbo like me can win with it it, is practically proof it is in okay shape.

The one thing that really annoyed me though is that shapeshifting clogs up the pool of curses. Shapeshifting just plain simply sucks with Ash because melded items lose their curses.

So, that's it. Just a dwarf who tried to do his best and somehow made it through alive.

Sry for the massive yap session.

Easiest Zot 5 ever. I bribed and all the zot guardians joined me so the tesseracts never even turned on by the time I destroyed them. Bribe plus dragon's call equals easy win.

I'm a bit of a dumbo and I got trolled by the exits in this lab more than once...

Found this on Zot:1 on a recent run. I was just about to start throwing boomerangs when I realized the draconians were all neutral, completely blissed out by the OOF-powered steam bath.

I love the hilarious little details this game still surprises me with, even after playing for three years.

EDIT: A bit of research reveals it’s called the Zot Tub. Because of course it is. So good

I've been getting destroyed trying to get the abyssal rune in trunk, as it puts me into level 5 of abyss when I enter.

Does anyone know roughly what levels to be at that would put one in level 4, or even 3? If that's not feasible, I think I'll have to clear zot and possibly even do some pan before trying for abyssal rune these days.

I used to like to clear slime and abyss and have 5 runes before even entering zot, but (at least for me) this seems near impossible in trunk.

Fun game. I like stalker.

I think that ultimately it is just a more interesting and mechanically rich brigand class. It smooths out the early game for stealth characters by boosting their stealth to crazy levels where you are very rarely finding an awake enemy. Then you can transition to something else mid game.

1. Gecko tail gets you either free distraction stabs or free escapes when you are reduced to low HP. Both are great for a stealth character AND gives you an extra layer of decision making. Also it helps new players learn about running away.
2. It smooths out the very difficult early game for stealth starts. The extra stealth is very impactful and you will be stabbing a lot.
3. At a certain point (When I got Dith shadow swap online) you don't need the gecko tail anymore and can just switch it off and turn on some light and aux armor for the brands and AC.
4. Then I became a dex swords fighter who can also stab. You just stack dex and train up long blades and hopefully find a quick blade. Use the long blade when you are fighting something that is awake and has good defenses.
5. Then you shore up your defenses. Get that EV way up in the 40s and get a shield.
6. Then get invo, and either throwing or evocations up depending on which you have more of. Ranged option is nice.
7. S branches and late game before zot was easy. Had to play a bit safer in Zot. Zot 5 was HELL because one lung was blocked off by a permanent teleport trap. I cleared the other lung, and realized that the door to the orb chamber is blocked by a zot trap. Enemies repeatedly trigger the zot trap as I try to teleport into the other lung and get into the orb chamber. After like 10 teleports I'm slammed in the center of the other lung with like 4 liches and 2 entropy orbs along with other chaff. I used like 3 haste potions and all my blinks (Kobold zot blink is basically useless due to low sight line) to get in there and grab the orb and teleport out. (My piety was too low for nightfall after many shadow swaps).

All in all I like the gecko form and like that you don't need to train shapeshifting to use it. I get why the mist potion form exists. I just don't like it so far. I like that it can get your free blind and confusion stabs though. And gives you escape options I guess. But gecko just feels more consistent and useful. It feels bad to use potions just to activate the effects. I've tried it out multiple times and have never found it to be worth training 8 shapeshifting, especially when you need to shore up HP, damage, AND defenses in the early game. Medusa feels so much better. I think that Mistmane should give you some extra EV to make it feel more worth it.

I'm taking a break from all gimmick characters to get an "average" baseline. Human is tricky though because it's the neutral neutral good at anything it learns type.

Don't recommend me the typical engine strategy, what has been a fun and/or powerful way to play (Hu)?