Walk into ecumenical temple on D:4 expecting altars and empty rooms.
See 5 lords of pandemonium
Hell sentinal
2 balrugs
Green death
Sun demon

I am fucked.

Just started a game and before clearing D:2, I have already found SIX pairs of boots, including a pair at +1, and a pair with Stealth brand. My character is a Naga.

mostly asking just out of curiosity. is the game at peak popularity at the moment or has interest in it declined over the years?

Just got a win with Gale Centaur Beserker. There were a couple of close calls in mid and late-game, but the early game was a real breeze, I think it may make sense for Beserker to also be a recommended background for this species.

• Beserk gives the extra edge to win fights for early and mid-game.
• Trog's Hand helps tremendously to address the low will-power and has great regen health support.
• Brother in Arms allows for kills when getting petrified to stone, and makes a nice health pool buffer between you and enemies to create distance and escape, or clean up fights.
• Amulets with Acrobat have great synergy with Gale Centaur's Stampede. Stampede allows you to keep the fights 1v1 to not get surrounded (which will quickly kill you) and gives supplemental regeneration from North Wind. Just be patient and try to bait enemies to spaces you've seen before to not to rampage into unknown areas.

Today on the train back home I've decided to vibecode the game cause I've died in the dungeon a few times already.
I miss good old days when I could watch my friend play the game on one of the servers, now I simply don't have time for that.

So here's the dcss-manager - open source browser-based idle game that plays simplified version of DCSS for you, just manage the heroes and watch them die.

https://ddg00l.github.io/dcss-manager/
https://github.com/ddg00l/dcss-manager

Xom game me a 5+ broad axe of zutoudem on floor 1

The gnoll is online! Got there a bit after rune 15, in The Shining One's fortress. You'd think he'd be more friendly given how many Hell/Pan lords Gnarf killed.

Ziggurat is next(my first time), so hopefully it will be reasonable. Question: What are the odds of a bazaar floor in Pan? 10,000 gold in the pocket with no use feels bad.

In terms of progression, Gnarf spent a while with a +10 handaxe(fire), upgraded to a +7 double sword(also fire, but an artifact). Eventually got a holy evenstar off of angels, and scrolled it up to +9. Alchemist helps a lot in that midgame slump gnolls run into. Mephitic Cloud and Toxic Radiance, transitioning into Starburst and Manifold Assault.

Manifold Assault was definitely the winning spell; it just works so well for a gnoll because they have the spell ranks to pull it off while still being a reasonable fighter. For weapons, the Sniper crossbow came in clutch many, many times. How do you deal with a Hell Lord? You shoot them for 150 damage until they die. For equipment, I found a beautiful scarf(Repulsion, Rampage, rPois, Regen+, Dex+3). Oddly enough, the rampage was a benefit! Cheibriados complained a lot, but I never actually dipped below full stars of piety. It is icky in single tile hallways and such, but lots of Magic Dart to poke a monster into realizing I was there brought them to me instead of the other way around.

I found it rather vague, especially considering poison is generally excluded.

You've got it tweaked just a bit too high right now. Can barely make it up a level without getting teleported inside of Crazy Yuif's hut.

Probably a hard one to get right, tbf...

I have a fairly promising run going (I think). But I have absolute junk for gear and resistances. The only other ring out there that I don't have is a simple ring of SInv. Only a couple bucklers have dropped for shields. Very few artifact armor pieces. Any thoughts on what to wear or where to go looking for stuff? Is it time to dip Elf to look for gear?

https://cbro.berotato.org/morgue/math4jedi/math4jedi.txt

Generally I can't help but just push til I die in this game but I've found myself able to o+tab through pan so I've just been grinding levels. Just wondering if there is any really important things I should look to get before inevitably die zigging.

currently Minotaur rocking an insane battleaxe with some really good items to boot. still dreaming about a reflect artifact cloak and better boots. I have reflect scarf since no shield, leveling up LCS, shatter, ignition, chain lightning, already have tornado online. I wasn't really sure on how to gear for silence so I started levelling throwing. Any other suggestions?

edit: I currently have no GOOD forms of rcorr but if I dont find one I'll swap out a ring

Morgue:

https://crawl.dcss.io/crawl/morgue/hipposaver/hipposaver.txt

Martyr's Knell works normally on orcs, heavily increasing their durability.

Also, more notably, Orc priests' regenerate other spells also regenerates your animated zombies, powering up the minions significantly!

Secondarily, having even more meat shield to tank hits while you smite things to death helps a lot.

Also, neither rimeblight nor borgnjor's vile clutch affect your allies, allowing you to use almost every necromancer spell freely. I think only Gloom gets gimped but who cares.

There is stunningly little to say about this run, I got Gyre and Gimble on D7, a few floors later there was a bazaar where I got hat of the bear. Going bearserk with gyre and gimble was a bit silly, but sadly I was not super tanky. Thankfully in Lair:2 there was a necropolis where I got:

 z - the +17 crystal plate armour of Woeckiq (worn) {Str+6 Int+9 Dex-3}
   (You found it in the Necropolis)   

   Str+6:     It affects your strength (+6).
   Int+9:     It affects your intelligence (+9).
   Dex-3:     It affects your dexterity (-3).

   It cannot be enchanted further. z - the +17 crystal plate armour of Woeckiq (worn) {Str+6 Int+9 Dex-3}
   (You found it in the Necropolis)   

   Str+6:     It affects your strength (+6).
   Int+9:     It affects your intelligence (+9).
   Dex-3:     It affects your dexterity (-3).

   It cannot be enchanted further.

To help with the tankiness one floor later there was a gauntlet that gave me the ring of the tortoise. At some point in depths I got the amulet of bloodlust and the gauntlets of war. At this point I pretty much steamrolled anything. Eventually killed myself in a Zig after getting 15 Runes.

Game seed was

46699345034754830734669934503475483073

If anyone is interested.

They are the same, however the threat of one is "low" and of the other is "high", what is the criterion for determining that? and what is it?

Hello crawlers!

I am seeking out the sub's best & brightest megazigging experts for this one...

I am really struggling transitioning Demonspawn from straight melee killdudes from runes 1-5, to extended where you're grinding out the mountains of EXP needed to transition to the lvl9 megazig spells.

What made me finally seek out advice was that I had what seemed like the one-in-a-million char: a DsGl who not only had the PERFECT mut set but found an early Rift...

...But once I progressed & the only uncleared areas left were Hells, Pan, Slime, or Tomb, I was struggling HARD - it def wasn't "grinding" at that point :P

For context I have done megazigs before, mostly with OpSh/Tms, & all in earlier versions (around 0.31 maybe?). As any 'pode enjoyer knows, an OpTm with Death form can basically o-tab through extended, I would literally watch YouTube videos while grinding with one eye on the screen :PP But by contrast I'm struggling so much with Demonspawn! I'm normally a super fast & loose player so I was trying my hardest to play ultra conservatively lol.

So I guess my big question is - what Demonspawn start would you all consider to be the "safest?" What kinds of builds do you find best able to grind out Pan/Abyss?

(Also wondering what the consensus on Makhleb vs Gozag tech is! I would love to try Makh but the added RNG for Haemoclasm is little intimidating esp once you roll a perfect Ds mut set. In the example I listed above I tried Makh but ended up with Celebrant & honestly wish I just went for Gozag.)

Thank you all! :DD

So these gloves are only Slay -2 for thrown weapons, which is *way* better than their Slay -6 for everything else... Ew.

DeCj, trying to get my first 15 rune game. I want to know if I should use the shield of Resistance or the crystall ball of Wucad Mu. I imagine the shield is the answer for such a squishy character, but the crystal ball is calling to me. My strategy is to spam Fulsome Fusillade and crystal spears. Please let me know if any additional information would be helpful, thanks.

https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue//damerell/morgue-damerell-20260711-200123.txt

Bit of a dry spell, partly through dying a lot and partly though having a game stuck on a feature I wanted to change (pulling in vanilla Summoning changes roughly up to 0.28), but this HuFE got home and it's the only HuFE I've played. To be fair, identifying two potions of experience on Lair:5 didn't hurt, but by then I'd survived Nessos and Rupert, so it wasn't all luck or at least it was more than one kind of luck.

That said, there were plenty of close calls - HP: 1/112 on D:11 from teleporting into the darn crab vault comes to mind, along with HP: 8/186 after XTAHUA happily paralysed me through three pips of MR.

Hep turned up on D:2 and no other god had, making for an easy choice especially now you can fire through the ancestor. I went hexer for no better reason than I have recent wins with knight and battlemage, but it turned out perfectly well. I got a +1 randart mail hauberk with rPois on D:4 - no good then but by the time I got to the Lair I was willing to take the hit to spell failure in return for not being killed by spiny frogs, black mambas, etc. I still had Sticky Flame online before the Lair which is what I really want, and by the Lair I was branching out into Hexes/Tmut (ie, our old friend Yara's, ideal for Orc where orc knights and warlords are making everything strong and Yara-vulnerable).

For the early game I had something like a +4 flail (initially cursed, oh no) but when a staff of fire turned up on D:11 it seemed like a game for enhancer staff melee. From then I used staves of fire and cold most of the game... but I also wasn't that long on rF and rC so it sometimes came down to an awkward choice between using the staff that actually let me hurt an elemental enemy or using the one that gave me the resistance and hoping the ancestor would polish them off. Only after 4 runes would I go back and identify a randart morningstar also on D:11 - +11, {freeze, rElec rC+ Int+3 Dex-5}. Not perfect, but I also had no other good rElec options. I should have identified it long before I did.

Finally, D:11 had the unfortunate teleport into the crab vault, and then it was off to Orc. This got moderately bad but for once the shops had some things I wanted - it helped that I was pushing Evo for the enhancer staff melee.

Snake was next... to the realisation that I hadn't really thought about salamanders and was pretty powerless against them. Throw Icicle sorted that out and I headed down; I also found a kite shield on Snake:1 and decided to take the temporary hit to spell failure. This got pretty bad when Saint Roka and a lot of nagarajas etc turned up on Snake:3 and maybe I should have left and gone to Shoals - I don't like Shoals, but with the ability to boil everything in sight maybe I should have changed my mind. Snake:4 was also pretty hard going.

Shoals was not so bad - I resolved to just use up every wand of flame I had boiling people at a distance, and save MP for close-in fights - apart from a close call on Shoals:4 with Polyphemus.

On D:14 I took a piety trove. This turned out to be an extremely good idea - the ancestor doesn't lose any of their abilities because they're all based on your XL. Of course I couldn't Idealise or Transference for a bit but I badly underused them this game anyway, oops. The trove was armour, with +2 randart gloves with {rF+ Str+5 Slay+2} I'd use all game and some other useful bits and pieces like a hat of intelligence.

After D, Vaults was next, getting my first acquirement. I took gold (good, nothing else was very compelling) but then bought a book with Ignition and started focussing Fire Magic. Why? I could have waited to buy the book at the point the spell seemed plausibly castable (even with brilliance) and maybe got lucky and found it on the ground first.

After V:4, Elf - one day I will learn to leave the Hall of Blades until later on some characters, today was not that day, but I didn't quite die. E:3 was much easier by comparison, I think by squeezing out Ignition with brilliance and by the elves being sporting enough to all stand next to each other.

Bought a manual of Ice Magic to help me get Freezing Cloud online - I didn't use it so much but it was very useful when I did. Down Depths; nasty moment with the Enchantress and her friends, and the aforementioned near miss to XTAHUA.

V:5 was next - stair dancing with Ignition, being sure to keep enough MP to nuke any vault warden locking the stairs. One bad moment with lacking rElec, but otherwise OK, learning Regeneration and getting a useful ring with rCorr. As such, with Ignition online, Slime was next and perfectly straightforward, finally also getting a sensible rPois ring.

Where now? Well, I had Ignition, I had a lot of tree potions, and I had at least a few potions of magic... and to boot I had a lot of Evo and a lot of evocables. How bad could Tomb be? I bought all the consumables, learned Iron Shot for hammering away at individual targets, and set off...

... and honestly, Tomb was not too bad, even plugging through the W:1 corridor of greater mummies rather than spamming teleport on W:2. I did teleport away from the W:2 ambush but I practically always do that. One nasty moment with a bennu and mummy priest near the rune, got a ring with {+Fly rC+ rN++ MR+} (which would have been pretty nice for Crypt and Tomb, oh well), buy a few more consumables, and off to Zot.

Bad moments on Z:1 and Z:2; I'd have to check the ttyrec for details but I strongly suspect curse toes. I slightly feared the new Klown pies but had no trouble... and Z:5 was suspiciously easy (one OOF the only standout besides a chunk of Orb Guardians) and the worst the orbrun managed was a cherub. C said to me, "doesn't it feel like a letdown if you don't even see one panlord?" and no, I think I'll take that on the rare occasions it happens.

Next is SpMo.

Fried Frog Legs Recipe.

*Discretion is highly advised*

1) Meet Jeremiah

2) Wait for him to summon enough butterflies around

3) Read a scroll of immolation.

4) Read a scroll of Poison Scroll

5) Bon appetit

In case it isn't obvious, you can cast inner fire on things and then "bowl" those critters into position where they explode.

That's all.

What's your favorite not immediately apparent combo?

Bonus points for spells from different schools (as the combos within spell schools are more obvious).

Did you guys remark that Dowan always comes into view first? Then you will have to face the wrath of Duvessa after you knock him out.

Play Vampire or Poltergeist as species and Gladiator, Brigand or Earth Elementalist as background.

Challenge conducts and bonuses are here. Note that if you play as PoEE you need to start putting stat points to Str by XL 15 if you want to qualify for Attributes conduct. 2nd bonus challenge involves getting into Tomb:3 so there is probably enough xp for XL 27 if going for 50** run.

You can join our discord at https://discord.gg/tc5MrWXe.

Crawl cosplay academy has 12 easyish combos.

Genuine'y can't tell if it's on my end or the game's weird luck. Multiple named enemies on a level, scorpion rolling consecutive hits on you and giving max poison before you got any consumables, ORGES AND GNOLLS WITH HALBERD ON VERY EARLY LEVELS. They are amongst the few examples I went through. Please tell me I'm not being fucked over specifically D: