(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue file for those who can read it

While winning in DCSS is fun, what I find even more enjoyable is to win in a sub-optimal (but fun) way. This run is a great example of what I mean:

  • I have sacrificed my hand, my courage and my armor to get my deity’s powers earlier. No shield, no armor, and I suffer a debuff every serious battle.
  • I am a shapeshifter, in a form that can’t use weapons and any armor. Except for my form’s innate resistances, I have only a bit that I could get from my amulet and one ring (as you can only wear ring per hand).
  • I am a spellcaster with 7 innate Intelligence. Yes, I sacrificed some of my brain matter too. Brain mattern’t.

And I am a god-slaying tempest that no one can defeat. Even under heavy debuffs from my cowardice, I kill everything in one-three shots. With 74 evasion, nothing can hope to hit me. And I move to my next victim in a moment. How come?

Storm talisman. Make Shapeshifting a focus of your whole run and you can kill even the Pandemonium lords in three hits. Or die a miserable death to a spell you couldn’t dodge.

This run had a good progression of talismans: first, Rimehorn that turns the early game into a peaceful walk; then, Serpent that’s… kind of similar to Rimehorn honestly. Really strong, plenty defense, enjoy your strong midgame (though, to be fair, I did struggle with it a bit in Vaults). Now that Serpent can wear two helmets, it has some endgame potential too.

I admired this potential for a bit longer than I expected to… my two potential upgrades were Granite talisman that I’m not fond of and Riddle talisman. I tried to make the latter work but, no matter what, it gave me less defense than Serpent so I stuck with being a snake. To give myself some advantage for my slithering endgame I started training summoning magic. At first, it wasn’t very impressive but once I got Mana Viper and Forest online, my XP investment started to pay off.

Then, right after getting the third rune and preparing myself for the final showdown at the Realm of Zot, I found it - Storm talisman! And you know the rest.

Can’t wait to learn which of the Hell branches will kill this character!

  • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    3·
    9 hours ago

    Respect, that’s an accomplishment for sure. It’s been a while since I’ve played, but what I really like about DCSS is how it’s about exercising good probabilistic judgment under high stakes, it challenges you to manage your emotions and reflect on your biases in a way not a lot of games do.

    • Lucy [she/faer]@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      DCSS shows just how bad humans are at interpreting statistics.

      I like how Crawl gives a player really tough choices. For example, Death talisman prevents you from suffering a lot of annoying late-game punishments like Torment and Malmutate but it also prevents you from drinking potions making otherwise safe situations (e.g. being confused by a golden eye) into a dire threat.