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?

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

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

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).

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

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

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.

For the record, the yellow was enlightenment and the bubbling yellow moonshine. Someone had a gooooood time there in D2, shame adventurers are always looting people's stashes.

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.

Decided to go SpEN^Dith with the plan of getting Orb of Guile + Discord and going for extended. Went surprisingly well, ended up with the Spriggan Knife and both Statue Form and Death Form. Finally found the right orb and with Spider, Swamp, Slime and Vault runes in my pocket, headed for Tomb. Obviously Tomb is hard but with Death Form and Guile + Discord I felt it should be doable, especially as I found the Amulet of the Four Winds which gives clarity and Will+++ to offset the orb.

All went swimmingly at first, and really didn't feel too dangerous. But then on my second descent to L3, something manage to stick me with petrify and TBH I am not sure what I could have done to avoid this, or to recover. I blinked to the up stair but froze before I could ascend, and then got clobbered.

When you lose a big powerful char there is always a bit of rueful reflection. I am wondering what I could have done to save / prevent this. Possibly cast Yara'a Violent Unravelling on myself? Maybe Dith's Abyssal Nightfall might have helped? I don't really know what this does as I never felt the need to try it. Bit gutted TBH - any advice welcome.

Morgue: https://pastebin.com/fb3GJzFN

Edit: forgot to say - obviously I would normally swig Cancellation to avoid petrification, but death form means no potions. Would Statue have been a better choice?

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:

5 aquirement scrolls before D9. Must be my lucky day. Any strategy to use these well?

Because the moderator(s) at DCSS_Seeds are unpredictable and the subreddit is frequently locked I've created a new subreddit to replace it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dcssSeeds

Weird politics do not belong in this game. We need somebody that can keep their account online instead of selfishly jeopardizing the community by pointlessly breaking reddit rules. What keeps happening with the original is ridiculous and I believe the community deserves better.

Edit :

If you're a highly active member here or a skilled active player I will give you mod status just DM me.

For the time being I will be trying to post truly yoked seeds that will give you an easy win to start the subreddit off on a good note.

https://cbro.berotato.org/morgue/GloriousHammer/morgue-GloriousHammer-20260719-231159.txt

I've been slatting these in droves. I thought I had a go-er here, but damn 3rd rune is hard now. I thought I was a good fit for Abyss, but tried 2-3 times crawling through abyss 4 and 5 without finding the rune (looks like they changed the rule for that and I should have tried to avoid tele?). Anyway, I went to Slime. Floor 2 was big and open and I couldn't tele away from the mob, didn't really have a good crowd control solution.

I ought to have blinked to the edge, used digging. I was probably demoralized.

I hope this doesn't become my new mage character lol.

I find it weird that enemies will most of the time go for you no matter what your ally is doing (unless they're in the way of heading towards you). Even if it's smart to go for the summoner directly, you would expect them to do something as a melee waiting in a corridor while someone else in the backline is sandwiching you between them and the player.

My first game ever with more than 5 runes lost because someone thought it would be funny to mash on the keyboard while I was in the washroom. I died extremely slowly. I've only got one ring on because they managed to mash it off of me...