-Crawl- YACD Kenku Gladiator

External Since: Feb 06, 2006 Posts: 90

Hi all!

I've lately been playing mostly random characters in crawl. I really
like that because you get to try characters that you otherwise would
not touch. This one actually has made it quite far. The very first ring
I found was a +0, +8 ring of slaying on about D:3, and next I came
across a great mace of crushing. In the early game I hade a lot of exp
to share, since everything took only 1 hit (and a few misses Smile

) to
kill, so I have gone dancing half-naked with rats maybe 5-6 times. Now
my dodging is 7 and armour 8 and I'm going to raise them together. My
great mace isn't the best weapon to use with high slaying (I think
faster would be better there) so when I find a faster hard-hitting
mace/flail I think I'll change for that.

My stats are heavily on strength. I checked the YAVPs and it seems that
there are very, very few winners with Dex as the highest stat, so I
decided to go for strength. It's working almost too well; I have to
admit that I have some trouble imagining a birdlike humanoid with 26
str (31 with Oki's might) Smile

.

I have done Orcish mines and I'm currently clearing the Lair. I found a
+2 banded mail of poison resistance, so I think I'll go to the hive
next.

There are some things that I'd like some advice on:

1) Being a kenku I have the "flying" ability. Does flying or levitating
give you immunity to electricity in Crawl?

2) What else is flying good for? If I survive I'll soon be able to fly
constantly.

3) Is there something hairy in the "throwing spears" code? I can't hit
anything with them although I have Polearms 9 and throwing 3. Crossbow
is accurate and so are thrown darts.

Here is the commented dump:
Dungeon Crawl version 4.0.0 beta 26 character file.

Odin the Cudgeler

Race : Kenku Res.Fire : . . . See Invis. : .
Class : Gladiator Res.Cold : . . . Warding : .
Worship : Okawaru Life Prot.: . . . Conserve : .
Level : 12 Res.Poison: . Res.Corr. : .
Exp : 36532 Res.Elec. : . Gourmand : .
Next Level : 37699
Exp Needed : 1167 Sust.Abil.: . Rnd.Telep. : .
Spls.Left : 13 Res.Mut. : . Ctrl.Telep.: .
Gold : 2124 Res.Slow : . Levitation : .
Clarity : . Ctrl.Flight: .

//No resistances...

HP : 83
MP : 18
Str : 26 Weapon : +2,+0 great mace (crush)
Int : 8 Armour : +4 ring mail "Kob Pi"
Dex : 16 Shield :
AC : 12 Helmet :
Evasion : 16 Cloak : +0 dwarf cloak
Shield : 0 Gloves : +0 pair of gloves (str)
Boots :
Play time : 16:26:38 Amulet :
Turns : 29693 Ring : ring of sustenance
Ring : +0,+8 ring of slaying

You are in the Lair.
You worship Okawaru.
Okawaru is exalted by your worship.
You are not hungry.

Inventory:
Hand weapons
b - an uncursed runed dagger
e - a +1,+0 dwarven crossbow
//My current ranged attack. I like it so far. Also just found an elven
hand crossbow, but I believe this does much more damage.

f - a +2,+0 great mace of crushing (weapon)
(You took it off an ogre on level 6 of the Dungeon)
//An early find, which made me change from polearms to maces & flails.

i - an uncursed runed morningstar of protection
(Okawaru gifted it to you on level 3 of the Orcish Mines)
t - an uncursed runed blowgun of venom
(You found it on level 5 of the Lair)
T - an uncursed spear
V - an uncursed spear
//these seem useless to throw..

Missiles
m - 25 bolts
z - 18 dwarven bolts
D - 6 poisoned orcish darts
M - 16 poisoned orcish darts
U - 28 poisoned orcish bolts
Z - 15 dwarven bolts
//more bolts stashed

Armour
d - a +0 pair of gloves of strength (worn)
(You bought them in a shop on level 1 of the Orcish Mines)
//Great luck - bought as "pair of gloves" for 37 gold, the only gloves
I've seen in this game.

k - a +0 dwarven cloak (worn)
N - a +2 robe
//For the occasions when I have over 1500exp in pool and a rat comes by
in a cleard level, to build up dodging.

Q - the +4 ring mail "Kob Pi" (worn)
(You found it on level 4 of the Dungeon)
It affects your evasion (+5).
It affects your strength (+3).
//Worn it ever since. I'm trying to build a dodging middleweight-armour
carrier. AC/EV 20/20 would be very nice.

Magical devices
a - a wand of slowing
g - a glass wand
j - a wand of digging
l - a silver wand
q - a wand of cold
v - a bronze wand
w - a wand of enslavement
x - a wand of slowing
B - a wand of cold
//just found most of these. Yes, they will be stashed (as will many
other things).

Comestibles
c - a chunk of yak flesh
h - a lemon
n - a bread ration
r - an apple
R - 2 pears
Scrolls
p - 2 scrolls of teleportation
H - 2 scrolls of magic mapping
//lots of this and that in stash, still missing enchant armour,
vorpalise, ench. weap III etc..

Jewellery
o - a +0,+8 ring of slaying (left hand)
//would have been a very short game without this

C - a ring of fire
J - a ring of sustenance (right hand)
Potions
A - 2 potions of might
F - 2 potions of healing
L - a potion of heal wounds

You have 1329 experience left.

Skills:
+ Level 9 Fighting
+ Level 1 Short Blades
+ Level 14 Maces & Flails
- Level 9 Polearms
//I had polearms 7 when I decided to go with maces & flails. If I had
remembered that you *can* kill hydras with polearms, I'm not so sure I
would have changed. Polearms still got two levels more, because at
first I couldn't hit monsters with the great mace and had to switch to
my starting trident for the dodgy ones.

+ Level 5 Crossbows
- Level 4 Darts
- Level 3 Throwing
+ Level 8 Armour
+ Level 7 Dodging
//This is what I'm trying to focus on. Does one train dodging at all
when wearing a ring mail?

- Level 1 Shields
+ Level 4 Traps & Doors
//I've had no trouble with traps this far (no zots), and several times
I've got a warning when I am about to step on a trap. Is that Okawuru
or this skill?

+ Level 7 Unarmed Combat
//I like this kenku! I'm kickin' an' peckin'.

- Level 1 Spellcasting
+ Level 4 Invocations
//I'll still have to get this higher, even with my 160 aptitude,
because Okie's haste is important and it's still only "fair".

You have 13 spell levels left.
You don't know any spells.
//With int 8 I decided not to go for spells.

Vanquished Creatures
//important only

2 hydras
// Oh yes! Hasted and mighted, but they still do awful damage. At least
half of HP goes.

A griffon (Lair:7)
//So stupid... I was surrounded by this AND a lot of yaks (luckily I
was hasted) and had killed this before I noticed I was bare-handed Very Happy

.
I did notice it since I got the "your armour prevents you from hitting
the yak" message, which I had not seen in this game so far.

3 hill giants
//One of these took me down to 2hp. No blinking, so I decided to try my
luck and just hit it, and missed. Luckily, so did it and my second blow
killed it.

Erolcha (D:11)
Edmund (D:6)
A mottled dragon (D:11)
The ghost of Hannes the Chiller, an average DG IE (D:3)
A steam dragon (Lair:5)
A deep elf soldier (D:11)
//one of the few elves I've seen this far in all my games (never got to
elven halls)

Ijyb (D: Cool

Jessica (D:3)

651 creatures vanquished.

External Since: Oct 13, 2005 Posts: 284

enurmi wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I've lately been playing mostly random characters in crawl. I really
> like that because you get to try characters that you otherwise would
> not touch. This one actually has made it quite far. The very first ring
> I found was a +0, +8 ring of slaying on about D:3,

Ooh!

> and next I came
> across a great mace of crushing. In the early game I hade a lot of exp
> to share, since everything took only 1 hit (and a few misses Smile

) to
> kill, so I have gone dancing half-naked with rats maybe 5-6 times. Now
> my dodging is 7 and armour 8 and I'm going to raise them together.

A bit of a tricky path, but definitely among the workable ones. IMO
you'll want a swamp, adjectiveless, or ice dragon armour sooner or
later going this route. The above order goes from least to most good
and from soonest to latest in the game. Probably dragon armour is a
good happy medium, as it should come soon enough to not leave you
waiting unduly long to apply your scrolls of enchant armour.

> My
> great mace isn't the best weapon to use with high slaying (I think
> faster would be better there) so when I find a faster hard-hitting
> mace/flail I think I'll change for that.

Right, something fast. (Since it's maces/flails we're talking about,
this is "for rather slow values of fast.")

Fast will mean one-handed, so you'll be getting punch attacks to beef
up your damage, which is cool.

> My stats are heavily on strength. I checked the YAVPs and it seems that
> there are very, very few winners with Dex as the highest stat,

Strange. Dex is good stuff - better dodging, more accurate hitting,
better shield usage, and more. The carrying capacity boost from
strength is small, and after that it's just some extra damage and a
very important role in bows and slings (too complex to explain here).
I'm not surprised that Brent once said, in effect, that Dex is more
valuable than strength. Of course the decision to go with maces/flails
skews you a bit towards strength... but the decision to use a
relatively small one skews you back a bit again.

FWIW (not much), out of six wins, I have half str-based and half
dex-based. I'd have even more dex-based, but I had a lot of bowmen and
slingers.

> so I
> decided to go for strength. It's working almost too well; I have to
> admit that I have some trouble imagining a birdlike humanoid with 26
> str (31 with Oki's might) Smile

.

Kenkus are tough old birds.

> I have done Orcish mines and I'm currently clearing the Lair. I found a
> +2 banded mail of poison resistance, so I think I'll go to the hive
> next.

You won't be getting much effect from your Dodging until quite a high
level of Armour skill in armour with such a high evasion penalty. Also,
you're a natural fighter/conjurer, but you won't be getting much from
that side of you easily, for the same reasons. (I see below, though,
that you're using Kenkus' other ranged aptitude, missile weapons. OK.)
If you really really like the poison resistance, you could always
invest a scroll of enchant armour and make yourself a swamp dragon
armour once you're wearing the obvious prerequisite.

OTOH this IS a phase of the game where always-on poison resistance is
still pretty defensible (later on, the resistance makes more sense as a
swap).

> There are some things that I'd like some advice on:
>
> 1) Being a kenku I have the "flying" ability. Does flying or levitating
> give you immunity to electricity in Crawl?

No.

> 2) What else is flying good for? If I survive I'll soon be able to fly
> constantly.

You can cross physical traps without setting them off, you are slightly
more stealthy, you get double effect from the Swiftness spell, you can
cross deep water and lava and aren't penalized in shallow water, and
probably something else I've forgotten.

> 3) Is there something hairy in the "throwing spears" code? I can't hit
> anything with them although I have Polearms 9 and throwing 3. Crossbow
> is accurate and so are thrown darts.

Thrown weapons don't use their related weapon skill, just throwing.
Crossbows and darts are fairly accurate even without any skill. Thrown
weapons are not.

> //No resistances...

Not so far into the game yet; don't worry.

Crawl's resistances game isn't as byzantine as other roguelikes',
anyway. Fire's pretty important, cold's just behind, poison's important
as a swap, lightning is important later on if your evasion is low (or
even if it's high, when you're fighting electric golems close up, but
that only happens in Zot). Other than that... meh. Draining is
conspicuous by its absence above, the thing is that the effect of
draining resistance is frustratingly weak. Magic resistance perhaps
too... ditto, although if your innate resistance is low, it can
sometimes make sense if you go early (<level 15ish) into areas with
monsters that like to banish you to the Abyss (but having done this
many times, I recommend you don't).

> Shield : 0 Gloves : +0 pair of gloves (str)

These should be your Enchant Armour priority for now, as they're
endgame-quality.

> Turns : 29693 Ring : ring of sustenance

Hmmmm?

> e - a +1,+0 dwarven crossbow
> //My current ranged attack. I like it so far.

Crossbows start out quite strong and accurate but don't improve with
skill and strength as much as bows do; bows eventually beat them out
(although by the time they do, you're almost a hunter).

> Also just found an elven
> hand crossbow, but I believe this does much more damage.

Sure, but bolts don't grow on trees. Speaking off the top of my hat, I
believe hand crossbows are more accurate too, and a little faster. Also
by checking out both types, you have a higher chance of encountering
the holy grail, a missile weapon Of Speed. (You also blow through twice
as many scrolls of detect curse/remove curse, but hey.)

> Q - the +4 ring mail "Kob Pi" (worn)
> (You found it on level 4 of the Dungeon)
> It affects your evasion (+5).
> It affects your strength (+3).
> //Worn it ever since. I'm trying to build a dodging middleweight-armour
> carrier. AC/EV 20/20 would be very nice.

Nicey.

> C - a ring of fire

Oooh. If your crossbows weren't so high already, I'd say go with this
and fire magic, though it does mean a risk when facing cold-based
enemies if you forget to take it off.

> + Level 7 Dodging
> //This is what I'm trying to focus on. Does one train dodging at all
> when wearing a ring mail?

No. OTOH it's light enough that you'll still be getting the benefit of
your dodging even without great Armour skill.

> + Level 4 Traps & Doors
> //I've had no trouble with traps this far (no zots), and several times
> I've got a warning when I am about to step on a trap. Is that Okawuru
> or this skill?

That skill.

> + Level 4 Invocations
> //I'll still have to get this higher, even with my 160 aptitude,
> because Okie's haste is important and it's still only "fair".

Kenkus are so awesome* that a 160 here or there is indeed only fair.
Wink

* and anyone who doesn't agree doesn't get to play with my Luke
Skywalker.

> You have 13 spell levels left.
> You don't know any spells.
> //With int 8 I decided not to go for spells.

gurgglegurrrglegurrr

> A griffon (Lair:7)
> //So stupid... I was surrounded by this AND a lot of yaks (luckily I
> was hasted) and had killed this before I noticed I was bare-handed Very Happy

.
> I did notice it since I got the "your armour prevents you from hitting
> the yak" message, which I had not seen in this game so far.

Unarmed combat is difficult in heavy armour, barring armour skill high
enough to overcome its encumbrance, judged via evasion penalty, if I
recall correctly.

e.