LOL! And THAT is why I love nethack! :)

Has anyone played Incursion? I saw it mentioned elsewhere and it looks like it has an amazing system for a roguelike. I think I might give this one a go in the near future. When I do and I get a chance, I'll report back.

FAQ - Incursion Wiki

I've heard of Incursion, but I think it must have been right when it was getting started because I never went back to it. Looks like its developed quite a bit since then. Certainly worth checking out I think.

Incursion never took for me, as I believe the world and all the loot and stuff are static and persistent, and I dearly need that random element for a roguelike to hook me.

I have been have a lot of fun with Crawl. I have a lot of hope in this guy as I have some good equipment and ways to escape danger.

For anyone who has experience with Crawl, should I go ahead and vorpalize my current weapon or should I wait for a better one to come along?

I've not had the opportunity yet to vorpalize a weapon in Crawl, but from reading the message boards over at the Tavern, I'm going to say wait for something better to come along based from what I've read about it, but I would ask over there to get the "experts" opinion if no one here has advice for you of course.

Probably my most unique death yet. I died because my character forgot to breathe due to no intelligence. The file shows my intelligence as 0 but it was actually -79 on the screen.

Oooof that's a tough way to go-hard to find something to restore stats in Crawl. I've seen a few "death dumps" where characters died from losing all their INT, so at least you can say that you are not alone. :)

That IS a nice death. Very cool of Crawl to contain something like that. I'm sure the statue absorbed all your essence and the other monsters gobbles up your body so none of you should go to waste. It was an ecofriendly death.

Doh...another stupid death on a character that was doing well. I found a nice axe that I wanted to start using. The problem? There was the potential that unequipping my existing weapon would either damage me or send me to The Abyss. Well, what do you know what happened....

Ooof weapons of distortion are rarely worth it to me, unless I'm worshipping the one god that grants you an ability to leave the Abyss at will. If not worshipping that one, I likely wouldn't risk wielding one unless I was Level 20 or so.

I'm having a lot of fun playing a Demonspawn Chaos Knight of Xom, the Angband version of a Beastman Chaos Knight. Xom is hilarious-there's nothing you can do to gain his favor, he just pops in when he's "bored" and does something which is most of the time harmless. Demonspawn gets mutations-and the few I've got other than the berserk one which I actually got from Xom are actually pretty helpful in combat. The berserk one will likely get me killed at some point, though its probably saved my ass a couple times too.

Xom has given me three god "gifts" so far-3 scrolls of fog, a mace (+0,+0), and 2 apples. Ummm..yeah very funny Xom. How about a nice demon weapon perhaps? Actually I found the perfect weapon already for a worshipper of Xom, that flail of chaos I'm using. Attacks with a random effect from time to time, perfect for chaos loving Xom. That ring of protection from magic has been nice too. The combo of those two allowed me to take out the "lovers"-Duvessa and Dowan when a charm affect from the weapon caused Duvessa to take out her lover, then go berserk but still friendly towards me for a couple of rounds. :)

That's a fun combination to play with but also very hard to survive. Xom is damned near impossible to please. A bored Xom is dangerous in my experience.

I just found two scrolls of acquirement with my level 10 fighter and got artifact crystal plate mail and boots or running. Let's hope I don't end up killing this guy with something stupid.

sweet! very lucky to get stuff your class/race can use

Another NetHack story...

Playing a Ranger named Hurin (if you have ever read Tolkein you might know what winds up happening), and I stumble on an altar on lvl 2. I begin a sacrifice dance. I find an elven dagger, name it Sting, get my luck up, and my HPs get up to 78 by lvl 7. I lvl up again, and a couple of golden glows later, I'm sitting at 99. Mars is pleased as punch and gifts Stormbringer to me.

Deciding I have spent enough time here, I trek down to Minetown. I find a temple to Mars. So as I am getting my shopping taken care of, I buy some scrolls and hike back to the temple to test and read them. First scroll, scroll of flame, I hit the priest, Mars gets pissed and smites me, the priest then paralyzes me and lays the smack down repeatedly and Hurin dies.

I gave Crawl a go for my first time. Ran through the tutorial which I'm glad I did since there were some different controls than I'm used to. I tried a deep elf wizard. It didn't seem too difficult until I ran into three gnolls on level three in a not overly favorable tactical situation. I summoned a total of three imps that were dispatched quickly with only killing one. I damaged another gnoll but one got a swing on me and took off all of my 9 remaining hps and left me dead after having reached level four. I managed to pray to a god that liked people who used cursed equipment, so I intentionally cursed my robe and hat and used a cursed dagger (seemed like a reasonable god for a wizard since I wasn't going to do hand-to-hand with this wimpy guy anyway). I have to say it's a pretty cool setup and I'm sure I'll give it some more tries in the future.

Glad you gave it a try and liked it JAG. Smart move to do the tutorial first. My advice would be to try the "in-between" stage (can't remember the name now) as a gateway to the full game. It will give you help and advice as you see or do various things for the first time. You'll have a choice of three characters-one a ranged attack guy, one a wizardly type, one an brute fighter type. All three are optimal characters that should find the early game easier than most.

You sure went off the deep end with god choices there-I haven't even used that god yet just because of how different it is to play a worshipper of that one. If you like the wizardly types, the two gods to look for are Sif Muna and Vehumet. Somewhere between level 4 and 7 I think you will find the Ecumenical Temple which is a special level that just has alters to many of the gods-so be on the lookout for that if you haven't found an altar in the dungeon to one of those gods before that.

A couple tips-fully explore every level before going down to the next unless forced to escape something-be warned though that most monsters will follow you up and down stairs-something you can take advantage of at times like with those pesky gnolls-getting one of a group upstairs with you so you can take them out one a time. Make sure you use O to auto-explore a level-the greatest roguelike invention ever. :) Sometimes you'll be told the level isn't fully explored yet. You might need to go up a level and look for another staircase down to get you to the unexplored areas. There are 3 upstairs and 3 downstairs on each level.

Stay away from named monsters for now-they are significantly tougher than regular mobs-Ijgib and Jessica are probably the easiest of early ones when you feel ready or have no other choice. Immediately run away from Sigmund. If you want to play a wizardly type-try a spriggan. Fighter types you have a bit more of a choice-trolls. mountain dwarves, minotaurs, and ogres are all good here. For a ranged/sneaky attacker-try halflings. If things get too complex/overwhelming-try a Ghoul Monk-you'll have to eat to keep yourself whole but hey your undead and can get rotting food so not really a problem. Monks do better with their hands and less armor so you won't need to carry around weapons/armor and try to figure out which is best for you.

Feel free to ask for advice and help

Given the short shelf life of many of the Crawl characters the auto-explore is a must on the lower levels. That and the command "G" to quickly go between levels. Permanent death would be much more frustrating if it wasn't easy to quickly get you next character up to a higher level.

That was the only god I had come across so that's why I tried him out. I think he helped me identify stuff I was finding, which was handy. Really oddball god though.

Oh, I gave a spriggin air elementalist a try and that was a fairly disastrous run. In a big room I found two hobgoblins right away. Shock barely scratched them so I ran (4 spell points run out quickly). I was able to outrun then, but then came across a bat that was faster than me. I tried escaping down a level but he followed. I tried shocks when I regained SPs and they did roughly no damage. The bar was pretty wimpy but after enough hits he was finally able to get the kill. I don't think I'll be trying that combo again.

Why do you suggest fully exploring each level?

I do agree autoexplore is great.

I'm not surprised to hear you died. :) spriggins and wizards are both frail so if you get in a situation like you did, yeah you are g makes you stopoing to die. The good parts about a spriggan though are its speed so it can run and more importantly run faster than most things out there and its innate magical ability. So don't be afraid to try a spriggan magic type again. Spriggan Enchanters seem to be popular with many of the people that hang out at the "Tavern" message boards, so maybe try that next time?

I suggest fully exploring a level for a couple reasons-one to find all the good stuff that you can before going to the next level and in so doing, especially at the earlier levels, to get as much experience before going to down a level. You often, depending on background and race chosen, will get one level and sometimes two on level one of the dungeon. That helps tremendously when you have the chance to face named mobs, plus group mobs such as Orcs and Gnolls as early as dungeon level 2. Since there is no town in this game to go back to and rest up and restock, finding every thing you can on a level before going down can be crucial to your survival.

Oh another tip, when you finish a level and want to go to the next level, or want to backtrack to the previous level to get something you missed before or whatever, hit Shift X, then either < for up stairs or > for down stairs. Keep hitting those keys to cycle between the ones you have found on that level-then hit enter when you find the one you want. You will automatically move to that stairs unless a mob or previously unexplored dungeon feature/unseen item makes you stop. Very helpful when you just want to get off a level as quickly as possible

Third guy was a deep elf wizard again. Felt like a decent run, can't recall what level I was when I died, but made it to DL 5 before dying to an ogre I couldn't beat. He killed off all the imps I summoned easily, withstood some magic darts, and eventually caught up to me and took off 22 hps with a single blow (I had 21/26 at the time). I did manage to kill a couple uniques, Crazy somebody and a ghost of my first character. The difficulty seemed to increase a lot at level 4 and 5, big packs of orcs, sometimes with some tough wizards along with them. The first three levels almost nothing was a challenge.

Even though I usually prefer magic-oriented characters, I might go with a more martial type next go-around for some variety.

Yeah Ogres are major tough and best to avoid if possible unless you have something really nasty to take them out with. Congrats on taking out your first uniques! Crazy Yluf is not an easy one to take out, so well done-did he leave behind a room full of hammers? There's usually at least one good one there if so. Ghosts are nasty too-tougher than the original character, I've certainly died to a few.

Yep the Temple levels (4-7) are really when Crawl hits its stride-packs of tough monsters, more uniques showing up, special "instances" start appearing which are themed dungeons seperate from the main dungeon-sewer is usually the first one to show up-each has numerous versions so fun to play them, but very very dangerous to newbies. Some have a time limit on how long they stay "open" and you'll get warned about as you explore the rest of the level the instance is on.

Try one of the warrior-mage classes if you want a nice mix of magic and martial-crusader and enchanter good choices there-I would stay away from warper for now.

Another tip: don't throw the flaming axe you need to kill hydras into deep water. :banghead:

Alright, so I gave a Centaur Fighter a go to try something different, and I'm having my best game thus far. I've reached character level 10 and am on DL 10, which is way more difficult and monster-packed than any previous level I've encountered. I had a chance of finding the way to the Minotaurs Lair, but time ran out before I could hack a path through the crazy amount of monsters on the level, plus I had to backtrack to rest and heal up a couple times. So anyway, I've got some Q's for more experienced Crawlers:

1. I found an armor shop on level 8, which is cool, however the way to get there is a cooridor blocked by statues either direction. Do I need to find a secret door or some stone-to-mud type way to bypass the statues? I picked up some exploding darts and thought of going back to see if that might work, but food is an issue so I don't want to waste a lot of time. I'm carting around 4-5 unidentified wands so I could give that a try too I suppose.

2. I have a choice of how to proceed from here, either going to DL 11 or some animal pit (I think was what the entrance said) or the Orc Mines. Anyone have thoughts on what kind of risks / rewards I'd face with each of those options?

3. How does one do a character dump?

It's been a more enjoyable run-through as a warrior since it seems to open up more equipment options and choices, though I don't know that I'd pick a Centaur again as dealing with the increased hunger is stressful (and next time I'm staying away from polearms...seems like I find tons of good weapons of all other types and I've only found a total of 5 polearms, including the one I started with, a cursed one, and one that Trog gifted to me).

1) If you absolutely don't see any way in then you could look for a secret door. If you have a wand of digging you may be able to remove a wall to get there. Alternatively, if you have a blink scroll you could probably blink past the statues. The only thing is that you need either another blink or teleport scroll to get back out. Those two scrolls tend to be the panic button that can save your characters life so I probably wouldn't use them to get to the armor shop. I can't recall but I think you have armor restrictions as a centaur anyway.

2) As a fighter I tend to hit the Orc Mines first. I am assuming the other place you saw was the Lair. You will probably want to be careful with the Orc Mines as a centaur. Your main advantage is being faster than everyone else but that isn't going to help you if there are 15-20 orcs attacking you at once. The one thing that could be good for you is that you may find a decent halberd in there.

You could probably dip your toe into the first level of the Lair. You aren't going to deal with the mobs that you hit in the Orc Mines but you may run into some tougher monsters.

3) On the tiles version of Crawl there is an option to export a character dump in the menu buttons right above your inventory. On a Windows PC the character information gets dumped to a hidden folder:

C:\Users\[your windows user name]\AppData\Roaming\crawl\morgue

Thanks for the info.

And he's dead. On the third level of The Lair to some blink frogs. It was pretty stupid in retrospect, had I given my situation better thought, I had some items and abilities that could've helped. I tried using a scroll of teleportation, but I forgot it takes some time for that to activate.

Another Q: do people just chug potions / read scrolls to identify them (preferably at a safe point)? There's just so much stuff to identify and so little ability to ID things that I find myself using up a ton of inventory space on singles of them (when I got 2-3 of a scroll / potion, I would try it to see what I had).

Anyway, because I'm stubborn and wanted to try something different, I rolled a deep dwarf healer (I think deep dwarf, the type that can't regen its hps). Level 1 was fairly hilarious, trying to pacify monsters since I started with no weapons. I figured I was dead when I was stuck between two kobolds in a corridor since they're rather resistant to being pacified, but remarkably I was able to kill both with my bare hands and didn't take much damage. I don't know that this guy is good for more than a laugh, but I think I got my money's worth on level 1 alone.

Don;t let this thread die!!!

You really just have to test a lot of it out. The more times you play through the better feel you get for when, where and why to test out. As a fighter I tend to wait until I have 35 HP before I start testing potions. Also, and this seems easy to forget, but always make sure you are fully healed before testing potions. You don't want to accidentally poison yourself to death. You don't want to do it when there are any monsters around in case you get a potion of paralysis or confusion.

If you are careful really about the worst thing that could happen is you drink either a potion of mutation or cure mutation. Drinking the potion of mutation has a chance to either give you a bad or good mutation - I generally tend to avoid them. Randomly drinking a potion of cure mutation isn't that good either because they are fairly rare. Odds are that even if you never drink a potion of mutation you will still pick up some mutations. You will really want those potions of cure mutation around to get rid of some of the nasty mutations you may pick up. Because of this I tend to avoid testing potions until I have 2 or 3 of the same potion in my inventory.

Scrolls work much the same way. Not much bad can happen from testing out scrolls. Just do it when you are safe.

I've been Crawling a lot. Turns out: I still suck.

Deepest dive so far ended earlier tonight. :( Things were looking good, but next time I know to have better fire resistance before heading deeper into the Vault.

ah too bad! I've never been down that far, so hard to comment or give advice on what to do there. Did you have no healing? didn't use the teleport scroll? active protection vs fire? Better luck next time, but congrats on getting as far down as you did, getting successfully through so many of the portals.

Here's some Pro Tips on Crawl from over at the Tavern-quite a few I didn't know about:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/view...php?f=5&t=1865

I seem to have bad luck with statues. :( This character was doing awesome and had some nice gear...

well that's the first I've heard of the Monastery and being killed by a creatured summoned by old memories, so at least your deaths are educating the rest of us. ;)

Do you only play Mountain Dwarf fighters?

The statue put me into a state of confusion which dropped my shield defence down to 0. From there it was just open season me.

Nah, I don't only play the MDFi combination but it is by far what I've had the most success with. It is really hard to keep casters alive earlier in the dungeon. As evidenced by this death I still do too many stupid things and my casters usually become squishy messes.

So shall we have a CRAWL competition then since we seem to have a few people playing the game? Something easier to play for newbies and the less experienced? Speak up if you are interested.

I'm game. I'd do it dynasty style so you can see how badly I screw up.

I'm game too, but I am usually dead before I reach the 4th level of the dungeon.

Ditto. I've been beating merfolk assassin to death, literally. I dunno why I'm stuck on the assassin class, but I can't seem to get off it, no matter how many times I die.

well that was why I was thinking of something like an Ogre or Troll Berserker to play. Start out with high strength, worship a god that you can gain piety with quite easily and gain some good powers not to mention items from, and you can berserk your way out of a lot of trouble.

Definitely a different way to play Crawl-trying to get your stealth up so you can get those backstabs in, causes you to take risks you wouldn't with most other characters, so I can understand the appeal. :)

So here is where I am at so far. I have had some luck and found some good items for the early game.

Picked up the new graphical roguelike called Dungeons of Dredmor - very funny game, and I love the graphical style of it. Great into by the Cynical Brit for it. Also, it's less than 5 bucks on Steam right now.

very nice start there Ironhead errr Meatball ;) That Swamp Dragon armor and great sword of flaming in particular are sweet-good luck with him! Any preference for a race for our berserker in the comp? I thought Ogre or Troll would be good because of their high STR and ability to eat rotten meat with Ogres.

Trolls would probably be a little easier. They can survive just about anything earlier in the dungeon. Claws are very effective weapons so that also eliminates a lot of wondering about which weapon to use. Hunger isn't really an issue earlier in the dungeon because they can eat just about anything, anytime. Trolls just don't scale well and struggle deeper in the dungeon.

dola

So I have been going a little crazy with eating every piece of mutagenic meat I can find. It's working out well so far!

I found a nice great sword that has the speed brand on it. It also comes with hunger+ which I am a little worried about dealing with given the hunger issues that already come with trolls.

Trog also threw two triple swords my way which are very rare but I am sticking with claws for now.

If I start taking lumps soon I will enchant the shield I found. I would rather save the enchantment scrolls (more in stash on Lair 2) and use them once I find a good piece of dragon armor.

This character is now tied with the highest level I have hit. I lost all of my fun mutations when I picked up all three levels of body degeneration. Not fun. I Had to chug 2 potions of cure mutation to get rid of it.

Currently in the Vaults. I have not grabbed any runes yet but I may try to tackle the final level of the Snake Pits soon.

And the run comes to an end. I ended up with 1 rune (Snake Pit) but died trying to get the rune from the Swamp.

well done Ironhead! Even getting one rune in Crawl is an accomplishment to be proud of.

Looks like there's another roguelike coming to Steam next month. This one is by the creators of Super Meat Boy, which makes it a must by for me.

Ed McMillen Annouces The Binding Of Isaac | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Picked this up today, played probably about four hours. Fun game. Wish I could find out more about what things do -- the tooltips can be sketchy on information.

Dungeons of Dredmor is the bomb. Plus, it's funny. And cheep. Try the demo at least, for cryin' out loud!

Gaslamp Games

So I'm playing Z+Angband again as a much needed break from Crawl. Z+Angband if you remember has a wilderness with quests in it, plus farms, inns, and multiple towns. You usually start out in a small town with some missing much needed stores. So I start exploring and find another small town, then close by a huge town, well would have to be called city really, the biggest I've seen so far. It has a whopping 61 stores in it. I'm in heaven. :) Just had to share. It's a fun variant with the addition of the wilderness and quests.