LATEST CHATTY HEADER
Subscribe to Shacknews Mercury starting at $1/month!
Chrome Shack Community Guidelines Chatty Search
Scroll down to join the conversation.
New to Shacknews? Signup for a Free Account
Already have an account? Login Now
Subscribe to Shacknews Mercury starting at $1/month!
Chrome Shack Community Guidelines Chatty Search
Scroll down to join the conversation.
WEEKLY CHALLENGE: PEW PEW PEW EDITION
I hope you were tired of melee characters, because they're all gone this week (mostly)!
As you know, I roll two random characters in the game each week. One is truly random (usually considered the "hard" choice, as you can get some really bad combos), and one is "good random" (chosen out of "good" combinations).
These characters are the WEEKLY CHALLENGE. There are three categories to win. Best random score, best good random score, and best overall score.
You can play either offline or at http://crawl.akrasiac.org/ . I trust you guys not to cheat. No cheating (save backups, etc.) will be allowed (honor system, obviously). I will use the most recent "stable" edition that's available this week. Right now please use version 0.6.1
If you haven't played this game before, it's awesome. Go to http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/ and check it out. Basically, it's a randomly generated dungeon game. You've got a wide variety of classes and races to choose from. It's very hard, and when you die, your character gets deleted. Dying is a normal and expected part of the game. These weekly challenges are a good way to get people to try new ways of playing.
THIS WEEK'S CLASSES
RANDOM: (Hard Mode) - Draconian Wizard with the "frost" option.
GOOD RANDOM: (Easy Mode) Kenku Air Elementalist.
Finally some good ranged options going on. Though, you could easily go melee too with that kenku.
I will post the winners from last week in reply. If i have time tonight, i'll also do a quick newbie writeup if you want to get into the game and don't know wtf. You have until ER is posted next monday to submit scores. If you start your own score thread, please use the tag DCSS so i can find it. Good luck!
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 36 replies.
This isn't a complete guide, but just some stuff off the top of my head to get someone started. All you good players, feel free to add tips you think are useful, or call me out for stuff that's shitty. I'd like to develop this over the weeks into something someone can use to get started in this game.
So, you downloaded dungeon crawl, and you try it out. You get 50 turns before getting your ass kicked by a kobold with a dagger. What do you do? Well, look below for a short beginner's guide. It won't be complete by any means, but i'll repost it below my DCSS posts each week, and will be improving it as time goes on.
If you have any questions, or want some tips, go here: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=CrawlWiki - It has some great descriptions about classes, gods, races, etc. A lot of spoilers, so don't look if you care about that stuff. Of course, you can always ask the shack, too. There are some good players on here.
The first thing you want to do when starting up DCSS is pick a class/race combo. Here are a few “easy†ones. (I say “easy†because nothing in this game is easy. It's all brutally hard and will make you its bitch. You can die with a second's lapse of attention, and lose your character forever).
Easy-ish Characters
Mountain Dwarf (Or Demonspawn) Chaos Knight of Makhleb – Both are good melee characters. MD gets some great strength bonuses. DS gets a really fun mutation every 4 or so turns. Can get some neat stuff like fire resistance, horns, extra armour, etc. Being a disciple of Makhleb gives you some good spell-like abilities like summoning and conjuring.
High Elf Wizard – High elfs have decent conjure and spellcasting abilities, but they also are great at melee, and have decent HP. If you really like spell casting, try a deep elf. They're the best casters in the game, but they're really fragile, and take a bit of caution to get them to survive. Take either fire or ice book. Spam magic dart, throw frost or fire. If you're frost, use mephitic cloud a ton. It's great crowd control. Also try a high or deep elf conjurer, for a more pew pew style of play.
Sludge Elf Transmuter – This is an interesting class. Basically, you go unarmed, and use transmuting to change yourself and objects. Learn fulsome distillation right off the bat, and start getting potions off of corpses. When you're level 2, learn evaporate. Use pots of confusion to confuse groups of monsters, and poison over the same cloud to poison them. You can take down some pretty big monsters that way. Eventually, learn blade hands when you get high in levels.
Spriggan Enchanter – Fun class that doesn't take much food. Harder in the late game, but pretty easy to start out in. Get a short sword, and start casting spells to level them up. Keep with light armor, and try and sneak up on enemies.
Deep Dwarf Necromancer – This is a really different play style, but can be fun. Deep dwarfs don't regen, but they have a high damage resistance. With this, get a weapon as soon as you can, and spam your pain spell, and switch to melee when enemies get close. Learn vampiric touch as soon as you can, and use that to regen health. For a god, try Makhleb for some healing and summoning.
Troll Beserker – These guys are just fun. Shitty armor, no weapons. Just go beserk and rip through things. They get super hungry though, so make sure to eat every corpse you find.
So, now that you have a character, what are some things you need to know? Here are some general tips that will make your life easier.
“o†is auto-explore. Use this to get around the level fast. It'll stop when something happens like meeting an enemy, getting hungry, etc.
“ctrl-g†is auto move. Use this to get around places you've already been to. You can do “ctrl-g†and then “>†to go down, or < to go up. You can use that to go to specific dungeon levels or to branches you've found.
Eat corpses. You can chop up corpses by pressing “c.†Do this whenever you're hungry at all (“e) to eat). I usually only eat food i've got in my inventory when i'm “near starving.†Eat white and brown corpses.
Wtf are aptitudes? These are how good your race is at stuff. Press % at the charcter selection screen or ? Followed by % in game. The lower the number, the better. Like deep elves will have a very low conjure and spellcasting number. This means they're badass wizards. But they have a super high polearms number. That means they're shitty at using spears.
Drink potions – drink potions early on to identify them. However, if you've got a huge amount of one type of unknown potion, it's probably a potion of healing. Healing potions can cure poison, which is useful.
Read scrolls – if you have a high number of an unknown scroll ,it's probably identify or remove curse. Read scrolls when you have a cursed item on you to ID that scroll, and always try to ID an item if it prompts you to select an item.
Run away – run away if you have a chance, especially if you're a wizard or enchanter. Try and maneuver into a 1-wide passageway to limit your chances of being hit. Or retreat up a staircase to get away.
Turn off skills – Don't be afraid to turn off certain skills. Use “m†to get into the skill menu. I usually turn off stealth if i'm not a character that's using it. If i'm a spellcaster, i'll usually turn off my secondary spell-skills for a while (enchantments, conj, ice, etc.) and focus on spellcasting. That raises your spell power a bit, but more importantly it makes it cheaper (less food) to cast spells.
Gods – Gods can make or break a game. They can let you do amazing stuff. If you're melee, consider going Makhleb for some ranged and summon skills. Okawaru is also good for strength boosts and free weapons/armor. If you're a spellcaster, Sif Muna is great. He gives you some awesome spellbooks.
Decide if you're going dodging or AC based. IF you want good armor, start off with something like ringed, to get some armor skill. Then move up the ladder until something like plate. If you want to go dodge based, stay with leather or robes. AC was nerfed in the latest version, and it's kind of useless now. It'll get better with the next version, i've heard.
Weapons – Some weapons are better for dex based characters (short swords, etc.) some with strong characters (axes, clubs). Make sure you look at the item before using it.
The post has been reported. Thank you!
You must be logged in to post.
You must be logged in to post.