DCSS 0.5.1

[tazelbain]

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.5.0
http://sourceforge.net/projects/crawl-ref/files/

Some thoughts:
Tiles UI is a bit nicer.
Seems randart equip seems to drop more often.
Orc priest and Orc wizard are more common.
Deep dwarf seems pretty cool with a class that can self heal.  Deep Dwarf Berserker seems pretty pimp.
Artificer is another class I don't "get."

EDIT:  0.5.1 is out.

[Moaner]

Also, there is a tourney coming up in August at crawl.akrasiac.org.

[tazelbain]

My new best.  I was doing alright until I was one-shotted by the titan.  Don't know what I could have done.  Having cleared out Lair/Orc/Hive I wasn't sure what to do next. I started going down the main again but that seemed to escalate in difficulty quick.

[ezrast]

Ohmigoodness peeps

Transmuters

You would never guess but if you like EXPLOSIONS and MASS CHAOS this is the class for you

Level 8 so far and the game has consisted of walking into rooms full of things that would make my other characters quake in their +1 elven boots and turning their lives (and occasionally my own) into noxious explodey magical hell

Seriously, try it

..... <-- here are all my periods okay

[tazelbain]

I tried it last night, but I was focusing on unarmed and form changes.  Things were going swimmingly to the point were I was better than spider-form.  So I scribed ice-form.  Mind you I have no ice magic.  So I decide to brute force it.  Cast it over and over hoping to succeed a bit and learn.  Nope started going crazy with tainted magic.  This dies down, I give up and I go down stairs.  Go to use spider form again, boom, tainted magic craziness starts up again nukes me for 2/3rds my hp.  I get swarmed and died.  I guess I did learn something but it wasn't ice magic.

Transmuter seems pretty awesome but it seems to dependent on other magics and start up potion spitting seems more like a supporting ability(and uses a ton of food) than a staight up taking care business skill.

[ezrast]

Perhaps I should have been more specific.

Potion creation/exploding are the only spells I use. They are low level so after you train them a bit they almost never fail, even though I've been training weapon skills as well as magic. I'm a kobold so food isn't a problem. Random single orcs/goblins/whatever get stabbed to death; anything more threatening or in large numbers gets hit with a potion of confusion and then stabbed to death.

[ezrast]

Shiiit. The one problem with the class is that certain monsters are immune to status effects and resistant to poison. I got a god power that let me enslave undead but still had no way to deal with jellies. Maybe I should have learned one of those form-changing spells after all.

Even so, the death was due to overconfidence on my part and 100% avoidable. Next time!

[Yegolev]

First fight, with a bat, on level 1 left me with 1 HP and 0 Mana.  Stupid necromancers.

[tazelbain]

They stopped giving most pure casters starter weapons and pain really sucks as a starter spell.  :/  Since skeletons can't go up stairs, I not sure how viable Necros are any more.

No luck with transmutters.  I guess the the general consensus that hybrids are hard is true.

I am starting to get an idea of how important god selection is.  Vehumet's tighter spell book range is probably better for most casters than Sif Muna.

[Yegolev]

Pain isn't terrible if you are a Mummy, but being a Mummy is.

[ezrast]

I actually did really well with a kobold necromancer earlier and I have no idea why. Took him to level 12, my personal best (I am not very good at this game), before dying on the *first* level of the orc mines because of no AoE whatsoever. Pain and regeneration are awesome though. I didn't learn any raise dead type spells.

e: Has anyone had any luck with enchanters? I keep playing them but can't seem to raise my skills fast enough to survive past dungeon level 5 or so.

[Yegolev]

I have not tried it but you seem able to toggle off skills to which you apply experience or something.  I like discovering things but I think I am going to have to read up on how that works.  Also what I might do about unallocated points.

[tazelbain]

I posted my best enchanter in the Hedonist thread. http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16094.msg606112#msg606112

I was Hibernate/Stabbing the hell out of every thing.  One-shotting Hydras is fun.  Early game goals are getting stabbing to a workable level and finding a dagger with fire/ice/vorpal brand. You only get one bite at the apple.  In the future I'd look to fire or earth magic as backup for undead/ ice resistant things.

[Slayerik]

From my experience, nothing beats a a berserker with an amulet of resist slowing. Kobolds are fun due to being full all the time.

[Yegolev]

Is there any way to play this shit in a window?  ALT+TAB makes baby Mummy Necromancer cry.

[Rendakor]

Is there like, a tutorial for this game? Reading this thread makes it sound very interesting, but I am terribad at roguelikes.

Fake Edit: Yes, there is one in game. Awesome.

Yegolev, yours doesnt run in a window? Mine's running in a command-prompt style window; amidoinitwrong?

[Yegolev]

Ah, sorry, using tiles version.  The non-tiles runs in a cmd-style window.

[tazelbain]

settings/tile_options

CrawlWiki is starting to get better, but so far the most helpful advice has been from the SomethingAwful threads.

[Yegolev]

settings/tile_options

I swear that option was not in that file when I looked the last two times.  I swear!

[Rendakor]

Thanks for CrawlWiki; pretty helpful so far. Also thanks for the heads up about the tiles version; I just downloaded the first Windows link and didn't even see it.

Edit: Changing "# tile_full_screen" to false still makes the game run in fullscreen mode; I even tried setting a resolution below mine, and setting it to autosize.

Edit2: Fixed. I'm retarded.

[Yegolev]

It's the file, I tell ya!

[tazelbain]

Got a SpEn to lvl15.  Damn Vehumet wouldn't give Sticky Flame so moving into fire was a big waste.  I never got poison resist item so I had to bypass hive and swamp.  I wasn't getting what I needed to progress and my old weren't working so well.  I am really starting to dig Mystic Blast.  A lvl 4 magic missile is pretty handy.

[Yegolev]

Anyone remember the hallway scene from Old Boy?  I'm more-or-less recreating that in a hallway that seems to have no end of kobolds.  Actually my Minotaur Chaos Knight would be fine as rain except for the big kobolds, but then I have gained three levels while chopping these fools into bits, currently level 9.  Mahkleb is pleased!  Good thing, too, since I get some health back from kills.

I had been using . to throw things but then I realized ENTER would work much better, and a few times missing the big kobold at the head of the line led to me killing a kobold further back in the death-queue... which pleased Mahkleb.

Looking at the floor, it just lists the item on top and mentions the floor is very bloody.  I do hope these guys stop coming eventually, would be a sad end here.

[Yegolev]

A 6x8 room full of kobolds.  Well, it was full of kobolds.  Glad I wasn't playing something stupid like a caster.

[tazelbain]

I still not skilled enough to get anywhere with anything but cheesy sprig casters.  Melee seem to have the least amount of options for getting out trouble.

[Rendakor]

In my noobishness I'm more inclined to agree with Yegolev. My one foray as a caster ended with me dead somewhere on the first level; I'm rolling with Demonspawn CK now.

[Yegolev]

To be fair, I started off throwing darts at things and that helps soften up targets, especially if you get a couple levels in Throwing.  Also you can throw daggers and axes.

[Slayerik]

I still not skilled enough to get anywhere with anything but cheesy sprig casters.  Melee seem to have the least amount of options for getting out trouble.

Have you tried a zerker? :P Seriously...They are beasts. Zerk + Regen + Brother in Arms = Wading through armies of fuckers.

[Yegolev]

Untimely end due to orc knight.  Also, I forgot about the scrolls of teleportation I had.  Derp!

[tazelbain]

I finally got a DDBe to post-Lair game.  I found some advice to turn off weapon skills once you have a few levels in them to give armor and fighting a chance to level. Seem to work alright and when I switched to maces to use my god gift, I had plenty of points to train it quick.  That whip scares me.  There is a +4 battleaxe of electrocution that I can buy, but I not sure if I want to go back to axes.  Haven't needed that teleport control ring yet, but it seems like a nice out.  Only found one (bad) amulet so far.  So my dreams of resist slow are unfulfilled.  I am surprise that I have so much piety since I abuse TH like all get out.

[CmdrSlack]

So, either what I downloaded from Sourceforge is borked, or I need to compile it myself.

Based on the "install" file, I get the impression I need to compile it. How hard is that to do for someone who has never compiled a program in his life?

[tazelbain]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/crawl-ref/files/Stone%20Soup/0.5/stone_soup-0.5-tiles-win32.zip/download
How about this one?

[CmdrSlack]

Hrm, I guess grabbing the first file with "tiles" in the name isn't always the best plan. I've never been to sourceforge before, so this is all new to me.

ETA -- This seems to be working, thanks! Now to proceed to suck at yet another roguelike.

[tazelbain]

I mothballed the DDBe in favor of a Mountain Dwarf Fighter who went Trog.  He did get a resist slow amulet and is quite the beast.  He's starting down Swamp, but I am not sure what he can do about the hydra zerg at the bottom.  Maybe Trog will gift me a flaming weapon.  He's cool like that.

[tazelbain]

DCSS 0.5.1 is out.  This fixes the tile lag issue that some people were having.

305581 Grant the Hacker (level 22, -14/205 (208) HPs)
             Began as a Deep Dwarf Berserker on July 26, 2009.
             Was a High Priest of Trog.
             Shot with an elven arrow by a deep elf master archer (17 damage)
             ... on Level 7 of the Elven Halls on July 31, 2009.
             The game lasted 07:50:47 (72063 turns).

I probably wouldn't go DDBe again, scrapping together enough piety to keep healed is a bitch.