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the very thorough crawl thread
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:06 pm    Post subject: the very thorough crawl thread Reply with quote

(aka the chaos knight, the giant bat, and the trip through the realm of zot.)

linley's dungeon crawl (now usually called "crawl") is a roguelike game inspired by nethack. it was original created by linley henzell (of captain pork's world of violence and overgod), who has since left the game in the care of open source developers.

it is a terrific game, easily the most bullshit-free pc roguelike i have played. trying to play most pc roguelikes seriously usually turns into an exercise in tedium - either they ask you to play interminable item identification games (nethack) or have you constantly ferrying piles of loot to and from shops to cash in (angband). nethack is interested in being the most thoroughly thought-out collection of injokes in existence. angband is interested in implementing as much of tolkein's (or zelazny's or lovecraft's) bestiary as possible. crawl is interested in being a game.

it's leaner and meaner. it's tough but fair. it's revisionist - while the philosophy in most roguelike development is more more more, the goal of crawl is balance, playability, and replayability.

some reasons why crawl plays better than nethack

  • the id game isn't painful. in nethack a cursed piece of equipment can ruin your game, and altars and scrolls of identification are so uncommon that it can take ages before you're comfortable putting on a new piece of armor. in crawl, scrolls of remove curse mean trying on armor isn't an outlandish notion, and scrolls of detect curse make it easier to avoid curses even without identifying items fully.

  • magic isn't all-or-nothing. in nethack, if you want access to spell magic, you're forced to play characters who can wear next to no armor and wield next to no weapons. the opening games for these characters are so difficult that they're barely worth the effort for non-experts. crawl on the other hand has a wide range of magic-using classes and of magic/fighter hybrids, including reavers, warriors who can enchant their weapons, crusaders, melee fighters with access to direct-damage spells, and chaos knights, soldiers whose god awards them fearsome magical abilities.

  • you will never die instantly from picking an egg up off the ground and eating it. you're not required to juggle a multitude of obscure laws in your head while playing to avoid instadeath. the skills you learn in crawl make sense, and a smart player can make it through many first-time encounters in one piece. it's usually easy to keep an escape hatch open. you won't be killed by a stroke of bad luck that generates a swarm of killer bees.

there's a greater diversity of playing styles, too. there are twenty-six different races, all of whom play fairly differently (and many of whom play radically differently), 25 different classes (including a wide variety of magic specialties and many classes which combine slashing and spelling), 12 different gods (each with different demands and rewards), and a bunch of different options for completing the game (you need only three runes out of over seven to reach the final area).
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

getting started with crawl

first you'll need to download it.

i like the tile version, which has a bunch of useful patches applied, mouse options, a mini-map, and lovely graphics. (use the "-" key to edit your player avatar!) the ds port also looks lovely, and is shortcut-based rather than virtual keyboard-based, meaning it probably actually plays well. i'm looking forward to playing it when i get my ds flash card.

then you'll want to check out these links:

documentation (also included with the game)
frequently-asked questions

tutorials:

13 steps to crawl
the life and death of atomjack

i find the second much more practical, especially if you're planning to try a spellcaster. you'll also probably want to check out the links labelled "hint" on this page.

start with an easy class, like a fighter. start with a dwarf or minotaur. don't play a human, as they do nothing particularly well except level up. once you're more experienced try a berserker, troll, or (if you want to try magic) elven conjurer.

beginning hints

  • most of your food will come from corpses. save rations - which don't go bad - for when you're desperate. use the capital D key to "dissect" a corpse and produce edible chunks of meat. unless you're playing one of the more hardier-stomached races, you may wish to avoid corpses with green blood.

  • more practical items are more common. so if you've got eight purple potions and one blue, odds are the purple potions are healing, one of the staples of your inventory (they heal poisoning, sickness, etc). scrolls of teleportation, detect curse, and remove curse tend to be pretty common.

  • early in the game, you may wish to read unidentified scrolls as you find them. the worst that can happen is your armor or weapon being cursed, and sooner or later you'll read a scroll of remove curse (message: "you feel like someone is helping you). note that these scrolls have no effect if you're not carrying anything cursed, so if you curse an item you may wish to try scrolls that originally seemed to have no effect again.

  • scrolls of teleportation require two to three turns to take effect, so use them before you're knocked down to five hit points, not after. blink scrolls, on the other hand, take effect immediately, and warp you to any space of your choosing that you can see. use them sparingly, as they're your escape hatch.

  • if you can't get a giant bat to stop within hitting distance of you, try taking a step away from it.

  • somewhere near the top of the dungeon you'll find a staircase to the ecumenical temple. there's an altar to each of the game's gods there - pray ("p" key) in front of an altar to hear a description of the god and choose a religion. to sacrifice a corpse to your god, dissect it (capital "D" key) while praying. to sacrifice an object, drop it on an altar and pray.

  • holding shift and pressing the rest key (numpad 5) will cause you to rest for a hundred turns, or until your hp hits max, your mp hits max, or you receive a message. don't be afraid to rest and recover after taking some damage. if you're a pure magic-user, do not wander around the dungeon with no mp.

  • use the up key ("<") to enter a shop. you can't sell to shops, only buy from them. if you find a distillery, you may want to buy the cheap (1 gold) potions - usually bad things like poison, confusion, slowing - because from then on they'll be identified for you and you won't be in danger of drinking them accidentally.

  • don't be afraid to run away from powerful enemies and dangerous situations. if you run into a ghost of one of your previous characters, run for the stairs - ghosts won't leave the floor they're on. remember you can always go up a flight of stairs to the last floor and then come down a different one.

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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i started out the game playing hill dwarf fighters, advanced to hill dwarf berserkers (fighters who start with a religion that grants them some options for escaping tricky situations), then switched to deep elf conjurers (fragile but powerful direct-damage magicians), and now i'm playing minotaur chaos knights aligned to mahkleb (fighters whose religion grants them somewhat random magical abilities, including summoning).

here are posts i've made about the game in other threads:

adventures in the orc mines with a scythe of orc-slaying
playing with dolls in tile crawl
my highest-scoring conjurer so far
playing a minotaur chaos knight
summoning a balrug who was not at all happy (screenshot)

finally, a limerick

by helicopterp

There once was a game called Crawl.
Dess played it, and she had a ball.
She'd run and she'd hide
after meeting a hyd-
-ra, though hydras aren't scary at all.


(pro-tip: do not hit hydras with blade weapons.)
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Did you get the DS version up and running yet?

Also, what was that shooter roguelike you were talking about?
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've spent a good bit of time with DSCrawl now. It's good! The control scheme (hold a direction and press either A to move, or B, X or Y to access a shortcut) might not seem intuitive at first, but is well-suited to the pace and complexity of the game. The ascii-like tiles (check the screenshots) are likeable (and helpful.)

It's not perfect, though. None of the shortcuts are context-sensitive, and all of the PC versions' controls are preserved; thus you still have to resort to the virtual keyboard once in a while. It's a shame, because you shouldn't really need that many keys - for example, Crawl has separate commands for wearing armor, removing armor, putting on jewellery, and taking off jewellery. Even climbing and descending stairs are two distinct operations, in spite of the fact that there are no staircases where you can go both up and down. (And if you're in doubt as to which kind of staircase you're standing on, there are at least two commands you can use to check.)

Anyway, it's a ton of fun, and a better thought-out port than the DS version of NetHack that I tried (which had ugly scaled tiles and a full virtual keyboard hogging up the bottom screen.) Crawl's been kind of a near'n'dear game for me since I stumbled upon it while downloading Captain Pork's Revenge (see the little link at the top there?) a few years back. It's great to have an excuse to play it again.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Six wrote:
I've spent a good bit of time with DSCrawl now. It's good! The control scheme (hold a direction and press either A to move, or B, X or Y to access a shortcut) might not seem intuitive at first, but is well-suited to the pace and complexity of the game. The ascii-like tiles (check the screenshots) are likeable (and helpful.)

That tileset is just darling.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
Did you get the DS version up and running yet?

Also, what was that shooter roguelike you were talking about?


i havn't gotten my ds flash card yet, but ds crawl will probably be the first thing i try on it when i do!

the game i referred to as a "roguelike shooter" is taito's syvalion for the arcade, super famicom and european snes. it's not actually a roguelike, but it is a maze shooter with randomly-generated stages. and it's fantastic.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Syvalion has really nicely drawn sprites but they really needed more frames, the animation doesn't befit the medium res it runs at.

I Crawled a bit today, my Hercules_Jesus didn't make it past level 3 which makes me sad. Far worse than my previous character of the same name who I deleted so I could do a different class but still retain the name.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i have like a hundred dead characters named fable.

i would never get anywhere with this game if i needed to think up a new name every time one of my characters died.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 4:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

uh oh, a beehive.

tactics: i stood in the doorway (one step back from where i'm pictured in the screenshot) to force them to attack single-file, summoned a demon who began gating in other demons, and began whomping bees one by one. when the queen confronted me, and stung and poisoned me, i backed off and let my new horde of minions hold it at bay while i healed myself. then i was able to stock up on tasty honeycombs!

what was the ultimate fate of this character?

r.i.p. fable the cudgeler, level 11 minotaur chaos knight and the champion of mahkleb. died on dungeon level 13 (screenshot taken shortly prior to death) with a score of 10887, making her more successful than my most successful deep elf conjurer.

she wielded a +5,+4 mace of protection and wore the +1 plate mail of defence, which has the following special properties:
it affects your evasion (+3).
it affects your accuracy (+4).
it protects you from magic.
also a +4 ring of strength and a +0,+6 ring of slaying (and a +1 pair of gloves and a pair of boots).

max hit points 94, magic points 19, and an armor class of 21. skills: 9 in fighting, 14 in maces & flails, 6 in armor, 5 in unarmed combat, 8 in invocations, 2 in dodging, 1 in stabbing. mutations: she had a fast metabolism.

her epitaph reads "slain by a yak". i was actually surrounded by a bunch of creatures, including a ghost of a previous incarnation, a horde of centaurs and a summoned demon that decided it didn't like me, and was in turn gating in more demons. r.i.p. fable the minotaur chaos knight.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have an epitath that reads "convulsed to death" from when I accidentally hit myself with a Pain spell and, um, apparently scored a critical hit.

One of the interesting things about Crawl is that aptitudes are entirely based on race, and experience is distributed to the skills you use often. This means that the class you choose only determines your initial skills and inventory. There's no system for multiclassing because there's no need for one. Want your fighter to learn some magic? If you're clever, just read a lot of scrolls and you'll probably glean enough to get you started. Your mage wants to use that +5 club of horrible skin irritation he found? Just swing it around a bit and you'll start to get the hang of it. Crawl obviously isn't the first game to do something like this, but it's less restrictive than many other roguelikes.

I've been playing as merfolk transmuters lately. Merfolk aren't as hyper-specialized (or as wussy) as you'd imagine. Mostly (before you find water, anyway) they're notable for being good with spears and short swords, and competent at casting ice magic and transmutations.

Transmuters, incidentally, are awesome to play. The first spell they learn is one that distills (typically nasty) potions from corpses. Fun, but useless - until you hit second level, when you can learn Evaporate, which allows you to pressurize those potions and huck them at enemies, causing them to explode in a cloud of damaging fumes (which also carry special effects based on the potion you threw.) For example, using a potion of confusion will leave enemies dazed, punching themselves and each other, wandering around, and ripe for you to pick them off. Of course, you can then use their corpses to extract more potions of confusion - a little number I like to call "the circle of life." Transmuters eventually get a bunch of other crazy spells, like the ever-useful Dig and one that turns your hands into blades!

The downside is that it's very much hard going at first. You start off naked, with no spells already learned, a slight aptitude for punching things, and a dozen normal arrows (but no bow.) Low-level Transmuters tend to pile up at the morgue.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Six wrote:
I have an epitath that reads "convulsed to death" from when I accidentally hit myself with a Pain spell and, um, apparently scored a critical hit.


i've got a "died of stupidity"! (from having one of my int 4 berserkers intelligence-drained by a statue.)
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote



i finally succeeded in summoning a friendly balrug. even it could not save me from the horde of monsters who wanted my head, though. the last demon i'd summoned transformed an enemy yak into a vicious moth of wrath, which was all too happy to deliver the killing blow. note my +2,+4 eveningstar of flaming, though.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 4:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

encountered my first labyrinth today.

portals to labyrinths appear towards the middle of the dungeon - i found this one on level 15. you're given an ominous warning about starvation at the entrance, but i was a minotaur, so i plunged right in. labyrinths are mazes of long, straight corridors. auto-mapping doesn't work while you're in them. food isn't generated, nor are monsters (save one) - thus the warning about starvation. i went through quite a few rations while in there, but at last i reached the center of the labyrinth, and its guardian - a minotaur. they're tough opponents, and it was a rough battle, but i emerged victorious, took my pick of the pile of loot it was guarding, and took the stairs out of there.



pictured: gang rumble in the dungeons.

this character went on to be my first to achieve experience level 12, following a huge, fantastic battle. she died when a teleport scroll left her seperated from her demon army and badly wounded. i was up against a bunch of foes, including a manticore, and my hp were low. i read the scroll hoping to get out of there and recover some hits, but by the time the actual teleport hit my demons had mopped up the monsters. the teleport left me next to a seven-headed hydra. a second teleport put me in the middle of a bunch of slime creatures. i summoned a smoke demon, but it turned on me and set me on fire. epitaph: "burnt to a crisp".

r.i.p. fable the pike-minotaur, high priest of mahkleb and level 12 chaos knight. 16908 points. max hp 112, max mp 22. wielded a +6,+4 spear and wore the ring of "yh". skill levels 10 in fighting, 14 in polearms, 10 in invocations, 6 in unarmed combat. 10 in armor.

she killed: erica, urug, michael, psyche, edmund, ijyb, jessica, two ghosts of previous fables, 20 killer bees, a minotaur, a mottled dragon, 3 cyclopes, a yaktaur, an ettin, and a bunch of other things (448 creatures total killed in worship of mahkleb).

screenshot taken shortly prior to death. r.i.p. fable the pike-minotaur.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i've been playing chaos knights in the "service" of xom rather than mahkleb. xom is truly chaotic, the one deity who asks nothing of followers and guarantees nothings to followers. xom will randomly mutate you, give you an incredibly powerful weapon, summon a host of demons to help you, summon a bunch of demons to attack you.

i just hit level 2 and xom cast me into the abyss.

i'm probably going to attempt a death knight next, since i enjoy the undead companions i've accumulated as a chaos knight. (i feel sad when they get killed again.)
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i just watched someone win the game on this telnet server.

i'm probably not going to play on the server because i love my graphical interface too much but watching games in progress can be pretty nifty.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm watching Sawtooth now!

This is kind of wicked.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i kept sawtooth's game(s) open for a while and glanced at it periodically. crawl is a lot less boring to watch than angband or adom or any game with scumming.

i've been playing demonspawn death knights. death knights can choose to either learn necromantic magic or serve yredelemnul. i chose religion because i prefer invocations to spellcraft, because of the armor restrictions of the latter. almost immediately you can begin raising corpses as zombie companions, but they'll be pretty frail until you begin meeting and killing some tougher creatures. you get a lot more lethal once you gain the ability to raise hordes of dead at once - run into a pack of orcs, kill a bunch, then raise to corpses to surround their former comrades.



my zombie, my pal.

demonspawn are nifty because they'll periodically mutate - you might get scales that cover your body, or the ability to spit poison (very nice if you don't have a missile attack), or you might just get a useless pair of horns that make it impossible to wear helmets. they level pretty slowly, though. they're also popular as chaos knights.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dessgeega, how are draconians as death knights? Don't they mutate as well?
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yeah, after a few levels draconians blossom into one of i think ten different colors and get some of the powers of that color dragon. i don't like to play draconians because they can't wear most types of armor.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

xom and demonspawn are a good match. you're basically leaving yourself totally at the whim of random bonuses. my most recent demonspawn chaos knight developed the ability to control teleports, which was just great when she found a pair of magical gloves that let her blink at will.

xom provided a ludicrously powerful quarterstaff, and protected against poison i decided to take on the hive.

she starved to death after xom made her go berserk over and over (but not before killing 51 killer bees). r.i.p. fable the cruncher.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i was spotted by the inhabitants of a monster den the moment i set foot on the eleventh floor of the dungeon. so i opened a gate and got an executioner. executioners are utterly terrifying demons who are covered in blades and move incredibly fast. i saw this one get twelve attacks in a single turn. thankfully it was friendly, or else that would have been game over. it sliced through that monster den in a matter of minutes.

speaking of game over, r.i.p. fable the cleaver, level 12 minotaur chaos knight in service of mahkleb. wielded the +8,+5 sword of blood, max hp 112, max mp 21. skills: 11 in fighting, 12 in short blades, 9 in invocations, 8 in armor, 7 in unarmed combat.

she killed 461 creatures including jozef, josephine, urug, an unseen horror, 5 smoke demons, 2 hellwings, 5 ynoxinuls, 2 neqoxecs, 5 orange demons (all summons gone awry), 13 yaks, and the ghost of fable the skirmisher, demonspawn chaos knight.

screenshot at level 12. 17,920 points.

also:


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

is there a way to change the resolution on this? the window doesn't fit in my screen.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 4:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

it doesn't fit mine either, but nothing's cut off but the tip of the hp bar. if you're missing more than that try meddling with init.txt?
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

you can mess with the font face and size in the init thinger! that's how i get it to fit on my screen.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been playing this game a bit recently. It's truely excellent.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i've been on the internet-phone listening to shaper play crawl for the past hour or so.

there's a lot of "DIE YAKS! DIE!!"
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, I just spent a really long time playing a pretty good game. I kept going into this terrible phallic-esque chess board like part of the dungeon, and then when I got in trouble I would teleport out and then refill my health then charge back in and attempt to kill things all over again.

Well... so like, my teleport scrolls stopped working, they wouldn't teleport me out. This maze literally only had one way in or out and it was through a diagonal opening towards the bottom. I tried to run and realized that I was slowly being surrounded with Shadow Dragons.... they drained me down from level 13 to level 11 then started zapping me with negative electricity.

Anyways, following is the image that I took to show how the random dungeon is very similar to a cock, I died shortly after, in which if you look at my morgue report you'll see that there were actually 7 Shadow Dragons in that maze from hell.



Code:
Dungeon Crawl 400b26e070tf(Windows/Tile) character file.
[Last build Dec 23 2005]


Shaper the Shatterer

Race     : Minotaur         Res.Fire  : . . .   See Invis. : . 
Class    : Chaos Knight     Res.Cold  : . . .   Warding    : . 
Worship  : Xom              Life Prot.: . . .   Conserve   : . 
                            Res.Poison: +       Res.Corr.  : . 
Level           11          Res.Elec. : +       Gourmand   : . 
Exp          11748
Next Level   21629          Sust.Abil.: +       Rnd.Telep. : . 
Exp Needed    9881          Res.Mut.  : .       Ctrl.Telep.: . 
Spls.Left       12          Res.Slow  : .       Ctrl.Telep.: . 
Gold           296          Clarity   : .       Levitation : . 
                                                Ctrl.Flight: . 
HP       : -34/ 97
MP       :   7/  7          Weapon +7,+5 spiked flail (protect)
Str      :  19              Armour +0 scale mail (R-poison)
Int      :  11              Shield none
Dex      :  12              Helmet none
Armour Cl:  20              Cloak  +0 cloak
Evasion  :  10              Gloves +2 pair of gloves
Shield Cl:   0              Boots  +1 pair of boots
                            Amulet none
Play time  :   04:50:11     Ring   ring of sustain abilities
Turns      :      14855     Ring   ring of regeneration


You are on level 14.
You worship Xom.
You are hungry.


  Inventory:
Hand weapons
+p - a +7,+5 spiked flail of protection (weapon)
Missiles
 f - 7 poisoned +0 needles
 r - 14 +1 darts of ice
 t - a poisoned +0 needle
 H - 18 +0 darts
 I - 13 +0 orcish bolts
 Q - 32 +0 dwarven darts
 Y - 29 +0 elven darts
Armour
+l - a +2 pair of gloves (worn)
 n - a +3 robe of magic resistance
+u - a +0 scale mail of poison resistance (worn)
 C - a +0 cloak
+L - a +0 cloak (worn)
+V - a +1 pair of boots (worn)
Magical devices
 i - a wand of slowing (3)
 x - a wand of draining (7)
 y - a wand of disintegration (4)
 K - a wand of draining (7)
 N - a wand of confusion (6)
 S - a wand of flame (10)
Comestibles
 M - a bread ration
 P - 17 honeycombs
Scrolls
 e - a scroll of identify
 g - a scroll of paper
 j - a scroll of recharging
 o - 9 scrolls of remove curse
 q - 3 scrolls of teleportation
 w - 4 scrolls of fear
 A - 2 scrolls of random uselessness
 Z - a scroll of detect curse
Jewellery
 b - a +3 ring of evasion
+h - a ring of regeneration (left hand)
 s - a ring of protection from cold
 z - a ring of levitation
+O - a ring of sustain abilities (right hand)
 T - a ring of protection from fire
 X - the ring "Uxonygib Ripoq"   
   This ring occasionally exerts its power to randomly translocate its wearer
   to another place, and can be deliberately activated for the same effect.
   It insulates you from electricity.
Potions
 c - 2 potions of healing
 d - a potion of might
 k - 3 potions of restore abilities
 m - a potion of poison
 D - 2 potions of mutation
 E - 2 potions of strong poison
 F - a potion of levitation
 J - a potion of invisibility
 U - a potion of confusion
 W - 2 potions of speed
Books
 a - a book of Frost
 B - a book of Power
 R - a book of Power
Magical staves
 G - a staff of wizardry
Miscellaneous
 v - a crystal ball of fixation


 You have 0 experience left.

   Skills:
 + Level 10 Fighting
 + Level 15 Maces & Flails
 + Level  6 Darts
 + Level  2 Throwing
 + Level  7 Armour
 + Level  3 Dodging
 + Level  1 Stabbing
 + Level  5 Unarmed Combat
 + Level  1 Spellcasting


You have 12 spell levels left.
You don't know any spells.


           Mutations & Other Weirdness
  Your muscles are strong (Str +1).
  You are immune to electric shocks.
  Your natural rate of healing is unusually fast.
  Your muscles are flexible (Dex +1), but weak (Str -1).
  You sometimes forget where you are.
  Your body is slowly deteriorating.
  You are partially covered in yellow scales (AC + 2).


  Last messages:
> a glowing great mace
> a runed great flail
> The shadow dragon breathes.
> The bolt of negative energy hits you!
> You feel drained.
> * * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
> The shadow dragon breathes.
> The bolt of negative energy hits the tentacled monstrosity.
> The tentacled monstrosity is drained.
> The bolt of negative energy hits the shadow dragon.
> The shadow dragon appears unharmed.
> The shadow dragon breathes.
> The bolt of negative energy misses you.
> The shadow dragon breathes.
> The bolt of negative energy misses you.
> You see here a very ugly thing corpse.
> The shadow dragon breathes.
> The bolt of negative energy hits you!
> You feel drained.
> You die...



........... . .#.##.#.#.#.#.#.#.#
###### .... . .#.#.#.#.#.#.#.#X#.
      #.. .....#.##.#.#.#)#.#.#D#
      #.#####. #.#.#.#.#D#.#.#.#.
       .#   #.##.##.#.#.#.#D#.#.#
            #.##.#.#.#.#.#D#.#.##
      # #   #.##.##.#.#D#.#.#.##
      # #   #.##.#.#.#X#.#.#.## 
###### .#####.##@####D###########
........ ...........D............
#######.#####.###########.##### .
      #.#   #.#         #.#    #.
       .    #.#         #.#    #.
>           #.#         #.#    #.
.           #.#         # #    #.
.#          #.#         #.#    #.
 ######     #.#         # #    #.


  Vanquished Creatures
4 hill giants
An unseen horror (D:14)
Urug (D:11)
4 giant brown frogs
A smoke demon (D:14)
A cyclops (D:13)
A griffon skeleton (D:14)
A very ugly thing (D:14)
A hellwing (D:14)
3 trolls
An ugly thing (D:14)
A queen bee (D:13)
An ettin (D:14)
Psyche (D:14)
Donald (D:11)
A stone giant zombie (D:14)
An ettin (shapeshifter) (D:14)
2 two-headed ogres
11 yaks
3 hippogriffs
2 neqoxecs
3 manticores
A wraith (D:13)
2 giant blowflies (D:13)
An orange demon (D:14)
A soldier ant (D:12)
3 wyverns
An ugly thing skeleton (D:14)
2 ice beasts
2 phantoms
6 centaurs
5 ogres
10 big kobolds
2 hill giant zombies
A necrophage (D:10)
2 giant lizards
Sigmund (D:5)
Blork the orc (D:10)
3 giant frogs
7 orc warriors
A beast (D:14)
A steam dragon (D:14)
43 killer bees
A big fish (D:11)
8 imps
5 orc priests
A giant brown frog zombie (D:12)
3 hounds
A giant beetle (D:10)
9 orc wizards
9 giant ants
8 jellies
4 giant iguanas
A shadow (D:14)
2 wights
A yak zombie (D:13)
A scorpion (D:8)
Ijyb (D:6)
4 electrical eels (D:11)
3 gnolls (D:6)
10 snakes
A big kobold zombie (D:14)
2 giant lizard zombies (D:10)
2 lemures
A mottled dragon zombie (D:14)
A shadow imp (D:12)
4 worms
2 giant mites
2 giant centipedes
A white imp (D:12)
A giant frog zombie (D:7)
Terence (D:3)
An ooze (D:3)
Jessica (D:4)
2 giant eyeballs
A giant ant zombie (D:7)
A giant eyeball zombie (D:6)
A hound zombie (D:12)
2 ufetubi (D:12)
4 giant cockroaches
6 giant geckos
9 hobgoblins
5 jackals
27 orcs
4 quokkas
4 small snakes
17 giant bats
A giant cockroach zombie (D:3)
8 giant newts
11 goblins
8 killer bee larvae (D:13)
32 kobolds
A kobold skeleton (D:7)
A kobold zombie (D:7)
2 orc zombies
A quokka zombie (D:12)
13 rats

 395 creatures vanquished.


Anyways, I thought it was a pretty damn good run.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 12:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

man what is up with that chesscock
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

big screenshot post!

features of the dungeon:


small ecumenical temple, featuring an altar to each of the game's gods.


underground lake.

you and me both, sweetheart. (image contains spoilers for those who have not yet seen invisible.)

this dragon armor tried to kill me. another reason crawl is better than nethack is that the mimics are actually convincing. nethack's mimics have a unique sprite/character that makes them stand right out in just about any store. and if you farlook them the game will describe them as "a mimic". way to give the game away.

for matt: the noble death yak in its native habitat.

"thy liver shall be my victuals!" (welcome to hell.) prediction proved false.

versus hell knights and necromancers in the iron city. (i ran away crying.)

this character earned my highest score by far of 695,566. r.i.p. fable the fencer, level 14 minotaur chaos knight of mahkleb. wielded a +2,+5 long sword of holy wrath and wore he +4 pair of gloves "gugucuwi":
it affects your evasion (+5).
it affects your strength (+3).
it affects your intelligence (+1).
it affects your dexterity (+1).
it makes you susceptible to fire.

131 max hp, 27 max mp, armor class of a whopping 25. mutations: my mind was acute and my digestive system was specialised to digest meat. vanquished 1033 creatures including geryon, francis, josephine, harold, snorg, michael, erolcha, three shapeshifters, three mimics, a dragon, three hell knights, and twenty-seven yaks. plus one death yak.

r.i.p. fable the fencer. (screenshot from moment of death.)
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

shaper has been harassing me about getting sound to work in crawl. supposedly there's a patch to make the game play sounds? supposedly the patch has already been applied to the tile version? i can't figure out how to configure it, though. help?
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 8:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
7. Playing sounds
(Thanks to Ilyak for implementing this feature on Linux.)

(If you compile the game yourself, see the compile notes on how to enable
sounds - sound playing is disabled by default.)

A rather primitive sound-playing feature: the game plays sounds if any of the
messages it displays matches one in a list you define.

To use it, you set 'sound' options in your long-suffering init.txt, like so:

sound = zaps a wand:sound\sounds1\bolt.fire.wav
sound = breathes:sound\sounds1\breathfire.wav
sound = As you .* it creaks loudly!:sound\sounds2\Doorshut.wav
sound = LOW HITPOINT WARNING:sound\sounds2\danger3.wav
sound = This is a scroll of acquirement!:sound\sounds3\joy.wav

Those paths are for Windows; Unix users will want forward slashes, and may also
want to use absolute paths.

If regular expressions were compiled in (the precompiled Windows binary has
regular-expression support), you can use regexes to match against messages,
otherwise you're stuck with the basic '*' and '?' wildcards.

Any message that the game displays that matches one of the 'sound' messages will
play the corresponding sound file.

The path to the sound file may be relative to the current directory or absolute.

Of course, getting suitable sounds may be awkward. Grundman's collection of
Angband sounds is what I use. The main page seems to be down, but the sound zips
still seem to be available at:

http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/angband/Extra/

(sounds1.zip through sounds4.zip).


from travel patch documentation.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, we kind of gave up on the sound thing, but I found an excellent text file. It's labled as a OMG*spoilerz* text file, but seriously, in most other games I would consider this part of an instruction file.

Starting Stats and Modifiers.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I might have to start playing this game. The only other (true) RL I play is NetHack.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

what do the red staircases mean? i died before i could get to one.

finally got above level two however.

edit: a text file listing of all the commands would be helpful too.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

red staircases are rock and grey are stone. there's nothing different between them. (gold staircases link to and from sub-dungeons, though.)

cycle, you should play crawl. yesterday i said to matt, "the only reason to play nethack is for all the geeky in-jokes." and matt said, "yeah, or you could punch yourself in the face." so there you go.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

gotcha. this is seriously addictive.

i made my own key:


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hell yeah, rock the fuck on Dhex. Aside from some archaic commands and some tactics that aren't normally involved in games, Crawl is really hot, and I've tried many PC roguelikes.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex wrote:

Someone who is not lazy like me turn that into a keyboard overlay.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

fuck that!

i leave it running in ifran view in the background along with my mp3 playlist. i think crawl works nicely without sounds.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The plan is working! They're becoming addicted!

Also, more spoilers, although I don't really think they are spoilers (well, not all of them). They're obviously labled, so read at own risk.

R1's Crawl Page

And, the more I learn about the game the more I feel like the majority of fans are living in a time rift. They primarily talk about the game on news groups, they hate graphics (I don't even mean flashy nice graphics, I mean, any), and they have a sick knowledge of computers. It's kind of frightening.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 1:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wish the tile version worked in OSX.

Sad
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.digital-eel.com/13steps/

this seems pretty handy for those starting out.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was just doing really well (apparently my fourth best ever) on picking up a game that I started last night and just couldn't finish because I was so freaking tired. Anyways, so I was doing well, I had just beat two jellies (which started out as one), I'd been playing really defensively, and even had a few mutations in my benefit.... then I decided to read a scroll. When I saw a bunch of little orange suns I knew what had happen: a scroll of explosion. It took about 2/3 of my life away, and then when I make my first step, from just outside my vision a centaur appears and start shooting at me.

Burned to a crisp and hobbling across an open room I make it about three steps before I fall into a smoldering pile of flesh. Why couldn't Xom protect me?
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 7:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The underground lake has convinced me to try it, for some odd reason. Soon, that is.

I'm very bad at this sort of game.
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 7:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Swimmy wrote:
I'm very bad at this sort of game.

Everyone is at first
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 8:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

enemy priests and magicians suck. invisible dude with a sycthe sucks. your ghosts kinda suck too!

also, apparently weapons rise from the grave to kill you as well?

Code:
> As you read the scroll, it crumbles to dust.
> You feel strangely unstable.
> Your surroundings suddenly seem different.
> The giant newt misses you.
> You miss the giant newt.
> The giant newt misses you.
> You kill the giant newt!
> The dwarven war axe hits you!
> You miss the dwarven war axe.
> The dwarven war axe hits you!
> The dwarven war axe hits you!
> You die...


edit: what the hell do you do against unseen horrors?
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex wrote:
edit: what the hell do you do against unseen horrors?


the easy way to deal with them is to be able to see invisible. if you can't, you'll need to employ different tactics.

screenshots!


they're not supposed to do that!


on level 15 i turned a corner and was confronted by this bunch: three unique characters and a vampire, all at the same time!


immediately after killing them i took a few steps and ran into another unique character and a killer clown. killer clowns are not funny.

i survived a crazy amount of close calls this game. here i am being chased by an ice dragon with one hitpoint. my smoke demon managed to kill the dragon the next turn, before it could fire another ice blast at me. here i am with three hitpoints, on fire. next to me are a two-headed ogre and an (invisible) ogre mage. the next turn the fire went out and i fought and killed them. here i am being blasted by demons summoned by the unique character francis. ...i didn't survive this one.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dess, i really want to watch you play this! i can't quite wrap my head around anything past level 5 yet.
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

also, is there any way to sell all these random things i have? i can only buy from shops i've run into so far. i'd love to get rid of all this stuff that's hanging around each time i play, and if i could sell it instead of just tossing it...
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