Still Living That Dungeon Crawl Life

King of Posters
1

Dungeon Crawl is a traditional roguelike that was made by Linley Henzell around 1997. Linley also made some STGs that were sort of plain and had weird music but I liked them too! Anyway, Linley made his roguelike open source and a VERY active group of developers picked it up in 2006 and renamed it Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and have been working on it ever since.

Now, DCSS has been improved immensely based on a few core design goals that promote meaningful decisions, variability, and clarity. The dev team makes a dozen-odd commits a day. The game has a good looking and, best of all, expressive tileset (that surpasses the original ASCII in readability and information density). And you can play it online, right now, with any HTML5 compatible browser! The servers you connect to pull directly from the live trunk in Github so you can always play the cutting-edge version with the new fixes and features that the dev team is always playing with. Like most traditional roguelikes, there’s a pretty steep learning curve, but it’s a very satisfying game to learn and get better at!

And I finally beat the game!

I had won before offline a few years ago with a lame melee Minotaur, but now I’ve won w/ a squishy Deep Elf Fire Elementalist. It took me a really really long time to learn how to be cautious enough to survive the early game with this type of character. But now I finally have my second win!

Over the past month I really focused on fixed the problems in my play: not taking chances I “know” I’ll win; using consumables when I need to; running from enemies that are too strong; abandoning floors when needed. I was consistently getting to the Lair (which is about midgame) but I kept stalling out there and dying while trying to get runes (of which you need 3, plus the Orb of Zot to win). I sort of mulled over what I was doing and decided I was putting too much experience into things that weren’t directly affecting my chances of surviving.

Playing Crawl well is all about maximizing your survivability. At any given time you have to look at your current skills and equipment and decide what has the biggest chance of killing you, and then play in a way that will best mitigate that (e.g. avoiding dungeon branches that you don’t have the right resists for, leveling up dodging instead of fire damage, ignoring other skills to get the Fire Storm spell castable as soon as possible).

What’s fun about the game is that these needs change dramatically from game to game based on how the dungeon is randomly generated, what enemies you have to fight, and what equipment you find.

Despite putting a fuckton of time into this game, I’ve still not seen a lot of the game has to offer. You only need to collect 3 runes to win the game, but there are a total of 15 runes in any Crawl game that span 25 dungeon branches, 10 of which I’ve not seen before (save for poking my head in a few times). Additionally, there are 26 difference species (some of which play wildly different because of different aptitudes a special racial abilities), 25 different backgrounds (fighters, mages, assassins, etc), and 25 extremely varied gods to worship (gods that help with magic; gods of necromancy; the orc god which turns you into orc jesus and you eventually get to walk on water and raise your orc friends from the dead; a god where you get to fight alongside a ghost of an ancestor; a god that creates a giant storm that follows you around at all times).

Anyway I’m very excited! Hopefully that comes across! Please ask me things about Crawl if you’re interested, because I feel like talking about Crawl right now.

And here’s my “morgue” file for the game, which is a summary of my character and what I did in the game:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.19-a0-812-g33f3bc8 (webtiles) character file.

1629540 Gate88 the Ruinous (level 27, 157/157 HPs)
             Began as a Deep Elf Fire Elementalist on June 27, 2016.
             Was the Champion of Sif Muna.
             Escaped with the Orb
             ... and 3 runes on June 29, 2016!
             
             The game lasted 08:17:34 (85567 turns).

Gate88 the Ruinous (Deep Elf Fire Elementalist)    Turns: 85567, Time: 08:17:35

Health: 157/157    AC: 16    Str: 10    XL:     27
Magic:  48/54      EV: 26    Int: 43    God:    Sif Muna [******]
Gold:   2493       SH: 12    Dex: 15    Spells: 14 memorised, 4 levels left

rFire  . . .      SeeInvis +    b - staff of wizardry
rCold  + + .      Gourm    .    I - +2 robe {Archmagi}
rNeg   + . .      Faith    .    d - +3 buckler {rPois}
rPois  +          Spirit   .    N - +2 helmet {SInv}
rElec  .          Dismiss  .    e - +2 cloak of Absence {rC+ rN+ MR++}
rCorr  .          Reflect  +    Q - +2 pair of gloves
SustAt .          Harm     .    O - +0 pair of boots of Patterns {rPois rC+ SInv}
MR     ++++.                    J - amulet of the Saviour {Reflect +Inv Int+4 SH+4}
Stlth  +++.......               x - ring of Adepn {MP+9 Int+5}
                                m - +5 ring of intelligence

@: very slightly contaminated, deflect missiles, incredibly resistant to hostile
enchantments, fairly stealthy
A: low mp 1
a: Channel Energy, Forget Spell, Renounce Religion, Evoke Invisibility
0: Orb of Zot
}: 3/15 runes: decaying, serpentine, silver


You escaped.
You worshipped Sif Muna.
Sif Muna was exalted by your worship.
You were not hungry.

You visited 10 branches of the dungeon, and saw 50 of its levels.
You visited 1 bazaar.
You also visited: Labyrinth, Sewer and Ice Cave.

You collected 6172 gold pieces.
You spent 3679 gold pieces at shops.

   Skills:
 - Level 12.0 Fighting
 - Level 11.0 Short Blades
 - Level 7.5 Armour
 - Level 19.4 Dodging
 - Level 17.0 Stealth
 - Level 4.3 Shields
 - Level 21.8 Spellcasting
 + Level 26.5 Conjurations
 - Level 13.0 Charms
 - Level 7.2 Necromancy
 - Level 5.0 Translocations
 + Level 26.5 Fire Magic
 - Level 12.0 Invocations
 - Level 6.0 Evocations


You had 4 spell levels left.
You knew the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Iskenderuns Mystic   Conj           ########     0%          4    None
b - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          1%          2    None
c - Sticky Flame          Conj/Fire      ########     0%          4    None
d - Fireball              Conj/Fire      #########.   0%          5    None
e - Bolt of Fire          Conj/Fire      #########.   0%          6    None
f - Ring of Flames        Chrm/Fire      ########..   1%          7    None
g - Orb of Destruction    Conj           #########.   1%          7    None
h - Haste                 Chrm           ########     1%          6    None
i - Fire Storm            Conj/Fire      #########.   1%          9    ##.....
j - Apportation           Tloc           #######...   1%          1    None
m - Deflect Missiles      Chrm/Air       ########..   2%          6    None
p - Passage of Golubria   Tloc           N/A          1%          4    None
r - Regeneration          Chrm/Necr      ########..   1%          3    None
t - Summon Butterflies    Summ           ######..     1%          1    None

My full morgue can be found here: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/Gate88/morgue-Gate88-20160629-013856.txt

6 Likes
2

I’m still playing .16 offline. hadn’t really felt a lot of the latest changes. Play melee usually or hybrids like MfIE. I get to the bottom of lair pretty consistently, though I usually don’t feel safe to really clear it out very often. I don’t know, wide open areas kinda fuck me up no matter what I’m rolling with

3

crawl is by far my favourite ever roguelike after there was a big tgq thread about it back in 2006

I’ve never won

4

An IPhone alt. for crawl, does it exist - Selectors?

Edit: free, duh…

5

Yeah, I’m not very good (like a 1/500 winrate) but the Lair seems to be a sort of check to make sure you’ve been training the right things. If you’re doing hybrids it’s pretty easy to spread your XP out too thinly among your skills making it hard to do enough damage for some of the Lair monsters.

Earlier in the game you can rely on hallways and fighting things one-on-one, but the Lair is like “hey, fight these dudes in the open” and you can only say “okay”.

That said, there are ways to mitgate that. Some Lair floors are more closed than others. If difficult monsters show up on early floors of the Lair (death yaks, hydras) it can be wise to dive deeper and skip that floor and then clear it on the way back up. Early dungeon you want to be training your damage skills (weapon-specific for a melee dude, spell schools for a caster). Once you feel like you’re doing consistently high damage (or if you hit min-delay for your weapon) then you want to switch to defensive skills around the start of the Lair (fighting, dodging, armor, depending on your aptitudes). The swarms of enemies aren’t nearly as scary with a little defensive training. Even a deep elf can survive quite a few rounds of combat with swarms of yaks around them.

Oh, and it’s often wise to save the last floor in a branch for later (especially the Lair). There’s often a big jump in difficulty for the last floor. It might be wise to do a little more of the main dungeon and clear out part of the Orc branch before tackling the end of the Lair.

6

There’s definitely an Android port (don’t think there’s an iOS version), but I can’t imagine it playing very well on a phone either way.

There are a lot of keys which would necessitate big menus, and optimal play often involves manually searching for things with ctrl+f which would be annoying to type on a phone. It would likely take forever to get anywhere meaningful in the game. The game takes a long time to play even on a PC where all the actions are a couple key-presses away.

7

It’s not my fault but sorry about this. Hope you’re okay

8

Well, the question stands, or is answered well enough, anyhow…

10

@r-i usually has some good words about Crawl, and @DewGoddess4_2_0

I stopped playing when I started losing whole days to it, which I think was exacerbated by my strict MiBe axeman auto-tab heavy style (the lamest, but I wanted to see as many branches as possible without putting too much time into minmaxing). Have they added auto-explore to webtiles yet?

11

Do you really want to make this sacrifice?

A thread in which somebody finally gets a win and a bunch of people profess their inexperience is probably not the thread for the stress-riddled wounded doomsayer developer with years of work here to pull out another rant about the atmosphere problems of development or dedicated communities at-large. I’m not really sure I’d have much to reply with beyond using my own source-delving knowledge base…

though perhaps I could comment on the medium instead. how Crawl offers possibly too much automation despite inheriting, growing a heavy knowledge overhead and game length and combat randomness. how this leads to newcomers not learning the technicalities of monster mechanics or terrain tactics or level generation or build min-maxing and to oldhands becoming belligerent and ill-tempered about whatever breaks up ordinary safety-optimal play from particularly divergent level arrangements and monster mechanics or variety-weak low-control sloggy levels.

or I could briefly reflect on the mythy shit I’ve been doing (I’ve been pressuring myself on a lot of fronts, so I didn’t feel comfortable entering the discourse of the appropiation thread) and the next two months of heavy design work I’ve got left to try and fix things I want to fix before I can successfully stop working in something I’ve lost fondness for

or how the very heavy variety in the game (player choices, level chunks, said mechanical overhead) versus the toxic atmospheres kind of makes anybody who stay around just have their souls drain out if they don’t just deliberately leave it on good terms when the game is always still shifting around anyway

see look I’ve brought myself down as expected describing what I’m currently trying to take a break from. if somebody still has their innocence intact because crawl is the main aged bloat-based roguelike that knows how to be less user-hostile and which constantly strives to better itself then I shouldn’t spitefully break that and instead congratulate Gate88 for their first win

and I will continue to muse on those plans of mine to make the mystique of extended less miserable in practice, in the midst of other devs… at the moment, trying out a few big subtle shifts in weapon balance.

12

posting alone about Tales of Maj’eyal itt

Pfffh, you guys are still using potions. Infusions, runes and salves are real 512 bit era tech. Tales of Maj’ewill what Crawl Dungeon’t.

2 Likes
13

maybe instead I should note that a bit past a week ago “level dev” involved a lot of making and quitting naga wizards I nick’d “fear of a queer serpent” as I would visit constant incarnations of the first landmark in a peaceful temple. as part of shoving my hands into the game’s guts and assessing a lot of level variations and monitoring raised min/max/averages of altar counts up a few to compensate for recent years of fresh new rather raw god designs.

it’s not like I can really evoke crawl discussion with those who haven’t sacrificed a hand and cursed themselves in chains

…TOME4 is a bloat nightmare of a million and one starting / skill tree possibilities and it’s not really reasonable to discuss it in comparison as a roguelike, not that you want to. If you want to make dumb flavour arguments, in covering new niches and filling out the possibility spaces and representing more obscurities of worldly mythologies I’ve recently added skeletal star goddesses, bee priestess girls, and a stormy dragon lady.

2 Likes
14

Hi I’m only skimming the topic what are you all-

!!!

2 Likes
15

Hey, I fought the dragon lady in my game! I almost abandoned the swamp for a bit because of her. She took a whole lot of Orbs of Destruction to her stormy dragon face before finally going down.

Still haven’t ran into any smite bees since you added them, though.

16

(also I did eventually watch Tsui Hark’s Green Snake at @u_u 's notation and it inspired me enough in its melodramatics to figure out a set of not-absolutely-terrible idle dialogue with said dragon lady, actually looking for a personality or something like a unique should and which most uniques eschew for a few long-running jokes or a hella lot of bland threats of violence. she’s got more health than most uniques for the sake of actually making her transformation visible?)

2 Likes
18

Oh shit, they can show up in the Lair? That’s scary!

19

If you aren’t writing comments to yourself via : while playing, you’re just not playing Crawl properly.

105152 | Lair:1 | COME ON 105155 | Lair:1 | NEED THE LAST ONE 105156 | Lair:1 | Cast into the Abyss (a distortion unwield) 105157 | Abyss:1 | SUCCESS

143245 | Pan | UNCE UNCE UNCE UNCE 143266 | Pan | Noticed Bybbikh the pandemonium lord 143266 | Pan | *record scratch 143266 | Pan | MAKE SOME NOISE!!!! 143279 | Pan | Killed Bybbikh the pandemonium lord 143428 | Pan | Shame I can only visit Pan Disco once

I was playing a Deep Elf Fire Elementalist, coincidentally! He had Shatter running and I was trying for the banner of getting 6 runes (2 Lair branches, Slime, Abyss, Vaults and Tomb) before entering Depths.

1 Like
20

Crawl is the only good open source game and it is fantastic

1 Like
21

Fuck, I always forget to do this. I will start! That’ll make it much more fun to go through the milestones and get a look at my frame-of-mind at various points of the game.

Like, this previous win I definitely had some close calls and instances of feeling super powerful, but I don’t remember exactly where they were in the run.

22

I bloodpotioned this but I actually think that Wesnoth is pretty good too. It takes a long time to play, though, and you have to get used to accounting for variance and worst case scenarios. It’s actually a pretty tightly designed game. Terrain is super important for balance, so it only really works on the built-in multiplayer-approved maps (stay far away from random!). We used to play a few games on weekends every once in a while in college. Haven’t played it in years, but I think about it occasionally still.