Welcome to round 2 of Let's Play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
◊ As you might remember last time, the RNG didn't take kindly to Joan and I was stupid enough to try and take the gnolls head on instead of running in the opposite direct. For the record people, it is a legit strategy to run to the next floor if you don't think your odds of surviving a fight are too good.
Anyway, today we're going to be covering stealth. Guess who we have for the job? Nope, Snake retired, remember?
◊ Yeesh, leave the guy alone. No, we're playing the much hotter bishonen dude. Shut up! I can't have been the only person who likes Raiden more than Snake.
Anyway, there's a few races that are exceedingly good at sneaking around, but many of them are gimmicky and I don't quite feel like tackling them yet. Sure, we can play the kitty race (literal kitty, none of this humanoid stuff), the not so sparkly vampire race, the slower than everyone else snake race, the race that doesn't regenerate health naturally, or the vegan race, but nah, we're playing the swimming race that just so happens to be decent at stealth.
◊ I figure it fits since Raiden did a lot of swimming.
Anyway, unlike humans, Merfolk have some actual advantages and disadvantages when it comes to crawling about. For one, the Merfolk can actually swim, unlike every other race, thanks to a nice fishy tail they have. When they're on land, their tail magically morphs into a pair of legs. The Mermaid Dilemma is not averted, however, they keep the scales. They also have a different level of aptitude in certain skills (unlike humans, who are average at everything ever), and I picked them because they just so happen to be good at the three things any stealthy character should be good at: short blades, stabbing, and of course, stealth. The three S's of sneaking.
As for our class, it's the Assassin we're picking this time.
◊ Unlike the fighter, the assassin only comes with a robe, cloak, a nice enchanted dagger, a blowgun, and some sedating darts. The dagger is +2,+2. Now, enchantments in Crawl, the first number is means how much the accuracy is enchanted, and the second number is how much the damage is enchanted. In this case, the dagger is two levels higher in accuracy than a normal dagger and the damage is two levels higher than a regular dagger. Accuracy isn't as important for us since the dagger is a more accurate weapon, being smaller and better fit for dexterity fighters, but we can use every drop of damage we can get.
Our first victim.
◊ Notice the z's above his head? We never got to see those as a fighter since we were too busy making a ton of noise walking around in our clanking armor. In the light white robe that Raiden has on, we can walk about unnoticed. The color of the robe is arbitrary and has no baring on us being seen or not, however it looks awful. I'll be sure to switch it out ASAP.
Anyway, every time you take a step, there's a chance an enemy will hear it. The closer you are to that enemy, the better chance he or she has of hearing you, so it's a bit of a risk and if you can attack them from around a corner, all the better. As you can see here, I screw up my first attempt at a silent assassination.
◊ But more importantly:
The kobold shouted, meaning I need to kill him fast and duck out of the way relatively quickly. It's important to note that in Crawl that shouts only have a set distance that enemies can hear them and that the enemies will only head to the point where something yelled, so they won't magically track you down if you where near the shouter.
Having put some distance between me and that now dead kobold
◊, we find this now very dead newt. Now, why bother with stealth if it's so chancy?
You puncture the helpless giant newt.
You kill the giant newt!
Because of the stab bonus. See, when you strike an incapacitated enemy (sleeping, confused, paralyzed, etc), you get a stab bonus. It counts as a stab regardless of the weapon you have, meaning you stab enemies with maces, swords, polearms, your fist, etc. However, the blunter weapons get less of a stab bonus, while the dagger gets the highest stab bonus. In addition to this, the enemy can't dodge, loses a lot of defense in this state, and the stab effect multiplies, not adds, to your overall attack damage. What does this mean? It means late game bosses can potentially be one hit killed by a well placed dagger strike.
For the record, you still need to be able to fight one on ones pretty decently on your own though because of jerks like this.
◊ This is an alarm trap, step on it and it makes a loud noise. This prick is just out to make people like Raiden cry.
This is a phantom.
◊ It has a tendency to "blink" around a lot, hit you for a decent amount of damage, and not regenerate HP at all. Blink is a spell that causes the caster to land in a random square in sight. For the record, this is a life saver for most wizardy types. Anyway, just stab the phantom.
One death later because I'm not too good at stealth characters and Raiden runs into a slime.
◊ They have some higher defense but it's easy to kill. Just stab it, however, beware, it has a notorious cousin called the Jelly that has caused many Crawlers lots of grief. We'll get to it eventually. Also, I grab a potion and drink it, because it's not a bad idea to do that in Crawl.
This means that it was a potion of restore abilities. These basically put your stats back to their current max. Certain attacks, illnesses, and traps can cause your strength, intelligence, and dexterity to drop temporarily and this potion can be quite handy in the late game to get them back up to par when you're in danger.
This is a giant gecko.
◊ It's another meh starting enemy that appears on the early floors. Trust me, we'll eventually get to the exciting enemies.
Now, about ranged combat.
◊ To access ranged combat, just hit "f" and if you have a suitable method of ranged attack, the game will jump to it immediately. There's various items that count as "missiles", like a needle that you can load in the blowgun. Some missiles need a particular weapon equipped to use effectively, such as arrows to bows or needles to blowguns. Other missiles you just need to throw, like a hand axe, spear, javelin, stones, etc. In this case, we've got a poison needle, which while it doesn't do much damage, can poison enemies it hits. Beware, some enemies have poison resistance and sometimes missiles break upon impact. Me, being as lucky as I am lately, completely miss a sleeping bat and wake it up. Raiden, you suck.
This is a jackal.
◊ These bad boys typically travel in packs and can ruin any wizard's day thanks to the old and proven zerg rush tactic. We are the rest you ask? Just around the corner that I ducked away from, I say. They don't all know my location yet because they were alerted when I wasn't in their view, but they'll spot me soon enough because they'll hear their barking friend.
See that question mark?
◊ It means three possible things: An enemy hasn't seen you yet, is confused, or is running away. In this case, the jackal hasn't seen me yet, so it's time to try out that blowgun again. Bingo, needle hits!
◊ See that purple drop above its tail? That means it's now poisoned. I can literally run away now, it will succumb to the poison and I'll get the experience anyway.
I've been forgetting to mention these. These are just stacks of gold laying about.
◊ They weigh nothing and you'd be a fool not to pick up every bit of change you find. You can later spend them in stores littered about the dungeon, which I might mention work nothing like stores in, say, Angband or Net Hack. More on those when we run into them.
Anyway, time for some scroll identification. As you can see here, we've got a live roach by us.
◊ I also recommend having a piece of unidentified equipment in your pack too. Read each scroll by hitting "r" or clicking on it if you're using the tile version of Crawl (like I am!).
You hear a loud clanging noise!
As you read the scroll, it crumbles to dust.
Please select an item.
...
This is a scroll of identify!
m - a +0 pair of gauntlets
As you read the scroll, it crumbles to dust.
Your items softly glow as they are inspected for curses.
As you read the scroll, it crumbles to dust.
Nothing appears to happen.
Okay, from top to bottom, you've got the scroll of noise which just lets out a loud noise. Absolutely worthless and you can achieve the same effect by yelling if you really need to. The next one is a scroll of identify, which you select one of your items and if it needs identifying, you learn that the scroll is a scroll of identification and identify that item. For the record, you want to do it on a piece of armor, because there's another scroll that has a similar "select an item" choice that appears in the beginning of the game and causes armor to glow, allowing you to identify that scroll. Lastly is the scroll of detect curse, which checks your equipment to see if it's cursed. Cursed equipment just sticks to you like glue until you use a scroll of remove curse. The last scroll, well, we don't know what it is. Sometimes you just can't identify every scroll in one go, but don't worry, we'll get plenty of them in any given run.
Well, gee, ain't that temping.
◊ Alas, as great at the banded mail is as heavy armor, we'll be making quite the storm of noise wearing that, but if we were, say, a fighter, this would be a great start to the game.
For the record, Merfolk are the race that can swim in deep water.
◊ Any race can walk in shallow water, but they'll take a speed penalty. Merfolk traverse all levels of water at the same speed as it walks on land.
Anyway, I hate playing stealth characters in Crawl, it's just not as much fun as charging in and directly implanting my axe in the next enemy's skull, so... Raiden, go get yourself kill, suicide run every single enemy you run into.
Next time? Magic! And a deeper look into skills.
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