Brogue

This contest is now over.

Hey everyone, welcome to this weekend's contest! This is our 25th Brogue contest.

The seed for this contest, created from stock market indices and a bit of hocus-pocus, is 201659.

How to compete:

1. The contest begins right now, on Friday August 17th, 2012 at 21:30 UTC (5:30 PM EDT). You can start your game any time after this. The contest is open to anyone.

2. Start a game by control-clicking "New Game" in Brogue v1.6.4 and entering the seed. Verify that the screenshot below matches what you see on your screen.

3. Play through the game. You only get one chance. We are all on the honor system here.

4. Once you are finished, record your score and post the details of your game in this thread. Minimum requirements for consideration include your score, cause of death and lowest level reached. However, the thread is open to all spoilers, so feel free to add screenshots, game recordings, character dumps, strategy tips, etc. You do not need to wait for the end of the contest.

5. The contest will run for 60 hours and ends on Monday August 20th, 2012 at 09:30 UTC (5:30 AM EDT). You must finish your game and post your results by that time to be considered in the contest.

6. As a result of point 4,

PLEASE DO NOT READ THE REST OF THE POSTS IN THIS THREAD UNTIL YOUR RUN IS FINISHED.

As always, honor system.

7. Good luck! Have fun, etc.

Results

13 players competed in this week-end contest. The winner is Cybermg who amassed a bit more gold than tinyrodent and thedrin, who were also very close to ascending. Congratulations!

This seed was fair, with a strong early staff of poison, a +2 mace, intermediate armor, a good number of potions of strength, strong rings of stealth and clairvoyance, etc. However, it was not rich in allies, and several players ended near the amulet level with no good way to handle end-game monsters.

Here is the list of contestants, ordered by score:

Code: Select all

===========  =====  =====  ===================================
Contestant   Score  Depth  Cause of death / Victory
===========  =====  =====  ===================================
Cybermg      30681    27   Killed by a dragon
tinyrodent   29082    25   Killed by a dragon, amulet in hand
thedrin      20579    25   Killed by a phantom, amulet in hand
Nillo        16080    20   Killed by a fury
Box          15869    20   Killed by a violent explosion
Macky         8259    16   Burned to death
boa13         6783    13   Killed by a wraith
Creaphis      5887    12   Killed by a zombie
lintlickerr   5515    17   Killed by a fall
jonathanmcc   1134     6   Killed by a cloud of caustic gas
Drekmyre         ?     4   Killed by a pink jelly
ais523           ?     3   Killed by a spectral blade
FrannyMac        ?     3   Killed by a jackal
===========  =====  =====  ===================================

Died to a spectral blade on level 3. Normally I'd try to retreat to a safe area when a goblin conjurer shows up, but there was a purple gas cloud behind me due to a bloat, and there's only one item that could help escape the situation on the first two levels (the potion of healing, which I'd already quaffed to ID it).

20579: Killed by a phantom on depth 25 with amulet in hand.
Deepest depth reached: 26

Equipment of note:
Staff of lightning [14/14] (11 enchantments)

I don't like relying on a staff of lighting and this run did nothing to change my mind about that.

The big mistake occurred around levels 15-16 when I removed a protected splint mail in favour of a banded mail with an unknown positive enchantment. I left the splint mail in an item stash which included another splint mail that was unprotected. I returned after a couple of levels to get the splint mail back but picked up the wrong one. 3-4 levels later I took two hits of acid and didn't have enough food to go back for the good splint mail.

Diving down began on level 20. This is the first time I've got the amulet with less than 30000 gold.

I really wanted a staff or protection or healing in the first 8 levels because my monkey learned strength sapping but he got taken out by a goblin totem assembly on level 9.

29082 Killed by a dragon on level 25, amulet in hand.

Max depth 27. I just didn't have anything to fight dragons with, my few useful consumables got used up rapidly in the first couple of dragon encounters. I managed to get the amulet and hoped to sneak out, but no such luck. A dragon blocked my path and I decided to read an unidentified scroll - thinking that the bad ones had already been labeled, it must be negation. But it was summon monsters - and I got 2 more dragons surrounding me. Read a scroll of scare monster and they all fled. But then I fell through a trap door and aggravated another dragon on level 27. Picked up a dar priestess on the way out, she did not survive long but distracted the dragon briefly. Up the stairs, hoping to entrance the following dragon and make him fall back to 27 but he barbecued me first.

Early on had a monkey mystic, that was nice. And for a while I had a pack of invisible nagas (thanks to wand of plenty) who were very helpful taking out tentacle horrors. But as usual my allies died quickly. I ran for a long time with a -2 mace until finally settling on a war axe. I saved a recording to review my equipment etc. but it is out of sync. I think by the end I had +7 plate, +7 war axe, +4 staff of firebolt, +3 ring of clairvoyance, +3 ring of transference, +3 staff of discord, +3 staff of entrancement, +2 staff of tunneling. Loads of food but very few other consumables remaining.

Score 6783, killed by a wraith on level 13, due to a poorly managed fight against too many foes (two centaurs, two trolls, the wraith).

I chose the staff of poison [4/4] from the vault on depth 2, since I had no way to check the armors and weapons for curses at that point. By the time I died, I had started to reluctantly and slowly enchant it up to [7/7]. I was still using the +2 mace from level 1, and the splint mail from depth 9, which I had protected.

The vaults on depth 5 were quite the puzzle, even after a potion of detect magic. I chose the ring of stealth from the first vault, thinking it would pair well with the mace and poison. I almost chose the war pike in the same vault, which would have made for an interesting end-game weapon as I can now see with omniscience.

I rescued the ogre from depth 7, which was still with me when I died. On depth 8, after noticing the ring of clairvoyance was +3, and not sure about taking the ring of regeneration, I settled for the former, as a further combo with stealth and mace. Since I had no regeneration, I was careful to have the ogre learn to cast protection from one of the many goblin mystic that haunt those depths.

I did not want to enchant the staff of poison too much, and had not yet found a final plate mail, so I decided to enchant my rings further: I had them both at +5 when I was at depth 13. Overall, the combo worked well, I was notably able to one-shot ogres and trolls with a bit of care. Fighting against aware trolls was harder due to the slow mace, I had to use the wand of slowness and staff of poison against one before I could finally take him down.

On depth 13, there were two trolls guarding a centaur, and a wraith sleeping in the same room. As omniscience shows, a few turns before I arrived there, a team of centaurs had also just entered the room. Fearing my wounded ogres were about to jump in the middle of the pack, I chose to lead the charge. When I saw my mistake, I started retreating. Unfortunately this would leave my protection-casting ogre exposed, so I foolishly tried to cast discord amongst my enemies, way too late. Fatal mistake! I still had scrolls of teleportation, potions of descent, confusion, and speed, so there were several ways I could have survived this (maybe).

Very interesting game, I ended up starving to death for the very first time in a game of Brogue.

After the first few sets of vaults I ended up with some neutral platemail, a +2 mace, ring of clairvoyance and a staff of discord. I feel like I probably could have ended up with a much more cohesive build if I had made better choices in the vaults. As a result, I had virtually no offensive options once I started getting deeper into the dungeon. I only managed to survive as far as I did by expending most of my consumables and blowing 6 enchant scrolls on the plate to stay alive. I spent a lot of time running from Trolls and Wraiths, trying to finder other enemies I could set them off against with the discord. Unfortunately, this lead to my slow starvation. The real killer blow came when an imp stole my mango on Depth 14 Slowly starving to death, and with not a scrap of food in sight, I dived as fast as I could. But of course, this just caused me to blunder through a fire trap. I burned and starved to death not long after reaching Depth 16. I still had 6 scrolls of enchantment, waiting to find something I wanted to invest them in.

Final Score: 8259, Burned to death on Depth 16
(although it should say: starved to death when an imp stole my mango)

ugh - killed by a jackal on level 3! ugh ugh ugh, didn't even bother to note the gold gathered.
Had picked up the staff of poison, but had not even checked anything else out, apart from the strength potions....duh.

I got 5515 points and died on floor 17 from a stupid choice. I was facing a dart trap with low hp and I chose to quaff that potion of descent. Didn't think about the hp hit from the fall. This was a very strong run for me overall. I have yet to reach as low as floor 20.

I invested most of my enhancements into my mace, so combat was pretty easy. The staff of poison was also a nice find, and the ring of stealth. Without that stealth, I probably would have succumbed to a pack of acid blobs (which fortunately never woke up).

Cheers!

Died on level 20 to an explosive bloat. This whole level was a mess, as I ran into a Lich for the first time ever and wasted a lot of resources dealing with Centaurs (still not sure what the best thing to do against them is). I mostly relied on a staff of poison that I got up to level 8 (first time using poison; seems very powerful)and a +3 Waraxe/+3 ring of transference. Anyhwoo, without a doubt my most successful game yet! Final score of 15,869.

Killed by a pink jelly on level 4.


Stupid jellies. This was a hard game... I would have died to goblin conjurors a level up if I hadn't gotten extremely lucky with the potion I tried and got a potion of healing by chance to stay alive.

This run wasn't good to me... and I got super confused by the lack of anything useful. I was still in my basic equipment and I had used the two scrolls of enchantment on a plate mail that I still couldn't wear.

Very bad run... very bad.

Box wrote:wasted a lot of resources dealing with Centaurs (still not sure what the best thing to do against them is)

Stand behind a closed door and the centaur will approach to melee range. Or poison/flame and hide.

16080 - Killed by a fury on level 20.

This was largely a merciful seed, with access to many potions of strength, scrolls of identify and a 4/4 staff of poison. I even had the opportunity to enchant a ring of clairvoyance to high levels after upgrading the staff of poison, which is a rare situation.

There were several difficulty spikes during this run. The first one was on level 10, which contained numerous trolls, ogres and loads of other nasty beasts. I had to consume all of my healing potions to survive that level, but once it was over I managed to descend many more levels without much trouble.

The second difficulty spike was when I found a Vampire on a deeper level, which soon cast Discord on my Pixie ally. I have no idea how my allies survived that fight. I know the Pixie cast negation and discord on my Troll, but somehow, the Troll still had his regeneration power when the fight was over.

Finally, I died on level 20 when I encountered a Lich. This was a somewhat embarrassing situation, because I wasted all of my tunneling charges on the walls surrounding the stairs. I had no idea that those walls could not be tunneled. If it had been possible for me to go through, I probably would have defeated the Lich before it caused a big commotion.

My two most enchanted items were the staff of poison (10/10) and my ring of clairvoyance. I also spent one enchanting scroll on the staff of tunneling and one on a plain broadsword.

Killed by caustic gas on level 6 (1134 gold).
Ran in to a purple bloat on other side of a door and when I went back to the first room it was full (!!!!) of purple gas.
Don't know how that happened.
Anyway, that'll teach me to play while drinking beer.

30681 - Killed by a dragon on level 27.

Fairly by-the-books run, with a few levels that were tricky. First picked up the 4/4 poison from the D:2 vault, knowing that the plate mail was a better choice, but wanting a more interesting poison-based game instead of another plate mail snooze-fest. After picking up the 3/3 firebolt in a later vault, I went back and exchanged the poison for the plate mail. Oh well.

The +2 mace was my weapon early on, and I put my spare enchants into the plate mail. Picked up a ring of transferrence in a vault over regeneration and stealth, knowing that it tends to provide the most marginal help, making liches and golems a lot easier. I put off weapon choice for a while, carrying around a war axe to use with transferrence and a broadsword for sheer damage, but eventually found the +2 axe of confusion in a vault. Fairly mediocre rune, but I figured it would work well with tranferrence, so I stuck with it.

Once I saw my first dragon, I realized I had no real way of dealing with them. Entrancement helped stave them off for a few turns (or to lead them into a pit), and I nearly killed a dragon by discording and slowing it next to a horror, but a lot of the work had to be (riskily) done with my axe. I diagonally swiped a dragon while fire immune, and hacked it to death while it was confused, using a potion of healing in the process since I didn't want to get one-shotted. I found myself in a really bad position between a confused horror and a dragon in a hallway. I stood my ground and kept them confused, burning all of my healing potions in the process, and risking instant death if both of them would stumble toward me and hit me at once (which fortunately didn't happen). Now I found myself with virtually no consumables, entering D:26; I knew I'd have to grab the amulet and run. I found a dar battlemage chained up, and decided to free him, thinking he might give my run a tiny bit more longevity (probably not though, since he'd probably just discord himself on a golem). I go to free the battlemage, SHIT, I fall down a trapdoor into D:27, on a completely wide open level in view of about 3 dragons. I manage to steak around for a couple dozen turns undetected until a couple dragons wake up and fry me. Nothing much could have been done there. I should have really been hammering the search key on D:26 - a trap door can mean instant death on a run like this, and it did.

tinyrodent wrote:

Box wrote:wasted a lot of resources dealing with Centaurs (still not sure what the best thing to do against them is)

Stand behind a closed door and the centaur will approach to melee range. Or poison/flame and hide.

Wow, using closed doors works so well I almost feel bad; thanks!

Nillo wrote:I know the Pixie cast negation and discord on my Troll, but somehow, the Troll still had his regeneration power when the fight was over.

Regeneration isn't an ally power in the usual sense - if a monster "regenerates quickly" all that means is that it has a regen delay of 1 (it gains a point of health every 1 turn) and different monsters have different regen delays. Similarly, if a monster "moves quickly" that means it has a movement delay of 50 instead of 100, if a monster "attacks slowly" it has an action delay of 200 or higher, etc.


Anyways, I died to a zombie on level 12 with 5887 points. My monkey died on level 2 to eels which disheartened me*, and I've only had a couple spare hours all weekend so I didn't really have the time or energy to play well.

I pulled the staff of poison out of the level 2 vault to have an early-game offensive option. Poison is great for shutting down jellies and conjurers, but later on, without firebolt and conjuration to help with the "death by a thousand cuts" strategy, or without a huge food supply, relying on poison to kill monsters is a great way to starve to death. On level 5 I quaffed my first potion of detect magic and chose the ring of stealth out of the first vault for its end-game potential, but I felt lousy about leaving pretty much the entire contents of three vaults untested and planned to return to this floor if I found another ring of stealth or if I found myself low on good gear further down. In particular, I intended to spend one of my extra scrolls of identify on the war pike, since this is the strongest weapon type with a chance of good runics. On depth 10, without any good equipment or allies, I started to feel the pinch and I knew I'd have to return to depth 5 at some point, but I never had the spare food to make the trip. Anyways, boa13 notes that the war pike in that first vault on depth 5 would make "an interesting end-game weapon," which is somewhat of an understatement. That war pike is the absolute best possible weapon that can spawn in Brogue.


* In case losing a monkey ally doesn't seem like such a tragic loss, let me explain myself a bit. Base monkeys do 1-3 damage by default. By the time a monkey from depth 1 reaches depth 7, it'll have had about 4 level ups, meaning that it does 5-7 damage, or an average of 6 per turn. Level 7 in this seed contains a captive ogre, and base ogres do 8-14 damage, or an average of 11 per swing... which is 5.5 per turn. In other words, a depth 1 monkey kicks more ass than a depth 7 ogre, and as they both level up the monkey's advantage only gets stronger and stronger.

I'm not going to make the deadline obviously, but I've decided to try the contest out, so I'll post my results when I'm done.

The contest is now closed, results have been posted above.

Congratulations, Cybermg, for your victory! It was a bit of a close call this time, with tinyrodent right behind you in terms of score.

Sylverone, you did not make the deadline (there has to be a deadline, right? ), but be sure to include your score, it's always interesting to compare, the more the better.

I'm done!
8149 Killed by a pixie on level 14.

It was an okay run, but it started falling apart at the end. I don't feel I did as well as I could have with what was available.

It turns out that the first weapon I wielded was the +2 mace. It worked pretty well, but later I lost its enchantments when I accidentally pressed "A" near some acid blobs...

This game was mostly spent just getting used to Brogue again since I haven't played in a while.

Like boa13 I chose the staff of poison [4] from the first vault, and then the ring of stealth. From the third vault I took transference, but it didn't seem to help me that much, and my feeling is that maybe the regen or clairvoyance would have been more help. Like boa13, I enchanted my staff of poison to 7, and my ring of stealth to +5. Once I had discord [2] I put a couple enchants into it, and it saved me a few times. Notably, I discorded a troll which took care of a patch of sentinels (I had never encountered those before so wasn't sure how to deal with them). I must note with a bit of shame that I actually returned to the vault on level 5, identified the +3 war pike of paralysis, and left it in favor of the ring of stealth; I had already enchanted the ring to +3 and I figured that stealth would go better with poison. I would probably try taking it next time.

One thing I did a lot was waste turns. I can see in the replay that I was perhaps too agressive with my staff of poison, and I ended up doing a lot of backtracking for various reasons.

@Nillo: The tough enemies on level 10 were spawned from statues when you took the key from the altar. I had a really hard time fighting those guys and getting to the vault; used up a few items and a lot of time.

Here's the replay: http://www.filedropper.com/contest25

With the replay, I saw the ring of regeneration was only +1, compared to a +3 ring of stealth, I was quite glad I chose the latter.

I'm always wary when I see a lot of statues around a door key. This time, there was a trap door right next to the key, so I used it to dive as soon as I had the key and saw the statues cracking. I came back to kill the statue monsters, but it's somewhat easier when you know in advance what to expect, and when you not surrounded from all sides.

Nice use of discord against the sentinels, which can be a huge pain if you don't have negation and are not a very heavy hitter.