Crapknocker

Just a few bits of general advice on playing #FrogComPosBand gleaned from dying over and over and over.

Once you’re deeper than level 30, watch out for summoners. Lots of different monster types can summon on you, which is generally a really bad thing to have happen. Watch out for qulythulgs, as that’s their main jam to summon nasty stuff right on top of you. Bigger demons can summon as well, which can also lead to chain-summoning which can royally ruin your day. Always have a means of escape; teleport scrolls work very well for this. You can also find ways to cast the genocide or mass genocide spells to clear things out, but be aware that for every monster you delete using these methods you lose 1 HP. When the dungeons fill with hundreds of monsters, this might do more than just sting. Also be aware that uniques are resistant to genocide.

Keep out of open areas, for the simple reason that monsters seeing you will begin to attack you. If you’re playing a stealthy class they might not see you until you’re closer or at all, which is highly to your advantage. Whenever you can choose the battlefield and tilt things to your advantage, you should do so. Open areas give the monsters the initiative to start chasing you, and many have very nasty distance attacks like Hell Lances or Mana Storms. Keeping out of sight of summoners can prevent them from summoning on you as well.

Buffing yourself up before a fight is almost always worth it. Potions of Speed, Heroism, Resistance, and temporary armor buffs like Stoneskin can make the difference between having to retreat and heal and sticking out that last turn and killing that tough unique. Eventually you will find a rod of Heroic Speed to hit you with both at once and perhaps save an inventory slot.

Always have a source of healing! Early on you will have to use potions of cure (light, medium, whatever) wounds but towards the midgame those won’t be as effective as you would like them to be. You can search for staffs of cure wounds that can have you back up in a jiffy, but as you go on, you will need to rely on potions and later staffs of Healing unless you have some healing magic to fall back on. Stockpile these potions! Buy them from black markets when you can. In the late game, staffs and rods of Angelic Healing can replace some of these needs, but having potions as your backup is a zero fail method you can always depend on. Potions do give you nutrition, so if you’re planning on chugging a bunch of potions, you may want to come on an empty stomach, as being Gorged slows you down significantly.

Always have a source of detection! Knowing what’s coming and how to deal with it is paramount. If there’s a tough unique up ahead, you would definitely rather know about it rather than just blindly getting ambushed. Furthermore, knowing the layout of the dungeon around you is helpful for the same reason. Taking a quick sprint across two tiles is much safer than walking up to that big summoning monster and just hoping they don’t get too many shots in before you get there. In the early game you will have to find or buy rods or staffs of Detect Monsters, scrolls of Magic Mapping and Detect Traps, but towards the midgame you will replace all these with rods of Detection, which rolls a bunch of useful things into one (monsters, traps, items, stairways). You will also find staffs of Clairvoyance later on to help map the terrain and light things up for you. You can also use potions of Enlightenment on levels you think will be tough to find out the whole layout at once.

Ideally, here’s how a battle against a difficult enemy would go: you use your rods or staffs or whatever to detect the enemy far off in the distance. You do a little magic mapping to see the terrain. You choose the best possible approach, one that keeps you out of line-of-sight until you’re right next to them. You buff up before you engage. Then you hit them until they drop all that delicious loot.

What actually happens in practice is that there’s some element you’ve forgotten or something unexpected occurs. For example, just out of range of your initial detection radius could be another difficult enemy that wakes up when you’re fighting the first, putting you at more of a disadvantage. The enemy could escape or even steal something of yours before running away. Enemies can also buff themselves with berserk rages and globes of invulnerability and the like. Some enemies can dispel your precious buffs or suck the charges from your wands, rods, and staves. One of your potions of speed might shatter after an enemy’s elemental attack, causing that enemy to be much faster than you were originally estimating.

You can always ‘l’ook at a monster and hit r to recall information you know about it. If you’ve seen that type of enemy before, you might know what it resists, what it’s immune to, it’s speed, it’s HP, lots of different information. This is invaluable, and you can turn on the ability to remember this info between characters in the settings. There’s a billion kinds of enemies, so having this info around can keep you out of the frying pan just a little while longer.

One last thing, don’t rush. The game doesn’t do anything on its own until you press a button to move or act. Take time to pay attention to what enemies are around you and what they might do in the next few turns. Other games may have conditioned you to push buttons quickly to get yourself out of danger, but doing this only gives enemies more turns to act while you might not be noticing what they’re doing. It’s tempting to start smashing the move buttons after an enemy gets you down to half health in one round, but acting without thinking, especially in the lower depths of the dungeon, will get you killed. If you get in a tough spot, think over your options before doing anything. Teleporting out is usually safe, unless there’s a big enemy you’ve passed by that’s awake somewhere else on the level that you might accidentally end up next to. Staffs and rods have a chance to fail and if you do in the midst of combat, the round you spent trying might be your last one. Keep low or no-fail options like scrolls or potions in your inventory as well.

Level feelings

I’ve you’ve been playing the game, you’ve probably noticed a message pop up, something like, “This level looks relatively safe.” This is the level feeling and can give you an idea of what’s waiting for you out there in the rest of the level you’re on. The color of the level indicator in the lower left of the main screen will change depending on what message you get. This only applies to the level you’re currently on, if you to a new level in a dungeon you’ll need to wait a bit there until you get a new feeling.

The level feeling takes around a hundred turns to pop up. But once it does there are several useful things you can take away from it that might change how you play the level. Possibly the best one is “There is something special about this level.” in a baby blue color. This means that somewhere on the level is an artifact, just waiting to be picked up. Depending on the level you’re on, this could be a huge find.

There are a few levels of messages that indicate how difficult the enemies you will be facing on the level are. The first, in light brown is something like, “You’re feeling nervous.” In the early levels (0-20), this probably means there’s a unique monster somewhere on the level. Next is, “You have a bad feeling about this level” in dark brown. That means there’s more difficult enemies waiting for you, probably still a unique or a few out of depth monsters waiting for you. The next level is in orange text and I can’t remember the message. The final one that I’ve seen is in dark red, indicating that there’s something extremely dangerous out there. Probably a vault or a bunch of out of depth monsters.

Line of sight

You’ve probably noticed that enemies don’t start firing distance attacks at you until they see you. There are a few ways to keep out of sight of monsters but still cause damage to them. The first is by using a rod, wand, or ammunition of exploding to fire an area of effect spell that hits the monster without you being in its line of sight. This becomes extremely useful when dealing with enemies like qulythulgs and druj (drujes?) that are immobile but can cause all sorts of problems for you if they see you. If you can avoid being seen by these guys and have enough charges or ammo, you can safely kill them from out of sight without them being able to do anything about it.

Personalities

These are options in character creation that can add some additional wrinkles to your run. A few of the easiest ones to ‘get’ are the Combat and Mighty personalities. They are trading your int and wis for additional strength, dex and con. If you’re planning a warrior-type, these can give you some extra early game oomph at the cost of higher device and spell failures in the lategame. On the flipside, there is Crafty or Shrewd, which somewhat does the opposite of the previous two mentioned.

Some of the wackier choices are Unlucky, which gives you a boost to all your stats, but makes it harder to get good drops, occasionally makes you miss in combat and gives you higher spell and device fail rates. The opposite of this is Lucky.

Sexy gives you a boost to a few stats but gives you inherent aggravation, which causes enemies to instantly wake up on level generation. This puts you at a serious disadvantage to start with, but can be mitigated a few different ways. And you can wear items that aggravate since you have it already.

The in-game help has good descriptions of how each of the different ones work, so check through the list and see if one might make an interesting twist on your character.