::A Geek in Korea::

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the roguelike I’ve played the most of, released a new version in January 2009. Since I put in the time to learn a lot of the helpful keyboard commands, learning this version was much easier than the last time. There are a few changes, like a simple press of “o” will now auto-explore. The choices and play styles are whelming at first, but I’ve got a handle on it now.

I also had a better idea of the classes I should try to play. Instead of running around trying to cast magic, I went straight to the Mountain Dwarf Fighter. He chops fools up with axes and has tons of armor and hit points to make him very friendly to a newcomer such as myself. I used to die in levels 1-3 consistently, but now I can average level 5-6 every time. I’m consistently making it to the Ecumenical Temple to choose my god, which was something I only saw on my best runs last time.

The game is basically a prolonged battle with a Random Number Generator. Every level, every encounter, and decision you make are determined by what the RNG throws at you. My best run, I got a favorable mutation that gave me a beserker rage, yellow scales on my feet, and made me a total badass in combat. I got the farthest I’ve ever gotten before, nearly clearing out the Orc Mines before I died. I even saw the Elven halls! These places were talked about in threads I used to read about the game, but I actually made it there once!

The new “Vampire” class they added this version plays differently than all the others, and they have great success as Death Knights, which let you raise the dead and fight alongside an army of Zombies and Skeletons. That alone puts me in high spirits to try over and over again to succeed. I might not get the high score with a Vampire Death Knight, but it’s still fun to try.

That game with the favorable mutation now sits at the top of my death high score list, mocking me, almost 7 times higher in points than my next highest game. Even the next highest game is higher than my old scores. If the point system is to believed, I am about 60x times better than I used to be at the game. I certainly felt unstoppable that game. I’ve still never seen an “Orb of Zot”, or gotten to the point of “mid-game” consistently, but I did have fun trying to recreate my success this weekend.