I'm not going to play in the tournament, but I am going to try and properly get into the game in the next week or so. Having ascended 4 times now in Nethack, my once lofty goal of ascending as every class is looking a tad tedious. I'm sure I'll do it one day, but another roguelike is definitely needed...

Sweet. Do you play ASCII or tiles? If you play ASCII, might as well play in the tournament as there are plenty of newbies in it.

I'm up to 6 game winning streak and have yet to lose a game in 0.5.0 ... 1 more win and I will tie for 2nd longest Crawl streak of all time. Unfortunately, the #1 streak will be very hard to beat, but I'll give it a go if I get there.

man that is just insane. i've played maybe 50 games now with 1 rune between them.

1 rune in first 50 games is not bad at all fwiw. After I got my first rune, I improved rapidly.

Tournament is going well. I took 2nd in the "first win competition" by playing 4:19 straight of Crawl at maximum speed. Grivan took 2nd in the first all-rune win competition. Our team(FirstName) has a pretty big lead for now over last year's runaway juggernaut:

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/tourney09/overview.html

Creampie, the gray elven druid, saved the world with his brave efforts and
became a great ruler while saving himself 6 times.
He scored 17390848 points and advanced to level 42.
He survived for 0 years, 113 days, 14 hours, 49 minutes and 16 seconds
(165594 turns).
Creampie visited 108 places.
His strength score was modified by +12 during his career.
His learning score was modified by +11 during his career.
His willpower score was modified by +16 during his career.
His dexterity score was modified by -3 during his career.
His toughness score was modified by +29 during his career.
His charisma score was modified by +10 during his career.
His appearance score was modified by +2 during his career.
His mana score was modified by +12 during his career.
His perception score was modified by +5 during his career.
He was unnaturally aged by 52 years.
He was the champion of the arena.
He was a member of the thieves guild.
He adhered to the principles of the Cat Lord and thus rose to great fame.
He saved Khelavaster from certain death.
He left the Drakalor Chain after completing his quest and became a great
leader and famous hero.
4565 monsters perished under his attacks.

So sick, I read this thread like 2 weeks ago and decided to get back into ADOM, then got my first legit win. I ran really good, was down to 1hp once and nearly died three other times. This is seriously like the greatest day in my gaming career, even though the game isn't that bad once you learn all the best scumming techniques - I really only scummed herbs in this game which is considered pretty legit by most though.

Fate smiles upon you is largely responsible for the 1 hp thing. Good work winning though, I never got the cat ring before (I came very close once and then did something stupid like two levels before the cat lord.) Herbs are a huge part of my strategy for that game; morgia and moss of mareilon are so useful in the early game and stomafillia and spenseweed great later on. If I'm playing a class that has neither herbalism nor healing I will frequently opt to take the herbalism quest, which I think is pretty non-standard.

I'm also surprised you finished the game on only level 42; did you employ an endgame strategy that did not involve killing everything on D:50? I've never had a character make it to D:50 that didn't have a pretty easy time with everything down there, but it might be different in post 1.0.0 games.

I routinely finished ADOM in low 30s XL and never reached XL50 in ~8 wins. I would generally just skip post-TOEF level except Casino & Cat Lord and dive straight to temples and use teleport hopping+wands of destruction on D:50(too boring to bother killing everything).

Man, I would have thought killing orb guardians alone would get most characters to 40+. Maybe you had a lot higher speed than I typically have. But I can see how diving might do it, as oftentimes I get to 50 from clearing a greater vault in that lower part of the dungeon.

The Casino was probably the scummiest part of my game, as I'd always just use a blessed girdle of wealth to rack up enough gold in a single game turn to clean out the gift shop of any artifacts, slaying ammo, girdles of giant strength, corruption removers, etc. I'm assuming making the slot machines hugely +EV was intentional to encourage people to play a bunch and eat a few corruptions but the possibility of playing thousands of spins on one game turn renders that meaningless, unless you're more honorable than I.

You don't need to kill many monsters in the air or earth temples. The mana temple can be annoying... it helps to wake up the archmage with a wand of farslaying and then wait in the corridor for him to come out.

Does anyone else think this is a bit of a ridiculous situation to teleport into? I'm new to the game, but how ****ing often does this **** happen? I already opened this crazy room full of oozes and jellies, fought them off with a rage, teleported into this when I got low.

Believe it or not, but I managed to teleport out of this into another collection of monsters that I could put in a corridor and raged and mowed them down, lived on 4hp.

I can't tell wtf is going on in any tiles screenshot, but yeah that looks like an excessive number of monsters.

FYI, you should have much better AC by XL 9 if you don't want to get creamed. Wear heavy armour(* mails mostly) ASAP as a Minotaur Berserker or any other character that doesn't use spells.

What's the comparison between AC and EV? Is AC better?

AC is better point for point by a wide margin. However, it interferes heavily with spellcasting, so there is a tradeoff. Anytime you're not spellcasting, you should just wear the heaviest armour you can find(check the ev penalty).

For those that have ascended, did you rely on strategy info you read elsewhere? I've read that it is thought to be impossible to beat the game without outside information.

To a large extent; Wikihack is the source I used. With that said, I used wikihack far more to learn what all the different things in the game meant rather than how to use them effectively.

<Henzell> Jeff has 10 consecutive wins (HuAr, MDDK, HOPr, MiBe, DDCK, MfCr, CePa, HEAE, DSFi, SpEn).

117. Jeff the Ruinous (L1 DECj), succumbed to poison on D:1 on 2009-09-15, with 35 points after 159 turns and 0:01:32

My 10 game (Crawl) streak finally ended. I used an additional restriction that I wouldn't repeat any race or class. Pleased to have 2nd longest streak of all time, but a ****ty way to end it.

i've been playing crawl semi-regularly since discovering it in this thread, is anyone else playing?

any interest in all playing the same race/class combo for one game, and reporting back? I'm kind of curious to see other approaches to building the same character. Then maybe the winner picks the next one? Maybe over a month period or so.

DCSS, AKA Crawl, is still a thing. I come back to it every few years, and don't bother with offline anymore. They recently had their 0.19 tournament, and devs are starting in on some serious changes to 0.20 (most of which I dislike, strongly). I splatted a MfSu with 6 runes a month ago, and rage quit, but I'm starting up again.

My only two wins, four years apart:

[14:27] <ddubois> !lg ddubois win 1
[14:27] <Sequell> 1/2. ddubois the Conqueror (L27 MiGl of Zin), escaped with the Orb and 15 runes on 2012-09-07 07:01:34, with 9143079 points after 187735 turns and 22:44:20.
[14:27] <ddubois> !lg ddubois win 2
[14:27] <Sequell> 2. ddubois the Slayer (L27 KoBe of Dithmenos), escaped with the Orb and 3 runes on 2016-12-06 05:03:38, with 1502063 points after 103487 turns and 14:44:48.

I also heard that they finally released a new version of Nethack after like 10 years, but haven't checked it out. Frankly, I doubt that game has held up, especially compared to roguelikes like DCSS that have been under constant development during that time, and are so much more streamlined and so much less spoilerly.