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Welcome to Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup! I've never really done the LP thing before, so hopefully this won't be the absolute worst. As for my DCSS skill level, it's not amazing - I usually manage to reach the Temple, and I've collected two runes once. That's it. Played since before Stone Soup had tiles, still never won. Let's jump right into it!

Here's the species selection screen. As you can see there are a lot of options, some being pretty weird. We're doing a pretty standard one this time though, and picking a Minotaur Berserker. I'll happily take requests for what to try once this run is over, I'm equally terrible at playing all character types.


Background selection. We're a Berserker, which means we start with a god to worship (Trog) and some pretty basic equipment. Trog lets us flip out and go on a rampage when in a pinch, and will later on let us regenerate, summon buddies and gift us weapons. He doesn't like us using magic, and prefers if we burn any spellbooks we find.


Weapon selection. We're getting an axe because it lets us hit several enemies in an arc, which is nice when you're going berserk in the middle of a crowd.


Our first view of the dungeon! That's us standing there with the axe in one hand, next to a trapdoor that leads to a random spot downstairs. We'll try not to use those as they leave us without a guaranteed way back up if things go poorly. Next to that is a pile of potions, but we don't know what they do yet.

On the right you can see our basic stats. The "*....." indicates our piety level with Trog; it's currently pretty basic, and so the only abilities we have from there are to go berserk, burn books or renounce our faith. Below that is our health and magic, which are fairly self-explanatory. AC is Armour Class, and provides damage reduction. EV is Evasion, which gives us a chance to dodge incoming attacks. SH is Shield, our chance to block attacks with a shield, but since we're not carrying one of those it's at 0. XL is our character level, you know how that works, gold is spent in shops. Str is Strength and lets us hit things harder (it also affects to-hit chance with heavier weapons, I think), Int is Intelligence and lets us cast spells more efficiently and Dex is Dexterity which affects our attack speed, evasion rating and to-hit chance. Wp is, of course, Weapon, and Qv is Quiver.


Our starting inventory. Nothing too impressive here.


Our starting skills. Every species has different aptitudes, affecting how quickly they learn the different skills, but everyone is capable of learning anything. I know it used to be a popular gimmick run to get a troll proficient in Necromancy, thus creating what was known as a Death Troll. I don't know exactly what the point was though!


Our current abilities.


Our first enemies! Here we see a goblin and a newt.




Info and flavour text. I'll post these for every new enemy we encounter.



The goblin had an enchanted dagger. Usually I wouldn't go for a dagger on a berserker, but it's +5 which is pretty significant this early on. I'll probably use it until I find something with a brand.



Our axe, for comparison. It's got higher base damage but that's offset by the +5, and it's both slower and less accurate than a dagger.


We pick up our first scroll. As you can see it's not identified yet, so we don't know what it does. Just like the potions we found earlier.




We meet a kobold! Then we kill it.


It's possible to sacrifice fresh corpses to Trog, so we do so. We could've done this with a few of our previous kills too, but I've been playing the nightly builds where that feature's no longer around so I forgot.




We meet and kill a rat.




A ball python. It's not very dangerous, but it can constrict us, limiting our movement. Potentially dangerous if someone else is beating us at the same time.


Constriction in action.




An ooze. Nothing remarkable about it, really. But there's an interesting-looking robe to the north.



The robe grants fire resistance. Should come in handy.




Here we see a hobgoblin, the slightly bigger cousin of the regular goblin. Still no real threat on its own.


A pair of gloves. They're mundane, but still add a point of AC so there's no reason not to take them.


Here's the state of our inventory at the end of the first floor. Still haven't identified any of those potions or scrolls, but we'll get to that fairly soon. I usually go through all the ones I have multiples of by the end of the third floor at the latest.






Second floor immediately introduces us to a couple of new friends. The bat is more annoying than dangerous, fluttering back and forth so it's hard to hit in melee. The adder can potentially be a little bit dangerous since it's venomous, but we take it out without any trouble.


At some point we reached piety level 2 with Trog, getting access to the Trog's Hand power. It's very useful, and I often forget to use it.



We reach level 3, and get to add a point to the stat of our choice. I pick Strength, because we're a brutish minotaur (admittedly a brutish minotaur wielding a tiny dagger, but still). This brings out Strength up to 22.




A giant gecko. More dangerous than a newt, but not by much.


Escape hatches both downwards and upwards. As I said before, these place you in a random spot on the floor they lead to, so they can be risky. Could be useful as an escape route in a pinch, though.





A quokka and a cockroach. Neither is very interesting.


The adder in the previous shot poisoned us. We're not in any danger, but you can tell by the life bar how much damage the poison will do before it wears off.





Our first altar. If we wanted to abandon Trog and worship Elyvilon instead, we could convert here. We won't do that though, I've never gotten the hang of how to play Elyvilon well.


This gecko is asleep, which means a stealthy character can get the drop on it and do bonus damage. Minotaurs are not renowned for their stealth, and it wakes up. Then we kill it.




This is a giant worm. It's pretty slow, but fairly durable compared to what we've seen so far. Still not really dangerous on its own though.



The worm has a friend, so we use our berserk ability and kill them both in quick order. This leaves us exhausted, slowed and hungry; this is a bad state to be in, so we rest up and eat one of the corpses.


This area looked special and I took the picture expecting to meet a unique enemy here, but he didn't turn up. We did gain a level and a point of strength though.





Another altar, this one is dedicated to Xom. Xom is a pretty fun god, in the sense that you never really know what's going to happen next. Most of the time worshipping him means death, but at least it tends to be an amusing death.



We find a magic amulet and try it on. Warding is situational, but never a bad thing.




Our inventory and character screen at the end of the second floor. This seems like a good spot to end the first post, so I'll see you next time!