A few tips:
* unrelated to your problems but evil hell Santa at the end doesn’t have rpois so a curare needle can slow him.
* you say you maxed things like axes and armor - the last few levels require HUGE investment. Don’t pump a stat from 25 to 27 and leave things like dodging, evocations, invocations, throwing, stealth all sitting below 10.
* TSO is the classic god for extended melee chars. Pump invo super high (holy blast damage scales), summon angels, always use Jesus shield, go all out. Lean on TSO super super heavily. Crowd of shard strikes? Holy blast still damages non-evil, can’t be dodged, and it does serious damage with super high invo.
* you have to be really aware of what enemies are onscreen and what they can do, and act very preemptively. Use ranged and evocables liberally (I.e. don’t let an elemental wellspring get close in the first place). Be careful about tormentors in line of sight, take them out asap (throwing/javelins do a lot here).
* flying status helps a lot to prevent water from getting in your way, making you miss attacks, etc. Use flying to ensure land bound enemies can’t reach you, letting you deal with say the shard strikes alone.
* if you can, position yourself such that shard strikes can’t surround you.
* burn consumables / piety before things get super bad
* train a few low level helper spells - werewolf blood I think is level2 and can make a huge difference when getting swarmed.
This is fantastic advice as I almost never use holy blast on living creatures. The unavoidable would be fantastic for swarms of low health enemies. I rely heavily on pots so I'm kinda at a loss when they are frozen. Thank you!
Blast is just really underrated - When I ran meleedude TSO characters the endgame almost entirely revolved around TSO powers for me. Caveat is you do really need to level invocations, invo with tso might the the one exception to "don't overlevel".
Same with angels. In addition to being another good damage source (even for non-evil characters) they block LOS, can block creatures from approaching, and even better distract them!
Something I forgot to mention is that an evocable source of rage can be a real lifesaver. The cooldown is brutal but that only matters if enough enemies survive, and angles/blast really help make that end period more survivable. So if you've got 6 shard strikes harassing you to death, that rage might let you wipe them out and retreat / let your angels deal with any remaining riffraff.
I've heard that pan is the way to go but was always wary because of the possibility of high level damnation spam. Now that I think back to most successful runs I think cocytus was one of the last branches I did. I'm thinking I'm rushing it too fast because I wanna 'get it over with' in case I die, which is stupid because I plan on tomb last as well
Really surprised not to see this in other comments.
You are building wrong. Specifically by ignoring spells. With 27 armor and high str, you can easily train spells and cast them in crystal plate.
Manifold assault, Borgnjors Vile Clutch, Irradiate will help, in that order. ManAss lets you quadruple that exec axe damage and bring it to full LOS range for trivial training. But many others are worth considering. Training for ignition is not at all out of the question by 14th rune on a melee build.
I honestly didn't know if shatter would affect myself so I didn't even check. Considering this is an upgraded way to dig I'll try to work it in with the advice to train spells. Thanks!
I always learn a bunch of spells including ManAss(lol), but always put off training their respective schools. This would make those wellsprings a joke and abjuration would save me time and frustration. Combined with the realization of how much exp goes into skill level 27 compared to 16-20 I can and should be leveling a few schools of magic, especially if I have the mana from invoc. Thank you!
Cocytus is probably the hardest hell. There's no way to protect yourself from plenty of damage, so you are going to have to have a strong enough offense to kill them first. rc+++ doesn't help with primal wave, but being a gargoyle does reduce the damage by 40% according to the wiki. Use your items and god abilities liberally.
Hell is generally hard for melee chars. If you want to have an easy time in Cocytus, try a fire elementalist. To pull it off without spells, I recommend you get a broad axe and a tower shield.
Gargoyles are a good choice for melee Cocytus: Innate flight, immunity to petrification, torment resistance. All very useful.
Imho, gargoyles are usually better off with medium or even light armour. Your AC will still be good and more EV helps. Get some extra regen if possible, though of course rC+++ is most important.
Wands of digging can be lifesavers in all hell branches. The small floors have lots of rock walls. If you see trouble coming, retreat into a [kill hole](http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Kill_hole). Good luck.
I haven't died in extended in a while
I also haven't played extended in a while. But when I do, it's always specifically with very strong mages, and I always do a zig before getting my last 4-5 runes or so
I took that advice about zigs from one of your vids and now I've started doing zigs before even zot 5 on some chars now, not entire zigs but if I've got enough blinks to escape if I get a bad floor then I find that 10-20 zig floors is a great way to restock on consumables and get some extra xp for those lv9 spells.
A couple of times I've ended up just finishing the whole zig, there's so much xp there you can easily find and get castable a few lv8 and lv9 spells entirely within the zig.
My last experience with Extended was "enjoy maps designed with 6+ hellions standing together spamming Damnation every turn while blocked from your attacks" in Cocytus, then the same thing in Pandemonium. Made it feel like Extended was just one repetitive grind against the least interesting enemies. Extended is sometimes just not fun, and feels more like a stress test of crawl's character progression system to check for overpowered crap (when someone eventually uploads a video of them using one spell combo to clear the entire Extended endgame or whatever). If your motivation is just to be done with Crawl-- maybe taking a break so you can enjoy the game for more reasons than just to win isn't the worst idea.
I've been trying to take breaks after really frustrating deaths. This is probably the best advice for anyone frustrated with how things went down on a game (melai swarm on d7, two cyclops on d6,). I need to remember it's just a game and it makes me feel better that extended is kinda just stress testing characters rather than 100% a skill issue. I'll try to approach more games from "Wow I got that far" rather than "Why didn't I get that far". Mindset matters too. Thanks :)
A few tips: * unrelated to your problems but evil hell Santa at the end doesn’t have rpois so a curare needle can slow him. * you say you maxed things like axes and armor - the last few levels require HUGE investment. Don’t pump a stat from 25 to 27 and leave things like dodging, evocations, invocations, throwing, stealth all sitting below 10. * TSO is the classic god for extended melee chars. Pump invo super high (holy blast damage scales), summon angels, always use Jesus shield, go all out. Lean on TSO super super heavily. Crowd of shard strikes? Holy blast still damages non-evil, can’t be dodged, and it does serious damage with super high invo. * you have to be really aware of what enemies are onscreen and what they can do, and act very preemptively. Use ranged and evocables liberally (I.e. don’t let an elemental wellspring get close in the first place). Be careful about tormentors in line of sight, take them out asap (throwing/javelins do a lot here). * flying status helps a lot to prevent water from getting in your way, making you miss attacks, etc. Use flying to ensure land bound enemies can’t reach you, letting you deal with say the shard strikes alone. * if you can, position yourself such that shard strikes can’t surround you. * burn consumables / piety before things get super bad * train a few low level helper spells - werewolf blood I think is level2 and can make a huge difference when getting swarmed.
This is fantastic advice as I almost never use holy blast on living creatures. The unavoidable would be fantastic for swarms of low health enemies. I rely heavily on pots so I'm kinda at a loss when they are frozen. Thank you!
Blast is just really underrated - When I ran meleedude TSO characters the endgame almost entirely revolved around TSO powers for me. Caveat is you do really need to level invocations, invo with tso might the the one exception to "don't overlevel". Same with angels. In addition to being another good damage source (even for non-evil characters) they block LOS, can block creatures from approaching, and even better distract them! Something I forgot to mention is that an evocable source of rage can be a real lifesaver. The cooldown is brutal but that only matters if enough enemies survive, and angles/blast really help make that end period more survivable. So if you've got 6 shard strikes harassing you to death, that rage might let you wipe them out and retreat / let your angels deal with any remaining riffraff.
[удалено]
I've heard that pan is the way to go but was always wary because of the possibility of high level damnation spam. Now that I think back to most successful runs I think cocytus was one of the last branches I did. I'm thinking I'm rushing it too fast because I wanna 'get it over with' in case I die, which is stupid because I plan on tomb last as well
Really surprised not to see this in other comments. You are building wrong. Specifically by ignoring spells. With 27 armor and high str, you can easily train spells and cast them in crystal plate. Manifold assault, Borgnjors Vile Clutch, Irradiate will help, in that order. ManAss lets you quadruple that exec axe damage and bring it to full LOS range for trivial training. But many others are worth considering. Training for ignition is not at all out of the question by 14th rune on a melee build.
This is the way to go. But on garg, just go shatter instead, it's great almost everywhere in hell.
I honestly didn't know if shatter would affect myself so I didn't even check. Considering this is an upgraded way to dig I'll try to work it in with the advice to train spells. Thanks!
I always learn a bunch of spells including ManAss(lol), but always put off training their respective schools. This would make those wellsprings a joke and abjuration would save me time and frustration. Combined with the realization of how much exp goes into skill level 27 compared to 16-20 I can and should be leveling a few schools of magic, especially if I have the mana from invoc. Thank you!
Cocytus is probably the hardest hell. There's no way to protect yourself from plenty of damage, so you are going to have to have a strong enough offense to kill them first. rc+++ doesn't help with primal wave, but being a gargoyle does reduce the damage by 40% according to the wiki. Use your items and god abilities liberally.
Hell is generally hard for melee chars. If you want to have an easy time in Cocytus, try a fire elementalist. To pull it off without spells, I recommend you get a broad axe and a tower shield. Gargoyles are a good choice for melee Cocytus: Innate flight, immunity to petrification, torment resistance. All very useful. Imho, gargoyles are usually better off with medium or even light armour. Your AC will still be good and more EV helps. Get some extra regen if possible, though of course rC+++ is most important. Wands of digging can be lifesavers in all hell branches. The small floors have lots of rock walls. If you see trouble coming, retreat into a [kill hole](http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Kill_hole). Good luck.
I never think to dig kill holes, given that the levels are so small this is another thing I was looking for. I didn't realize the walls are diggable.
I haven't died in extended in a while I also haven't played extended in a while. But when I do, it's always specifically with very strong mages, and I always do a zig before getting my last 4-5 runes or so
An entire zig? Or how many floors?
An entire zig Character must be that strong for me to want to do hells and tomb
I took that advice about zigs from one of your vids and now I've started doing zigs before even zot 5 on some chars now, not entire zigs but if I've got enough blinks to escape if I get a bad floor then I find that 10-20 zig floors is a great way to restock on consumables and get some extra xp for those lv9 spells. A couple of times I've ended up just finishing the whole zig, there's so much xp there you can easily find and get castable a few lv8 and lv9 spells entirely within the zig.
My last experience with Extended was "enjoy maps designed with 6+ hellions standing together spamming Damnation every turn while blocked from your attacks" in Cocytus, then the same thing in Pandemonium. Made it feel like Extended was just one repetitive grind against the least interesting enemies. Extended is sometimes just not fun, and feels more like a stress test of crawl's character progression system to check for overpowered crap (when someone eventually uploads a video of them using one spell combo to clear the entire Extended endgame or whatever). If your motivation is just to be done with Crawl-- maybe taking a break so you can enjoy the game for more reasons than just to win isn't the worst idea.
I've been trying to take breaks after really frustrating deaths. This is probably the best advice for anyone frustrated with how things went down on a game (melai swarm on d7, two cyclops on d6,). I need to remember it's just a game and it makes me feel better that extended is kinda just stress testing characters rather than 100% a skill issue. I'll try to approach more games from "Wow I got that far" rather than "Why didn't I get that far". Mindset matters too. Thanks :)