I'm pleased to have got this TeAE home after scoring my first ever Zot
death on one. I got the Coctyus rune for the first time ever, but
after that decided to play it safe and not try for more.

I took Ash because they were one of the few gods I haven't won, but
they worked out nicely, with the skill boost combined with tengu apts
letting me get Dodging, Conjurations, and Air to 27, Shields and
Evocations to 25, and Fighting to 22, with lots of XP left for other
skills. I was lucky with items like the ring of Robustness, but not
many characters can both cast a level 9 spell and have 39/44/35
defences.

However, I did struggle badly before the skill boost kicked in (and
because the Temple was on D:7, that took a while) and could easily
have died in the early game.

In previous attempts I looked into enhancer staff melee, which I'd had
always had a general understanding was bad. To my surprise, it's not
(provided you were planning to train the spell school anyway and can
find a use for 10ish Evocations) - fsim showed a staff of air would
considerably outclass other weapons on TeAE on non-resistant targets,
and of course the enhancer is valuable.

(We plan to give all magical staves some sort of melee-related bonus
in Stoat Soup, but I try not to make changes that might help out the
combo I'm trying to win; now I've won this one I can go ahead with
that.)

The Zot splat used a staff of air and robe of the Archmagi for good
melee damage and huge spellpower. I expected to do the same
here... but first I found the robe of Augmentation, then it took me
forever to find a staff of air and shortly afterwards I found the
Elemental Staff.

As mentioned the early game was pretty bad, especially with Joseph
turning up on D:7 and Harold on D:8 leaving me wondering if I was just
choosing who to be killed by. I struggled with centaurs and yaks on
D:10 and then went in a volcano on Lair:1 which I only survived
because of tengu flight letting me scrape monsters off on the lava.

On Lair:2 Ash's skill boost kicked in and from there, apart from
nearly getting collected by Urug, things got easier. I learned Shroud
of Golubria and Regeneration and of course it's very easy with Ash to
use low-level utility spells with minimal skill investment; I'd turn
off Shroud later when I wanted the MP more than the now relatively
small effective HP boost.

D:15 had an ice cave which gave me Freezing Cloud, which was amazingly
useful. It also had a piety trove which I agonised over for a bit
before going in. This worked out OK, netting 8 potions of heal wounds
and some haste and resistance potions; I used some heal wounds as I
got the skill boost back and built piety up, but I still came out well
ahead. It was a bit irritating to learn Freezing Cloud and almost
immediately be unable to use it, though.

I stuck my nose into Snake but it had a horrible crowd on the
entrance, so I went to Swamp; this was fine apart from one
miscalculated move letting me take a hit from a titanic slime creature
(which couldn't _quite_ have killed me, so OK, I guess?)

Snake likewise was fine apart from one bad run-in with a naga
sharpshooter. I returned to D:15 to clear up a runed door vault which
I thought I'd now be able to handle, but that got a bit hairy too.

I went to Elf where I got a wizlab, Iskenderun's Mystic Tower, which
gave me Isk's Battlesphere (which I'd use steadily until I started to
use Tornado) and Orb of Destruction which also was very useful.

Elf:3 gave me Blink (which I never used, having loads of scrolls, but
it's nice to have), the robe of Augmentation, and an amulet with
{Faith MR+ Str+4 Dex+4}. Stoat Soup has the bcrawl Ash rework where
cursing items is free but uncursing them costs piety, and of course
I'd thrown away a lot of piety on the trove, but even so I expected to
get more use from the stat boosts than from the faith. Not so - I
found more potential equipment swaps than I expected and wanted the
extra piety.

I went to Vaults, hitting a Desolation of Salt. I've been in a few
before; never died, but never had a good time. This one was very easy
by comparison - I got to one of the buildings, cleared it out, and
then could just tackle the rest of the level without trouble. V:3 also
had Mennas, who is always scary; however, I got a good result from a
scroll of summoning and killed him that way.

So far I'd been using a trident which I'd enchanted up and branded
because if I was planning to use a staff of air, there was no point in
saving scrolls of enchant weapon for an endgame weapon, and it would
help me stay alive. All very well, but the staff had noticeably failed
to appear (I'd had high hopes of getting one on Elf:3) and now I was
stuck using a weapon with a bad base type, even if it was +8 freezing.

I had plenty of gold so bought two unidentified randart weapons in
shops - a +8 scimitar with {slice, +Fly Int+2} which looked pretty
good until the other one turned out to be a +12 morningstar with
{crush, +Fly rC+}. I went off to Depths with that; no sooner had I
finished transferring knowledge of Polearms to Maces and Flails than 3
scrolls of acquirement turned up, giving me the staff of air. U:4 also
had Deflect Missiles, the ring of Robustness, and...

... the vault with the Elemental Staff. Was this worth it? It would
mean training a lot of Evocations, but Evocations is good anyway; it's
less good on non-rElec targets, but not a lot, and it's a lot better
on targets who do have rElec. Also, I could really use the AC and
resistances; it also let me swap out another MR+ item for something
better. I decided to use it.

After clearing Depths I went to Crypt. As usual, I had one unpleasant
curse skull encounter (these very much come down to whether it gets a
summon in the way of the orb of destruction or not); the C:3 ending
with Khufu was easy by comparison. Here I got a ring with {*Contam
rElec rN+ Int+6 Stlth+} which I decided was worth wearing for the
extra Int.

V:5 was next. By now I had Tornado online so came down the stairs and
dropped that, moving into a defensible spot. This worked fine, but V:5
didn't really have anything interesting (except the rune, and a +1 helmet
with {rPois rN+ Str+7 Stlth-} which would have been lovely if tengu
could wear helmets...).

I tend not to stop at 3 runes these days and quite fancied trying for
one I'd never had; it seemed like Cocytus might be feasible. Geryon
was a pushover along with the rest of the Vestibule... apart from a
curse skull (not Murray) that gave me serious problems.

Cocytus was fine until Coc:7. Maddeningly, a hell effect gave me
enough Contam for blurry vision 1, which was not quite bad enough to
mutroulette out but bad enough to be seriously worrying. Coc:7 had
enough Ice Fiends and tormentors to be distinctly not-fine until I
realised that on a level full of water, it was worth bringing along a
wand of flame - it doesn't do them any damage, but it blocks LOS on
demand.

After that I could clear them out, killing Antaeus with the aid of two
phantom mirrors. I also got the Serpent of Hell, but it was easy by
comparison.

To Zot! Zot 1-3 was mostly fine, almost entirely made of draconian
packs that are easy to mash up with Tornado. Z:4 had an awkward vault
with all 3 downstairs; I found myself in a situation where I knew
there was an OOF and a curse toe (and some other bad stuff) in there,
but not where they were. Even with Ash's monster-vision, they both
turned up at once and the curse toe tormented me (could be worse; it
did so one turn before I nailed the OOF, but I had to use up a potion
of haste and one of magic, both of which I was short of.)

This started a pattern where OOFs always malmutated me instead of just
setting me on fire. I didn't even take any damage off two OOFs this
game. This was nice in a way but also slightly exasperating; my
previous Zot death was caused by not having enough rF and getting
burned to death by an OOF, and now I had rF++ and resistance potions
to spare so of course they weren't even trying fire attacks.

This one gave me dopey and teleportitis. This with blurry vision was
bad enough to mutroulette out, giving me AC +2 and robust, which I
wasn't complaining about.

Z:5 was mostly OK with Ash's monster-vision and OOFs' curious
reluctance to do me any damage. One gave me clumsy (who cares?) and
one gave me low potion healing (kind of annoying since for once I had
a large reserve of heal wounds). A final OOF turned up wandering just
as I collected the Orb, but I read fog and ran away.

I had a panlord on Z:3 but used teleport and my last fog to block LOS
until it kicked in; another panlord on Z:1 which I holy worded and ran
away from; and a final panlord on D:4 which I holy worded and dropped
hell beasts on (which killed it, but I really only wanted them to
stand in the way.)