Exasperatingly, I had one death between this win and my last one,
another HaHu who took a bolt of acid from Maurice and didn't panic
hard enough.

I had only 3 unwon gods starting this game: Fedhas, Ely, and Jiyva. I
could easily have gone Ely but Fedhas turned up first. I did not get
as much use out of Fedhas as I should have, which is probably
connected to the reason I nearly died in 6 of the 12 branches visited
and finished the game with 18 fruit in spite of burning it freely on
Zot:5. In particular, I never used ballistomycetes at all - the usual
problem of not using an ability because you have no sense of what it
does...

I also wanted to get a sense of old Fedhas before the 0.24 rework. I
don't know what to do about that now; old Fedhas is highly obnoxious
to use for obvious reasons, but new Fedhas seems a bit of a bland
"piety on kills" affair.

Being a halfling had relatively few consequences except finding an
incredible selection of the two-handed unrands which are too big for a
halfling to wield, reminiscent of how the best way to find a centaur
barding is to be anything but a centaur. The Slings apt was nice but I
ended up also training Crossbows and Long Blades to conserve ammo. I
did have incredible luck with manuals, finding two manuals of Armour
(one just in time to switch to GDS), one of Shields, one of Long
Blades, one of Translocations, and one of Spellcasting, all of which I
wanted to cash.

Lair was the first place I started having to kite stuff like death
yaks I couldn't kill otherwise to oklobs. In particular L:5 had a
vault - no runed door - with an incredible selection of ants and two
entropy weavers who I had to stash on L:4 for later. However,
corroding entropy weakers is very satisfying.

On L:6 I found a +3 hand crossbow with {velocity, +Blink Int+4} which
I used for ages on chaff to conserve ammo, knowing there's a basically
unlimited supply of bolts later. This all got a bit odd when I'd
carefully built up Slings skill and then wasn't using it. I also found
a Book of Battle and would use Shroud of Golubria and Regeneration for
most of the game, except for a while after switching to GDS; I also
found +5 leather armour with {rC++ Int+4} which I'd use for a very
long time. I was hoping to find Ozo's Armour to go with it, but no
joy.

O:2 had a volcano (extremely easy with boots of flying and a load of
iceblast charges) but got pretty hairy with an orc sorc and stone
giant turning up just after killing Josephine and very nearly
collecting me; however, I was able to set up a couple of oklobs
outside the main room of bastards and murder all of them with ease.

I started with Spider but found Asterion on Spider:3 and ran away to
Shoals. This was probably a mistake, both because Shoals was pretty
horrible and because when I did get to Asterion he was not too hard to
kill. In particular I went into an ice cave on Shoals (because I had
rC++ and a scimitar of flaming, it should be fine, right) which turned
out to be the Ice Fiend ice cave; while I berserked down the Ice Fiend
that was at best a desperation move.

Oddly Shoals 4 was mostly fine in spite of the rest of Shoals being
ghastly. Off to Spider, stomping Asterion and setting up another oklob
farm outside the room of bastards on Spider:4.

I went to Elf, clearing E:1 and 2 and finding a shop with gold dragon
scales for 2000 gold. I bought this (especially in the light of just
having found a manual of Armour) but this introduced a bit of
overconfidence and I very nearly got killed after a bad teleport into
the Hall of Blades.

To Vaults, where I found a ring with {MP+9 Str+4 Dex+3}, a lucky find
especially since I was using guardian spirit almost all game (and
barely using any MP except occasionally for Infusion). Sojobo gave me
serious trouble on V:3 but after several runnings-away I got him.

To Depths, where I bought an amulet with {Reflect +Fly rF+ Int+4 SH+4
Stlth+}. Depths:2 was a horrible all-level vault with the most
incredible horde of monsters and I nearly got killed by spriggan
packs; in retrospect I felt bad about not building an oklob farm, but
I could hardly have kited spriggans back to one. I very nearly gained
two experience levels on one dungeon level.

After U:5 I'd just about squeezed out a third pip of MR and went to
clear out E:3, which wasn't so bad and yielded enough gold to buy an
amulet with {RegenMP rElec rF- MR+ Int+2} for swapping on
demand. (Unfortunately, this was not an ideal swap to have later when
fighting an electric golem _and_ two orbs of fire...)

I went to V:5 and teleported, finding a couple of defensible spots and
fighting until things got bad then teleporting again, getting the rune
without too much trouble.

To the Crypt, with the usual horrible curse skull encounter, an odd
vault with a silent spectre that teleports away and releases a horde
of summoners from behind glass, and Wucad Mu's Monastery which I think
I've done once before; the statue was ridiculously easy. C:3 was the
ending with a horde of flying skulls and jiangshi, which is vastly
easier than the usual mob of mummies.

I don't like to stop at 3 runes; I easily had rCorr, and it seemed
like TRJ could be handled with immolation and Portal Projectile. This
was true enough but shining eyes malmulated me with distressing
ease. Ideally I'd have been able to interpose summons and pproj them
to death, but even getting Summon Butterflies up on a halfling in GDS
was going to be a nightmare. (In retrospect, I should have gathered up
brilliance potions just for this.)

To Zot, via buying all the consumables. Z:1 had the "dig for victory"
transporter vault which I left well alone. The rest of Zot was mostly
fine apart from getting frail from an OOF on Z:3 and a nasty curse toe
encounter.

On Z:5 I carefully set up a full circle of oklobs just inside the orb
vault only to find there was a Zot trap on the way into one lung and a
permanent teleport trap into the other, greatly reducing the degree to
which I could kite anything back to it, but I did manage to chew up
one OOF and one alich on it as well as some chaff.

I decided the Zot trap lung was less bad. Here I got two OOFs at once
along with an electric golem. As mentioned, swapping to the amulet
with rElec and rF- was very stupid (I finished the game with 5
resistance potions) and could easily have killed me; this error chewed
up about half my supply of heal wounds before I could teleport away,
and if I'd got a bad teleport I would have died.

The orbrun was quite uneventful except on D:4 where I ran into an Ice
Fiend between me and all the stairs; I holy worded it and ran around
with a wand of digging, only for the digging zap to break through to a
panlord, leaving me trapped in a corridor between them with stone in
the direction I now wanted to go. At this point the Ice Fiend caught
up and tormented me. However, I holy worded again and was able to beat
them; the panlord wasn't particularly dangerous.

Next... Elyvilon or Jiyva?