https://crawl.montres.org.uk/morgue/damerell/morgue-damerell-20231015-095442.txt

Won again, using archery for almost the entire game.

My demonspawn mutations were horns (completely useless since I wasn't
meleeing, and removing a hat with {rPois MP+9 Dex+2} - bloody
nuisance), thin skeletal structure (and, while I'm not complaining, I
do wonder why that doesn't make you frail), demonic guardian,
augmentation (handy), and spirit shield.

I started with a hand crossbow and 27 bolts. As such, when Ihp'ix (the
Stoat Soup archer god) turned up in a D:4 Temple I took them... and
then of course had to ration those bolts until some more ammo turned
up. On D:5 I bought a scale mail from an antique shop which turned out
to be +8 {rPois rC++ rCorr Str-3} - pretty nice and this saw a lot of
use not least because rPois and rCorr (and MR) were in pretty short
supply - later in the game I was going between a cloak of MR and one
of poison resistance based on which lack I thought was more likely to
get me killed.

I learned a lot of spells which then didn't see very heavy use (oops),
mostly because they had to compare favourably with shooting two arrows
from Zephyr at whatever was annoying me. Yara's, BVC, Irradiate, Aura
of Abjuration, Cause Fear - all got online, and even Yara's only got
13 casts. Some of that XP could probably have been better spent on
Evocations.

Although there were some hairy moments in Tomb and one very nasty
panlord on the orbrun, the best performing monster was surely the
adder that had me at 4/30 HP on D:2 - but I'd started with a potion of
curing, without which this would not be a YAVP. Psyche Abyssed me on
D:8, and that too could easily have killed me.

After that it was pretty plain sailing for a while, with Ihp'ix
granting a +7 fustibalus of velocity on Lair:6 - demonspawn's Invo
aptitude let me get good divine weapons early, and I'd take Invo to 27
for the duration on Piercing Fire. I'd use that and a buckler for a
while but Ihpixies are almost always going to go two-handed
eventually, and the point came where I'd enchanted up a longbow then
found Zephyr on E:3 (a boon not just for its lethality, but for SInv
which otherwise was being a nuisance).

Snake was hardly any trouble. Swamp:4 got a bit nasty owing to a
spriggan druid - Lernie turned up too but it turned out I could fill
Lernie full of arrows faster than it could walk over to me. Went to
Elf next - irritatingly, hitting a bazaar with almost no
money. Besides Zephyr I found the OCPA (which I did consider using,
but resistances were a struggle and I'd have had to turn off spells
that were making me harder to kill) and a +5 ring mail with {*Drain
rC+ Str+6 Dex+2} (which I did use when the resistance situation was
better for the stat boost).

Hit a Desolation on V:2 - I have never died in one, but I also have
rarely had an entirely comfortable time, and this one got pretty
unpleasant. Around here I was training a lot of Crossbows out of
concern that I'd run out of arrows - which didn't happen, somewhat to
my surprise. (Ihp'ix doesn't grant ammo or change the mulch rate,
although they do stop missiles falling into water or lava - and
Zephyr, of course, does its extra damage by firing more
arrows). Crossbows crosstrains Bows (and Slings) with Ihp'ix, but in
retrospect there was XP to be saved here.

I ducked immediately into Crypt when it turned up on V:4... which was
fine until Mennas showed up on C:3. I left in a very big hurry and
would only return to kill Mennas much later. Finished V:4, went to
Depths - no horrible encompass vault full of caustic shrikes, which
was a nice change. Teleported on V:5, finding a fairly defensible spot
and clearing it without too much trouble. I found the amulet of the
Air here which I'd use but I think that was a mistake - I had other
rElec and Ihp'ix provides some defence against fired missiles and a
lot of defence against thrown ones. However, I had few other good
amulets - but I could have used the one with {MR+ Regen+} and not been
juggling cloaks of MR and rPois.

Cleared the Vestibule, but with rN+++ I thought I might have a crack
at Tomb. By this point I could kill Mennas with a chunk of
consumables, and after buying a stack more went into Tomb. The log
doesn't tell much (it's all "noticed a greater mummy, killed a greater
mummy") but there were nasty moments against the Tomb:2 ambush and in
the corridor of bastards on Tomb:1, and an extended series of
teleports on Tomb:3 to find a defensible spot. This is the first Tomb
run where I made heavy use of tree potions to become immune to torment
- a pity to lose the stats on the body armour, but of course it did
make me into a really giant sack of hitpoints.

With that, it was off to Zot. One OOF on Z:3 went down encouragingly
easily (of course, OOFs are often hard to kill largely because of
their very solid resistances - Zephyr, like IOOD, doesn't care) and
clearing out Z:5 was not too bad except for finding a Zot trap on both
lung entries. I'd blink across on the way in, then teleport on the way
out.

The orbrun was not uneventful - a panlord on Z:4 who hit very hard
(and as a demonspawn, my usual approach of reading holy word and
running away was less attractive). Evaded that one; another panlord on
Z:1 (evaded), two on U:5 (both killed), D:15 (killed), D:10, and
D:8. I don't think I have seen seven panlords on the orbrun before.

What's next? DsFE, says the RNG.