r/dcss

I just had my best run so far as a minatoar fighter worshipping trog (I made it to swamp:2, 42k points going after my first rune) and I had focused on training axes like the whole run so when I found better weapons than my +1 waraxe of draining, I ignored them cuz the skill level for those weapons were about 40% lower than my axes' skill level. Honestly the axe was doing pretty well but most enemies took a buncha hits to kill so I think might've done better if I had switched weapons sooner and trained them. What should I look for and think about when switching weapons? I'm still kinda new to the game so caveman terms would be appreciated lol

I think Talismans have become one of the most interesting additions to DCSS in recent memory. I've been poring over and updating their wiki pages, analyzing talisman usage data, discussing their design goals with the devs, and, of course, trying to find where they fit in my own games.

I love these things, and it turns out most people agree and are using them very often in their own games.

In this video guide, I rank every talisman from best to worst while explaining when each one shines, why you should (or shouldn't) use it, and which builds get the most value from each.

Let me know what you think of the ranking, especially if you think I've undervalued any of them or that I should be using certain forms more often!

(Timestamps for each talisman - easier to use if you open the link in YouTube)

Hoping that someone can tell me if the following actions provide Uskayaw piety:

Auxiliary attacks (Tengu talon/beak, minotaur horns)

Rending blade attacks

Battlesphere attacks

Self damage from ie chain lightning or static discharge

Also secondary damage from static discharge (does damaging the same enemy twice with the same static discharge spell increment piety 2x as much?)

Detonation Catalyst explosions

Orb of pyromania explosions

Anguish damage

The wiki states:
For each monster you hurt, you will gain piety based on the monster's threat and the % of the monster's max HP you dealt.

hurt_val = 1d3 + sqrt(2 * threat + 2) * (damage dealt)/(monster max HP)^([7])

piety = 10 * log2(1 + (<hurt_val - 5> / 10) )

This piety gain seems tied to taking actions. Many of these effects aren't quite actions so I'm not sure they would proc the piety gain.

Moot point because a herd of death yak got me on Lair 1 (I thought there was one death yak and me and the horde of yak zombies could take it, turned out I wound up stepping into a herd). But on a very low level of the dungeon playing as a kobold stabber I found this bad boy . . . +11 dagger {devious, rF+ rN+ Str+3 Int+2} and I'm wondering if a stabber could actually find anything better than +11 devious for killing even if it's just a dagger?

I took a break from DCSS for a while, and just came back to it. I gotta say, some of the quality of life updates are so nice!

I love the inventory change to have potions and scrolls not count toward your inventory limit. Among other things, it makes throwing and evocations with all the various projectiles and wands far more convenient strategies. And with this change I am far more likely to speculatively pick up armour that almost competes with my current setup but with different resistances, which pushes me to think more carefully about my setup before going into situations. Identify scrolls and curing potions auto sorting to i and c is also very nice. I used to do this manually once I got characters far enough, so I appreciate the automation.

Big props to the devs for this, I'm a huge fan of the updates! Not that these changes help me with my hubris...hey devs, when is that update happening?

[I did it. It was super easy because it wasn't just a big open room.]

[Cleared W:1 and almost died in W:2.]

[Escaped with the orb. 4 runes.]

I've got all the dungeon branches cleared, and this game has just been giving me everything. I'm a MiFi of Gozag, and I've been tabbing my way through most of the game. I haven't done Zot yet, but V4 was really easy.

I have 22 Heal Wounds (somehow) and a few scrolls of Torment. Scrolls of Poison, Blink, Tele, Immolation.

Obviously, I don't want to YASD, but am I overthinking it? Should I just go?

Troll is really not very good at all in the mid game on. There are chance based conditions but the species generally sucks and the aptitudes make it hard and annoying to play. Demonspawn can be utterly broken and when you get a full claws stacks the species is **far** superior to trolls in every single way.

There is not a single thing trolls can do better than Ds with claws. Trolls are worse than Naga in the late game and IMO a complete pain in the ass and "simple" should not be used as a way of saying it's the most chopped species in the game.

If you tell a new player to play TrBe because they're easy they're going to grow to hate the game because of how hard it is past the early game due to a slight possibility they're getting armor. There's only one way to play troll too and that's to charge in unarmored which is always wrong.

Here's my idea : Bring back Death Knight and put DsDK as a simple role. Ds^Yred is busted simple and straightforward and throwing players into the beginner role with backup and damnation is plainly superior than tossing them in as a glassy giant with a severe learning disability.

You can make a guide for a melee Ds,

Train fighting (asterix), train weapon/claws(asterix) train invo(+) and you enter simple difficulty with Yred. No complex skill arrangement required! Works into post S

Edit : good points. ITT simple intermediate advanced is more of a "how easy this class can be played" vs "overall power"

Hey all,

If I'm aiming for shapeshifting in the end-game, are the strength benefits toward unarmed combat/constriction/throwing/encumbrance (shield) worth taking strength over dexterity every level-up, every ring, etc.?

Considering the armour restriction and poor early-game shield options, the dexterity benefits toward dodge/stealth on a pode seem to be the play...

Either way, is there a point at which you have "enough" of one, and transition to stacking the other (str/dex)? What's your strategy?

Thanks!

The way continuous development is done just irks me. I don't care that you are volunteering your time. That doesn't make the negative impacts of the development decisions magically disappear.

This isn't even to mention the crumbling infrastructure that the game used to thrive in. Wiki is years outdated, the community is concentrated in discord which is non searchable so new players cannot locate helpful info via a google search unlike if a reddit thread is made about something, it remains forever and becomes an important gameplay guidestone for new players. The in game help is admirable, but does not even get close to freeing the game from requiring spoilers. There are tons of info that you cannot located in game, especially strategy and tactics info.

There is NO active development towards helping new players, in fact, each update is more and more hostile to them. Every gameplay guide in the community is horribly outdated. Even onei's felid guide is horribly outdated and will kill you in slime if you try to follow it word by word. Onei even has left the community. We have no one making community content at this point (Sorry, but nobody wants to watch a stream of this game Draconius and Particle Face, we want usable guide content.) 8 months ago a video was made about TOME that has 1 million views. I don't think there is a single video on DCSS with more than 100k views.

Things are added (Mahkleb in .32,) that the community as a whole are in agreement is underpowered and boring. Then those things just sit there, as nobody (but challenge players) uses them. Things are then added which don't actually address the communities complaints, but just sail by them like two ships in the night. Wow the marks? Hells flavored destruction? Boring, clunky, and underpowered, and doesn't make the god work. Its just a bandaid. How the hell are you making the HELLFLAME themed god so boring and uninspired?

On the other hand, Kiku and necromancy were ruined in the same update(.29), another legacy feature that has been truncated and lost its former glory. The devs tried a new tweak in EVERY patch since .29, and necro is STILL in a nearly unusable state as a background and kiku is only used in the most niche challenge builds (Felid for one). This is because they are unwilling to admit that the necro rebalance was a MISTAKE. The lack of ability to recognize and correct their own mistakes is a huge reason why the game is losing more and more features and adding incomplete truncated ones in their stead. There is an inability to look and step back a little.

Centaur has been redone I think 4 times at this point, and at NO point did the devs ever think "Maybe making rampage an innate ability just isn't a good idea." and tried something new. Nope, they double down on it. I have seen ONE, ONE person who actually likes playing gale centaur and I'm sure he will be in this comments section.

There needs to be more emphasis on testing and adjusting new gameplay additions rather than just plopping them in and never looking at them ever again besides for band aids. There needs to be some pride in this dev team, pride enough to not allow this shoddy work to remain in the game for so long. You all were SO ready to remove anything from the game that you didn't make yourself, but can't bring yourself to admit some of your additions need to be removed wholesale and retried.

You devs VERY PUBLICALLY have actual PTSD from the fan backlash around 24 and onwards, even banning a guy I literally can't even mention here (He must who not be named) at risk of being banned just because he was a vocal detractor of the dev team. I think that PTSD has made them scared to remove anything from the game.

I know it might be hard as a dev team to look at 100s of hours of work on a feature and just throw that out, but sometimes that is just what needs to be done, and it seems like they don't have the balls to do it. They'll just keep adding piecemeal additions that don't add up to any larger whole.

I want old necromancy back. I want a makhleb that actually feels fun to use. I want more variety in spell lists. I want more variety in what my character can actually do (Tome cough).

Half of the devs are probably just vibe coding with ChatGPT anyways.

I dunno man, this trunk just really is not doing it for me at all. Gale centaur is not interesting or fun at all to me. Everything the race does is done better and in a more interesting way by another archetype.

Take dimensional bullseye and slap it on rampage. Boring and uninspired.

Less damage on rampages when you are taking opportunity attacks. Useless and gets you killed.

More damage on spells if you rampage at someone is fun. Too bad it gets you killed and doesn't synergize with the current spell list very well. Also gets you killed.

Stabbing is boring and unfun and I will never play a stabber again.

IN 80%+ of situations as a gale centaur, it is optimal NOT to use your rampage.

Besides that, I really don't see anything else worth playing for in this trunk..There is a new branch that is just a copy of a weaker one? Cool...Does it feel like meaningful gameplay related development is really slowing down?

I got greaterplayer and now feel absolutely no reason to play the game anymore. Its just a source of frustration and annoyance for me every time I turn it on. No new spells or items or anything to play with. Stagnant.

Also, how are you a decsendant of WIND, that makes NO SENSE. "Distant descendants of the Four Winds, they can stampede swiftly towards enemies in battle and trample entire groups of them backward"

Morgue: https://cbro.berotato.org/morgue/agentchuck/morgue-agentchuck-20260630-040210.txt

Zephyr got a massive buff in trunk. Now it has the "salvo" ability, instead of the speed brand. This means it can shoot at up to 5 targets at full damage at the same time if you have line of sight. So it went from 150% to 500%. This doesn't work if you're 1v1 or in a corridor/killhole. But for groups it's *ridiculous*. You're launching a constant storm of arrows like in an old WuXia movie.

This was the most O-tab run I've had in a long time. Even through Zot for a lot of it was just annihilating swarms of bad guys in a few turns. It was also kind of funny that having it meant I ignored the GC stampede ability for the most part.

It does have the downside that it encourages reckless play and everything you can target can target you back. So you run the risk of taking more damage and effects. But on balance it felt way too strong. Maybe it would be better balanced with a weaker or slower base weapon? Or if the salvo didn't proc every single time.

Playing as a ranged GC is fun. Definitely need to balance out the benefit of stampeding with the risk of running into dangerous situations. I found that it's often better to not stampede until I was sure of what's around. Starting out GCs are surprisingly squishy, so it takes some getting used to. Look forward to trying the other winds.

I ended up with Kiku from a faded altar and it was almost completely useless for a hunter build. The only real use I got was torment resistance and getting Fugue and sometimes charging it up with wretches. Minions just get in your way. Sign of Ruin can be pretty strong for a melee dude, but it doesn't help ranged attackers. I was looking forward to trying a pain branded longbow but by that point I already had Zephyr, so there was no point.