Dwarf Fortress: Back at It

Day 4. The epic adventure continues tonight!

Will goblins take me down? Unlikely? What can stop me? Nothing. Nothing can stop me.

www.twitch.tv/Robot2600

Minotaur Berzerker and Mummy Summoner of Sif Muna, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

I'm determined to conquer the Lair again in Crawl and to get past the middle game which has been giving me trouble since I started playing Crawl over 2 years ago. This time, I'm playing a Minotaur Berzerker, and Sigmund doesn't stand a chance. This is an awesome class/race combo, and worshiping Trog is always a great idea for melee. The Minotaur has all the aptitudes he needs (+2 Axes, +2 Armor, +2 Fighting) to become a death machine by the end of the lair. The trick is somehow staying alive until Trog can grant you an epic artifact executioner's axe.

I find and destroy my NEStalgia guildmate's ghost. Player ghosts are rarely a match for Berzerk.

However, soon I'd die to poison. A typical death, and annoying. I abandon the Minotaur and try my hand at another Mummy Summoner, eventually worshiping Sif Muna, and the results were:

A pretty easy early game, and I took it slow until finding this altar. Now things could get serious.

Summon Imp Spam on a player ghost.

It's a good thing I summoned some monsters before going down the stairs.

And all I lost was 4 HP :D

I never stop using summon small mammals. It's a cheap way to increase the ranks and protect the monsters that count. It can also be used to quickly position your Mummy in a favourable position before sending out wave after wave of spammed summon.

Narrow passages suck for a summoner.

Sending this Ice Beast into the passage took care of Sonja.

This gnoll sergeant wasn't fucking around; he killed a good number of troops, but he couldn't kill them as fast as I could summon them right back to battle.

This was an epic battle with a Hill Giant and some Yaks. I'd found the "Shadow Creatures" spell, so I was able to summon all sorts of things.

Like these awesome wights.

And some more awesome wights. We eventually won the battle.

But on the next level I died. I honestly can't remember how--I played several games since then and none of them were very exciting. This however, was a disappointing end to a great game. I never found the Lair, which would have made things easier. The Lair is pretty much a ton of free exp, and it has to spawn on level 13 or above. I still feel Mummy Summoner is an awesome class, an will probably continue to be my "main" combination on my quest to retrieve the Orb of Zot.

How to Play Crawl and Other Roguelikes

So you want to play Crawl...

No problem! This guide will walk you through the several easy steps required to play Crawl, Nethack, Rogue, ADOM, and other awesome games.

STEP 1: Download PuTTY (Link to Putty Download Page is here)

PuTTY is a TTY interface--a program designed to send text and symbols between computers. This is how most Roguelikes, including Crawl, are played.

Putty supports both Telnet and SSH, the two most common protocols used for TTY interfaces.

STEP 2: Download mIRC. www.mirc.com

IRC is "Internet Relay Chat" and like TTY it goes way back to the pre-Web days of the internet. mIRC is the most commonly=used program for accessing IRC.

You will need IRC because several of the games--especially Crawl and NetHack, have IRC chatbots which players are meant to use as a database. Additionally, you can chat with other Crawl players, ask questions, recieve guidance, etc. The chatbots annouce all the deaths, so you don't want to miss out on IRC.

STEP 3: Telnet to crawl.akrasiac.org

This is CAO, the North American Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup server. Telnet over and you can create an account, play the game, and watch others play as well. For other games, search the web for the game's website and find it's appropriate server configurations.

STEP 4: Sign on the IRC server irc.freenode.net

In mIRC, type "/server irc.freenode.net" minus the quotations into the chat bar, and you should be connected to the server.

STEP 5: Join ##Crawl, #SR, #8bitcity

You have to join channels on IRC, so go ahead and join ##crawl.

You can join a channel, for example, by typing "/join ##crawl" into the chat bar.

You should also join #SR and #8bitcity to meet up with the other 8bitcity readers and Shrenwold Revenants! You can also join #nethack if that's your poison instead of crawl.

STEP 6: Begin Your Quest!

This is just a quick and dirty guide to getting your ass off of the xbox and onto Crawl. I have several advanced tutorials I'll be working on, such as interacting with the chatbots and playing Crawl successfully. These games are tough, but have fun playing and after a hundred tries or so you'll be getting better! Happy Crawling!

Check out ##Crawl, #nethack, and #8bitcity on irc.freenode.net!

Play Rogue Online Now!

The original UNIX Rogue is now available for play online, free. Rogue is the game that started the cascade of number-driven ASCII worlds over the past 30 years. Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman programmed the game in C, using the then-new curses.h library. They were university students at the time, and Rogue was distributed across university and public networks over the next 30 years as free, open-source software. The creators retain copyright despite open-sourcing their creation.

A new website has appeared: rlgallery.org, the Roguelike Gallery. Currently the site hosts 2 versions of Rogue, with plans to expand. The website hosts the scores of all the players, including online leaderboards and game replays. You can watch others in real-time as they explore the Dungeons of Doom.



Simply SSH to rlgallery.org. You probably need to use a terminal emulator, and I recommend PuTTY, a free Telnet/SSH client. The username is "rodney" and the password is "yendor".

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Telnet and SHH are text-based internet protocols. They are Pre-Web technology, but are still very fun and easy to use.

I encourage all readers to give Rogue a try and set some high scores on rlgallery.org!