Vacation in the Shaols

Today I had the chance to visit the Shoals - the entrance was in the Lair
and I was on a winning streak with my deep dwarf artificers follower of Elyvilon

As you can see this level has pretty colors and a whole new design - I don't know who has done the graphics for the Shaols, but it is really great looking, water especially - it somehow remind me of Wesnoth.

Some tips - as an artificer being a deep dwarf has many benefits - because the character starts with 2 wands (because of the class) and 1 wand of healing because of the race.

Deep dwarf don't heal naturally, so the healing wand is very important - at least at the beginning, but once my character started to follow Elyvilon - and has 2 stars I could use the 'ab' feature and heal myself.

Now the only thing that is still troublesome is not having an Amulet of the Gourmand (yep French in the text) - otherwise armor class is pretty good, and  I specialized in the axe and mace - prioritizing the invocations to at least 70% until it reach level 15 or more.

I also had an unfortunate visit to the maze - here also the graphics are pretty nice and colorful.

Crawl - dcss

This above was my first discovery of the game crawl (back in July 2014) - a text based rogue like game, since then ... I've discovered the graphical version (see below) and I'm sorry to say I've been addicted to this game, ever since...

So far that's how many characters I've played :
  33 Troll Healer
  32 Vine Stalker Monk
  25 Human Berserker
  24 Gargoyle Fighter
  13 Troll Hunter
   9 Troll Berserker
   6 Kobold Arcane Marksman
   5 Ogre Berserker
   5 Gargoyle Monk
   4 Troll Monk
   4 Spriggan Warper
   4 Mummy Wizard
   4 Gargoyle Wizard
   4 Gargoyle Hunter
   4 Deep Elf Wizard
   4 Deep Dwarf Hunter
   3 Vine Stalker Necromancer
   3 Troll Wizard
   3 Spriggan Conjurer
   3 Spriggan Air Elementalist
   3 Mummy Summoner
   3 Minotaur Hunter
   3 Formicid Fighter
   3 Deep Dwarf Healer
   2 Vine Stalker Air Elementalist
   2 Spriggan Venom Mage
   2 Minotaur Healer
   2 Minotaur Berserker
   2 Kobold Summoner
   2 Kobold Assassin
   2 Hill Orc Summoner
   2 Hill Orc Healer
   2 High Elf Wizard
   2 Formicid Earth Elementalist
   2 Draconian Wizard
   2 Deep Dwarf Artificer
   1 Yellow Draconian Venom Mage
   1 Vine Stalker Conjurer
   1 Troll Fighter
   1 Tengu Air Elementalist
   1 Spriggan Wizard
   1 Spriggan Ice Elementalist
   1 Spriggan Hunter
   1 Spriggan Healer
   1 Ogre Wizard
   1 Mummy Necromancer
   1 Minotaur Fighter
   1 Minotaur Death Knight
   1 Kobold Ice Elementalist
   1 Kobold Hunter
   1 Kobold Fire Elementalist
   1 Human Wizard
   1 Human Fire Elementalist
   1 Human Death Knight
   1 Hill Orc Fighter
   1 High Elf Warper
   1 Halfling Hunter
   1 Gargoyle Summoner
   1 Gargoyle Gladiator
   1 Gargoyle Fire Elementalist
   1 Formicid Hunter
   1 Formicid Healer
   1 Felid Healer
   1 Felid Conjurer
   1 Draconian Warper
   1 Draconian Wanderer
   1 Draconian Venom Mage
   1 Draconian Healer
   1 Draconian Berserker
   1 Draconian Abyssal Knight
   1 Demigod Fire Elementalist
   1 Deep Elf Conjurer
   1 Deep Elf Air Elementalist
   1 Deep Dwarf Warper
   1 Centaur Hunter

Which is ... 267 dead characters - and I'm still "mid game" (I have reached level 15 and seen the entrance to the vault or the depths) - like I said in a previous post my best luck was a gargoyle hunter follower of Elyvilon - because of the resistance to poison, and a good skill with a long range weapons, and the healing and capacity on top of it.

This game is very very (very) hard - I've seen a player finishing and escaping with the orb.  It is possible ...

But my experience so far, is not so glorious :