YAFAP: Brogue 1.6.4 (caster character, /10 staff of firebolt, +5 ring of wisdom)

[ais523]

I'd played older versions of Brogue quite a bit, but never ascended. It
seems that I was almost there, though, because my fifth game on playing
the latest version, I won. (I am moderately heavily spoiled on Brogue,
btw; but I don't think spoilers make a huge difference in this game,
though, and I learnt more from playing it than I did from the spoilers.)

I chose a staff of firebolt from a vault early on, originally as a
utility staff, but having no better uses for my enchantment scrolls, I
decided to enchant it up as a main weapon. Destroyed my dagger early on
due to not understanding the throwing mechanics, so I gambled that a
vault with a single good item (as determined via looking into it through
a statue and seeing no items on all squares but one that couldn't be seen
from any angle) would be a weapon; it wasn't, but rather a +3 chain mail
of absorption (which is pretty bad as Brogue armours go, but the best
armour I found all game…). It ended up as +1 by the end, because I never
found a scroll of protect armour all game. I had to switch to whatever
weapon I could find, and soon found the +1 broadsword that took me
through the whole game (hitting with it was awkward for the first half of
the game due to its massive strength requirement, which I never enchanted
down, but as a mostly caster build that didn't matter so much).

A while later, I found a random ring of wisdom, so decided to go all-in
on caster build; the staves I used throughout the run were fire (my main
attack), discord (first backup staff I found, and it came in handy on
occasion even at /3; I enchanted it to /4 in order to get an extra charge
in an emergency at one point), healing (which I actually found much
earlier, and which helped out allies on occasion, but I always left it
at /2, and eventually abandoned it), tunnelling (my choice from a vault;
pretty awesome utility staff, it saved my life several times either by
giving dead ends on demand for beating monster packs or locating
phantoms, or by allowing me to route around monsters that I couldn't
otherwise deal with), and blinking (found in a vault late on, saved my
life several times by helping me run away or allowing me to move around
an area where an otherwise unbeatable monster, like a sentinel pack or a
golem, was). I used scrolls of identify in order to know precisely when
my scrolls were out of charges.

I also used allies as I found them; goblin mystics are great early-game
allies (one died due to being set on fire, always a risk as a fire mage
due to all the burnable terrain around, the other one I abandoned to die
after negating it by mistake), pixies are awesome (mine died to a zombie,
because although they have such a great spell selection for ally use,
they're really fragile when actually under attack, and being a zombie I
couldn't help her out because it'd just have set her on fire), and a
random chained tentacle horror late on proved to be just what I needed to
deal with golems (running consumables is not a sustainable strategy in
the long run for dealing with them).

The exploration strategy was to explore the first 20 levels or so in
full, then dive. I think this is probably the optimal way to play this
sort of roguelike; past a certain point, the only items you care about
are consumables, and more specifically, escape items. And the chance of
finding them is lower than the chance of needing to use them while
looking for them, and getting a negative return on average.

The main problem enemies for my build were golems and krakens. Luckily,
krakens are rare enough that I could deal with them using escape items
(fear or teleport; I tried polymorphism at one point but it didn't help),
and golems I mostly ran from (with the help of blinking and discord, as
discording yourself hardly makes a difference with no allies) until I got
the tentacle horror, which deals with them handily (tentacle horrors just
have all-around better melee stats, and golems have no ranged attacks).
Other notable monsters for the build: phantoms would be very difficult,
but are defeated by tunnelling (make a dead end, wait until you're
attacked, zap fire at the only square the attack could have come from),
salamanders weren't really an issue because they died to melee, dragons
would probably have killed me but I never saw one; pixies would have
given me huge trouble when I had allies, but they're fortunately weak
enough to die in one hit. The major problematic terrain was bog (as
always for fire mages, you can't safely use your main attack in it),
which I generally dealt with by running out of it or pre-emptively
exploding it (risky as it can destroy scrolls). Fungal grass was less of
an issue, because you can ignite it pre-emptively, run off it and then
set it and the monsters on it on fire, or just eat the fire damage.
(Perhaps I was a little too free in taking damage; I had 8 potions of
healing at one point, but had none at the end.)

Final inventory:
2 rations of food (more like 2.6 in practice, I ate one when it wouldn't
fill nutrition in order to save inventory space, when it became clear I
wouldn't run out before the end of the game)
A +1 broadsword<19> (main melee weapon pretty much all game, acidproof,
random spawn)
9 +0 darts<10> (for putting on traps, etc.; non-mages typically run out,
mages don't need them for dealing with fleeing enemies)
17 +0 javelins<15> (backup ranged weapon, never needed it)
+1 chain mail of absorption[6]<13> (I'd love to have found something
better, was +3 in the vault)
A potion of creeping death (in case I needed to go through a room full of
poison-vulnerable enemies; this would flush them out or fatally poison
them, and I could easily clear the infection afterwards; I turned out not
to need it)
A potion of levitation (I had a lot more originally; I was using these
for escape across lava, or for exploring levels when I couldn't see an
obvious way forwards)
A potion of speed (identified this on something like D:26)
A potion of incineration (likewise, not that fire mages need these so
much…)
A potion of paralysis (abandoned this much earlier in the game, picked it
up again during the ascension run because it was in the way)
A scroll of cause fear (necessary insurance against krakens)
A scroll of recharging (another 10 firebolts if I came across a heavy
concentration of enemies)
A scroll of shattering (probably should have discarded this one…)
A scroll of teleportation (emergency escape item)
A staff of firebolt [10/10] (from a vault, main attack most of the game;
enchanted 7 times from /3)
A staff of tunneling [2/2] (huh, the name in Brogue is typoed; really
excellent utility staff even at /2, works well with wisdom, probably I
couldn't have won without it; from a vault)
A staff of discord [4/4] (I /think/ this was also from a vault but am not
sure; enchanted once because I needed an extra charge and thought the
extra duration would be helpful more generally, and it seemed wiser to
use enchantment than recharging)
A staff of blinking [3/3] (not a reliable escape item, because it depends
so much on the dungeon terrain, but it worked when I needed it, and it
makes a good utility item too; as a caster, this was used exclusively for
running away from enemies, not for running towards them)
A staff of healing [2/2] (heh, looks like I picked it up again on the way
up; saved an allied goblin mystic from fatal burning at one point, but
was otherwise mostly useless and I abandoned it, because 2 shots of 20%
healing isn't usually enough to make a difference)
A wand of domination [1] (I was trying to use this as an escape item; it
doesn't really work, but I could have used it to get another tentacle
horror if something happened to the first one)
A wand of polymorphism [1] (Also an escape item; this one did work on
occasion, and didn't work on other occasions)
A +5 ring of wisdom (random spawn at +3, enchanted twice; works
excellently with blinking and discord, and the effects on the other
staves were nice too)
A +3 ring of clairvoyance (secondary ring for most of the game;
forewarning of monsters through walls can be very powerful, and its use
in mapping is pretty powerful too)
A +3 ring of light (found this quite early but only really used it late
on, as it doesn't do much early-game; swapped this out for clairvoyance
during combat so I could hit monsters further away, and when near lakes/
pits so I could see to the other side)
The Amulet of Yendor

Total score: 52719 (mostly from gold, as usual in Brogue)


Just as a personal note, Brogue is the game that made me stop trying to
like DCSS; it has everything I was looking for in Crawl and failing to
find, and I like the "smaller" scope of the game, which is a good fit for
that style of roguelike. Pender's done a great job on it.

--
ais523