The Quest for the "Orb of Zot"
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is an open-source, single-player, role-playing roguelike game of exploration and treasure-hunting in dungeons filled with dangerous and unfriendly monsters in a quest to rescue the mystifyingly fabulous Orb of Zot.Yeah, right .. this isn't what the game is like at all. No dear reader, this game is madness incarnated - this game will get you addicted and looking into every irc, forums and even wiki for weeks in order to get passed some curses or find out what the heck is wrong with this particular wand you just found or how to drink from fountains, or why the priest has disappeared in the next release of the game? or which is better Vehumet or Sif Muna ? or what a 'gourmand amulet' will do for you, or how to defeat an invisible monster ... - and you will have to face your old ghosts too in that insane game. You will lose your sleep and possibly your sanity.
Okay, I'm exaggerating a tad bit, but in a nutshell ... this isn't a "normal" game ; but more like a Universe you are entering into - you can from the first seconds in the game starts to feel that something is a bit odd - when you have to select your character's race and class among the 24 different species and the 27 "background" as they call it. Another hint about the difficulty of the game is that it has several "Tutorials" included.
I've tried Minotaur gladiator, Spriggan conjurer, Troll berserker ... the game is very well balanced - each player will have to find in himself what his type of gameplay fits the best.
But "Crawl" is freakin' hard - even after watching many youtube videos on great skilled player - you will get killed over and over, you have to be sharp, to be focused, to be prepared, to be disciplined ... and maybe, maybe one day you will grab the Orb and escape with it... that's if you're lucky.
Tips
Now some tips, learn your keyboard shortcuts (q for quaff, z for spell casting, a for special actions, d for drop, f for throwing things, ' for swap between your short range and long range weapon etc ...) - learn how to create macros, learn how to counter spells, which potions are to use when you are surrounded, which god to worship etc ...https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto
Learn how to play with Zoopy Joobles ; He is one of the best player (he's very humble and has an amazing voice) - Following the saga of Zoot the Air Elementalist will keep you on the edge of your seat for about a dozen of hours ...which is about the average time of a Crawl game.
How to play where to play
The game is free and available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux - and Online too with various servers :
Europe
US
Ow! and I almost forgot, of course you can save your game (by pressing "S") - but once your character is dead ... no reload, you have to create a new one and start from scratch again ... it's not a bug, it's a feature -- that's the kicker.
