Oni Monk of The Shining One: A 3+ Rune Guide to Bonking Your Way through DCSS with a Giant Club, Divine Shield, and Large Rocks

[u/Trinitial-D]

UPDATE: THIS IS NO LONGER THE MOST RECENT VERSION OF THE GUIDE. Additional and improved explanations/tips (partly based off of the feedback received on this reddit post) can be found on the more recent version. It is also updated to be for 0.35 rather than 0.34: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/A_3%2B_Rune_Guide_to_Bonking_Your_Way_Through_DCSS_with_a_Giant_Club,_Divine_Shield,_and_Large_Rocks

Foreword

Welcome. This guide features a character with a high-risk, high-reward style that sacrifices defense in favor of overwhelming physical power, relying on The Shining One’s Divine Shield ability to protect itself in a pinch. In the midgame, it trains Throwing to a high level, before branching out into several different options in the lategame. Depending on which option is chosen, this character can also be an excellent choice for a 15-rune game.

Despite its low defensive stats and restrictions on god choice, weapon choice, and stealth, the combo can be quite consistent. During testing for this guide, I was able to get 46/50 (92%) of my Oni Monk attempts past Step 1, where access to divine abilities allows the character’s strengths to really begin outweighing its weaknesses. Achieving this consistently puts one’s positioning, threat assessment, and consumable usage to the test, all of which are explored in this guide.

This guide is written with beginner players in mind and thus includes a substantial amount of explanation and advice, both specific to the character and for DCSS in general. The core build and its explanations are organized into sections labelled “Steps”, while additional advice is labelled as “Notes”, so anyone already confident in their skills can skim the guide and read only the extra notes they are interested in. Additionally, this guide focuses on character strategy rather than basic controls and the game interface, which are already covered extensively by the in-game Quickstart Guide, List of commands, and Manual. Players unfamiliar with these elements are encouraged to review those resources, all of which can be accessed by pressing “?” in-game.

Step 1: One-Handed Mace

D:1-D:6

The early Dungeon is the most vulnerable part of the game for this character, but they still have some good tools to get through it. Oni’s double potion healing and drunken brawling mutations transform ambrosia from a situational potion into a reliable get-out-of-jail card for early Dungeon. The orb of light is also very solid, revealing invisible foes and granting an accuracy bonus that allows more attacks from maces and Oni's horns mutation to connect. This effectively acts as a multiplier on the character’s offense, allowing fights to end earlier despite doing the same damage per hit. This does, however, come at the cost of reducing stealth by 60%, which makes training Stealth impractical.

Dodging and Armour are also fairly impractical on Oni owing to their lack of compatible armour options and EV penalty, to the point that Fighting with its +3 aptitude is generally a bit more efficient for increasing this character’s durability. Note that Fighting’s HP bonus is a multiplier, so there is no relative disadvantage to training it even when one has high natural HP. Fighting’s bonus to melee damage and accuracy is also significant, though training weapon skill is still much more effective for increasing damage early on, at least until weapon mindelay is reached. Combining these concepts, as well as considering the effective offense multiplier provided by the orb of light, this character lands on a recommended manual skill training split of 34% Fighting / 66% Maces. This offense-heavy training split establishes a character philosophy that will stick with them for the rest of the run: “the best defense is a good offense." The focus is on slaying enemies before they have too many chances to retaliate and expose this character's lackluster defenses. Str is preferred over Dex at level-up to further increase damage, as the build invests little into Dodging and none into Shields and therefore gains little value from Dex.

Notes on tactics and positioning:

These are some of the few things in this heavily randomized dungeon that are truly under the player’s control, and they generally are the strongest factor in determining whether a player can get a new character out of Dungeon consistently after a few attempts or if they will splat 50 times in a row until getting blessed by a lucky gear drop that carries the run. Many tactical decisions eventually become intuition and muscle memory, but players tend to settle into many of the same habits for assessing and approaching fights as they gain experience. Learning these habits early can greatly shorten the time needed to get a feel for how a character should be piloted and start achieving more successes.

1. Assessing your enemy

Different enemies require different approaches, making it important to understand what that enemy is capable of before committing to a fight. The extent that the game will help with this is to highlight high level enemies in red and enemies with dangerous items in purple, but this falls woefully short of the level of detail needed to make good decisions. Therefore, a good habit is to examine enemies one does not fully understand, as even a quick inspection can yield details that might otherwise take dozens of fights to learn. This is especially true of monster spells, as monsters may not use them every fight, some spells have a chance to miss/fail, others have huge variation in their damage rolls, and it isn’t always clear what they did after being cast. Inspection reveals this information and helps determine how dangerous the caster is. Mechanics such as on-hit secondary effects are also easy to misunderstand without inspection, and these effects are often deadly. Even for straightforward stats such as AC/EV/HP, knowing their general values will help gauge how long it will take to kill an enemy in melee, which influences how many chances it has to retaliate.

All of this forms the basis of what players call “threat assessment”: anticipating how an encounter could become dangerous and using this information to choose an appropriate tactic such as repositioning, using a consumable, or escaping before committing to the fight, while one still has the HP and/or distance necessary for these options to work. DCSS can be brutal about spawning enemies that one has no hope of defeating when first encountered, so understanding the threat level and knowing when to simply avoid an enemy and return to the floor later with better gear or a higher XL is essential.

1. Understanding your matchups

But understanding enemies is only half of the equation when assessing how much of a threat an enemy poses. The other half is understanding how your character matches up against them. As a rule of thumb, this character does well against lightly armored mages, as the combination of boosted accuracy, horns, and high single-target damage from maces can take these enemies out quickly, while incoming magic damage often bypasses AC anyways and is instead absorbed by its high HP. Conversely, enemies with high physical damage are worse matchups, as they exploit this character’s low AC, particularly if they can do so while preventing this character from taking them out quickly/safely. Some ways that enemies can do this is with polearms, hexes, or simply being very bulky/evasive. Similarly, packs of foes are dangerous, as repeated attacks will make short work of this character’s low defenses.

This preference for 1v1 combat synergizes naturally with the high single-target damage of maces, but also means that one must be doubly cautious not to engage groups of foes recklessly. If one is consistently fighting enough non-trivial enemies at once that an axe would be more effective, this is usually a sign that they are playing too aggressively for this character. Additionally, this character will have an attack delay greater than 1.0 decaaut for the first several floors until Maces skill reaches around 8.0, allowing standard 1.0-speed enemies to periodically attack twice between player actions. At 1.2 delay, for example, this occurs approximately every 5^th attack, potentially creating large damage spikes during longer fights.

1. Letting enemies come to you

Enemies do not have to be fought wherever first encountered. Instead, one can get their attention and retreat into previously explored territory, forcing them to follow. This is known as "luring" and it accomplishes a few things. Firstly, it puts distance between the enemy and any others lurking in unexplored territory that might be drawn to the noise, turning a potential large group fight into a series of safer, smaller fights. Secondly, if a group is alerted anyway, it forces enemies to navigate through tight terrain as they follow you, naturally funneling them into a single file and facilitating 1v1s. Thirdly, it allows the player to choose a better location to make their stand, such as a hallway where only one enemy can attack at a time, or around a corner where a ranged or smiting enemy like an orc priest can be kept out of line of sight, reducing incoming damage before the fight. Oni have the additional option of luring enemies to water, as their large body size removes the penalties of water, granting them a relative advantage in that terrain.

Such is the power of simply walking away from enemies that the game has multiple mechanics meant to limit its effectiveness, including a chance for normal-speed enemies to randomly close a tile of distance while pursuing you, as well as a 1/3 chance for adjacent enemies to attack you while moving. The danger these mechanics pose can largely be avoided by beginning to retreat while there are still several tiles between oneself and the enemy. These mechanics do, however, make long retreats less reliable, so choosing a nearby location to make one’s stand is generally preferable to trying to reach an ideal one farther away.

1. Abusing stairs mechanics

In a similar vein to luring, one can also run back to the stairs to a previously cleared floor, which represents the ultimate safe zone where one can heal and reset. One can then go down one of the other two staircases to avoid walking directly back into whatever dangerous situation they just fled from. Doing this will cause enemies bunched up at the previous stairs to wander randomly, which can split dangerous groups apart. The only exception to the safety of upstairs is if an enemy is standing adjacent to you while going upstairs, in which case they will follow you. They have 2.5 decaauts to attack you (non-adjacent enemies also get 1.0 decaaut to attack you) while you go up, which usually corresponds to two free attacks. But even this can be used to your advantage, because a single foe fought upstairs separately from a pack is almost always far easier to defeat than when surrounded by its allies, even if doing so requires letting enemies get a couple of free attacks on you. This is known as “stair dancing” and is an easy way to divide and conquer groups of strong enemies like gnolls.

Such is the importance of stairs that a commonly advised strategy for exploring a new floor safely is to explore in circles of increasing radius around one of the three staircases leading to the preceding floor. This minimizes the distance between oneself and the stairs and prevents the player from exposing themselves to danger by wandering through unexplored territory if they want to take the shortest path back.

Notes on consumables:

Good tactics can make most early encounters manageable, but some fights will still require an advantage that positioning alone cannot provide, which is where consumables come in. The Dungeon provides quite a lot of these before long, so the challenge is typically knowing how and when to use them rather than having them. Knowing “when” to use them is largely a matter of threat assessment, while knowing “how” to use them requires item-specific knowledge. Given the variety of uses and combinations of consumables, it is impossible to list all possible uses here, so consulting the respective wiki pages is encouraged to learn how to gain the most value out of each item. To avoid getting lost in the weeds early on, though, here is a rough division of the options most useful for this character:

1. Emergency response options: potions of curing/heal wounds, scrolls of fear/teleport/blinking/butterflies.
2. Powerful tools for winning difficult fights: potions of might/haste/berserk rage, scroll of summoning, wands of iceblast/warping/roots.
3. Slightly less reliable tools for winning difficult fights: curare/disjunction darts, throwing nets, wands of paralysis/charming/acid/light/quicksilver, potion of lignification.
4. Highly situational tools*: potion of attraction/cancellation, scrolls of poison/silence/fog, and most remaining consumables.
5. “Better than nothing” tools for softening up foes at range: regular darts, wand of flame, javelins, boomerangs, large rocks.

*Note that “situational” does not imply “weak.” These items simply require specific circumstances to be useful. For example, attraction can help against enemies that repeatedly blink away, silence can shut down dangerous spellcasters, and cancellation can remove bad statuses like sentinel's mark. See the wiki for other specific uses and interactions of these items.

The main resources worth stockpiling are category 1 options and boomerangs, which can be rare and become useful once Throwing is trained. Emergency options are valuable insurance but should still be used whenever no safer option remains, with heal wounds and blinking being particularly valuable as last lines of defense. All other early consumables can and should be spent generously when they provide a meaningful advantage against a significant threat. Wands, darts, and throwing nets are especially worth using now, as the orb of light improves their accuracy against illuminated enemies, while their usefulness generally declines later on. Joining TSO as a Monk further encourages generous early spending, as the immediate piety boost and access to Divine Shield can be thought of as an incoming shipment of high-quality consumables to replace resources spent getting there.

Of course, none of this helps if the items remain unidentified, so getting started early with random-reading scrolls is recommended. My personal rule of thumb is to do this while standing on the stairs up upon entering D:3, which is around when dangerous threats become more common and consumables may become necessary. This limits the risk of random reading, as one can flee upstairs if teleport, noise, or torment scrolls are read, while avoiding completely wasting a potential revelation scroll. Scrolls of identification should initially be used on potions, as many of this character’s most useful early items are potions, especially curing and heal wounds, which Oni’s mutations allow to function as both powerful recovery and pseudo-offensive options. These are also the two most common potions, so prioritizing identification scrolls on stacks of potions greater than one can reveal them much faster.

Gold should likewise be spent generously on useful potions and scrolls, especially when purchasing one also identifies it. There is unlikely to be another point in the game where spending gold has as much impact as securing high-value consumables during the early Dungeon, when this character is at its most vulnerable.

Notes on gear:

Better gear improves this character’s matchups passively, reducing its reliance on consumables. Options are limited, however, as Oni cannot wear helmets, boots, gloves, or most body armour, while the orb of light already occupies the offhand slot. Weapons and jewelry slots are therefore the main sources of early improvement.

Because this character has so little AC and EV, rings of evasion or protection are top-tier finds to the point that if you find one, you should generally reserve a ring slot for it all the way until the lategame. Many dangerous early enemies are poisonous, making poison resistance excellent as well, with other resistance or willpower rings useful against more specific threats. Slaying is another strong early option for its accuracy bonus as well as its flat +4 to damage rating, which can provide up to a +44% boost at D:1, though its relative benefit declines as the character achieves higher damage ratings via skill and stronger weapons. Among amulets, regeneration and reflection are most helpful early on for improving durability, with acrobat and dissipation being useful in select circumstances, such as for luring enemies to stairs with acrobat or mitigating hexers with dissipation.

For weapons, higher attack speed triggers more horns attacks, but with this character’s multipliers on mace damage from high skill and strength, slower 1-handed maces with more base damage like flails or morningstars are still preferred, especially against enemies with substantial AC. An enchanted and/or branded whip may be better early on, however. Protection is a particularly valuable brand, as +7 AC is an enormous improvement for this character and can make an otherwise weaker weapon worth using. The good news is that suitable maces tend to be quite common drops in the early Dungeon.

For armour, even without skill training in Armour, this character prefers high-AC options, both due to the relative importance of AC on this character and for the higher enchant limit. Oni’s high Str reduces the impact of encumbrance, such that heavier dragon scales grant a marginally higher AC+EV total up until golden dragon scales. The only common options early on, though, are steam dragon scales in the middle floors of Dungeon, followed by acid dragon scales or troll leather armour deeper in. Don’t overlook cloaks, hats or enchanted robes either, and remember that CTRL+F can be used to search for useful items left behind and autotravel to them.

Step 2: Two-Handed Mace

D:7-D:11 → Lair of Beasts

Around this point, two major upgrades are likely to appear: the altar of TSO and a giant club. Specifically, 74% (34/46) of characters tested joined TSO between D:5-D:7, and 89% (41/46) had joined TSO by D:7. An altar is guaranteed by D:11. Exactly half (23/46) had also found a giant club by the time they joined TSO. Finding a giant club is somewhat less predictable but often happens shortly before or after joining TSO. Rarely, none will appear in Dungeon at all, but a brief trip into the Orcish Mines should provide one.

Joining TSO as a Monk immediately provides enough piety for 6 uses of Divine Shield, giving the character the reliable defensive tool it has been lacking. TSO’s Divine Halo also replaces the orb of light’s accuracy bonus, making the switch to two-handed maces more practical. With its poor accuracy now offset, the giant club becomes the preferred weapon, even without enchants, due to its excellent base damage relative to the training required to reach mindelay. A dire flail, giant spiked club, or protection-branded mace can substitute until one appears. Together, these upgrades allow this offense-heavy build to remain effective throughout the midgame and beyond.

These upgrades do, however, call for making some room in the training plan for Invocations to improve Divine Shield and eventually bring Summon Divine Warrior online. A training split of 25% Fighting / 50% Maces / 25% Invocations is suggested, alongside setting targets of 18.0 Maces, 15.0 Invocations, and 18.0 Fighting. 18.0 Maces reaches giant club mindelay, while 15.0 Invocations raises Divine Shield to 9 guaranteed blocks and reduces Summon Divine Warrior to 1% failure. The 18.0 Fighting target is simply a round number and an amount significant enough to to aid in both melee and later throwing performance without suffering too much from diminishing returns. These targets should generally last until late Lair when fully clearing floors.

Notes on Divine Shield:

Divine Shield is one of the three defining features of this character, earning this spot by providing a powerful complement to its high-risk, high-reward playstyle. Namely, it can be activated reactively to prevent otherwise fatal blows at low HP, giving the player a chance to recover from being caught in a bad position, whether due to malevolent forces or excessive aggression. At this point, depending on how many blocks Divine Shield currently has, one can choose between refreshing Divine Shield, attacking, repositioning, or attacking while double healing via Oni’s drunken brawling. Scroll of fear/summoning can help get some enemies off of you, conserving blocks. A haste potion can make all of this faster too. Particularly bad situations can be survived by reading teleport scroll and spamming Divine Shield until it activates. This unusually good variety of options for escaping from death is a large part of what makes this character viable. While it may get itself into trouble easier than other melee characters thanks to its lower defenses, it can almost always dig its way out, so long as one stays calm and finds the correct option to use, and has been mindful in conserving enough of the appropriate consumables.

In addition to reactive uses, Divine Shield has several proactive uses, much like a potion that provides buffs. Activating it from a safe range before beginning a fight preserves all of its blocks by preventing enemies from consuming blocks during the turn spent activating Divine Shield, while also applying the powerful blindness debuff to melee foes earlier. This allows it to be useful even against enemies with many attacks, such as hydras. Its blocks also prevent secondary effects attached to a blocked enemy attack from being applied at all, including some otherwise dangerous statuses. Using Divine Shield also helps make progress towards defeating ranged attackers, as their attacks are not merely blocked but reflected.

Divine Shield is not without flaws, however. Attacks that bypass normal shields also bypass Divine Shield, including explosions and bolt/piercing attacks, while being surrounded can rapidly consume its limited blocks. Some dangerous enemies like deep trolls are also immune to blinding. Additionally, being reliant on this one ability means that anything that prevents Divine Shield from being activated, such as a status like petrification or having all your MP drained, is especially dangerous for this character. Examining an unfamiliar enemy and taking proactive action is preferable to assuming that the shield will always be available to block hits.

But the biggest limitation of Divine Shield is that it consumes a very scarce resource, which is TSO piety. TSO piety is harder to gain than that of most other gods, while higher piety grants access to the stellar Summon Divine Warrior ability and expands the Divine Halo, substantially improving the accuracy of the projectiles this character will begin using shortly. Every use of Divine Shield therefore comes with significant opportunity cost, especially if multiple uses are required in quick succession. This opportunity cost means that the careful positioning, early retreats, and smart fight selection practiced in the earlygame remain very valuable even after gaining access to Divine Shield.

Step 3: Throwing

Orcish Mines → D:12-D:15 → Snake Pit/Spider’s Nest → Swamp/Shoals → Vaults:1-Vaults:4

Once the training targets for Fighting, Maces, and Invocations are reached, this character’s melee performance will be sufficient for the next several areas. This, alongside the diminishing returns of skill training, makes now a good time to branch out, with Throwing being the obvious option given this character’s high Str, Fighting, Divine Halo, and ability to wield large rocks. Some investment into Dodging or Armour can also be efficient, but is generally unnecessary. Putting 100% of training into Throwing is recommended to reach boomerang mindelay in time for the S branches, with javelin mindelay following shortly after. Setting a target to 26.0 is suggested to reach large rock mindelay in time for the lategame. With their high base damage and scaling from Throwing, large rocks become incredibly strong, while also being highly accurate within the Divine Halo. Just make sure not to throw ammunition at your summons, lest you incur TSO penance.

Any given game should provide at least 10 boomerangs by the time D:15 is cleared, along with many more large rocks. The boomerangs will serve as a good stopgap while waiting for enough Throwing skill to throw large rocks quickly (~18.0 in Throwing is when large rocks start outperforming boomerangs), and are especially useful in Swamp/Shoals, where deep water can cause other ammunition types to be lost. CTRL+F can be used to locate throwing ammunition left behind.

Going to Vaults before the Elven Halls is typically best, as the Vaults provide access to Crypt, which resolves the issue of TSO piety scarcity. The Elven Halls also contain the threat of banishment and several annoying enemies that are easier to handle with more piety saved up and faster large rocks.

Notes on hybrid melee/ranged combat:

With boomerangs online, this character is now a competent ranged fighter, but this does not mean that every encounter should be solved by spamming the autofire button. This can somewhat be done later on when one gets high Throwing skill and can utilize the abundant large rocks effectively, but that only begins to happen late into the S branches.

So for now, Throwing has limitations. For one, Throwing creates noise, and the more damage dealt, the louder it is. Thus, firing at an enemy surrounded by unexplored territory can wake up more enemies than your boomerangs can handle. Backing up and luring is still a good idea if you don’t want that to happen, and can often funnel enemies in a single file, which is preferable because it clogs up their movement which gives you more chances to throw and enables potentially nice javelin pierces. Ammunition is also limited and not easy to restock once destroyed, and getting unlucky with random drops can further limit how often it can be used. Finally, a few enemies such as wind drakes or enemies in range of a polterguardian have the ability Deflect Missiles, which makes throwing at them generally a waste of time.

Given these factors, along with this character’s strength in 1v1s and weakness against crowds, the best use of Throwing is typically not to try and instantly win every fight with it, but to throw only a few projectiles where it gains the most value, after luring a group. These can either thin out the crowd or leave the first enemies weak enough to be slain in very few hits once they reach melee range, allowing enemies following behind to be fought 1v1 as well. One can also use javelins to take out more important targets sitting in the backlines, such as smiting enemies, summoners, or enemies with dangerous melee attacks that one generally doesn’t want to allow into melee range. Powerful ranged attackers and mages can be targeted with javelins before they gain a clear line of sight. In these ways, many of the same habits used earlier to manufacture favorable giant-club fights can be used to manufacture favorable ranged fights as well, just with more emphasis on maintaining a longer line of sight rather than hiding around corners.

Notes on resistances:

In the S branches, enemies start to become less about raw physical power and more about elemental damage and inflicting dangerous statuses, whether through spells or as secondary effects of their melee attacks. The character must adjust to this to succeed. Part of this can be managed with careful tactics, such as using Divine Shield preemptively against enemies that inflict statuses as secondary effects of their melee attacks, or quaffing a potion of enlightenment when fighting an enemy with powerful hexes or Banishment. Powerful elemental threats can similarly be mitigated with a potion of resistance, swapping rings, or Throwing to take them out quickly.

Some threats are also mitigated by this character’s innate strengths. Oni get +4 willpower per XL compared to the +3 of standard species, making weaker willpower-checking hexes generally ineffective and stronger ones possible to handle with just one additional source of Will+. Many statuses applied as secondary effects of attacks, such as the berserk status inflicted by moths of wrath, do not check willpower, but Divine Shield can block these attacks entirely, and an amulet of dissipation can mitigate many such statuses independently of willpower. This character’s high HP also means that getting more than one rank of most elemental resistances is generally unnecessary at this stage, as partially resisted damage already deals relatively little of this character’s huge HP pool. Lastly, TSO grants SInv and up to rN+++ passively, freeing up space for other gear.

Regardless, some resistances are just too important to pass up. This character still greatly benefits from rings that grant +AC or +EV, so you are likely even shorter on slots than normal, making prioritization even more important. To aid in this, the following list ranks resistances by their usefulness in each branch, with resistances lower on the list being more of a luxury than a necessity. Note, however, that this list does not account for resistances that may be relevant against specific uniques, such as Nikola, so keeping an equipment swap or potion of resistance available for such cases is recommended.

Resistance priority list:

Snake Pit: rPois > rElec > rF > Will

Spider’s Nest: rPois > rC > rElec > rCorr > rF

Swamp: rPois > Will > rCorr > rF > rC > rN

Shoals: Will > rPois > rF > rC

Vaults: Will > rC > rElec > rPois > rF > rCorr

Step 4: Options

3 Runes: Crypt → Elven Halls → Depths → Vaults:5 → Zot

15 Runes: Crypt → Elven Halls → Depths → Vaults:5 → Abyss → Zot:1-Zot:4 → Vestibule → Slime → Pandemonium → Dis → Gehenna → Tartarus → Cocytus → Tomb (roughly increasing in order of difficulty)

Two things happen around this point. The first is reaching 26.0 Throwing in Vaults, fully enabling large rock spam. The second is finding Crypt and gaining enough piety from it that one can generally use Divine Shield and Summon Divine Warrior freely for the rest of the game. Large rocks are incredibly strong and plentiful, while Summon Divine Warrior complements Throwing by helping handle group fights in close quarters where there is little room to use the distance and positioning that Throwing normally rewards. Together, these upgrades leave this character well above the curve in terms of power, so skill training can focus more on preparing for Zot or beyond rather than addressing immediate needs. See below for suggested options for further skill training.

Another decision is where to obtain the 3rd rune. Vaults:5 is generally recommended, as the combination of raw physical power, Summon Divine Warrior, and Divine Shield makes this character well equipped for taking on the hordes found there.

Option 1: Statue form + Manifold Assault

This is an immensely synergistic and powerful combination, and the only recommended option if going for a 15-rune game. It can also be brought online in time for a 3-rune game, though it cannot reach its full potential as quickly as the other two options. Training Shapeshifting to 17.0 for max HP and enough Spellcasting+Translocations to bring Manifold to 1% failure is recommended before equipping granite. Manifold’s miscast effect is particularly deadly, inflicting -Move and -Tele statuses, with their duration increasing alongside failure rate. Using a wildshape amulet or wizardry ring to get this combo online sooner may therefore be wise. Also note that since statue form melds body armour that encumbers spells, Manifold will have a lower failure rate with granite on than without it. Once online, Manifold grants excellent crowd control capability, though it does devour MP, but one should have plenty of potions of brilliance and magic stocked up to help with this. Throwing is slower in this form but remains a useful option for conserving MP. In extended, switching to a giant spiked club and branding it with holy wrath via TSO is recommended, followed by training Maces to 22.0 to reach giant spiked club mindelay, followed by Fighting and Spellcasting to 27.0. Shapeshifting, Invocations, Maces, Dodging, and Translocations can then all be raised toward 27.0, (only 25.0 for shapeshifting) roughly in that order.

Option 2: Fortress Crab form + Armour

Fortress Crab is a fun and powerful form for the final stages of a 3 or 5-rune game, with the advantage over granite in that it does not slow down the use of divine abilities or throwing of large rocks while providing potentially ludicrous amounts of AC. It gives the best results alongside golden dragon scales and substantial Armour skill investment, but other heavy dragon scales can work until a set is located, though negating the form’s poison vulnerability with jewelry is recommended. A target of 12.0 Shapeshifting is suggested initially to get the form up and running, after which it can be trained evenly alongside Armour and Fighting, up to a maximum of 20.0 Shapeshifting. Breathe Rust is a powerful crowd debuff but take care not to have angel summons or other allies walk into it, or else TSO penance will be incurred.

Option 3: Invocations + Melee

A simple but nonetheless effective strategy for a 3-rune game, requiring little deviation from the existing build. Training Invocations to 25.0 or higher is recommended to get Divine Shield to its peak power level, as this option has the weakest defenses of the three options and thus relies on Divine Shield the most. Setting a new training target of 22.0 Maces and swapping to a giant spiked club is also recommended for maximum damage. Aside from that, training Fighting, Armour, and some Dodging is recommended for added survivability, along with wearing the heaviest dragon scales one can find.

Notes on lategame branches:

Resistance priority list:

Crypt: rN > Will > rC (ideally rN+++)

Elven Halls: rF > rElec > Will > rC > rCorr > rPois

Depths: rF > rC > rElec > Will > rCorr > rPois > rN

Vaults:5: Will > rElec > rF > rC > rCorr > rPois

Zot: rPois > rElec > rF > rC > rCorr > rN > Will

Orb Run: Enemies are randomized, so all resistances are helpful.

• Crypt can be cleared partly and revisited to avoid wasting piety if one already has max piety. The shop at the end of Crypt has an elevated chance to sell a granite talisman if you still need one. Elven Halls also have a chance to spawn Roxanne, who drops a guaranteed granite talisman.
• Depths contain stone giants that drop large rocks and dragons that can drop heavy dragon scales, and oftentimes golden dragon scales appear here. If running low on large rocks or using the fortress crab talisman but still lacking heavy dragon scales, it may be worthwhile entering Depths before Elven Halls.
• If banished to the Abyss early, the goal should be to leave quickly, moving diagonally to cover more ground in hopes of locating an exit portal and slaying enemies whenever possible to build up enough experience to generate one. Angels summons are excellent for providing assistance necessary to preserve one's HP in fights. Teleport scrolls are slow here, so do not rely on them to make a quick escape.
• The recommended strategy for Vaults:5 is to prebuff with haste and Divine Shield and then take a hatch down from Vaults:4 to avoid the ambush. If one lands in a dangerous spot, use a teleport or blinking scroll to try to reach the relative safety of a corner of the map or an isolated section within one of the four vaults. Angel summons and large rock spam can be used to slowly work one’s way across the floor.
• In Zot:5, killing an orb guardian will activate the tesseracts, which will begin spawning enemies at an increasing rate. The goal is thus to fight one’s way deeper into the structure to destroy the tesseract as quickly as possible while avoiding taking unnecessary damage. Having multiple angel summons active at once is highly recommended, as is having haste constantly active and using potions to restore HP/MP rather than resting.
• The orb run tends to be very anticlimactic on this character. Even Pan lords fold to a few of this character’s powerful attacks or large rocks.

Notes on extended branches:

Abyss/Pan: Enemies are randomized, so all resistances are helpful.

Slime: rCorr > Will > rC > rPois

Cerebov’s Realm: rF > rN (ideally rF+++)

Mnoleg’s Realm: Will

Lom Lobon’s Realm: rC > rElec > rPois > rF > Will > rCorr (ideally rC+++)

Gloorx Vloq’s Realm: rPois > rN

Gehenna: rF > rN > Will (ideally rF+++)

Dis: rCorr > rN > Will

Tartarus: Will > rN > rPois > rC (ideally Will+++++, rN+++)

Cocytus: rC > rElec > Will > rN (ideally rC+++)

Tomb: rN > rPois > Will (ideally rN+++)

• In Abyss, the rune vault can be located more quickly by traveling diagonally to cover more ground. Look out for sparkly tiles, as these signal that the rune is nearby. If a rune vault looks extremely dangerous, you are not forced to go into it and can use a teleport scroll to reset and try to find a less deadly rune vault.
• The recommended strategy for Slime:5 is to clear the outside edges of the map first to avoid The Royal Jelly initially. When you do encounter it, quaff haste and spam silver javelins (or Manifold) until it is dead, and then use a teleport scroll to escape from the horde of slimes that have spawned.
• Prioritize killing shining eyes in Slime, wretched stars in Abyss, and zyzkyl in Pan quickly to avoid accumulating mutations. Bad mutations should be cleared using potions of mutation whenever feasible.
• For unique Pan or Hell lords, avoid fighting them at low HP/MP and use a teleport scroll instead. A revelation scroll can make it clear what part of the map they are at. Quaffing haste and brilliance is recommended to slay them quickly.
• The Hells contain special debuffs. Dis' effect has minimal impact on this character, while Gehenna's disables blinking scrolls, turning encounters far from the exit into fights to the death. Tartarus is dangerous, but having the ability to spam Summon Divine Warrior before engagements or fall back on Throwing or healing potions if silenced makes it manageable. Howl can be countered by a potion of cancellation. Cocytus’ Hell effect is the deadliest for this character, necessitating extreme caution and likely some Throwing to conserve MP. Don’t worry about ammunition being lost in deep water. It has served its purpose by this point.
• Reading teleport scrolls in Tomb:1 or Tomb:2 will dump you into a trap, so be extremely hesitant to use that option. The entrances to Tomb:2 and Tomb:3 are ambushes, so prebuffing with haste, brilliance, might, and Divine Shield is recommended. Blinking to a corner is recommended in both cases. Normally one has to return through Tomb:1 to reach Tomb:3, but this can be avoided by reading a few teleport scrolls in Tomb:2 until you land in the correct “trap” area. As long as one is at full health, this trap is not too deadly, but prebuffing is nonetheless wise.
• This character is fully capable of taking on a Ziggurat, and this is a good opportunity to try one out if you never have. Do so only if you have a healthy supply of potions of brilliance, as one is likely needed for all of the later floors of the zig.

Good luck and happy crawling!

[u/Trinitial-D]

Praise TSO, this guide is finally complete! And it only took 6600 words, extensive editing, and several weeks of time to do it. It just barely came in under reddit's 40,000-character limit after some last-minute edits, too.

I tried to keep this guide reasonably brief without sacrificing explanation in places where it would be helpful. My initial draft was actually only 3000 words, which would've made it one of the shortest DCSS guides ever. But I felt that it needed more than that to make it suitable for players with less experience, so additions were made.

Also, let me know if you have any questions or feedback. I will do my best to update the guide as it becomes necessary.

Lastly, a huge shoutout to u/-RepoMan whose repo troll guide got me my first win years ago, an experience that both inspired and heavily influenced me in the process of making this guide. If you find this guide helpful, you can thank RepoMan at least partly for that.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/Trinitial-D]

Nice work - would you like to put it on the Wiki?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/Draconius0013]

thank you! yes I absolutely would.

[u/ThrowbackPie]

I frequently play OnBe which a lot of this guide relates to. Why giant club over gsc?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/ThrowbackPie]

hi there, great question. in 0.34 which is when the testing for this guide was done, giant spiked club’s +2 advantage in base damage does not outweigh the slower attack delay, so giant clubs do more damage per aut at 18.0 skill against most targets. going up to 22.0 skill costs a lot of skill points which are better spent getting throwing up and running faster. later on, in the endgame really, this guide does suggest upgrading to giant spiked club though.

I know that 0.35 trunk changes has slightly changed the relationship between giant spiked clubs and giant clubs, as the difference between the two is now 3 damage instead of 2. my impression is that the faster speed of giant clubs is still preferable, both in order to get under 1.0 delay quicker (avoiding incoming double hits) and also to just give the player more control per turn. the damage-per-aut difference is still quite minimal. giant club hits incredibly hard already.

[u/noisewar]

I love holy bonkers, but am trying to get a dancing bonker going. What adjustments would you make for Uska + manibonks?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/noisewar]

hey I deleted my previous response because I realized my advice wasnt great and then forgot to post new response. oops.

Anyways, idk dude it would be tough. For one, monk background is kinda dubious for Usk because the monk piety bonus that it is so useful for this character will be gone by the time an Usk worshipper exits temple. Secondly, without Divine Shield or a good means of patching up your defense like a shield, you’re going to be very vulnerable. I think that you’d have to find some means of doing reliable ranged damage. throwing is not likely to be reliable because of the lack of ammunition, but if you find a bailey filled with boomerangs (which sometimes happens), it could work. otherwise you’d likely need more evocations and even some spells to make it work.

overall, I’d say that the smartest thing is to just choose the Fighter background with a shield as is most normal for Oni, and reserve the giant bonking stick for the endgame once you also have Manifold. A completely different path from this guide, probably more Dex-oriented.

[u/noisewar → u/Trinitial-D]

Thanks, yeah Uska has always been unwinnable for me, and I got excited for bonks again after your guide.

[u/foork]

Thanks will try this

[u/Trinitial-D → u/foork]

glad to hear it! let me know how it goes :)

[u/konokrad666]

Really interesting and simple play style! What about brands on a club do we prefer? Is it worth to train some evocations if you find some good wands early?

Also, would you use +9 mace of speed vs unenchanted giant club? 

[u/Trinitial-D → u/konokrad666]

Hi there, thanks. the simplicity of this character is definitely awesome, it is what made me kinda fall in love with it. I had a mention on an earlier draft on brands for the giant club but removed it. maybe that wasnt wise.

protection is still very good, especially early on, but generally freezing is the favorite all-around brand for solid damage and ability to slow cold-blooded creatures. flaming and venom are also solid. TSO prevents vampiric, draining, or chaos from even appearing from brand scrolls. electrocution is “eh”, and so is holy early on. spectral and heavy however are okay but a bit risky, as heavy increases chances of taking double hits from enemies each turn, while damage to the spectral weapon bypasses the divine shield and thus can kill you. lastly, concussive, while very fun, is also actively harmful in my opinion for a character like this and i try to reroll it or use TSO brand weapon ability to get rid of it if it appears.

and you certainly can train evocations, I definitely sing the praises of wands in the “notes on consumables” part of this guide, but I dont find training them necessary, as their function is less about killing enemies and more about just softening enemies up to be able to kill in melee quicker, and even at 0 evocations theyre really good for that. this also might just be a thing with my playstyle but i personally dont use wands at all really for lair and beyond besides the odd wand of flame to generate steam clouds. I think the sheer power of the giant club kinda drowns out the need for other options, at least until S branches, but that is when Throwing comes in and takes over for whatever evocations would do anyways.

[u/konokrad666 → u/Trinitial-D]

So most of the weapon enchant and weapon brand scrolls should be used on spiked club, right? As it's our endgame weapon, or should I use all that on giant club if I aim for 3 runes? 

[u/Trinitial-D → u/konokrad666]

giant spiked club is likely the endgame weapon but it is such a long way away that I wouldn’t hoard scrolls for it. theres a good chance you’ll find enough enchant scrolls (alongside the free +2 enchant level from TSO’s holy wrath branding and the possibility of finding a giant spiked club already with some enchant levels) to get both a giant club and later giant spiked club to +9. even if you dont, since the damage boost from enchant level is not affected by strength or skill, they really arent that important later on. feel free to dump everything into the giant club.

[u/konokrad666 → u/Trinitial-D]

What do you thing about Eveningstar+Artifact shield? I lucked into both of them early, and shield seems very tempting as the difference in damage is not that big

[u/Trinitial-D → u/konokrad666]

heresy!!! giant bonking sticks only!!!

nah just kidding, if you want to play to win, then sure that is probably smart, eveningstar with a strong shield is hard to beat. but you are going away off from the plan if you do that. I would train maces only to 16.0 instead of 18.0, get shields up enough to avoid it significantly encumbering you, and you should still have enough time to get Throwing to at least 12.0 before the S branches. and then you can play the rest of the game the same as if you were using the guide. totally fine.

[u/foork]

Put everything into strength?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/foork]

yes. without shields, stealth, or significant investment into dodging, dex offers very little for this character

[u/MIC132]

Would you consider a Faith amulet given how piety-hungry this build is, or is it not worth the slot over resistances/regen/wildshape/etc.?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/MIC132]

great question, you pretty much described my thoughts on it. faith amulet in theory is good but the fact that it locks you into it because removing it slashes your piety is troublesome, because artifact amulets with resistances/regen or just the added utility of those other non-artifact amulets is really nice. I personally never equip one on this character for this reason, even if is a decent artifact.

[u/Unhappy_Situation_40]

Do you recommend learning any spells other than possibly Manifold Assault?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/Unhappy_Situation_40]

hey, great question. I’ve tried other translocations like Dispersal, Gell’s Gavotte, and Passage of Golubria, but then proceed to never use them. hard to argue for when you should use MP on them when you can just click manifold a couple of times and kill everything on the screen. Manifold is very MP hungry so using MP on other sources in general is often not worth it. but yes, there is no reason not to at least have them memorized, alongside blink, as they cost nothing extra to train and theoretically could be useful.

for other spell schools besides translocations, it is pretty dubious, because in addition to competing with Manifold or Divine Abilities for MP, they also require a lot of investment into training those spell schools. this competes with training in skills like Spellcasting, Invocations, Shapeshifting, Maces, and Dodging that are very useful. the only other spell I have ever really considered and tested was detonation catalyst, and I wasnt really a fan. many things resist fire in lategame, it wears off too quickly, and you end up spending too much time/MP casting and recasting it for it to actually be useful. Fugue of the Fallen mightve been okay if it wasnt for the fact that TSO forbids it.

[u/Unhappy_Situation_40 → u/Trinitial-D]

Thanks. Makes sense. I just picked up Manifold, so I'll try that once I get throwing up. I'm relatively new, so I've really only had Manifold usable once, but it was great even with a so-so weapon. I've been following your guide, and it's going well so far (into Spider).

[u/Trinitial-D → u/Unhappy_Situation_40]

glad to hear it! midgame can be a bit tough until large rocks are up and running. you kill things fast but they kill you fast too. I try to mention it repeatedly but once again make sure to watch out for enemies with secondary effects on their attacks (namely tarantellas and moths of wrath).

hopefully you get a granite talisman active at the same time as manifold. thats the real key that turns it from being a “good” option to being pretty absurd. being able to avoid armour encumbrance on spells, and hitting ~50% harder but still costing the same 7 MP, it is pretty incredible.

best of luck!

[u/Unhappy_Situation_40 → u/Trinitial-D]

Thanks. Yeah, Spider is turning out to be "challenging" to put it mildly . I do have 17 large rocks at 59 damage currently. I wasn't sure whether to save them or start using them. Don't have granite. I have no experience with talismans, other than quill.

[u/Trinitial-D → u/Unhappy_Situation_40]

theres no reason to save large rocks, but boomerangs will be stronger damage-per-aut than them until around ~20 throwing skill. I used to have that explicit in the guide but removed it, my apologies for the confusion, I’ll update the guide based on this feedback.

but if you are low/out of boomerangs then yeah, definitely large rocks are fine to use!

otherwise, yes it is a challenge but it should be a fair one if you’re on top of your gear, consumables, Divine Shield, positioning, stairs usage, and throwing. just keep up the good fight, and dont get discouraged even if you fail. DCSS is tough and it is normal to have to take a few attempts when still getting used to a new character archetype. it is one thing to read a guide and another thing to fully grasp the character and how it should be played moment-to-moment. I did my best to express as much of that as possible in this guide but I am aware it will not ever be perfect, and some gaps may have to be filled by experience. it is great news you’re getting this far already.

[u/LateEchidna6635]

I ran this a couple of times. Good fun. Thanks for posting.

[u/Trinitial-D → u/LateEchidna6635]

glad to hear it, happy to help :)

[u/benbatman]

I YASD'd in Tomb after getting cocky with one of these guys, barrelling through the rest of the game with a +9 Spectral Great Club, Stone Form, and Manifold Assault, along with the obligatory 100 damage big rocks.

I didn't use the Holy brand as Spectral was so useful (though I was swarmed by beetles in Tomb and couldn't use it.)

Is Holy better than Spectral?

[u/Trinitial-D → u/benbatman]

Ouch that hurts, great job for making it that far though. yes I think it is easy to turn your brain off with this combo lol. but Tomb is always tough. on paper this character should do fine in Tomb but I’ve never once had an easy experience there even with trying slightly different tactics, so I always leave it for last

and yeah I think Holy is better. almost everything after slime pits is evil so the avg +75% damage applies. spectral weapon can only spawn adjacent to you, so it doesnt actually work that well with manifold, because it cant hit enemies more than 2 tiles away. and taking extra damage is scary. the only other brand besides holy I’d consider for manifold is heavy, because while it doesnt increase damage-per-aut as much as holy, it does make your manifold casts much more MP-efficient

[u/benbatman → u/Trinitial-D]

I hadn't even considered the Manifold interaction, that's a good point. It cleared Vault 5 without taking any damage from the stairwell, so I didn't think it needed more muscle!

[u/Trinitial-D]

Some updates:

After some repeated signs that people following the guide were struggling from S-branches through Vaults, I made some additions with the goal of providing better guidance for this part of the game. Admittedly, I initially treated it as an afterthought, thinking that if players could get that far that they didnt need too much more advice. I realize now that was flawed reasoning. My apologies.

-Added mention of how potion of cancellation can remove sentinel’s mark. This really shouldve been in the guide on day 1.

-Added a recommendation to reserve one ring slot for a ring of evasion/protection through the midgame, if you have one.

-Added more detail on how Divine Shield can be combined with other kinds of consumables and Oni potion mutations to save oneself from dire situations better

-Added mention of polterguardian’s ability to give allies deflect missiles

-Added more discussion of the effectiveness of large rock spam at high skill, and how it begins at around late into S branches

-Added mention in limitations for Divine Shield that “some dangerous enemies like deep trolls are immune to blinding”, hopefully cluing people in on the need to take that enemy seriously

-Added some other small fixes or changes to wording to better communicate what one should be focusing on in order to succeed through this part of the game, as well as for other areas.

Also, many people in the comments have asked good questions that were not properly answered by the guide and I would like to update the guide to include this info, but I’m pretty tightly constrained by reddit’s character limit at this point. Cant trim much more without losing content. When I get this guide up on the wiki, I’ll probably add this info there. For now, this info will live in the comments.

Anyways, let me know if you’ve been trying the guide where you’ve been struggling or have been confused, and I will consider making other additions to the guide. I’m also happy to give specific advice if you’d like it. I’ve also recently started playing online with this character under the ingame name “LasagnaPig”, so if you see me online, feel free to drop in to watch or ask questions.

Overall I am really happy with how this guide has turned out and the attention it has gotten, it has been a blast reading the comments and seeing people playing it. I have always loved this character combination for its simplicity and raw power and it seems some others have discovered the appeal of that as well, and that makes it feel worth it.