Got my first 0.31 tournament win today. I did horribly yesterday but my Demigod Hunter got real lucky finding lots of dex equipment. I think at the end of the game I had the best defensive stats I’ve ever had outside of Gargoyles. 75 EV and 20 shield. Pretty fun time.
In preparation for the dcss tournament, I'm going to make back stories for all my characters so that I really feel for them when they die. Maybe this will make me try hard.
I did this when I first started playing the game 20 years ago. It didn't help me then, but I was terrible at the game then. I think it took me 10 years to get a win.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is a really great free online roguelike. You can choose classes (in the screenshot attached below, I went with minotaur) and pick a weapon (I grabbed a mace). you can play at the link below, all you need to do is click the button, pick a server, register, and you're in.
Also, here is more about the game, and you can download a copy to your machine if you don't want to play the online version: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/