Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup setup guide

Ever wondered how true experience playing roguelike games is like? Sure you can get the feeling by playing brogue, preferably brogue speak. But what if you can have more? Right, you can have more!

Dungeon crawl stone soup, or as we're gonna refer to as dcss in this guide, is a very vast and complex roguelike game, at least more than all I've ever seen so far. Like other roguelikes, the objective of the game is to seek out the orb of Zot, an ancient artifact rumored to grant you power of a god. In order to get to Zot, you must collect 3-15 runes (the third runes have three options of places you can choose from). You only require three runes to enter zot and get the orb. But if you like the challenge, go ahead for 15. The dungeon itself has 15 floors, with tons of additional floors for other runes. You'll see everything you require in this, like the branch to hell, to the abyss, to pandaemonium in hell, to vault5 If you plan to run 15 runes...good luck. It's gonna take forever.
I'm not going to include any details of how to play and stuff in this. That's the work of crawl wiki, and it'd be more detailed than me anyway. I'm just going to include what we need to know in order to play effectively.

How to set up:

Grab the latest console version of Crawl from its website (google download dungeon crawl stonesoup gets you there fast enough). Download the soundpack link and the init file from the link attached to this post. Once you get the game and the pack running, you only need to put your se folder you just downloaded in the game folder. Replace init.txt in the settings folder of your game and everything will be working for you. This is pretty much the prepacked version of how you can set the game up and stuff. For those who want to set useful options at will after you're done installing the pack and replace init.txt to suit your playstyle, there are ways to mess with init.txt to customize your game. Useful options for us are:

options

Disable animations and view delays so the screen updates immediately after each
command:
    view_delay = 0
    travel_delay = -1
    rest_delay = -1
    use_animations = 0
If you feel that you want messages on the top instead of the bottom, and want to remove message condensing:
messages_at_top = true
    clear_messages = true
    msg_condense_short = false
List player-relative coordinates in the ctrl+x display:
    monster_item_view_coordinates = true
Set a separate glyph for unvisited stairs and transporters:
    feature += stone staircase leading up {<,x25C2}
    feature += stone staircase leading down {>,x25B8}
    feature += transporter {xA9, x25CE}

Let me say i never used these aside from the coordinate display, but for some people it could be useful.

Links

I'm lazy and still didn't make a separate download for the soundpack, feel free to grab the 0.25 trunk which has the accessibility fix from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Kt2Q0 … sp=sharing
If the 0.25 stable comes out, all you have to do is: Download the newest version from the website (crawl.develz.org), copy se folder in the main game folder and init.txt in to the settings folder, launch, enjoy!

screen reader choice

You need NVDA, and the NVDA cursor (numeric 7 and 9 to use it, alternatively if you don't have numeric keypad nvda+up and nvda+down).

If you don't want to dive into the game without some form of knowledge, and you are lazy to read through the manual, here are some tips!

Note that these tips, aside from number 1 is totaly based on my knowledge. Ignore them as you see fit.
1. movement: Use the following keys: up, down, left, right. Y for northwest, u for northeast, b for southwest, n for southeast.
2. Do not bother with movement if you are not positioning yourself! Use o for autoexplore. Tab through little enemies with ease if you have the hp and the weapon!
3. Do not forget that from now on autorest is turned on by default! Do not waste your strength by pressing 5. I still have the habit.
4. If you want to be a caster, do not, i repeat do not choose a deep elf at first! Go for a sturdier race such as a draconian. Better natural ac, no hindrance of armor because you can not wear any, and better hp. The con is that you don't have epic aptitudes for magic, but  survivability is much more important than getting a spell online two levels earlier.
5. If you are a hill orc and do not choose Beogh as a god, you are a heretic! Okay, that was a joke.

Closing words.

Thanks for Mata for writing the introductory part of the guide and thanks for you guys who are interested in this piece of wonder. And of course, thanks for the DCSS dev team who implemented the newest accessibility fix!
If you feel that i did something wrong, if you feel that this guide needs improvement, and even if you want to just chat about anything in general, reatch me on the following platforms:
Skype: Aradiarnold
e-mail: infrapocokatgmaildotcom (Just correct the punctuation)