Part 12: MinoMax, MiMo - One

Here's a thing.

Min(o)-Maxing Crawl
"Did you get my MiMo?"



This is MinoMax the Monk. He woke up in a dungeon wearing nothing but a robe and carrying nothing but a piece of bread. He decided the best thing to do would be to just start running around punching everything he saw.

Why did we take monk? They start with really good skills.

Minotaurs start unarmed, but not unhorned. They are apt at all but Stealth. This is just a dominating skillset for the early game. Unarmed is great, fighting and dodge are great combat skills, and we start more skilled than almost anything we'll meet in the first four levels.

Here are my starting skills. Note how the game took the experience needed for those starting skills and applied my aptitudes to get my actual starting skill.


I set training to Fighting, Unarmed, and Dodging. Unarmed I will turn off at 6.0, an insignificant investment to kill stuff faster early. The other two I will keep maxed practically all game. I'm going to throw every stat point I get into Dexterity (Minos have excellent Evasion) so I won't show that.


There's also another critical reason for choosing monk, but we'll get to that later.




I am pretty much hitting "o" to autoexplore (which is really well-implemented) and then tabbing through fights that don't look tough or interesting. The only thing I'll stop for before the Temple is something like these +1 gloves (+2AC). They mean taking roughly a point less damage per attack. That's meaningful any time in the game.




This is Jessica, our first unique, luckily just a novice sorceror. I've copied in the text of how the fight went. This is a typical fight for a MiMo. She blinked next to me, the adder missed and got a retaliation headbutt, then she missed and was killed by a headbutt.

:minos:




A bigger pic at the end of Level 4. I still haven't found the temple, so I have no access to Heroism, which is an awesome god buff with no real penalty or recovery. Most troubling I still haven't found a stave (staff or quarterstaff). Even a magical stave would open the skill to be trained. If I cannot get staff skill I cannot get Okawaru to reliable gift me with staff weapons.


I'm not seeing anything on level 5 either so I take a quick dip down into level 6:




Yeah. Orcish Wizards are a nuking blinking pain in the rear and Blork can also nuke as well as haste and invisible himself. We'll have to see what these artifact boots are later.




Heading back up, you can see we have explored most of level 5 without finding the temple. We also find this artifact cap in a shop. Minos can only wear caps, so this is a great find. Of course, it could also be a -4 hat of hunger. But we don't have 210 gold, so once again we'll have to see what it is later!

One of the other great thing about Lajataurs and MiMos in general: I haven't had to manage ANY of my skills. The only thing I did was turn off Unarmed when it hit 6.0. I've never had to pick up body armor or weapons or go through the process of equipping, checking out, uncursing, etc. Jewelry or clothes I'll put on. About the only other thing I do is occasionally quaff-id and read-id some potions and scrolls. Oh, and I collect magical robes because they frequently come with resistances.


So I guess what I am saying is Minos may be murder machines without much micromanagement. Unless something like this happens:


I head for this unusual structure thinking it might be a Temple variant. It is an altar of Ashenzari. These altars often have a spellbook on them with just Animate Dead in it, named something like Skeletal Cooking," "Culinary Necromancy," "Culinary Dark Arts," or "Rapid Deboning." A crimson imp, adder, and jackal all alert on me as I come into view of the temple interior, so I try to find a secure place to fight.

Not so much. A giant spore comes around the corner and explodes.

I am confused. I also have 9 hit points. And I am still wearing my starter gear aside from one pair of gloves. Oh, and I have a poisonous snake, a teleporting imp, and a jackal to deal with. I have a 3 unidentified scrolls and 4 different potions, one of which is a stack of 2.

Luckily, I am a minotaur. It may not be enough, but at least it's something...