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That list makes it look scary, but I don't think it's really any harder. I haven't played that much, but I haven't had any problems with juggernauts, shadowtraps made the game a good bit harder and are gone and the controlled teleport change actually makes the game easier in my opinion since it means there are no more -ctele areas and controlled blinks, even from scrolls of blinking, are always fully controlled. I almost never used actual controlled teleport anyway and I think removing it was the right decision. Death Cobs are the one change that people have repeatedly mentioned as making the game harder, though neither of my characters to encounter them since the buff felt very threatened (I'm sure I'll get killed by one in the tournament just for mentioning that).
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Nov 6, 2015 06:05
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Haifisch posted:s - the ring of Ofugyn {rPois rF+ rC+ Dex+2 Slay+3} Not quite as good, but here's my lab ring: the ring of Nihanir {Wiz rElec MP+9 Str+10 Stlth-}. That Str+10 makes a pretty big difference with a GSC and wizardry is great for an ogre.
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Nov 8, 2015 10:10
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Yes, hexers care more about spell power than anyone else, a robe of the archmagi is excellent for them. That amulet is obviously very good, but whether it's worth it is up to you. On the one hand, the confuse procs very rarely, so as long as you're not especially low on potions of curing or otherwise have a very high demand for them, it's not going to be a deal breaker. On the other hand Faith does nothing for you and as a spriggan, you have crazy high innate MR, so all you're really getting from it is fire resistance. If you have an amulet of regeneration, I would wear that as the default amulet and switch to the randart when you need rF. I believe as a gozag worshipper you're in a unique position to be able to treat a faith amulet as swap item.
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Nov 8, 2015 11:15
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quote:Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17.0-5-g1273c08 (webtiles) character file. I think the floor god loves me. Near perfect equipment and good spells as well. The only thing I can complain about is that the game has been incredibly stingy with large rocks. I've cleared V:1 and only have 5. Also, how long has controlled blink been a level 8 spell? I wonder if it's worth it to learn it before extended now, even on a Cheibro. I think it's a very fair change, probably overdue, but I do have one complaint. I think disjunction should be moved to level 7. I've tried using it a few times before and even on a character for whom it seems perfect, an archer with lots of translocations, it was almost always better to cast controlled blink. Even when they're the same level, they still compete for spell slots and contam and if you have to choose one, anyone but a formicid would choose controlled blink every time.
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Nov 8, 2015 15:03
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Can Of Worms posted:There's at least one situation where Disjunction is better than Controlled Blink: The orb run. I have indeed saved my rear end with it on the orb run. There's another use that I've heard of, but never tried, which is to escape nasty zig floors in combination with death's door. It's undoubtedly a good spell. It's just one that no one ever uses because it's outshone by controlled blink.
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Nov 8, 2015 15:40
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On a serious note, I was discussing this very change on the dev channel, not that it went anywhere substantial. Disjunction is a pretty strong effect though, I just haven't used it enough to suss out its effectiveness.
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It's probably fine. I suspect increasing only int would give better returns on spells since ogres typically have enough str naturally to cast in heavy armor. But if you only want just enough to cast low level spells, str still does give you a small damage boost. Dex seems pretty good for ogres too since their low dex contributes to their EV problems just as much as their large size.
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Nov 8, 2015 18:20
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Ogrevictory!quote:Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17.0-7-gfadd4cc (webtiles) character file. It was a shame to not take such a beast into extended. I even learned controlled blink so I would have it if I did decide to go for 15 runes and got it down to 1% practically on the very turn the orb of zot came into sight. But I decided I'd rather play a new ogre than slog through extended, even with such an awesome one as this. I do wish the really cool luck came on a later character in the tournament after I'd won a few combos I want to try.
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Nov 9, 2015 10:54
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UP AND ADAM posted:I just started playing this game, and it's really good. I got my second character, a GrFE, to the lair very with lots of good stuff like a +7 dagger {freeze, MP+9 Dex+3 Stlth+} that I found on d:5, but died in the swamps to a hydra (after having beat some others ones). I'm getting how all the stats and skills work to build a character, but I was wondering what the "optimal" armor for a hybrid type fighting/magic character is. I found a plate armor with like +7 but resigned myself to never using it, but if I focus on armor and spell skills, what kind of armor could I expect to get? I know the other choice is going dodge and just wearing robes, but I was a hearty species and found a good weapon. Before talking about armor, two points to mention: At what level did you enter swamp? A common mistake is to go in only a short time after finding the entrance thinking it's like lair or orc. You might well already know, but just in case, lair branches are a major step up in difficulty and it's best to do them after clearing all of the main dungeon. Next point, be careful of weapons with high enchantments and lots of special abilities but of a poor base type. That dagger was quite good when you found it, but it and almost any other short blade would probably have not been ideal for your character by the time you entered swamp. Base type is usually the most important thing in choosing a weapon and as a loose rule, bigger, heavier weapons are better once your weapon skill is high enough. As for armor on hybrids, light and heavy armor both can work, but it depends on your stats, your god and how much magic you're going to be using. I think gargoyles are best in light armor even if they aren't casting much magic because they have high innate AC, so they're best off by mitigating their weakness rather than focusing on their strength. My opinion is that a combination of decent AC/EV is usually better than good AC and poor EV, but most people seem to value AC more highly than I do. I favor light armor on almost any hybrid, actually, because you can just cast ozocubu's armor and get really good AC. But if you don't really want to bother with learning a lot of magic and rather focus on low level buffs and utility spells as well as maybe one mid-high level spell, heavy armor can work out provided you aren't weak in either strength or intelligence. Hybrid is a spectrum in Crawl. Basically any character should end up as a "hybrid" by the end of the game. Even pure melee bruisers who don't follow Trog will be stronger with a few low level spells and even pure blaster casters should have a weapon to fall back on. My favorite characters are jacks-of-all-trades who mostly fight with their weapon but have a trick or spell for every situation. Most such characters will want to wear troll leather unless there's a resist or other ego they really want. Edit: To give some specific advice in case you want to play a heavy armor hybrid, Hill Orcs are quite good at it. You gain str every 5 levels and have decent aptitudes. A more spellcasting heavy approach would be to start as a HOFE and worship vehumet. Your best weapon aptitude is in axes, but the good ones require more xp investment than you can likely afford, so you're probably best off going with a one hander (one handed axes suck, by the way, maces and flails or polearms are your best bets) and a shield. You should be able to cast bolt of fire and fireball in plate armor by the mid-late game. A more melee heavy approach would be HOSk of Okawaru. This time you do go for axes, they're pretty cool with spectral weapon and heroism helps with the skill requirement. Ashenzari would be a better choice if you want to cast lots of magic, but Okawaru is a lot more straightforward. The HOFE wants int on every level up perhaps with a touch of Str if you're having trouble with armor, the HOSk can choose between int or dex depending on what you want to cast. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 13:09
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Hail Ogrebrothers! What do you all think about the state of the GSC in .17? The skill needed to hit min delay has increased from 22 to 24, while the giant club now needs only 18 rather than 20. It might be heresy to say this, but I think some ogres might prefer giant clubs now to giant spiked clubs. Especially those ogres who prefer to emphasize "crush with large rock" over "smash with huge stick". I imagine this could be even more true for the ogre that would like to say funny sounding book words before crushing with large rocks and smashing with huge sticks. My win so far used a GSC, but I lost an ogre on snake four that I think would have been stronger without making the push to 24 M&F. 20 base damage is still really, really good after all.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:06
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I think you'll do more damage with a giant club until 22-23 skill anyway. It's 20 vs 22 base damage, so at 18 m&f, the giant club is quite a bit better.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:33
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Elf can get really scary for melee guys, especially if you don't know what to expect and don't have a plan for how to deal with it. Vaults is probably safer through 4. Then you could do elf, crypt (can also get scary for the unprepared) or depths. Elf is generally the easiest of those as long as things don't go pear-shaped, but that's very possible if you let yourself get surrounded by nasty elves. Whole floor vaults in depths can throw everything you'll find on elf: 3 and more at you, though. Other, unrelated advice: get more dodging. A minor investment (12-13) will get you a significant increase in effective hit points. Just a few EV can make a big difference. Next, get a better ranged attack. Attack wands work, but you should have something more reliable. Evo or throwing are ideal if you have the tools (rods or javelins), if not I would go for an arbalest on that character, but I can see how some players might thing it's too much investment. Third, ID your wand of hasting, digging and any other wand you want to use to attack with. You have little use for the ID scrolls and that will let you make much better use of those wands. Finally, don't touch that obsidian axe! Edit: for the future, use acquirement scrolls on "staves" on Trog characters. It's guaranteed to give you a rod. That will give you a great ranged option that scales with the best utility skill in the game. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 13:09
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Somehow I forgot about the ammo gifts from Trog. Throwing is less viable if you don't have shoals in your game because you probably won't be able to throw javelins at will. Tomahawks are surprisingly badass at high skill levels, but not better than bows crossbows for the skill investment. Trog obviously will help a lot with that problem, though. Regarding Darkness, It's helpful, but quite esoteric. When it was level 7 it was mostly just a novelty. At level 6 it's probably worth taking if you're going for hexes anyway because it can be quite helpful under the right circumstances. I wouldn't see it as a reason to go for hexes in the first place, but if you're casting hexes anyway, it's a decent spell that puts your skill investment to good use even in situations where you can't actually hex anything. I wish the duration were longer, however. It doesn't last for a very long time and while LoS reduction can be extremely powerful, it's hard to figure out when to cast it.
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Nov 10, 2015 16:19
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Pomale posted:Wow, awesome advice guys, thanks! I'll try out some of these and see which one clicks. I'll probably go for something hybrid since as much as I like having a huge repertoire of spells I can't stand being so fragile. I know higher level spells mitigate that problem but I always seem to react to danger too late. There's no reason you can't have a huge repertoire of spells, good melee damage and be fairly durable. That's what Ashenzari is for! HE^Ash is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades-gently caress-the-saying-master-of-all-also character. But HE is weak early and relies heavily on good spell book finds. GrVM^Ash is very strong throughout the game and doesn't need to find anything other than a decent weapon (much easier than HE because m&f are so much more common than LB even though it makes no sense for that to be the case any longer). Lean on sting and kiting while you train poison magic to 7 or so for OTR then switch to melee. By the time you can't rely on poison magic and meph cloud to solve all your problems, ash's skill boost should make you a decent fighter. Pick up venom bolt mid-lair for a very powerful AoE range nuke. Gargoyle AC and Ash's skill boost will keep you durable even in light armor and with moderate dodging skill. It's a very offense focused strategy, but it can take a punch too. It does melt even faster under heavy pressure than most gargoyles, though. Internet Kraken posted:The real easy mode for extended is a statue form character. You get tons of AC, a big health bonus, and the best torment damage reduction outside of Kiku. On top of that, they have immunity to a lot of the stupid bullshit you can't avoid in extended. You don't have to worry about getting your HP rotted constantly or getting petrified in Dis. Pretty much the only extended threat they still care about is hellfire, but some races in statue form will have so much HP they don't care. And if you really want to go overkill, you can still worship TSO or Mahkleb to get heals on kills. You're basically indestructible at that point barring incredibly stupid play. I tend to be slightly more anti-statue form than pro, and I know other people differ from me on this, but my problem with statue form in extended is that you have to eat far more hell effects and deal with more of the super high spawn rate in pan. It's also harder to escape from bullshit situations in pan as well. I end up taking more damage in statue form than without it in both of those places. It's amazing in tomb, however. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 18:37
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Internet Kraken posted:I mean I've tried tons of different builds in extended, and statue form feels like easy mode to me. It makes everything way easier. I'm not sure what you're doing to make you take more damage in it cause Ive never felt that way when using it. The only times I've come close to dieing with statue form in extended is when I play like an idiot because I'm overconfident. I have no desire to get into a poo poo-slinging contest about statue form, but I will clarify why I take more damage when I use it. First, you fight many more enemies, so you give the RNG more chances to gently caress you with bad rolls. Second, you can't escape fights and if you try to re-position during a fight, you take damage. LoS management is crucial in extended and statue form makes that harder. Third, it actually drops your damage output significantly on most characters. Even transmuters will do a lot more damage with blade hands or dragon form and won't suffer the slow effect while doing it. Other characters have free access to ranged attacks and consumables without losing turns due to slow. This is a big deal for me, even in basically the same fights, I take more damage as a statue because it takes that much more time to end the fight. Obviously this partly comes down to play style. I strongly favor offense over defense and never play without a strong ranged attack, so statue form is very situational for most of my characters.
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Nov 11, 2015 03:53
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The wiki is worlds better now than when I started. I think part of the reason it has a bad reputation is that most of the people who feel confident giving advice started playing crawl when the wiki was a major source of death and suffering for new players. By now we know almost everything about the game anyway and the learnDB is actually legible for us when we need to look up something specific. Some people are even such ridiculous nerds that they feel comfortable using the IRC bots. I haven't been on the wiki in forever, but after quickly looking over some articles that previously gave bad advice (e.g. the GDR page) it looks pretty solid. Another issue with the wiki that is at least partly still true is that it adheres to the release version rather than trunk. While not unreasonable, most long time players play trunk, so this is a frustrating policy. It also used to be that to edit it you had to have an account, so it wasn't easy for people to casually correct bad information. Edit: Tony Montana posted:Yeah, well the OP is quite good otherwise and not that old. I suggest updating it with significantly less Wiki-hate and probably suggesting new players go straight there and read entries such as the summaries of the branches (so you have some idea where you're going) and a bunch of other useful stuff. Who wants to join an IRC channel as a complete noobie and ask to have everything explained to them? I agree with this. I used the wiki when I was learning the game even though I knew it was full of wrong information and had lost a good character as a result of misinformation there just because it was and still is the only remotely approachable format if you don't already know the game inside out. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 13:44
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ZeeToo posted:Hello, I am ZeeToo. I am an orb of fire hunter. My ogre assassin had 11. I did clear both lungs, though. There were six of them in the bottom quadrant of the first lung I cleared and they all showed up basically at the same time. I was surrounded by four of them at one point, but fortunately one thing ogres are good for is bashing orbs of fire.
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Nov 12, 2015 10:09
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I didn't stick around Z5 to see if there were any in the other lung.
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Armor acquirement is good for casters too. Everyone likes resists and if you're very lucky you can get crazy stat boosts or regen+ or other really good stuff. I find jewellery and book acquirement to be pretty poo poo for most characters. Wands is always good until you have hasting and heal wounds; it's weighted towards the useful ones, so you have a respectable chance to get a good wand even before you've found all that many (you will actually get magic darts). I would split them between armor and wands, personally. Staves could be good if you have a high elemental school and want to use the enhancer staff. I quite like weapon acquirement in the early game, but that's not relevant for you. Holding onto them is pretty wasteful, though.
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Nov 13, 2015 06:23
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Scaramouche posted:- I've heard you guys discuss how giant clubs have changed recently, did the crit rate change? It seems to be firing way more often. Put another way, on my old install I had to play 121 chars before I got up to 5 ogre deaths and I've reached that one in 20 plays this time. I know I'm a little late on this and other people have already given thorough answers to your post with which I completely agree, but I will add one point, which is that Crawl has no critical hits in the D&D sense. Rather damage is just swingy as all hell by design. Everyone basically always rolls from 0 to a very high possible max damage, perhaps with some weight towards the middle range. The chance for ogres to hit for 30+ damage or for orc warriors to kill you in one hit with a freak 40 damage hit is no higher now than ever. This leads to the very common experience of crushing 10 enemies of a certain type with no issue and then suddenly exploding as soon as the 11th touches you. The good aspect of this is that the extreme randomness forces you to react to unpredictable circumstances and past the beginning of the game, you're basically guaranteed the tools to do so. The bad aspect is that, as people have been complaining, you go into cruise control for 3 hours and then suddenly die because you weren't paying attention for 10 seconds. I really enjoy those moments of pants-making GBS threads terror, but I can understand how other players might not.
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Nov 19, 2015 16:31
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Steam checks rF and is totally negated if you have one rank.
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Nov 20, 2015 04:27
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I do think Zot is the most boring part of the late game, though I really like depths and vaults as is. I don't think eliminating Zot in some way is inherently a bad idea, but it could have pretty wacky game balance repercussions regarding XP gain. Increasing xp gained in vaults and depths could make acquiring the orb much too easy (A character ready to clear Zot 5 could have a level 9 spell without sacrificing too much from defense, but a character casting firestorm on vaults 5 is usually pretty squishy). With no change at all, the orb level is vaults 5 difficulty, it could make it hard for some characters to get ready for extended. The game is too long, but I'm not sure the end game is the worst offender. I still think it drags too much in the mid game and that lair, orc and even lair branches could stand to be shorter and more dense. Extended is a huge slog, especially for what amounts to a very long victory lap for most of the characters that do it. I wish those areas would be shortened before anything else.
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Nov 20, 2015 15:14
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It's bed time for me, so I can't give a complete answer, but the short version is that PDA is worth it with your stats full stop. Whether the artefact is worth it depends on what other stuff it has on it. It probably isn't, haste is really good however fast you're already attacking. Statue form probably isn't worth it unless you're an unarmed character, however. Especially with a full slots species wearing PDA. But there are lots of other mid level utility spells that are really good, depending on what you've found. You've got some really nice jewellery and you basically can't go wrong with any of it. Switch as needed. If I recall correctly, VS really likes having str and dex up to a total of 50ish to guarantee bites, but int will help with hybridization so all stats are good for you.
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Nov 26, 2015 17:36
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Death channel doesn't use corpses and creates the spectres passively as you're fighting. They're both really good spells, but I would probably hold off on death channel until later once your defenses are solid and you have reliable melee damage. Kiku can't rebrand artefacts, but I'd still go for the pain brand anyway. Try acquiring a weapon if you have 10+ m&f and a scroll. You stand a fair shot of getting an evening star or demon whip (obviously the best choice) since the scroll tends to give you a type you haven't seen before and the other m&f weapons are quite common. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 08:07
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*Confuse is fine without clarity. It doesn't happen very often, doesn't last long and you can quaff curing if you need to. I agree that amulets are in need of reform, but these changes look pretty terrible. rMut is awkward and I think getting rid of it would be good if there were a serious change in how malmutate works. But as it is, this just seriously ups the frustration and tedium of the most tedious and frustrating part of the game. Likewise, amulets of regen are too good, especially if you can us them for out of battle healing. I don't think this change is all bad, but rot is seriously annoying and perhaps too much of a penalty. I think there must be more interesting ways to change the amulet that show less detest for the players. I feel like these changes indicate a major disconnect from what most people's experience of the game actually is. Another change in the same spirit would be to bring back equipment destruction.
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Nov 30, 2015 07:51
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That post is very reassuring. I do wish that malmutate had been changed before rMut was removed, but as long as it is changed in the future, I think the game will be better for all this.
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Dec 1, 2015 05:07
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Mana shield is my second favorite tier 2 after nightstalker. Stack regen effects and watch yourself regain 3 mp per turn. It's better than passively channeling a staff of energy every turn at 27 evo. That's not to mention that spirit shield is very strong on its own for everyone but pure casters.
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Dec 2, 2015 08:39
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Liberal_L33t posted:So, after not playing since the tournament, I'm actually not getting pissed off about any of the things other players are. i'm fine with painful amulets, no rMut, no cTele, and the weird ranged weapon changes (since I found them aggravating to play with before). The difficulty of Snake seems to depend heavily on playstyle. I find it i as hard as shoals, but other people say it's easy. A big part of dealing with it is recognizing threats and knowing how to handle with them. Greater Nagas aren't all that bad. They deal heavy damage in melee and at range and can haste themselves to pursue you at standard speed, but they're still normal speed bruisers at worst. You have no reason to deal with them more than one at a time unless you screwed up. Their one major trick is that they are magic immune. Hexes won't work on them at all, ever, no matter what, so plan accordingly. The real nasty killers in snake are sharpshooters, shock serpents and guardian serpents. A single shock serpent is a major emergency if you don't have rElec. More than one sharpshooter is the same. Vashnia is a run the gently caress away no matter what sign. If you didn't fight Vashnia, you won against Vashnia; there's almost never any reason to fight her at all. Seeing a guardian serpent means you should break line of sight immediately and retreat to a position where you can handle being surrounded by constricting enemies. If you're playing a weak or weird character that lacks escape, heavy offense and AC, you're in for a really tough time, and you might want to wait to take on snake 4 until you have a way to deal lots of damage very fast (iron shot, iood, a really big weapon, etc.) I really dislike Snake and most of the midgame because it throws a bunch of really annoying encounters that focus on action denial while being the least rewarding part of the game in terms of character growth. Lots of characters hit a serious hump in the mid game and depending on your play style and the character you play, Snake (or, more commonly, Shoals) can exemplify that. But the mid game is still far easier than the early game objectively. It just lulls you into a sense of security and then kills you with sudden bullshit. So learn what the bullshit is and you can circumvent it much more easily than being triple-smited by a surprise orc priest on d: 3.
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Dec 3, 2015 19:14
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Unimpressed posted:Is it worth skilling up armour as a caster? Probably not for a DE, I doubt you'll have the strength to wear any heavy armor. I guess you could go for 7-8 armor skill and maybe get 2 extra AC from swamp dragon armor, but I'd prefer troll leather or a lighter armor with a better resist. Personally, I think poison magic is a giant mess of ugly design decisions. It's never worth it to train past 10-11 skill, it's useless in extended, it's very frequently resisted right from the early game and by very dangerous enemies starting in Lair, and the usefulness of the whole school is heavily dependent on finding one rare spell. People say that it's okay for it to be frequently resisted and to become useless in extended because it's so strong early on. I don't agree. It is strong early on, but it's also inconvenient, its early game power depends heavily on kiting, which is annoying, and also on knowing what rPois threats are likely to show up and having a plan to deal with them. If you have a very specific play style or you know the game in and out, poison magic might be comparatively stronger than other schools early on, but for the vast majority of players it is actually weaker because it requires such specialized play. So why bother? I actually like venom mage as a background, OTR is acceptable as a low investment damage spell in the early game and venom bolt is actually a really solid nuke if you get its power up high enough. And poison magic does have some really good spells, Parrow is the best single target attack spell in the game and poison cloud is great AoE. I do understand the argument against adding high level acid spells to poison because then it wouldn't have much to distinguish it from other attack focused schools. But I would never train poison magic outside of starting as a VM or finding poison arrow. Some mid to high level cross-school utility spells would make the whole school a lot more appealing even without Parrow.
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Dec 10, 2015 07:47
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PleasingFungus posted:If Poison Magic has balance problems - and I haven't played enough recently to have a strong opinion one way or another - I would much rather buff its early-game spells's power scaling than add late-game poison magic. Poison is mostly okay balance wise, it's just aesthetically unpleasing. It feels pointless. The advantages aren't strong enough to outweigh the hassle of making it work, it's only really good if you luck into Parrow, it has limited utility options and it lacks interesting and creative attacks spells that are present in other schools. I understand not wanting to add high level attack spells given poison magic's design concept of "strong early, weak late unless you're lucky", but I do think mid-high level cross-school spells should be added that make players feel like their 10 levels in poison magic aren't wasted. Again, balance-wise, it's obviously not a waste, but the issue here isn't balance. It's not a rational issue and appealing to player's sense of reason won't work. The problem is that the design is ugly and makes people feel bad for reasons that are aesthetic rather than rational, and people won't stop disliking poison magic and complaining about it until that's changed.
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Dec 11, 2015 08:05
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Dee Ehm posted:I got to Orc with the axe murdering deep elf Necromanxer, and I've realized that I'm completely clueless when it comes to Necromancy spells that aren't animate skeleton / animate dead / bolt of draining, I don't know how to play deep elf casters, and I have no idea what I'm doing. So I'm asking for legitimate help before I kill myself. It's not the ideal build for a deep elf, but I'd go the death knight route. Keep laceration for the whole game; unless you want to subject yourself to extended, you won't find a better weapon. Train axes and use animate dead and death channel to make a big army. Use corpse drop for ablative zombie armor when you run into nasty things. Simulacrum would be a great find for you, especially if you can find a book of frost to give yourself better defenses. Simulacra are frail but will mess poo poo up. You'll want to focus on buffs for yourself and might consider getting some summons. A good necro-warrior can roll through the whole game pretty much unopposed until zot: 5, at which point you'll need a plan for orbs of fire. I don't find necromancy very reliable against them because they rip through your minions so quickly. OoD or malign gateway should both be acceptable in that regard. The staff route would be better if you want to be a more "pure" necromancer, but I find that to be super fiddly and annoying. It can be effective, but it will take forever to kill things and require three times as much work as if you just chopped them with the axe. Haunt will be a good spell for you in this case (I hate haunt, don't do this and don't learn it) because it's good for clogging up the whole screen with trash that will pick away at your enemies very slowly. A short blade is a good backup weapon for spooky haunters, too, because it's easy to get distraction stabs, so that manual would prove useful. You could go for air magic, but that won't mix well with your minions at all. CBL, chain lightning and tornado are the big air spells and your undead will just get in the way or get blown up. Poisonous cloud, on the other hand, would be perfect for you if you could swing the XP. Tony Montana posted:Ok I lost another like 4 loving Wizards yesterday in the early levels. Please can someone write me a super brief 'How to be a starter Wizard' guide or a couple of dot points. People have already given a lot of good advice, but I'll add that HEWz is more a melee or ranged character in disguise. You should turn off magic and start training defenses or a weapon by D:4 unless you've found another background's starter spell book. You can eventually cast all kinds of stuff as a HEWz, but you need to develop ways to kill things right away, and a sword or bow supported by your magic is the best way to do that early on in most cases. If you want to play a generalist caster, deep elf conjuror is a good bet, though they're frail as hell. It doesn't get better than deep elves, though, if you want to cast all the magic. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 08:47
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:I looked up kiku in the ingame guide to the gods and holy poo poo that sounds fun. What's a better race than hill orc to go with if I feel like going all in with the necromancy? Hill orc is still a good choice. Even if you're following Kiku, necromancy works best as a powerful support skill set that enhances your ability to attack and defend as well as giving your more ways to approach an encounter. You will still be stronger if you develop a standard way to kill things (melee with a polearm is probably ideal) and supplement it with necromancy. You can make a pure necromancer work, but to my mind it's a very unnatural way to play the game. Other than hill orcs, tengu and demonspawn make nice necromancers. Vampires can be good too, but vampires are weird and not friendly to new players. Someone suggested deep elf enchanter, which is an off-beat but interesting choice, especially if you really want to focus hard on magic. Any caster background is okay, but those that support a hybrid playstyle like wizard and ice elementalist are probably best. Necromancer itself is a good hybrid start, but is redundant with kiku; it's better if you're going for another god that's helpful to hybrids like Ashenzari. My first win was a demonspawn ice elementalist of kiku, which is a fun, versatile and powerful combination, though it can be complicated to play.
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Dec 16, 2015 12:13
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Sergeant_Crunch posted:Christ, gently caress centaurs. Every single time I've come across one it's been an instant game over. None of my consumables helped, plus it was way faster than me, and on top of that it does like a fifth of my hp with every arrow even with the awesome +2 dagger of protection I found. It's happened to 4 different characters, none of them could outrun the centaur to the stairs in time even if I managed to drop a conjured flame behind me and get around a corner, it just kept pursuing. If you're playing a wizard, meph cloud that fucker, then finish it off with imps and magic darts. That's the wizard solution to most early game problems: summon a bunch of annoying creatures to distract enemies and then fart on them. Meph cloud's range is short, so you should duck around a corner and lure the centaur closer without letting it shoot you. Controlling line of sight is probably the most important skill in the game and centaurs are one of the biggest tests of your ability to do that. In the early game, you should try to explore carefully so you always have a corner nearby that you can use to escape enemies with scary ranged attacks. Edit: After reading your post again, there's another point to mention: conjure flame isn't working here because it's out of line of sight. Your clouds tend to dissipate much faster when you can't see them, so using it to block enemies then running around a corner won't help to put a lot of distance between you and them. Conjure flame is for orc warriors and ogres in the early game, but it won't help much against centaurs. Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 04:30
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Yeah, wizard is a solid contender for strongest start after berserker. For me, only ice elementalist and assassin compare in reliably surviving the early game. You just have to realize two things. First, it's a melee (or ranged) background in disguise. Unless you luck out with spellbooks or follow vehumet, you need to work on getting a weapon usable as soon as you have your spells at a comfortable failure rate. And that relates to the second, which is that for hybrid starts like wizard or skald, a comfortable failure rate is between 20-30%. You can't play like other casters and try to get your spells below 10% ASAP, because by the time you do, you'll find you don't have a way to reliably kill things.Sergeant_Crunch posted:I definitely underuse the imp summon, but it sounds pretty handy. I guess I never saw the use since I was only summoning one at a time to help me fight instead of a small horde. I also haven't used meph cloud much, but it sounds pretty drat useful. Thanks for the tips! Wizard is my favorite background; I've played tons of them and won quite a few, but I still underuse the imps since I'm just not a fan of how summons work in this game. But they really are a key tool of the wizard. Meph cloud is your best spell in the early game since it automatically wins most fights if you get it off (but it's noisy and will attract other monsters, so be careful with it!) and the imps are your second most important spell. They can buy you a lot of time to escape from dangerous stuff and the stronger ones deal good damage on the first few floors. They're also immune to the meph cloud, so the major wizard strategy is to block enemies with imps then meph them and finish everything off with your weapon, retreating through your imps if things go wrong. How much you need the imps depends on your species. With a high elf, I rarely bother since you can get magic dart to max power quite quickly and that will be good enough until you can start to deal damage with a sword or bow. For an ogre, magic dart is pretty useless after d:1 and you need the imps to take out nasty stuff on d:2 and d:3, so I can't imagine playing without them.
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Dec 19, 2015 06:22
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Ferrinus posted:I never actually train a weapon skill on my wizard starts and I'm not sure I'd call it a "melee background in disguise". Like, you certainly end up stabbing confused monsters, and spearing monsters from behind pillars of fire, but there's no call to do that with more than 0 weapon skill and however many points of Fighting you would've been able to spare anyway. Your real powerhouses are non-red imps (white imps are killer) and pillars of conjured fire. That said, stumbling onto a random artifact with a +9 enchantment or something never hurts. There are three reasons to train a weapon on a wizard. First, if you don't follow vehumet and don't get lucky with books, you'll run into serious problems with offense by the time you reach lair. You definitely can kill everything just with your starting spells even through the end of lair, but it will likely make you want to tear your hair out and it's far from ideal. Second, you don't really have anything else to train. Conjurations is of no use past 5-6 for magic dart, and even that is far from necessary. Putting two points into air and a point in poison for lower failure rate on meph cloud is a good idea. If you're a deep elf, going deep into hexes for a high power, long duration slow can be really good, but it's not worth it for most species. Your spells really only need enough investment for them to work in the first place and spell power is only really significant with slow (and maybe repel missiles, but there are far more important ways to use your XP in the early game), so there's no reason to invest heavily in casting. That means you can start training a weapon with only a little more investment into your spells as a skald would make and less than a hybrid ice elementalist. Finally, the book of minor magic is awesome for early game melee characters. Conjure flame significantly boosts your damage in lair, imps interfere and block for you as well as dealing solid damage early, blink is good for everyone, meph cloud is a win button for early game melee characters and slow is also a win button for things you can't meph if you invest in hexes, though that's rarely worth it. Sure, you can play a wizard as a straight caster, but it's one of the best backgrounds for melee and going for melee makes the early-mid game much easier. It's certainly a much stronger melee start than a skald, even if the book of battle is far better in the mid-late game.
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Dec 19, 2015 09:26
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PleasingFungus posted:Gell's Gravitas might be good, I'm not sure anyone's sure. Force Lance is decent these days, Summon Forest is strong if you have the XP to dump into two schools you aren't using super heavily at present. Phase Shift will be very good eventually (by mid-late game?) but it's not worth investing for yet. I was not able to get any use out of Gell's Gravitas on my DEAM. It might as well not even exist. I think it might be okay at high spell power, but it basically does nothing at all except cost 3 mp at the power level you're likely to be using it in the early game. Sergeant_Crunch posted:I might invest in forest summon since I just found a book of beasts as well and will probably be training summoning pretty heavily. I also found a ring of stealth in a shop and I'm thinking I might also do a bit of stealth on the side. How decent of a stealthy character would a high elf wizard even make? I would go force lance and ice beasts from the book of beasts, then work on summon forest. That's spreading your experience out across a lot of schools, though, which might not work out, depending on your god. Summoners typically work best when they can stand next to monsters and take hits for their summons, so they strongly recommend themselves to a hybrid play style, but that's obviously something to focus on later. Stealth in crawl is a defensive layer that gives you more control over where and when you fight and is useful to all characters. Focusing entirely on stealth, however, isn't usually a good idea. You'll never be able to sneak up on everything. Enchanters are the real stealth start because they have hexes that let you disable enemies that you can't sneak up on and then stab them. Wizards can pull it off too because you can use meph cloud to enable stabs with a shortblade, and high elves have decent enough aptitudes for it; a few levels in short blades and stealth is a very solid investment on a low level high elf wizard. But don't go overboard, stealth is good for defense and escape, but it's very difficult to make it work as your main strategy for killing things and short blades are not good in toe-to-toe fights with nasty enemies.
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Dec 20, 2015 07:21
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PleasingFungus posted:Gell's Gravitas was rebalanced to be dramatically stronger at low power, about a month after your deam. Good to hear, that might mean I have to do yet another DEAM. Darox posted:And yeah, shock is really good. It's the best level one spell and part of why the AE start is great. My ideal starter spell book if element schools didn't matter would be book of flames minus flame tongue/throw flame, plus shock & meph cloud. Interesting, I hate AE with a passion (and I've won 3-4 of them, because I want to like them and love high level air magic) and I'm not a big fan of shock. Better to be able to kill single enemies reliably without fussing around with bouncing the bolt. I think the real problem with AE, though, is lightning bolt. I'd have to choose freeze as my favorite level one spell. It's single school and can take you through most of the early game by itself with careful use.
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Dec 20, 2015 14:28
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Internet Kraken posted:Nothing of Ash is cool because he's a finicky god of bullshit. They are good though. Ash is the god of the jack-of-all-trades-except-gently caress-you-I'm-a-master-of-all-of-them-too who can also see through walls. I actually find her to provide serious quality of life improvements as well because of the auto-IDing and because you don't have to deal with equipment swapping since you can't do it anyway. Of course 70% of my characters worship Ash, so I'm hardly an objective source. resistentialism posted:EE stabbers of ash are super cool. Indeed they are. Ages ago someone in one of these threads said they're like an evil slasher movie Kool-aid man and that's definitely true. HisMajestyBOB posted:For HE, you could used bows as well instead of melee. IIRC there's no penalty for using bows in melee, and High Elves have a higher bows apt. Plus another, MP-less ranged attack can help soften enemies before they reach attack range. Bows are really, really good for casters. They solve your MP problems, they're quiet and they don't require you to train high defenses. I'd probably forgo firestorm on most deep elves for 20 in bows. And the wizard spellbook is even more friendly to ranged attackers than melee since you can use blink, meph cloud and, early on, conjure flame to keep enemies at range. But compared to melee, arrows can be hard to find very early, then lair can get rough if you don't have a longbow, and you probably won't! Once you do get one, though, the game folds like paper. Weapon acquirement is a very good idea with an early archer.
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Dec 21, 2015 02:51
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I'm bad at ziggurats and have never cleared one without a really strong caster or a monster hybrid, so I won't offer much advice here except to say, don't do it! It's doable for melee characters with the right resources (the number of scrolls of fog you have is more important than your resists, most likely) but clearing zigs requires a completely different style of play from winning the game. It might turn out that you're good at it and you'll succeed, but probably not. If you're lucky, you'll figure out that you should bail on the zig before it kills you, if not, you'll die. Either way you'll feel disappointed. Take your 15 rune win and be happy about it. Attempt to clear your first zig with a naga fire elementalist of Makhleb in lich form with Wucad Mu or whatever.
Heithinn Grasida fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Dec 21, 2015 |
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Dec 21, 2015 15:58
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Glaciate is clearly and objectively better than firestorm because it turns things it kills into those cool ice statues. Nothing feels like dropping the WMDs more than casting Glaciate. To be more serious, I like Glaciate because I like ice magic a lot more over the course of the game than fire. I can see the argument for firestorm once you do get to high levels, but I don't think it's such a clear thing. Glaciate typically hits harder and hits a larger area. It's not as straightforward as firestorm and you have to play around its weaknesses, but if you do, you can wreak a whole lot more havoc per cast. It's especially good if you're playing a hybrid that wants to be up close to monsters anyway.
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Dec 22, 2015 04:29
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Arivia posted:Oh, I have an antimagic executioner's axe in my stash. I thought freezing or vampiric were the go-tos for the full game as a MiBe. They might be better, but not significantly, especially at this point when almost nothing has rElec. That axe is fine for the rest of the game. You could try to rebrand it if you want, but you certainly don't have to. I'd train fighting at this point, you should be able to bring it up quickly and it will help both damage and defense. More dodging would be nice, but it's going to start getting really expensive for low returns because of your heavy armor and lowish dex.. I think Evo would be more valuable, especially after dodging hits 16 or so. I agree with rchandra's suggestions of where to go next. Be sure to bring MR to elf unless you feel ready for the abyss. And, indeed, there's little point to doing the hall of blades when you already have a great weapon.
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Dec 22, 2015 08:39
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Internet Kraken posted:Ash is the most boring god. Almost everything he does is entirely passive and to get the most benefit out of him you have to manage a bunch of cursed gear, which means minimal swapping. He's extremely good but also extremely dull. Casting level nine spells while wielding whatever weapon you want without sacrificing hugely on defense in a three rune game is boring? Ash's skill boost is passive, but effectively it gives you more active abilities than any other god because it lets you cast a bunch of stuff that otherwise would cut too much into your melee or defensive abilities. Imagine Ash as a melee god whose 2 star ability is fireball with no piety cost. Then at 4 stars he gives you bolt of fire and at six stars he gives you orb of destruction. Or for a mid game character you can imagine Ash's "active abilities" to be haste, deflect missiles, silence, agony, death channel, monstrous menagerie and aura of abjuration, all piety free. On a typical light to medium armor demonspawn or gargoyle, for example, you could maybe cast two of those spells by vaults and still be decent in melee. With Ash you can cast all of them before vaults and be fine. I know I'm exaggerating here a little bit, but the sheer number of extra spells and powers available to an Ash character compared to most other gods is staggering. Ash not only gives you the largest number of active powers of any god, he gives you a lot of flexibility in choosing powers to suit your character and even lets you change your powers to adapt to what the game hands you.
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Dec 23, 2015 05:00
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