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[tompliss]

Well, you're lucky it is not named after you (this can happen, even if it is very rare) c:

PS: +7 elec crossbow is nice, I don't know many characters who would not like to use it

[EvilTwin]

Well, you're lucky it is not named after you (this can happen, even if it is very rare) c:

PS: +7 elec crossbow is nice, I don't know many characters who would not like to use it

So you are saying I should start training crowsbows? I have 0 skill with them :/

[tompliss]

I'm not saying that you HAVE to train crossbows, but that this weapon makes it a good option, once you already have nice levels in *your melee weapon* armor and/or dodging, fighting, ~10 invocation (for low failure finesse).
Having ranged option(s) can save your character, and Okawaru will give you nice ones.

[EvilTwin]

Fair enough. I shall follow that advice. Thanks.

[Retropunch]

Yeah one of the main things I always see people doing (either watching online, friends, forums) is forgetting/not using ranged. It's invaluable in crawl, and weapon swap time doesn't take too long (try it out with a goblin or something). Being able to take something's health down a third before melee range is obviously useful, and poisoning/slowing/confusing is realllly useful in any fight. With that xbow you'll probably manage to mulch through most stuff - with bolts of penetration/steel bolts you'll dominate any sort of corridor of creatures.

Also, as you'll probably want to learn translocations for blink (even with a melee build unless you have ridiculously heavy armour) it's worth trying to get portal projectile online if you have a good ranged weapon. That gives you smite targeting which with a powerful crossbow will make short work of casters. In my last win I got ridiculously lucky as the Zot layout had a statue that needed disintegrating before all the monsters could come out of the main 'Zot rooms'. As I could see over that and portal projectile I cleared the entire Zot rooms without suffering hardly any damage.

[monk12]

Depends, are you going sword and board? If you're using a 2handed weapon anyway then yes, I'd definitely plan on putting points into crossbows with a MiFi. You might have 0 skill, but you have an acceptable aptitude and the new power to make things dead at range.

[Rex_Nex]

I mostly shy away from ranged weapons on melee chars because of how tedious it is to have to swap between weapons instead of bashing things with tab. Plus I feel like I need to carry a bunch of different ammo type and suddenly 1/3 of my inventory is gone. Every time I NEED to soften something up, I always have ample bolt wands.

[Mindmaker]

You can swap the weapons designated as "a" and "b" with ' if that helps.

[Retropunch]

I mostly shy away from ranged weapons on melee chars because of how tedious it is to have to swap between weapons instead of bashing things with tab. Plus I feel like I need to carry a bunch of different ammo type and suddenly 1/3 of my inventory is gone. Every time I NEED to soften something up, I always have ample bolt wands.

Have you been setting stuff up as a/b weapon slots? Then you only need to press ' to change between the two (admittedly it's annoying to have to change it earlier on, but easy once you've found your two main weapons). I pretty much only carry penetration or steel bolts (silver if I haven't got a holy weapon). While I admit bolt wands are in huge abundance, a really good xbow and penetration bolts does heaaaaps of damage, and you can get off a good 5 or so shots before each serious melee.

More than anything though, it's just a shame that crawl has devolved into just o-tabbing everything.

Edit: Ninja'd!

[Rex_Nex]

I didn't know you could do that, I'll go check out how to set that up.

[monk12]

I didn't know you could do that, I'll go check out how to set that up.

It's super helpful and basically necessary.

(i)nventory
whatever the key for your main weapon is
(=) to "adjust"
it'll prompt for a letter, you'll want to press (a)
It will tell you that the weapon is now a and whatever item used to have a is now swapped with the old letter of the weapon.

Repeat for the crossbow, except on step four press (b) so your inventory looks like
a- an excellent melee weapon
b- dat crossbow

' will then switch between the two. Remember that switching weapons still costs you in-game time, it just saves you the annoyance of going to (w)ield a new weapon every time you want to switch from melee to ranged.

If you do carry every single type of crossbow ammo it does take up a fair amount of inventory slots; I usually just carry some base bolts, steel bolts, penetration bolts, and maaaybe some fire/frost/poison if I'm heading to a branch full of susceptible enemies. It depends a lot on how much of an inventory crunch I'm facing at the time.

More than anything though, it's just a shame that crawl has devolved into just o-tabbing everything.

If that tactic works for you, then I envy your skill. Only time it's ever worked for me was that GrFi of TSO, and there's a reason I escaped feeling like it was the baby class combo for losers. Crawl just generally has that effect on me, though; "Oh, you're going down to the Orb of Zot? With only five runes? What, the dungeon too tough for you? Scaredypants is afraid of Tomb? Sure, fine, enjoy your win, if you can even call it that. Nerd."

[Retropunch]

More than anything though, it's just a shame that crawl has devolved into just o-tabbing everything.

If that tactic works for you, then I envy your skill. Only time it's ever worked for me was that GrFi of TSO, and there's a reason I escaped feeling like it was the baby class combo for losers. Crawl just generally has that effect on me, though; "Oh, you're going down to the Orb of Zot? With only five runes? What, the dungeon too tough for you? Scaredypants is afraid of Tomb? Sure, fine, enjoy your win, if you can even call it that. Nerd."

Agreed, if you go for the hard runes or have a non-good class combo you've got to have some serious tactics and skill.
I just feel that with any remotely sensible class combo a great deal of the game (basically anything from mid lair till Zot) can be done by just o-tabbing and a bit of RNG luck. I don't know, maybe it's because I've gotten better, but it always used to feel there was a lot more to worry about.

[Robsoie]

For those interested by stats, here's some from the tourneys :

0.14 : total players : 2318, Games : 56717, Wins : 1.31%
0.13 : total players : 1749, Games : 44014, Wins : 1.37%
0.12 : total players : 1735, Games : 45500, Wins : 1.40%
0.11 : total players : 1545, Games : 40084, Wins  1.18%
0.10 : total players : 1628, Games : 33636, Wins : 1.10%
0.9 : total players : 1337, Games : 37593, Wins : 0.9%
0.8 ("unofficial") : total players : 1523, Games : 29493 Wins : 0.79%
0.7 : total players : 1091, Games : 44884, Wins : 0.72%
(odd so much games in 0.7, despite the website mentionned having removed quitters in that count, maybe they mixed it)

total players meaning people that at least played once in the tournaments apparently

[Retropunch]

Hugeee jump in players from 13 to 14 - I guess it's due to new gods and species coming out and a generally ever more RL favorable atmosphere?

Crazy how much lower the win rate was in the old days. I can't remember 12 being much easier than others, but I seem to remember there were quite a few well known exploitable mechanics back then. I for one abused the hell out of Haunt as that was waaaaaaaayyy too OP.

[Rex_Nex]

It's also worth noting that the longer the game has been out the more wins older players will be able to get due to experience etc. Of course I'm sure old versions were harder (at least .11 and down), but it's not as bad as it looks.

.12 was pretty easy though the amount of effort you needed to put in to get a 3-runer was minimal (in comparison).