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[Grendus]

Yes and no. Summon butterflies is better mid to late game, when it creates 24 butterflies to eat arrows and take up space, but early game spammals are better for their damage. Once you reach enemies that rats can't hurt, you can and should switch to butterflies, but until them spammals has it's place.

[Mr.Person]

The reason I stopped bothering with Fire Wizards and moved on to Fire Elementalists is simply because I dislike all the cantrips that Wizards get. Magic Dart is literally only useful against Imps, who are easy to escape from. It's also a wasted slot once I learn Mystic Blast and Orb of Destruction. The only enemies I would want to escape from are ones that I can't pillar dance with, and Blink in no way helps to get away from speedy foes or ranged attackers. Mephitic Cloud is good, but it's ineffective vs Spiny Frogs and Hydras. Even confused enemies occasionally get shots in. If I want to Spammals, I'll play a Summoner. In any case, I'll be learning Summoning later on once Vehumet gifts me all the Summoning books anyways. That's not even getting in to the fact I don't care about the Int or Spellcasting since I never have hunger problems.

[Grendus]

I gave up on fire wizards. Five tries, and each time I got butchered by something on the first few levels. Not enough power, not enough mana, not enough food. Just not fun.

Any way to pick up only part of a stack? I've been trying to pick up short stacks of food for the trip into Zot and all I can pick up takes me directly to overloaded.

[quinnr]

I gave up on fire wizards. Five tries, and each time I got butchered by something on the first few levels. Not enough power, not enough mana, not enough food. Just not fun.

Any way to pick up only part of a stack? I've been trying to pick up short stacks of food for the trip into Zot and all I can pick up takes me directly to overloaded.

I thought you could type a number before the command to do it a certain amount of times. Maybe that was the drop menu...

Also, I am the opposite. All my farthest characters, sans one summoner, have been wizards. Although I haven't really gotten far enough to experience food shortages (I die at about the lair.)

[Dr.Feelgood]

Found my first decent randart!

J - the +8,+3 halberd "Kira Sche" {elec, Hunger+ MR Str+1 SInv}

Is this worth giving up my shield for? I'm a level 5 DrPa.

Maybe, if you're careful about training your polearm skill. Polearms are not that great in the long run though.

Yeah, elementals can be good later, but aren't worth it when you first get them. Now, Summon Butterflies is even better then Spammals.

Summon Butterflies is overpowered for a LV1 spell. Spammals is still pretty useful in the early game.

The reason I stopped bothering with Fire Wizards and moved on to Fire Elementalists is simply because I dislike all the cantrips that Wizards get.

I gave up on fire wizards. Five tries, and each time I got butchered by something on the first few levels. Not enough power, not enough mana, not enough food. Just not fun.

Like I said before, Flame wizards are better than fire elementalists in almost every single way. In fact, wizard is the best background in the game. I'll explain:

Flame wizard:
- Magic Dart (never misses, non-elemental damage, huge range)
- Summon Small Mammals (easily deals with most early game threats)
- Throw Flame (both books have it, good spell)
- Blink (tremendously useful spell for staying at range)
- Slow (trains enchantments, use on poison resistant enemies)
- Mephitic Cloud (overpowered spell that neutralizes most threats in the game)
- Conjure Flame (both books have it, decent defensive spell)

Fire elementalist:
- Flame Tongue (worse than throwing stones, crap range)
- Throw Flame
- Conjure Flame
- Sticky Flame (very powerful, but meph cloud is better)
- Bolt of Fire (offensive spell)
- Fireball (offensive spell)

An elementalist has only 1 defensive spell in case they get in trouble. Sure they have a lot of destructive power, but wizards can get just as powerful with the right god. Hydras are easy for wizards, just cast slow (they have low MR) and spam throw flame. Magic dart is great for pulling enemies, due to it's range.

Blink is great solely because staying at range eliminates most of the damage you'll receive. Meph cloud has a very long duration for such a powerful effect. Blink and meph cloud are very popular among winners for these reasons.

Any way to pick up only part of a stack? I've been trying to pick up short stacks of food for the trip into Zot and all I can pick up takes me directly to overloaded.

Press # along with the number you want.

[Muz]

Oh, I finally found the game's easy mode. It's called Mountain Dwarf Fighter. Why didn't you guys tell me about it? My top high score is now littered with these Urists.

[Leafsnail]

MDFis seem to be much weaker in the new version due to the AC nerf.  I mean, I can't even get one through the lair without being eaten by a hydra or ripped apart by Death Yaks.

Yes, Mephitic Cloud is THE big advantage of a wizard.

Centaur in view?  Mephitic cloud means it can't shoot you.  It's basically dead.  Same goes for Orc Priests (I defeated a group of 3 orc priests that would've killed almost any other character just by confusing them) and almost anything else liable to kill you in the early game.  In fact, I didn't let a single tough monster get a swing at me until I got to the lair.  Which is the other good thing about wizard - you can work on the philosophy "Don't let anything other than really weak monsters hit me".

Later on, the early wizard spells become less useful, but by then you should have better spells as gifts from Sif Muna/ Vehumet (indeed, Sif Muna gave me sticky flame, which was much appreciated) and Selective Amnesia, allowing you to forget anything that's now outdated.

Also, I really, really like the idea of memorizing a way to erase your memory.

[ChairmanPoo]

I was thinking on going for Kiku instead, and developing necromancy. And if I find a book of demonology along the way to apply my leet summoning skill, then so much for the better


BTW: Fedhas doesnt mind necromancy, but corpse despoiling. So if you stick to necromutation and vampiric draining you are ok in his book.


PD: Oh boy, my vampire assasin found a sword of distortion right after starting up

[Grendus]

The key to a mountain dwarf fighter (I've been playing one too, they're awesome) is to balance your evasion and AC. In particular, training up your shield skill since you lack the dexterity to have a high dodge. Between that and going up in armor slowly, hydras are actually a joke unless you're stupid enough to use a bladed, non-flaming weapon against them - there are far easier ways to commit suicide.

Worshiping Okawaru can really help with any kind of gear heavy fighter. If you need to, you can drop him late game for another god. Once you reach your mid teens or so you can survive his wrath fairly well, but he's powerful enough that you may want to consider staying with him. Since odds are magic won't be your forte, being able to invoke haste (the number one most common spell for escaping Zot hunters) is an incredibly powerful tool. You do have to be careful, haste consumes piety like there's no tomorrow, but a decent warrior who sacrifices corpses can easily invoke haste on the dangerous battles and use other cooldowns (find an amulet of rage, best thing for a MDF). His gifts of gear can be useful as well. I've gotten everything from powerful demon weaponry to randart armor and shields. I found myself using or carrying a fair number of gift items by endgame.

MDF's massive health pool renders most of the dangerous enemies a non-threat. Hydras can't hurt you through your heavy armor, and even the blows that get through can't do enough damage to notice. Centaurs and Yaktuars are only dangerous if you're forced to stand back for an extended period of time, even less so if you come across a shield of reflection. The only real danger is if you get hit with some kind of status effect. Paralysis will get you killed fast, sleep is really annoying, and enemies who spam poison can wear you down if you don't notice and use a healing potion.

[Tepes]

Holy Mother of God. I killed Sigmund on level 2 of the dungeon with a level 2 troll berserker. And then I died to an iguana seconds later. /cry

[Grendus]

The berserk status makes players ridiculously powerful... at a price. I've died many times when it didn't last nearly so long as I had hoped.

[Kagus]

Is there any particular reason for picking Wizard (fire) over Wizard (frost)?  Throw Frost naturally isn't as effective against the odd ice beast that shows up early on, but Ozocubu's Armor seems like a more all-round defensive spell than Conjure Flame (even with the AC nerf), and Sticks to Snakes is a pretty neat spell (at least I think so, in my most inexperienced and misguided opinion).

But some fire training can have merits down the line.  I'm sure Mephitic Cloud and Ignite Poison make for a very fun combination.

[Dr.Feelgood]

Is there any particular reason for picking Wizard (fire) over Wizard (frost)?  Throw Frost naturally isn't as effective against the odd ice beast that shows up early on, but Ozocubu's Armor seems like a more all-round defensive spell than Conjure Flame (even with the AC nerf), and Sticks to Snakes is a pretty neat spell (at least I think so, in my most inexperienced and misguided opinion).

But some fire training can have merits down the line.  I'm sure Mephitic Cloud and Ignite Poison make for a very fun combination.

Fire wizards are slightly better than ice wizards. Wizards have no use for AC, so Ozocubu's Armor is kinda useless. Conjure Flame combos well with meph cloud and spammals. Sticks to Snake is much better than spammals though. Ultimately, fire magic is better than ice magic. Fire is more powerful and useful. Ice is more interesting, but more monsters are resistant to it. Fire Storm (ultimate fire spell) is completely broken compared to the ultimate ice spell.

[Grendus]

Been playing a fire wizard, and once you get over the initial hurdle it's fairly fun. However, I'm noticing that Conjure Flame doesn't seem to hurt zombies, but Throw Flame does. Am I just really unlucky, or are zombies immune to the stationary killer fire?

[beorn080]

Ozocubu's Armor is pretty nice, but Conjure flame stops most melee threats from reaching you in a hallway. Sticks to Snakes is VERY nice, but requires ammo and costs twice as much as spammals, which makes spammals slightly better for meat shield purposes.