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[Taxus]

I didn't use Haunt at all. Didn't like the sickness. My order of summons:

* Small mammals carried me through to the start of the Lair
* Canines took me through most of the Lair, with the occasional ice beast for hydras and other reptiles
* Ice beasts for the end of the Lair, and the Orc Mines. When you have Mephitic Cloud + Ice Beasts, things are easy.
* Ugly things for the Vaults and the Crypt, with horrible things for tough fights
* Horrible things through the end of the game

* I never got Demonic Horde, but whenever you get it, that will take you far.
* Any other demons are too unreliable. Last thing I need is a neqoxec mutating me. Not to mention a hostile greater demon.

Follow Sif Muna and train up Air, Enchantments, and Translocations early on so Sif will give you books with Repel Missiles, Swiftness, Blink, and Mephitic Cloud. From there, your only real job is staying out of harm's way while you outsource the violence.

[inaluct]

Speaking of horribly gimped races, have you dudes had any luck with ogres? I've been trying to play ogre wanderers for a challenge, and it's actually pretty fun.

I haven't been making much progress, though, heh.

[Robsoie]

Call Imps can be good too depending on your luck for early game :
-white Imp can shoot from a distance, good support fire against monsters that need to be in contact to hit.
-shadow Imp, those are more interesting as they can raise dead monsters joining the fun, and those now undead monsters stay with you even after the shadow imps left the scene.
Great when you manage to bring down a hydra in Lair and a shadow Imp raise it as an undead the following turn to help you.
In one of my game, i had 2 undead Hydra following me everywhere on the level they were killed. Very good to clean that level.
-iron Imps, good meat shields and hit hard, harder than any monsters until deeper level of Lair.

But the big problem of Call Imps are the default red Imps that can be summoned (as you unfortunately have to rely on luck for what kind of Imp will appear).

They are simply useless and a waste of magic points, even as temporary meat shields, as they blink everywhere and everytime, not helping you to get away from a monster that is focusing only on you, and in fact worse, as you wasted 1 turn to summon one (that is more likely to appear behing you), during that turn the monster has moved nearer to you, and high chance next turn the red imp will blink even more out of sight from that monster that will then continue to move to your position.

That's a relatively good spell only up to Lair/Hive, as after a while any monsters eat iron imps for breakfast 1 shotting them.

The red imps are definitively a major cons of that spell, they are a true waste of magic point as them blinking away most of the time does not help you in any ways.

A very good summon for running away is Summon Butterfly if you can manage to find the book with it.
At good summon level, you can flood a whole screen with butterflies in 2 or 3 summoning.
As butterflies have a good EV (25), the monsters may not kill them that quickly, giving then you a few turns to move out of harm way.

[beorn080]

Don't forget that you can throw out 2 mammals for 1 imp, and your quite likely to be throwing out two mammals a cast. Most mobs take at least one round to get through a summon, so you buy yourself two rounds, plus two more for the cost of one iffy imp.

[Frumple]

Yeah, for early-game meatshields, scorpions usually do better, since you can summon 4+ at a time. The potential hostile is an issue, but that just means use spammals in corridors and scorps elsewhere. Until spammals maxes out on power, though, Imps still tend to give more hang-up, from what I've seen. Even two rats have a fair chance of dying faster than a single Imp does, to say nothing of the tougher ones. When you're mostly outputting quokkas and grey rats, though, spammals wins out for delay (Well, butterflies still tops it, but that's not a starting book thing.

A lot of it seems to be matching to the target, though. Imps always seem to do a better job vs higher EV/AC critters, while spammals do better vs slower/less defensive stuff. Mixing them up works wonders too, heh. When my MuSus get going, they tend to have a core 3/3 pack of (min hounds) canines and ice beasts, then 10-15 or more mixed scorps/imps/mammals. With free channel to support the mana cost and reinforcements, it just wrecks everything.

Re: Haunt, though, that's my secondary reason for going Mummy. No sickness if you're undead. Add in hungerless sif channeling, and you're getting a casting every 2-3 turns, after your initial 3-5 burst (which you promptly tell to 'wait here' and laugh as they wander around and murder half the level.). Lichform can manage it too, but it's a beast to get transfigurations and summoning to the point you can cast both.

[Robsoie]

He he he, vengeance is mine finally.


During the tourney, that annoying Prince Ribbit killed a Mountain Dwarf Fighter character i was beginning to like as i had found very nice equipment.
But for some reason that character had an insane streak of bad luck in the hit % dices apparently as he was unable to land a single hit of his axes of electrocution, while Prince Ribbit had few care about the plate mail the character was wearing.

And there, a Human Fighter teached Prince Ribbit that he can't always have that kind of annoying streak of luck.
With a wand of fire, proving that the dwarves in the fortress were right : fire is the solution to everything.

Anyways, as i got Elyvilon , i couldn't help but notice that trying to heal an animal failed a very lot, expected as my character has very low evocation.
But what i didn't expected is the huge hunger toll of that simple healing power, as from not hungry, i went to near starving in a bit more than 5 failed attempts on a rat.

Is there a way to fight the "power hunger" the same way you can fight the "spell hunger" (as by just just getting more intelligence and spellcasting level, you can lower a lot spell hunger) ?

I can foresee this power hunger becoming extremely annoying if there is no way to lower "power hunger" for my character that has Invocation so low, as i'll need to get more of that skill level to have the pacifying power and the healings to become more efficient later.

[Heron TSG]

I finally downloaded this game and have gotten brutally mauled thrice so far. My minotaur spearmaster died to a horde of rats, my Mummy Monk died to a hobgoblin, and my Mummy Necromancer actually made it pretty far before dying to two kobolds that cornered it on a staircase.

[Frumple]

Yeah... mummies pretty much universally suck. Deep Dwarves make better necromancers (Pain doesn't damage them, making the early game a breeze and vampiric draining fixes a lot of their healing issues) and the poor mummy buggers just plain suck as melee combatants. They get no automatic stat gains, their aptitudes are almost entirely -2 (only slightly more than half the absolute lowest they can get.), and they can't use potions, which are the most reliable early-game panic button. The only real early-game advantage they can get is hungerless sif channeling, i.e. massively increased mana regen rate (at the cost of turns), and that's only actually useful (surprisingly) in a very few, very specific situations. Which is a sad, sad thing, 'cause I freaking hate crawl's food clock.

If you like minotaurs, try a straight fighter using maces or swords, then 'downgrade' to leather armor or robes (or simple ring mail, which has pretty low EV penalty) asap; high-ish EV and a shield drastically increases survival. Minotaur's biggest problem is universally low magic aptitudes -- by the end-game, having a certain few spells reliable castable basically increases your chance of winning exponentially. Draconians seem to do alright too, as do high elf and merfolk crusaders -- the starting enchantment-themed book drastically improves survival rate.

I'd probably say give a troll hunter a go, after giving it several attempts at sprint runs. They start with throwable large rocks, which hit like g'damn freight trains (I've seen them one-shot Sigmund! Well, may have been Igjyb, but still... definitely two-shot siggy.) and have a low squelch rate, and the troll can still just tear things to hell with their claws if things get dicey. You basically claw everything except uniques to death, throw rocks at the uniques, and if you run out of rocks you can throw nets which can basically paralyze critters for a few turns. I've just rolled one up to double-check the non-sprint stuff, and I've breezed through the first four dungeon levels without even slowing down, despite running into Igjyb and both a wizard and priest orc pack.TrHu is, honestly, probably easier than the berserker version.

Or spriggan enchanters, which is basically the single most imba combo in the game right now. Stab a few things in their sleep to hit level 2, then learn hibernation and stab everything else in their sleep, regardless as to if you found them that way. Then hit level three, get confusion, and be basically set until, uh... until. Yeah.

Well, the list goes on. Check this out for a list of some easy-as-pie ('least so far as crawl's murder-themed RNG goes.) combos.

EDIT: TrHu just found a robe of the archmagi on D:5. That's the first time I've even seen on of those outside the sprint maps. I mean... it doesn't do much for 'im, but still. That's a pretty harsh thing for the RNG to do to a basically magic-dead race. Dies to grinder a bit later, though. Freak of nature had a lightning wand. Lightning wand + freaking paralyze = dead TrHu.

[baruk]

EDIT: TrHu just found a robe of the archmagi on D:5. That's the first time I've even seen on of those outside the sprint maps. I mean... it doesn't do much for 'im, but still. That's a pretty harsh thing for the RNG to do to a basically magic-dead race. Dies to grinder a bit later, though. Freak of nature had a lightning wand. Lightning wand + freaking paralyze = dead TrHu.

My Minotaur Warper found robe of the archmagi in the Vaults - too bad I had chosen to worship Trog..

[Mr.Person]

Robes of the Archimagi are horrible anyways, don't fret the loss too much.

[inaluct]

I've had fun playing troll spellcasters before. The toughness and strength makes up for being mediocre at magic, I think.

Although, that might be because I normally play even dumber characters, so after 50 ogre wanderers biting the dust on D:4, even a troll spellcaster seems great.

[Taxus]

But for some reason that character had an insane streak of bad luck in the hit % dices apparently as he was unable to land a single hit of his axes of electrocution, while Prince Ribbit had few care about the plate mail the character was wearing.

If you couldn't land a blow on Prince Ribbit, and he hit you hard even w/plate mail, you should not be blaming that on an "insane streak of bad luck". You should be thinking, "Wow, Prince Ribbit has high EV, and he hits really hard. He must be pretty hard to kill!"

After all, he's a blink frog, not a regular frog.

[Robsoie]

Actually it was a streak of bad luck because Prince Ribbit has only 12 EV, hardly something very high (unlike Sonja that has 24 EV or a blink frog that has 16).
And usually all my small AC characters that reached 20 EV never had any problems being hurt by monsters too.

So yes, it was an insane streak of bad luck to not being able to hit that damned frog once, as the axe at the time had +3 to hit too and the character using axes since the start had over skill 5 at it.

[Taxus]

You know how everyone says the wiki is old or just wrong? It is wrong about Prince Ribbit.

<freehugs> @?blink frog
<Gretell> blink frog (F) | Speed: 14 (swim: 60%) | HD: 6 | Health: 21-47 | AC/EV: 0/16 | Damage: 20(blink) | Flags: amphibious, cold-blooded, !sil | Res: magic(40) | XP: 265 | Sp: blink.
<freehugs> @?prince ribbit
<Gretell> Prince Ribbit (F) | Speed: 14 (swim: 60%) | HD: 6 | Health: 40 | AC/EV: 0/16 | Damage: 20 | Flags: amphibious, spellcaster, cold-blooded | Res: magic(40) | Chunks: contaminated | XP: 302 | Sp: blink; teleport self.

Edit: I have only recently realized just how inaccurate the wiki is, so my apologies to anyone that I steered there for answers.

[Robsoie]

Ah, so that's the same EV as a blink frog in reality.

Wonder how much wrong/outdated there is in the wiki, i noticed that the AC Nerf page is said as outdated by the knowledge bot, the same as the GDR that is not using the same formula in the bot or the wiki

I guess the knoweldge bot will be the reference to use everytime now, too bad it is not as detailled as the wiki with strategies and etc...