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[Frumple]

Call imp, meph cloud. Don't have those? Why aren't you playing wizard, nitwit I jest, of course, but still...

My melee dudes definitely have a lot harder time getting off the ground. I tend to have a lot better luck picking up melee and defense skills after I've got enough magical firepower to actually keep me alive. Pure melee folks just... they don't have options. From what I understand, it's genuinely not intended to be a viable playstyle by the devs. Support by either god powers, magic, or evocations is supposed to be basically requisite.

As for the impossible situations in the early game... iirc, that's supposed to be at least somewhat intentional, or was at some point. Re: Kobold avec exploding darts opening door to starting vault on turn two. Stuff like that. Sometimes crawl's just going to kill you, and there's literally nothing you can do or could have done about it. It gets less likely as you get better at the game, but there's a reason no one's managed an unending streak yet. Well, beyond the whole logical impossibility of an unending streak in a finite timescale.

--

IE's have one of the easier early games Freeze murders everything that's not an ice beast (most things -- I've killed up to Yaks with it, iirc, without much trouble) and th'armor's ruddy good for light armor users (i.e. casters). Icicle or summon ice beast kills ice beasts. Agreed that EEs are a bloody pain to get off the ground, though.

AEs always seem to have trouble, unless spark got buffed recently and I didn't notice. If you can't doubletap with it, it sucks, and even then it doesn't hit terribly hard and seems to miss fairly often. It's also the only thing they really have for damage until lightning bolt (which they only got in their starting book in 0.9!). Static discharge seems like crap, and the olololohitzu aspect isn't something an early game critter can risk using.

[freeformschooler]

I guess Spark must have been buffed or something, because it an Mephitic are the primary reasons I have had EL 13-16 (significantly higher than most of my characters) AEs. My absolute best character was a DeAe, who ate expectations for breakfast.

I guess my biggest beef with pure melee types is that there just seems to be more lose-lose situations, in general, and the time from where you anticipate it to where you're in one seems an awful lot shorter.

edit: Oh, and yes. Static discharge sucks. I try to skip it. At that point I think there's another higher spell, or I've already found a new spellbook.

[Akigagak]

lolololol random Gnoll with a Wand of Disintergration on D:3

Did 18 damage. I have 16 max HP.

Fuck you, Crawl.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, IEs and EEs certainly have the hardest. However, Air Elementalists have one of the easiest early games, due to certain races being optimized for them in general, and their first, overpowered spell you might see use of far into the midgame: Spark.

IEs have a hard early game? Freeze is an amazing level 1 spell.

Spark is okay, but you have to multizap things for it to be particularly effective.

[freeformschooler]

IEs have a hard early game? Freeze is an amazing level 1 spell.

Spark is okay, but you have to multizap things for it to be particularly effective.

I always end up getting curbstomped as IEs right at the start because of the range. Yeah, Freeze is great, but that's not stopping the two goblins from taking out 2/3 your HP in a turn or so, just because you have to be close to them. Still pick things off one by one, but I get killed that way too.

On the other hand, Frost Bolt is one of my favorite spells.

And yeah, multizap is the only way to go. As AEs, I always focus on getting Spark to 5/5 as full priority.

[tomas1297]

lolololol random Gnoll with a Wand of Disintergration on D:3

Did 18 damage. I have 16 max HP.

Fuck you, Crawl.

I had a barbarian miraculously obtain a wand of disintegration and wand of draining, both with about 15 charges, on D:2. Found disintegration just laying there, got draining from a random mook.

[freeformschooler]

+2 Ring of Strength, dagger of +5 AV and Staff of Energy all within the second floor.

I MUST NOT LOSE THIS CHARACTER.

[Soadreqm]

+2 Ring of Strength, dagger of +5 AV and Staff of Energy all within the second floor.

I MUST NOT LOSE THIS CHARACTER.

That usually means that you are about to die. Xom always watches over you, even when you don't worship her.

[Krath]

+2 Ring of Strength, dagger of +5 AV and Staff of Energy all within the second floor.

I MUST NOT LOSE THIS CHARACTER.

Xom toots happily.

Edit: I just found an altar of Xom surrounded by teleport traps.

Xom laughs heartily.

[Max White]

I MUST NOT LOSE THIS CHARACTER.

Emotional atttachement, not a good thing in this game. That time I had a deep elf wizard with two rings that give mana, and a staff of the same effect, and died to a room full of killer wasps (And I mean full, over 100 there, you guys know that kind of room, you normally get them with kobalds) I was in therapy for weeks.

[freeformschooler]

I MUST NOT LOSE THIS CHARACTER.

Emotional atttachement, not a good thing in this game. That time I had a deep elf wizard with two rings that give mana, and a staff of the same effect, and died to a room full of killer wasps (And I mean full, over 100 there, you guys know that kind of room, you normally get them with kobalds) I was in therapy for weeks.

Yeah, you gotta play the roguelikes without any sort of investment, or you'll want to find a table to knock over when it's done.

Anyway, the character has so far survived 3 near-death experiences. I'm doing alright! Oh, and it's a HeIe. Yeah that's right I'm retrying the Ie.

[Niveras]

All sorts of situations like this. My normal approach: minmax my skills for both the moment and future, autoexplore and defeat everything, hit and run when too hard -- they're useless here. What am I supposed to do when stuck in a hallway in the early game between two enemies who I know I can't melee, who I don't have any spells to combat or weaken, and don't have the god superpowers to break through? I'm probably playing it wrong, but pure melee seems pretty tough.

I think this is one of those games where you are just supposed to, at some level, rely on spells. This is not D&D or Diablo where there are multiple methods of character development that are intended to be balanced and equal. You wouldn't expect, for example, to be able to beat Zelda or God of War without relying on your spells/abilities/things besides your simple melee attack. This is part of the reason why Trolls just can't survive past midgame: there's a point where just bumping into things to kill them (or to survive before they kill you) isn't going to work. Even if you had some absurd level of AC/resists, I think vaults:8 would kill you before you could clear out all the guards, even relying on wands and scrolls (and I'm not sure there are 3 easier branches than vaults in which to get runes for Zot, assuming you can even handle/flee from deadly things in Zot).

Unfortunately, since relying on spells seems necessary to win, choosing a combination that plays to that strength seems a no-brainer. The only flip side is spellcasters being a bit more flimsy (due to lower AC, potentially lower Fighting and thus health).

[Dr.Feelgood]

All sorts of situations like this. My normal approach: minmax my skills for both the moment and future, autoexplore and defeat everything, hit and run when too hard -- they're useless here. What am I supposed to do when stuck in a hallway in the early game between two enemies who I know I can't melee, who I don't have any spells to combat or weaken, and don't have the god superpowers to break through? I'm probably playing it wrong, but pure melee seems pretty tough.

I think this is one of those games where you are just supposed to, at some level, rely on spells. This is not D&D or Diablo where there are multiple methods of character development that are intended to be balanced and equal. You wouldn't expect, for example, to be able to beat Zelda or God of War without relying on your spells/abilities/things besides your simple melee attack. This is part of the reason why Trolls just can't survive past midgame: there's a point where just bumping into things to kill them (or to survive before they kill you) isn't going to work. Even if you had some absurd level of AC/resists, I think vaults:8 would kill you before you could clear out all the guards, even relying on wands and scrolls (and I'm not sure there are 3 easier branches than vaults in which to get runes for Zot, assuming you can even handle/flee from deadly things in Zot).

Unfortunately, since relying on spells seems necessary to win, choosing a combination that plays to that strength seems a no-brainer. The only flip side is spellcasters being a bit more flimsy (due to lower AC, potentially lower Fighting and thus health).

Berserkers and fighters have the highest # of wins in 0.8.

[Niveras]

But do they have absolutely 0 spells memmed? Do they have spell-like abilities, e.g. Nemelex cards?

[Robsoie]

I MUST NOT LOSE THIS CHARACTER.

Emotional atttachement, not a good thing in this game. That time I had a deep elf wizard with two rings that give mana, and a staff of the same effect, and died to a room full of killer wasps (And I mean full, over 100 there, you guys know that kind of room, you normally get them with kobalds) I was in therapy for weeks.

Yeah, you gotta play the roguelikes without any sort of investment, or you'll want to find a table to knock over when it's done.

Anyway, the character has so far survived 3 near-death experiences. I'm doing alright! Oh, and it's a HeIe. Yeah that's right I'm retrying the Ie.

The main problem is not really emotional attachement, but the gameplay.

For a long time in early game, dying is not a problem because your character is low level and so do not have access to several interesting spells, items or god or personnal abilities.
So basically, early game is very dull in term of gameplay because you don't have much tactical choice.

But then when your character has survived and is now having access to several spells, several good items and several god or personnal abilities, the gameplay has changed, become much more interesting and is not dull anymore, because you have lots of tactical choices and can try to approach situations from several different of method.

And there when your character begin to be interesting to play, you get a YASD.
So of course it's never going to be "fun" to lose in Crawl, as there's no rewarding hilarity like in Dwarf Fortress that make it very fun to witness your whole fort going insane before crumbling.

Always after all that time, i am very annoyed to lose a character in Crawl once it has reached the point where it become very interesting to play with it, while i don't care losing any of them in early dull game.