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[debvon]

Are you planning on participating in the .15 tournament Leafsnail? I bet someone who's been playing as long as you have could bring loads of glory to bay12. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying..

[Rex_Nex]

Bleh, unarmed combat. If we ignore the early/mid game, yeah, it's technically great later on, but half the reason you'd pick it over a weapon is because with unarmed combat you have your endgame weapon at gamestart. It's technically more reliable. For that reliability, you give away weapon enchantment and whatever egos you might be able to get on a real weapon. You also suffer (small) penalties for both wearing heavy armor and using shields.

If I recall correctly, maxed out unarmed combat deals sliiightly more damage in a given timeframe than using a maxed out 2-hander. However, a 2-hander with any brand does slightly better, and a well enchanted 2-hander with any brand exceeds UC by a large margin. It's very rare not to be able to have one of these by lategame, so I don't feel taking these penalties for reliability is worth it.

[Parsely]

Yeah fists hit about as fast as a short blade. Only thing you miss out on is a few good brands.

[Dr Feelgood]

Maxed UC does more damage than a highly enchanted non-branded executioner axe and it hits much faster. You also have auxiliary attacks and transmutations to further increase its effectiveness. In exchange, UC requires serious investment. You need around 11 levels in UC before it stops being inferior to commonly found weapons, and you need 26 UC for it to reach its full potential. 26 levels in a skill is an enormous amount of exp, which could be better used to raise 3-4 skills by a dozen levels. I wouldn't bother with UC, unless I was playing a transmuter or a race with claws.

I'd pick merfolk for transmuters. Learn every spell in the book. Raise UC asap. Use Beastly Appendage for the 1st few levels, then ignore it. Sticks-to-snakes is for support and escape. Spider Form will be your main offense, until you get Ice Form. Ice Form is useful in the lair/swamp/shoals, due to slowing cold-blooded creatures and being able to walk in deep water. Eventually, you should get Blade Hands. It'll be your go-to spell for the rest of the game.

[Leafsnail]

I can probably do the tournament yeah.

[frostshotgg]

Why only 26 UC? Is there no difference between 26 and 27?

[Leafsnail]

Nah, UC reaches min-delay at 27 (and I think each successive level actually has a greater impact due to the way delay works, or at least it used to).  26 ->27 is a hell of a lot of XP though.

[tilkau]

From 26 to 27 actually is no different in base cost than from 15 to 16.

It's just that you get a multiplier to the number of skill points needed, based on how many skill points you have already acquired (globally, ie. the sum of all skill points that you ever spent on any skill). This amounts to basically a global diminishing-returns system that makes it harder to attain extraordinary skills, primarily in terms of breadth but also secondarily in terms of depth.

So ideally if you wanted to max UC with the minimum skill points, you would exclusively train it and never train anything else til it reaches 27.
This is not usually a wise idea, of course.

Crawl devel wiki has the details -- note that the section marked 'proposal' actually describes the currently implemented skill system.

[Nistenf]

Are there no 0.15 beta binaries available yet? Webtiles is really slow, I assume because of high ping

[Leafsnail]

That isn't true.  There is a global increase in how much XP you need for levels as you gain more, but it's not the only factor. e: actually your link explicitly says each new skill level requires more XP.

The standard soundbite is that getting a skill from level 1 -> level 20 takes less XP than getting a skill from 20 -> 27.

[Dr Feelgood]

I remember reading that going from 20 to 26 in a skill required 20 levels worth of exp. 26 to 27 required about 9 levels of exp. The last time I played an UC character I stopped at 25, and raised some other, spell-related, skills pretty quickly. I usually only bother maxing out UC if I'm doing post-endgame stuff.

Edit:
Preemptive answers to common UC questions: Don't bother wearing a shield, since it eliminates your off-hand punch. It's your strongest auxiliary attack, since it scales with UC. Other auxiliary attacks scale with mutation level. The exception would be a troll wielding a large shield, because your defenses are atrocious. And iirc octopodes can still(?) use the off-hand punch with a shield. Best armor for UC is some form of dragon armor. I use steam/mottled, then switch to fire later.

[miauw62]

Are there no 0.15 beta binaries available yet? Webtiles is really slow, I assume because of high ping

If you're worried about ping, I'm fairly sure there's multiple webtiles servers, so there's probably one that's not slow for you...?

[Moron]

Don't forget that if you're a transmuter, many forms including Blade Hands meld shields anyway, so you won't get the benefit (or lose your offhand attack) while using them.

IMO, this means that for some characters, it MAY be worth using a shield or buckler, if you can spare the XP to train the skill. You would then have the shield available while exploring, giving extra defence if you run into any unexpected dangerous situations (and possibly need to run away.) Then when you do commit to a fight, cast whatever form you're using and meld the shield for maximum offensive capability.

[tompliss]

Except for one thing : transmuters already have many skills to put XP in. If you have enough XP to spare to get shield 15 (because buckler is too low defenses to sacrifice off-hand punch, and large shield is too much XP to get level 25 and negate the penalties), either you are skilling him weird or you're already in the ate game, where you can win "easily"

[Retropunch]

I normally don't use shields with a transmuter, but if you get a really good artifact or randart one then it can sometimes be worth it (and just remember that you'll lose the bonuses when you meld!) especially if it's a good buckler.

Whilst Transmuters do have a lot of skills they could put points in, after a certain point you can really just pump UC, Tmut and Dodge. I tend to try to get decent Tloc and whatever I'm using for ranged, as well as enough in charms to do a few simple buffs. Consumables are so ridiculously abundant that you can normally fill any gaps you have.

Silence is an incredibly, incredibly useful spell to have, especially as you're having to wander up to people and punch them (especially in something like statue form). You also don't really need to be casting mid battle usually, so if I'm doing a 3< rune run I'll always try and get it online!