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Maxwell's patent armour takes away some of your mobility with -Tele (and your spells, but the -Cast is a lot less interesting than the -Tele imo). I would generally agree with you here, but the arrival of Gnolls has made the -Cast ego more interesting. My Gnoll was badly mutated (couldn't find many...

Arrrgh, I really shouldn't have told you...

But you did the right thing in Zig, using Death's Door. That's what it is for.

I agree. Having permanent see invisible and corona helps with melee characters, and there are enough undead and imps even in the early game to gain some benefit from HP/MP recovery, although that matters less.

It turns out I was wrong when I said that most levels of Pan have an exit through the Abyss. It's all of them. I chased my poor little gnoll through 15 levels so far, and every single one of them had an Abyss portal. If that has not been the case in the old days, it probably must have changed to tha...

I would qualify that by stating that gourmand is useful for melee characters that berserk a lot, but that didn't happen in this game.
Well played, anyway! Just stay away from the difficult places next time, for as long as possible, and then you'll make it!

Don't. Go. Into. The. Tomb.
You'll die there right now, no matter how well you play it. Have fun with this game, take your three runes (if you can) and make it your first victory.
The Tomb is probably right now the most deadly place in the whole game.

Your skills training looks good, but, as Nago said earlier, you should improve your evocations.

Wow, your evening star is awesome. Nago is right, this is the weapon that gets you anywhere. If you do find a d-whip or a non-artifact eveningstar (no hurry for that) you can still have it blessed by TSO for unholy enemies, but this star you have is really your weapon for most of this game.

Yes, the vaults are easier than the slime pits, with the exception of V5, which might be roughly on the same level. For both it is important to come well prepared, and both places you should only see just before entering Zot, if at all. So you want to clear V1-4, but leave V5 for later. Demon whips ...

Leave the Slime Pits alone for a very long time - they are more end-game or even post-end-game stuff. You'll find a rune in there, but not at your current development stage. Really, you don't need to go there at all for your first victory. Shoals is right, get your second rune from there!

You cannot re-brand the artifact evening star, unfortunately, so you should still wait for a better weapon to show up. You can make TSO brand only one weapon during the game. For now I would stick with the +7 plate, because yoúr strength is not quite up to wearing the crystal plate, but its time wil...

Hmm. I count myself not as particularly lucky, but I cannot recall a single time where I wanted to leave Pan and couldn't for lack of an exit (mostly through the Abyss). But I take your word for it - I cannot read enough code to verify my claim.

The 'no-guaranteed exit' of Pan is a myth. Granted, most Pan-floors have no direct exit (many do, though); the exit via the Abyss is really about as threatening and as tedious as crossing a not so busy street in broad daylight by the time you enter Pan for your extended game. That presumes collectin...

Pan for me, because I take the opportunity to collect more experience. Hell means to go in, dive deep and get out ASAP, so you won't be much stronger after you are done.

I never do any poison magic, but a Gnoll gives you lots of opportunities to try things out. You are right, LOS and smite targeting are definite plusses. The cloud, though, is almost non-existent, even at full power.

Can someone explain the benefits of the (apparently) new spell Poisonous Vapours to me? I learned it as a Gnoll, and started it out with full spell power, so it should be as good as it gets, but for all I can see it does not seem to do much more good than Sting, except that it is smite targeted. Am ...

Of course you could get there by just training earth and conjurations.

I disagree. Having Spellcasting on par with the schools would almost certainly give Iron Shot a 7# spellpower, which makes it a useful spell. At 6# it is practically useless.

Learn Spellcasting! Your Iron Shot won't do you much good at 6#, will miss anything but Lerny, and not do much damage. Spellcasting is not just about spell levels, it gives you higher spell power, more MP, better success, and you keep it creeping around at 7 when your spell schools are twice as high.

Does training armour increase the AC bonus gained from statue form? In other words, does training armour have any benefit if I intend to do most of my fighting as a statue?

By all means, train more spellcasting. If you want a new way to kill things, buy the geomancy book and get going on earth spells. I like your anti-summoning sacrifice! But your anti-air sacrifice prevents you from using the best mid-level ice spell. You'll have to branch out to another elemental sch...

I don't see why killing monsters with fireball can train just a weapon skill and nothing else and it is what many players do with manual skilling. That's really just an objection from a flavour point of view. I can see how that bothers people, but it seems that arguments based on flavour don't carr...

The last few contributions to this discussion I found most fascinating. I am quick to say that I certainly enjoyed not having to make any skilling decisions in my recent Gn win. Now I started a new game, and have similar fun trying out new things, but somehow the novelty has worn off. I now know how...

Could constricted monsters have the 'held' status, so that they are set up for stabbing? This would breathe some new (un-)life into the cloak-and-dagger strategy of crawl, which I find sadly lacking in the late game, as things stand now.

I wouldn't mind if Gnolls stay as they are. But I can't believe that they will. Maybe they will if developers allow a species that provides undiluted and unmitigated fun.

Here's my update: I splatted a good number of GnEE's before getting the first rune, but all because of my own stupidity. I finally decided that Elemental Caster is really not the best way to start a Gnoll, because there is a fairly long plateau phase in mid game where the early spells are too weak t...

Obviously, I couldn't resist and started, although I really have something else to do. Here are some early observations: ⋅ I started as an EE up to level 10 for now, and sandblast starts out with a strong #### spell power. Stone Arrow becomes immediately castable at level 3, with ### spell...

Aptitudes of +8 sounds very strong to me, even if spread out over all 31 skills. In terms of individual skill growth it (roughly) equals training 15 skills at +4, and eight skills at 0 aptitudes. That is not particularly slow going, and you get everything for it. As someone who does not mind trainin...

Some early uniques (Sigmund, Ijyb) might surprise you with wands of flame.

Does anyone know what the developers think about that? Will they heed all these complaints (not here for the first time), or can we expect more incarnations of DCSS with ghosts?

Thanks to edgefigaro for a very polite and very well thought out response! This is the best reasoning for narrow training I have read so far, and I accept it as a good motivation for going this way. Certainly training 10 skills as early as the example above does is not something I would do either. N...

Please elaborate. To state my point: Training just a few skills. or even just one, means breaking a sweat pushing dials and buttons like a sound tech at an Iron Maiden concert, and all for very incremental benefits, gaining you a measly stat point here and there a few hundred turns earlier than if y...

We've had this discussion before, but edgefigaro's advice makes less sense than it sounds. It involves a lot of tedium, and gains you almost nothing. I don't want to spend sleepless nights deciding on what I need most next. Training 10 skills is perfectly fine, has practically no disadvantages that ...

I always wondered if axes are really a beginner-trap. Generally speaking, fighting multiple enemies at a time is dangerous and should be avoided. Of course axes do help in some bad situations, but that's a bit like installing an airbag instead of learning to drive... You seem to overlook that OP ru...

Didn't know that. I usually attempt to kill the lords, so this never happened to me.

How did LL get there?

Your main armour added two resistances you already had, took away one you needed, and dumped more AC on a character that already had an insane amount. Since you've visited ice cave and volcano, was there not a good armour giving you resistances against cold or fire?

There are people here who object to the very idea of a guide, no matter how well researched or written.

Rast wrote:I hope the responses you've gotten here don't discourage you from being part of the crawl community.

From my own experience I can say that writing a guide is the one thing this community will never forgive you.

Sprucery wrote:If you get banished from a Trove, will you return inside it from the Abyss?

Please do us all a favour and try it out, wielding/unwielding a distortion weapon. And then report the result here...

papilio wrote:STR vs DEX
For stabbers/pure casters : DEX > STR (but STR vs DEX usually doesn't matter for pure casters)
For everyone else : STR >>> DEX

No. STR is better for casters, as it allows them to wear better armour.

Doesnt wrote:It means you're giving the monsters more time to pick crap up off the floor and potentially use it against you.

Monsters stopped picking up stuff some versions ago.

Random advice: the energy ball can be useful when slow, if used at the right moments. I don't know. The best success rate with 27 Evo is 89%, which gives you an 11% chance of total MP loss and/or confusion. I find that unacceptable. I'd rather waste a few more turns on less effective channelling wi...

One could also make the effect of cleaving and riposte depend on dexterity. That would even fit flavorwise. This would make DEX the key to lots of extra damage for some weapon classes.

The feeling that draconian and gargoyle aren't as good (or effective) as elves probably depends on the fact that they are much less minmaxed than deep elves when it comes to magic. They have other advantages, but they are species that work better as hybrids. I disagree, at least for the gargoyle - ...

One thing I was wondering about controlled blink is that by the time I can get it working, I might be in the last stage of the game i.e., Zot realm & escaping, where IIRC blink is no longer controllable? Or is that just the scroll version? I'm going for a 3 rune run as I have yet to complete on...

Should you splat this character, you might want to start your next attempt with a gargoyle. Not as powerful as a DE, but a lot more survivable, and towards the endgame its a killing machine as good as the DE.

Gourmand is also very desirable for characters who want to frequently switch between Vamp and other weapons. This helps a lot in the Depths, for example, where you normally engage groups of regular monsters, but often encounter other groups of mostly undead monsters.

There are often swamp worms hiding under the water tiles.

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