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Ok I see more what you mean now. There are some power combos yes, ones recommended to newer players, you nailed most of them right there. A lot of the time however the other various combos are not exactly hard, just require a deeper understanding of crawl, the tools/spells/whatever involved and perh...

Yeah that axe... Something I've learned over a number of runs now is that handaxe is just poor, pretty much nothing but elec/pain changes that. Your gear was pretty strong yes, nice enchant on the weapon and some slay. However like Sar I wouldnt have paired those two. A large shield you are not yet ...

Equipment Quotient? Might be a term from another roguelike or something intending to sum up gear power. Unless he actually meant EV, but V/Q is not a common typo. +1 dagger of venom, yeah, definately underpowered by there. Its a fabulous find in the early dungeon, but needs enchant scrolls to stand ...

Out of the woods again, cheers Sar. I saved in the situation I posted here overnight and thought about it long and hard over breakfast while writing the post. The fact that you recommended more or less what I had come up with made me go for it, but I just waffled around a lot and took unnecessary ri...

I just couldn't stop pressing buttons :'( Its a nasty habit and the reason I dont win more often. I make decisions and commit to them across 20 odd keypresses before I decide what to do next. Soon as I saw that exit with no HP I just ran, would have improved my odds (even though I made the exit) to ...

Yeah that statement is back to front for me too. Sure a range of tools are just outright out-of-reach in the early game, but most of the stuff you meet before lair has no resists, or 1 well-defined and obvious resist. Like Sar says once you actually go to Pan/Hell/Tomb half the shit just doesnt work...

Well I ignored my own good advice and went back to Orc 4... Where I was promptly Banished... So I turn off everything except Stealth. Thankfully I had gone back to get the long sword of flaming, so I hold that instead of the venom rapier. I start drifting around Abyss 1 looking for my exit. When I g...

Ahh unfortunate. I really really hate starcursed masses, if anything is gonna kill me when I go for the Abyssal rune its usually them. (I invariably lack AoE offenses)

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17-a0-968-gf8e1f1d (webtiles) character file. celem the Slicer (High Elf Skald) Turns: 32960, Time: 02:55:17 Health: 101/106 AC: 15 Str: 16 XL: 14 Next: 98% Magic: 22/22 EV: 21 Int: 26 God: Okawaru [******] Gold: 2518 SH: 8 Dex: 18 Spells: 5 memorised, 13 levels l...

VS's bite is an extremely powerful aux attack which also "heals" and apply antimagic to the target - it alone can offset the low damage of short blades, also because it is triggered more often when using them, as there's a chance (depending on dex+str) for each attack done, and short blad...

Berder wrote:[*]Don't train heavily into short blades unless you're an enchanter or a vine stalker

I get the enchanter point, stabbing power and all that. Why the VS edge-case?

Exactly. In trunk the En starter book no longer contains Enslavement (which is now only found on wands) and contains Tukima's instead. As stated, its quite effective in its trunk format, but sucked prior to that im afraid. Its not just that its inferior to Enslave (which it is), but thats its spellp...

thx zargon n sprucery! :D I got that mutation from ID'ing potions as I just chug them like a massive alcoholic the first time. I usually try to save my ID scrolls haha. Is this not how everyone does it? Not me, no. Take a look at the available scrolls and potions. There are a couple of really key s...

On that character as stands right now, I'd wear the robe all day. While its handy to sum up your AC/EV totals with both bits of kit and compare them, its not quite an even playingfield. Commonly-held belief is that for a given sum of AC/EV you are in general more durable if these are fairly even. No...

I've played all the way through a 3-rune stabber in squareLOS now and ascended him, so i'll give some thoughts. I didnt even notice until 5-6 levels into D. Once I did notice I started paying attention to see what was behaving differently and how. I didnt mind at all about the whole 'longer approach...

Some really fun ideas in here! I like the chunk conduct, its interesting because most characters eat primarily chunks, so this leaves you looking for alternates. Im not quite sure about the two passives scaling all the way up to 100%. Hunger reduction I note you do not propose fully stopping, fair e...

On Slime: .... and the walls get more dangerous as you go deeper. You learn something new every day... I dont mind the 4-floor S-branches too much, feels somewhat less of a slog. I would have supported shortening Slime just because it makes life easier and nobody clears those anyway...but I guess t...

That rod is pretty nice too, im quite fond of the ignition rod, its really quite powerful. Its not going to last you all the way into Zot though, the number of foes who come with at least rF+ climbs dramatically towards the end. I like to carry an ignition rod however for undead who rarely resist fi...

With randart stats able to go to +12 you can have some pretty epic stuff appear. Sure its usually tempered with a malus, but for the right character some of them can be massively powerful. (+12dex on a ring was a favorite of mine, i'll put up with a lot of other random crap for 12 dex on 1 slot. +2 ...

I'll take that and use it to temper my own.

"Never forget that AC is only half the sum"

Theres probably a middle-ground somewhere. Ringmail!

Good point - I don't think I had a shield when I generated the above. That should be 10% less damage to unarmed then? Wouldn't change that unarmed is much stronger, but does reduce how much stronger it is by a bit.. Why -10% damage? Are you thinking off the off-hand punch? Octopodes always get thei...

Crappy defenses aside. You cant toe-to-toe with a hill giant when you first meet them with anything but a plate-clad combat beastie. Shooting it down may well have worked as pointed out, but if he gets close you gotta be fleeing. If something then pops up behind you...yeah thats hard to escape from....

Voted that I don't much care. I read the various threads about squareLOS and was concerned it would make my game harder playing a stabber. I quickly realised that I never leveraged/abused circleLOS optimal approaches anyway and barely noticed the change when approaching sleeping foes. I did have to ...

Hmm yeah. Stick with the robe and Glaciate will wind up in due time. Anything heavier than Leather will pretty much bar you from getting that online in a useful timeframe. As Sar points out that Plate is pretty awesome, but for a different Mf to the one you built. (would work nicely on a Charms supp...

If you touched it they wont pick it up, this applies if you get the item and drop it again befoe animating. Didnt know that about Tukima's, but makes sense. They also wont animate with a holy wrath blade since they cant hold one as a zed/skele, so they leave it and rise UC. The gear does drop back t...

Pretty nice guide, manages to tread the line of generalisation that keeps it from being opinion, I'd hold with most of this. The single element I found most on-target was 'Stop Pressing Buttons'. I die plenty of times because I make a decision, and then commit to it through 10-15 keypresses without ...

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.17-a0-964-gd3d8594 (webtiles) character file. 1648615 celem the Maledictor (level 24, 173/173 HPs) Began as a Vampire Enchanter on May 7, 2015. Was the Champion of Ashenzari. Escaped with the Orb ... and 3 runes on May 8, 2015! The game lasted 08:12:09 (64696 turn...

For starters I'd turn on Fighting, you need the HP and im pretty sure its used for ranged accuracy as well as melee. To be honest you have little in the way of offensive spells, enslavement perhaps. I'd be tempted to move up into ring mail, switch off slings and turn on shortblade. You have a dagger...

Bringing them back up to full speed might just fix this issue for me. I find the expiring undead to be a fairly substantial nerf to necromancer characters, particularly those who advance slowly (MuNe is horrid since this change). Most of the time I finish up a fight, AD, then hit 'o'. Im going to be...

Yeah I was just about to say... I didnt even notice for 5 levels of D as a stabber En. Its probably not gonna be a big deal...

Hexes, its what brings your warding success % up on the majority of your spells. I'd be tempted to burn that manual straight away too, will improve your stabbing and give you enough skill to use something like a rapier if you find a decent one. Assuming you have a buckler, shields needs to go to 9 t...

For what its worth I dont use any of the branded ammos, like ever. Im probably only gonna find 10 or so silver whatevers, they are excellent vs a specific enemy. Im not going to give up 1/52nd of my inventory to carry them around all game until that situation comes up, i'll drop them now in favor of...

On the Dazzling Spray debate (I agree, its awesome). One of its primary uses for me is blinding stuff with see invisible. When I cast invis as an Enchanter 90% of the monsters lose sight of me, but invariably the nastiest ones are the ones that dont. Good news is most of those have eyes. Where its b...

By all means hit Abyss next, but dont expect it to assist your gear woes. Might be worth doing Zot 1 through 4 if you keep a sharp eye for roaming Orbs. In my most recent run the rF ring dropped first on Z4. You got a nice stack of potion of resistance, enough to buffer you through Orbs I guess if y...

Its actually a decent combo, I killed maybe 10 or so, which is pretty average for my progression considering its an 'unwon' species for me. I had little trouble early game or getting them to Lair. I killed a couple with 1-2 runes and one in Z:5, they melt away under sustained fire of a branch-end li...

Woohoo, finally got my Halfling win done! This is a species I quite liked, sturdy little buggers. I dabbled with both HaHu and HaGl but found the Gladiator a stronger start despite the game UI not recommending it. You lose a little throwing skill and cant start with Tomahawks, but get to pick your m...

Regarding lvl 9 spells. One probably, two perhaps... You had good int, and Ashenzari, both in your favor. But even with all these contributing factors its a serious amount of work to get the 9's running in plate. Had you said Chainmail, I'd have said yes straight away. As a rough rule of thumb it ta...

After having made my post above proclaiming the virtue of 1-handed and shield I then went away and actually won a Mf and used 2-handers to do it. Vampiric is a very strong candidate. I went for a vorpal bardiche, but its a lot of XP to get it to minimum speed and takes a long time, even for Mf. Unle...

Okas wrath is usually one of the more survivable ones, but you need a foolproof blink and rElec ideally. He is fond of dropping in a swarm of titans or similar big hitters (stone giant etc)surrounding you, so your first action will almost always need to be blink. It used to be quite common to drop O...

(This is the latest trunk version, Ignite poison is thrash.) Tried it on this run? I know Ignite Poison got nerfed hard at the start of 0.17, but its been rebuffed a bit since then. The key change is that you need to poison the enemies, it doesnt work out of the box just because they have poison at...

Hehe, grats on the win. And just so you know...theres no such thing as a good scythe.

Noisy weapons are not usually too bad, for your character Its hardly a problem, you weren't exactly ninja to begin with. Its not noisy all the time, you will see a line in the output when it makes a noise, but I dont usually find them much noisier than combat in general already is. Its too good a we...

Yeah I wouldnt have put Haste in there, Invisibility perhaps for its high power in early-mid game, its more balanced later where the scariest stuff sees invis. Moving Haste to Charms 8 itself excludes a wide range of the hybrids who currently learn this spell, not a huge fan of that as haste wand/po...

You think in absolute terms far too much, most of these answers involve if's, when's and but's. Grey weapons (and grey items in general) are useless to your character due to species, forget them entirely. This is your one absolute. Blue weapons are identified as branded and the brand given if a mons...

When I looked at this I thought 'Vehumet...what were you thinking?!'. Then I realised that could actually work really well if you focus on it, but unfortunately you didnt realise how to leverage it as Hurkyl points out. I do get that you were using him for mana on kill to fuel hexes. I do Makhleb th...

The recent change whereby statues/plants dont cast a shadow hurt my usage of this god a bit. I won FoFi with Dith using shadow-step as a pseudo-blink, but never used it much beyond running from hydras in lair by stepping to plants. The stealth boost I find just saves you some Stealth skill levels bu...

If the Lair is getting too much for you then I'd be tempted to go hit up a couple of levels of Orc. Might find a shop with some ?remCurse, nerver know. On the whole Orc tends to give you swarms of smaller enemies, which is fairly ideal for AE, on the downside, I note you havent found Orc yet and wou...

If you cant 'control dead' a player ghost then i leave it, if its early D i often ditch the entire level. If you can charm it then you can ctrl-attack if you think you might manage to drop it with a sneak attack, or order it to retreat and you do likewise. Go around is probably about it, unless you ...

Vampiric Draining spell was the key to this for me. Memorise skeleton straight away, then vamp draining. Leave spellcasting on from start for spell levels, you cant really afford to just run necro/weapon. Learn what you can and cannot 'vampiric tank' like this, it works on some uniques, quite useful...

Real men also read ?Tele before ascent for the extra 4 letters of awesome...just make sure its the last one you add to the pile.

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