CIP DSFE of _____ with longbow of Krishna

[Osgoodbad]

Hey, y'all,
I started a DSFE game, and got some interesting mutations that I would love in any game (claws 2, iridescent scales 2, cold resistant flesh 1 so far), I just got to the temple and it has all of the gods in it. But on dungeon 6 I picked up the +8 longbow of speed Sharnga. So now I'm at a crossroads. I could continue forward with my plan of worshipping kiku or vehumet and proceeding as a blaster. But it's early enough that I could also go heavier into the melee, using the longbow for ranged, and perhaps using my claws for backup, and continue using my fire magic as more of a support. How would you proceed?

[Lyrick]

claws are awesome, not a lot of weapons can stand up to claws.

but sharnga is really good too.

You could go okawaru or something if you plan on fighting more, and of course you can still go kiku or vehumet. even 0 skill sharnga is probably awesome, pick up all the arrows you find

for now, either work on your magic, or work on your ranged, or work on your claws (pick just one).

[damiac]

I'd go Oka, heroism is a big boost to unarmed, and it'll help with the bow too. As a side benefit, you'll get ammo gifts, which will help out a bit with the bow.

I'd focus on unarmed combat, and then some defensive skills. I'm assuming you've got conjure flame castable, which means you can hide behind your flames and shoot enemies with the bow, or beat up monsters who decide to stand in the flames. I wouldn't train bows much, maybe a level or 2 here and there, but I'd mostly just use heroism when I wanted to shoot at guys.

Of course, this assumes you want to play as a melee-hybrid character. If you really want to play a blaster, you could just forget about the claws and bow.

[tasonir]

Small point: if you continue going mage, don't entirely forget about claws, after you have your spells online and are comfortable with killing things with magic, get about 10 unarmed, for when you run out of magic, and then you can train defenses/more magic/other things. Having some melee is always a good idea. Later on you can take it higher than 10, although if you're primarily magic based, you can probably stop around 15. If you do more melee, raise UC higher.

[and into]

I don't think there is any reason to train melee *and* bows on a character that is already training kill spells. You have a +8 longbow of speed, which is significantly better than two-handed unarmed combat with claws 3. Krishna will be quite good at low (or even 0) skill and will be extremely good with some training. Unless you also found staff of fire plus the shield of resistance, or something, I'd just use the crazy good artefact longbow as my backup weapon.

You don't need two backup weapons for a FE, and to be frank it is very, very bad advice to recommend unarmed combat over a +8 longbow of speed. If you hate ranged combat in Crawl or w/e and don't want to use it, that's fine, but it is wrong to suggest that (even with claws 3) UC is better than Krishna.

[damiac]

Good point, I figured the bow was kind of redundant with the conjurations, but perhaps the best advice would be to forget about ranged conjurations and just build the character around the bow. I didn't really consider just how good that bow is.

I do absolutely hate ranged combat, but that's not why I gave the advice I did.

[nago]

The bow isn't redundant because it shoots arrows, not mana.
And yes when you find a very good item like that (especially before having choose a god) thinking to totally change the 'type' of chat isn't a bad idea.
Anyway bow (especially heavily enchanted lbow of speed) are are extremely strong even with 0 training so no one forbid you to get sticky flame and fireball online, then some defence, then some arrow magic and other good spells you may find