Equipment advice... Found some goodies and want to live!

[asphyxia]

Hi,

I've been playing crawl for a few months and have managed to get as many as 2 runes locally with a DrMo which I played as a level 22 unarmed/dragon-form tank, before the inevitable YASD happened while regaining Makhleb piety so I could have backup clearing the final level of the vaults (a quicksilver dragon almost killed me shortly before the YASD to a bunch of giants/very ugly things) .
Now, I'm playing a level 10 Demonspawn Gladiator of Okawaru; Who's fate seemed sealed by his lack of equipment...
That is, until a labyrinth showed up and I barely survived the minotaur with a !speed, a wand of fire and a scroll of recharging after almost dying to him!

Up until now, I've been using a +1 +2 great mace and surviving somehow with help from a ring of regeneration and a cTele -CAST Int-1 ring.
Thanks to the overconfident Minotaur I now plan to switch to the +10, +6 Mithril Axe "Arga" {speed, MR Str+2}!
I'm glad he came at me with a trident instead of that or I'd be dead (he found me around a corner, no time to prepare- and I foolishly tried melee).......
I'm not sure how to do a char-dump or I would; He currently exists at crawl.akrasiac.org...

I also recently found a Dex+3 Int+4 Acc+3 cloak, but have now found a cloak of preservation...
Is the accuracy bonus worth lack of preservation, especially with +10 to-hit?

I've also got a +8, +1 randart war axe {chop, +Rage Int+2}, but I doubt +Rage holds a candle against speed in this case.

Also, should I be careful while crosstraining axes up? Anything I'm missing going to sneak up and YASD me soon? I *REALLY* don't want to lose this guy!

Thanks for any advice.

[Shinigami345]

Character dumps can be done by clicking the little circle icon. It says "Dump Character Progress" it's the last one and it's got the grey Di Vinci Man in it. After that you go into C:/Documents and Settings/YourAccount/Application Data/crawl/morgue (or wherever it says it dumps it to on the message for me its /Owner/) then you find the notepad file with your character's name and that should be it. It's also where the computer stores your dead characters for post game reflection. If you're not using tiles version...use it because I've hardly touched the ASCII version (plus agra looks sweet in tiles).

Speaking of Agra it's not as great as you'd think it is since it's only a war axe base type. That being said MR is very important for melee chars unless you want to spend time in the abyss due to banishment or be paralyzed at a bad time. MR is like chocolate cake without the threat of getting fat by having too much. Thus get as much as you can unless you have to put on like Maxwell's Patent Armor and be unable to blink or something then it's not worth it. Agra like most fixed arts is one of the best and one of the worst axes in the game just like it's older brother the obsidian axe (which you shouldn't use until you're a total freaking bad arse and have like 50 AC and 50 shield and can handle being mesmerized constantly i.e. with lots of noise scrolls and electricity wands or i think uncontrollable shouting also breaks mesmerize not sure though i know the first two do).

That randart axe is only a war axe so that's too bad. Broad axe is the best axe to use in 1H. I would use that other cloak and switch to your preservation one when you need it since preservation is a bit esoteric. The +dex may mess with your strength weighting a SLIGHT bit but as I understand strength weighting doesn't mean much anyways. If I understand correctly I could have 70 str and 1 dex and a demon whip would still be better than a mourning star even though demon whip is dex weight and mourning star is str weight. +Int is nice to help prevent random stat death (which has happened to me several times) and Acc+ is always nice since hitting things means they die faster and if they die faster you die slower pro tip of the day.

I will note that I'm no expert in gladiators, but I have played a ton of fighters and berserkers so that has to count for something. The way I understand it gladiators are basically fighters but instead of using heavy armor and trying to tank everything they favor mobility and tend towards medium or light armor. I'm surprised Okawaru hasn't given you decent stuff yet he's always been relatively good to me to spite the occasional +0 gloves. Clearing out Hive if you have rPois and above 25 AC or so is a great way to gain piety with Oka.

[asphyxia]

Thanks for the reply.
I'm on ASCII over SSH right now, played the tiles for a little while though; not bad for an ascii rendering of a roguelike either.
Darn, so this isn't the super axe I've been waiting for either... Well, I'll bet some slaying rings would make it more efficient? (if I could only find one :/)
I'll switch the cloak now, I've cleared the lair as well as most of the hive W/O rPois do to my wonderful =Regen and have gotten some neat gifts, one of them being a randart rElec Int-5 +9, +0 ankus much needed for killing those pesky hydras which have wasted so many wands... (though luckily recharge scrolls seem to be stacking)
I wish Okawaru would give me a nice randart platemail instead, as I only have a +0 platemail right now so my AC and SH are only at 24 each and my EV 4.
At least he was nice enough to give me a +1 shield of reflection... Is that better than a +0 large shield?
XL 14 now.

[asphyxia]

Dead. Killed by a summoned hellion. Coulda saved myself. YASD. LOL

[Shinigami345]

Orc high priest? Because those things are just the second they enter your field of vision you gotta either run away or have a good escape method in case you can't run up to them quick enough to deal 55 points of damage or hit them hard enough from a distance. Also I've found that 90% of the time if I just calmed the lotion in a tough spot and looked at what I actually had BEFORE even getting myself into it to be sure I could even attempt such things, and then if something bad happens I can get out...YASD would be avoided all together and I'd probably come out ahead in the whole deal. Teleport scrolls are often your friend especailly if you have cTele then you can just tele miles away from the problem get stronger then deal with it later. Calming down and not pushing random buttons is a valuable lesson that I still forget to do and I bet the second I learn to do it I'll get the orb and all the runes with relative ease.