[CIP - > YASD] Another SpEn, need feedback on spells!

[lolhart]

Okay, here we go again.

Just smashed my way through Lair:8, planning on diving until I reach Depths, then to finish off Orc and take on Shoals or Snake. I don't have rPois yet, so I'll probably go Shoals.
My question: I am not sure what spell schools I should focus on, if any, at this point in the game.

A chardump: http://pastebin.com/nKvDmtkh

My available spells:

Envenomations: Spider Form, Poison Weapon, Olgreb's Toxic Radiance, Poisonous Cloud
YPH: Sting, Cure Poison, Mephitic Cloud, Olgreb's Toxic Radiance, Venom Bolt
Hinderance: Confusing Touch, Slow, Confuse, Petrify, Leda's Liquefaction, Metabolic Englaciation
Frost: Freeze, Throw Frost, Ozocubu's Armour, Throw Icicle, Summon Ice Beast, Condensation Shield
Ice: Metabolic Englaciation, Ozocubu's Refrigeration, Bolt of Cold, Freezing Cloud, Simulacrum
Power: Iskenderun's Mystic Blast, Venom Bolt, Bolt of Magma, Fulminant Prism, Iron Shot, Orb of Destruction
Geomancy: Sandblast, Stoneskin, Passwall, Stone Arrow, Petrify, Lee's Rapid Deconstruction
The Sky: Flight, Airstrike, Silence, Deflect Missiles, Conjure Ball Lightning, Tornado
Unlife: Recall, Animate Dead, Control Undead, Twisted Resurrection, Death Channel, Simulacrum
Death Corpse Rot, Sublimation of Blood, Agony, Dispel Undead, Excruciating Wounds, Bolt of Draining
Changes: Beastly Appendage, Sticks to Snakes, Spider Form, Ice Form, Blade Hands
Summoning: Abjuration, Recall, Summon Elemental, Shadow Creatures, Summon Demon, Monstrous Menagerie.

The only spellbook I can't afford (that I've found) is a Book of Annihilations.

I think the main problem is that I've not experienced enough of the late game to know what's going to be ineffective. I know that my hexes aren't going to be very useful past the Vaults.
Since clearing Lair I figured that I'd be going for an Air/Charms focus - that would give me Deflect missiles and Flight, as well as Haste if I ever came across it later on, while using some of the only direct damage spells (that I can see) to only use one spell skill; namely Airstrike and Tornado. Conjurations aptitude of -3 is a bit lame.
Then I found the book of Ice, and the book of Death. Ice and Necromancy have strong synergy in the form of of Simulacrum, but I'm not a huge fan of summons/minions. I either outrun them or I forget to summon them, usually because I zip around killing things too quickly anyway. There's also Metabolic Englaciation, which would require additional investment in Hexes as well as Ice to be reliable.
I also know that spriggans have a strong bonus to Transmutations but I've invested a lot into short blades - none of those forms will be very useful. I don't know how strong Poison magic is in the late game, either.

Too many choices! The other possibility is not to choose any of these skills/schools. Is a melee SpEn viable at all??
All that aside, this is a great run. I'm loving the lack of Invis in the spellbook - Dazzling Spray is much more powerful for actually taking out monsters. Dithmenos is pretty fun. I suppose Orc:4 will be the real test, but I'm going to hold off from playing this character until I get some feedback here.

[Velikolepni]

I would go Ice/Necromancy and a bit of Air. The spells that I would use would be Freezing Cloud, Ozocubu's Refrigeration (if you have conservation and good ice resistance), Animate Dead, Metabolic Englaciation and a couple of others. Later on Simulacrum would be nice. You should also give Death channel a try if you can spare the xp since it is a great spell.

Animate Dead is useful even if you don't like summons because it denies corpses to some enemies that like casting Twisted Resurection.

Alternatively, you could go for Air plus a little of poison in order to get Poisonous cloud, since spriggan have 0 in poison but -2 in ice.

[Hurkyl]

An aside on short blades: further training should probably be put off until later. The main reason to train the skill is to get to minimum delay and for sleep-stabbing damage. Min delay only needs 8 skill for a quick blade or 10 for a dagger (unless this has changed in 0.15), and unless you're trying to sleep-stab something like the Royal Jelly, you have more than enough damage for that already.

So, unless you pick up a short sword or cutlass that surpasses the quick blade (e.g. highly enchanted with electrocution might have a chance), or you're at a point where you really need to boost your confusion/distraction stabbing, you already have more skill than you need.

Being melee focused is possible, but it works a lot better if you have good slaying bonuses; you'll still probably want good spells to go with it, though. e.g. Silence to disable dangerous spellcasters, Haste / Metabolic Englaciation to make you relatively stronger in melee, Freezing Cloud for supplemental damage....

With spell power, hexes are still useful late game. e.g. you can stick Confuse semi-reliably on giants, deep trolls, and many draconians with a reasonable amount of spell power.

I would suggest getting Mephitic Cloud as soon as possible. There are a number of enemies which are much more easily disabled by it than with hexes, and it's area effect too.

I will second going for Freezing Cloud: it is an excellent spell, and handles a lot of the situations that stealth and stabbing won't. And training Ice/Air means you can also get Deflect Missiles, Silence, and whatever defensive Ice spells you want to use, and also helps get your Ensorcelled Hibernation spell power up.

[Lyrick]

Nice quick blade. Melee is only slightly more dangerous than it would be for a normal race with such low HP, you'll need to focus some more fighting. If there are any good long blades lying around, you may want to consider picking one up for higher AC opponents.

Even as hexes appear to be getting more useless, maxing out EH will make it effective even versus Vault Guards/Sentinels/Wardens!

Also...

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Enslavement       |       |       |     2 |    14 |       ||    16

This is actually a really great spell. You can enslave a bunch of dudes, they'll kill the dudes that weren't enslaved, and then as their enslavements wear off one by one the others will kill them until there's just one left.

In terms of offensive spells: I've learned that the -3 conjurations apt is pretty painful to power through, though it is doable. Freezing Cloud and Iron Shot are probably all you really need if you do go for that. Among all the spells there, there are several I would most definitely get:

Deflect Missiles (without question, have it on as often as is feasible)

Shadow Creatures (for quick and relatively cheap backup; limited to 4 dudes, but thats usually sufficient)

Abjuration (smite-targeted threat removal; if you are doing Elf i'd highly suggest this unless you can 2-3 shot deep elves)

Dispel Undead is handy against Liches, Bone Dragons, and Crpyt/Tomb Dwellers.

Animate Dead gives you opportunities to distract foes, and is sort of like a mass enslavement.

Simulacrum gives you a ridiculous amount of firepower; from a single corpse you can produce many powerful icy copies, and those hit quite hard. If you can spare the spell slot pick up Animate Skeleton for instant chunking (and an extra undead minion)

[and into]

Ozocubo's Armor, train 3 levels of ice magic and some quick/cheap charms. Then I would train evocations to at least 8, maybe as high as 10, and use the hell out of that ring of invisibility. This will also let you reliably berserk thanks to that buckler. With +Rage and that q.blade, melee will be more than viable option for anything you can't stab, just be careful to use your speed to isolate one or two enemies at a time when you berserk.

I would not train any more stealth or short blades. I would train fighting, and would try to improve AC with ?enchant armor too if possible. Then I would train some invocations so I could actually use Dithmenos's abilities, which are very useful.

After I had a good bit of fighting and renewable invisibility, I would go ahead and get summonings for shadow creatures; you say you don't like minions but shadow creatures gives a bunch of random summons—often a group of them for one cast—based on what would randomly generate for your level, and they are short-lived, which makes it something of a "conjuration-like" summon spell in my experience. It is also very powerful (it gets more powerful as you go deeper since it replicates random spawns) and it is very cheap for its power level.

After that you could just train more fighting, then some more dodging. Then do whatever you want, honestly. (Metabolic Englaciation, Dispel Undead, and Iron Shot are all cool spells but you really don't need them; you can pick any of those up, or anything else really, just don't neglect core skills like fighting and dodging.)

Oh I'd also drop that dagger of speed, and if there is any curare out there I'd pick that up and a blowgun.

[Hurkyl]

27 Stealth with Dith is pretty nice in Pan, although probably overkill if you're not going that far. (admittedly, I haven't compared it to 20 stealth)

[lolhart]

Thanks for the replies. Seems I misjudged a bit with the skills.

Buy the book of Frost. SKill up Ice to 3, as well as Evo to 10 for that ring.
Switch to Charms (once Ice is at 3) for Deflect Missiles/Flight/Haste if I can find it. A bit of Air, to up the power on Deflect.
Then Fighting up to 10, and Invocations up to.. 8? Not sure on that point. I guess just get shadow form down to something reasonable.
Then Summoning. I really like the idea of using Shadow Creatures while following Dith.
After that I might try mixing Air into Fighting/Dodging so I can get the cool spells like Freezing Cloud.

Spells are looking like: Ozo's Armour, Flight, Met. Eng., Flight, Def. Missiles, Abjuration & Shadow Creatures, and anything else I fancy after that.

As I've progressed down inD, things I've noticed: high AC & MR creatures are going to be tough until Evo goes up. A pack of skeletal warriors spawned on d13 and they were hard to take down, so I avoided them for the most part. Orc was a BREEZE. Just had to be careful about being cornered.

[lolhart]

HAHAHA DIED IN SHOALS TO A SNAPPING TURTLE *flips table* http://pastebin.com/5Zwwmtvs