Cip - DDNe of Chei

[Lyrick]

Played this dude on phone, so no dump. Version 14.1 (not trunk)

So about a week ago I rolled a DDNe and gave it a shot, he found an altar to Chei on dlvl 2 and i thought, why not. Somehow, after many close calls, he's managed to pick up the barnacled, serpentine, and silver runes and is in Zot:1. I went with maces and flails, and now have several nice eveningstars; +5, +6 eveningstar of freezing, and +0, +6 eveningstar of distortion. Chei has been a ton of fun; casting in chain mail, massive damage from str, and 1-shot-stabbing golden dragons with eveningstars is pretty funny.

Now that I've gotten so far there are a few questions i'm wondering about.

I had a manual of necromancy, so I had level 19 necro. And lucky me, I found a demon blade of pain right off a draconian in front of the Realm of Zot. Would it be worth getting 10 or so levels of LB to make use of that sexy pain brand? (Than say, continuing to train fighting (17), armour (15), or dodging (19)?)

I have the +5 shield of Resistance (rF+, rC+, MR+) and some randart +1 large shield (rElec, rN+). I don't have any other source of rElec but I'm hanging around in Zot; have a couple potions of resistance, but which one should I keep on for general wear? Also already have MR++++. without shield of Resistance.

I played a lot of mutation roulette, and ended up on some middle ground: fast metabolism II and -10% HP for bad muts, but clarity, see invisible, hooves II, +MP 10%, and some others for good ones. Should I switch from Chei for Jiyva? There's a wand of hasting lying around and I can recharge it at will whenever (never used the recharge ability yet lol). Or maybe to Kiku so I don't have to make zombies from scratch.

Would having stair following allies from Twisted Ressurection be better than the powerful but clumsy Animate Dead?

[Siegurt]

First of all I must say, congrats; you are a serious iron man to play DCSS on your phone, I tried it and I wanted to smack my head on the wall.

A demon blade of pain is about as good as a necromancer could ask for, weapon wise, and demon blades take 14 skill to get to min delay, it's probably worth it.

Twisted resurrection is fairly powerful, but kind of tedious, ideally you'll use simulacrum instead.

Switching gods is always an iffy proposition, I wouldn't strongly *suggest* you swap gods unless you have a serious reason to do so.

[Magipi]

he found an altar to Chei on dlvl 2 and i thought, why not.

Because you're a DD, that is a pretty big why not.

[Lyrick]

He ascended! I actually didn't really use the demon blade, the evenstar of freezing took care of OOF and the evenstar of distortion cleared the way on the orb run.

Cheibriados is fun but a little scary to use. The greatest benefits from him were really the stat boosts, Bend Time and Temporal Distortion saw extremely little use. Slouch was strong, but it also killed my zombies, so even that wasn't useful. I only used Step from Time once, and that was by accident. DD works well with Chei, seemingly cause they can make use of the greater defensive capabilities from high stats Chei provides, and the damage shaving can let you vamp drain away in melee even against powerful critters. Animate Dead is mad powerful, just about anywhere, and even if another spellcaster gets to the corpses first Control Undead is there for you.

Also, I had two ranks of Wild Magic, and that gave me nearly full power in all my necro spells, and I still had <10% fail rates on all my spells! pretty funny game, easiest bone dragons and ancient liches I've ever had to face.