The Tavern

I am a bit surprised on how long it took to start really struggling with an Elf this time. Usually I don't make it past Lair with HE. Finally the wall has started to rise in front of me and I am often on the brink of death and would like your assistance. First the basic question: What should I do with my skills? At the moment I am trying to make Recite more useful and raising Fighting to be less squishy.

I tought my AC and EV were sufficient, but in Vaults I am starting to question this. With Ozos and Condensation Shield up, I get AC 30, EV 27, SH 9. Currently my best light/medium armors are Leather, so I have not been training Armor much. How ever, I have stashed 6 EA scorlls and got Mottled and Ice hides available + a steam DA. I probably should not have hoarded the scrolls that much waiting for a good hide and now that I think about it, I am not even sure what I was hoping for... My concern is that if I create a mDA or IDA and buff it up to +5, it would give me less than 30AC... These would benefit more from Armor Skill, but taking the Resistances on my leather armor in to account, it is quite hard to decide what is the best course. I doubt that a fully enchanted Steam DA + ozos would be that much better.

My weapons are not that great either. I only got 2 EW scrolls, but I probably should just use them up on my bow... I was hoping to find either a higher enchant Long Bow or a better brand form the Centaurs in Vaults, but no luck. I might hold on to those scrolls until I have done elf, but this time Elf scares me even more than normal (I usually do not find elf hard at all). Still, might be worth visiting the Hall of Blades.

One more thing, not relevant to this game (at least yet). The good gods mark Rod of Destruction and Rod of Clouds as contraband since they can create negative energy. Still, with rod of clouds, the negative energy clouds seem to be very rare or impossible to get, before a certain level of Evocations. So could a ZIn worshipper use rod of clouds safely with lesser Evocation skill?

A Steam DA would give you more AC, but I still would not do that. That randart leather is sweet with those resists. I'd enchant up the aux armour pieces instead.

I don't see why you should struggle with this character. It is strong and well built. In non-trivial fights use Vitalisation, it is cheap and good. I see that you only used it 3 times so far; that is a mistake.

I have little experience with Zin so I am not too familiar with his abilities. I mostly use Recite as an opener and Sanctuary to cover from mistakes. Clearly I am doing it wrong and should take more use out of him.

The reason why I am strugling might very well be me playing badly and not using all my assets well. For example, I just remembered that I have Passage of Golumbria memorized but never cast it. It might have made some close calls less of so, now that I think of them.

I would not train Invocations any higher in 3 rune game and I wouldn't train Fighting at this point. Your defenses are fine, I believe you have problem with attacks: neither the triple sword nor the longbow are at min delay. Basically you should specialize more before hybridizing, having 3 weak ways to kill monsters is worse than 1-2 strong ways.

I wish I had a tripple sword, but sadly that is a great sword which hits min delay at 18. (according to wiki). What skill do I need for min delay long bow?

After playing some more clearing Elf and few levels of dephts, I struggle a lot less. I have now found all the spells I need, now I just need to buy the book and learn them. Haste, Silence and Deflect missiles are already online. I burned up all my enchant scrolls on the bow and aux slots (some Ench Armors still remain) and I found gloves of archery. This all has helped out tremendously. Also actually using Zin abilities more helps out quite a bit.

Updated the morgue file above.

Updated morgue.

This is what I imagined my endgame Warper elf would look like, but hunter was the way to achieve it. I got Ice magic and charms to boost my defenses, Tloc to get out of trouble and do AOE damage and my bow for ranged. Not much more I could hope for. Just wanted to update this thread to boast a little.

I have a bit mixed feelings on the power of singularity. Compared to other lvl 9 spells, it doesn't feel like the insane AOE blast Glaciate and FIrestorm are or the ultimate screen cleaner tornado feels. Yet it is very satisfying to use. The fact that it blocks a tile made killing Cerebow a piece of cake. I just stood around a corned and blocked him behind a singularity out of los. This has been mentioned as OP tacktic in a development thread. I do not wholly agree to that, since taking advantage of that feature requires quite specific circumstances. It can be exploited, but not too consistently.

Disjunction sounded more interesting than it actually is, but still, it has helped me escape some situation that were going down hill too fast. Not sure if I am using it properly or do not see its potential.

Hoping to take my second 15rune win with this one, perhaps even a ziggurat.

I only have 5 runes left- Hells and Tomb, which scare me a little... My plan for Hells would be to wield staff of Energy and run around with Disjunction up searching for stairs, ignoring everything. I got rF++ and rC+++ armors, so I can get full resistances for those. rN lacks one easy pip, that I can get if I use my +5 Great sword of venom. How ever, that would not be wise when my main melee weapon is +9 holywrath.

Zin is probably the best choice for Hells, but should I switch to TSO for Tomb? Zins vitalisation should protect me from most of the nasty stuff going on in Tomb, but TSO has other benefits, mainly the summons and rN+++.

Any other tricks you can think of with my spell set? I have Dispersal in a book lying around if that helps better than Disjunction.

With Zin, you can play in Hells pretty much like normal; Zin block Hell effects, so you can rest to heal up. Going down as fast as you can is still a good idea, as there is no loot on levels 1-6. On the last level, if things get rough, you can use Sanctuary, apport the rune and ctele out.

The Tomb is tough now with the ugly new monsers, but hey, you are very strong. TSO is a good idea, and also don't forget to put on a Sust.ab ring.

Zin in 0.16+ blocks only half of hell effects at max piety, so I don't think keep resting will work, probably you're going to get more damage than you can heal unless having some +regen equipment to swap. I'd just keep to go forward, healing/resting only when really necessary. Sanctuary + apport is certainly a strong solution

I would go with the Zin all the way, train Invo, and use Recite often (at high Invo it does good job vs hell lords).

How much invo is needed? I got 17 now and stopped using Recite some time ago, since it did not seem to help much and caused too much noise. Now that I cast singularity, noise no longer a concern.

I like to have it ~20-21 or even higher

I got it to 20 in Gehenna and in Cocytos it seemed to do very little. At least against anything that matters...

Hm, I was satisfied with it durning Pan/Hell/Tomb;

my favourite moment with it:

Hmm, I must try this. If I make it to him. I am in a pretty sticky situation...


I was trying to rush in the vault hoping to ninja the rune and get the hell out of there, but the rune was not there. I evoked Fan of gales, read scroll of fog and this is where I am now. My next move could be potion of HW or Potion of Magic. The question is which order? Third or second move is Sanctuary. Then some healing and TP. Or am I missing some obvious life saver? Apparently the fog only created 3x3 which basically did nothing for me...

Any good reason why you wouldn't just use sanctuary like, immediately?? Second priority would be to heal some, third to get some MP.

I'm on fire today

If you think you can gain 3 MP in 10 aut, then quaff a heal wounds. Otherwise quaff the magic and sanctuary immediately afterwards either way.

He needs 7 mp for sanctuary, unfortunately. Otherwise this is a very good case where sanctuary is so good.

I'm not good to read ASCII but you're in a dire situation - why the short dump? It's not good not knowing what items you have or the effects you have active.
Are you hasted? In that case you could try to close the door (the blizzard demons are among the worst things on the LOS in this moment, you're quite helpess against airstrike and lack relec for b.lightning).

Another idea it's holy word - in a situations like that I'd probably burn many of that scrolls, then quaffing magic or hw, depending of what would happen after the reading.
HW isn't probably going to save you, there are too many dangerous things, you may potentially take more damage than it can cure.

In any case, if you get engulfed by the elementals, that could be fatal - as you won't be able to use invocations and scrolls - so it's crucial you don't waste turns.

Those are very very generic advices, I've no idea what are the E near you etc, without understanding your positioning and of your enemies and the terrain it's kinda impossible to give a good one

E is an air/water elemental

I tried to grab only the relevant info to the dump, apparently I failed. The dump at the starting post had pretty much all consumables I had, but status efects are not in the stub. There we could have seen the +Tele status that I had on already... This is Cocy, so the E are water elementals, but there are also 2-3 friendly Air elementals, which you can not point out without colors.

Never the less, I survived. I went with HW, Magic, sanctuary and then got TP:d out on to the middle lane. I managed to improve my health and mana some what, but very soon ended up in an even more dire situation. A random blink saved me there, but I burned far too many resources there to my liking.

I am done with hells now and only got Tomb and Zot5 + orb run left. My normal arrows are starting to run low, but fire and frost arrows should last until the end. Tomb1 has not been tough at all at least for now. I should be running in to Boris again soon.

So I went ahead and finished this with 15 runes. (Finals morgue is updated to the top post.)

Tomb was a cake walk with Zin, buffs and silence. I even went with Scroll of immolation and singularity on Tomb3, which was very amusing. This was the first time I really enjoyed Tomb.

Thanks for everybody that helped me! Even tough most of the posts were just "you can do it" encouragement to me, I really needed that to stay on course and not do stupid things as usual.

Nice win, congrats.