YASD: Lv 27 HECr of TSO, so close!!!

[C4Sale]

Hey all,

So here's Jaheria,my Lv19 HECr of Okawaru(*****.)

She's proven very tough (took down Mennas), but she's been insanely lucky with her finds in the dungeon.
I've cleared all the early branches, the Shoals, Swamp, and Elf down to 4, the Vaults to 5 (except for Mara who followed me up from 6 during my retreat), and the Dungeon only down to 17.

I have options right now, I'm just not sure what the best course is from here. I'd really love some input so I could weigh it out before I go any further.

Here are my biggest concerns:

-I lack a solid form of Sinv which is my biggest weakness. I've gotten by so far by briefly wielding a crappy randart with Sinv Okawaru gave me to ID what it is and respond accordingly (I can usually kill it anyways) since I don't want to wear that robe, but maybe I should?

-what skills should I focus on at this point? Can I turn any off? and on a related note what gear should I be wearing? I have reservations about my shield of ignorance but it also entices me

-should I switch to TSO or Ashenzari? If I should, how much longer should I stick with Okawaru?

-I have no scrolls of amnesia. Should I hold out for haste, or should I learn Tukimas dance first and train spellcastin more, also, should I learn attack air spells?

-Mutations, get rid of some annoying ones now or save my potion if/when I get a game-ruiner

-Anything else you'd like to address

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Attributes:
12 Str
22 Int
22+5 ring Dex

Major skills:
13 Fighting 8 Spellcasting
20 Long Swords 12 Charms
9 Armour 8 Air Magic
12 Dodging 6 Conjurations
13 Shields 5 Invocations
...and a 7 in Evocations

Spells:

Delfect Missiles @ Very Good
Blink @ Great
Berserker Rage, Repel Missiles, Regeneration, Flight, Magic Dart, Control Teleport,Apportation,
and Silence @ Excellent

Noteworthy equipment:

Weapons
+7 Katana of Slicing (wielded), +5,+8 Scimitar of Flaming, +4,+4 Scimitar of Holy Wrath, +4,+5 Katana (egoless),
Venom Demonblade, Long Swords of Distortion & Freezing,

Armour
+5 elven Scale (worn), +2 Dragon armour, +0 Swamp Dragon armour, +0 Steam hide,
+3 Robe of the Clam (Str+2,Int-2, SInv), +0 leather armour (rF+), Cloak of rM(worn), +2 gauntlets,

Shields
+3 Dwarven shield (+3 AC)(worn), +8 Shield of Ignorance (rN+, AC+2, EV+2, Int-6, recurse)

Amulets
"Noemol" (+Rage, rElec, rN+, Int+2)(worn), Faith, Stasis, Conservation,

Rings
wizardry (worn), +5 Dexterity (worn), "Erymawui" (rElec, rN+, Int+2), rings of rF+,rN+, sustenance, sustain abilities,
+3,+2 Slaying, teleportation

Wands
Healing (0), Hasting (3), Fire(2), and several Lightning, digging, polymorph, paralysis etc.

Mutations(I have 1 cure mutation stashed)
Dex+1, Int+2, rC+, blurriness1, -10% hp, -10% mp

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I've been playing Dungeon Crawl for a little under a year. I've made one 3-rune with a FeCr in trunk, and
I'm dying for a second win/a chance to poke around the later branches more. I think this character has potential.

So much thanks,

C4sale

[XrBob]

At first glance I'd say your long swords skill is too high. Others can explain this better, but you really don't need it any higher after you get min weapon delay. I'd say you switch to TSO when you

1. don't need his gifts any more
2. don't need his skills (heroism, finesse) anymore
3. want to do crypt
4. can survive his wrath without issue.

My guess is you can wait a bit, TSO starts to get useful with the angel summons, the hp/mp gain for killing demon/unded, and blessing your sword. You've still got a good bit of regular monsters to fight.

A +8 shield is nice, but -6 int isn't worth it.

It's optional, but I'd go ahead and try to get rid of the frail mutation, I don't like have less hp than I could. You won't likely get a mutation you don't want until you go to more dangerous places like slime or zot, though abyss is possible. At worst just get a resist mutation amulet and keep that on.

Eventually you'll want controlled blink, and you'll absolutely want anbjuration. If you don't have the books, no reason not to use scrolls of acquirement on them.

[QTQuazar]

I regularly play a HECr. I'm not an expert on Pan/Zigs yet but can maybe help you until you get up there. Most of this advice comes form stuff players gave me over time.

First off, above advice from xrbob about Long Swords is accurate--not an efficient use of skill points beyond L14-16. The new weapon speed expanation on the wiki is MUCH CLEARER than it used to be, read it to get a solid grasp of how that works.

As for the frail mutation--not worth worrying about yet. Stock up mut and Cmut potions, roulette later. With your gear, frail is not a big threat atm, whereas making new potions when you're with TSO means penance. And, contrary to previous advice, there are some real game ruiner mutaitons for your char (esp speed or healing related) which are far more critical for removal. You don't have an amulet of Resist Mutation yet so you're still at high risk to Neqoexecs

The +8 shield is fine for now but, again, you won't be using that in late game when you need your Int.

For weapons (you have been insanely lucky) all you need are the two katana. Keep the egoless one egoless, you're a Crusader, so you can brand it with damn near anything you need, situationally. Pump all your Enchant scrolls into these swords. Your slicing one is going to get a rebranding when you switch to TSO before Crypt.

Amnesia repel missiles (when you get the scroll)--deflect missiles supercedes it (they don't stack)

Pick up swiftness to pair with flight, if you've found it. Abyss should then be a cakewalk if you don't do anything stupid. You can safely scum it if you want (once you have an amulet of RMut)

Clear dungeon down to 27 once you have Fulsome Distillation... so you can pul mut potions off the ugly things ... aside from that, don't think there's much that can stand to you at this point. Some kind of cloud (poison/mephitic/evap/or rods) would be nice to finish Elf: 5.

Ring of Ery and Slaying for now, switch to more intelligence/magic oriented ones in the late game.

You're going to need to build up one of your magic skills, likely summoning and air for your build. Tornado and Shadow Creatures are probably a good goal for late game. Start victory dancing these now; your combat stats are sufficient.

Build up Inovcations slowly with Okawaru, so that when you switch to TSO before doing Crypt, you'll be ready for Tomb at full piety with high enough Inovcations to summon Allies. This + Silence will allow you to handle Tomb... carefully (some traps skill is nice as well). Silence makes Tomb oh-so-much-more-pleasant.

Switch to the Robe. Good dex means good evasion, which is more important for your likely route than raw AC, and you can't afford the scale mail's penalties for much longer.


addendum: as a point of comparison, luck-wise, my current HECr, L27, who has burned through innumerable god gifts and 5 scrolls of acquirement (which were, let's see, boots, boots, crappy scale mail, boots, and ... *shocker*... boots--NONE of which have any resistances), can barely muster fF+++ (i have to lose my amulet of RMut to do so). my armor is a +3 or 4 ringmail with rN+ and SInv. he has L21 Air and L16 spellcasting and he has NOT MANAGED TO FIND TORNADO. he hasn't even found abjuration. his three unique rings all have *TELE, as does his primary weapon--his other weapon, the Sword of Jihad, is auto-rage. he has hit almost every branch, made 5 abyss trips, and still not found a single wand of hasting or healing.

your character is in really good shape.

sometimes Oka just decides to dump the garbage in the back of his garage on you. aside from my speed-branded random-teleporting double sword this game, i could make better gear at a pottery barn.

i did manage to take out two orbs of fire with no rF, but i wouldn't recommend that (oh, and not fun finding like 8 of them in a lava pool in the middle of Zot 4).

i've also had to kill Boris 5 times. i didn't even realize he could come back that often. i'm half-dreading finding him in Tomb: 3 at this point.

[slowcar]

don't waste a cure mutation on frail, i absolutely agree with QTQuazar here. (and your other mutations are quite nice!)

for me, the most important question is: Do you intend to do the extended endgame? Or do you want to win crawl, most likely with a 3 or 4 runes win?
TSO is a good choice for the extended endgame, crypt/tomb, pan and hells, especially if you field a mass destruction spell like Tornado.
He builds piety very quickly in crypt, if you plan to switch i would do it there (or keep the crypt for this occasion).

check if you have any un-ided amulets and use ctrl+f to find a possible rMut amulet, maybe a shop offered one and you don't remember it.
Abyss, Zot and all places where demons are or are summoned (and slime, of course) rMut is among the most important to have.
A single orb of flame can not only kill you in numerous ways but also destroy your character by mutating him horribly, for example.

I would suggest you train summoning until you can cast abjuration at excellent (if you have it). If you want other summoning spells you can go higher, but if you field tornado everything except air elementals are useless.
also train translocations. blink is a must have, and higher levels offer the excellent phase shift and controlled blink (which lets you do semi-controlled blinks in no-cTele-levels like branch ends).
Otherwise: Air all the way. Tornado needs massive levels in it. If you have or can find Airstrike you have a golden spell for in between.
You can also use lightning bolt, but disable conjuration unless you want to go for other conj-heavy spells like orb of destruction.

[C4Sale]

Thanks for your great advice you three, but unfortunately this CIP is now a YASD .

I died halfway through clearing Zot:5. I retreated back into the corridors of the level to rest up after taking down two orbs of fire at once. Not 25 turns after resting do I get waylaid by a golden dragon, a storm dragon, a couple draconians and a killer klown.

An emergency exit was a scroll of blinking away, but I forgot Zot5 doesn't allow controlled blinks, so instead I blinked further into danger.

Definitely could've a lot further but stupid me for not immediately going back to Zot:4.

I should have quit after 4 and started some optional branches .
during what I thought was going to be a clean escape.

It's okay though, another lesson learned.

[QTQuazar]

Hmmm... you should post your char details at time of death... none of those monsters should have posed a serious threat to your char at L27, even after a major battle, unless you were totally out of health. Even then, DMSL + a deliberate berserk back to the stairs (since it boosts your health) would seem the safer option to me, as long as nothing is hovering on Zot 4. Maybe you had no RElec? even then...