Tomb Titivator
Posts: 856
Joined: Friday, 31st October 2014, 10:03
CIP: FeTm^Oka, with some commentary on felid gameplay
Lately I've been playing felids. HP-40% has proved to be an interesting challenge: one never quite gets to a point where fights become trivial, because one good hit puts a felid to a critical HP range for a long while. For the people who complain that Crawl is too easy, play more Felids. Cutting the amount of HP all across the board would be a simple solution for making the game harder and having to maintain good tactics longer.
Lousy HP makes transmuting a bit more interesting for felids. Most other transmuting species are pretty much set with Blade Hands, but felids can really use the HP+20% from Ice Form. Although with BH felids retain their one great advantage, speed, which is critical when just one big hit means the fight is over and it's time to GTFO.
My first ever felid went with Dith because of an early altar, but ran into a wall in the Lair runes. Okawaru is just too good to pass: +5 in UC and Dodging is ridiculously powerful at just * piety, and Finesse makes it possible to melee even hydras in Ice Form, something that is just too dangerous without it. Oka is just too good compared to everything else.
Nerf Oka: at least make Finesse give contamination like Haste, or make the attack speed slower, like Haste. Heroism with just +3 bonuses would still be good, but not ridiculously so.
This char found a +6 slaying ring in D:1 which is the main reason that I have 0 deaths so far. Orc gave me the Ring of Shadows, which might be the perfect item for Shoals; even with stronger characters I tend to postpone A:4 even after vaults, and sometimes even after depths, but with liberal use of invisibility I remained at good health throughout.
I've played a lot of octopodes who become pretty much invincible after Statue Form, but with felids' aptitudes, +1 Trmt, -1 Erth, it's actually takes just as much XP to get Dragon Form online. And with HP+50% compared to HP+30%, Slow, and no shield, Dragon is the superior form on felids.
I've yet to clear Depths. As an example why transmuters of Oka are so good, I ran an fsim vs a juggernaut in Dragon Form, Heroism, Finesse, !might, and, !agility with a character identical to the one I'm running:
15 runes: 2x HuSk, Op(Mo,Tm,Wn,Fi,Wr,EE,AM,Wz,Ne), VSTm, DsTm, Dg(Sk,Tm), MuGl, GhMo, Fe(En,EE,Ar,Wn,IE)
3 runes: FoFi, OgSk, KoHu, SpCj, 2x DgGl, MiBe, Fe(Fi,Tm,Mo,Su)