A Worthy Death

[Grytorm]

Hello. This is my first post on this forum, but I just wanted to share the death of my latest character. A kenku air elementlaist which I had trained in both combat and magic. Had a +5 Short Sword of Draining and an artifact Ring Mail with Dexterity, Blink and Strength. Made it to level 9 without much trouble except for a player ghost I couldn't really hurt. No side areas. And then I hit a level which just overwhelmed me. As far as I can tell level 10 (or 11) was this crossed hallway filled with monsters. I saw Ogres, Orcs and a mixture of beasties. Ultimately I tried to bring them up to the next layer, and I got maybe 10 kills that way. But then I pulled 4 of them at once including a gargoyle. And they just beat me to death.

Sad to have it go that way. Because I really want to explore some of those branch vaults.

[Nebukadnezar]

If you're asking for detailed advice: post your morgue and put a [ code ] before it an a [ /code ] behind it, so everybody can see the details.
(without the spaces I've use in the command)

Tengu is not an easy species, AE is not an easy background.
If your main motivation is to explore more parts of the game: chose an easier combo like Mifi of Okawaru for the beginning.
Packs of monster can be handled in a corridor and even better while standing on stairs. You can take 1 monster upstairs (max 2 if stairs are in a corridor), kill it, regain health and repeat.
If you think that 1 of these stairs is too crowded: go down using the other 2 stairs.
There are other ways of dealing with packs but this is the most basic (and boring) strategy

[Siegurt]

Note that played properly, an AE is as (if not more) powerful as any of the elemental or conjurers, however there's some (easily learned) subtleties with regard to position and targeting (and some slightly odd interface stuff) that aren't important for other spellcasters.

However that being said, Melee bashers do tend to have a generally less complicated start, and so the advice to play a MiFi^Oka isn't a bad suggestion for a new player.

Some things to take away from this are:

1. You don't need to kill everything, or indeed most things, if it's dangerous, you can just go elsewhere, In particular when you noticed that a gargoyle (who is resistant to electricity) was in the set of creatures you were facing, you just should've picked another staircase, or gone down another branch. You can use x(arrows)v to examine a creature to get some details about it's attack and defenses.

2. While it's not an exact thing, I do find that D:10 to be a slightly larger step up in difficulty than earlier levels.

3. I don't know if it was an option or not, but typically the Lair is doable as soon as you find the entrance, likely it would've been easier than a pack of nasty trouble on D:10, if you'd found the entrance.

[VeryAngryFelid]

AE is still worse than Cj/IE/FE no matter how good player you are.

[Grytorm]

Yeah, I don't go for the best ideas a lot of the time. I was not fortunate to find a sub dungeon which I would have done willingly. And all three stairs led to the same crowded chamber. But I probably should have rotated between them more.

[CypherZel]

MiBe is also good but Be could get very boring

[CypherZel]

Yeah, I don't go for the best ideas a lot of the time. I was not fortunate to find a sub dungeon which I would have done willingly. And all three stairs led to the same crowded chamber. But I probably should have rotated between them more.

Yea it sucks when the game spawns them like that but if you swap between them and blast dudes it can be fun making them essentially stay in the same place

[Siegurt]

AE is still worse than Cj/IE/FE no matter how good player you are.

I personally have very slightly more success with AE than with Cj, about the same as FE and IE. (Wz is actually slightly better for me than any of them though, the wizard starting toolbox is really flexible no matter what you are dealing with, although it doesn't have as much staying power if the rng is stingy) and i have signifactly more success with AE than with EE, at least for the portion of the game where background has much more impact than the rng.

I would however certainly agree that playing AE safely is more work than the other elemental styles (more retreating and repositioning is required to double hit every single time mostly other conjurarions you get into one good position and blast until the critter dies).