CIP:NaTm

[delarado]

So, I'm running a Naga Transmuter. I've tried it a few times before without much sucess.

Pretty sure I Want to go Chei, and I see an altar on D:3. However, I'm sure I read somewhere not to take Chei until after Lair and go back for it, just because the lower speed makes the game so hard?

Any opinions?

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.24-a0-291-g79c1ce7 (webtiles) character file.

delarado the Changer (Naga Transmuter)              Turns: 2885, Time: 00:11:11

Health: 39/44      AC:  2    Str: 12    XL:     5   Next: 9%
Magic:  8/8        EV: 10    Int: 15    God:   
Gold:   93         SH:  0    Dex: 11    Spells: 5/8 levels left

rFire    . . .     SeeInvis +     - Unarmed
rCold    . . .     Gourm    .   (no shield)
rNeg     . . .     Faith    .   b - +0 robe
rPois    +         Spirit   .   (no helmet)
rElec    .         Reflect  .   (no cloak)
rCorr    .         Harm     .   (no gloves)
MR       .....                  (no barding)
Stlth    +.........             (no amulet)
HPRegen  0.14/turn              o - ring of see invisible
MPRegen  0.11/turn              (no ring)

@: very slow
A: large, see invisible, deformed body, poison resistance, slowness 2, slow
metabolism 1, spit poison 1, AC +1
a: Spit Poison


You are on level 3 of the Dungeon.
You are not hungry.

You have visited 1 branch of the dungeon, and seen 3 of its levels.

You have collected 93 gold pieces.

Inventory:

Hand Weapons
 q - a +0 hunting sling
Missiles
 a - 9 arrows
 c - 27 sling bullets
Armour
 b - a +0 robe (worn)
 i - a +0 leather armour
Jewellery
 o - a ring of see invisible (left hand)
Scrolls
 e - a scroll labeled ERUOKU UMOFIHIXI
 f - a scroll labeled YHYAFI ISOUSUPE
 k - 2 scrolls labeled PYUDOT RIMPANU
 l - a scroll labeled AXTETHAE ISAQO
 m - a scroll labeled JICUEN GYECH
 p - a scroll labeled MOUSSUCADY
Potions
 g - 2 potions of flight
 h - a potion of lignification
 n - a potion of berserk rage
 s - a potion of curing
Comestibles
 d - 4 rations


   Skills:
 - Level 1.0 Fighting
 - Level 1.5 Dodging
 - Level 3.0 Unarmed Combat
 - Level 2.0 Spellcasting
 + Level 5.1 Transmutations


You have 5 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Beastly Appendage     Tmut           ###...       2%          1    #......
b - Sticks to Snakes      Tmut           ###.....     4%          2    ###....

Your spell library contains the following spells:

 Spells                   Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
 Spider Form              Tmut/Pois      #.........   24%         3    ###....
 Blade Hands              Tmut           ###.......   58%         5    ######.
 Ice Form                 Ice/Tmut       #.......     61%         4    #####..


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (3/15)           

Altars:
Cheibriados

Annotations:
D:1 1 runed translucent door, exclusion: upstairs


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You cannot wear boots.
Your serpentine skin is tough. (AC +1)
You have supernaturally acute eyesight. (SInv)
Armour fits poorly on your strangely shaped body.
Your system is resistant to poisons. (rPois)
You cover ground very slowly.
You have a slow metabolism.
You can spit poison.


Message History

You kill the hobgoblin!
The rat bites you but does no damage.
You closely miss the rat. The rat barely misses you.
You hit the rat.
You kill the rat!
Your transformation is almost over.
You hit the giant cockroach.
The giant cockroach is almost dead.
The giant cockroach misses you. The giant cockroach barely misses you.
You barely miss the giant cockroach.
The giant cockroach is almost dead.
The giant cockroach closely misses you.
You hit the giant cockroach.
You kill the giant cockroach!
No target in view!
You start resting.
Your horns disappear.
Things that are here:
a +0 club; a giant cockroach corpse; a hobgoblin corpse
Saving game... please wait.

         .
        ..
     ##.#
   ##...#
 ##...#
##†...#
#<@_..#
#†...##
#..###
#...
#.###
...
#..
###


There are no monsters in sight!

Vanquished Creatures
  Terence (D:2)
  A gnoll (D:1)
  3 adders (D:2)
  A worm (D:2)
  4 dart slugs
  2 leopard geckos
  3 bats
  3 giant cockroaches
  4 goblins
  7 hobgoblins
  10 jackals
  3 kobolds
  3 frilled lizards
  7 rats
52 creatures vanquished.

Notes
Turn   | Place    | Note
-------+----------+-------------------------------------------
     0 | D:1      | delarado the Naga Transmuter began the quest for the Orb.
     0 | D:1      | Reached XP level 1. HP: 18/18 MP: 3/3
     1 | D:1      | Found a runed translucent door.
    52 | D:1      | Reached XP level 2. HP: 13/25 MP: 5/5
   223 | D:1      | Reached skill level 3 in Transmutations
   528 | D:1      | Reached XP level 3. HP: 9/31 MP: 6/6
  1718 | D:2      | Reached skill level 4 in Transmutations
  1735 | D:1      | Upgraded the game from 0.24-a0-285-g3c078ff to
                  | 0.24-a0-291-g79c1ce7
  1738 | D:1      | Learned a level 2 spell: Sticks to Snakes
  1841 | D:2      | Reached XP level 4. HP: 3/38 MP: 7/7
  2353 | D:2      | Noticed Terence
  2376 | D:2      | Killed Terence
  2497 | D:2      | Reached skill level 5 in Transmutations
  2510 | D:2      | Reached XP level 5. HP: 41/44 MP: 8/8
  2863 | D:3      | Found a snail-covered altar of Cheibriados.

Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4 |
---------------+-------------+-----
Transmutations |     3  4  5 |  5.1
Fighting       |             |  1.0
Dodging        |             |  1.5
Unarmed Combat |             |  3.0
Spellcasting   |             |  2.0

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Unarmed           |   151 |    78 ||   229
       Headbutt          |    18 |    10 ||    28
       Punch             |       |     2 ||     2
 Cast: Beastly Appendage |    18 |    11 ||    29
       Sticks to Snakes  |       |     3 ||     3
 Abil: Spit Poison       |       |     1 ||     1
  Use: Scroll            |     2 |     2 ||     4
       Potion            |     1 |     2 ||     3
 Stab: Sleeping          |     1 |       ||     1
  Eat: Chunk             |     2 |     3 ||     5
Armor: Robe              |    34 |    18 ||    52
Dodge: Dodged            |    80 |    40 ||   120

Table legend:
 A = Non-vault XP
 B = Vault XP
 C = Vault XP percentage of total XP
 D = Non-vault monster count
 E = Vault monster count
 F = Vault count percentage of total count

                 A         B        C        D         E        F   
            +---------+---------+-------+---------+---------+-------
      Total |     145 |      34 |  19.0 |      49 |       3 |   5.8
            +---------+---------+-------+---------+---------+-------
        D:1 |      62 |       4 |   6.1 |      25 |       2 |   7.4
        D:2 |      77 |      30 |  28.0 |      20 |       1 |   4.8
        D:3 |       6 |       0 |   0.0 |       4 |       0 |   0.0
            +---------+---------+-------+---------+---------+-------


[petercordia]

I'm not sure about naga transmuter of chei myself. Strength seems less important to transmuters, and part of the benefit of naga transmutations is that you lose your slowness (unless you go bladehands I guess.)
If I go Chei I always take him asap. Bend Time is good enough to deal with early dangerous situations (if you train some invo), and once you get slouch you're almost safe.

[TheMeInTeam]

I wouldn't go Chei on NaTm. Changing form actually lets you move at normal speed w/o Chei, and Nagas have +20% HP so this is really significant for ice/dragon forms.

Chei works better with heavy armor + spells at the same time, which can certainly function on a naga. If you really want you can do that + go blade hands in heavy armor, that will hit pretty hard. Feels kind of bad giving up the 9.0 for medium and 15.0 skill for medium/large shields, but the damage will shred and maybe you can get statue form later if you're lucky.

[sanka]

Statue form is useless on a Naga: it melds your natural scales, you will end up slowed and with worse defences.

[stormdragon]

How sure are you that you want to go Chei? Chei is a pretty weak god, and Naga is a very weak species. If you're trying to win a naga transmuter, you'll have better odds with Oka, Hep, Gozag, Nemelex, or really most gods, than with Chei. If you're just trying to win a transmuter, you'll have much betters odds with Draconian, Merfolk, or really most species, than with Naga.

[TheMeInTeam]

Statue form is useless on a Naga: it melds your natural scales, you will end up slowed and with worse defences.

I was talking about it specifically with Chei in mind.

Naga gets +9 AC from scales at max level. Statue form gives between 20 and 37 AC depending on spell power. Unless you're in heavy armor, it's worth considering since it also gives +30% hp (naga will likely have > 300 while it's active). The main question is whether armor outcompetes it, but armor fits poorly on nagas so the base AC from that is less useful and we're already talking about a committed Tm in this case. As I said, I probably wouldn't go Chei with Tm but if that's a lock then statue form is worth considering if it turns up.

Also, since it makes you slower doesn't that boost slouch? If it doesn't the game should say so, since the implication is that it would.

I did do a naga of chei for the tournament but it wasn't a Tm https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Th ... 044034.txt.

[acoolguy]

Train early stealth on a naga. As a naga, you are slow so general you deal with early threatening enemies by walking away from it (stealth helps) or by burning consumables to fight or flee. Early game, I would prioritize getting sticks to snakes and spider form castable. (Spider form can really be a bit under 20% fail, you don't really need to train it too much). Prior to spider form, I would consider using a decent weapon if you find one and cast beastly appendage before every fight. Once spider form is castable, focus train some unarmed combat until you feel like you have decent damage output. Then train dodging and fighting (prioritize dodging). Once you get to lair, I'd try to get ice form castable under 20% fail. After you defenses are shored up, you should pick up blade hands. In the late game, raw unarmed combat does very good damage at high levels so it is less necessary to have forms, but both dragon form and statue form provide a substantial benefit.

As a general rule, when it comes to transmutations, spider form, blade hands, statue form and dragon form all provide a substantial boost in power. In general, these forms can be rushed, but keep in mind that these forms require some investment that don't immediately improve your character (compared to training defensive skills + unarmed).

As a NaTm, I would train for a medium/large shield as soon as you can. While some forms meld the shield, nagas have poor mobility when it comes to ranged enemies and the shield will help greatly for positioning and general defenses.

[tasonir]

I like nagas with Chei, and I'd advise taking Chei as early as you find Chei, not after lair. Especially on nagas you're already slow, and while there is a difference between being slightly slower and being very, very slow, it isn't that large of a difference. Getting the piety to be able to slouch in an emergency is very helpful, and the stats are powerful, especially on hybrids which use all 3 stats.

That said, statue form on a naga removes both your natural +9 ac scales, and also the ability to wear a naga barding. You can still do it, and your ac won't be any *worse* than a human, you just lose the benefits you could have had.

I've done basically all the major forms with nagas: blade hands, statue, necromutation. Necromutation is still a possibility if you're going extended, but for general purpose I favor blade hands + heavy armor. Sample morgue: http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.10/Ta ... 013421.txt

You can pretty easily break 60 AC if you get CPA or GDS; that morgue had only 50 ac but look at why: my crystal plate armor was only +5 (enchant armor scrolls were hard to find) and I was wearing a -6 enchanted cloak. You may think that's a horrible idea, but I'd say that if you are *still* at 50 ac after wearing a -6 cloak, you probably don't really need the ac. It had rF, rC, MR, and accuracy +4 (ok this is an old, old morgue).

But yeah the 10 second guide is go chei, blade hands. With chei once you get some piety you can dump an early ~8 levels into transmutations, and blade hands is online and your damage is insane. You then have to desperately dump exp into defenses and try to get enough armor going to not die, but you can keep unarmed slightly lower (say 10) and not have to invest in it very much until after your defenses are higher. Finding a barding/good body armor helps a ton.