The Tavern

But I'm having a bitch of a time getting these guys going. I tried following the guide, but relying on imps just hasn't worked out for me at all. Those fucking crimson imps won't stand still and fight, and eventually I run into an orc warrior or hydra or whatever that just tears through all 20 of them faster than I can "aazb" out replacements.

This build I focused more on getting Meph Cloud up ASAP and playing more like a wizard, using imps tactically rather than just walking around in a cloud. This was sort of required though, since a Sif altar wasn't in temple, and worse, I couldn't find one until D:9

I just now got double shafted, figuratively and literally. What should I do here? Both in this specific encounter, and my character direction in general? I can probably just channel, Meph, channel, Swift, and run, then wait for teleportitis to kick in, but with all levels 10-14 unexplored, this teleportitis is going to suck hard. Oh, and when I got shafted to D:14, I was told there was a labyrinth, but I'm not even going to try to get that absurd crap. I don't have the firepower for D:10, let alone D:14. This shafting really sucks. (Still, the teleportitis is my fault. I had three remove curse scrolls around D:4 and burned them all on random junk way faster than I needed to, then carelessly wear-IDed a ring after using the last one. Haven't seen another remove curse since, tho.)

I think I'm at a fork in the road at this point: I can either beeline to try to get online one of: 1) Lightning Bolt, 2) Freezing Cloud, or 3) trident/polearms. Since my enchant scrolls are starting to stockpile, and I have conjure flame/imp blockers, I'm thinking the latter. I'm not sure what all I will need in terms of skills to get freezing cloud working, with Ice at zero, it seems quite a ways off.

At this point you will need some luck.

For this specific encounter I'd do as you said, except I wouldn't swift & run but channel instead. When you get teleported next you want mana this time. And if teleport doesn't come, you have a decent position to fight those.

Then I'd look for stairs to go back to D:10, but fighting rather than running. Be ready to use blinking/fog as well.

Lightning bolt is decent if you understand how to multi zap. The major drawback though is the noise.

Freezing cloud, you don't really need ice. With about 10 conj&air you should be able to get started with it. If you do invest in ice though it will be much faster. And it's a really awesome spell.

I wouldn't invest in tridents right now, it might be ok to do so but you definitly can't spread too much with a mummy (slow exp). However you have hungerless channeling, I'd use that instead of trying to swing a weapon.

Just so you know, I'm kind of a newb as well but I happen to play a MuWz currently and it had a rather similar build early game: summon focused, <3 mephitic, freezing clouds without ice, lightning bolt.
On that note, one of the last spells I memorized (while in a ziggurat) was summon butterfly and I wish I did earlier as it would have made some of my narrow escapes a lot easier. In your situation I'd definitly get it now.

EDIT: You'll need some invocation too, it makes channeling more efficient. Caps at int + invocation == 40.

I've heard of MuSu being easy mode, but wizards need to spread their skills out, which highlights mummies' weak aptitudes. You appear to be leaning more toward conjurations as your main killing tool. Channeling will let you fill up your MP quickly after a fight, but summoners can do that during a fight.

You've got lots of options to keep enemies at bay, so I'll echo Lulero's advice and recommend making a fighting advance for the stairs. If stuff gets scary, throw up some blockers and run away. Once you're back up where you started, decide which spell you want to use to kill things, and lean on it. Right now, you're too spread out.

Wrong post somehow, sorry....

At some point, you will come up with a way to kill those.

But one of the key lessons on the way to winning Crawl is: you don't actually have to kill everything on your way, especially not as soon as you meet it. If your storm of imps can't kill an orc warrior, they will at least delay/annoy it long enough that you can go somewhere else, and find something you can kill.

Also, 'easy mode' is probably an exaggeration for any combo, unless you have won many times already

Orc warriors are incapable of killing more than one summon per turn. Spammals will eventually kill them as long as you are not in a corridor, though it will be very tedious (this is true for any enemy which is speed 10 and has no way of killing more than one summon per turn). Scorpions will usually kill hydrae as long as you start summoning early enough, but yes they are one of the few monsters actually capable of overwhelming spammals. Scorpions will definitely kill orc warriors.

For MuWz you can use conjure flame in these situations, but I really think musu is much better if you want to kill everything with summons (because spammals is indeed that good).