The Tavern

After way too many wins with HeHu, MiHu, DEWz, and DEFE (note: not actually a lot of wins - just enough that I don't remember exactly how many, I would guess like a dozen - only feels like a lot because until a month ago the game was unwinnable to me), I decided to give a stabber a try. I was at first kind of puzzled about how to play them and made a lot of splats, but then started getting the hang of things and became confident that I'm not shooting myself in the foot every turn. Now that I've sailed to the strange new world of stabber midgame this newfound confidence is starting to decay. So I decided the best course of action would be to bore you all with a bunch of stupid questions. Here's the dump:


What armour should I wear? I've got 10 EA scrolls and a troll hide, mottled dragon hide, robe of fire resist, robe of life protection, and the currently-worn robe of the archmagi. I'm also thinking about swapping to the elven cloak of preservation. I could put on a ring of +5 strength and wear FDA (I have that hide somewhere), but that would be a big hit to stealth/spell success and I'd lose a ring slot.

What rings should I be wearing? The two I have on look like the best, though regen and slaying are tempting.

What weapon should I use? I unwielded distortion dagger to try a randart short sword that turned out to be crap (in hindsight, perhaps I should have ID'd, but the abyss doesn't scare me as a max stealth spriggan with flight). Should I rewield, or use electrocution, or use chilly death, or use unbranded and learn warp weapon? And would it be better to go with a sabre or a dagger (I'm leaning dagger as non-stab attacks are kinda crappy)? I'm considering a +8 blowgun of speed in a shop as I have a few needles of sleeping and curare, but no paralysis and haven't trained throwing at all. I'm also thinking about dropping the buckler and running around with the staff of enchantment and switching to dagger when needed, is that a good idea?

Should I raise STR to avoid stat death, or keep getting INT?

Last but not least (in fact, probably greatest), what spells should I learn (I can free a few spell slots by forgetting Corona, Confuse, and maybe Cause Fear)? Unfortunately I do not have a necronomicon or a book with haste (or darkness or summon dragon), but other than that I've got just about everything. cBlink I've been putting off since I've been working through a manual of dodging (just finished), so that'll be my next goal. Afterwards, I'm thinking I should get a better summon spell to replace scorpions, but I'm not sure if it should be greater demon or hydra or horrible things. OOD, LCS, and the level 9 damagers also look like good options but I'm worried about the noise. Petrify might be good but pretty much everything dangerous is way too resistant anyway. Earth magic is supposedly really good for stabbers, there must be something about it I'm missing?

</noob panic>

Enchant your cap, your archmagi robe, maybe the fire resist robe (you probably want it for zot) and then you can decide if you want to make MDA after that. Probably I would just wear archmagi most of the time on this character. You can wear preservation if you want but honestly spens don't get hit much period so it probably doesn't matter.

You can use whichever dagger you like. If you like distortion then use that one, if you don't then don't.

If you're not driving yourself crazy with carrying capacity then 4 str is fine, otherwise get more. You don't really have a use for more int though....

If you get cblink your character can win easily (or even without it you're fine, but if you have cblink you should be pretty much guaranteed to be fine ninjaing the orb)... if you want to use summons my personal recommendation is shadow creatures, no real point imo in getting higher-level stuff than that on a spen. Try to save a speed potion or two for Zot but probably you can manage without any if you have to.

Sorry, forgot to mention I'm going for 15 runes - that probably changes some things. I've been attempting it for a couple weeks now so I almost thought it was assumed

It doesn't really change anything I said. I mean if you want to turn into a spsu instead of a spen you're free to do that but if it were me playing I wouldn't. You don't actually need to kill much of anything in extended as a spen.

Now that I looked over your spellset again the biggest thing you are missing is actually apportation. That, haste, cblink, and darkness are probably the most useful spells you have left to learn.

Hmmm...that's good to hear, looks like I haven't screwed up royally - I thought there would be something totally essentially about earth magic that I was missing but I guess not. I'll go with dagger of distortion, enchant the hat & archmagi, pick up apportation and cBlink, replace scorpions with shadow creatures, and cross my fingers for haste and darkness. I guess Vehumet was a bad choice, I'll probably go with Ash next time.

Yeah, unless you're looking for help with summoning, Vehumet isn't ideal for stabber.

Have you found Metabolic Englaciation useful? I never use it.

Things are going well - found barnacled rune, haste, and steam dragon armour (which I don't think I'll use) in Shoals (which was a joke with invisibility), and went to the unique-infested V:6 with Wiglaf, Boris, Mennas, and Mara. All sleeping by this point (been a while since I last saw them), I used invis to sneak up on Wiglaf (easy kill) and haste to sneak up on the other three. Mennas and Mara woke up so I ran away, but I managed to slit Boris's bony throat and take his robe of resistance. Invisibility was great against the V:8 welcoming party, sadly the shadow dragons ruined my stabbing spree but by then I had enough room to lure them one by one and pump 'em with iron. 50 EV with dMsl is very nice for grabbing the silver rune, and with it the ring of robustness (which replaced my INT ring now that spellcasting is maxed). Cleared hall of blades for exp. By now Mara and Mennas were back to sleep, together oddly enough, and this time I introduced them properly to the dagger. So cBlink is down to 1% failure. Oh, and I acquired a +6 +4 randart quickblade of venom with rN+, which I might use if I decide to train stabbing for it (and there's a good chance I won't, got to be careful not to get carried away killing things when I should focus on avoidance). Back to base in lair:1, looks like the next destination is going to be slime, so I'll use cloak of preservation and archmagi there, then switch to robe of resistance (right?) and regular old cloak.

Metabolic Englaciation doesn't help with sneaking and stabbing, but it's great for getaways and battling things. I might forget it for Hell/Pan/Tomb (everything's cold resistant, I think) but then again what would I do with the spell slots...