Friday, 20th September 2013, 17:18 by and into
Lasty pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I'd only add that some of the aptitudes can be misleading. Their size bonus for shields basically translates into like a +3 for regular or +6 or something insane like that for large shield aptitude, despite what it says on the tin. As for "Throwing -1," that doesn't matter, unless you want to go heavily paralysis blowguns, which you can do I suppose but isn't necessary and doesn't jive with Trolls' other capabilities. This is because large rocks don't need high throwing skill. Fighting has a bit of a malus that maybe seems unthematic, but you get insanely good returns on fighting due to your really high natural HP, and the more you stack on through Fighting, the more your HP regen goes up (since it operates in part based on percentage of total HP). When you factor all that in, the poor aptitudes even in those core areas basically prevent Trolls from being even more insanely overpowered. The bad aptitudes *look* bad but in practice they are needed to offset Trolls' crazy species advantages.
Because of this thread I'm running a Troll Monk of Chei (a great deal of fun) right now who got shafted on D13 right before I was about to enter Lair. Got dropped on D16—that's a very scary shaft drop! Ended up just clearing D15 and D14, without having done Lair. Trolls are sick.
As for advice: Cyclops start becoming pretty common just a bit after the average spawn depth of Lair. If I didn't start with large rocks (Troll Hunter) or get lucky finding some before lair spawns, I would consider doing the first few floors of Lair, then dip a bit further into dungeon to see if I can cobble together large rocks. Obviously if the dungeon seems particularly dangerous (I'd probably go back to Lair if I hit a wide-open floor plan for instance), don't do this, but getting large rocks is amazing.
Hydras die, or at least flee, reliably when you hit them with three large rocks. Those fast dangerous bastards, mambas and spiny frogs, are harder to hit, but you are capable of one-shotting them or, more commonly, weakening them up enough with a single shot that even a glancing blow from your claws, after they have closed in, will send them packing.
The really dangerous, common critters in Lair, and this is true for *every character in the game* and not just Trolls, are spiny frogs, mambas, and blink frogs. If a lot of death yaks spawn on a level it does become quite dangerous, but otherwise I tend to lump Hydras, Elephants, and Death Yaks together under one tier of "potentially dangerous but highly escapable." I've lost an order of magnitude more characters to the bad frogs and snakes than I have to Hydras. Those are the guys you should be worried about most in Lair.
I'd say around 5 or 6 in throwing is worth it, I'm sure some go for a bit more, others perhaps less. Throwing 6 gives very good results with large rocks and poisoning/curare through blowgun when that's more appropriate. But I don't run *tons* of Trolls and minmay and others probably have that down to more of a science than I do.
If you have large rocks and needles, you can save wands for where you really need them: AoE attacks for when big packs of enemies (especially fast enemies) threaten to swarm you.