Tips for developing FE and EE

[wayreth]

Hi there,
I'm currently playing a Gargoyle EE and would appreciate some tips on what higher level spells I should be aiming for (never played Earth Elementalist before).
Also, concerning FE, I usually clear the Orcish Mines and the Lair with a combination of Inner Flame + Fireball and then end up dead on account of doing something really stupid (like deciding to take on Mara with the same strategy after two previously failed attempts). What should I be looking for after bringing Fireball online?

Share your words of wisdom with me, oh great lords of Crawl.

[XuaXua]

EE: LRD and Shatter. Stone Form / Transmutation if you intend to go into Extended End Game or if you aren't focusing on Armour.

[ontoclasm]

Sticky flame is the key to FE. I have literally killed stone giants with one cast of sticky flame (and a lot of kiting).

[Sandman25]

Bolt of Fire is next target after Fireball. It deals more damage, is less noisy and great in corridors.
For EE I go Stone Arrow -> LRD -> Iron Shot route usually.

[wayreth]

Thanks everybody.
Sticky flame is great. But will these spells be enough to get me through the late game (3-runes)?
I've just discovered that EE have a lot more trouble early on than FE - sandblast and stone arrow are no match for sticky flame, inner flame + fireball, IMO.

[Sandman25]

EE can be a good hybrid since it has Stoneskin (Gr, DD are great hybrids). FE can either hybridize (LO) or go for Fire Storm (DE)

[duvessa]

FE: Flame tongue most things until you get sticky flame, using throw flame if you need longer range and conjure flame to hold monsters back or kill mindless ones outright. Once you get sticky flame kill just about everything with that. Get fireball because you will still want to kill things at range occasionally, and hope to find bolt of fire. Assuming equal aptitudes, you want more conjuration skill than fire skill, because there are only four fire spells that aren't also conjuration spells: three that suck, and one that's a charms spell (ring of flames) so it's easy to cast (since you already have charms for haste). You will want some sort of non-fire attack eventually. Bolt of magma is not good enough for this. If you want to keep killing everything with spells you can get iron shot or IOOD, but you should know that melee also works perfectly well.

EE: Sandblast is extremely good as long as you wield stones, and really bad if you don't, so be careful not to run out of them until you at least have stone arrow at a good success rate. You want a bunch more earth skill than conjurations skill early, because getting LRD is extremely important. Once you do have LRD you can damn near finish the whole game using it, but you still want to look for iron shot, and again, consider getting melee. XuaXua's advice is pretty bad, you probably don't want shatter unless you're getting 15 runes or have like a +3 earth aptitude (this is true of all level 9 spells) and you probably don't want statue form either (it is only good for melee and rarely worth the investment).

[wayreth]

FE: Flame tongue most things until you get sticky flame, using throw flame if you need longer range and conjure flame to hold monsters back or kill mindless ones outright. Once you get sticky flame kill just about everything with that. Get fireball because you will still want to kill things at range occasionally, and hope to find bolt of fire. Assuming equal aptitudes, you want more conjuration skill than fire skill, because there are only four fire spells that aren't also conjuration spells: three that suck, and one that's a charms spell (ring of flames) so it's easy to cast (since you already have charms for haste). You will want some sort of non-fire attack eventually. Bolt of magma is not good enough for this. If you want to keep killing everything with spells you can get iron shot or IOOD, but you should know that melee also works perfectly well.

EE: Sandblast is extremely good as long as you wield stones, and really bad if you don't, so be careful not to run out of them until you at least have stone arrow at a good success rate. You want a bunch more earth skill than conjurations skill early, because getting LRD is extremely important. Once you do have LRD you can damn near finish the whole game using it, but you still want to look for iron shot, and again, consider getting melee. XuaXua's advice is pretty bad, you probably don't want shatter unless you're getting 15 runes or have like a +3 earth aptitude (this is true of all level 9 spells) and you probably don't want statue form either (it is only good for melee and rarely worth the investment).

Thanks, Duvessa. I appreciate the level of detail in your post.
On the topic of melee, while playing FE/EE I usually stick with staves that enhance my magic skills and end up putting lots of points into Staves and Dodging. Is 15 or 20 enough for end game? I mostly play gargoyles these days.

[duvessa]

On the topic of melee, while playing FE/EE I usually stick with staves that enhance my magic skills and end up putting lots of points into Staves and Dodging. Is 15 or 20 enough for end game? I mostly play gargoyles these days.

There's actually an easy way to find exactly how much you should train your weapon skill depending on your current weapon. Once you reach minimum delay the returns from training weapon skill are pretty small (it increases your base damage multiplier a bit and gives a small accuracy boost).
In the case of magic staves, their base attack delay is 120%, so their minimum delay is 6 aut (12 / 2), which you need 12 Staves skill to reach ((12 - 6) * 2). Magic staves have terrible base damage (most of their damage comes from this), so you almost never want to train staves skill any higher than that unless you're switching to a bigger staff.
And of course, none of that matters if you aren't hitting things in melee in the first place. Staves skill doesn't help your magic in any way.

[and into]

Thanks, Duvessa. I appreciate the level of detail in your post.
On the topic of melee, while playing FE/EE I usually stick with staves that enhance my magic skills and end up putting lots of points into Staves and Dodging. Is 15 or 20 enough for end game? I mostly play gargoyles these days.

Enhancer staves that also do elemental damage (fire, cold, earth, air, and death) are definitely effective melee weapons. You don't want more than 12 skill in staves in this case, though, because the damage output from those weapons is determined almost entirely by the relevant elemental school and evocations skill. (Evocations boosts damage a bit but gives larger increases chance for the elemental damage to proc on hit; elemental school gives larger boost to damage and smaller chance for elemental damage. In general around 8 to 10 in evocations, plus the appropriate elemental school in at least the mid-teens, will give you a very effective weapon all the way up to and including Zot. Higher elemental and, to a lesser extent, evocation skill will give greater damage though, of course.)

20 dodging is a large amount but it is hard to say, in the abstract, whether that is too much or about right. That's around how much dodging I might get on a high elf, for instance, in a 3- or 4-runer (give or take). But HE have really good dexterity so they get great returns on dodging that often make it worthwhile to raise a bit more even at high skill level. So the answer depends a lot on your dexterity, AC, and what defensive / escape spells you have.

For Gargoyles, you get a lot of AC naturally as you level up. That plus a well-enchanted mottled dragon armor will give a ton of AC with really just a nominal (tiny) casting penalty. And you might find (depending on what you are wearing) that the armor skill is a better investment, so long as you aren't in robes.

You'll want to get some dodging eventually, but on a gargoyle EE, something like Armor 16, Dodging 14, in fully enchanted MDA, plus your usual buckler with 5 shield skill, would be reasonable goal for end game. That would likely give you over 40 AC (gargoyles are ridiculous) and probably EV in the upper teens. I'd probably prefer that set up, along with a few escape or buff spells (rMiss, Phase Shift, Ozo's if you aren't casting fire spells, etc.), to a gargoyle who has a bit more EV but few defensive buff and/or utility spells.

[hannobal]

GrEE can have hungerless Shatter with 5% failure rate at XL22, you need just staff of energy and ring of wizardry.

  Code:

hannobal the Metallomancer (Gargoyle Conjurer)     Turns: 87617, Time: 18:54:06

HP 124/124       AC 38     Str 17      XL: 22   Next: 92%
MP  50/50        EV 11     Int 27      God: Sif Muna [******]
Gold 1372        SH 14     Dex 16      Spells: 12 memorised, 12 levels left

Res.Fire  : + + +   See Invis. : .   a - staff of energy
Res.Cold  : . . .   Warding    : .   U - +5 ring mail "Hein" {rF++ Stlth+}
Life Prot.: + . .   Conserve   : +   s - +3 buckler {reflect}
Res.Poison: +       Res.Corr.  : +   W - +0 spiked helmet
Res.Elec. : +       Clarity    : +   x - +2 cloak {rCorr, Cons}
Sust.Abil.: . .     Spirit.Shd : .   v - +5 pair of gloves "Huomaf" {Str+4 Dex+4 Int+2}
Res.Mut.  : .       Stasis     : .   e - -2 pair of boots of Context {+Blink MR++}
Res.Rott. : +       Flight     : +   N - amulet of clarity
Saprovore : . . .                    n - ring of magical power
                                     h - ring of wizardry

   Skills:
 - Level 10.0 Fighting
   Level 4.3 Axes
 - Level 4.2 Maces & Flails
 - Level 4.5 Staves
 - Level 6.7 Armour
 - Level 4.0 Dodging
 - Level 11.0 Stealth
 - Level 5.3 Shields
 - Level 16.6 Spellcasting
 - Level 16.6 Conjurations
   Level 2.1 Hexes
 - Level 11.3 Charms
 - Level 1.3 Summonings
 - Level 1.3 Necromancy
 - Level 2.5 Translocations
   Level 11.1 Fire Magic
 + Level 23.9 Earth Magic
 - Level 4.1 Invocations
 - Level 6.6 Evocations


You have 12 spell levels left.
You know the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
b - Iskenderun's Battles  Conj/Chrm      #######.     1%          4    None
c - Apportation           Tloc           #####.....   1%          1    None
e - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          1%          2    None
g - Regeneration          Chrm/Necr      ######....   1%          3    None
h - Haste                 Chrm           ######..     1%          6    None
i - Iskenderun's Mystic   Conj           #######.     1%          4    None
j - Shroud of Golubria    Chrm/Tloc      ######....   1%          2    None
k - Iron Shot             Conj/Erth      #######...   1%          6    None
m - Swiftness             Chrm/Air       ######....   1%          2    None
n - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ######....   1%          2    None
o - Summon Butterflies    Summ           ####....     1%          1    None
s - Shatter               Erth           ########..   5%          9    None


http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.13/hannobal/hannobal.txt
I started training Earth Magic at XL18/D22 when i bought a book with Iron Shot, before that i went with pure conjurations/fire as no good earth spells were available.
Shatter was really great against big masses at bottom of Snake, especially as area of effect is your whole line of sight and it never misses.
Plan is to max Earth Magic, and then raise armour to around 15-20 (as it seems to provide about equal increase to success as spellcasting, but will be cheaper). Spellcasting would increase power too of course. Will probably stick with staff of energy to be able to spam Shatter without starving. LCS has not been gifted.
If i had not found staff of energy, i would have increased more spellcasting to get hungerless Iron Shot, and afer that more earth/conjurations for spell power.
The original plan was to actually use fire magic, but shatter is easier to get online than fire strom, as it's just single school.

edit: With lighter armour/robe the success rate would be even better, but rF++ seems like good reason to wear the ring mail.

I'd say it's worth it to try to get Shatter <10% even on 3 rune game, while killing everything with Iron Shot is viable too.

I'm sure skills could have been more focused, but that's some kind of direction you can look at for mid-level EE, if you want Shatter.
It's also doable earlier with more focused spells (for example, less xp for conjurations and no fire magic).

[duvessa]

Well yeah you can get Shatter in 3 rune games it's just usually not a great idea. You'll note that despite a +2 earth apt your character also has no melee, no EV, no control teleport, no necromancy, and no invo/evo (not a big concern with Sif, but crystal ball of energy is pretty popular otherwise). Though to be fair, you did get stealth to 11...while bragging about casting the noisiest spell in the game.

edit: and I repeat, it is often reasonable if you are a species with aptitudes like Gr/DD/DE

[hannobal]

Sorry was not trying to brag, but just illustrate what kind of trade-offs you have to do for Shatter.
I'm very aware the character is far from perfect (especially as it was not planned for Shatter from the beginning), and will probably end as YASD like my previous attempts...
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9494

I suppose with just Iron Shot 3-rune end game skill distribution would be 20 conjurations/20 earth magic (depending on aptitudes) and with Shatter&Iron Shot 10-15 conjurations and 27 earth magic.

But there is actually point for the stealth: Despite Shatter is learned, it does not have to be used all the time, plan B being moving around more carefully and using Iron Shot to kill.
It works very nicely around stairs: You make huge noise, it attracts bad guys, the masses die fast and reliably and and you can retreat upstairs to replenish MP.
When they stop coming, rest of the level can be explored more safely.

Without staff of energy i would have continued with Bolt of Fire and Iron Shot.

[and into]

Well yeah, staff of energy and ring of wizardry, plus having a great aptitude for earth, could push someone in the direction of getting shatter late game (assuming you find it, obviously). But it should not really be thought of as the standard end-game goal for an EE, especially as it is generally going to do less damage to flying enemies than iron shot. (Which can make it less reliable against some foes, including a few very dangerous ones in Zot.)

Yeah if you already have solid lvl 6/7 damage spells plus good fighting, a decent melee option, good EV/AC, and good escape options and utility spells online, then working toward shatter is a fine choice. But until you have all those other things down, shatter is probably not your best investment.

[rebthor]

I generally agree with duvessa but in this case, I'm not sure that I do. If you have a strong wizardry boost, getting shatter online can absolutely trivialize things like branch ends. Here's a character that I had with a +1 apt for earth that I spent a lot of XP on to get staves to 27 for the title but wasn't weak in any way in Zot and had nearly full powered LCS too. So yeah, I guess I could have trained more fighting or dodging or stealth instead of getting shatter online but really I could have done all those things and still had shatter online if I left my staves at 12 instead of pumping it for giggles.