Skill development with Tengu?

[Jarlyk]

I'm taking a break from getting melee-heavy characters killed and trying out killing off some casters instead. Tornado sounds like a fun spell and Tengu have great aptitude for Air, so I thought I'd give that a try. They have some great built-in escape tools with their increased speed while Flying and ability to cast Swiftness. Even still, with their low HP I've had a lot of early deaths to Priests and I don't seem to have the damage output to deal with some of the uniques I start seeing around D:8. For instance, Blork picked me off on my most recent run, as he hasted himself and blasted me with spells while I tried to flee to the stairs. The layout was one with wide-open hallways, so there were no corners to duck around.

I might've been able to pull off a Teleport in this case, though it would've been risky as most of the level was still unexplored. I tried to kill him at a distance with Sting/Shock, but I wasn't doing enough damage. I was hesitant to use Lightning Bolt, as I was still at 17% failure and I didn't really want to wake up the whole level. Do I need to start avoiding uniques once I get around this level until I can get my higher damage spells reliable (and maybe get more spells from Vehumet)? Do I have the right skill dsitribution? I tried to grab some early Stealth to help pick my fights, as well as some Dodging and a few levels of Fighting once I hit around D:6 (2 levels are relatively cheap and every HP helps against the annoying Priests, I think.) It feels like this should be easier than other casters I've tried, what with all the escape tools, but maybe I'm just not running away often/soon enough.

On a side note, I hate it when I die with an unidentified scroll of blinking.

  Code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.13.0 (tiles) character file.

2669 Jarlyk the Gusty (level 9, 0/47 HPs)
             Began as a Tengu Air Elementalist on Nov 25, 2013.
             Was a Believer of Vehumet.
             Killed from afar by Blork the orc (12 damage)
             ... with a magic dart
             
             ... on Level 8 of the Dungeon.
             The game lasted 00:53:05 (7878 turns).

Jarlyk the Gusty (Tengu Air Elementalist)           Turns: 7878, Time: 00:53:05

HP   0/47        AC 10     Str  9      XL: 9   Next: 37%
MP  14/24        EV 18     Int 19      God: Vehumet [**....]
Gold 426         SH  0     Dex 14      Spells:  6 memorised,  7 levels left

Res.Fire  : . . .   See Invis. : +   n - +2,+1 elf dagger (protect)
Res.Cold  : . . .   Warding    : .   y - +1 robe
Life Prot.: . . .   Conserve   : .   (no shield)
Res.Poison: .       Res.Corr.  : .   (helmet restricted)
Res.Elec. : .       Clarity    : .   o - +0 cloak
Sust.Abil.: . .     Spirit.Shd : .   B - +0 pair of orc gloves
Res.Mut.  : .       Stasis     : .   (boots unavailable)
Res.Rott. : .       Flight     : +   I - amulet of the gourmand
Gourmand  : +                        (no ring)
                                     u - ring of see invisible

@: flying, very quick, slightly resistant to hostile enchantments, fairly
stealthy
A: able to fly, beak, talons 3
a: Renounce Religion


You were on level 8 of the Dungeon.
You worshipped Vehumet.
Vehumet was pleased with you.
You were not hungry.

You visited 2 branches of the dungeon, and saw 9 of its levels.

You collected 406 gold pieces.

Inventory:

Hand weapons
 m - a +3,+2 anti-magic flail
 n - a +2,+1 elven dagger of protection (weapon)
 s - a -1 blowgun
Missiles
 p - 2 throwing nets
 t - 52 poisoned needles
 v - a dart
 E - 4 darts of flame (quivered)
Armour
 o - a +0 cloak (worn)
 y - a +1 robe (worn)
 B - a +0 pair of orcish gloves (worn)
Comestibles
 c - 3 bread rations
 f - 4 pears
 g - 2 meat rations
 q - 2 chokos
 z - an apple
 A - 16 sultanas
 H - a rotting chunk of giant frog flesh
Scrolls
 a - 2 scrolls of teleportation
 d - a scroll of enchant armour
 e - 4 scrolls of remove curse
 i - 2 scrolls of amnesia
 k - a scroll of recharging {unknown}
 r - a scroll of enchant weapon I
 D - 2 scrolls of fog
 G - a scroll of magic mapping {unknown}
 J - a scroll of blinking {unknown}
 K - a scroll of enchant weapon III {unknown}
Jewellery
 u - a ring of see invisible (left hand)
 I - an amulet of the gourmand (around neck)
Potions
 h - a potion of agility
 j - 3 potions of restore abilities
 w - a potion of cure mutation
 x - 2 potions of magic
 C - 2 potions of speed
 F - a potion of curing
Books
 b - a book of Air   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   *Shock                             Conjuration/Air              1
   *Swiftness                         Charms/Air                   2
   *Repel Missiles                    Charms/Air                   2
   Flight                             Charms/Air                   3
   *Static Discharge                  Conjuration/Air              3
   *Lightning Bolt                    Conjuration/Air              5


   Skills:
 - Level 2.0 Fighting
 + Level 5.9 Dodging
 - Level 4.0 Stealth
 + Level 6.9 Spellcasting
 - Level 7.0 Conjurations
 + Level 7.1 Air Magic


You had 7 spell levels left.
You knew the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Shock                 Conj/Air       ####         1%          1    None
b - Swiftness             Chrm/Air       ###.......   4%          2    None
c - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ###.......   4%          2    None
d - Static Discharge      Conj/Air       ####....     1%          3    ##.....
e - Lightning Bolt        Conj/Air       ####......   17%         5    #####..
f - Sting                 Conj/Pois      ###.         2%          1    None


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (8/27)             Temple (1/1) D:4             Orc (0/4) D:7
  Lair: D:8-13     

Altars:
Ashenzari
Cheibriados
Elyvilon
Fedhas
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Nemelex Xobeh
Vehumet

Shops:
D:4 **   D:7 (

Annotations:
D:8 Blork the orc


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You can fly.
You have a beak for a mouth.
You have claws for feet.


Message History

Blork the orc hits you but does no damage.
Blork the orc is no longer moving quickly.
Blork the orc hits you from afar with an orcish halberd!
Blork the orc mumbles some strange words.
Blork the orc seems to speed up.
Found 15 poisoned needles.
Found 18 poisoned arrows.
Blork the orc screams, "I'll cut your head off!"
Blork the orc casts a spell at you.
The puff of flame hits you!
Your scroll labeled SHREMUZX HOTRE catches fire!
Found a stone staircase leading down.
Blork the orc casts a spell at you.
The puff of frost hits you!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
Found a stone staircase leading down.
You feel better.
Blork the orc gestures at you while chanting.
The magic dart hits you!
You die...

   ###########################
  ..............<.)...........
 ..........)..................
 ...(.........................
 >............................
..............................
.>......@.....o...............
.........#####################
 ........#
 .....(..#
 ........#
  .......#
   ......#
    .....#
       ..#


You could see Blork the orc.

Vanquished Creatures
  Edmund (D:3)
  3 sky beasts (D:6)
  2 phantoms
  2 ogres
  2 centaurs
  2 giant frogs
  A troll zombie (D:7)
  4 crimson imps
  4 wights (D:7)
  A quasit (D:7)
  2 hounds (D:5)
  3 orc wizards (D:6)
  An iguana (D:5)
  3 scorpions
  7 worker ants
  A big kobold skeleton (D:7)
  A hound skeleton (D:7)
  11 adders
  An inept feature mimic (D:3)
  4 worms
  5 giant geckos
  16 orcs
  3 ball pythons
  A bat skeleton (D:6)
  A giant cockroach (D:1)
  17 hobgoblins
  11 jackals
  3 quokkas
  6 bats
  3 giant newts
  A giant spore (D:3)
  12 goblins
  24 kobolds
  A kobold skeleton (D:5)
  An orc zombie (D:5)
  16 rats
  A ballistomycete (D:3)
178 creatures vanquished.

Notes
Turn   | Place    | Note
--------------------------------------------------------------
     0 | D:1      | Jarlyk, the Tengu Air Elementalist, began the quest for the Orb.
     0 | D:1      | Reached XP level 1. HP: 10/10 MP: 3/3
   182 | D:1      | Reached XP level 2. HP: 15/15 MP: 0/5
   202 | D:1      | Learned a level 2 spell: Swiftness
   984 | D:1      | Reached XP level 3. HP: 19/19 MP: 1/7
   990 | D:1      | Learned a level 2 spell: Repel Missiles
  1472 | D:2      | Reached XP level 4. HP: 15/24 MP: 1/9
  2211 | D:3      | Reached XP level 5. HP: 28/28 MP: 1/13
  2211 | D:3      | Reached XP level 6. HP: 32/32 MP: 1/15
  2504 | D:3      | Found a sparkling altar of Nemelex Xobeh.
  2555 | D:3      | Reached skill level 5 in Air Magic
  3585 | D:4      | Noticed Edmund
  3699 | D:3      | Killed Edmund
  3699 | D:3      | Reached XP level 7. HP: 22/36 MP: 1/18
  3884 | D:4      | Found Lotz's Assorted Antiques.
  3891 | D:4      | Found Limyxoud's Assorted Antiques.
  3932 | D:4      | Found a staircase to the Ecumenical Temple.
  3939 | Temple   | Entered the Ecumenical Temple
  3954 | Temple   | Became a worshipper of Vehumet
  4074 | D:4      | Reached skill level 1 in Fighting
  4074 | D:4      | Reached skill level 5 in Spellcasting
  4420 | D:4      | Learned a level 3 spell: Static Discharge
  4426 | D:4      | Learned a level 5 spell: Lightning Bolt
  4427 | D:5      | Entered Level 5 of the Dungeon
  4750 | D:5      | Reached skill level 6 in Air Magic
  4919 | D:5      | Reached XP level 8. HP: 42/42 MP: 13/21
  5145 | D:5      | Reached skill level 5 in Conjurations
  5189 | D:5      | Found a burning altar of Makhleb.
  5189 | D:5      | Noticed a green death
  5306 | D:6      | Acquired Vehumet's first power
  5306 | D:6      | Offered knowledge of Sting by Vehumet.
  5309 | D:6      | Learned a level 1 spell: Sting
  5546 | D:6      | Reached skill level 7 in Air Magic
  6017 | D:6      | Reached XP level 9. HP: 10/47 MP: 6/23
  6605 | D:7      | Reached skill level 5 in Dodging
  6607 | D:7      | Found Brodot's Weapon Shoppe.
  7453 | D:7      | Offered knowledge of Flame Tongue by Vehumet.
  7665 | D:7      | Found a staircase to the Orcish Mines.
  7827 | D:8      | Noticed Blork the orc
  7878 | D:8      | Killed from afar by Blork the orc


Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Unarmed           |     6 |       |       ||     6
       Short sword       |    25 |       |       ||    25
       Dagger            |     4 |    30 |    12 ||    46
 Fire: Blowgun           |       |     5 |     2 ||     7
Throw: Dart              |       |     2 |       ||     2
 Cast: Shock             |    81 |   160 |   320 ||   561
       Swiftness         |       |     1 |     6 ||     7
       Repel Missiles    |       |       |     2 ||     2
       Sting             |       |       |    32 ||    32
 Abil: Fly               |       |     2 |    10 ||    12
  Use: Scroll            |       |     5 |    12 ||    17
       Potion            |       |       |     5 ||     5



[tompliss]

Shock :
Max Damage : 1d9 electricity

That was your problem...

I haven't played TeAE but, as Static discharge bat be risky, you may have to focus more on your early Conjur and Air magic skill as you need to be able to cast Lightning Bolt pretty early, in case of unique/OoD monster you can't avoid...
Otherwise, you can try the TeCj, to get a "better" book early on, even if you won't have the charms support you get as an AE ...

[dck]

Static discharge is great and should be used.
Cj book is much worse than AE.

[Tiktacy]

Static discharge is great and should be used.
Cj book is much worse than AE.

I disagree with this, very much so actually.

[Jarlyk]

I have thought about going Cj instead. The Flight spell is redundant and as Cj, you can get plenty of early damage with only training Conjurations. I do really like Shock in the very early game, though; makes it possible to take out Gnoll packs relatively early if I can lure them into a long narrow corridor.

[BlackSheep]

Static discharge is great and should be used.
Cj book is much worse than AE.

I disagree with this, very much so actually.

It's the presence of Swiftness. If you just want to hurl destruction at monsters, the Cj book is great.

[Sar]

Discharge is good in Lair and Orc.

[dck]

Static discharge is great and should be used.
Cj book is much worse than AE.

I disagree with this, very much so actually.

Why?

[Volteccer_Jack]

Fighting skill is pretty bad at low XL. This is because the amount of HP it gives you is based on (Fighting x XL)/8. That's obviously not the entire formula, but it's the important part. As your XL grows, so does the effect of Fighting skill. An XL6 tengu only gains 1 HP from 2 Fighting skill, and your XL9 tengu was only gaining 2 HP. You definitely want the HP later on when it gives bigger effects and you can spare the XP, but at low levels you much more important concerns than a couple of HP up or down. If you want your tengu to survive better, you need to get more AC and train more Dodging. Neither of those things help against orc priests, but there's nothing you really can do about smite, except playing a high-HP race, and learning better tactics so you get smited less.

Speaking of Dodging, I recommend training Dodging fairly early on with almost any character. With Tengu this is even more true thanks to the +20% EV they gain from flight.

Stealth is a bad choice. Seriously. Even moreso for TeAE, as you can easily use 0.8 movement, and later on 0.7, to "choose" your fights.

Lastly, Tengu has -1 spellcasting apt, and +3 air and conj apts. There is no way spellcasting skill should be as high as the other two during the first half of the game.

That being said, 17% is easily good enough for use in emergencies. One good double zap from Lightning Bolt has the potential to instantly end almost any threat, and TeAE is in the unique position of having it castable significantly sooner than any other race. Yes Lightning Bolt is noisy as hell, but that's okay. You have Swiftness to escape trouble. And it's also important to remember that after Lightning Bolt attracts monsters, you still have Lightning Bolt to kill them with. Lightning Bolt is very, very good at killing things.

In short, your skill distribution should be limited to Dodging/Spellcasting/Conj/Air during the early game, with Conj and Air being the highest. Naturally this is only 100% true in a vacuum, and god choice or particular item finds may of course change things somewhat.

Even still, with their low HP I've had a lot of early deaths to Priests and I don't seem to have the damage output to deal with some of the uniques I start seeing around D:8. For instance, Blork picked me off on my most recent run, as he hasted himself and blasted me with spells while I tried to flee to the stairs. The layout was one with wide-open hallways, so there were no corners to duck around.

By D8 you should have Shock at max power and Discharge/Lightning castable. Double zaps with Shock are plenty of damage output to kill anything pre-Lair. If for whatever reason that isn't a good choice, move up to the higher spells. I'm fairly sure you could've led Blork to a good spot if you had acted properly when he first entered LOS, but if you really do end up in such a position, you need to close the gap as quickly and safely as possible, and you had scroll of fog available which is perfect for exactly that situation. Once close, Static Discharge should easily be enough damage to kill Blork, but if you're not sure, you can use defensive buffs like potion of agility and Repel Missiles. Against a really dangerous foe, like say Grinder, you could've set up a Lightning double Zap like so:

  Code:

.........
...@.....
....5....
####X####

with 'X' representing the piece of wall you target with Lightning Bolt.

That was your problem...

Shock is not in any way a problem. You can and should keep it on hand throughout all of Lair. Learn to take advantage of the fact that it is a bolt. Learn how bouncing works, specifically the more common useful situations. Do not hesitate in the slightest to zap yourself; the damage your receive is basically non-existent.

Otherwise, you can try the TeCj, to get a "better" book early on, even if you won't have the charms support you get as an AE ...

Tengu's big problem is low HP, and AE has two big advantages in that department: Rmsl and Swiftness. Getting the most out of the new Conjurer book also involves training Charms and Hexes, both of which are bad aptitudes for Tengu, whereas AE uses the two skills Tengu are masters of. Both books are very good, but specifically in the case of Tengu, AE is obviously superior. If you want to play the easiest tengu, it's my opinion that the winner is without question TeWz.

[Lasty]

@OP, I think you got pretty unlucky with that last bit of damage. Blork magic dart is 3d4 (IIRC), and you had 10 AC, so that last shot did the maximum possible damage while your AC blocked none of it.

Aside from that, Shock is quite good if you double-zap it. 1d9 is a bit weak, but 2d9 is quite strong for a level 1 spell. The one thing I would change about your skills is to put some of the levels you have in Spellcasting into Conjuration/Air instead. You could probably get by with about 3-4 Spellcasting at this point in the game. Many uniques can be taken out with just double-hits of Shock, but for ones that do significant ranged damage, it's probably better to blast them with Lightning Bolt, then run away to a staircase (with Swiftness, if needed), and come back through another staircase to throw off pursuit.

With decent dodging (18-20 EV in this area of the game) you can also take out dangerous uniques with Static Discharge. It deals quite a lot of damage, and it's much quieter than Lightning Bolt.

[Sandman25]

True, it is not very useful to have more MP than you can spend in a single fight. 24 MP means 8 Static Discharge or 24 Shocks, going for Lightning Bolt would be better.

[Volteccer_Jack]

You could probably get by with about 3-4 Spellcasting at this point in the game.

In his defense, it is reasonable for a Vehumet worshipper to train a bit more Spellcasting than other characters.

[Jarlyk]

Thanks for the detailed comments, particularly on the bouncing. I knew you could bounce to get double zaps, but I didn't realize you could target the wall to get the desired bounce in cases like that. I was always setting them up by looking for T junctions and luring things into the corridor.

The description on static discharge made me wary of hurting myself if I did it without a lot of monsters around, but I probably should've just tried it out. It sounds like a very good spell to cast when I reach a corner and wind up face to face with something fast, like annoying venomous snakes.

Regarding skills, I like how Stealth lets me walk away from sleeping uniques that I don't want to fight yet, though with Tengu it's not that hard to get away, like you said. It's probably also a bit pointless later on, given that Air has some of the loudest spells in the game.

[Jarlyk]

If you want to play the easiest tengu, it's my opinion that the winner is without question TeWz.

Hmm, never actually tried a Wizard before. Read a little about them and they get some really nice spells in their starting book. Not as much direct damage, but Conjure Flame lets you barricade a hallway and I've gotten great use out of Mephitic Cloud even on fighter characters that didn't get it until partway through Lair. Certainly makes swarms of killer bees less terrifying.

[Sandman25]

Static discharge does less damage to player

damage = 1 + random2(3 + pow / 15);

than to monster

damage = 3 + random2(5 + pow / 10 + (random2(pow) / 10));

[Utis]

Besides the t-shape at the end of corridors, and the bouncing against a wall that Volteccer_Jack mentioned, there's a third pattern that is a little bit more obscure but comes up quite frequently when a melee foe is approaching you:

  Code:

  @           
  # # <- aim at wall tile
  #o#

[Hurkyl]

Fighting skill is pretty bad at low XL. This is because the amount of HP it gives you is based on (Fighting x XL)/8. That's obviously not the entire formula, but it's the important part. As your XL grows, so does the effect of Fighting skill.

But on the flip side, getting 1 more MHP is a lot more valuable when you have 10 MHP than when you have 100 MHP.

[Hurkyl]

Besides the t-shape at the end of corridors, and the bouncing against a wall that Volteccer_Jack mentioned, there's a third pattern that is a little bit more obscure but comes up quite frequently when a melee foe is approaching you:

  Code:

  @           
  # # <- aim at wall tile
  #o#

I think you can also do it from one square to the left of there too. One really nice feature of this setup is that it makes it fairly easy to double zap two monsters at once. I usually make a lot of use of this when I play AE. A related pattern that comes up less often is

  Code:

  #@ #           
  #  # <- aim at wall tile
  #o #

[Jarlyk]

Been playing around with double zap paths (fun!) and found another interesting one:

  Code:

   ###
-> #
   # o
   #@#


There was only one monster when I tried this, but I suspect this might double zap a few of the tiles in that corner area. Would it be considered cheating to modify the zap path preview UI in Tiles to somehow display the number of zaps per tile? Right now it's a plain transparent yellow overlay, but I could see maybe using orange for double-visited tiles. Kinda a niche feature, but having an intuitive way to understand what's about to happen is always handy. I might take a look at the code and see what it would take to make that change, now that I'm curious.

[Jarlyk]

Was fun to get a chance to look at the code. Took some time to figure out how to add a new tile to indicate the 'multi-zap' state (required defining a new tile flag, as well as a new tile and adding a new aff_type to target.h). From the comment in there, it sounds like somebody had thought about extending this already. I created a new AFF_MULTIPLE and mapped this to a new orange zap indicator when it passes through multiple times.

double-zap.png (20.68 KiB) Viewed 6417 times

The main problem is that the beam stuff relating to bouncing is a little hairy and the path_taken was previously excluding immediately consecutive visits to the same tile (though not repeated visits if it traveled to another tile in between.) The majority of the direct beam effects all occur directly in the beam process itself that generates the path_taken (the fire method). The tricky thing is that this resulting beam path_taken has been reused in a lot of different places, including things like apportation. I'm not sure if any of those things is impacted by this though, since the bouncing case is somewhat particular. In any case, turned out to be a bigger change than I thought, but I was surprised with how easy it was to work with the code. It's all pretty well structured, though I certainly had no idea just how complicated the actual bounce logic was.

Not sure if this is the kind of thing that would be acceptable as a patch; I think it's kinda high-risk given the many places that path_taken is used, but it was fun to create and gives me a quick way to play with double-zap geometry.

[Siegurt]

Was fun to get a chance to look at the code. Took some time to figure out how to add a new tile to indicate the 'multi-zap' state (required defining a new tile flag, as well as a new tile and adding a new aff_type to target.h). From the comment in there, it sounds like somebody had thought about extending this already. I created a new AFF_MULTIPLE and mapped this to a new orange zap indicator when it passes through multiple times.

double-zap.png

The main problem is that the beam stuff relating to bouncing is a little hairy and the path_taken was previously excluding immediately consecutive visits to the same tile (though not repeated visits if it traveled to another tile in between.) The majority of the direct beam effects all occur directly in the beam process itself that generates the path_taken (the fire method). The tricky thing is that this resulting beam path_taken has been reused in a lot of different places, including things like apportation. I'm not sure if any of those things is impacted by this though, since the bouncing case is somewhat particular. In any case, turned out to be a bigger change than I thought, but I was surprised with how easy it was to work with the code. It's all pretty well structured, though I certainly had no idea just how complicated the actual bounce logic was.

Not sure if this is the kind of thing that would be acceptable as a patch; I think it's kinda high-risk given the many places that path_taken is used, but it was fun to create and gives me a quick way to play with double-zap geometry.

Only way to see would be to make the patch and upload it to mantis, I'm sure it'll get looked at, at the very least, and you'll get feedback on what might need changed to make it acceptable

[DracheReborn]

Also note that you'll have to provide the same functionality for console players (shouldn't be too hard, just give the double zapped square a different color asterisk). I think this would be a cool addition. Usually it's not hard to figure out whether a square gets double zapped or not, but there are corner cases where some visual feedback will be helpful. Can you imagine there was a time when zaps weren't previewed at all, and you had to figure it out through trial and error or by looking at spoilers.

[Jarlyk]

Also note that you'll have to provide the same functionality for console players (shouldn't be too hard, just give the double zapped square a different color asterisk). I think this would be a cool addition. Usually it's not hard to figure out whether a square gets double zapped or not, but there are corner cases where some visual feedback will be helpful. Can you imagine there was a time when zaps weren't previewed at all, and you had to figure it out through trial and error or by looking at spoilers.

I'm pretty sure the necessary change for console would be in directn.cc under direction_chooser::draw_beam_if_needed. Now all I have to do is figure out how to build the console version on Windows (the MSVC solution/project is really handy, but it looks like it's only configured for Tiles.)

[BlackSheep]

Instead of 'make TILES=y' you can just type 'make'.

[Jarlyk]

Thanks a bunch to everybody who provided advice. I'm having a lot of fun with the TeAE now that I have a better sense of how to play it.

- Double-zaps are fun! Good positioning is extremely important; if you stand in the right squares and maneuver appropriately, you can wipe out early Gnoll/Orc packs with a few choice zaps.
- Static Discharge is awesome when you want to finish off an annoying melee monster; can't believe I never tried it before.
- Static Discharge is also really nice if you don't have SInv and there is a pesky invisible monster trying to melee you.
- I don't really miss not having the extra few points in Stealth. Having more spell power and Dodging means I can usually kill the things I meet instead of having to see them and step away while they're asleep.
- Tengu seems to work really well as an AE. The combined Swiftness/Flying lets you reposition easily and Repel Missiles helps a lot against early Centaurs.

Also, finding an altar to Vehumet on D:2 is always fun.

[Utis]

Besides the t-shape at the end of corridors, and the bouncing against a wall that Volteccer_Jack mentioned, there's a third pattern that is a little bit more obscure but comes up quite frequently when a melee foe is approaching you:

  Code:

  @           
  # # <- aim at wall tile
  #o#

I think you can also do it from one square to the left of there too. One really nice feature of this setup is that it makes it fairly easy to double zap two monsters at once.

Yeah, in which case Shock does 4d9 damage per MP/per casting. That's not too shabby for a 1st level spell.

I usually make a lot of use of this when I play AE. A related pattern that comes up less often is

  Code:

  #@ #           
  #  # <- aim at wall tile
  #o #

Oooooh, I didn't know that one, thanks! It is really useful for kiting in some levels, especially those that look like a city. Together with another one I just discovered that works with three tiles wide corridors:

  Code:

▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒·▒
·········▒
·········▒
··▒▒▒▒···▒
··▒  ▒···▒
··▒  ▒Z··▒
··▒  ▒.··▒ <— aim at this wall tile
··▒  ▒···▒
··▒▒▒▒@··▒
·········▒
▒▒▒◼▒◼▒▒·▒