Which lessons to learn next after MiBe?

[MainiacJoe]

I dabbled in Crawl a couple years ago, and then came back to it this summer. I played some SpEn with middling success, and then rediscovered the Tavern. I read Patashu's guide in the "Any tips on these class combinations" thread and was struck by this section:

I also think that your first win should be Minotaur or Gargoyle Berserker, because they and their god's abilities are tuned for melee fighting and it forces you to make use of all melee tactics and positioning techniques, while at the same time not having to worry very hard about skilling or building your character ... You can of course do your first win with anything, but then you are learning two things at once, both how to play Crawl and how this specific start needs to be built and played to survive well.

I realized that since SpEn was a stabber constantly approaching enemies, I was *not* training the "melee tactics and positioning techniques" I needed to learn. So I took Patashu's advice, and now eight games later I have a MiBe win. Yay me!

So full of confidence I thought to myself, let's try a caster next! Several DrWz's later it has been very bad. The relative impotence of Magic Dart is a big change from MiBe, and I didn't ever run out of melee swings before, either! The only character I've gotten past XL 4 found rings of wizardry and poison resistance and a randart hammer all in the first few DLs and even with all that RNG help I still died quickly.

This tells me that there are a few more lessons I need to learn next, after the ones that an MiBe can teach you, before I'm ready to do casters. So instead of the typical, "what build should I do next?" I'd like to ask first, "What lessons should I learn next?" and only second, "which builds will help me learn those?"

[Sandman25]

DrCj of Vehumet.

Lessons to learn: retreat 8-10 tiles before fighting any monster, run upstairs if you are down to 50% MP and the monster is not almost dead, retreat closer to (or right on) upstairs after killing the monster and rest there.

[MainiacJoe]

DrCj of Vehumet.

Why, exactly? What skills will this build teach me that I should aim to learn from the expereince?

[Sar]

I don't think I can give you a general advice on casters (well, apart from "being a caster doesn't mean you can't beat your enemies up in melee", but your randart hammer story is telling me that you have already figured that out). I can tell you that Wizard is far from my favourite book backgrounds - Magic Dart is indeed underwhelming and you won't see a better direct damage spell for a long, long time. So, I would advise you to try Elementalists, Necromancers and Conjurers.

[Sandman25]

For beginners Conjurer is easier than any other caster IMHO because you need to train only one magic school early and there are great spells like Searing Ray and Battlesphere.

[Lasty]

There are few lessons to learn about being a conjurations-heavy character, but the most important one is managing how many monsters are aware of you at the same time. As a conjurations-heavy character, you have the ability to unload a ton of damage to monsters before they approach you, but you can only unload so much harm before they get next to you. So, some things you can do to improve that situation are:

1) Practice drawing the attention of only one monster at a time.
2) Practice learning when it's time to GTFO -- that can mean spotting a ranged threat, accidentally attracting the attention of two monsters at once, walking around the corner into a monster, or getting low of magic reserves without being quite certain that the foes who are aware of you will die to your remaining magic.
3) Once you've gotten good enough that you can get your main offensive magic to level 10 or so, learn how and when to learn defensive skills, and when to branch into melee/weapon skills. I always aim to make my conjurations-focused characters fairly powerful in melee as well, because it gives me a lot more versatility and resilience, and in my experience those are way better (and more fun) than raw power. The goal, for me, is to have a character with solid defenses, strong attacks to handle groups and monsters at a range, decent options when out of mana, and a variety of spells that will help me ensure that every situation can be turned to my favor.

In order to practice these ideas, I would recommend either draconians or humans, and probably an ice elementalist. Draconians and humans are each durable and have quite flexible aptitudes and stats. Draconians get a breath weapon that may help a bit when you need more options and built-in armor that levels up with you, whereas humans get to wear actual body armor and a helmet and get to train the armour skill, giving the potential for more AC and resists; humans also gain experience levels quickly.

Ice elementalists start with one of the most powerful beginning attack spells, Freeze, which always hits and ignores the defender's AC, making it similar to a strong and accurate melee attack. From there they get two long-ranged conjurations, Throw Frost and Throw Icicle, which can be used to soften up targets before they close in. The latter does reasonable (but not good) damage even to cold-resistant enemies. Ice elementalists also a big defensive boost from Ozo's Armour and a summoning spell, Summon Ice Beasts, for versatility. Your summons can be used to enhance your offense, to kill cold-resistant enemies, and to block enemy line-of-sight and cover your retreats. Overall, the package of spells offered to Ice Elementalists is both versatile and powerful, without railroading you into a single play style.

[XuaXua]

For beginners Conjurer ... great spells like Searing Ray and Battlesphere.

When you have it cleanly castable, IMHO you should always have Battlesphere cast.

[Sar]

It's probably theoretically optimal, but it also it totally unnecessary and really annoying, so I would not recommend that.

[Sandman25]

For beginners Conjurer ... great spells like Searing Ray and Battlesphere.

When you have it cleanly castable, IMHO you should always have Battlesphere cast.

Sometimes hunger is an issue.

[Magipi]

I would recommend either draconians or humans, and probably an ice elementalist.

Well, ice elementalist is certainly powerful, but it is very much a "melee dude with some buff spells" type. I guess MainiacJoe had something more of a blaster mage in mind.

[McGeekster]

In all honesty, I personally believe DEFe to be the easiest casters to play. Conjure Flame is an incredibly useful spell, and can be combined with spells such as Inner Flame for taking on multiple enemies at once, or for retreating from difficult battles. And Deep Elves high spellcasting aptitudes make them very versatile should you find useful spell books later on. Overall, they are more effective than DrCj in every aspect except for fighting crimson imps early on. And if you make it very far, worship Vehumet, as his ability to restore magic with kills makes offensive casters much more capable of fighting large groups of enemies, especially with spells like Fireball, Inner Flame, etc. Hope this helps.

[Lasty]

Keep in mind that the question at hand isn't "what spell-casting character do you like playing because you think it kicks ass," but rather, "what spell-casting character will teach me lessons about Crawl so that I can become successful."

[ackack]

Keep in mind that the question at hand isn't "what spell-casting character do you like playing because you think it kicks ass," but rather, "what spell-casting character will teach me lessons about Crawl so that I can become successful."

DEFE would be fine for that too. In fact, it would probably be better than something like DrCj because a lot of what makes DrCj good is that with the HP and native body armour it's somewhat more forgiving. Once you've figured out how it works, DEFE becomes an easy/strong background, but it will punish you until you get it.

[Sar]

What, IE is not a proper caster now? What? Killing everything in Lair by casting Ice Beasts and walking away is not magical enough?

[McGeekster]

What, IE is not a proper caster now? What? Killing everything in Lair by casting Ice Beasts and walking away is not magical enough?

I only recently got into IE, and I've found that they are MUCH more melee based than a lot of other casting classes. They are more defensively played, and they have no spells that target multiple enemies early on like Cj and FE. If we want a class just to get past XL 4, IE probably isn't the best for a beginning caster.

[Greyr]

SpVM is a lot of fun. That was one of my first ascents actually... Their movement speed makes a lot of things less scary (so really Sp make great everything). Just remember that one crystal spear will one shot your level twenty something.

[Sar]

Ice Beasts can bite several targets at once and Freeze is the best level 1 spell. IE is a likely candidate for the best book background, actually.

And while I train melee skills on every single character I play, I usually don't really think on my IE weapon choice until I finish with Lair - or maybe even Orc. Unless I find something I really wanna use, I just use my starting spells and some skill 0 melee weapon as a backup.

[MainiacJoe]

Keep in mind that the question at hand isn't "what spell-casting character do you like playing because you think it kicks ass," but rather, "what spell-casting character will teach me lessons about Crawl so that I can become successful."

I'd like to second this! And to go further, I'm not necessarily committed to a spell-casting character--that was just a guess of what to try next and what "sounded cool." If you think, for instance, that an EV-style melee character with different god than Trog would be a better second build for an incremental education in playing Crawl, then say so.

[MainiacJoe]

There are few lessons to learn about being a conjurations-heavy character, but the most important one is managing how many monsters are aware of you at the same time.

Yes, that is a succinct way of describing nearly all my caster deaths thus far. Well, except for the kobold with the short sword of electrocution right outside the entry vault, that was just unfair!

[Sandman25]

IE is not easy for beginners as you have Ice Magic, Conjurations and Summoning to train, at some point you should make an important decision about Throw Icicle vs Summon Ice Beast, also you will need decent defenses relatively early because Freezing affects adjacent tile only and monsters will stop dying after 1-2 casts.

[McGeekster]

There are few lessons to learn about being a conjurations-heavy character, but the most important one is managing how many monsters are aware of you at the same time.

Yes, that is a succinct way of describing nearly all my caster deaths thus far. Well, except for the kobold with the short sword of electrocution right outside the entry vault, that was just unfair!

As I said earlier, FE solves all your problems... Conjure Flame is one of the most versatile spells in the game, perfect for both engaging and escaping combat. And of course another thing you should take into account is that if you are playing a Cj or FE, stick close to hallways so you only face one enemy at a time, and can make full use of spells like Searing Ray and Conjure Flame.

[fisheye]

Another vote for DEFE^Veh. I found it easier to learn than DrCj due to the huge MP pools and the massive skill aptitudes. FE skills training is also much more straightforward than with a Cj.

[all before]

I don't think the skilling on IE is as difficult as sm25 makes it out to be. You just 1) decide which spell you need most next, then 2) train the applicable skills until it's castable. That way you get what you need as quickly as possible. It's true you have to choose between icicle and ice beast, but honestly it doesn't matter that much because both are quite good.

As a side note, it's not true, at least for me, that Cj only involves training one spell skill early on, because dazzling spray is so powerful.

[Psiweapon]

dazzling spray

I don't really know how it is starting out as a conjurer (I've tried it but much fewer times) but as an enchanter, judicious spam of this spell will make stab-able nearly anything - there are things you can't hibernate or confuse (or it's damn near impossible) but which can be blinded.

[partial]

GrFi

it's like a GrBe but you get to pick your god

[Quazifuji]

1) Practice drawing the attention of only one monster at a time.
2) Practice learning when it's time to GTFO -- that can mean spotting a ranged threat, accidentally attracting the attention of two monsters at once, walking around the corner into a monster, or getting low of magic reserves without being quite certain that the foes who are aware of you will die to your remaining magic.
3) Once you've gotten good enough that you can get your main offensive magic to level 10 or so, learn how and when to learn defensive skills, and when to branch into melee/weapon skills. I always aim to make my conjurations-focused characters fairly powerful in melee as well, because it gives me a lot more versatility and resilience, and in my experience those are way better (and more fun) than raw power. The goal, for me, is to have a character with solid defenses, strong attacks to handle groups and monsters at a range, decent options when out of mana, and a variety of spells that will help me ensure that every situation can be turned to my favor.

I agree with these as the next lessons to learn, and ones that playing a caster will teach you.

MiBe teaches good positioning tactics, but a MiBe can generally kill just about anything they want with the right application of Trog abilities. A lot of situations where other characters should run away, teleport, or avoid even fighting in the first place if the enemy hasn't seen them yet, a MiBe can just charge in and use Brothers in Arms and/or Berserk and be just fine.

Playing a book start, especially a squishier one, teaches you threat assessment. You learn when to run, and when to pick a fight. You learn when to spend your mana on defensive spells while fleeing, and when you can kill an enemy with the last of your mana and maybe some melee. You also learn about the borderline cases, where you can win a fight if you can draw one enemy out, but not if they all come, and how to handle those.

Sill management works well too hear. MiBe doesn't teach you a ton about skill management because you don't need many skills. Casters need to spread out their skill training a lot more, so they'll teach you a lot about how to choose what skills to prioritize.

[tedric]

I found MfIE to be a great combo to learn about casting. The IE starting book does lend itself to melee support, and Mf have a great Ice apt and decent robustness. The polearms apt is great too, because it's pretty cheap to get a trident to mindelay and then you have all of your Trog-begotten melee tactics to fall back on when casting isn't working out. As far as skilling, TBH I rarely bothered to learn Summon Ice Beasts so I didn't have to juggle Summoning into the mix. I've since learned it's a great spell, but it's by no means necessary for this combo (and I have a stunning lack of patience when it comes to summons anyway). Just spam Icicles as enemies approach, cast Ozo's when they're just out of poking distance, then mop them up in melee.

GrEE is another combo I'd recommend, partly because you get good natural defenses and mostly because LRD is awesome.

[ackack]

IE is not easy for beginners as you have Ice Magic, Conjurations and Summoning to train . . .

This is actually a good way to learn that you shouldn't neglect Spellcasting early on. The amount of training you have to put into Summoning to get productive use from ice beasts is quite small.

I do agree with the people who say that IE isn't really the most representative of the conjurations intensive style (FE, Cj, VM are all better / more typical from that point of view.)

[Sandman25]

Probably the easiest way to learn how to train skills for a caster is to use AUTOMATIC skilling (all skills are enabled and there are no focused spells) as I remember my VM was quite good all the way to Temple and Lair and I could focus on tactics.
The less options we have the better for new players. I can imagine such a player being easily confused by what should be trained next: Ice? Summoning? Conjurations? Spellcasting? Dodging?, that's why I don't like IE here despite I agree that it is the best book background (tied with Cj IMHO).

Edit. As far as I remember, automatic skills led to pretty high magic schools and spellcasting before Lair.

[Sphara]

You're asking here what is the easiest way to go (before finding an altar).

Conjurer has a Searing Ray. That is an earlygame spell that kills just about everything. Getting battlesphere even at 25% rate is enough if you can do the stairdance.

Summoner has Summon Imp and later Summon Ice Beast. If you get even moderately low spell failure rate, ice beasts will wipe out every opponent before the Lair (and in the Lair too if youre careful).

When fire mage gets Sticky Flame online, it takes bad luck like orc priest with wand of lightning to take you down.

Air mage should be more careful moving very far from the escape stairs. Near stairs, static discharge and swiftness should make things easier.

Ice mage: freeze and throw frost. Ultimately Throw Icicle.

Venom mage: Poison everything and retreat. *

* player ghosts provide a significant challenge to early elemental mages. Check their spellset and don't fight them if they are resistant to your main damaging attacks

[ZipZipskins]

I think IE is a great background for learning how to diversify. It's typically relatively sturdy with Ozo's, it teaches valuable lessons on skilling priority (what do I need right NOW), it has lots of different tools in its kit, and it really reinforces the concept of keeping your options open and considering what the best option is for a threat or a given situation.

This flexibility is what Crawl is really all about, at least at the highest levels of skill. (Not that I even pretend to approach them.)

Dr gets recommended a lot for IE, and in general, and I think it's a good fit for learning purposes too. Dr gets tough naturally, gives you a nice additional tool in a breath weapon, and most importantly throws you a curveball in your colour that has the potential to mix up your gameplay (just like lots of things in the game do!)

[MainiacJoe]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I've gotten two DrCj^Veh to Lair thus far and am certainly feeling more comfortable with the build the second time around there. (I chose DrCj after Sandman's initial comments and before the thread blew up BTW.) My first lair splat is directly due to MiBe "mis-training," I had NO IDEA black mambas were so tough!

Two comments about specific spells that have been mentioned here. I absolutely love Searing Ray, it is pretty much perfect for the situation where you've lured a monster away from its pack and now it's coming towards you. Mind the polearms, but pretty much you've got the best damage/MP in the early game in this situation right here. It is also good when you have a bunch of weenies like green rats coming at you; aim at the maximum range, so that as intermediate rays kill closer ones your shots continue on to farther ones, and then the last ray is a bolt.

As for Conjure Flame, Vehumet offered this to me and I took it because I know it has a good reputation, but I couldn't figure it out. I forgot it to make room for Battlesphere, since I *know* what to do with that and therefore it was a better use of spell levels.

[Sandman25]

Conjure Flame can be useful in corridors for:
1) Killing a monster with spells/polearms/ranged weapons while it does not want to step into the flame and is just waiting for the flame to end
2) Blocking monsters when you need to retreat. It is somewhat tricky to differentiate it from previous situation sometimes but basically you never want to get to 0 MP: if you are running too low, conjure flame and retreat.
3) Killing monsters who step into the flame (zombies, hydra, Orc Knights, Yaks etc). In this case you want to put a row of flames usually. Sometimes it leads to funny situation when a monster steps into the flame, you put another flame between you and it, the monster steps into this new flame, you put another flame, it steps again etc. Even if the monster does not want to step into second/third flame, it does it because it is already in flame so only the initial step is determined by high monster's HP.
4) If you are at full HP, you can even stay near a monster from situation 3 and watch it dying. Of course the monster should not be able to kill you in 1-2 shots so it works with zombies the best. This is why Dr can be better than DE: higher AC and HP.
5) Also Conjure Flame works good for Wz because Wz has Call Imp and Crimpson Imp is immune to fire damage

[1010011010]

As for Consume Flame, Vehumet offered this to me and I took it because I know it has a good reputation, but I couldn't figure it out.

Conjure flame places a flame cloud on one non-occupied square, which really has two functions. The first works at lower levels and works as a block, placing it in a corridor will stop most things following you (useful against high speed monsters), or getting next to you as you searing ray them; making early melee centric monsters a cakewalk. The second is a cheap source of high damage; harder (and mindless) monsters may walk through the flames which can be fatal if they cannot move out. You can block their path with summons (butterflies are good) or, if you have sufficient defences, yourself. There is more you can do but this is the basic. One of my favourite level 3 spells, it's quiet too.

[MainiacJoe]

Well RIP the latest DrCj^Veh. An acid blob by the Slime entrance absolutely clobbered me.

[Sandman25]

Well RIP the latest DrCj^Veh. An acid blob by the Slime entrance absolutely clobbered me.

Don't feel too bad, it is extremely dangerous monster. Just make sure there are no blink scrolls in your inventory and you are waiting for teleport hasted and quaffing heal wounds when dying.

[MainiacJoe]

Well RIP the latest DrCj^Veh. An acid blob by the Slime entrance absolutely clobbered me.

Don't feel too bad, it is extremely dangerous monster. Just make sure there are no blink scrolls in your inventory and you are waiting for teleport hasted and quaffing heal wounds when dying.

No ?tele or Blink, hasted running for the stairs, and hit from afar. I would have made it if I'd known to run immediately, but instead cast Battlesphere and tried fighting it, and then it was too late. A learning experience, and another "lesson to learn after MiBe"!

Incidentally, I'm running a DEFE now to try another of the builds suggested here, and I have figured out how to use Conjure Flame to block corridors and make a fort to Flame Tongue from behind. I would expect that gnolls and other intelligent creatures would run away from an obviously deadly situation like that, but I'm not complaining that they don't! I'm using this spell a lot so thanks for the tips.

[tasonir]

So I notice that everyone took the opposite of a melee character to be a caster, but why not try a completely different type of melee character? Because spells are, you know, dumb. But not buff spells, which are, of course, awesome.

Transmuter of Chei, go. You'll be learning mostly about the time system of crawl, and why Chei is so terribly awesome. Also, once in form (you may use either blade hands or statue form) you'll be learning that hitting things for !!!!! is a lot of damage. It will also teach you the vast differences in starting difficulty, as Be is arguably the easiest to lair and beat lair background, and anything of chei struggles the most to find/beat lair.

Races to consider: Minotaur if you feel like a direct race comparison, but if you want something new:

Merfolk
Naga
Gargoyle
Troll
Centaur

Octopode
Felid

There are plenty of other great options but those just come off the top of my head. The last two are hell until you get statue form online but really fun after that.

[duvessa]

oh god

[Galefury]

I think Chei is actually pretty good at teaching you some things. You only see how super important some stuff, for example moving around, is when it gets taken away from you. Also using Chei is a nice way to see all the effects of stats, because you get to play with super high stats. Okay, maybe not Tm of Chei because that's more terrible than usual, but Cj or elementalist of Chei, why not? Probably a lesson better left for a little later, but certainly an interesting one.

I would like to add my voice to the ones suggesting to play an ice elementalist. It's a really fun background. Your tactics will be a little different from Cj and FE because your starting spell is melee range (one step closer to MiBe) and you later get a great summon. Learning how to use summons is a pretty important part of playing casters. On the other hand your ranged damage spells are a little worse than what Cj gets, and you don't have conjure flame and sticky flame like FE does. By the way, if you want to stick with FE maybe try something other than a deep elf. If you're not so squishy it's much easier to use sticky flame, and that spell is just as integral to FE as conjure flame.

[Sar]

OpTm^Chei

why

[Sandman25]

I have not tried an elementalist/Cj of Chei but in theory it is really bad. Blaster mages must retreat at some point, they cannot continue killing monsters with 0 MP and Chei makes it extremely hard to retreat. Probably only IE can be good since it has spells for early hybridization.

[Sar]

It's actually pretty OK if you don't pick a bad race since you get to cast really good spells early and also a defensive boost due to Cheidex (stealth and EV).

You better pick up something to hit weaker things with, though.

[1010011010]

I have not tried an elementalist/Cj of Chei but in theory it is really bad.

On the contrary, conjurations provide decent ranged damage, good for Chei worshipers.

Blaster mages must retreat at some point, they cannot continue killing monsters with 0 MP

My easiest Chei experience was with a DEFE,Chei stat buffs make dodging/heavy amour and weapons stronger. When I'm left at 0mp, I just hit the enemy.

and Chei makes it extremely hard to retreat. Probably only IE can be good since it has spells for early hybridization.

FE also gets conjure flame to stop early threats chasing you (a spell you can get before Chei).

It's arguable that I found the game easier because I was DE, but it (elemetal start) is a definite preference over typical melee start eg. MiFi (not to say I pick gods before I start a game, I'm more weary about picking chei on something without ranged damage, or blink). I don't often play Chei any more and not that experienced with it, but I found FE easier than non-ranged starts.

[Sandman25]

I don't often play Chei any more and not that experienced with it, but I found FE easier than non-ranged starts.

That's not surprising. I don't understand players who pick Chei with spell-less melee only characters. Self-imposed challenge I guess.

[crate]

Um elementalist/conjurer type character is probably the best direction you can go with chei (AM is still good but less so now that stats don't matter as much for ranged combat, so it might not be the best chei background any more).

Fire elementalist in particular is kind of bad since fireball is not a good chei spell and sticky flame doesn't care much about spellpower so you don't even get a boost there, but the others have spells that are good enough and not super loud (or in the case of AE, lightning bolt is super loud but high-power lightning bolt is a huge bargain, and you can make up for the loudness in a few ways, though AE of chei is still not great). IE of chei is most excellent.

The single biggest benefit chei gives you is the +15 int, since this does a lot more for your spellpower than the str/dex does for your melee damage or defenses. Taking advantage of it would seem, then, to be the best route to go.

(also I hope everyone was done talking about non-chei things in this topic since someone mentioned chei so now everything in this topic is about chei)

Really all my experience with chei says that his effect on melee is noticeable but still pretty bland (except for specifically in blade hands/dragon form forms, but tm has other reasons to pretty strongly not want chei), whereas his effect on spellpower is enormous.

[Sandman25]

Oops, sorry for confusion. I forgot my first Zig clearer was NaIE of Chei. It is not that bad indeed

[tasonir]

There's also little talk about ranged weapons. They can be tedious, certainly, but I think CeHu's with bows are pretty non-controversially one of the strongest combos in the game. It's fairly easy to mix with Okawaru for ammo gifts and stay pretty pure bows all game long with heroism and finesse. Trog is a decent option, although I prefer okawaru for primarily ranged characters, and OP has already played with Trog.

Ce have poor magical aptitudes so you're best off staying almost or entirely purely physical. If you do want to get magic, keep it very minimal and only invest in the core spells like haste/regen (regen probably only qualifies because you'll already have charms from haste and can just toss like 4 levels in necro and stop). Don't branch out. You'll probably be in relatively heavy armor, so high level spells are very tough to learn.

Edit: this isn't to suggest that you should never train a melee weapon, you should, you just can get away with not doing it if you wanted to. Getting enough arrows until temple can be luck-based, but once you've fought a few enemy centaurs and have okawaru piety that should never be a problem again.

[ackack]

Part of the reason people aren't talking about things like Chei or centaurs is that playing effectively with those is very different from playing effectively in different situations. Thus they're not good recommendations if what you're looking to do is learn more broadly applicable Crawl ideas other than "Trog good."

[and into]

I agree with ackack, but I nonetheless feel compelled to address one specific thing:

Ce have poor magical aptitudes so you're best off staying almost or entirely purely physical.

This really is not true. Ce have bad spell casting apt (which doesn't matter that much), but aside from that and poison, they have -1 across the board with really isn't that bad. They are only a bit worse than demigods and not that much worse than demonspawn. Do you advise that Dg and Ds never cast spells, either?

CeHu do start with mediocre intelligence (10) but that's not so low you can't work with it. And that can easily be addressed with stat allocation as you gain levels, especially as you are not going to be casting anything early on as a CeHu.