Ru question

[BabyRage]

Is there an "optimal" way to play Ru? Like going for minor sacrifices only? How do you feel about saccing hand on melee char or saccing eye/resists/artifice?

[Sprucery]

I like to take the biggest sacrifices I feel I can handle, to quickly gain piety. Hand or eye can be ok.

A good combo imo is love, artifice and stealth. When you've sacced love, artifice does not hurt that much because you couldn't summon allies anyway. And without summons, distraction stabs are rarer so the stealth boost to stabs can go.

[le_nerd]

Agree with Sprucery. While it can be tempting to try to not cripple yourself too much with many minor saccs that means the healing/jump/wrath come that much later online, when the worst of the game is already over.

If you start by saccing artifice you immediately get healing access. What to sacc though does not follow an easy decision matrix, Ru is really well designed here.

Dont sacc words/potions together; dont sacc your only defensive skill; a spriggan doesnt want to sacc stealth but is fine with armour/eye, octopodes can afford to sacc resistances but not dodging etc.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Taking minor sacs is a mistake in my opinion, especially early on. Go for big sacrifices unless the character is already very strong (in which case I'd still try to get to Leap quickly I guess). Don't sac your main magic attack school of course.

Saccing a hand or an eye is more a nuisance than a serious handicap.

Artifice is the one I would be most reluctant to sac. Evokers, wands (HW/Haste) and some rods are just really strong. Still, early on it gives a lot piety.

The last time I looked at the piety gain I saw that some minor sacs (like purity/essence) give 0 piety. I don't know if that's been changed, but it feels like a bit of a trap. Stay away!

If you got the right items saccing resists has a very small cost for a lot of piety!

[robbcorp]

I recently took a GrFi of Ru with 15 runes.

Think I did Courage, Resists, Stealth and no Conj/Trans magic.

Courage was interesting. It made me play a less reckless. But with Ru I tend to be more reckless so maybe I just played normal. Lack of resists wasn't a big deal.

[Shtopit]

My dumb answer is that, if you are a melee character, you can sacrifice essence, arcana, stealth and love without losing much. I wonder how sacrifice love and demonic guardian interact.

[BabyRage]

My dumb answer is that, if you are a melee character, you can sacrifice essence, arcana, stealth and love without losing much. I wonder how sacrifice love and demonic guardian interact.

Yes, of course. But you don't get those every time, and it's not like you are going to decline everything else waiting for those to pop up.

Basically, the reason I made this thread is that currently I'm playing a melee dude of Ru, and from the first set of sacrifices I chose hand, because yolo. This gave me *** instantly at XL 6 and I pretty much snowballed from that. I was lucky enough to find a decent one-handed weapon too (+11 vorpal morningstar). This made me wonder if making major sacs is a way to go with Ru or this will usually screw you over and I just got lucky. In other words: should you prioritize getting piety ASAP over not crippling your char or vice versa?

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Yes, you should pick big sacrifices early. Once I get power leap I relax a bit. It's possible to get there with 2-3 sacs, so that can often be before lair. Power leap is insanely strong. Most of the time I use it to fight near safety (stairs, open doors, plants, other unpassable terrain) and then jump out when needed.