Armour skill rules of thumb?

[mattlistener]

I have read the http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Encumbrance_rating and delved into AEVP a few times over the years, but I can never seem to come away with a pragmatic understanding of what I should be doing right now regarding Armour skill.

Most of my successes in Crawl have been casters wearing no more than Ring Mail, and I have a good feedback metric with spell success to indicate when I need more Str/Armour/Wizardry in order to perform well with my current (or desired) body armour.

When I try to play more melee-focused characters, I feel like I'm playing blind with the Armour skill. I know that I shouldn't wear more Encumberance Rating than my Strength, and that some Armour skill is good, but I don't have a good sense of how much to aim for. I know that additional points of AC scale up linearly with base AC and armour skill, but is there a plateau I can estimate on the benefit to hit rating you can get from Armour skill?

I also have the problem that playing spell-less always gets me killed. I don't think I have ever even gotten a rune while worshipping Trog -- something always goes terribly wrong during berserk-slow or enemy status effects I can't handle, no matter how annoyingly-cautiously I can make myself play. So unless I'm trying that again I always have my eyes out for when I might reasonably be able to shoot for getting something like Blink or Sticks To Snakes online. When I see that my current body armour has their failure rates over 90%, I'm at a loss to estimate how much Armour skill I'd have to plan for to get those into a reasonable zone. So I'm probably splatting characters that could have benefitted from a few spells by the the time they get into a situation they can neither consumable through nor run from, and others that were too underskilled in melee offense/defense because I'd over-invested XP into getting level 2 spells castable.

[VeryAngryFelid]

What I do in my games:
1) Use wizard mode for copy of the character when in doubt (especially helps with long time planning, for example, I want to know if I will be able to cast Tornado in ring mail)
2) Try different armour in game when lazy with wizard mode
3) Don't train Armour for success rate

Some hints for Trog games:
1) Don't berserk unless you have no choice. Lure to upstairs for berserking.
2) Invoke Trog's hand as first action when you see monsters with Slow/Confuse/Paralyze/Banishment
3) Summon Brother in Arms if you are not sure in easy win (easy here means you will keep at least 50% HP with no monsters in view).
4) Spam brothers when you made a mistake (slowed and heavily wounded after berserk with monsters in view, no scrolls of blinking, waiting for teleport).

Edit. Also I use wizard mode to learn how many skills I will need for specific spells like Silence, Animate Dead, RMsl etc.

[bel]

If you are playing with Trog (as a Be?), typically you should wear the heaviest armour you can find and train armour as high as feasible (and also a bit of dodging). I am assuming that you are playing some normal melee race, not something funky like DE? Don't worry about Str in this case.

If you just want an easy melee build to understand tactics and skilling, play something like MiBe or HOBe.

Skilling typically goes something like this: train your weapon skill highest, followed by fighting and armour (and a bit of dodging). Train evocations for handling ranged threats using wands and rods. Use shields if you want; two-handed weapons are fine as well. No need to train anything else.

Melee tactics like luring monsters to safe areas, managing monsters in LOS etc. are best learnt with experience. You can also spectate games on Webtiles or watch old ttyrecs to get some ideas.

[Siegurt]

Here's an example from a recent MeBe in platemail of mine:

  Code:


Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 |
---------------+-------------------------------------------------+-----
Long Blades    |     4        5     6  8  9 11 13    15 16 17    | 17.9
Fighting       |        4     5     6  7  9 10 11       12 13 14 | 14.1
Dodging        |        3     4     5  6  8  9 10    12       13 | 13.3
Armour         |        3     4     5  7  8 10    11             | 11.8
Bows           |                             2 10    12 14 15    | 15.6
Evocations     |                             1  2  3  6  8 10    | 10.2


Not to say that's really perfect or anything.

Some other stuff:
If you are playing with heavier armour, you will need to get more XP to cast spells, that means you should be prepared to do without early if you want the additional protection (And it's usually worth it)

Generally speaking, you should probably be investing in the armour skill in order to get higher AC, the mitigation of spell success penalties isn't very strong, and certainly isn't nearly as worthwhile a reason to invest in Armour.

If you're dying to post-berserk slow, you probably aren't luring, berserk is a situational buff which should let you kill strong things but never be used in an uncontrolled situation (don't berserk if you're remotely close to any unexplored tiles, for example) Trog's other powers are often undervalued, trog's hand particularly is a good way to heal while retreating (As well as of course helping you avoid being hit with MR resisting attacks), brothers are a good way to do damage while retreating (berserked brothers can walk up and hit things that are chasing you) don't be afraid to use trog's piety, holding out for more gifts isn't useful and will typically be a source of dying.

Melee focused characters often will find a ranged option useful, either evocables or ranged weapons are good for this role.

Mostly the important thing for melee focused characters is to position properly, don't fight things where you encounter them, pull them back away from unexplored areas and you'll be fine.

For non-trog chars, spells are pretty useful, just count on getting them later, and at a higher XP cost. if you're spell success rate is 90% and you want to reliably cast that spell, train more related spell skill, don't train armour it has only minimal benefit.

You *should* train armour when using heavier armour and you want more AC (And you should always want more AC) Also don't completely neglect dodging, heavy armour gives you a penalty to dodging, but it's still worth training, particuarly if you strength and dex are higher, While the armour skill reduces the penalty to dodging from heavy armour, this effect is pretty small, if you want more EV, you should probably just train dodging instead.

Generally if you are using heavier armour, you want to raise strength to reduce the body armour's penalty approximately until it's 10-30% more than your body armour's ER, you'll get less returns on the investment the higher you go, but until that 10-30% it's probably more worth it than anything else, after that point it's still valuable, but other stats start to get more competitive, However don't stress about it, because a point of strength one way or the other is *not* going to be the difference between winning and losing, Crawl isn't a game where winning is about micromanaging your stat and skill allocation to maximize your power, it's about positioning and threat evaluation, as long as you are in the generally right ballpark skill/stat wise you should be fine.

[mattlistener]

Thanks for the tips, just what I was looking for.

Regarding my meleers -- I do lure, stairdance, choose terrain etc on all my characters, and already do weapon to min delay as top priority. Unless I'm really lucky with equipment I generally get to a point where I have to Berserk in order to kill many depth-appropriate things. If I go downstairs without clearing a level due to skipping things that feel too risky, it gets worse. Not many of my Trogites have made it to enough piety for Brothers in Arms.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I hope you don't go for min delay ignoring fighting/armour/dodging, that might explain why you need to berserk that much.
I spam berserk before Lair indeed but basically the deeper I am in the game, the less I berserk.

[Turukano]

I also have the problem that playing spell-less always gets me killed. I don't think I have ever even gotten a rune while worshipping Trog

That's surprising. Of course, you are used to casters, but Trog is the best god you can wish for in early game. You can start with him right from the beginning and should be able to kill everything, including tough ghosts. This means that you get more XP and piety before lair than non-berserkers (who sometimes must skip levels). Getting the first two runes with Trog shouldn't be that hard for somebody who already won some games.

Problems should rather occur in extended. Berserking is risky, you want at least a few spells (apportation comes to mind) and frequently using Trog's abilities can lead to piety problems.

I wonder if it's only a problem of armour skilling if you don't get the first rune. Maybe you put a dump in the CiP forum?

[Siegurt]

Thanks for the tips, just what I was looking for.

Regarding my meleers -- I do lure, stairdance, choose terrain etc on all my characters, and already do weapon to min delay as top priority. Unless I'm really lucky with equipment I generally get to a point where I have to Berserk in order to kill many depth-appropriate things. If I go downstairs without clearing a level due to skipping things that feel too risky, it gets worse. Not many of my Trogites have made it to enough piety for Brothers in Arms.

Here's my action table from that same game:

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Falchion          |    78 |   129 |   266 |       |       |       ||   473
       Headbutt          |     9 |    16 |    72 |   132 |   336 |    41 ||   606
       Long sword        |       |       |   113 |   493 |       |       ||   606
       Great sword       |       |       |       |    36 |  1627 |   210 ||  1873
       Shortbow          |       |       |       |       |     4 |       ||     4
 Fire: Shortbow          |       |       |       |   101 |    80 |       ||   181
       Longbow           |       |       |       |       |   104 |    28 ||   132
Throw: Stone             |       |     7 |     7 |    25 |    53 |       ||    92
       Tomahawk          |       |       |       |       |    37 |     8 ||    45
Invok: Berserk           |       |     2 |     6 |     2 |     7 |     2 ||    19
       Brothers in Arms  |       |       |     1 |     7 |     7 |     1 ||    16
       Burn Spellbooks   |       |       |       |     1 |     4 |     1 ||     6
       Trog's Hand       |       |       |       |       |     5 |     1 ||     6
Evoke: Wand              |       |       |       |     7 |     4 |       ||    11
       Disc of storms    |       |       |       |       |     5 |       ||     5
  Use: Scroll            |     1 |     7 |     2 |    13 |    21 |     5 ||    49
       Potion            |       |       |       |     3 |     4 |       ||     7
 Stab: Distracted        |       |       |       |       |     1 |     1 ||     2
  Eat: Chunk             |     1 |     6 |    15 |    11 |    28 |       ||    61
       Royal jelly       |       |     1 |       |       |     4 |     2 ||     7
       Beef jerky        |       |       |     1 |     3 |     2 |     1 ||     7
       Meat ration       |       |       |     1 |     1 |     4 |     1 ||     7
       Fruit             |       |       |       |     4 |     3 |       ||     7
       Pizza             |       |       |       |       |     2 |       ||     2
Armor: Animal skin       |     7 |     5 |       |       |       |       ||    12
       Chain mail        |       |    35 |   144 |   346 |   407 |       ||   932
       Plate armour      |       |       |       |       |   470 |   226 ||   696
Dodge: Dodged            |    44 |    57 |   146 |   289 |   851 |   155 ||  1542


As you can see, I don't berserk often, and I used my first BoA between levels 7 and 9, If you aren't accruing piety, you might be spending too much time backtracking or wandering around explored levels (I don't see any other way with trog you can kill stuff and not have enough piety for BoA) If you berserk *too* much you can end up spending a lot of turns resting off exhaustion, which just reduces your piety gain even more.

[kuniqs]

If not going for heavy armour, don't train Armour more than 11. The same applies if you plan on wearing robes, have low Str, or have auxiliary armour slot restrictions. Training more than 22 Armour is almost never worth it - better train Dodging now.

[TonberryJam]

The two primary factors to casting in heavy armour are: Very High Str(penalty is divided by str) and spell school skill levels.

Secondary factor is: Int. It's worth a third in value of skills when determining success rate. Still important early game. 16-21 Int is doable for heavy armour I think. If, you go the high str route.

Tertiary factor: Armour skill and spell casting. Reduces the penalty some more. More important for high level spells.

Can always train invocation for MP, or just train spell casting as needed.


I have the most success with Trog by building Piety first. This allows you to get BiA up early, then you use it liberally.
I'll always use Trog Hand and Berserk in most encounters.
See casters? Trog Hand.
See smiters? Trog Hand then berserk. B-line to smiter.
3 or less foes that are not popcorn with nothing special going on? Berserk
Berserk wears off and still fighting? Trog Hand. Something bad happen still? BiA x1
Got hit hard last round and didn't berserk or trog hand yet? BiA x1
Lots of bad doods and got hit hard? BiA x3 and use them as shields. Then Trog Hand.
Some tough unique/boss/ghost? Trog Hand > Berserk.
Looks tough, what to do? Trog Hand. Lots of monsters? BiA x2 maybe x3 then berserk.
Just you and a tough unique? Trog Hand > BiA > Berserk
Got enough Piety for BiA and see your first Hydra/Hill Giant/Cyclops/etc? BiA.

Note: Use BiA sparingly. You get like 3 uses per piety *. So you get like 6 uses at full piety or a couple more. U can also abuse trog hand and berserk. Maybe be mindful if u go from 6* to 5*

[duvessa]

I know that I shouldn't wear more Encumberance Rating than my Strength

this is very wrong
you should frequently wear armour with higher ER than your strength
for instance pretty much any non-Sp/Fe/Op without spells is hoping to wear heavy armour at least up until lair or so, even if it's with 10 str; the AC is well worth the penalties

[VeryAngryFelid]

this is very wrong
you should frequently wear armour with higher ER than your strength
for instance pretty much any non-Sp/Fe/Op without spells is hoping to wear heavy armour at least up until lair or so, even if it's with 10 str; the AC is well worth the penalties

Fsim shows it is a bad idea for species with deformed body, low Str, high Dex, small size, high Dodging, EV bonus. NaAr, HaHu, KoAK, TeWn, MfGl, maybe HuAs, VpAs, CeCK and alike.

[bel]

this is very wrong
you should frequently wear armour with higher ER than your strength
for instance pretty much any non-Sp/Fe/Op without spells is hoping to wear heavy armour at least up until lair or so, even if it's with 10 str; the AC is well worth the penalties

Fsim shows it is a bad idea for species with deformed body, low Str, high Dex, small size, high Dodging, EV bonus. NaAr, HaHu, KoAK, TeWn, MfGl, maybe HuAs, VpAs, CeCK and alike.

You should take some pity on the OP. The thread is titled "rule of thumb". The OP is a player who has never obtained a rune with a melee character. It's better to not confuse them.

As a rule of thumb, "don't wear armour with higher ER than your STR" is not correct. There may be cases where it is accurate, but they are not the norm.

As I said above, imo, if they are playing some sort of melee brute (they mentioned Trog in the OP, not sure what exactly they are playing), they should not care about STR at all. Most melee characters will have enough STR for it to not matter.

To the OP: some morgues of your recent deaths will be useful in giving you more concrete advice.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I was replying to duvessa who is a top player.

[Sar]

more like a top poster tbh

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ok, you better know whom I was replying to.

[tabstorm]

Start as a MiBe, use Axes, and wear the heaviest armour you can find that doesn't give you a negative resist, unless something lighter with a good base enchant or other properties spawns, and use the heaviest axe you can find. I would not recommend shields and axes for this character. At the start turn on Axes, Fighting, Dodging, and Armor. Focus Axes. You are probably timing berserk use wrong, because you can win a MiBe without any use of movement keys (aside from o/tab) simply by using berserk at the right time. Use Trog's hand against enemies that use hexes. Don't be afraid to use brothers in arms against a tough enemy.

[VeryAngryFelid]

you can win a MiBe without any use of movement keys (aside from o/tab) simply by using berserk at the right time. Use Trog's hand against enemies that use hexes.

I believe it requires luck, the character will die to 2-3 crowds of monsters. Or is teleportation allowed too?

[tabstorm]

Yes... and you don't die to crowds of 2-3 monsters at a time. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It's not crowds of 2-3 monsters, it's 2-3 crowds of N monsters. You kill first group without berserk but now you are wounded and press autoexplore because you cannot hit tab, right? Then you find another crowd and you need to berserk to survive. After that you are slowed and even more wounded but you still must press o for autoexplore, so next crowd kills you.

[MainiacJoe]

My general advice for berserkers is that you can train a ranged weapon sooner to more profit with Trog. I've won sling-based, bow-based, and crossbow-based Trog types. Throwing would work, too, because not only do you get the javelins etc. you also get the needles--I've just never done it. Being able to kick ass at range adds a huge amount of flexibility to your character, and in particular since you cannot used ranged weapons while berserk, it will teach you that berserking is not a crutch but rather a tactical resource to be used rarely. It also gives you something to do that *feels* useful instead of approaching an enemy; luring is actually more useful, but feels much less so.

[mattlistener]

I hope you don't go for min delay ignoring fighting/armour/dodging, that might explain why you need to berserk that much.

No, I understand the diminishing returns of higher skill levels. Fighting/armour/dodging get brought along at a lower rate.

I'll write down some notes from the thread and try a few more sallies. I guess I could focus Trog until I've won with him once, to practice pure melee without holding out hope for eventual spellcasting.

[VeryAngryFelid]

No, I understand the diminishing returns of higher skill levels. Fighting/armour/dodging get brought along at a lower rate.

There are no diminishing returns before min delay. Training M&F from 11 to 12 for demon whip increases damage more than training it from 0 to 1. It's just that
1) higher level skills are more expensive
2) having better melee is useless when you die to a pack of centauri in the open.

[mattlistener]

No, I understand the diminishing returns of higher skill levels. Fighting/armour/dodging get brought along at a lower rate.

There are no diminishing returns before min delay.

Less skill gain per XP invested is the very meaning of diminishing returns. That is all I meant. (Context was another poster you hoping I wasn't tunneling weapon skill to min delay without investing some in other things.)

[mattlistener]

I've posted a CiP on tonight's MiBe, who has cleared Orc and Lair (though no Lair branches yet).

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