Artificer? Hafling? Clueless!

[grinrain]

Having finally won with a GrEE (Boy was that fun), thought I would try something different. What is an Artificer? lets try that. What is a Hafling good for? Lets try that.

Ok, Got through D15, L6, O2, Spiders, starting the Shoals, and still feel clueless. What the heck is an Artificer good for? Found a good sling, so sling is at 12+, found a good short sword (but no dagger) so short blades is at 12+. Found a buckler, so shield is at 6+. Letting stealth and evo just run, but in the mid teens. Got a bit worried so memed portal projectile and raised hex/translocation in an attempt to make the spell useful. Picked Oka as good because again clueless.

Playing as some sort of halfling arcane marksman with evo skill rather than straight casting. But questions questions questions. Is there a better god? what sort of armor should I be looking for other than just troll. God for next time? Would put my character here, but forgot how.

[Siegurt]

Artificers are classical neutral "react to what you find" backgrounds. They provide enough starting material to keep you *alive* but not really a hard push in any specific long-term direction. Most backgrounds probably are best played as a "these are the tools I have to keep me alive while I explore the early game and find out what else I have to work with" but in all honesty most players (myself included) probably interpret their backgrounds as a stronger influence over how they play than they should.

Slings and PP are a pretty straightforward way to play. By the time you get to the S branches, your background is largely irrelevant, even if you started with one that gives you a solid push in one direction or another, you're unlikely to still be relying primarily on your starting kit.

[grinrain]

Along similar lines, what do I do about Sojobo? Killed his minions, but his repel takes out both my sling and my wands. Tried wand of paralysis 4 times, never stuck. Assume he will never go back to sleep for a BS?

[Siegurt]

Along similar lines, what do I do about Sojobo? Killed his minions, but his repel takes out both my sling and my wands. Tried wand of paralysis 4 times, never stuck. Assume he will never go back to sleep for a BS?

Just stay away from him and ditch him somewhere, you don't have to kill everything, and particularly not things that you don't have a decent tool to take care of. No, he will not go back to sleep.

[grinrain]

Good point, run away works well. If he were on V4, would have to worry about him, but on V3 I should be able to avoid. More questions.

1) A sling that is *Corr and a ring that is +Rc. Do they cancel or will I still run the risk of corrosion?
2) Slay +4 or str +6 for slings. Str helps with damage and defense, Slay with damage and chance to hit? Which is more likely to increase damage per "time"?
3) If you are primarily slings/Evoc, does stealth help much? Thinking of dragon stealth bp vs an enchanted storm dragon bp.
4) How do you link your character here again .. ..

[Siegurt]

Good point, run away works well. If he were on V4, would have to worry about him, but on V3 I should be able to avoid. More questions.

1) A sling that is *Corr and a ring that is +Rc. Do they cancel or will I still run the risk of corrosion?

+rc is(or rC+) is usually the abbreviation for resist *cold* not *corrosion* if you are indeed talking about a ring with resist corrosion they do not cancel:

1. rCorr reduces the *chances* of being corroded by anything which would normally corrode you (it also reduces the damage acid-type attacks do)
2. *Corr gives any *normal* attack a small chance of additionally corroding you.

Using both means you now have an additional small chance of being corroded by non-corrosive attacks, which is reduced in likelihood

2) Slay +4 or str +6 for slings. Str helps with damage and defense, Slay with damage and chance to hit? Which is more likely to increase damage per "time"?

Strength doesn't *directly* help with defense, strength mitigates the encumberance effects of body armour, which means it might increase your EV slightly.
Slay is *usually* worth more per-point than strength damage-wise, strength provides a small percentage bonus to the base damage of the weapon (which means larger, heavier weapons get slightly more benefit than smaller, lighter ones) And as you point out strength doesn't add to your to-hit. The difference between +4 slay and +6 strength is very small in terms of actual attack power, both will help, slightly, and which will help slightly more than the other isn't a terribly important decision, whether you choose the optimal one or not will have no impact on your success rate, don't spend lots of time worry about it. If you *must* micro-optimize, figure out how to pull up a clone of your character in wizmode and fight sim it (there's plenty of instruction on the forums for how to do so)

3) If you are primarily slings/Evoc, does stealth help much? Thinking of dragon stealth bp vs an enchanted storm dragon bp.

Stealth is good for *controlling* monster fights, the proper way to use stealth is to backtrack a lot and pull small numbers (preferably singular) of monsters at a time, stealth lets you get one thing's attention at a time and evade things that would otherwise hunt you down more easily. (and of course for stabbing things, but that gets progressively harder, relying on stabbing without magic doesn't really work)

The shadow dragon armour pretty much just *ok* stealth-wise (high ER body armour lowers your stealth, Shadow dragon compensates, but doesn't cause you to be like mega-stealthy or anything), storm dragon isn't bad either, rElec isn't something you need very often, but as body armour goes they're equal, I'd pick the one that gave me more AC with it's current enchantments, personally (unless I just had a gigantic stack of EA scrolls lying around unused allowing me to easily max either one, or if they were exactly equal, in which case, I'd probably go with Storm, unless I had a randart that had rElec that I was using already, in which case I'd go with shadow, but it's still mostly a coin-flip)

4) How do you link your character here again .. ..

'#' in game will create a character dump in your morgue folder, if you're playing offline, copy/paste that into code tags, if you're playing online, check your chat channel it should give you a link to the web page where you can copy/paste from.

[grinrain]

Ah ha! thanks!

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/grinrain/grinrain.txt

1) Suggestions on skills?
2) Suggestions on rings?
3) Suggestions on BP? (Guess i am going Storm, but really wish I had more resists)

[Siegurt]

Ah ha! thanks!

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/grinrain/grinrain.txt

1) Suggestions on skills?
2) Suggestions on rings?
3) Suggestions on BP? (Guess i am going Storm, but really wish I had more resists)

Stop training slings (past min min delay weapon skills are only ok, and fighting gives nearly as much damage and bonus HP)
If you can find a good long blade (demon blade or double-sword) you can upgrade your melee attack and still derive some benefit from your short-blade skill, an Elec short blade is not terrible, but it's also not awesome

Wear the slaying ring always, and probably the AC ring most of the time, swap in an appropriate resistance for the second ring slot when stuff that has a known element type pops up.
Keep the storm dragon armour, the shadow dragon armour wouldn't be an upgrade.

A shield upgrade would help, bucklers are pretty wimpy shields, although halflings do require a lot more skill to eliminiate the penalties for medium shields, the non-spellcasting penalties aren't major.

You'd probably be happier with a little more invocation, while 8 is *enough* to use Oka, I find that 10-12 lets me avoid having my abilities run out in the middle of longer fights.

It's probably worth memorizing some of the spells you have in your library, gell's isn't a super good spell, but it allows you to rearrange critters letting you fire your sling a few more times before they get into melee (when used properly, and then only sometimes) apportation lets you pick up your ammo without walking towards it (helpful when you don't want to explore more area, but do want to grab your stones before you retreat) Shroud of Golubria is a very small defensive spell (if you cast it right before you get into combat it will negate a little bit of damage) Slow is great on the things you can effect with it (it literally just slows things down, so they move/attack less frequently)

If you want to invest skills for it, IMB will push people away from you, which is helpful for your setup, and of course you should memorize blink if you can find it.

[grinrain]

Was trying for max dps, figuring the best defense is piles of your enemies. And stealth seemed helpful in the abyss (##$#^%^^& abyss). But Oka gifted me with a +13 gold dragon bp, which sort of settled that issue. Because of the +7 str on bp, only net loss of +2str swapping out the rings. Win!

As for shields, have a +2 kite shield of protection and a +5 kite shield (+regen, str-3, int+3 dex+6) available. Started training shield up, but read that until shield skill of 20 or so, would slow down my attacks. Still worth using one of those shields and just start training up?

+2 cloak of poison resist + Amulet of repulsion or scarf of repulstion + amulet of acrobat?

Looking for swords, blink, and spells .. ..

No blink on anything other than a +3 scalemail. No good swords, best is a +0 Scimitar of elec, a +4 Scimitar, or a +1 longsword of flaming. Even with 4 enchant weapon scrolls stashed, not sure worth swapping out yet.

[Siegurt]

Was trying for max dps, figuring the best defense is piles of your enemies. And stealth seemed helpful in the abyss (##$#^%^^& abyss). But Oka gifted me with a +13 gold dragon bp, which sort of settled that issue. Because of the +7 str on bp, only net loss of +2str swapping out the rings. Win!

As for shields, have a +2 kite shield of protection and a +5 kite shield (+regen, str-3, int+3 dex+6) available. Started training shield up, but read that until shield skill of 20 or so, would slow down my attacks. Still worth using one of those shields and just start training up?

+2 cloak of poison resist + Amulet of repulsion or scarf of repulstion + amulet of acrobat?

Looking for swords, blink, and spells .. ..

No blink on anything other than a +3 scalemail. No good swords, best is a +0 Scimitar of elec, a +4 Scimitar, or a +1 longsword of flaming. Even with 4 enchant weapon scrolls stashed, not sure worth swapping out yet.

I was thinking of the blink spell, rather than evocable blink.

+4 elec scimitar would be an upgrade from a +8 elec shortsword, but a small one.

I would do cloak of rpois+ (Or really any +2 cloak, MR probably preferred, rpois doesn't mean anything if you're using gold dragon armour) with amulet of repulsion. Acrobat is ok, but I think 4 AC is better, (Acrobat *might* be better if you spent lots of time repositioning in combat, but that's atypical)

I would use kite shield of protection over the artifact shield, and I'd probably start using it around 10 or so shield skill (and train up to remove penalties) Stealth is in actually more useful in the abyss than probably anywhere else in the game, so you did perceive that correctly.