Halfling Sword training


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Halls Hopper

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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 01:40

Halfling Sword training

I'm playing a Halfling hunter with a sling, worshiping Oka. I was lucky enough to find a plain longsword and the Sword of Jihad by floor 5 so long blades are definitely calling my name. Given Halfling's aptitudes what would be the best way to train, go strait into long blades, or train short blades for the cross training.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 01:40

Re: Halfling Sword training

train long blades

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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 01:50

Re: Halfling Sword training

Jihad is very, very powerful, so definitely pump up long blades ASAP. And don't worry about your aptitude; you can always activate Heroism when you want to kill dudes faster with Jihad. :)

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 01:55

Re: Halfling Sword training

Also don't train Slings too high (I think you would need about 14 to be at min delay for typical HaHu). Slings is the best ranged weapon in this regard, it saves XP for other things like Long Blades ;)

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Halls Hopper

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Post Friday, 28th March 2014, 02:00

Re: Halfling Sword training

Thanks for the advice guys.

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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Sunday, 30th March 2014, 00:39

Re: Halfling Sword training

Is there ever a scenario in which training a high-aptitude weapon first just for cross-training bonuses and then training a second type actually costs less XP than only training the second type? I assume not (and if so, it should probably be changed), but I was just curious. How much does it cost for a Merfolk to train a certain level of polearms, and then the same level of staves, rather than just going straight to staves?

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 30th March 2014, 00:42

Re: Halfling Sword training

Quazifuji wrote:Is there ever a scenario in which training a high-aptitude weapon first just for cross-training bonuses and then training a second type actually costs less XP than only training the second type? I assume not (and if so, it should probably be changed), but I was just curious. How much does it cost for a Merfolk to train a certain level of polearms, and then the same level of staves, rather than just going straight to staves?

currently yes, if the apts are 5 or more apart IIRC
this is being changed

Tomb Titivator

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Post Sunday, 30th March 2014, 02:13

Re: Halfling Sword training

From my calculations based on http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Skill, a Merfolk saves ~850 skill points by training polearms to cross-train staves to level 12. That's enough to train a 0 apt skill to between levels 5 and 6, but it's almost nothing over the long run of the game. So any benefit you get by doing it this way probably only matters to hardcore min-maxers.

I picked 12 because that's mindelay on an enhancer staff, so it's the minimum amount anyone would want to train. I'm also assuming both skills start untrained, as they do for a book background.

Calculation, so folks can check my math, behind the spoiler.
Spoiler: show
According to the chart, the skill points needed for 12 levels are:

0 apt: 4200
-2 apt (Mf staves, no crosstraining): 4200 / 0.71 = 5915
+2 apt (Mf staves, crosstraining): 4200 / 1.41 = 2979
+4 apt (Mf polearms): 4200 / 2 = 2100

So add the last two to find the total cost of crosstraining: 2979 + 2100 = 5079

...and subtract from the raw staves cost to find the savings: 5915 - 5079 = 836
Wins (Does not include my GrEE^Veh 15-runer...stupid experimental branch)

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Sunday, 30th March 2014, 02:21

Re: Halfling Sword training

You have to be careful about that because skill cost increases at the same time.
minmay wrote:You are ignoring the effect of skill_cost_level. The more skills you have the more expensive they get.
Here is an easy test you can do to see for yourself: start MfFi in wizard mode, with a trident. Set experience level to 27 (don't train skills). Create and quaff a potion of experience, and put it all into polearms. Create and quaff a second potion, now put it into axes. You should come out with 10.7 axes skill.
Now quit and repeat the same process, but put the first experience potion into axes. It gets it to 15.4 - you got MORE axes skill by spending HALF the amount of experience. If you keep them closer to each other as you gain experience, this loss is much smaller, and yes, it can work out to get you more axes skill than you would otherwise, but I'm not going to bother figuring out the exact formulas used because it turns out training slings on ogres and axes on merfolk is completely boneheaded no matter what.

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