Earth Elementalists

[tormodpwns]

I've always been interested in the challenge of starting an Earth Elementalist. They are extremely difficult to get going, although I'm sure they can be very powerful in the late game.

The starting book is awful - the only true offensive spells are Sandblast and Stone Arrow. Sandblast is actually quite powerful for a level 1 spell, but it requires stones to be effective and your supply is limited. Stoneskin is ridiculously weak; at level 5 Earth Magic it provides a measly +3 AC (and at level 27 you only get +7). Stone Arrow deals decent damage, but is dreadfully inaccurate. Also, it uses Conjurations, a skill EE's don't have, meaning subpar spell success and power. Summon Elementals must have been a joke; EE's have no Summonings skill and it's a level 4 spell. LRD is highly situational, and by the time you can cast it well, then you've already passed the tough early game so we'll put that aside from the discussion.

Here are some basic questions:
Which race is best? A powerful spellcaster like a Deep Elf, or a strong hybrid with melee like a Sludge Elf or Ogre?
Which spells should be learned? Stoneskin seems negligible, and it seems difficult to train up Conjurations early.
Which skills should be focused on? Spellcasting, Earth Magic, Transmutation, or some combination of the three?

[Sealer]

I like my EE to be humans due to human versatility, and easy time training fighting&weapon, and decent hp. Other races that might work well are Sludge Elves, Deep Elves (squishy!), Ghouls and Deep Dwarves (if you can get to the temple).

You should learn stoneskin, although it's a weak spell it's really just free AC. Definitely learn Stone Arrow, as it will be your only ranged attack early on. Only learn summon elemental if you have enough int/spellcasting to cast it well, or if you found an early summoning spell to train summonings. Earth Elementals can be quite potent and easily available, however summoning miscasts include banishment. Passwall is a good, albeit situational escape spell, it's up to you if you want to use it or not. I don't know what to think about LRD (it is affected by monster ac 3 times!) but I'd definitely pass on dig, digging wands are ok common later on and early on you don't need them.

You should definitely focus on spellcasting and earth magic, if you go sif just train them all (spellcasting/earth magic/transmutations/conjurations). Weapon & fighting might be extra important with stone arrows crappy accuracy.

As for the god choice Vehumet seems to be the most obvious one, giving you early wizardry bonus and extending your conjuration range (extra useful!) as well as giving you access to crystal spear later on. Sif would be good for a more general spellcaster and he would probably grant you more earth related spells as well. Chei makes heavy armour casting much easier as well as giving you eventually a huge int bonus, also passwall is extra useful for chei worshippers. Then you have makhleb with the excellent hp/mp for kills and demon summoning. Oka would be great for hybrid casters as might would be of great help.

[Stormfox]

The nice thing about LRD is that even with the extra bonus to monster AC, it's undodgeable. And if you have walls of something other than rock or stone to work with, it can inflict tons of pain. (Or hostile skeletons. Skeleton warrior packs are suddenly a lot less threatening if you can keep your MP up.)

I work on my Transmutation and go Sif, since you will then very likely end up with some Tmut spells that help a lot with your limited offense. If you go that route, you'll need some Enchantment skill so that you stand a chance with Petrify if/when you get it.

[Kate]

EE has a few tweaks in trunk which will hopefully make it a bit more viable. Sandblast's range was increased to 2 (3 with wielded stones), which makes D:1 a bit less of a horrible pain. Stone Arrow also got a decent boost in damage, so although it's still rather inaccurate it now actually does some worthwhile damage when it hits, instead of barely being better than Throw Flame/Frost. Petrify is also changed to Tmut/Earth in trunk, so it should be easier to utilise (try casting it on flying monsters over deep water). LRD is still rubbish and I'd like to try and get it improved, too.

I like Vehumet as a god, for the help in getting Summon Elemental castable as well as the range increases on conjurations (and Sandblast!).

My most successful EE is always SpEE though, for the ability to kite with Sandblast early on and general Spriggan goodness. Passwall/Petrify stabbing is hard to pull off and pretty inefficient compared to SpEn, but it's very fun when it works so sometimes I give that a go.

[tormodpwns]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I just played a NaEE of Vehumet that died in Lair:2 with a score of 8819. I actually could have gotten much further but I was being cheap and wanted to kill that last Blink Frog without using my Potion of Heal Wounds. Of course, Crawl punished me and I died.

I had the Book of Geomancy (starting book), Book of Power, and Book of Tukima. The only spells I knew were Sandblast, Stone Arrow (learned at level 4 or 5 I forgot), and Stoneskin (learned later, and I ended up never using it).

Some things I learned:

-Stone Arrow is NOT a pain to use. Conjurations trains quickly, and Stone Arrow is powerful (2HKO Orc Warriors) and not as inaccurate as is rumored. Mana is only a problem for the first few levels you have it, but hunger is a big problem early on. I had to use several rations just to stay alive.
-Victory-dancing is very important. I used it to train up Conjurations (which probably contributed to my excessive hungering).
-Sandblast deals great damage. In the early levels when Stone Arrow was too expensive MP-wise to cast, Sandblast with wielded stones took down Ice Beasts and Ogres in just 3-4 shots. Later on, Sandblast became obsolete when Stone Arrow became spammable.

Even so, I was probably only able to survive the early game because of my abuse of Naga's poison sting. I used it all the time and only cast my spells to victory-dance. I stopped using it around level 9 or so.

Man, if I hadn't been so cheap with that potion! I had lots of spell levels left and could have learned IMB and Iron Shot right away, and the latter could probably 2 or 3HKO a Hydra. And I might have been able to learn LCS for the first time ever!

[joellercoaster]

I asked the same question on the old forum, and got some useful advice. I have had some OK results (clearing the Lair anyway) with:

Sludge Elves (Unarmed Combat and Staves are both good when you inevitably run out of rocks, plus great Transmutation and decent Earth Magic).
Sif Muna (decent chance of getting Petrify, which turbocharges Lee's Rapid Deconstruction, and an early chance to branch out from the admittedly crappy first set of spells), or Cheibriados (general coolness, could just be me though).

It helps when you find a lot of rocks early. It also helps when you figure out how to drive Passwall correctly (took me a while). And right at the beginning, collect pretty much everything you can get your hands on, as Sludge Elves are good at Throwing to soften things up without burning precious pebbles. Once you get Sandblast up to high power though, life is pretty sweet as long as you have rocks.

[angrykoopa]

The only EE I've ascended so far has been SEEE of Kiku, but I basically played like a necromancer with a few more direct damage spells as soon as I got the first gift.

[joellercoaster]

Just started playing SEEEs in trunk. They feel like they've been buffed significantly, though I'm still dying all over the place.

- New Sandblast(tm) tastes great - even just the range of two without stones is a big deal
- Having Petrify in the starting spellbook is interesting, makes LRD less of a questionable starting-book spell too
- Stone Arrow gets pretty powerful early on just because of Earth Magic, even with zero Conjurations (and -2 apt )

I'm gonna miss Dig, though.

Sif Muna is less of a no-brainer with a decent starting book now, but still probably the most attractive option... Ashenzari maybe?

Overall thumbs up!

[joellercoaster]

Hmm. Apparently EEs never had Dig in the starting book.

Still not sure about religion - Fedhas is thematic but I have zero idea of how to play him. Necromancy is a pretty decent second school for SEEE I suspect, so Kiku worship could be a way forward?

[szanth]

Hmm. Apparently EEs never had Dig in the starting book.

Still not sure about religion - Fedhas is thematic but I have zero idea of how to play him. Necromancy is a pretty decent second school for SEEE I suspect, so Kiku worship could be a way forward?

Nah, you get dig in the transmutation book.

[lucy_ferre]

Earth elementalists are much easier now. I won a MDEE on my 2nd try. I regretted my god choice (Chei), but other than that, it was a good combo.

[Gogozmozgom]

I actually miss getting the summon elemental spell in the starting book. It had the interesting feature of being tricky to skill up enough to use (typically you had to use potions of brilliance to victory dance summoning up to 3-4 to use it without getting a banishment miscast) but the early no-book-luck-needed earth elementals were dominant - and usually-friendly elementals at only level 5 is a defining feature of earth magic. Now with that gone from the starting book, the transmutation element toned down, and stone arrow being the workhorse of the book EEs usually play like another conjurer.

[joellercoaster]

I am noticing that too - Stone Arrow is great, don't get me wrong, but I'm finding it's the only really good weapon I have at the moment*. This results in me already having 5 in Conj even though I'm playing a Sludge Elf (-2) and trying not to lean on it too hard!

Have just picked Kiku as my God though and got the first book, just trying to figure out how to work it into my repertoire... I think Animate Dead and Dispel Undead are a good way forward. I might end up with a Necromancer if I take this route, with a second string in unresistable Conjurations... hmm. Not a bad thing?

*that and the +3, +4 Quarterstaff of Crushing I made myself, obviously. It's certainly made bootstrapping Fighting a bit less hit-and-miss

[vintermann]

I had a suspicion stone arrow had been boosted. A bit of a shame; I never could get EEs off the ground before, so I thought maybe I was getting better...

My SEEE also relies a bit more on conjurations than I intended, especially now that he found the book of power with iron shot and all. He was supposed to branch into transmutations and statue form, etc. but transmutations is still very low! I didn't remember that petrified creatures could be deconstructed, so I didn't memorize petrify at all - I figured since it's resistable, it's not worth risking a turn on when enemies are close.

Something I couldn't resist the temptation to branch into: ignite poison. I love that spell! Instant hydra-smiting, green rat massacres, and serious crowd control with poisonous cloud without needing to train up skills for them to be useful. Plus, Sif likes the training... Looking forward to finding the Hive now.

[joellercoaster]

My SEEE also relies a bit more on conjurations than I intended, especially now that he found the book of power with iron shot and all. He was supposed to branch into transmutations and statue form, etc. but transmutations is still very low!

Ha, I had exactly the same plan. I had this idea about using all the non-Form Transmutation stuff too, only to find it's just not super useful early on.

The Necro thing seems to be working out tho (except that Animate Skeleton was the wrong choice for a bootstrapper, ended up having to learn Pain and now Vampiric Draining to get it to train up faster - giving me a ridiculous surplus of low-level and close-range stuff but hey, every day's a school day).

On the gripping hand, those two plus the quarterstaff are meaning I still have a lot of stones... experience has shown that at high power, those rip through a lot of the Lair.

[Stormfox]

The Necro thing seems to be working out tho (except that Animate Skeleton was the wrong choice for a bootstrapper, ended up having to learn Pain and now Vampiric Draining to get it to train up faster...)

As minmay pointed out to me in the context of Distillation, you can probably cast Animate even with no raw material with "Z". It'll fizzle, but you'll still expend the experience to boost the skill.

[joellercoaster]

D'oh.

I actually already knew that, and had forgotten

[joellercoaster]

OK, so in the absence of useful Earth Magic bridges (I found a book with Shatter, but that's a while off) I'm following through with my plan of Kiku worship and Necromancy. So far, so good.

I don't really play pure spellcasters much though so I don't have a good feel for the skilling thing. Given that Stone Arrow and Sandblast are both at max power and still getting used a lot, should I turn off Earth and Conjurations for the moment and just let Necro keep building?

Another way of stating the question is, am I likely to find Iron Shot and Lehudib's Crystal Spear, or should I just admit I'm really a Necromancer now for good?

As others have pointed out, the emphasis on Transmutations has really gone far away; my Tmut is still at level 3 (compared to Earth 14, Conj 8, Necro 13). Which makes me sad a little bit; I'd been hoping for Necromutation to come naturally out of this build but the skill balance has just changed too much and I'll have to victory dance my way there after all.

Finding a book with Statue Form would, of course, change all that

[tormodpwns]

Iron Shot should be fairly easy to find because it appears in the Book of Power, which seems to be a fairly common book.

As for an earlier comment on EE's looking more like a conjurations-based class, that would be acceptable because if you think about it, Fire, Ice, and Air Elementalists are all conjurations-based classes (with the exception of Air which leans slightly toward enchantments and support).

Transmutations is generally not as useful in the early game because the only spell it really provides for is Sandblast (Stoneskin AC bonus is unaffected by Transmutations skill). In the late game, however, Transmutations is worth training for LCD against heavy golems and gargoyles and for Shatter.

On a side note, how exactly does Passwall work? Is it a reliable escape tool?

[joellercoaster]

1, GermanJoey has demonstrated it's possible to do well with just Transmutations as your Earth Magic power source, so I guess that part of my opinion is worth what you paid for it.

2. Passwall is a reliable escape tool if you have enough advance warning. It takes more turns to activate the more wall tiles you want to pass through, which means you have to see trouble coming (or fight beside thin walls). It's saved my bacon a few times early (packs of Gnolls, surprise Ogres) but realistically, it's not worth the spell slots after the early game. People have apparently used it as a way to do Stabbing but I haven't tried it.

3. Shatter doesn't use Transmutations any more. I think for my current character this is good, but in general I don't know how I feel about it.

[OneTrueFelid]

For my Earth Elementalist win, I used Stone Arrow for an incredibly long time. Since the damage buff in 0.8, it's been a top tier conjuration that only gets serious competition for damage at range for that cost from Throw Icicle and IMB. It'll definitely tide you well over until you get Iron Shot, at which point the game should be (snerk) putty in your hands. Shatter is an extremely powerful spell that has been changed to pure Earth (like Sandblast!), but clearing the game with Iron Shot should be easy enough. Combination and god-wise, I chose Deep Elf Earth Elementalist and Ashenzari, using the latter to reskill my Conjurations into 15 Fighting and otherwise tanking the game with minimal difficulty.


Further stuff: LRD, even made pure Earth, sucks. Maybe use it to break stone/metal, but you can use Shatter for that if you're really lazy enough. I didn't use Summon Elemental one bit. Stoneskin is also mediocre without Statue Form and I avoided this as well.

[tormodpwns]

For my Earth Elementalist win, I used Stone Arrow for an incredibly long time. Since the damage buff in 0.8, it's been a top tier conjuration that only gets serious competition for damage at range for that cost from Throw Icicle and IMB.

This totally saves Earth Elementalists, because Stone Arrow used to deal a measly 2d12 damage while Icicle did 3d20 and IMB did 2d28. Yay, you don't even need to find a spellbook early on just to survive!

[Sealer]

Now it deals 3d11 which is very respectable damage for a level 3 spell. It also branches very well into iron shot which does huge amounts of damage, and possibly crystal spear which at max power can deal about 200 damage per hit.

[joellercoaster]

OK, so my SEEE of Kikubaaqudha died YAverySD at XL18 in the low dungeon. The build seems generally very viable, and I have some reflections...

1) Spell slot management is important (I chose badly early on and used a few scrools of Amnesia on early learns). But you quickly find Necromancy dominating everything training-wise, unless you are careful to victory dance. For this I used Stoneskin (Earth/Tmut), as I was aiming for Necromutation (Necro/Tmut) and Shatter (Earth) as my late-game plan.

2) -2 to Conj didn't seem to be a handicap. Still ended up with it at level 10 or so before I turned it off (compared to 16 Earth and Necro).

3) Stone Arrow and Sandblast are both excellent all the way through the midgame, especially supplemented with Agony.

4) This should be a good build for training Fighting, but it's still really hard to get beyond 5 or so!

5) Maybe because I was spending a lot of XP victory-dancing towards later-game goals, I found that I wasn't really dominating anything - I got into a lot of scrapes with things that I had to fight piecemeal, or run around, much more than with other builds I've gotten this far. I suspect that had all those XP gone straight into Necro that would have been different, as Vampiric Draining and Agony both had still headroom in the spell power department when I died. I also ran out of MP absurdly often even though I had a Ring of Magical Power - Sublimation of Blood was really helpful there.

So my options at the moment look like playing the Kiku build differently, or trying Sif Muna (try and get Tmut going a bit better, MP) or Vehumet (Iron Shot, extra range on Stone Arrow (which was annoying), MP again).

Back to the drawing board...

[joellercoaster]

OK, after a few more attempts, I have a few more things on SEEEs:

Playing as a Conjurer with Vehumet and backup from Transmutations works well, up to a point. With Stone Arrow and Sandblast you find yourself doing OK until you run into multiple hard opponents (seems to reliably happen near the bottom of the Lair) and you need to make things die right now. Or tough unique (Roka, Rupert, etc)... with Iron Shot you can generally kill most things. The problems happen when you run into someone your one trick doesn't work on (I'm talking to you, shield users).

Statue Form plus Stoneskin is great for giving yourself more time to splatter things with your assorted bits of rock.

However, I keep dying in the midgame (XL13-16) due to still being too one-dimensional... I think this is potentially because I'm just bad at casters, though. Might post my last YASD to the advice forum.

[danr]

I keep preaching the gospel of the Halfling Hunter. They are good at killing things before they are close, and even when they get close, they can't touch you because of your shield and dodging. Go Okawaru, get some +4 steel bullets, and start learning charms and translocations. To me this is totally the best build (most well-rounded) in the game. Good ranged combat, good close-up combat, good stealth, good HP, good EV / SH, good magic support, low metabolism, and built in rMut.

I just had to say this because of your comment about being one-dimensional.

[Grimm]

First it was all the time quarterstaves, now it's the aptly named "HaHu" in every single thread.

[danr]

I just had to say this because of your comment about being one-dimensional.

[tormodpwns]

First it was all the time quarterstaves, now it's the aptly named "HaHu" in every single thread.

what?

[Grimm]

Just a bit of humour, tormodpwns.

[joellercoaster]

Aaaaaand back on topic for a second:

- Attempts to avoid one-dimensionality have basically failed (spent some time with Fulsome Distillation preparing to Evaporate my way through Elf with potions of Strong Poison, then completely forgot to do that as I realised just how powerful LRD is in those long stone passages - Elf and Snake are now partly reduced to rubble around choke points), but Blink and Abjuration have added greatly to survivability.

- Bolt of Magma isn't a great killer but it's still a bolt. OK when you're getting mobbed.

- Stone Arrow is completely useless in Hive. About 9MP/kill vs bees, compared to 1 using Sandblast (Sandblast is still great!). Got a lot better at using SA when I realised that the inaccuracy isn't so bad if you draw your targeting line through multiple opponents; at least it (probably) eventually hits *something*.

- Iron Shot is still impressive though my Conj skill is starting to run out of steam in a big way.

I haven't fired it in anger yet, but I found Shatter in the Elf treasure vault. It's almost at max power already, so hopefully I don't get carried away and do anything really stupid.

[vintermann]

I had a DS Wizard who branched over to earth conjurations. The reason was that he got the shadow attunement mutation, and I figured out that at max level, I would be able to hit anything I could see with Iron Shot(and possibly LCS as well? Never found it in this game).

What do you use as area control spell? I find this is a weak point for earth elementalists. Anything that attacks in packs too large to take out before they surround you, is a challenge. I relied on poison/ice cloud (power isn't much of an issue with those spells), as well as the occasional conjure flame i hadn't bothered to amnesia. Plus Mephitic cloud, of course.
There are preciously few area control spells that don't rely on air. Until the ultimate one, shatter... I also found Chei's slouch a very effective area control option (got dropped into the middle of an ant hive by a trap. One shout to wake'em, two slouches to kill every single one, probably at a net piety gain at that).

[joellercoaster]

Slouch (Chei in general) is brilliant, but you can get an awful lot of mileage out of Lee's Rapid Deconstruction.

The Lair is quite challenging, but packs in open spaces can still be taken out by petrifying the closest one and hitting the rest with LRD shrapnel as they go past - this alone makes it worth victory dancing Transmutations fairly early, for me. You will inevitably screw up though, at which point Blink is a godsend.

Regarding LCS: As a sludge elf I'm finding Lehudib's Crystal Spear quite challenging to get working, but so far I haven't needed it between Iron Shot, LRD (taking down big packs of Iron Trolls in a couple of casts is pretty satisfying) and the very occasional Shatter. Which I am mostly using for dungeon vandalism

Side note: Amulet of the Gourmand is bordering on the abusive at this point

[Excedrin]

http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/trunk/E ... 010944.txt

So, I played a few MDEE before this one. My goals were to play a heavy armour caster and go earth because it was new to me (actually heavy armour was new too). With this guy, I cast sandblast for a very long time, it seems like an extremely powerful spell (I kept running out of rocks). Then once I got stone arrow (close) to hungerless I switched to stone arrow with sandblast for stuff that gets close. Shortly after that I got iron shot and just spammed iron shot constantly. For most of the game, I used LRD only situationally, but later I started to realize that it applies in a ton more situations than I thought (and I started spamming LRD everywhere). I think that I'd be able to do equally well by going Sandblast -> LRD and basically skipping conjurations entirely. The part I'm not mentioning is that MDEE is good at Axe magic and can keep the character going when out of mana or when there's no rocks or walls around. If I play an EE again I think I'll plan more for getting Staff of Earth because it crushes everything, it's suprisingly great at 27 earth and >= 14 evoc.

Soooo that would probably look a lot more like this MDEE that mikee_ played: http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/trunk/m ... 160559.txt

[tormodpwns]

Does a Staff of Earth have any special intrinsics? Also, how heavy was your armour? I'm guessing nothing more than chain mail to cast all those spells. And how exactly does Shatter work?

[Excedrin]

I just used dragon armour (-3 EV) but I would have used storm dragon armour (-5 EV) if a hide had dropped before I was doing Zot. When I went into Zot I had killed a few Storm Dragons but they didn't drop hides, so I decided to use my enchant armour scrolls on my dragon armour. I had a randart storm dragon armour and I could cast while wearing it, but it had -1 AC so I didn't use it. Having around 40 AC with stoneskin up in dragon armour was plenty.

Shatter simply blasts everything nearby and breaks some walls, it's very loud tho. It's also better vs non-flying stuff. I had to change pants after accidentally casting it on Zot 5 because I expected everything to come after me. But it worked out ok. In retrospect it's probably not necessary to learn, and as MDEE it's hard to have enough int or spellcasting to make it hungerless. So, if I do another MDEE I'll probably stick with sandblast, LRD, stoneskin, occasional petrify and much more bashing magic.

[Jeremiah]

I think one of the problems with Earth Elementalists, and with Earth Magic generally is that there is no race that is particularly good for using it.

The only races that get better than 0 aptitude are MD, DD, SE and Gh, and of these the dwarves and ghoul are all-round bad at magic, leaving only the Sludge Elf as a race that is good with earth magic and not too bad at magic generally.

On the other hand, most of the 'good magic-user' races are worse at Earth Magic than any other type - both High Elves and Spriggans get negative aptitude for it, and even Deep Elves are worse at it than all the other magic skills.

So if you want to play an Earth Elementalist you are left with the choice of either being generally bad with magic, or of playing a sludge elf and suffering their bad aptitude for conjurations which makes it hard to take advantage of some of the most powerful spells like Stone Arrow/Iron Shot.

I wonder if playing a human might actually be the best option, as at least they aren't crippled in any of the important skills.

[eith]

I think one of the problems with Earth Elementalists, and with Earth Magic generally is that there is no race that is particularly good for using it.

The only races that get better than 0 aptitude are MD, DD, SE and Gh, and of these the dwarves and ghoul are all-round bad at magic, leaving only the Sludge Elf as a race that is good with earth magic and not too bad at magic generally.

On the other hand, most of the 'good magic-user' races are worse at Earth Magic than any other type - both High Elves and Spriggans get negative aptitude for it, and even Deep Elves are worse at it than all the other magic skills.

So if you want to play an Earth Elementalist you are left with the choice of either being generally bad with magic, or of playing a sludge elf and suffering their bad aptitude for conjurations which makes it hard to take advantage of some of the most powerful spells like Stone Arrow/Iron Shot.

I wonder if playing a human might actually be the best option, as at least they aren't crippled in any of the important skills.

You are way over-estimating the importance of apts.

[joellercoaster]

So if you want to play an Earth Elementalist you are left with the choice of either being generally bad with magic, or of playing a sludge elf and suffering their bad aptitude for conjurations which makes it hard to take advantage of some of the most powerful spells like Stone Arrow/Iron Shot.

I thought that too, until I tried it.

I'm playing my current SEEE as basically a Conjurer - leaned heavily on Stone Arrow and then later Iron Shot - still use the latter on the beefy flying enemies who are so rude as to step away from walls (where they get blended to a pulp by Lee's Rapid Deconstruction).

He's currently XL27 and has just pretty much walked through the Vaults unchallenged... even at one-pip-short-of-max power, Iron Shot cast by a Sludge Elf is still a really reliable way of making big things die quickly. I suspect I may never get around to learning Lehudib's Crystal Spear at this rate.

Shatter, now... eek. See a Lich, press 'zj' to gain 4000XP

[szanth]

O_o Doesn't shatter only work against adjacent enemies?

[tormodpwns]

Yep aptitudes are overrated, you can pretty much start any race on any path if you victory dance enough. For example, Trolls are awful at spellcasting but if you start a Crusader you can get Berserker Rage castable by level 5 or so.

[daniel_charms]

Sludge Elf Earth Elementalists are really powerful, especially if you manage to find a staff of Earth early on (like I did). Petrify and LRD take down pretty much everything that dares to look at you funny, and with some evo spamming, the staff turns into an atomic smasher. As to Shatter, then the best thing about it seems to be that you can kill all the vault guards before they even get the chance to move...unfortunately, I never quite managed to figure out what else it could be good for and then went and died in Zot:5 because I never found any good resistances anywhere in the dungeon...

shattered.png (79.09 KiB) Viewed 13395 times

[LunarHarp]

I have been playing with EE in trunk, and despite the triple ac check LRD has been very useful throughout the entire mid game. By the time that I got to some highish AC monsters I had iron shot lined up and there was no problems. So as it stands petrify in the start spell book makes LRD as it stands now quite good.

[Katak]

My last character to pick up earth magic ended up learning Iron Shot eventually and found it horribly worthless next to Stone Arrow. I elected to only use Iron Shot once or twice on tough enemies and then spam stone arrows. Iron Shot is even more inaccurate than Stone Arrow as far as I can tell, but the increased damage isn't worth that miss chance.

Sandblast is beautiful. Also, I have to say that I didn't miss much with Stone Arrow on the character, but almost all of my Iron Shots missed. Eventually I had max power in both spells, too.

[Gabriellk]

My last character to pick up earth magic ended up learning Iron Shot eventually and found it horribly worthless next to Stone Arrow. I elected to only use Iron Shot once or twice on tough enemies and then spam stone arrows. Iron Shot is even more inaccurate than Stone Arrow as far as I can tell, but the increased damage isn't worth that miss chance.

Sandblast is beautiful. Also, I have to say that I didn't miss much with Stone Arrow on the character, but almost all of my Iron Shots missed. Eventually I had max power in both spells, too.

I really love Iron Shot. Its damage is great, it can take several end game monsters with few shots. 9d18 isn't good enough?
And the accuracy really isn't that bad, imo. Unless we are talking about some things with crazy EV. I dont even know if its accuracy is worse than Stone Arrow, really.

[Katak]

I really love Iron Shot. Its damage is great, it can take several end game monsters with few shots. 9d18 isn't good enough?
And the accuracy really isn't that bad, imo. Unless we are talking about some things with crazy EV. I dont even know if its accuracy is worse than Stone Arrow, really.

I know it is supposed to be a great spell (and has been on previously characters). I just wasn't having the slightest bit of luck with it on that character. I can't complain that Stone Arrow was working for me in the late game though.