Some newbie questions...

[d3k0]

Hi all!
I have a couple of question hoping that some of you more experienced crawlers can answer.
A bit of background: i played 105 times, my best are a 55000 HEAM-15 dead by starving (no comments please ) at Lair:7 and a 41700 HEHu-13 slain by a skeletal warrior at D:13.
Usually my developing path is: train bow until is "enough", when i find a good spellbook i train the corresponding ability, for the remaining train a bit of fighting and a bit of evocations.
Sometimes stealth and/or dodge, but I did not find them very useful.

First question: is it normal that (expecially in Lair) if I find a pack of death yaks and if i am not-so-well-positioned, is very very difficult to stay alive? Staying alive usually involves potions, kiting, Nemelex cards (i love Nemelex ), and so on. If i do not find any jewelery like Spirit Guardian, or Vitality, or similar, is even more difficult.

Second question: how much evocation is needed to cast the "deal 4 cards" (****) ability of Nemelex with a decent percentage of success? Since it's a very good life-saver, it could be nice to cast it successfully when you need it...

Thank you for any advice!

[mopl]

I'll try to add some answers :

First question: is it normal that (expecially in Lair) if I find a pack of death yaks and if i am not-so-well-positioned, is very very difficult to stay alive?

Yes it's normal
Being not-so-well-positioned will always kill you !
Staying alive includes retreating, fleeing, cowarding, letting those monsters for later, escaping...

Second question: how much evocation is needed to cast the "deal 4 cards" (****) ability of Nemelex with a decent percentage of success? Since it's a very good life-saver, it could be nice to cast it successfully when you need it...

I don't know, but you can see the success rate (type a*).
If you plan to go with Nemelex, just train Evocation for a long time as soon as you find an altar and use cards a lot.

Usually my developing path is: train bow until is "enough", when i find a good spellbook i train the corresponding ability, for the remaining train a bit of fighting and a bit of evocations.
Sometimes stealth and/or dodge, but I did not find them very useful.

Current advice is train your offense, then get some defenses.
In a hunter case, that would mean Bows, then some Dodging/Armour depending on what you found and some Fighting.
Stealth is useful if you don't wear an heavy armour.

[Sprucery]

Sometimes stealth and/or dodge, but I did not find them very useful.

Dodging is very important. Depending on your dexterity and armour it takes a few levels of dodging until you start to see the effect on your evasion.

[Lasty]

It sounds like you're not training either Dodging or Armour, and most characters want to train at least one of these early in the game, and the other to some extent by mid-game to end-game, depending. Having decent AC/EV will make a huge difference in how easily you can survive.

Death yaks are very strong enemies when they first appear, and if you see one coming and you're not in position to handle it well, you should immediately start escaping.

[d3k0]

Well,
at the moment usually I am not training none of dodge, stealth and armor.
Some times I tried to train dodge, and sometimes stealth.
I found both to be quite effective in early game (early for me, in first 6-8 dungeon levels), but in later levels they not seemed so effective.
Maybe I should train them more.
Never trained armor, since I thought it is mainly for caster, to lower armor effect on casting.
I see stealth as a defensive ability because position management and packs are easier if not all monsters see you... but again, while 3 or 4 points in stealth are enough in lower levels, maybe they are almost useless later on.

My ideas are quite confused about the 3 stats...

[tedric]

The more a skill has been trained, the more another level of that skill costs -- and the less effective each additional point of XP invested becomes. So once you get to Lair-ish, it becomes relatively cheap to pick up 5-10 levels in defensive skills versus getting one more level of a skill that's already in the teens. For that small investment in Armour/Dodging you can get a couple more points of AC/EV, which is usually worth it.

Stats: If you want to cast lots of spells, pick Int. Otherwise pick Dex, unless you need Str for something specific like making a particularly good armour useable or avoiding stat death (if an effect drains one of your stats to zero, bad things start to happen and you eventually die). Dex is more generally useful than Str for combat calculations.

[d3k0]

Thank you all for the advices.
I will train more armor and dodge.
I understand the attack part much better than the defense part.
another quick question: is there a way to break down stats in what constitutes them?
For example, If I have X EV, is there a way to split it in components?
Something like:

Your EV comes from:
xxx base value
-xxxx from armor
+xxxx bonus from dodge
and so on?

Thank you!

[TheArcanist]

(if an effect drains one of your stats to zero, bad things start to happen and you eventually die)

Stat death is no longer a thing, thankfully. Draining a stat to zero will do a great deal of irresistible damage, but it's no longer an auto-kill.

Also, with the change to how armor penalties work, consistently picking Str if you're wearing superheavy armor like GDA or CPA is often a good idea, because there's no longer a hard cap on when Str stops reducing EV penalties.

[Lasty]

There's no way to do a breakdown like that -- Crawl's design philosophy is to mostly avoid giving detailed numbers and statistics in-game. The calculations for dex are pretty complicated, but the upshot is that it increases based on your Dodging and dexterity increase, and decreases as your player size increases (troll, ogre, naga, centaur) and as you wear armour with encumbrance, though the Armour skill and strength each help to moderate how much encumbrance affects your EV.

More specifically, you have an "adjusted evasion penalty" derived from strength, Armour skill and encumbrance, and it is used to penalize your Dodging skill and also subtracted from your EV, so in heavier armour you might not see your EV increase from Dodging skill until you train past a certain point, and then it will begin to rise normally.

Armour skill will also give you an AC bonus equal to (sum total of your armour base AC values) * (Armour_skill / 22). Since it counts your peripheral armour, while wearing plate amour and full peripheral armour, you get something like +1 ac per 1.5 Armour skill. Generally, this bonus is the main reason to train the Armour skill, so it can be wise to keep this formula in mind when deciding how much to train Armour.

[tasonir]

A quick suggestion: If you want to keep playing bow users, an excellent way to improve your scores and get further would be to play on a centaur. They have fast movement, more health, and are generally extremely strong, with a +3 bow aptitude as well. They get -3 to armor and dodging only as a way to keep the race's overall power in check - don't think it means you can't train them. You'll still want to train them at the appropriate times just like any other race. You can outrun death yaks all day long

[Lacuenta]

I'll have to say hunters and Nemelex are not the best combination in my opinion.
The good thing about nemelex is that he gives you ranged/summoning abbilities which are far more usefull if you don't already have them.

If you like Nemelex try a minotaur/gargoyle/hill orc fighter/gladiator/monk etc (focussed on melee type).
Nemelex will aptly compensate for your lack of ranged abbilities, while only needing one skill, evocations, which handily also works with a lot of other powerfull items; jewellery, (inv/fly/berserk/blink) wands, lamps, discs, rods and phials and gives mp to boot.
Contrary to training magic skills with a melee oriented built, this will leave you with more then enough xp to train your combat related skills (armour/dodge, fighting, weapon skill). No need to lucksack into the right book, or trying to overcome hideous aptitudes since almost all races have 0 or better apt for evo.

If on the other hand you really want to play a hunter/am I'd personally go with okawaru, he will gift you weapons and much needed ammo. Though i'm certainly no expert on ranged combat.

[d3k0]

The first reason I choosed Nemelex is... because I like it
The second is that with "deal 4 cards" I get a very cool lifesaver, that is effective with many types of decks (destruction, evasion, summoning...)
A legendary deck of summoning saved my life many times, too, also with the standard "draw 1 card" ability.
Anyway I am open to new possibilities and I started just now a new character going with Okawaru

[netkitten]

Usually my developing path is: train bow until is "enough", when i find a good spellbook i train the corresponding ability, for the remaining train a bit of fighting and a bit of evocations.

imo train long blades (or w/e you want) to min delay and then go heavy into bows (if you want a high elven archer), fighting and dodging (probably armor a bit too)

get rmsl, blink, haste if you find those spells, get only utility spells, no conjurations

[d3k0]

get rmsl, blink, haste if you find those spells, get only utility spells, no conjurations

The reason I usually go for casting spells is to have rmsl (I find very difficult fighting packs of ranged centaurs), invisibility if i find it, and to have some decent AoE damage with fireball or similar spells, to deal with large groups. When I start with Arcane Marksman, Enslavement, Cause Fear and Sticky flame are a bit of help with large groups, but when I encounter high level orcs, or death yaks, they usually resist...

[cerebovssquire]

You don't need decent AoE damage. If you want that in addition to ranged combat and defenses and other spells and probably some melee as well, you are training too many skills. Invisibility is a great spell but this is because of its use in stabbing, not actual fighting (I'm not sure about how you are using it, sorry if you were already aware of this), where its benefits are still noticable but not really enough to justify training for a l6 spell.
Instead of training AoE damage, try to draw single monsters away from packs, use corridors, etc. If you do need to damage multiple monsters, wands of fire/cold/draining are good enough. If you can't handle a monster, just run upwards and come down a different staircase, which should be especially if they are speed 10 and melee only like death yaks or orc knights/warlords. Death yak packs can be handled quite effectively by drawing single death yaks up staircases as you switch between staircases.

[d3k0]

You don't need decent AoE damage.

Instead of training AoE damage, try to draw single monsters away from packs, use corridors, etc.

Maybe I am just not good enough at doing this...

For example when you say:

If you can't handle a monster, just run upwards and come down a different staircase

I do this only when I am near to death at 1 HP
I still have to learn a lot I supppose...

[Patashu]

You don't need decent AoE damage.

Instead of training AoE damage, try to draw single monsters away from packs, use corridors, etc.

Maybe I am just not good enough at doing this...

For example when you say:

If you can't handle a monster, just run upwards and come down a different staircase

I do this only when I am near to death at 1 HP
I still have to learn a lot I supppose...

Yes, you should start running above 50% hp, not below. If you leave it that late you have severely misjudged the situation.

[Hopeless]

You don't need decent AoE damage.

Instead of training AoE damage, try to draw single monsters away from packs, use corridors, etc.

Maybe I am just not good enough at doing this...

For example when you say:

If you can't handle a monster, just run upwards and come down a different staircase

I do this only when I am near to death at 1 HP
I still have to learn a lot I supppose...

One thing that might help is raising when you get alerts to low hitpoints. The settings are in the .init/rc file.