Tuesday, 20th May 2014, 10:30 by gammafunk
Yes, suggestions of things that make allies and things that make fire are both good, and I'd add to that probably one of the simplest things you can use for hex-immune enemies : NETS. Spriggans can throw nets now, and if you wait until you're adjacent or nearly so, you'll have little trouble moving in for a stab. Even before they could throw nets, Sp could use nets while adjacent to an enemy, and they were still very handy for stabbing things as powerful as ancient liches and greater mummies.
For allies, consider maybe 5 necromancy and learning animate dead or even animate skeleton; it's possibly to make an undead mini-army that you can take along most of the level. Even if allies don't kill the thorn hunter quickly enough, if they can distract it for even one or two turns while you're within a few spaces of the hunter, you can move in to stab. Shadow creatures is excellent in swamp and requires maybe 8-10 summons (or less, depending on !brilliance or Ashenzari) to use effectively. Mana viper is a nice anti-magic option that also sense invisible and move fast, and would require even less (possibly 0) summons, assuming you have hexes trained.
To use e.g. fire effectively, just make sure you have 10 evocations or more before taking on a lair branch. A lamp of fire is probably most ideal thing since it makes bolts of fire that leave flame clouds and creates flame elementals. The steam clouds blocking LOS are the only thing you have to be careful about. Even the allies from the fan , the phial, or (arguably) the stone of tremors can be enough to get a distract-stab, and you only start to get those allies with reasonable evocations.
