Why is this unassuming spell so awesome?

[XuaXua]

I've been playing for a while, but I still simply don't use a lot of the spells that exist.

Many seem impractical or not necessary or less obvious in use.

Some are unexpectedly more powerful when applied vs. traditional means (Portal Projectile vs. Throwing is a good example).

As a means to advise anyone reading on the best way to use a given wonky spell, post a Crawl spell here and explain the best way it's used.

[banei]

Enslavement and Control Undead
Dazzling spray
Poisonous Cloud + Ignite Poison combo
bouncing shock and lightning bolts off of walls
summon butterflies

Those I believe are less known good spells

[savageorange]

Fulminant Prism as path denial. Enemies repath as if it's a plant, so whenever there are >1 possible paths, you can force them to go around a longer way.

[XuaXua]

Fulminant Prism as path denial. Enemies repath as if it's a plant, so whenever there are >1 possible paths, you can force them to go around a longer way.

That sounds like a bug.

[Tristian]

Dazzling Spray... I don't use it as often as I should.
Low level wide-spread attack, with a chance to blind.

[Patashu]

Dazzling Spray... I don't use it as often as I should.
Low level wide-spread attack, with a chance to blind.

It used to be good at even blinding 1s in extended, but it got rebalanced so now it only has a 5% chance of blinding a HD 18 monster and 0% for HD 19+.

[savageorange]

Fulminant Prism as path denial. Enemies repath as if it's a plant, so whenever there are >1 possible paths, you can force them to go around a longer way.

That sounds like a bug.

I don't see why. If the monster is intelligent, it probably should avoid wailing on the explody ball.. which leaves the only alternative as circumventing it.
(Unintelligent monsters, like yaks, will happily beat up Prisms, so this tactic is not good against them IIRC. Fortunately a lot of the enemies you will want to force away are humanoid)

[cerealjynx]

Recently had a GrGl that went into extended with an awesome lajatang, but went ahead and memorized OOD and Spellforged Servitor after nabbing a Conjuration manual. Holy crap. Telling it to park itself in a corner, lure in a group of enemies, I barely had a chance to melee them. I'm sure it's great to diversify SS' spellset, but a constant stream of OODs really gave me the overconfidence to die horribly in Dis.

[MrRokkomies]

Recently had a GrGl that went into extended with an awesome lajatang, but went ahead and memorized OOD and Spellforged Servitor after nabbing a Conjuration manual. Holy crap. Telling it to park itself in a corner, lure in a group of enemies, I barely had a chance to melee them. I'm sure it's great to diversify SS' spellset, but a constant stream of OODs really gave me the overconfidence to die horribly in Dis.

Ad Haste to the mix and Servitor becomes the hero instead of you.

Innerflame -> enslavement -> retreat! This is my favorite thing about Arcane Marksmen. Works even better when you do not worship Okawaru, since you can finish your slave off by your self to get the best timing.

[Sphara]

Butterfly barrier followed by LRD makes many ranged foes (stone giants, yaktaur packs) so trivial that in most cases they cannot hit you even once

Another great combo is Searing Ray and scroll of amnesia

[Patashu]

Butterfly barrier followed by LRD makes many ranged foes (stone giants, yaktaur packs) so trivial that in most cases they cannot hit you even once

Butterflies + portal projectile also works

[MrRokkomies]

...Another great combo is Searing Ray and scroll of amnesia

Please explain this?

[Sphara]

...Another great combo is Searing Ray and scroll of amnesia

Please explain this?

Well every spell has it uses of course. But i wouldn't learn Searing Ray on any other class that starting Conjurer.
Only thing good about it is, that it is cheap. Once you get IMB castable i don't see (m)any reasons clinging to this spell.

Personally i don't like standing still and waiting inaccurate beam to hit things like hydras and orc warriors.

[milo]

Conjure Flame.

Maybe not "unassuming" but there are so many times one can use it in a 3-rune game. Offensive and defensive (and tactical). Smite-targeted. Works with a lot of different play-styles. Really handy.

[Sar]

I love Searing Ray and I feel comfortable killing orc warriors with it. It also feels pretty accurate to me.
Probably would not use it on hydras, though.

[MrRokkomies]

Searing ray is really good spell until after lair. It is really cheap way to dispose of early gnoll packs, orc packs and even ogres in some cases. It is usefull against invisible orc wizards. It can do a lot of damage in full power. The stand still charge is not an issue, since you can cancel it at any time if things start to look bad. The best thing about searing ray is that it is bolt targeted and can hit a multiple targets at once which makes it really handy low level spell.

[KoboldLord]

I would learn searing ray on every conjurations background all the way up to the mid-game. You don't use it on everything, but it easily disposes of basically everything that has strong resistances all the way through the end of Lair and Orc with no investment beyond what you already spent on your other conjurations. You wouldn't want to use it on a hydra, but that's what your Fireball or Throw Icicle is for. Yeah, it's eventually replaceable by higher-level conjurations, but that's how most spells are supposed to work.

[XuaXua]

Fulminant Prism as path denial. Enemies repath as if it's a plant, so whenever there are >1 possible paths, you can force them to go around a longer way.

That sounds like a bug.

I don't see why. If the monster is intelligent, it probably should avoid wailing on the explody ball.. which leaves the only alternative as circumventing it.
(Unintelligent monsters, like yaks, will happily beat up Prisms, so this tactic is not good against them IIRC. Fortunately a lot of the enemies you will want to force away are humanoid)

I'd think the intelligent monsters would re-check their pathing after the sound of the explosion. Wouldn't they?

[stickyfingers]

It works on unintelligent foes just as well. The way length is calculated when the prism is placed, and again whet it is destroyed. The monster will only go around if the other path is not much longer than the one obstructed by the prism, then return on that path when the prism explodes (assuming it's shorter at the moment). Tested on wyverns and the like (although few months ago).

[and into]

Dazzling Spray... I don't use it as often as I should.
Low level wide-spread attack, with a chance to blind.

It used to be good at even blinding 1s in extended, but it got rebalanced so now it only has a 5% chance of blinding a HD 18 monster and 0% for HD 19+.

Yeah, it used to be absurd, but it is still very good.

I also agree with above posters that fulminant prism is pretty easy to underrate, but is very good as well. And there are lots of fun things you can do with enslavement, which is also distinguished by the fact that its list of (ab)uses grows every time enemies with fancy new abilities are added to the game.

[1010011010]

Luring big melee fighters into a conjured flame then spamming butterflies so they can't leave can kill even Ice giants.

[Sphara]

This is an old trick and might even be dangerous without caution but nevertheless:

Using enslavement on a giant eyeball in the Slime Pits (and everywhere else where they show up) can make your life a lot easier. Especially for a stabby character.

[Tedronai]

Note that giant eyeballs are pretty much gone in trunk.

[Hirsch I]

I need to start following the commits. I love Giant Eyeballs, why removing them?

[Tedronai]

I need to start following the commits. I love Giant Eyeballs, why removing them?

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... df139e863f

[Utis]

Static Discharge. It ignores armour.

[Hirsch I]

I need to start following the commits. I love Giant Eyeballs, why removing them?

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... df139e863f

sad. but makes sense.

[corvin]

Really basic stuff, but as a pretty crappy player I found the following synergies useful:

Conjure flame + inner flame - 1)block the doorway. 2)inner flame the weakest member of the mob. 3)poke inner-flamed dude with something. 4)blow up just about anything standing next to said dude. For chaining results and to hit things outside your LOS, use inner flame+confuse. This can link several explosions together nicely. Really good for the early game.

conjure flame + confuse - pretty standard seeming. Tough dudes burn themselves to death. box them in with conjured flame, confuse them, and walk away.

phial of floods + fireball - recreates dropping fireballs in a lake, which I have found to be surprisingly effective. adds (seemingly) a lot of lingering steam damage to the fireball, plus blocks LOS.

[Matanui3]

Fulminant Prism as path denial. Enemies repath as if it's a plant, so whenever there are >1 possible paths, you can force them to go around a longer way.

That sounds like a bug.

Would YOU attack something that blows up in your face, if you could go around?


I used to go Fire Elementalist of Yred, and cast Inner Flame on my expendable minions, but I hear they removed that now. Or did they just remove inner flame on summons?

[Siegurt]

Just summons

[crate]

It was in fact never possible to inner flame summons, as far as I know, so that wasn't even removed.

[dck]

You could IF s2s but s2s are weird and not technically summons even though they are on a timer regardless.

[MrRokkomies]

Just had a YASD with a DrCj and had a really good time with fulminant prism. It is very versatile and convenient since it has smite targeting and delayed detonation. Delayed detonation allows you to cast it on sleeping monsters and retreat before it goes of. Since the range of the blast is 2 blocks and you can usually take 2 steps away before the blast, you can attack monsters very far away out of your LOS. Smite targeting also makes it easy to place the prism in the most strategic position. You can also place it in water and use it to take out early Eels.

Also with the delayed blast, you can use the prism as a timed fuse to set off a chain of innerflames if you use a scroll of immolation. This is how my YASD happened. It would have worked if I had not had a posse of friendly skeletons trailing the blasts to me. My idea was, read immolation, set prism, blink away. (don't let orcs hit the prism and detonate it prematurely...) Second idea: cast mephitic cloud, read immolation, cast ignite poison -> fireworks?

[kroki]

Meph -> ignite poison is pretty average for the mana it costs, because the resulting flame clouds rarely last over a turn in my expierence (2 # short from max power). It's one of the best spells for snake pit though, more than capable of one shotting regular nagas and two shotting mages and ritualists.

Dazzling spray also works all the way to zot, and is capable of blinding orb guardians. It also does respectable damage to late game monsters which are resistant/immune to all elemental damage.

Bolt of draining while inferior to fire bolt allows you to shoot over your undead minions and servitor without hurting them (and turning them against you). It still regularly two shots non resistant late game threats.

Shadow creatures is cheap in getting online and shines in depths and zot. Fight orbs of fire with orbs of fire.

[Sar]

SCreatures shines in Vaults also (basically it's great in any place with strong "standard" spawns).

[nago]

Shadow creatures is cheap in getting online and shines in depths and zot. Fight orbs of fire with orbs of fire.

That isn't a smart idea

[Sar]

I think it's a direct quote from badforum.

[kroki]

Shadow creatures is cheap in getting online and shines in depths and zot. Fight orbs of fire with orbs of fire.

That isn't a smart idea

It was my take on fight fire with fire saying, cut me some slack

[headcrab0803]

animate skeleton + inner flame but its not possible anymore

[rockygargoyle]

animate skeleton + inner flame but its not possible anymore

Yes it is

[Aule]

Freezing Cloud at a decent spell power is a room clearer, in many cases, especially if you get the horde into a wide chokepoint, where you can smite-target to the edge of LOS (making its effects go beyond it). Lots of annoying swarms can be easily dealt with using this one. One +rC will even let you stand in your own cloud for a little while without worrying too much, if need be.

[damiac]

The great thing about the cloud spells is all spell power affects is their duration (at least, that's what I've been told).
They're great spells for 'hybrid' casters, since all you need to be able to do is cast it. Meaning if you follow Veh, or have some wizardry sources, you can cast pretty powerful spells without too much XP investment, at least compared to getting a spellpower dependent conjuration to have good power.

[dck]

By the time you can do any of that you should have access to spells that are better in situations where your attack spells actually matter and are not just convenience. When you have pcloud you can have parrow or high power lbolts for equivalent investment. Bolt of cold is ridiculously better than fcloud.
Sure your point seems to be that you can just "get these and then never care about their power", but that still requires a very non-trivial amount of investment and if it was a good idea to pursue these respectively TRIPLE and dual schools level 6 spells then surely just getting the actually good ones is a lot better.

Anyway sticky flame is a much better example of what you bring up.

e: oh and if you actually ever use shit power cloud spells (you probably have through rods at some point) you'll notice they're incredibly annoying to use so that fucks up the convenience appeal

[tabstorm]

Passage of Golubria

[crate]

It's not possible to be able to cast fcloud or pcloud spell with any reliability and still have bad spellpower unless you have contemplative mutation (or wield lantern of shadows or something, I guess ... don't do that), so the spellpower thing is not really a concern.

[XuaXua]

Passage of Golubria

Why.

[Patashu]

Passage of Golubria

Why.

Imagine if you could cast controlled blink but it was cheaper than level 7
If you don't know how to use it, try starting sprints as a warper and experimenting with it
I also think you can trick monsters into taking it, never tried using it like that tho

[Blink]

Passage of Golubria

Why.

Because you can use it to bypass all sorts of stuff. Tab used it to win in 10k turns.

Ninja.png (370.46 KiB) Viewed 16819 times

It is basically controlled blink that take 3 less MP, 1-2 more turns to use (as you need to step into the portal after you cast it), and a bit less accurate (the exit portal is not always on the square you choose, but you can see where it is before you step int). It doesn't work at all on Tel- levels.

I've used multiple portals pre-0.14 and I recall that if you could end up in any of the other portals. In many ways it is like that exploding prism: i.e., it really rewards planning ahead.

[tabstorm]

Because you can use it to bypass all sorts of stuff. Tab used it to win in 10k turns.

Not that fast Maybe I could do 13k though if I got lucky.

But yeah, some tricks include:

Ghetto cblink if you need to cross some area but lack for instance fly.
Create space to escape from an enemy. When you use for instance a scroll of blinking, it's often not so important that you escape across the entirety of the screen, but that you are not next to the dude you are next to.
Golubriawalk into a vault, apport a rune, and walk back into the portal to exit like in pic above. You can even blink dudes around corners with proper setup!
Drop a passage in front of an approaching enemy to blink it away, then run. Once used it to drop an enemy on an island minivault in Lair iirc. Should have used it to move a Titan out of the way on the Zot entry vault but I decided to run around in circles instead for some reason.
Formicid tech in V:5 to get to the rim quickly.
Ninjaing Panlord runes as a Formicid (You can watch Yermak's tvs to see it in action)
Speedrun tech to explore as quickly as possible, especially combined with =tele (gives no contam and trivial hunger), not to mention gives you a chain of escape portals to walk into if things go badly if cast repeatedly sometimes.
Another neat one I just thought of if you are brave that might work with luck:

On a ctele-enabled rune vault, cast, passage, rtele into the vault (under shadow form hopefully), then ninja the rune, and walk back into your passage. If you go quickly enough it might spit you out back at the stairs where you cast it. According to the wiki you have about 30-50 turns.

[crate]

secret passage of golubria tech is using it to escape zot in zigsprint after you pick up the orb

see:

  Code:

!lm crate sprint orb min=turn -tv