How to play Skald?

[John Milferton]

Been burning my fingers on a merfolk skald lately, got massive survival problems early...

I put all xp into polearms till 5, then I put some in translocation to get golubria online, but I usually die before that, I feel very weak and have to run from trivial enemies...

Only once I got to the point where I got spec wep online + decent dodging and polearms at which point I could tabsdude yaks

but i cant get to that point relaibly

need halpa

[tasonir]

I tend to play horribly narrow and ignore half the options available, but the way I play skalds is to mostly train weapon first, then train a small amount of charms/necromancy to get regeneration down to 20-30% fail, and play a regeneration fighter. Raise your weapon skill a bit more, eventually raise regeneration's spell power some, be happy. Biggest issue is getting a better weapon, because skalds get terrible starting weapons.

Spectral weapon is also great, of course, I just usually cast regeneration more.

[Sandman25]

I tend to play Sk like a Gl except I know I will have Regeneration later. Clear exception was FeSk as Shroud was extremely useful with so low HP.

[Sar]

I'm with Sandman here, I don't really start to level magical skills before I have a solid character overall. With Merfolk, that shouldn't be very hard!

[KoboldLord]

Skald is a rather difficult start period, compared to the majority of other starting backgrounds. You should almost certainly ignore magic development for a while, and an early plate armour might even tempt you to dump your starting book completely. Assuming you stick to leather and intend to actually use your spells, bear in mind that 30% fail still means you can just attempt to cast a couple times at range and then run away if it doesn't work. You do not have the same constraints on spell success rates as most other spellcasters, because you don't have any emergency spells and you don't have any spells that you will want to spam.

[notcluie]

you play skald like any melee start but you have a spellbook that you can burn when you join trog

e: seriously though you can just train weapon skill/maybe some defenses and use 30% fail golubria and infusion to get to temple then get whatever

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

Here's a fairly typical skald game with a human:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/keyma ... 065627.txt

I like to really pump weapon skill early on (I actually overtrained wep skill in the game), as a Mf should be very easy. Would get 10 or so polearms, then pump dodging to 10, then fighting to 5. Should be able to get this pretty easy as Mf. Then build how you like, getting spectral wep is great as a polearm user, maybe finish getting min delay, evocations never hurts.

an early plate armour might even tempt you to dump your starting book completely

Wouldn't go plate on a Mf due to defense apts (high dodge, low armour) though for the very beginning might be good, longer if lucky and it's highly enchanted.