FDA vs Troll Leather + Ozocubu's

[Zazen]

I have a +4 Troll Leather and Ozucubu on my UC DsWr of Okawaru (claws popped early), picked up a FDA from a shop because I had excess ?Enchant Armor and am wondering though if it is worth the extra spell failure to make the switch or whether I should just pump Ice Magic to better return out of Ozocubu's Armor.

This is after getting one Rune (Swamp) with Spider as my other lair branch pending

[mopl]

What are your resists with/without FDA ?

TLA + Ozo seems a solid option, but full dump could help us being more precise

[Zazen]

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Zazen/Zazen.txt

Boatload of rC+++ due to Scales and RandArt cloak, rF+from helmet. So not really hurting on the rF/C front truth be told, but more AC would be nice.

Going to aim to get Statue Form online which would help on the AC front and negate the benefit of FDA somewhat, but assuming I'm not trying to cast anything tougher than L6 spells, thinking it would be nice to have a default better AC if the spell casting penalty can be overcome.

[mopl]

FDA will hurt your spell success, of course. All depends on when you want to have your spells online...

I'd go with TLA + Ozo.

[tasonir]

Claws 3 and robust? You're a troll! Wear your skin with pride! Normally I'd recommend FDA, but if you really don't need the resists and already have +4 TLA, there isn't much reason to invest in switching. You still have plenty of other things you should be spending experience on: get your spells online, possibly get a shield, learn more magic, etc. TLA is good enough for now and there's already a lot of things going on for you. Also, there's always the chance you randomly find/okawaru gives you a body armor that's much better.

[JFunk]

And do not underestimate the value of additional regen. AC provides a benefit only at the moment you take damage. Regen is useful any time you are below max hp, and its usefulness can be multiplied by your play, typically encouraging good play. Careful luring and kiting are rewarded by additional hp regained. You also recover from fights much faster, leaving you more resistant to wars of attrition on busy levels. Plus with Oz's, you must be able to reach close to the same max AC anyway.

[nago]

And rather than learning a two school level spell which slows you and melds your armour I'd learn other spell - like haste, phase shift, blink, and so on.
Btw, with claws 3 I wouldn't have trained and learnt blade hands - sure the latter does some more damage than claws, but the latter deal so much tons of pain that any (good) form upgrade is kinda a big waste of xp

[Zazen]

And rather than learning a two school level spell which slows you and melds your armour I'd learn other spell - like haste, phase shift, blink, and so on.
Btw, with claws 3 I wouldn't have trained and learnt blade hands - sure the latter does some more damage than claws, but the latter deal so much tons of pain that any (good) form upgrade is kinda a big waste of xp

I already have Blink online and picked on transmutations for dealing with hydras (Ice Form removes Claws 3 which would otherwise hack of the Hydra heads). Blade Hands was basically free and gives the equivalent of +9 base damage over Claws 3.

Haven't found any of the fun high level spells like Phase Shift/Haste yet, so my choices for skilling at the moment seem to be:

1. UC/Dodge/Fighting
2. Armor/Spell skills to go to FDA
3. Statue Form or Deflect Missiles (both L6 dual school)

Since I have Repel Missiles already I figured Statue Form was the way to go to fill in some resistance gaps (rElec, Torment, rPois without the squishiness of Ice Form) and the melding is not terrible since I only lose 11AC and gain at least 17 + pow/10 and bump my already obscene HP by another 30%

[njvack]

I already have Blink online and picked on transmutations for dealing with hydras

Not to diss on ice form, but training tmut as a way of dealing with hydras is not a very good investment. Wands, rods, ranged combat, and walking away all work fine and are cheaper. And when you're beefy enough, you can just hit them until they die, extra heads and all.

[nago]

What njvack said (except I'd said very bad choice instead not very good), plus with statue form you aren't considering the fact it slows you which is a very very very bad thing. Considering you don't actually need that resists, you deal lot of damage and you even lose lot of ac I'd seriously advice against it, much better to get more UC fighting dodging or evocation or whatever

[Sandman25]

The character is with Oka, it does not need UC/Dodging/Charms that high so I support training Ice Form for Hydra/Black Mamba/Spiny Frog. Also the game has Swamp branch, there are no rods, conjuration wands (except Lightning). Level 4 spell is relatively cheap with Int 15, Ozo Armour makes it even more attractive.

[Zazen]

Thanks all for your comments. I've never got past two runes so clearly am still learning this game

When I found the book of changes I hadn't found any other books that had anything really worth learning, so having invested already in UC (because of claws) I just went with the theory that my DsWr was really a DsTm

[Zazen]

Just a quick update. I went down the transformation route just to play with Statue Form (made slightly cheaper by using a ring of wizardry to get it castable), and I can now appreciate why it was not recommended.

I hadn't factored in the effect of the armor skill not applying to SF (this is the first character I've got armor up to a decent level on). So the melded armor is roughly on par with SF's AC boost and I lose out of Ozo Armor. Of course if I dumped all that Armor XP into Earth things would be different

Still at 3 runes now (first time!) and trying to figure out how brave I am feeling...

[tasonir]

Ac in statue form should still be slightly to significantly higher than +4 Troll armor. It is now based on overall spellpower rather than just earth magic, so if you want to raise it, train transmutations and earth, wield a staff of earth, etc. Using wizardry to get it online you probably have fairly low spellpower, which might explain the lower ac. Also, make sure you're also casting stoneskin - statue form without stoneskin isn't that impressive AC.

All that said, even if you're doing everything right, statue form is still a fairly niche build and if you already had Ozo's armor going then don't expect that it's going to be all that much better, unless you're also using it for something you need like rElec, torment resist, etc. Do note that since you're going unarmed, and have claws, the melee damage will be EXTREMELY high (with the penalty of being slow, but unarmed is a very fast weapon to begin with so this is generally fine as long as you don't walk/cast in statue form).