Need help with late-early game SpVm

[majcrew35]

Hey guys,

I'm having a hard time getting past the early game with my SpVm of Vehemut. In particular, how do you handle poison resistant enemies? I don't find enough wands, so it seems to be a race to find a spellbook with a non-poison spell and then the experience to raise the corresponding school high enough for that spell to be useful. Last game I trained slings up to 4 just to handle basic phantoms, but that wasn't useful later on.

Any advice?

[jackalKnight]

Run, Spriggan, run.
That's how you handle the early game.
You can outrun almost anything in the game PERIOD, and certainly anything you encounter in the shallow part of the dungeon. Jellies are a nasty early foe but can easily be outrun; Imps and Phantoms are the bigger dangers, but both teleport around erratically rather than following directly in most cases. Seriously, if you see a Phantom or Imp early on, just head for the nearest stairs as quickly as possible. Only Venom Bolt has the raw power to dispose of them reliably.
The reason everyone suggest Vehu for SpVm? Easy (second gift guaranteed, anyway) access to both Conjurations boost (which makes Venom Bolt more reliable) and to Iskendrun's Mystic Blast. Once you get the Book of Power (second guaranteed gift!) you an learn IMB and alot of the weaker Poison resistant enemies will easily die to it.

[Stormfox]

Venom Bolt vs. phantoms or imps is a waste of mana. Don't confuse it with Poison Arrow -- Venom Bolt has no physical component. (Unless things have changed in 0.8 or trunk.)

This is one of those builds where you'll want to think about doing Orc:1-3 before Lair. Vehumet piety decays pretty quickly, and worshipping him is all about getting those casting assists and book gifts quickly. Taking down hordes of orcs in short order will build up that piety pretty well, at least enough to get that first book and an attack spell that isn't poison-based.

If you don't have the second book before you start Lair, you may even want to delay it further and head for Hive. (While Hive exists.) Even without rPois, if you use Cure Poison and Mephitic judiciously, you shouldn't have too much of a problem as long as you don't let yourself get swarmed. You'll rack up a bunch more kills and you'll get plenty of permafood.

Lair has the potential to crush you quickly if you haven't gotten the book of Power, though. There isn't anything you can do about spiny frogs or black mambas except run if you're still working out of the YP Handbook, and even the first book of Conjurations can be a little dicey.

[mikee]

Venom Bolt vs. phantoms or imps is a waste of mana. Don't confuse it with Poison Arrow -- Venom Bolt has no physical component. (Unless things have changed in 0.8 or trunk.)

I wonder how you can give VM advice while being misinformed about something as fundamental to the class as this. Venom bolt has always included physical damage.

[Stormfox]

Thanks for clearing that up. I was always under the impression that you shouldn't bother with Venom Bolt against anything with even one pip of rPois. (Thus I have tended to skip Venom Bolt completely.) But then, that has come from observation and not from source diving or the knowledge bots. I still stand by my statement that it has no direct physical component, but I also stand corrected in that it is not "useless" against things like phantoms and imps.

When you first get access to it, at least in my games I have other ways of dealing with rPois monsters (including but not limited to running away) and it costs a lot. By the time it becomes cost effective, you're not far from Poison Arrow (if you're with Vehumet and have been doing a decent job of building piety), if you don't already have it, and that doesn't cost a whole lot more. True, Arrow isn't a beam, but it does have an explicit physical component.

I'll have to give Bolt another chance, especially with the new mechanisms for forgetting spells that you don't want.

[LunarHarp]

Sting is the same way. You can kill a jelly in 15-20 or so casts of sting. I think throwing rocks at them is better then this, but it is certainly possible.

[majcrew35]

Thanks for all of the feedback, guys. It's proved very helpful. I reached D:16 and cleared lair and hive on my last attempt, died at char level 15 in the Mines - underestimated a cross-bow wielding Warlord, and assumed my Reflect Missiles would save me. A bit heartbroken about it, not gonna lie.

[majcrew35]

Once I get past the early game and have some escape mechanisms under my belt, it seems that most of my deaths are caused by burst damage - for example, the crossbow bolt that killed me last time hit for 34, or more than half of my total life. This is a definite downside to an EV build.

[joellercoaster]

died at char level 15 in the Mines - underestimated a cross-bow wielding Warlord

Pretty much any character at XL15 has only one reasonable response to an Orc Warlord, and that response is run like a squirrel. They tend to come with missile weapons a lot too though

[majcrew35]

Pretty much any character at XL15 has only one reasonable response to an Orc Warlord, and that response is run like a squirrel. They tend to come with missile weapons a lot too though

I had previously taken one down, so I had a false sense of security. Honestly though, I wish there was some sort of recommended XL for monsters listed somewhere. I recognize that variations in gear, race, and class make this nigh impossible, but had I read your post BEFORE dying I would have been more cautious.

[joellercoaster]

That's interesting... People might start taking notes with various classes about what level they are when they feel confident taking on certain common things, and see how it varies. Like (this is purely an imaginary list):

SENe: Orc 3, Gnoll 4 (Vampiric Draining), Ogre 6, Hydra 12 (Agony)... and so on.

Hmm.

[Confidence Interval]

That's interesting... People might start taking notes with various classes about what level they are when they feel confident taking on certain common things, and see how it varies. Like (this is purely an imaginary list):

SENe: Orc 3, Gnoll 4 (Vampiric Draining), Ogre 6, Hydra 12 (Agony)... and so on.

Hmm.

I'd welcome something like this. A lot of my deaths come through thinking "I can easily take this [orc/ jelly/ unique/ etc/]!" and then realizing after the (fatal) event that it was my previous (and now also dead) character, who was at a higher level, that could have managed that fight. It becomes even harder when I've been playing one class and switch to another: my level 10 Mountain Dwarf Fighter would have been OK in this situation - but will my level 8 Kobold Berserker?

Not sure whether a huge look-up table is the answer, and I imagine purists will say that coming to recognize what a particular character can and can't handle is part of the skill of the game... I just happen to lack that skill.

[hxy]

that might not be possible cos the set of equipment that you're using also contribute a significant bit to your damage-dealing abilities, as well as how much you can dodge or absorb damage

[Confidence Interval]

that might not be possible cos the set of equipment that you're using also contribute a significant bit to your damage-dealing abilities, as well as how much you can dodge or absorb damage

It will of course also depend on whether you're an experienced and thoughtful player of the game [like many people who post here] or totally strategically inept [like me].

With these various variables in mind, the question remains: how do you judge when to run away? (Let's presume you don't want to accumulate too many "false positives" and that you only want to run away when necessary, or when there's too much uncertainty to be sure you needn't)

[hxy]

I suppose "explore carefully" would be the best advice. As a beginner, dying early in the first ten or twenty games is to be expected, but after a while you'll get a feel of how your character is doing vs the various monsters.
e.g. if you find that you can take down an orc without getting much damage, then maybe the next time you come across two or three orcs together, you can still go ahead and bash them.
Uniques are where it gets tricky. Some have got special abilities, so check the knowledge bots, and compare their stats vs "familiar" monsters to get an idea of their relative difficulty.