A multi-character outline to help people diversify builds?

[Sprucery]

When I started playing Crawl, I played one game with each possible species-background combination. At that time, there were 356 such combinations*. I managed to win 6 games of these: HOFE, MDHe, HuRe, MDHu, HOCj, DsHu. To me it was definitely the most fun way to learn Crawl. Trying all kinds of combinations teaches you different aspects of the game. Of course, now there are much more combos...

*At that time, many species had a very restricted list of possible backgrounds. Actually, some combinations I played (SERe, CeWr, DrEn, MDWr, DrCr) were even removed during that time but anyway.

[Magipi]

When I started playing Crawl, I played one game with each possible species-background combination.

Awesome story!

In contrast to this, when I started playing, I played SpEn about 150 times until I won. When my brother (who was an experienced, but unsuccessful player) told me about the game, I asked him what is the best and easiest combo, and he recommended SpEn. So first I played half a dozen MiBe in tutorial mode (SpEn was not available) then came the SpEn spam.

[daggaz]

When I started, I played a few hundred games of kobold assassins. Kobold because the food clock at the time scared me, and I wanted to learn the game without having to worry too much about it (without going extreme like mummy), and assassin because of the obvious synergy with kobold skills. Then I would play progressively and progressively further, and kill the character in worse and worse situations without ever going to Zot, even though I could have ascended dozens of those characters.

Then I tried HoGl after first getting a game with a MiGl that must have dropped 16 runed helmets before lair. And after that I branched into FE and IE of various races, then Ogres, then Ocotopodes, then into just whatever I feel like at the time.

I still have a soft spot for KoAs.

[njvack]

Cause it sounds cool. You're not gonna pore over guides before trying the game, right?

I'd probably play the tutorial, which is quite good and does a nice job of introducing melee, magic, and religion if I recall properly.

After that I'd have seen that Crawl is goddamn complicated and either stick with one of the builds introduced in the tutorial, or go off on my own knowing there's a lot of stuff to see.

I think best guide for beginners would be one that introduces solid tactical habits -- positioning, luring, noise management, corners -- and I would honestly put forth that designing a tutorial level (or levels) would be a million times better than writing a guide on the wiki.

[Sandman25]

I think best guide for beginners would be one that introduces solid tactical habits -- positioning, luring, noise management, corners -- and I would honestly put forth that designing a tutorial level (or levels) would be a million times better than writing a guide on the wiki.

If I am not mistaken, this is how tutorial works in Battle for Wesnoth. It is a multistep process: tells player what to do, puts some visual indicator where character should go and then describes what happened and why.

[Pollen_Golem]

OK I guess let me redo it a little, splitting up the builds into categories for easier critique.
Class = Species + Background, and Combo = Class + God, is this convention?

First some warm-up characters:
TrCK of Xom, plain unarmed
FeBe of Trog
HaWr of Okawaru, slings
SpAs of Dithmenos, ultimate purely physical stabber
VpEn of Ashenzari, needs less speed than a spriggan
DrCj of Vehumet, there is no sturdier species to be conjurer
TeAE of Vehumet, best at conjurations/air magic, bad at invocations
DENe of Kiku, necromancy actually being their best school that damages
OgGl of Trog, a little throwing, doing a non-zealot troglodyte

Then harder characters, but ones easy to pigeonhole:
MiFi of Zin, best class for the god that limits weapon choice, needs versatility
OgAr of Nemelex, ogres need backup and have XP to spare on evocations
HOFE of TSO, hofe is classic and a suitable class for TSO
DgTm of Nobody, pinnacle of self-sufficiency
HOFi of Beogh, duh
OpVM of Sif Muna, poison is octo's best, need early boost, seek spider form
FoDK of Lugonu, polearms, Lugonu ideal crutch against stasis
KoHu of Yred, species is best at crossbows, best for god due to hunger
DDFi of Elyvilon, species has least incentive to avoid using Elyvilon's powers
MfGl of Fedhas, best species for god obviously
HEAM of Chei, the not-naga not-melee Chei character
HaAs/Gl of Ru, sacrifice hand and courage, halflings are underused anyway
NaFi of Ru, pump strength and armor and axes, scum other sacrifices like stealth

Now to partner up some of the kids no one wants to play with:
GlGl of Kiku, staves, necromancy, evocations, different use of god this time
MuIE of Gozag, both ice magic and Gozag are ideal for mummies
DsMo of Jyiva, a challenge to postpone, yes of course
FeWi of Sif Muna, a startling reversal of FeBe, open-ended abuser of channeling

As far as I can see there are no awkward combos above.
Finally, the guys left over are VS Gr Ce | Sk EE Su | Makhleb Qazlal. Weirdos:
VSSk of Makhleb, squishy hybrid with healing, panic buttons, and free ranged attacks
CeSu of Xom, join and abandon Nemelex first, a non-zealot plaything and Xom scummer
GrEE of Qazlal
HuWn of Lugonu, the final non-zealot worshipper of a starter god

Shortlisted combos:
MiBe of Trog, repeats other troglodytes pointlessly
CeHu of Okawaru, redundant and too obvious
NaMo/Tm of Chei, redundant and too obvious
NaAs of Dithmenos, redundant and too esoteric

[triorph]

Lots of problems with your list. A lot of the "harder ones" are easier than the warm-up characters by far.

Two that stood out to me:

SpAs of Dithmenos, ultimate purely physical stabber

--As is actually not a great stabbing class, you're more of a short-sword warrior. Not to say that SpAs can't work.. but you wouldn't necessarily want Dithmenos, and SpEn would be better for this archetype (although the VpEn^Ash also covers this well).

DENe of Kiku, necromancy actually being their best school that damages

Necromancy is a bit of a weird skill for direct damage and stuff, and I would think that DE-- wouldn't mesh well with a lot of the support options it has, such as pain-brand and regeneration for building up a strong melee.

[tasonir]

@Pollen Golem: It seems like you have two goals:

1) Easy combos for beginners!
2) Include every god, race, and background.

These two goals are inherently contradictory. To make recommendations for beginners, stick to around 3-5 options. Pick only strong combinations which focus on 1-2 things at a time - don't do god switches, overly hybridized characters, etc.

Coming up with a matrix of races/backgrounds if you wanted to do a 20+ streak with all unique backgrounds/races is an entirely different matter, and there's tons of ways to do it. Since you're talking about a theoretical player who is good enough to try to streak 20+ games, there's few wrong answers. Good luck completing it, there are only 11 streaks longer than 15 wins among all the players and all the years that crawl has been keeping online statistics (I think this is around 2008 or so). And three of those are elliptic.

Also, the weirdo section is really odd, but I don't think it's what you had in mind when calling it the weirdo section:

VSSk of Makhleb, squishy hybrid with healing, panic buttons, and free ranged attacks <== one of the strongest combos you can ever have. Skald isn't the best background but it's not bad, and now you have regen and god healing on VS.
CeSu of Xom, join and abandon Nemelex first, a non-zealot plaything and Xom scummer <== Not sure I follow this god plan, but it sounds terrible. There are very few reasons to join and abandon most gods, and if you do it's usually only done before switching to extended. Somewhat earlier Fedhas -> Jiyva switches are a thing, if you find jiyva altars.
GrEE of Qazlal <-- now this is just a straight up fun and easy combo. Really, move this guy up to the easy warm up section. Gr is highly powered, EE goes well with the earth aptitude, and qazlal is a strong god.
HuWn of Lugonu, the final non-zealot worshipper of a starter god <-- how are you planning on finding a lugonu altar without starting with lugonu? Do you get to level 18 and then banish yourself through intentional bad play (go to elf with no MR)?

[Sandman25]

KoHu of Yred, species is best at crossbows, best for god due to hunger

I am sorry to say this but don't you think that you need more experience with the game before you will be able to create any reasonable lists? What are you trying to achieve with those lists? They are NOT for new players, that's for sure.

If you want to win all species/backgrounds/gods with min number of games, there was such topic recently (unfortunately I cannot find it, I don't remember how it was titled).

Edit. tasonir created his post while I was creating mine but I posted anyway.

[and into]

Yeah, I'm still rather confused about the purpose of the list. Many of these don't mesh particularly well together, unless (as tasonir said) you are trying to fit every possible God/Background/Species on there at least once. Even with that condition, a lot of these do not make sense. Many would be frustrating even for advanced players.

I don't agree with most of the selections, and even on some of the selections that are probably ok, the reasoning you give is way off. These are the only suggestions + rationales that I don't find very dubious:

DrCj of Vehumet, there is no sturdier species to be conjurer
HOFi of Beogh, duh
DDFi of Elyvilon*, species has least incentive to avoid using Elyvilon's powers
MfGl of Fedhas, best species for god obviously

* I should add the caveat that I haven't played new Ely, but based on old Ely, this would be a very hard combo to die with—though it would not be fun to play IMO but whatever.

[Pollen_Golem]

Xom is amused that new posts are critical about combos being very strong. I had used Sar's and others feedback to change builds around. Many of these builds have direct parallels in wiki advice, and most classes are recommended by the game itself, so it can't be all be due to how I am at the game.

What you recommend to someone who wants to take Zin/Yred/TSO/Lugonu for a spin? "If you want to worship Zin then start as a berserker and don't abandon Trog."??
Who has least to lose in sacrificing hand or courage?
What the hell else is a mummy or demigod to do?

SpAs of Dithmenos <- a much poorer stabber than an enchanter, but a wonderful introduction to basic stealth mechanics and a blast to play for the first time IMO, even though you run into trouble quickly.

VSSk of Makhleb <- yeah this seems powerful, it's just that all three of these elements are "loose" and resist pigeonholing like the second list there, because they're great all-around individually, and just ended up together and even better.

Even the worst combo there - Centaur Summoner - seems plausible, certainly more than a troll conjurer or whatnot.

[duvessa]

Can we add a new rule to tavern: don't post in dungeon crawling advice if you intend to ignore all advice given to you

[Pollen_Golem]

I don't know who you're addressing, duvessa, but I'm all ears.

What I want to do is give beginners a potential shopping-like list to follow. So instead of an endless list of possibilities, you just have a short array of tasks to continue trying to get done. You better concentrate on "getting it right this time" which is better for beginners than poking around for things to try - that other approach tends to foster complacency and a sense of overwhelming complexity.

Wanna do a high elf? Do HEAM of Chei. Wanna do an arcane marksman? Do HEAM of Chei. Wanna worship Chei? Do HEAM of Chei. Wanna play with bows? Do HEAM of Chei. No game element is off-limits and everything facilitates proficiency.

I still have difficulty conveying this, maybe because of preconceptions of what guides are. Some people are attracted to this approach, like Magipi and daggaz above who played one class repeatedly, becoming better and better, and there's a reason there are books like "100 movies you must see before you die" to narrow down your options. There is a balance, you know, between running up a hundred SpEn or MiBe (which can be fatiguing) and picking a unique combo each game. Yet all posters here seem to advocate one extreme or the other. (Whatever floats your boat of course.)

[DrKe]

HEAM of Chei is not good for beginners though, nor is it a good high elf, arcane marksman, or chei character

[Sandman25]

HEAM of Chei is not good for beginners though

It is harder than most Mu of Chei IMHO.

[and into]

HOAK or DsAK are both good, fun, and fairly strong. If you want to play Fo, then AK is a solid background, but Fo is not a good species to choose if you just want to play an AK.

MiFi of Zin is fine (MiGl^Zin is better)—I just don't think the aptness of the combo has anything to do with the fact that Zin (and TSO and Ely) put slight restrictions on your weapon choice. Besides, TSO is more restrictive than Zin when it comes to weapon choice, unless you are hell-bent on using Yiuf's qstaff or something.

MuIE is fine, but Gozag is not ideal for anyone, even mummies. MuIE^Sif (obvious choice) or MuIE^Kiku would be better.

Now, the way that I play, going Yred on a hunter wouldn't necessarily be bad (I don't keep permanent allies with me usually), but this is not "optimal" play, and if you were trying to take full advantage of Yred and see all that he can do, trying to do that with a hunter would be frustrating, because permanent allies will be blocking your LOF all the time. (Unless you just choose hunter to help you survive until Yred altar, then use ranged combat sparingly afterward—that would be fine, but that isn't what you suggested. You mentioned Ko's aptitude for xbows, which suggests investing in them and using them throughout the game. Trying to do that while also trying to use Yred to maximum advantage would make for a really annoying game.)

Basically, a gladiator of any reasonable species will be a fine candidate for trying out Yred. Centaur if you are worried about surviving until the altar, I guess.

TSO is usually pretty bad to take early on, but probably summoners get the most out of his early abilities (in particular, the boost to accuracy from halo is great).

I haven't played Ru much yet, so I could only offer speculation. But I suspect that "Who has the least to lose in sacrificing hand or courage" is not the right question to be asking, if you are trying to arrive at an answer to, "What kind of character will benefit the most from worshiping Ru?"

Centaur anything is not the worst combo on any list. Unless the list is, "Bad at winning," I guess.

In short: Even when the answer you provide is correct, you seem to be asking the entirely wrong questions. If you are trying to think about, "What kind of character can put Yred to the best use?", then "What species cares [*even*] less about food" is entirely the wrong question.

[Sandman25]

Ok, here is my list. First element is goal, second is combo and god. It took me 20 minutes to create the list so there can be mistakes.
Fi - Mi of Trog
Gl - Mi of Trog
Mo - Tr of Trog
As - Ko of Trog
Hu - Ce of Trog
Sk - Mf of Fedhas
En - Sp of Kiku
Tm - Mf of Oka
AM - Ko of Oka
Wz - Dr of Vehumet
Cj - DE of Vehumet
Su - Te of Sif Muna
Ne - DE of Vehumet
FE - DE of Vehumet
IE - DE of Vehumet
AE - Te of Vehumet
EE - DD of Makhleb
VM - Na of Vehumet
Ar - Ko of Nemelex

Ce - Hu of Trog
DD - EE of Makleb
DE - FE of Vehumet
Dg - IE
Ds - Be
Dr - Be
Fe - Cj of Vehumet (probably En of Kiku is better but I have never tried it)
Fo - Fi of Trog (or Be if you don't want early shield)
Gr - Be
Gh - Mo of Makhleb
Ha - Be
HE - Be
Hu - Be
Ko - Be
Mf - Be
Mi - Be
Mu - Cj of Sif Muna
Na - Be
Op - Cj of Vehumet
Og - Be
Sp - En of Kiku
Te - Be
Tr - Mo of Oka
Vp - En of Kiku
VS - Be

About gods it is not so easy, for example Ashenzari is good for most characters except those who use UC. Fedhas/Yred are good for everyone etc.

[Pollen_Golem]

Enchanters of Kiku?? And I'd guess you don't really recommend MfSk of Fedhas as the first non-troglodyte.

[nago]

Kiku is the "default" God for En, and fedhas is the arguably the strongest God, barring zealot start and maybe Trog anyway (but just because I love to berserk) . With mf she also has a strong synergy.
Both of those two things are really obvious to anyone who have some experience with the game, so I'd suggest that maybe you need to play a bit more and understand better game mechanics (which should be in my humble opinion the central part of a beginner guide) before trying to write some kind of guide.

Honestly I haven't understood why are you trying to make a list of combo as suggestion, but it's certainly a silly thing to do, as it isn't the most important thing a beginner need and especially because giving the idea that each combo/background has a fixed God to choose from is terrible: to win crawl you need to adapt to what the game give you, which means usually the best God, at least for a new player, is the first not-awful for that combo found, which usually means 90% of the pantheon.

[mikee]

I don't know if I can do much good here, but I'll try. Over the years, I've seen a lot of people play crawl; some starting out quite bad at it and getting much better but most generally staying bad. The main difference I see between the two types of players is the ability of those who get better to see things in the game as they really are. You can actually see these differences in their vocabulary and choice of topics when people talk about crawl. Those who remain relatively bad typically use terms I would never even think to use despite knowing some of them from other games. They constantly refer to 'melee characters' and 'casters', 'zealots', 'fighter-mages'; they talk a lot about builds and they use a lot of labels. These players almost exclusively use the wiki as a primary source of information and have probably never spectated a game. What someone really needs to focus on is not what their character/type of character does: that's not really something that exists in itself. The players you are attempting to talk to (and you) would be best served by knowing what things in the game actually do.

I can try to give something of an example. Not all spells in crawl are actually objectively good. Do you know which are and are not? Let's say you find petrify: should you learn it on a character that's already using earth magic? One that's not? How about if you want to stab with it and you don't have other ways of stabbing? What if you find sticky flame? Should you learn it if you're already using fire magic/conjurations? What about if you're not? How much does the point in the game when you find it matter? See if you can answer questions like these (correctly) so that you have more real knowledge than you would from putting boxes around them.

[Sandman25]

Enchanters of Kiku?? And I'd guess you don't really recommend MfSk of Fedhas as the first non-troglodyte.

This is why I suggested you to get more experience with the game before trying to help other new players.

Edit. My lists were in order of species/backgrounds from wiki. Mf is the best species for Sk because it has +4 aptitude in Polearms (Sk is weak early).

[Sandman25]

I don't know if I can do much good here, but I'll try. Over the years, I've seen a lot of people play crawl; some starting out quite bad at it and getting much better but most generally staying bad. The main difference I see between the two types of players is the ability of those who get better to see things in the game as they really are. You can actually see these differences in their vocabulary and choice of topics when people talk about crawl. Those who remain relatively bad typically use terms I would never even think to use despite knowing some of them from other games. They constantly refer to 'melee characters' and 'casters', 'zealots', 'fighter-mages'; they talk a lot about builds and they use a lot of labels. These players almost exclusively use the wiki as a primary source of information and have probably never spectated a game. What someone really needs to focus on is not what their character/type of character does: that's not really something that exists in itself. The players you are attempting to talk to (and you) would be best served by knowing what things in the game actually do.

Sorry, I cannot agree with this. I got much better since my first game but I still often use all those "casters" and "melee characters" terms. Probably there is some correlation but there is nothing wrong with them as long as player knows that they can switch from "caster" to "hybrid" and even to "pure melee" (and vice versa) depending on drops/mutations.

[njvack]

I have read this thread, and the more I read the confuseder I get. I'm not quite sure as to the ultimate purpose of this idea -- do you want to get people to win more? Try more combos? Just play more crawl?

As mikee points out (I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth) a huge part of Crawl is in adapting to what a particular dungeon has to offer (both in terms of gear and danger) and working with that. Writing a Guide for that is really difficult because the benefits offered by loot and the dangers posed by an encounter are so situational -- they depend on your character and what else has dropped and the dungeon layout and hoo boy. It's hard to pick that stuff up without experience and asking questions.

For example: I think one of the main reasons Be is so strong is that having Trog from the start removes a huge amount of variance and hard choices from the game -- you don't need to worry about altars, weapons, ammunition, or spells from turn 0 until you're walking up the stairs with the orb. You basically don't need to worry about skill training, either. In essence, a large number of questions are pre-answered for you. There are still plenty.

More helpful than the guide you propose might be a list of characters who died along the way, and what questions you had about that game leading up to the end.

[mps]

I don't know if I can do much good here, but I'll try. Over the years, I've seen a lot of people play crawl; some starting out quite bad at it and getting much better but most generally staying bad. The main difference I see between the two types of players is the ability of those who get better to see things in the game as they really are. You can actually see these differences in their vocabulary and choice of topics when people talk about crawl. Those who remain relatively bad typically use terms I would never even think to use despite knowing some of them from other games. They constantly refer to 'melee characters' and 'casters', 'zealots', 'fighter-mages'; they talk a lot about builds and they use a lot of labels. These players almost exclusively use the wiki as a primary source of information and have probably never spectated a game. What someone really needs to focus on is not what their character/type of character does: that's not really something that exists in itself. The players you are attempting to talk to (and you) would be best served by knowing what things in the game actually do.

Sorry, I cannot agree with this. I got much better since my first game but I still often use all those "casters" and "melee characters" terms. Probably there is some correlation but there is nothing wrong with them as long as player knows that they can switch from "caster" to "hybrid" and even to "pure melee" (and vice versa) depending on drops/mutations.

irc tropes... "people who talk about the game differently from the people I talk to a lot are bad."

I thought the rest of the post was on target though.

[tasonir]

Merfolk skalds are a really good choice for a skald start, and fedhas involves water (rain ability) which helps merfolk. I feel kind of bad for leaving them off my list - they can easily fit into the fighter group or the chei puncher group.

[Sandman25]

Also Fedhas is really good for Polearms characters who can hide behind mushrooms or reach wandering confused monsters without walking too much.

[Wahaha]

What some people are missing is that new players often need guidance and feedback. Guidance: a real person suggesting a concrete combo + god is better guidance than saying "Play whatever characters are recommended in the game (some of them are not that good but you'll have to figure it out yourself) and pick almost any god (but not any god, not all of them are good and not all of them are good for every character, you'll have to figure it out yourself)". Personally if I was a new player I wouldn't trust character recommendations in this game, there are that many, I would need to hear a suggestion from an actual real person. Gods don't have recommendations and as a new player I certainly wouldn't know what half of them even do. Concrete suggestions help immensely.
Feedback: new players need feedback on how they're doing and why they died. When a new player follows a specific character build, they automatically get feedback in the form of "You picked a combo that is good. You picked a god that is good for the combo. You're training your skills at least somewhat correctly". This removes mental burden and lets them focus on the actual reasons for why they died. On the other hand, a new player who was told "Play whatever and try to be good" might be wondering if they died because their combo sucks or because the god wasn't a good pick, etc.

A good list of combos would be composed of combos where each one is played in a significantly different way. Don't try to include every race and class.

[Sandman25]

Concrete suggestions help immensely.

Ok, here is my suggestion for new player. Play 3 recommended tutorial characters, worship Trog, Vehumet,
Okawaru correspondingly. DON'T switch to manual training of skills.
When you win all 3 and want to play with other species/backgrounds, play recommended combos as I wrote above. I don't see why new player must play DrCj instead of TeCj/NaCj/HECj provided player has a goal to win Cj, all of them are very good (assuming in-game recommendations are based on power, not fun). Here new player can switch to training manually and see what happens.

[moocowmoocow]

---

[Sar]

I don't see why new player must play DrCj instead of TeCj/NaCj/HECj

Because it's stronger/more forgiving of mistakes.

[Sandman25]

I don't see why new player must play DrCj instead of TeCj/NaCj/HECj

Because it's stronger/more forgiving of mistakes.

Well, technically I agree but do we really want to have only 1 (the best) combo recommended by game?
In the context of this thread, it is not first win of new player so it is ok to try something not optimal, I don't think it will be fun to follow my list with so many Berserkers, Deep Elves and Vehumets/Trogs.

[Sar]

I'm not the one advocating for more player guidance, but if we were to have some, might as well make it good, no?

[Sandman25]

I provided my list. Want Mf win - play Be. Want Mi win - play Be. Want HO win - play Be. Is it good? Yes. Is it useful? No.

[Sar]

A far better list would be the one that provided a good race for a class and the least bad class for a race. Kind of like what char select screen does.

[Sandman25]

You are welcome to provide the list

[Rast]

HEAM of Chei is not good for beginners though

It is harder than most Mu of Chei IMHO.

HEAM of NoGod probably isn't too bad. Play it like a HEHu.

[Berder]

I think best guide for beginners would be one that introduces solid tactical habits -- positioning, luring, noise management, corners -- and I would honestly put forth that designing a tutorial level (or levels) would be a million times better than writing a guide on the wiki.

If I am not mistaken, this is how tutorial works in Battle for Wesnoth. It is a multistep process: tells player what to do, puts some visual indicator where character should go and then describes what happened and why.

I once played battle for wesnoth but couldn't handle having permanent troops that stay with you for the whole campaign unless you let them die, plus the ability to rewind time. I was constantly rewinding time to try to save as many as possible. It was excruciating.

[Sandman25]

I once played battle for wesnoth but couldn't handle having permanent troops that stay with you for the whole campaign unless you let them die, plus the ability to rewind time. I was constantly rewinding time to try to save as many as possible. It was excruciating.

Have you read user guide? It is optimal to train new units in every scenario instead of re-using the same units again and again. When you have more level 3 units than you ever need you don't care much if some of them die. Wesnoth is balanced around losing experienced units in every scenario.

[Rast]

A far better list would be the one that provided a good race for a class and the least bad class for a race. Kind of like what char select screen does.

Best class for nearly every race is zerker.

Best race for near every class is Mi

[Pollen_Golem]

I understand Kiku as a valid choice for anyone looking to become a versatile powerful mage, but what synergy does Kiku have with enchanters? Turning your undead minions invisible? Or the niche dispel undead spell? Or is it just a fast way to get the necro/charms spells?

Fedhas is, however powerful, a difficult god IMO because he has you engineer traps and terraform the environment – something you almost never do otherwise. It’s like a shooter with an oddball stealth mission.

I still often use all those "casters" and "melee characters" terms.

Yeah, what else do you call those characters that do 90%+ of their damage with melee, or conjurations?

[Wahaha]

I understand Kiku as a valid choice for anyone looking to become a versatile powerful mage, but what synergy does Kiku have with enchanters? Turning your undead minions invisible? Or the niche dispel undead spell? Or is it just a fast way to get the necro/charms spells?

Zombies and pain brand to kill enemies that have high MR and can see invisible. Other necro spells are good. That's more useful than many other gods for enchanters. Not always the most useful, but probably most often the most useful, and generally solid.

[Pollen_Golem]

The main difference I see between the two types of players is the ability of those who get better to see things in the game as they really are…

The players you are attempting to talk to (and you) would be best served by knowing what things in the game actually do…

as opposed to what makes sense? This is less problematic in crawl than in other roguelikes like nethack and I.V.A.N. (which I quickly gave up on).
It’s fiendishly difficult to ‘experience’ crawl, tho. It’s even hard to tell how often you’re missing in combat. A skirmish easily results in 100 lines of text, you can’t keep your eye on the textbox to keep track of ‘you hit’ and ‘you miss’. Crawl doesn’t let you ‘feel’ your accuracy so you gotta go back and tally up your hits and misses to have any idea, and take into account the kind of enemy you’re fighting if you want to be make the right conclusions. In the end it’s actually simpler to work out what should be happening theoretically, based on wiki or other data, and take it on faith that that’s what’s happening.
Maybe you have an IRL ring of see invisible that lets you peer into crawl.

I can try to give something of an example. Not all spells in crawl are actually objectively good. Do you know which are and are not? Let's say you find petrify: should you learn it on a character that's already using earth magic? One that's not? How about if you want to stab with it and you don't have other ways of stabbing? What if you find sticky flame? Should you learn it if you're already using fire magic/conjurations? What about if you're not? How much does the point in the game when you find it matter?

You’re asking if I know optimal play, which I don’t. Well this can be taken farther, for example, I tried out the recommended SpAK. There were many sleeping orcs near the orcish mine, and a Warg woke up among them. I thought to use banishment on the warg before it barked. Is it a bad idea or is it likely to work? Will banishment actually wake the orcs up faster somehow? You can’t possibly know as a player in this situation. Even if all goes to hell, it could be plain bad luck, and this situation doesn’t repeat itself often enough for you to “learn from experience”.

See if you can answer questions like these (correctly) so that you have more real knowledge than you would from putting boxes around them.

I have no idea what you mean by“putting boxes around them”. Great post.

[Pollen_Golem]

As mikee points out (I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth) a huge part of Crawl is in adapting to what a particular dungeon has to offer (both in terms of gear and danger) and working with that.
…Be is so strong is that having Trog from the start removes a huge amount of variance and hard choices from the game -- you don't need to worry about altars, weapons, ammunition, or spells from turn 0 until you're walking up the stairs with the orb. You basically don't need to worry about skill training, either. In essence, a large number of questions are pre-answered for you. There are still plenty.

Well yeah, and not just classes and gods but species too, and especially. For example an ogre has a straight path to wielding a giant club effectively, and would have to find one helluva polearm to consider straying from maces&flails. It’s one of the reasons I think a FeBe is a great second or third character to play in crawl.
Even with all the randomness I personally find the early game quite build-resilient. A particularly good weapon drop is unlikely enough that training your default weapon skill is a perfectly good option. Waiting for the perfect god translates into maybe 50 piety you’d have accumulated with an earlier god, on average. And the early game can be completed without using divine abilities that heavily drain piety, so you can max out piety either way.

[Sandman25]

Even with all the randomness I personally find the early game quite build-resilient. A particularly good weapon drop is unlikely enough that training your default weapon skill is a perfectly good option. Waiting for the perfect god translates into maybe 50 piety you’d have accumulated with an earlier god, on average. And the early game can be completed without using divine abilities that heavily drain piety, so you can max out piety either way.

Are we still talking about new players? Late game can be competed without divine abilities too, you can stay atheist if you like. What's the point in joining a god if you are afraid of "heavily draining piety"?

[Pollen_Golem]

I mean that the main benefit of joining an okay god ASAP is the opportunity to accumulate or burn through piety fast and early.

[Sandman25]

And the early game can be completed without using divine abilities that heavily drain piety, so you can max out piety either way.

And I mean that Trog and Fedhas are considered the best gods because they start becoming useful in early dungeon. Yes, early dungeon is the most dangerous place in the game. If you are trying to maximize piety ASAP by underusing divine abilities (=taking more risk), you are playing suboptimally.

[advil]

I understand Kiku as a valid choice for anyone looking to become a versatile powerful mage, but what synergy does Kiku have with enchanters? Turning your undead minions invisible? Or the niche dispel undead spell? Or is it just a fast way to get the necro/charms spells?

Discussing crawl can be fun, but honestly I think you need to spend more time playing the game, or at least looking facts up with sequell in ##crawl (e.g. `!lg * won --en s=god` to see what gods work well with enchanter, `!hs * spen 0.16 god=kiku -log` to see the morgue of the highest scoring recent spen of kiku and what spells they used, `!lg spas * / won` to get the winrate for spas, etc) and less time trying to reason it through based on the descriptions of the backgrounds and wiki (or wherever your information is coming from, I honestly can't tell). I do suspect from the way you describe combos on your lists that you mostly don't have experience with them, and such a list just won't be compelling without that experience. You're also finding that most people who do have deeper experience with a wide range of combos aren't willing to write down this sort of guide except in much broader terms, and this isn't just everyone else being stubborn. Crawl backgrounds are just initial trajectories (very much in contrast to other roguelikes and other rpg systems), and the key to diversifying playstyle is learning to adapt. Adaptability is not easy to teach, and cannot be made into a fun list, but there you are.

Also, on a more specific note I have come to believe that --Be is a terrible background for beginners to start with. It can be helpful because it simplifies down a lot of the decision making, as others have pointed out, but in my experience beginners who spend a lot of time with trog take forever to learn positioning, and forever to understand the impact of noise (because they don't ever realize how loud they are being). I would much rather encourage new players to try a mifi of oka (or similar) than a mibe (same for grfi/gl vs grbe), and I shudder to think of febe as any kind of learning tool.

[Magipi]

A far better list would be the one that provided a good race for a class and the least bad class for a race. Kind of like what char select screen does.

I think this is pretty funny:
1. Mikee advices against using "standard rpg" terminology that is meaningful in other games, but does not exist in Crawl
2. Sar thanks that post
3. A few hours later in the same thread, Sar uses the word "class"

[Sar]

that-thing-you-choose-on-chargen-that-is-not-race

[Eyesburn]

Mikee advices against using "standard rpg" terminology that is meaningful in other games, but does not exist in Crawl

So basically theres just one class in the Crawl: Fighter. Because you know we all fight our way to win the game.