Gloorx, Hellfire, and Oka in extended

[ajon]

Been running a bunch of MiFi lately just to try things out. Trying to run basically the same character but using different weapons 1H + shield/2H etc.

Was trying extended recently with one and I could not take down Gloorx Vloq. Had about 40AC and 35EV at the time. Using a +7 or 8 freezing eveningstar with might/agility/heroism/finesse. Seems like he is extremely tough to hit/hurt. What advice is there for taking him down? Maybe I should have had more than rN+ and it could have bought me some time against torment?

One handers with a shield seem very good in a 3 rune game. Damage isn't as high obviously but shields from my anecdotal experiences are underrated. So far in extended, I'm almost thinking that two handers are much better as most damage will be stopped by AC except unavoidable by hellfire/torment? Is this assumption right?

Oka - seems almost blah in extended, by then I usually ended up just maxing my skills easily and not needing heroism, and haste is almost as good as finesse. Gifts generally don't replace anything I already had. Perhaps maxing my skills was my mistake. I wonder if I could have gotten cBlink/haste online. Might be better than a few more points of AC/EV?

Related to that, I was using an enchanted up FDA, I also had CPA I could have enchanted but the overall defenses seemed better in FDA and most damage I was taking was from things more AC wouldn't help with. I'm assuming this was the right choice, provided I had actually trained my magic?

Heres the character I was running btw.
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 032004.txt

[Sandman25]

Gloorx Vloq does not have impressive stats, you were just unlucky in that fight.
Correct, 2h are better in extended but +9 eveningstar (base damage 15) is not much worse than +9 great mace (base damage 17).
True, it is usually a good idea to have somewhat weaker defense but good spells in extended because of torment/hellfire, of course it's the best to have both.

[dynast]

To do extended oka run train your skills only till 22, get throwing to 22, carry a 9+blowgun around always so you can get confusion, frenzy and paralyzing needles which are good against the unique lords, pan lords and fiends. try to acquire ammo if you are low on needles.

[ajon]

Oh, didn't even think of using a blowgun. I tend to ignore them on stronger characters cause I don't need them early game.

[mopl]

To do extended oka run train your skills only till 22, get throwing to 22, carry a 9+blowgun around always so you can get confusion, frenzy and paralyzing needles which are good against the unique lords, pan lords and fiends. try to acquire ammo if you are low on needles.

Sure it works, and killing paralyzed Pan lors is sweet, but it's a pretty huge investment...

Are you doing it with all your Oka-characters ? I only tried it once as SpBe...

[ajon]

I did have 25 throwing I think on this one already. I had javelins I was using at the time. Probably going to try different things on a bunch but will plan on giving blowguns a try, sure. Unless you were asking dynast?

[mopl]

Indeed I was, but thanks for the answer !

[dynast]

if your throwing apt is -1 or above its always worth. Not having to train your main fighter skills to 27 saves a ton of exp too.

[ZipZipskins]

It's my opinion that if you're following Oka (and even oftentimes if you aren't) you should pretty much always take Throwing on a primarily melee oriented character with a reasonable aptitude, and quite particularly if you're using shields at any point. Javelins are ballin out of control all game long and blowguns are the delicious, paralytic icing on the cake.

But I'm a throwing junkie who is obsessed with javelin chucking and hates weapon swapping, so be aware of that