Trying to transition from melee to magic ...

[magpie]

I hate player ghosts. I just had a promising fire elementalist literally one-shot by a player ghost with Stone Arrow.

I'm not bad at Roguelikes, but in terms of DCSS, I'm a relative noob with only one 3-rune win.

What's your advice? Play more melee (harder combos than MiBe/MiGl) to get more general DC experience, or go with magic for a while to get more a feel of it?

(And yeah - I know I should still be training Fighting and Dodging as a early-game magic user. )

[le_nerd]

After many many many games I only always play melee characters; not only is this more efficient, but it also reduces the time cost of a single game. I almost always run below or around three hour mark, with great drops even scratching 2 hour mark. Using magic more than doubles! So just go ahead and do the transition ahead of time

[sanka]

Many players hate player ghosts for a reason..

I do not know if it is still the case, but stone arrow is used to be one of the really bad spell on them, because for some reason ghosts make much more damage with it than a player (not to mention the ghost can cast it in every turn without miscast).

Some advice in case someone do not know it:
It has terrible range, so if you notice the ghost far away than you can simply run away. You can try to explore in a way that minimalizes the chances to reveal tiles close to you. If you can escape the ghost, you may avoid the whole level.

In most cases I simply hope not to run into deadly ghosts early on.

[Turukano]

I hate player ghosts. [...] What's your advice? Play more melee (harder combos than MiBe/MiGl) to get more general DC experience, or go with magic for a while to get more a feel of it?

Not many chars are able to kill everything on the first levels. You could play TrBe if you want to get close to it.

But as a general piece of advice: learn when to fight and when to run.

[magpie]

I went around a corner, to find an already-awake player ghost which immediately Stone Arrow'ed me in the face.

I realise one-hit kills are an inevitable part of roguelikes generally, and DCSS in particular, at low levels ... but it's a problem with magic users that while they have good guaranteed offence, and good utility, they do die extremely quickly.

Just looking for some advice - I've been playing DCSS for about a year, and have a single win under my belt. But I've been playing ADoM for a number of years now, and have three regular wins. So I'm not a complete roguelike noob - but obviously, there's scores of people here who are more experienced at DCSS than I am, and who could offer some useful advice.

[nago]

Ghost aren't nothing different from others kind of dangerous enemies: if you suppose they are remotely dangerous and able to kill you before you kill them, just run away - there's also the benefit they can't follow you upstairs.
This mean that while magic ghost could be easy to kill, they often are able to kill quicker - so if they have very dangerous spells like dazzling spray, stone arrow, stickflame \fireball, use consumables to flee \ kill them asap, like when you end with D:3 Sigmund right behind a corner.
And when you're oneshotted during autoexplore...well, very very very rarely it happens, it's a very very very rare toll to pay to have things "balanced" around.

In lastest version you should always xv them before engaging to check if they have crazy AC\EV, resistances, dangerous melee weapon and which sort of spells.

[Magipi]

(And yeah - I know I should still be training Fighting and Dodging as a early-game magic user. )

(Well, this sorta depends on the definition of early game, but)
I honestly think you shouldn't.

In the early game, your first task is to get some decent offense (both with melee dudes and blaster mages), With a fire elementalist, you should train ONLY fire and conj until you have sticky flame online (and NOT speellcasting, unless you want more spell slots). With a conjurer, you should train first only conj, then charms for the battlesphere.

After the key spell is on, you should train some defenses (especially on a FE, because with sticly flame you must stand next to the monster). Yes, that's mostly dodging and fighting, but if you have some real armour (dragon maybe?) then armour skill too.

[Magipi]

Addendum: I guess these general questions are not totally useless, but posting a dump and asking some specific advice about that is much more fruitful.

[Sar]

With a fire elementalist, you should train ONLY fire and conj until you have sticky flame online (and NOT speellcasting, unless you want more spell slots).

It really is not that bad of an idea to also train Spc on something like a DEFE before you get Sticky. Same goes for Dodging too, I guess.

[Magipi]

With a fire elementalist, you should train ONLY fire and conj until you have sticky flame online (and NOT speellcasting, unless you want more spell slots).

It really is not that bad of an idea to also train Spc on something like a DEFE before you get Sticky. Same goes for Dodging too, I guess.

Sticky flame is a spell that doubles or triples your offense. Getting a couple of points of EV or MP is has some value too, but nothing close to this.

Also, I don't think DEFE is a particularly good combo. If you are going to stand next to monsters because of sticky flame, why not just run something with decent HP?

[Sar]

Spc also provides more power/spell success and more MP to play with. Yes, it's 4 times worse that any spell school for that purpose, but it still helps. Just not a priority, I guess, but still worth sinking some XP into. Especially if the aptitude is good.

[partial]

try HEWz

good apts for both magic and melee, plus decent hp

and the Wz starting book is fun

[Sar]

HE have pretty big HP malus and also a noticeable XP malus, which means their HP/depth ratio is not very good!

[Indianageoff]

I don't like ghosts. I just flush them so I don't have to deal with em.

Play the game the way you like.

[daggaz]

DEFE is fine I think if not actually a bit OP.. Yes you have less hitpoints, but careful play pretty much mitigates that and your offence more than makes up for the rest. I dont see a problem with sticky here, either... in the earlier game, you make judicial use of conjure flame as a point, but otherwise you flame tongue monsters down to low hitpoints, and if they manage to get adjacent, sticky will usually kill them outright if not within one more turn. By the time monsters start getting pretty scary melee-wise, you should have somewhat better defenses but more importantly, you just nuke the bejeezus out of them before they can even become a threat.

I've got a DEFE of Veh clearing vaults right now and it is pretty absurd, far far easier than any melee build I have tried.

[Sar]

You never tried a Mi/Tr/HO/GrBe?

[phloomp]

When I finally managed to win, it was with a DEFE where I basically forgot to ever train dodging. I usually find really fragile casters easier (in the sense of "I am more likely to win one"). I think it's because with a melee character you have to decide whether a monster is dangerous enough that you need to stay away from it, while with a fragile caster the asnwer is always 'yes'.

[Tressol]

Spc also provides more power/spell success and more MP to play with. Yes, it's 4 times worse that any spell school for that purpose, but it still helps. Just not a priority, I guess, but still worth sinking some XP into. Especially if the aptitude is good.

I was under the impression that it's only 4 times worse for a spell with a single school. Isn't spell power based on ((average of spell schools) + 1/4 Spellscasting) x INT and other stuff)? If so, then for the purposes of something like Poison Cloud or Bolt of Magma (both 3 school spells), Spellcasting would be 3/4 as good as any one of those schools, plus you get spell levels and MP... Even with something like (insert a FE spell here, they're pretty much all Fire/Conjurations) it's still half as good as a school skill. Unless spellpower was recently overhauled or something.

An example: we have 8 Spellcasting, 8 conjrations and 12 fire. Average of spell schools is 10, +2 for 1/4 Spellcasting is 12 (times some numbers). Alternately, we could have something like 4 Spellcasting, 10 Conjurations (say) and still 12 fire, for 11 average spell schools + 1 for 1/4 Spellcasting is still 12 before multiplying by other factors... But this character hungers more, has less MP and less spell levels.

Edit (because it's much easier to think of this way): Effectively (again, unless there was an overhaul) Spellcasting adds 1/4 it's value to every school skill, plus it's other benefits.

[Sar]

Yeah, I implicitly meant that but it probably deserved elaboration.

[daggaz]

You never tried a Mi/Tr/HO/GrBe?

Of course I have. DEFE is substantially easier in the late game imo, where you can annhilate a major threat at the edge of LoS in one or max two keystrokes. Him and all of his friends, for that matter. I mean, I went into vaults and just spammed firestorm in every direction, went up the stairs, came back down did it again, and then walke to the edge and casually meandered thru the map erradicating any pockets of resistance that didnt come running to their death during my entrance. MiBe doesnt even come close to that, even tho they arent exactly threatened in vaults 5.

I think the worst thing that happened was Mennas and then I just quaffed a haste and a brilliance, walked out of his silence, and put him out of his misery with a few firestorms and an iron bolt for good measure.

Even in the early game DEFE was easier than most magic focused builds I have tried.

[Sar]

Huh.

[daggaz]

Keep in mind, if you screw up your noise/mana management, you are going to need to teleport. Luckily, you have like 20+ scrolls and probably a wand or two so hey...

[edgefigaro]

On whatever caster you play, put D1 xp into fighting, and lean on your level 1 spell. Those first few HP are incredibly important. So is stealth as you get into d4~d6, but it is hard to understand why or how without dying a lot in the process and playing all sorts of different kinds of characters.

Getting all the utility out of the opening spellbook, knowing the "gameplan" through lair is also important. Watch a good player work a caster combo will show you a lot of important but subtle plays that are important.

[Pollen_Golem]

Yeah, blasters are easier to play because all you need to do is keep your distance and leave your escape routes open and gtfo before you run out of MP, and everything around you just dies. Ranged weapons can't dish out that much damage. Melee leaves you vulnerable because even with perfect kill-tunneling, you're still exposing yourself to melee whenever you hit stuff. Magic is easier but forces you to think more on a consistent level whatever the threat level is, whereas melee dudes are harder in practice even though they have fewer courses of action to consider. That's just my well-founded experience.

[daggaz]

So after thinking about this thread a bit, and my many less than optimal ogre deaths, I went back and started an OgFE. I put my skills into conjurations at the get go, killed a couple monsters and wielded the first club I found. Then I immediately switched skills to M&F and fighting. From that point on, I flame tongued things and bopped them on the head if they managed to get close. Adders were a bit scary at first but after a level or two my accuracy went up as well as my hitpoints, and they became far less a problem. I upgraded from club to whip asap, and eventually found something with a brand, cant really remember. At this point I was down on D4 or so and my skill bonus was really shining, but I needed the next stage in my casting abilities, so I switched from melee focus back to conjurations and fire magic, and memorized sticky flame and conjure flame.

It took a little while to get sticky castable, but conjure flame came online quite quickly and was just gravy for holding off dangerous monsters while I softened them, or outright killing the stupid ones. Once sticky was working well, I switched M&F and fighting back on to normal xp, keeping the focus on my two spell schools. At this point I had picked up a morningstar of protection (quite nice) and had entered lair. Liberal use of conjure and sticky took care of yak paks and spiny frogs without a hitch. Normally I would be tossing fireballs already, but I didnt get that even reasonably safe to cast until Lair8, where I still just stayed with the lower spells. Even death yaks succumbed, tho potions of might helped immensely.

After finishing lair (and an ice cave, fire cave, and minotaur lab) I had a nice set of various robes, rings, and importantly a few weapons to choose from. The aforementioned morningstar of protection, a +3 dire flail of of freezing, a +4 club of flaming, and a +6 GSC which I had picked up and began enchanting from the get go. Skills are 14 in fighting/M&F, 10ish in fire/conj, and 7 or so in SpellCasting. I've now cleared D down past orc and have bolt of fire castable (found a book of fire, nice!), with ring of flames coming up sometime someday (im not in a huge hurry). Mostly I just burn stuff and then trash it with a club, my defences are hardly melee worthy in the long run but my damage makes up for it so far. With a DEFE I would have more spells online with way more spellpower, but they do have the problem that if you run out of mana, even if you have a bit of melee skilling and a decent weapon, you really can't take out big threats safely and have to retreat. The abyss was noteworthy for being difficult in this respect, and the reason I thought of running the ogre instead. This guy, he can obliterate a major threat if it happens to get too close in just a swing or two, and those sick hps really cushion any incoming attacks. Looking forward to posting a dump in YAVP.

[agentgt]

My advice on transitioning from melee to magic for new users is not to do blaster master but rather hexes. Hexes are so strong early and you need stealth anyway for most magic users.

Also might want to consider not picking Veh or Sif.
I think Dith, Ash, Fedhas and Kiku are better gods for most magic users.
Ash in particular allows you to explore most of Crawl magic far easier than most gods.
Humans with Ash are particularly a good choice for learning IMO.

[partial]

HE have pretty big HP malus and also a noticeable XP malus, which means their HP/depth ratio is not very good!

I have never found their XP rate to be problematic, esp considering the very strong apts.

I wouldn't call -1 HP a "pretty big" detriment, esp when considering comparably magic-affine species such as DE, Sp or Te all suffer at least -2.

HE aren't the hardiest race, for sure, but I think they have one of the best ratio of toughness to magic affinity.

[WingedEspeon]

HE have pretty big HP malus and also a noticeable XP malus, which means their HP/depth ratio is not very good!

I have never found their XP rate to be problematic, esp considering the very strong apts.

I wouldn't call -1 HP a "pretty big" detriment, esp when considering comparably magic-affine species such as DE, Sp or Te all suffer at least -2.

HE aren't the hardiest race, for sure, but I think they have one of the best ratio of toughness to magic affinity.

Dr have +1. Dg have +1. Vp have +0. Sp are special because they can kite making their low HP much less of an issue. Having said that, you can afford to sink more exp into fighting of HE because their high int lets you put less exp into spell schools.

[partial]

HE are also one of only 2 races who enjoy positive apts in both Fighting and Spellcasting (the other being Og), which is another reason they can train a little extra Fighting to compensate for the -1 HP.