Conjurer training class

[sage1234]

I have just played 20 or more DrCo characters, I just made it to lair 6, so I am progressing. I am slowly learning how to play Conjurer but is there a faster way? Would someone be willing to set aside an hour and monitor my DrCo play style and note my errors and help make decisions? Unlike the traditional HoBe I am still not sure what skills to learn. I realize that if I spend a ton of time reading the forum's and playing I will get better but is there a quicker way?

[le_nerd]

You already playing online? Someone will comment on your play at some point. Posting a morgue (press #, post output into code tags here) will also get specific advice.

[MainiacJoe]

Of all things DrCj is what I'm doing now too, after having decided that DECj is too fragile for my current threat-assessment skills. My plan is to take Okawaru or Dithmenos and go hybrid, using conjurations as ranged instead of a bow or sling. I'm stopping magic skills when I get Fulminant Prism to 10% (a really awesome spell BTW) and then training a weapon to min-delay and boosting my defenses. Later I'll pick up a lvl 6 or 7 spell or two. Don't forget your breath weapon!

[archaeo]

Unlike the traditional HoBe I am still not sure what skills to learn.

For DrCj, I would put conjurations at * and spellcasting at + to start. When you get your color, it's time to branch out; I'd leave spellcasting on until I had learned all the Cj spells, but I'd turn on fighting, dodging, and charms as well. I prefer Sif to Veh for Cj, but either one works well (Ash and Kiku are other good choices). Learn how to use searing ray and fulminant prism, as both are extremely powerful, and please pick up a dagger, ideally the first good branded one you find, in order to stab dudes who are blinded and confused.

The main thing to learn about playing blaster casters is that when you run out of MP you're in huge trouble for a long part of the game. That sounds dumb, but 99% of the time, when I see a blaster die, it's because they didn't start running away before they ran out of MP.

I realize that if I spend a ton of time reading the forum's and playing I will get better but is there a quicker way?

Even with a coach in tileschat, getting better at Crawl is still all about practice, practice, practice. You'll eventually internalize what monsters do how much damage, etc., along with all kinds of other knowledge you need to make decisions confidently on your own.

[Nebukadnezar]

These are the morgues from 2 15-runes games: DeCj of Veh. and FeCj of Veh.
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Nebuk ... 004159.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Nebuk ... 205117.txt

The history of skilling is there and a statistic which spells I used.
I'm not saying that these are excellent games...but they made it

What I found useful:
- a bit of stealth(you already have it just by wearing a robe). It let's you decide very often whether you really want to start *this* fight or better avoid it...or get better conditions by clearing other parts of the level to get more room for retreating.
- no autoexplore. Autoexplore prevents you from stepping too far after detecting monsters but you might find yourself autoexploring around a corner and face a monster face-to-face when you could have done the same thing from a different angle with more space. It's up to you. I have a high turncount and did spend a lot of real time on it.
- battlesphere with magic missile is very strong and will carry you down to Lair 8 *but*:
- you need a way to break up packs without having all of them following you. This includes fighting against single monsters. When you start to fight them as soon as you see them there might be more monsters around and the noise might attract them to your location.....and suddenly it's a fight vs. a pack. Lure every monster back into cleared territory when you're insecure about your abilities. 1 vs 1 magic missile + battlesphere should be suff. to kill anything if you start a fight with enough space between you and the monster. Again: this is time- and turn-consuming but it'll keep you alive.

This is the kind of advice *I* could give. Might not be everybodies style of play but it works. I played a Cj before (HeCj) and died a few times but the 2 above were my first games with these 2 races. Vehumet is a very strong and straight-forward god.

Dr is special because you don't know what color you'll get. Spellcasting and Conjuration otoh are good for every color.

Sooner or later you'll know what kind of monster is how fast and whether you can just kill it with a few of his friends around, too. This is decision-making based on your own abilities and deciding what is a threat and what not. I don't think a coach could help you there. That's why I advise you to take the very careful appoach I've described above. If you're ever in doubt whether you can kill something: run away. Hopefully you started the battle not against a monster which is faster than you.... or stayed close to the stairs

[amaril]

With a DrCj, I'd train conjurations/other spell skills until I had IMB online (plus most of the other <lv4 spells in the starting book), and then I'd put some points into fighting/dodging. Ideally, you could have Battlesphere up by the early lair, and Battlesphere can honestly take you through the lair branches. Once I have battlesphere online I'd probably find a good melee weapon and hybridize--especially on a draconian. There is no 'correct' way to train skills, though. If I found a good quick weapon early, I might start training weapon skills early.

I haven't seen your games, but you might not be retreating from combat early enough/using consumables before fights get unwinnable. Blasters tend to demand more 'optimal' play than melee characters.

[ydeve]

If you aren't willing to give up autoexplore (like me) it helps to run back to the upstairs every once in a while. As a caster (ime) you want to be able to easily run back to the upstairs, but sometimes autoexplore takes a beeline into the black. If you run back to the stairs after every few encounters it forces autoexplore to explore the area around the stairs first before adventuring farther away.

[The Ferret]

Nobody has mentioned Fulminant Prism yet, which is a problem because Prism is awesome.

Fulminant Prism is super powerful (especially for a level 4 spell) and scales well.

It damages multiple creatures, making it very MP-efficient vs. packs.

It blocks beam targeting and pathing.

Review this thread. Learn it, live it, love it.

[tedric]

If you want to spend less time trying to extract knowledge from advice threads, try searching for YAVPs of DrCj characters (preferably from accomplished veteran players, if you have a sense of any Taverners' reputations). Reading through the events log of a few decently played games will show you all kinds of valuable stuff -- from the order that skills were trained and spells were learned, to the way they adapted to book and loot drops, and you can even get a sense of how they responded to dangerous situations (like encountering a nasty unique partway through a branch and immediately switching to a different branch for a while). Of course you won't be able to repeat the steps of any one game exactly, because Crawl is all about adaptation, but you will get a sense of a rough outline you can follow like "train these skills to this level, learn these spells, then train these other skills to that level...etc."

[Nebukadnezar]

Nobody has mentioned Fulminant Prism yet, which is a problem because Prism is awesome.

The statistic for my FeCj lists it, a very nice spell, but I wouldn't advice it for players who have trouble surviving.
The spell is loud.
It will draw monster to your spot. Instead of dividing packs it creates packs. If you can deal with that it is a very nice spell.

EDIT:
For a Dr with its good AC I used fulminant prism against unseen horrors (had no Sinv) - after clearing most of the level.

[MainiacJoe]

Laraso's thread on FP is why I chose Cj to be my next background to win.

Back to the OP, in my prep for this background Ifound this thread to be incredibly helpful: "Skill strategy for mages" viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17328

Three comments in particular:

Berder's blaster strategy: viewtopic.php?p=237893#p237893

• Get your starting book online
• Get Fighting and Dodging to 10 or so
• Pick the best weapon you've found and train it to min-delay
• Flesh out your spell list with crowd control, irresistable killdudes, and support spells.

tabstorm's hybrid strategy: viewtopic.php?p=237862#p237862

• Stop with the middle spells of your starting book
• Transition into a melee-killdudes character
• Get a couple level 6 or 7 spells

archaeo's advice: viewtopic.php?p=237908#p237908

I'd just point out, Dioneo, that Crawl is a game with enough flexibility that tabstorm and Berder are both giving good advice, even if it appears contradictory. You can win using either strategy, though Berder's will definitely result in a character that "feels more like a mage," for lack of a better phrase.

I recommend trying Berder's strategy with DEFE or DrCj of Veh or Sif, and tabstorm's strategy with GrEE or MfIE of Oka or Makh.

As I wrote above, I tried DECj using Berder's strategy first. I got to Lair a few times, but mainly died a lot in D:5-8. I said above that I thought this was because I didn't have mature enough threat-assessment skills. Now I think rather that archaeo's advice above in this thread was the real reason:

The main thing to learn about playing blaster casters is that when you run out of MP you're in huge trouble for a long part of the game. That sounds dumb, but 99% of the time, when I see a blaster die, it's because they didn't start running away before they ran out of MP.

That was exactly what was happening: I'd run out of MP and then have no second option. And perhaps Nebukadnezzar's advice is part of the problem, too:

Nobody has mentioned Fulminant Prism yet, which is a problem because Prism is awesome.

The statistic for my FeCj lists it, a very nice spell, but I wouldn't advice it for players who have trouble surviving.
The spell is loud.
It will draw monster to your spot. Instead of dividing packs it creates packs. If you can deal with that it is a very nice spell.

because most of these deaths happened when I had more enemies with me than MP to deal with them, and I was using FP a lot.

In any case, as I said I have a DrCj^Oka using tabstorm's strategy right now and I am pleased with how it's going. Sorry no dump, I play offline and it's on my home computer.

[Bart]

I have mixed feelings about advising conjurers to transition to melee early. Unlike most book backgrounds, conjurers do not possess any spells that actually help once engaged in melee. Conjurations can be used to soften enemies, ok, but they are experience-costly softeners.

A decent weapon can be used to kill weak monsters efficiently even at no skill (assuming some fighting/dodging/shields has been trained). Relying on a weapon to kill stronger lair monsters is unsafe because of compromised defenses and melee damage at this point. Eventually a min-delay 1-handed weapon is highly advisable (even if it's not obvious from my morgues), but for me it's something to take care around xl20, as lvl 6 spells are normally a higher priority.

For the people with mana problems I wholeheartedly recommend trying Sif Muna, who makes a character less blasty, but more reliable in dire situations.

About fulminant prism: never been a fan, as it's hard to find additional experience to train hexes (for spellpower) and there aren't other good spells (for conjurer) in that school. That plus noise = it's a trap!

[Sar]

Dazzling Spray sort of helps with melee a bit.

[Bart]

Dazzling Spray sort of helps with melee a bit.

Well, I admit, I have yet to try that path. Maybe hexes make sense after all if you prefer melee version.

[MainiacJoe]

Dazzling Spray sort of helps with melee a bit.

And it also uses Hexes. I am expecting that Dazzling + Fulminant together make Hexes worth investing in for a Conjurer. Clearly after today's comments I need to re-look at the noise of Fulminant, but it seems to me that having a strong AoE can't hurt if used judiciously.

Dazzling Spray really shines with centaurs, their low HD reliably blinds them. They still know where you are and still shoot at you, but with a big accuracy malus which helps a great deal.

[MainiacJoe]

I do have a question about the synergy between Dazzling Spray and Fulminant Prism. I've noticed that sometimes blinded monsters begin to wander, and this makes it harder to keep them in a prism's AoE. Badwiki suggests that it is monsters without see invisible which will wander, but that doesn't make sense. What determines whihc monsters wonder and which don't in 0.17?

NB canines are immune to Dazzling Spray by virtue of the old Sense Invisible becoming the new Blindness Immunity. I guess they sniff you.

[ydeve]

Thank was for reservations on swapping to melee. It's easier for experienced crawlers to swap to melee since they have more experience with it, but if you're having trouble with skilling it may be more difficult to know when to swap, especially since Conjurations would already be your main killdudes.

But about FP, if you're good about running away (a must with a blasty character) and you use it reasonably close to the upstairs, crowd control isn't much of a problem. Just run up the stairs and take a different set of stairs down.

Personally I prefer Veh's MP on kill to Sif's summoning, but then I've learned to run long before my mp gets low (I typically have 1/2 to 1/3 of my mana bar left after running) so I'm almost never flat out of mana. But if that's happening to you then Sif could help.

[WingedEspeon]

I like Dith on Conjurers. One-shoting a deep elf fighter with magic dart (and without battleshpere) is awesome. Magic dart+ battleshpere is also super quite so he helps with Mp by letting you kill things much faster and letting you face things 1v1 so you can just '5' to regain Mp. The additional firepower you can can let you clear lair branches with just your starting book.

[Hurkyl]

Fulminant Prism is indeed a great spell -- but the thing you mustn't forget is that the Cj book has other great spells too. Against low AC targets, Searing Ray does an incredible amount of damage for 5 MP. The Battlesphere/Magic Dart combo (or even Battlesphere/Searing Ray when appropriate) is even more efficient.

Yes, a conjurer should probably exploit the power of Fulminant Prism, but do not make the mistake of making that your primary source of damage. (unless you're in the habit of gathering groups to take out at once, which is a questionable strategy)

Because battlesphere is so strong, I concur with the notion that conjurers should generally get their book online before spending any significant amount of XP on weapon skills.

[Siegurt]

Indeed, f. prism is the fireball of the conjurer, it is good damage when you need to hit a lot of things at once, and it is undodgeable, but it is noisy and sucks up your mp to quickly to be used on less critters (taking out an entire pack of killer bees otoh is fantastic) placement is also tricky, you want to hit everything, but not put it on a square where it will be attacked and explode badly. (Despite what was said on an earlier f prism thread, monsters will attack it, not aggressively, but like it was a summon)

Dazzling spray works excellently when paired with a short blade or blowgun (a single poison needle stab will usually take out a dazzled orc warrior) and if you are hitting 3 critters with it, the damage is on par with searing ray (aiming it is a little tricky takes some practice to know exactly when you can hit three non adjacent things with it, and where to put your targeting square to hit all three, but I find that you can nearly always hit 3 things in a 90 degree arc as long as one of them isn't blocked or out of range)

I don't train as much hexes as I do conjuration, but I always throw some points into my conjurers and haven't regretted it once

[Bart]

Thank was for reservations on swapping to melee. It's easier for experienced crawlers to swap to melee since they have more experience with it, but if you're having trouble with skilling it may be more difficult to know when to swap, especially since Conjurations would already be your main killdudes.

But about FP, if you're good about running away (a must with a blasty character) and you use it reasonably close to the upstairs, crowd control isn't much of a problem. Just run up the stairs and take a different set of stairs down.

Personally I prefer Veh's MP on kill to Sif's summoning, but then I've learned to run long before my mp gets low (I typically have 1/2 to 1/3 of my mana bar left after running) so I'm almost never flat out of mana. But if that's happening to you then Sif could help.

Well, eventually almost everything is about preferences. My previous advice about weapon skilling is just talking, as my last five winning conjurers didn't train weapon skills at all. Also, regarding god choice: 3x sif muna, 1x dith (only because of curiosity), 1x no god (demigod). None of them learned FP I do not claim they were optimal, but I'm sure I wasn't struggling with them and I enjoyed playing them.

Links for curious

Spoiler: show

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http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/ba ... 092418.txt
http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/ba ... 194022.txt
http://underhound.eu:81/crawl/morgue/ba ... 231608.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Bart/morgue ... 204644.txt
http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/0.11/Ba ... 234939.txt

[sage1234]

While reviewing the file below I love how you Noticed Jessica at the 95th turn on D2, I was trying to find where you killed her, then I found it "47753 | D:2 | Killed Jessica" I assume at this point she was but the effort to cast any spell.

Links for curious

Spoiler: show

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http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/ba ... 092418.txt