Blaster Caster Stairdancing

[MainiacJoe]

I've discovered that stairdancing with a blaster is fun, because you can kill stuff at range and then when they get too close or you run low on MP, you just go upstairs without anyone following you, rest, and go down a different stair. Did this in Orc:4 with loud spells like Lightning Bolt and Fulminant and the party came to me and it was a long time before I had to go exploring. I'm sure plenty of people know this already, but it was a fun discovery for me.

[kuniqs]

Try it on Vaults:5, it's fun!

[tv1990]

Try it on Vaults:5, it's fun!

1/ read scroll of immo
2/ blast everything (specially vault wardens)
3/ stairdance
4/ ????
5/ profit

[MainiacJoe]

I've done this on V:5 and gotten away with it, but it's not what I'd do now. As described above, you'll eventually attract too many enemies to your location. Then you go down a different location and draw everything to your new place, rinse and repeat. But on V:5, all the staircases go to the same place. Noise becomes a tactical problem instead of a tactical boon.

[agentgt]

I actually find this to be pretty dangerous to do with all but the strongest blasters and axe masters. There are some exceptions but in general limiting LOS, and having walls around you (ie digging) are superior to stair dancing and blowing stuff up out in the open.

It also waste a ton of turns because you have to go up the stairs and press "5" quite often since in general being in the open incurs more damage than one on one battles (there are exceptions like Makhleb). The worse is when you have wasted a ton of resources and fail to kill something strong and nasty. The best case scenario is you now cannot use that stair case.. the worse case scenario is the monster(s) followed you up.

Finally if you plan on doing this and you see a constricting monster... kill it first... kill it quick. Damn you Anaconda skeletons in Tomb

[ydeve]

Yeah, this works really well in lair and orc, but by the lair rune branches it gets a lot more dangerous. Doing it in V5 is what I'd call a Bad Idea, as vault wardens and tentacled monstrosities are common and once they shut you out you're in huge trouble. Actually, nowadays as a caster I usually go for the slime rune instead of V5. TRJ is laughably easy if you nuke him from range.