The Tavern

I have found that Deep Elf Summoners are just awesome. The game is so much easier when you don't have to do any of the fighting yourself. Spammals gets you through most of the early game, and it can be used for an escape spell early on. I haven't found much use for Summon Imp, it blinks way too much and seems less useful than spammals. Call Canine Familiar can be used to take care of invisible monsters and things spammals can't kill, and at the rate a Deep Elf Summoner summons those war dogs and wolves (and wargs), it can be quite useful during the midgame. Summon Scorpions are useful for their poison, but the chances of them being summoned hostile is usually too great of a risk so I usually don't use it. Summon Ice Beast is amphibious so it is useful in water areas and (very) useful in some vaults (i.e. bailey), but it does less damage than war dogs. Ice Beasts do, however, have lots of resistances so they sometimes are a better choice than Summon Canine Familiar.

When a tough monster appears, I find it most effective to use spammals 4 - 5 times to stop it, then summon some war dogs to finish it off, t + a is your friend.

This gets me to D:7 - D:8 consistently, even early game killers like Sigmund aren't a big deal.

/signed


About 2-3 weeks ago I lost a level 27 summoner going for the orb...I was sooooo pissed off.

Things like hydras give me the most problems, since they can "one shot" (kill in one turn from their # of attacks) most summons you have by the time you start seeing them-unless you just get lucky with books. Spammals seems to be marginally helpful to me in these situations. I usually go with fire or air magic as a backup for the tougher guys I run into.

I disagree with your opinion of Imps though. The red ones are a little weak and unreliable, but the ice, iron and especially shadow imps are quite powerful in their own right for a level 2 spell. In my experience you summon the "better" imps often enough that it makes the spell useful for a stronger spammals later on in the game.

Agreed, Summon Imps is a great spell because of its versatility (cold damage, zombies, etc.). Even regular imps are good because their blinking, high EV, and fast regen make them great at surviving, and they distract opponents well if you have enough blinking around. And if they pick up a weapon they can do some damage.

Call Canine Familiar is great. I remember on one summoning DeWz all I had was CCF for the entire Lair until Lair:8 where I finally got a Book of Callings from Vehumet. Until then, my answer to roughies like Uniates and player ghosts was always canine spam, and it works. Even hydras with their one-shotting get overwhelmed eventually. Unfortunately I found Wargs to be very rare. I had only summoned 3 or so by the end of Lair, but boy are they powerful! Trivia: When Hill Orcs cast CCF their wolves are replaced by wargs half the time.

Summon Scorpions is great. Even with moderate spellpower you'll usually get no more than 1 hostile scorpion, and your other friendly ones will kill it easily. The poison stacking and large summon groups make this spell viable until the late midgame.

The reason that I don't like summon scorpions is that it is the only summoner starting spell that uses poison magic, and the spell relies on skill in poison magic to be cast reliably. So, with my experience with the spell, it usually has a good chance of being summoned hostile until long after you have better summons.

I will admit that I haven't really tried summon imps that much, the only time I used it I couldn't kill anything with it because whenever my imps got into range they would blink away. It was really annoying so I just stopped using the spell altogether. I had a hard time killing rats and goblins with it.

I think that's just the RNG screwing you.

Im really enjoying it right now! But I don´t start as a summoner, I start as a wizard and focus on the summoning, that way I have blink and repel missels too, in case the enemies get near me! And the imps are great! many kinds, all together are really strong!

and you may end up with some permenant zombie followers if the RNG gods are kind (shadow imps? IIRC) - and you have mephi (imps don't breathe IIRC) the problem is getting the spell after that - Wizards seem to be defined by the second spell book that they get.

Hey, I'm currently playing a DESu right now, and I've got a question about stats. How many points of strength should I add during the third level up, if at all? I always seem to go into the Overloaded state with just 7 Str so putting more into Str is tempting, but I hear that Int is more important than Str or Dex when playing spellcasters.

As are royal jellies, which do the same thing and feed you. Many new players do not realize a royal jelly is almost like drinking a potion of restore abilities and a potion of porridge simultaneously.

Execpt it takes 3 turns to eat vice 2 turns to drink 2 potions.

If you can, wait to picnic until after all the foes are dead.

Actually, I think they take only one...

(I bet that the next guy who posts will say they take zero just to keep up the pattern )

Do they? I thought "snacks" took two turns and "rations" took 3. I would assume a royal jelly would be a ration, but I did not check my reference before posting.

Thank you Minmay.

Snacks take one, chunks take two, and rations take three, actually, or at least according to the wiki. But yeah, royal jellies count as snacks.

Any non-ration permafood takes two turns, chunks take three turns, rations take four turns. You can see it using the show_game_turns option.

Well, there's another thing the wiki has wrong

Fixed.