Deep Dwarves: How and Why?

[Velorien]

With the advent of Pakellas in trunk, I (a relatively inexperienced player) am trying Deep Dwarves for the first time to take advantage of their high Evocations aptitude. But their abilities confuse me.

1) Damage shaving. The wiki says it takes off e.g. an average of 2.25 points of damage at XL 11. This sounds tiny, especially next to more standard damage reduction sources like AC and GDR. What am I missing?

2) Passive mapping. How do I use this? All it seems to give me is a random scattering of unrelated squares, some of which are walls. It's nowhere near enough information to actually map anything, or plan my approach or find hidden vaults or whatever.

3) Bonus question: The in-progress build (with tiles) appears to have a different, darker UI, with different skill icons. What gives?

[Viashino_wizard]

Damage shaving both stacks with AC and works on anything, including smiting, hellfire and damage from being poisoned.
On another note, GDR tends to get heavily overvalued by players. In practice it doesn't have much impact.
As for Passive Mapping, it gets stronger at later levels.

[stoneychips]

Deep dwarves rock with Makhleb.

I dunno about Pakellas yet, but would seem like a good candidate too, if you can build up enough MP pool fast enough. (You do need some MP cap, right?)

Deep dwarves are really strong against succumbing to Poison status, at least on early/mid levels. (Although some sources of it, like scorpions, can still plain smack pretty hard.)

Most of the time I don't "use" mapping actively so much, but it does get much better later. It can be useful for telling you just enough to guess where a vault or portal to a branch might be, particularly if you know what to look for around those in terms of common structures. Sometimes it just tells you if there's an open room on the other side of the wall so you can dig/disintegrate a quick exit. Don't expect the whole map at once anytime, but if you follow it over time (a bit of memory game) or look to it in a pinch you may get some info that makes a difference even in early game.

[jestert79]

I actually recently ascended a DD of Pakellas: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 230951.txt

I can't give you a detailed explanation of damage-shaving but I know I really didn't seem to take as much damage. The mapping ability was vaguely useful, but not overwhelmingly - it can help in the Orcish Mines to find the unattached sections, and help you find "boss chambers."

Combine that with the wand of heal wounds you start with, and Pakellas's "quick charge" ability, and you're pretty much set for healing for the rest of the game. Once you find a good rod you'll be in good shape too.

[WingedEspeon]

With the advent of Pakellas in trunk, I (a relatively inexperienced player) am trying Deep Dwarves for the first time to take advantage of their high Evocations aptitude. But their abilities confuse me.

1) Damage shaving. The wiki says it takes off e.g. an average of 2.25 points of damage at XL 11. This sounds tiny, especially next to more standard damage reduction sources like AC and GDR. What am I missing?

2) Passive mapping. How do I use this? All it seems to give me is a random scattering of unrelated squares, some of which are walls. It's nowhere near enough information to actually map anything, or plan my approach or find hidden vaults or whatever.

3) Bonus question: The in-progress build (with tiles) appears to have a different, darker UI, with different skill icons. What gives?

1) Damage shaving is applied after AC and EV, which is what makes it good. Another good ability they have is having 20% more HP than humans.
2) Occasionally this may be useful, but they wouldn't be that much worse without it.