How do you do Summoner Extended?

[bcadren]

Serious question. I tried and...well I was a felid, I died twice so I gave up and did the orb run instead. Here's that character. http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Bcadr ... 103341.txt

It's just so much of the summoner playstyle involves controlling what's in LoS and slowly sweeping the floor, then extended...stuff comes directly at you (hell effects) and floor spawning never stops (pan) and it's impossible to rest and you can't Sif channel forever if you aren't running necromut, but Summoners tend to be frail so Necromut means no DDoor and...AHH! Seriously give me good examples of pure summoner in extended and tell me how the playstyle transitions for it?

[Sar]

Why purity? Summoners are great as hybrids. Anyway, my only problem as a Su in extended is that things abjure very often and monster abjuration is crazy effective. On other hand, a few casts of Horrible Things wipe the screen clean, and Dragon Call is great too. Malign Gateway is a very good anti-boss spell as well.

[archaeo]

well I was a felid

I think I spotted your problem. You also have 19 in invocations and only 8 in fighting, as well as a puzzling amount of earth. Summoners don't "tend to be frail"; there's no reason for a summoner to have lousy defenses, though FeSu doesn't have much of a choice. When I won it, I decided against doing extended because it sounded like a real pain.

Summoning through extended isn't particularly difficult. The main spell you were missing is XXX, which goes a long way toward responding to nearby threats, though it would've also been a good idea to pick up sputterflies and recall, as well as holding on to shadow creatures or MM. Then, you just rush through extended, avoiding stopping to fight while letting your dragon bros and other friends keep enemies occupied. Given how annoying channeling is without necromut, I would take it over ddoor, but that's likely suboptimal; you don't need to be able to channel forever, you just need to be able to channel a lot, and it turns out Crawl usually gives the player huge food stacks to do just that.

[bcadren]

XXX and MM were about the only summoning spells I didn't have access to...Recall though, that makes sense. Similarly, Malign was becoming useless in extended (it's whole thing is immunity to abjure, working outside of LoS and not moving; abjure immune is nice; working outside of LoS becomes increasingly useless as you can't really clear floors anymore (the only thing that part was really useful for leave it behind to kill things that would otherwise follow you etc.)

[bcadren]

You also have 19 in invocations and only 8 in fighting, as well as a puzzling amount of earth. Summoners don't "tend to be frail"; there's no reason for a summoner to have lousy defenses, though FeSu doesn't have much of a choice. When I won it, I decided against doing extended because it sounded like a real pain.

Manuals...and LRD, that's about the only reasons for going that far, though more mana/channel is really nice; it's roughly (d(8 + invo))/4 per channel and yea. And summoners DO tend to be frail if pure, because of the half-XP thing for all kills. Hybrids don't, but...

[Sar]

Getting half XP doesn't matter THAT much, as the skill costs increase rapidly. Malgin Gateway is great for bosses because it can't be abjured and chaos means you can get MR-ignoring para and confuse. If it does something silly like haste, just reroll the fight by walking away.

[bcadren]

Well I failed pretty hard at pure summoner extended there. I've done summoner hybrid extended before easily, but that was...OpMo^TSO with {Aura of Abjure, Monstrous Menagerie and Dragon's Call} (Summons) then {Dragon Form, Haste, Controlled Blink} as highest level other spells. Having lots of backup while being mostly a meleeist worked well...having nothing but summons is very abuh...

[tabstorm]

Serious question. I tried and...well I was a felid, I died twice so I gave up and did the orb run instead. Here's that character. http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Bcadr ... 103341.txt

It's just so much of the summoner playstyle involves controlling what's in LoS and slowly sweeping the floor, then extended...stuff comes directly at you (hell effects) and floor spawning never stops (pan) and it's impossible to rest and you can't Sif channel forever if you aren't running necromut, but Summoners tend to be frail so Necromut means no DDoor and...AHH! Seriously give me good examples of pure summoner in extended and tell me how the playstyle transitions for it?

protip: That fullscreen attack that takes half your HP away dosen't do anything if you cast Necromutation. People need to stop falling for this "never cast necromut lol" thing. If you have necromut on a Sif character (especially a summoner) and a L9 spell the only thing that will really damage you is hellfire or &'s. It will objectively make your life easier.

What spells did you do the entire game with if you never got MM or XXX? Shadow Creatures?

[MainiacJoe]

And I thought Sif eventually gave you every spell--not that I've ever gotten a Sif character far enough to notice that in my own games.

BTW I spectated this game for a while last night and bcadren was very kind to take the time to answer my many questions and give tips. He never made me feel like I was interrupting him and I appreciate that.

[Siegurt]

And I thought Sif eventually gave you every spell--not that I've ever gotten a Sif character far enough to notice that in my own games.

"Eventually" means "sif will keep gifting you random spell books, with slightly higher odds of them containing spells you havent seen"

If you are looking for a particular spell it might, in fact, be a very very very long time before you see it.

[MainiacJoe]

And I thought Sif eventually gave you every spell--not that I've ever gotten a Sif character far enough to notice that in my own games.

"Eventually" means "sif will keep gifting you random spell books, with slightly higher odds of them containing spells you havent seen"

If you are looking for a particular spell it might, in fact, be a very very very long time before you see it.

Someone sold me a bridge!

[ontoclasm]

pure

Suggestion one: stop handicapping yourself. You're basically asking "how do I beat extended without actually using, like, 70% of my character's power or potential?" Get melee, it's cheap. And it makes your summons better since you can help and protect them. Get defenses and Charms and Evocations and whatever. Being a summoner does not have to mean dying honorably in cases where summons don't work.

[Badtown]

Don't neglect Mana Vipers or Aura of Abjuration in extended, either. Branch bosses and pandemonium lords are way more manageable when they can't cast. Aura of abj makes mummies much easier, too.