Sunday, 17th April 2016, 20:41 by tabstorm
Here are a few things that I think are almost always not a good idea:
1. Training stealth. Stealth is crap in this game. Don't train it unless you're a spriggan, using Chei with transmutations, or want to play a dedicated hex/needle stabber.
2. Training shields. Don't do this unless you're a troll or formicid. It's ok if you use conjurations a lot, then use a buckler.
3. Training short blades. The parter of 1. and 2. Short blades are almost always terrible, and when they aren't terrible, they aren't actually that good, even though people sometimes argue otherwise, such as "I'm going to go short blades to maximize by bite attacks as a VS!"
4. Overtraining invocations on invo gods. Don't do this. Most invocations are not that good, seriously. Just get enough to use everything safely. I can't think of many gods that I'd want to go over 14 invocations on, perhaps Qazlal, but I don't think he's particularly enjoyable, and even this is debatable because you should be investing into things to help you survive the waves of enemies coming to you.
5. Training offensive magic without a book background and high starting int. Don't do this, especially in 0.18. Especially don't try to do a "reaver" character that uses mid-level conjurations with melee and moderate (base AC <= 10) armor, unless you have Ashenzari.Blade hands is still OK, if you do UC.
This works well for enemies but not for you because you have to deal with fail rates, spellpower issues, and experience allocation. By the time you get it working well, the game will basically be over, and you'll hate yourself because you spent 12 hours playing a character that has to rest and kite a whole lot because of how weak it is. It's just not a fun experience imo.
As more and more spells that aren't bad for characters without high intelligence are being removed or moved up in level, there is increasingly little point to training spells past the amount needed to use repel missiles, blink, summon butterflies, regeneration, animate skeleton, spectral weapon (I'm sure it will be removed soon) and possibly passage of golubria, unless you've started with highish INT. Learning deflect missiles or haste (the most overrated spell in the game) on a moderate-to-heavy armor character is probably a mistake unless you find a few INT items or plan to get 15 runes, in which case you can find the XP easily enough. Otherwise, haste potions and wands and berserk potions/amulets should get the job done.
I used to recommend shadow creatures, but 6 is too high level now for a more heavily-armored character. By the time you can afford that kind of XP in summonings, why bother, when you can train evocations and use a box of beasts or sack of spiders or elemental evoker that accomplishes the same thing, with far fewer fail rate issues, in a skill that most everyone has a better aptitude in, that dosen't check intelligence or use enhancers? Similarly, without phase shift, the value of even investing towards passage en route to phase shift is questionable. Necromancy is still okay for animate dead.
6. Not training any weapon, evasion, or fighting skill on a conjurer. If you're using moderate-to-high level conjurations, you should probably still use light armor, in my opinion. I actually think characters that use high-level conjurations are pretty fun and easy, unlike a lot of people, but you shoud still use a demon weapon or something like that even if you're wearing robes. You can kill even things like deep trolls fairly well with 18/30 and robes (RIP phaseshift) and avoid awkward situations where you have 0 MP.
7. Another good thing to do on many characters is to train ranged or throwing late game after stopping weapon skill at ~20. Ranged and throwing have issues early on with ammo, but this far into the game, these issues are no longer there, you can have a good launcher due to leftover enchant scrolls, and the XP is better used here than in 3 more points of dodging/armor.
Basically, I would try to build characters that are strong defensively, leaning towards high AC and moderate-low EV, or lightly armored with high-powered spells. These kind of characters will have a fairly smooth time going through the game. Being able to do a lot of damage is quite useful, especially as more powerful enemies are added to Depths in attempts to get people to die there. Being versatile and adapting after the early game is pretty overrated, imo - there is not a whole lot worth adapting to.
Good tactics are simpler to explain. It is straightforward - don't let a lot of enemies attack you at the same time. If there are summoners onscreen, get ready to use teleport if you can't dig a tunnel to break LoS with them. In general, there's no such thing as teleporting away too early. Be aware of enemies' special abilities and how they can cut off your escapes or kill you in 2 turns. Eventually you will get a feel for what kind of situations are unwinnable without having to find out the hard way by getting down to 30% HP. Remember to lure enemies back in the direction you came, so that things don't get out of hand due to noise. Finally, in my view, playing characters that allow you to be a little lazy with kiting tactics is actually a good thing, because you'll be less likely to make a mistake out of frustration or boredom.
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