Mini guide to transmuters


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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 30th June 2016, 21:33

Mini guide to transmuters

Tasonir's Transmuter guide 1.0

Races:
Best:
Merfolk, Draconian, Gargoyle, Vine Stalker

Good:
Ogre, Troll, Minotaur, Naga, Centaur, Hill Orc, Demonspawn

Nagas and centaurs will likely want to stick with blade hands so they can keep their bardings, and naga scale AC. Good luck getting claws 3 for your demonspawn!

Average:
Human, Demigod

Special cases:
Felid, Octopode, Deep Dwarf, Spriggan

Felid and Octopode will be weak at the start but once they have access to statue form become very powerful. Deep Dwarf is more of a special case in itself; as long as your build has access to some form of healing, you'll do fine. Trog is out since you'll be casting, but Makhleb or Ru are fine choices. Spriggan can be strong due to being able to escape from nearly anything, and transmutations allow you to deal high damage even with somewhat lower UC which can be hard to raise for them at -2. But their -30% hp will always be a problem, and I don't recommend them for transmuters.

Races to avoid:
Deep elf, high elf, halfling, tengu
Ghouls and Mummies can't be transmuters.
Vampire in older versions needed to be full to transmute, although now they can do it at just satiated, it may work.
Tengu's +1 UC and aux attacks may be tempting but I find the -20% hp to be more of a problem than it's worth. If you don't mind being a glass cannon, you could try to make it work, but the start is rather dangerous.

Skills:
One of main reasons why transmuter is so rough of a start is you can't simply apply the standard "raise your weapon" skill training like a berserker or fighter. While I would recommend training UC first, you probably only want to get it up to around the 5-6 range, then train transmutations slightly until you are comfortable with sticks to snakes. Assuming you have enough arrows, sticks to snakes will save you from most dangerous situations and you should lean on it fairly heavily. Next up get a few points of dodging/fighting, but either go back to training UC soon or even just train all three at once (not technically ideal, but it's pretty close in this case). Keep raising UC/dodging/fighting with an emphasis on UC throughout the game. Get more transmutations when you are ready to unlock another spell. If you plan on using either spider form or ice form, then put a few points into poison/ice to get them online quickly. Spellcasting should be fairly low as transmutations is better than it, especially for single school spells like blade hands, but you'll certainly put a few points into it. The picture as you enter lair (or are around lair:2-3) and are "established" might look something like 9-10 UC, 7-8 dodging, 5-10 Transmutations, 5-7 fighting (with low spellcasting and possibly low ice/poison). The reason for the wide range on transmutations is if you've committed to trying to get blade hands or ice form yet - this would make sense on something like a merfolk of cheibriados who can get blade hands very early, vs someone with a +0 aptitude on okawaru who is probably leaving transmutations at 5 for the time being because they can't afford to rush blade hands. Note that once you have blade hands online, your offense is extremely high and you don't need to raise unarmed for a while - focus on defenses. You'll want to go back and raise UC soon of course, primarily for increased attack speed, but your damage per hit is going to be fine for some time. Spoiler contains a sample skill leveling chart of a merfolk of cheibriados (ie, went blade hands fairly early).

Spoiler: show
Everything here is fairly typical and focused towards transmuting; feel free to branch out a bit more if you want to pick up evocations or other magic schools. The one mistake was training shields to 19, I simply didn't notice they had already hit 15:
  Code:
Skill      XL: |  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 |
---------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Unarmed Combat |     4  5     6  7  8 10 11       13 15          17 18                20 21 23 27 | 27.0
Transmutations |        3  4              9 11                         13 15 16                   | 16.0
Dodging        |                    4  6        8 10       12 20 21                            26 | 26.1
Fighting       |                    2  5        6  8 10    11    13 15                16 17 18 22 | 22.8
Spellcasting   |                             6              8           9    10       11 13 14    | 14.1
Invocations    |                             3  9    10 14                                        | 14.8
Armour         |                                   2                                              |  2.8
Throwing       |                                            5  7                                  |  7.7
Charms         |                                                     3  5                         |  5.0
Necromancy     |                                                     2  3                         |  3.6
Earth Magic    |                                                        7 11                      | 11.0
Shields        |                                                             10 15 19             | 19.0


Spells:
It'll depend on your race and what equipment you have how much spider form is worth it - if you're a draconian with racial scales and maybe you've found a +2 cloak, then losing all that AC to go spider form isn't that great. If you're an octopode with no armor at all, spider form is great, same for nagas who have slow movement but move at the normal speed in spider form.
I'm a lazy person, so I tend to go straight from sticks to snakes right up to blade hands, but in the interest of completeness ice form is your early AC/HP form. The HP boost is gives more hp to high HP races (draconians are +10%, trolls have +30%), but may be more vital to raising low hp races back towards normal (Gargoyles are -20%, VS are -30%). The AC is imho, fairly underwhelming, you could get more from a decent ring or scale mail. But it's better than robes and offers some protection.
I usually prefer to end up with statue form, although that depends on the race you're playing. Gargoyles, draconians, centaurs and nagas are often better with blade hands (gargoyles of course can't even cast statue form anyways). If you do play a troll transmuter, the early game is basically just straight monk and then eventually you get statue form for complete endgame power. It's a huge boost to any troll, although it's certainly not a "transmuter start" as you won't cast it for a long time.

God advice spoilered, considering removing it entirely:
Spoiler: show
As for gods, well, I have a serious cheibriados addiction, but if you're not interesting in being slow, okawaru is a fairly typical transmuter god. Might offers +5 to all physical skills, which is a huge boost to unarmed, gives you more dodging/armor, etc. Doesn't boost transmutations, but if your spells are castable, +5 there isn't that big of a deal.
Chei offers +15 to all stats, which makes getting your spells online much faster, lets you wear medium to heavy armor with less penalty, and gives you very high EV. Of course, you now can't walk away from monsters and you can't use haste, so be aware of the downsides and watch your step (literally) if you go this route.
Any other generalist god is still viable of course, take your favorite. Makhleb for healing, a ranged attack, and summons, Qaz for free clouds and ranged aoe, Fedhas if you want to have mushrooms kill everything for you, etc. As I said I have a cheibriados addiction, but if you aren't familiar with chei, try Okawaru first, it asks less of its worshippers.

Morgues: Actual transmuters:
GrTm: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 204009.txt
MfTm: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 052021.txt
OpTm: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 072327.txt
DrTm: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 195003.txt (Going statue form here is probably not the best choice, but I'm somewhat addicted to defenses. Try blade hands or dragon form)

OpTm: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/SlowThinker ... 045814.txt (Slowthinker showing a slightly different playstyle with more use of spider and ice form; switches to bow late game due to finding the very powerful unrand storm bow)

Technically not transmuters but they did transmute:
TrHu: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Tason ... 231010.txt (melee for a long time, statue form for endgame)
VSMo speedrun: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Tason ... 020017.txt (15 rune 40k turns speedrun, gets statue form online asap, around level 15) Better players have done this run in less than 20k turns (well one player at least, #2 score of all time; morgue here: http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/4t ... 234357.txt).

I'd also be interested in people's morgues of transmuters, especially ones that don't worship chei and which are recent (that skill level chart they added to morgues is great for teaching others), for diversity.
Last edited by tasonir on Friday, 1st July 2016, 21:44, edited 1 time in total.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 30th June 2016, 21:42

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

While I would recommend training UC first, you probably only want to get it up to around the 5-6 range, then train transmutations slightly until you are comfortable with sticks to snakes


I would reword to something like "Train just UC until you are XL 2, then switch to training just Transmutations until you are comfortable with Stick to Snakes failure rate"

Get more transmutations when you are ready to unlock another spell


It's optimal to train just Poison and Transmutations at XL 3 until you are comfortable with Spider Form failure rate. Ignoring Poison is a bad idea here. The same for Ice Form except it does not happen immediately at XL 4.

9-10 UC, 7-8 dodging, 5-10 Transmutations, 5-7 fighting


I would go with less transmutation and some poison/ice. There is no need to rush to Blade Hands. Saved XP goes into Fighting (UC is already very good with transformation and Dodging is not that great with Ice Form which is main form for Lair). "Blade Hands in Lair" builds tend to be closer to glass cannon which is bad, especially with Chei. Of course later it is ok to use Blade Hands when you are wearing heavy armour.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/SlowThinker ... 045814.txt

Also I have a morgue for example of bad play: http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 223339.txt
Transmutations should never be higher than UC.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 01:34

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

True I think I'm used to having higher dodging due to chei dex, but in general you could probably have it a level or two lower. And I'll add a mention that if you're using spider or ice form, training some of the skill for it is of course a good idea.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 02:41

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

For some races, I suspect the best way to win with the Transmuter backround is to ignore spells above S2S, find a decent weapon, and forget about UC.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 02:55

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

I think the god stuff is fine. You warn people well enough about the biased opinion and the downsides of Chei. And you push Oka as a better god.

@Rast, I think it's safe to assume that the people who'd be reading this guide are more interested as playing as a transmuter than winning a Tm.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 03:16

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

That seems like a good guide.

(But all my transmuters tend to die really fast. There's too much stuff to train!)

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 05:21

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Agreed that the goal is to stay true to the transmuter playstyle, although I do think the advice "get sticks to snakes online and then focus melee" is still pretty true to transmuters. Just stay unarmed :)

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 07:58

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Prsonally my favorite Transmuter god is Ru.

Leap lets you close in to pummel ranged threats; and you have some great AoE panic buttons; as well as Ru's passive aura of power really helping your survival. I find that Sacrifice Hand generally isn't that much of a detriment; since off-hand punches are not that strong; and you get a ton of piety for doing that as a Transmuter.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 11:08

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

A great suggestion, I'll do a Ru playthrough and an okawaru playthrough next.

I did a standard merfolk transmuter of chei run today, recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA32cKw ... lXkJPs6p0u (note: no audio, I didn't feel like talking to myself today)

Didn't get around to updating the guide yet but I will tomorrow. The run today was my first try, it's now part of a 2 run streak. Time to streak transmuters, everyone's favorite hobby :)

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 14:43

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

I should probably stop ignoring poison...

But honestly, as soon as spider form is castable I just pump everything into UC, Fighting, and Dodging. You're playing a melee character that uses spells, not the other way around. High-powered S2S is OP as fuck until after Orcs, though.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 14:47

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

PowerOfKaishin wrote:But honestly, as soon as spider form is castable I just pump everything into UC, Fighting, and Dodging. You're playing a melee character that uses spells, not the other way around.


I believe everyone does that. The only difference is what to do when Spider Form becomes weak. Some players go for Ice Form, others go for Blade Hands.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 21:17

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Sandman25 wrote:I believe everyone does that. The only difference is what to do when Spider Form becomes weak. Some players go for Ice Form, others go for Blade Hands.

I usually opt for dying at that point.
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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 21:39

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

tasonir wrote:I'm looking for some feedback and I'll polish it up and then use it as a go to copy/paste whenever transmuter questions are asked.


Put it on the wiki. You'll help those who use the wiki without asking here or on reddit, and you can swell with pride every time someone badmouths the wiki guides.

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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 23:01

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Sandman25 wrote:Some players go for Ice Form, others go for Blade Hands.
I usually play Chei transmuters so I get both for the Lair (Ice form for hydraes...first shoot evokables then ice form+bend time, then tele as last resort if shit hit fan)
You'll be glass cannon with or without Chei because you can't wear heavier armour (at least before and during Lair)
and with Chei you can pump your dodging; with blade hands you can kill pretty much everything in the Lair with poor defences (excpet hydraes).
I train poison and ice to just 1 point then turn it off. Once I get blade hands ~10% I train UC/fighting/dodging (I like to wear troll armour if Im with Chei then transit to some heavier stuff+armour training).
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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 23:20

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

If going for Blade hands, then Ice Form becomes castable naturally too. I meant that if I go for Ice Form, I stop training Transmutations early and can have higher Fighting/Dodging/UC. UC is important for attack delay also.
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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 23:34

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Sandman25 wrote:If going for Blade hands, then Ice Form becomes castable naturally too. I meant that if I go for Ice Form, I stop training Transmutations early and can have higher Fighting/Dodging/UC. UC is important for attack delay also.
Yeah I get it;
but
Sandman25 wrote:If going for Blade hands, then Ice Form becomes castable naturally too.
often I noticed that blade hands have better % failure than the ice form [assuming you are training just transmutations for blade hands(but again check it for yourself assuming I may talk garbage because Im drunk :)]
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Post Friday, 1st July 2016, 23:57

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Eyesburn wrote:often I noticed that blade hands have better % failure than the ice form [assuming you are training just transmutations for blade hands(but again check it for yourself assuming I may talk garbage because Im drunk :)

Happens to me every time i play transmuters and don't level Ice skill above 3.
Last edited by ZoFy on Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 00:29, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 00:04

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Ok, my bad then.
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 00:13

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

its not your bad, guess Im playing too much with Chei so I get both of those online pretty fast, I forgot how it is with other gods, guess it wouldn't be so easy with some other god tho;
blade hands is not mandatory in the Lair, ice form alone can be enough for that part of the game
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 00:17

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

No, no, it's my bad.

  Code:
 + Level 10.0 Transmutations

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger

d - Ice Form              Ice/Trmt       13 (100)     34%         4    224
q - Blade Hands           Trmt           25 (200)     14%         5    374

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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 02:42

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

The difference between ice form and blade hands success is also going to depend on spellcasting skill and int.

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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 10:03

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

What kind of armor would a transmuter wear? Obviously not for felid, Octopode, and draconians, but whenever I play something like demonspawn transmuter my character always seem to take too much damage from lair and orc mine enemies and die a a result. Obviously you'd want to stick to leather armor or robe for early game to keep spell failure to minimum, but I figure you gotta change your armor eventually-the question is, when, and what kind of armor?
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 11:48

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Unless you're using blade hands, armor doesn't matter because you'll always be fighting in a form.

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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 12:25

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

I usually just wear robes on tm, but I use ice form a lot more than most players. For blade hands tm I recommend steam, mottled, or swampDA (whichever you find first).

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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 12:38

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Why would you play a roleplaying conduct transmuter? Sticks to snakes is clearly the best transmutations spell by a wide margin. You're more favored to win stopping tmuts at S2S pretty much every time and making a shift to a typical melee weapon style.

On the other hand, the transmutation roleplaying conduct does not offer anything substantially different from the usual melee playstyles. It's the same kind of tactics with the added annoyance of constantly casting what are really just charms. The only reason this seems interesting to some people, as far as I can tell, is that when you split your skills between UC and transmutations, UC is really bad, rather than just kind of bad, and it becomes important to cast these temporary buff spells all the time. All you really get is more fiddly skill point allocation.
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 12:50

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

Fighting 10, M&F 18, +5 great mace of electro (yes, I know it needs 20 M&F) vs hydra

  Code:
           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:     20.6 |     57 |      84% |  17.3 |    80  |  1.25 |     21.7
Defending:     46.7 |    105 |     100% |  46.7 |   100  |  1.00 |     46.7


UC 10, Ice Form
  Code:
           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:     16.6 |     46 |      93% |  15.5 |    82  |  1.23 |     18.9
Defending:     34.8 |     99 |     100% |  34.8 |   142  |  0.70 |     24.5


UC 15, Ice Form
  Code:
            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:     20.3 |     57 |      93% |  19.0 |    72  |  1.38 |     26.4
Defending:     26.4 |     71 |      99% |  26.4 |   100  |  1.00 |     26.4


UC 15, Blade Hands (don't do it vs hydra :-))
  Code:
           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:     19.9 |     63 |      92% |  18.4 |    72  |  1.39 |     25.5
Defending:     46.7 |    109 |     100% |  46.7 |   100  |  1.00 |     46.7


+5 great mace of electro, M&F 20
  Code:
           AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking:     21.2 |     62 |      83% |  17.8 |    70  |  1.43 |     25.4
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 12:53

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

fsim has never been less informative.
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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 12:55

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

You are expected to compare damage and see that Ice Form slows hydra.

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Post Saturday, 2nd July 2016, 22:27

Re: Mini guide to transmuters

To give a quick summary for anyone who isn't familiar with fsim numbers, you can simplify things down by just looking at the final column, "aveffdam" or average effective damage. The last fsim shows a +5 great mace of electrocution with 20 skill at 25.4 damage, compared to UC 15 + ice form at 26.4. And ice form will slow cold blooded things (a fair amount of lair), and you aren't likely to have a weapon as good as +5 great mace of electrocution anyways.

Imho ice form is somewhat lacking in AC now that it doesn't get a bonus with ozo's armor, if I remember correctly. But that probably won't matter for a transmuter background in lair, who probably didn't find it anyways. But I was never really that impressed with getting ice form going and having 7 ac, maybe 9 at higher spellpower...

On a related note (trying to get AC), I tend to try to put transmuters in leather/ring mail, with a slight preference for ring mail. It isn't too much heaver and the +2 base armor over leather is a significant bump up. It does hurt your spellcasting a fair amount, so if you're on the edge of being able to cast something, keep a leather armor around for it. But I usually just manage the penalty, you can certainly keep sticks to snakes castable in ring without much trouble. Higher spells you might have to make adjustments for later. End game I'm either going for mediumish armor - fire/ice dragon or a really good randart ring/scale - if I'm using blade hands, or something light (mottled/leather/troll leather) if I'm just going to meld it anyways (stone/hydra/dragon form)

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