Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 5382
Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36
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).
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:
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.
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
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
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.
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/tasonir.html
Officially ruining greatplayer statistics since Jan 18th, 2015.
I wrote the Melee Naga Guide.
Recording of my 15 rune 40k turn VSMo^Chei speedrun!
Officially ruining greatplayer statistics since Jan 18th, 2015.
I wrote the Melee Naga Guide.
Recording of my 15 rune 40k turn VSMo^Chei speedrun!
- For this message the author tasonir has received thanks: 2
- mopl, Queen Cassie
