The Tavern

Hi everybody,

I'm pretty new to Crawl... The farthest I've gotten is the bottom floor of the Lair, but have had various characters reach similar points in the game.

I've recently become enthused with Vampire Enchanters, and am planning to follow Ashenzari with this character. My VpEn is XL 7 and is on Level 5 of the dungeon, and I just found the craziest Randart I've ever seen.

It's a +11 Mace with Antimagic, -TELE, and INT+6

Now, I currently have Stealth 10.0, Hexes 5.0, Dodging 3.0, Ice Magic 3.0, and Short Blades 2.0

Without the mace on, I have STR 8, INT 18, and DEX 14

Should I change my game strategy to accommodate this new mace? It seems almost too good to pass up.

As I see it, the Antimagic component is a pretty big issue... With the bulk of my attribute points in INT and little STR, I can't really afford to become a straight melee character instead of a caster, but the mace cripples my MP.

Should I focus on my short blades, but keep the mace around for sticky situations? If I happen to wake up a bunch of opponents, it might make sense to switch over to the mace and bust some heads as i retreat through the corridors. Should I level up my short blades but also start putting some points into axes and maces as a backup plan? I've never been in a situation like this before.

Many thanks,

Kamickalo

I would stick to the plan using short blades. That mace is a good weapon for some builds for now, but it will be outclassed in the mid-game, when it's base damage can't hold up anymore - the +10 doesn't help that much.

Meanwhile, you lose the stabbing bonus from short blades, antimagic drains your mp so you can eh/confuse less and -tele means that you can't teleport away when things go bad without unwielding you weapon. So you would have to change your game plan radical for a weapon that's good for a while, but not more... (+ antimagic brand isn't really that useful at this stage of the game).

It may be wortwhile to keep this mace as a backup plan and use it against opponents that are not too strong when your eh/confuse fails repeatedly, and use it if you have already depleted your mp pool, dunno. But then don't put points in maces, anyway.

It is almost never worth radically changing your build for a randart. Even moreso when the base weapon type is as crappy (i.e. low-tier) as a mace. High enchantment numbers may look enticing, but if you're going to make a weapon your long-term primary killdudes option you should give a lot more weight to base damage. (There are math reasons* for this.)

As to whether you should keep this particular crappy randart on hand for a while: Hit some things with it and see how quickly they die. Antimagic can be great against some of the deadliest early-game threats, like Orc Wizards. Don't worry about your stab bonus or limited MP, because you're only going to swap this in when your dagger and magic have failed you anyway. Don't worry about -Tele because you can swap away from it in half a turn. Don't train M&F.

* Essentially, enchantment is a straightforward additive damage bonus, but base damage gets multiplied by your skills and some weapon brands.

That randart isn't amazing.

It's amacing!

That randart is booty, base damage is everything, then the additional things like slaying and resistances. A mace is just not good. If it was a good randart and it was early dungeons I would think about switching and if I was around lair I would only switch if it was really good and it's weapon skill was cross trained (except if I was running long blades )

Havin' base damage ain't everything, not havin' it is

can't believe kanye tried to coin the term "getting some brain" in that song for the purpose of the worst reference in musical history

It's not everything but it is everything. That crappy mace or a great mace, I thing I'm going with the great mace

This is something that crawl is really terrible at communicating to players, but enchantment is actually much less important on a weapon than base damage. (This is because high strength and skills give you bonus damage based on the base damage of your weapon.) For a sufficiently skilled character, each point of base damage is worth about 2-3 points of enchantment.

So that +11 mace is good now, but it's about as damaging as a +0 morningstar or dire flail, and significantly weaker than a great mace. (Although its enchantment also increases its accuracy, so it has some advantage over the morningstar.)
Also, antimagic is not a very useful brand in the early game. Threatening things like adders, centaurs, or hydras don't cast spells at all. At this point the only real things it works on are orc wizards and some uniques.