Need some item advice

[VictorG]

I am pretty new to Crawl, and currently playing a Sludge Elf Transmuter of Sif Muna, experience level 12. I'm using unarmed attacks a lot, while supporting myself with Evaporate, Ice Form and (recently learned) Blade Hands. This seems to be working fine, but I have a few questions about which items I should use.

First question is about two robes I have:
1. +2 Robe of Repulsion (+4 STR)
2. +4 Robe of Night (+Inv MR SInv Stlth++)
Which of these two items is more useful to me? The second has a lot of bonuses, but I'm not sure how useful they are. I'm loath to give up the +4 STR of the first robe, both because of carrying capacity (potions for Evaporate weigh a lot, but I suppose I could carry less) and because I'm assuming that Strenght is very important for unarmed combat? Or isn't it?

My second question is about two staves I found, a Staff of channeling and a Staff of cold. Are these of any use to me? I've never been to 0 MP, and even if I get there, Sif Muna has given me a channeling ability -- so the Staff of channeling is pretty useless, right? And does the Staff of cold do anything for me when the only Ice spell I cast is Ice Form?

Third question: I have a +3 ring of evasion, a +4 ring of protection, and a ring of protection from magic. The first two have very tangible effects, so those are the two I'm wearing normally. Is that the right choice? The ring of protection from magic sounds rather specialised, since it claims to protect me against enchantments, and I don't recall having seen any monster trying to cast Enchantment spells on me.

Fourth and final question: what is better to wear normally, my Amulet of Clarity or my Amulet of Stasis? The latter has a scary-looking slow icon in the tiles version, so I'm not even sure it is a helpful item, though the description does sound helpful. I suppose the Amulet of Clarity allows me to Evaporate potions of confusion on monsters standing next to me, because it makes me immune to confusion?

Thanks for any help!

[szanth]

Strength does less than you'd think for damage. The +Inv MR SInv Stlth++ is far more useful. Especially since it gives you +2 more AC than the other one does.

If you equip the staff of cold when you cast ice form, it'll be stronger or last longer or something.

Later in the game you'll find a lot of donks casting enchantments at your face, and in those areas protection from magic is going to help more than 4 AC.

Stasis is annoying because you have to unequip it if you want to teleport yourself somewhere. On the other hand, keep it in your inventory so you can walk right through those irritating teleport traps you'll find right in front of something you want.

[KoboldLord]

+str is of marginal use, while SInv is huge. Being able to see the orc wizard or unseen horror reaming you lets you kill them without luring them into a corridor, which is not always available. The second robe is better even without considering the extra AC and the other three abilities. As long as your strength is high enough to manage your intended armor (irrelevant here) and high enough to avoid stat death (10 or 12 is plenty for even the post-endgame), there's little point in raising it. Just leave excess potions in your stash; if you start with a few confusion potions as seed stock you can harvest a dozen or so off of most dungeon levels from the ambient orc packs.

Staff of channeling is for post-endgame content pure casters who don't have anything better. Sif Muna is better, and you'll probably be able to cast Necromutation by that point so the hunger cost is irrelevant. The staff of channeling recovers mana slower than Sif Muna, Sublimation of Blood, or the appropriate crystal ball, but it doesn't have a drawback like those other methods.

The staff of cold is mostly for cold-focused conjuration casters, which you are not. It's junk to you, much like the orc equipment littering the floor of Orc.

Early game, your AC and EV are your main defenses, so those rings are probably your best bet for general use. Later on, they'll probably become obsolete because you'll have better sources of AC and EV and you'll have other useful rings to put in those slots. The magic resistance ring improves your defenses against things like Sigmund's confusion spell, so if you see a caster like him that might hit you with an annoying status effect you can quickly swap rings. Rings take only one turn to swap, so it's safer to do so than it would be to swap your armor.

Clarity and Stasis are both of fairly marginal use. Confusion is a very rare status effect, although clarity is enormously beneficial if you do expect to run into it. Stasis makes you immune to teleport traps, slow, and paralysis, but it also keeps you from using teleportation, berserk, or haste for your own benefit. Given a choice between the two, I'd probably keep clarity on for general use simply because it doesn't have any drawback, but the first action you should always take no matter what upon seeing a caster that knows paralysis should be to swap to stasis, as long as you have it available. Swapping amulets is very fast, much like rings.

[MrMisterMonkey]

Staff of cold does some good ac-ignoring cold damage with high evocations (you need at least 14 Evocations, is it, to get the cold damage to trigger all the time, but extra also helps with damage) and ice magic skill.

[VictorG]

Thanks for your earlier replies! I am back with two new questions.

1. I haven't found a single interesting helm, buckler/shield, pair of gloves or pair of boots in the game so far (D16, Hive, Orcish Mines, Lair). Is this just bad luck, or are there specific branches where you can find such items?
2. I've been playing unarmed, using Ice Form and Blade Hands, and my skills are Fighting 10, Unarmed 14. No other weapon skills. However, I just defeated Agnes, and she gave me a +7, +1 lajatang of pain. The game claims that a lajatang is "extremely effective", and since I am currently training necromancy (skill level 8 and rising; I have found the Necronomicon and would like to use it!) that "pain" brand sounds very good. Would it be worth it to start training staves? Or am I better off just sticking to unarmed attack through the rest of the game? I noticed that staves are the only weapon my sludge elf doesn't have an aptitude penalty with.

[ryak]

Its a bad idea to switch for two reasons:

(1) Transmuter spells are basically designed around using unarmed. While its possible to use some of their spells armed, its not a particularly good idea.
(2) You already invested pretty heavily in unarmed. If you switch now all that exp will have been wasted.

In general you want to pick a weapon type at the beginning and stick with it permenantly. The only exception to this is cross-training skills. For example, you can start with short blades and later switch to long blades assuming your aptitude for both is decent and you do the switch before you reach a very high skill.

[Stormfox]

Late game switches are also bad because of the higher XP requirements to advance skills at higher experience levels. While you didn't mention your XL, it can't be horribly low if you've got Fighting 10, Unarmed 14, and can survive to take down Agnes and have gotten down to D:16. It will take an entirely unreasonable amount of XP to first bootstrap Staves, and then to get it to a level where the lajatang's speed penalty won't kill you.

[Kate]

The enemies in Elf carry loads of bucklers, and it can often be worthwhile to dip in and kill a few enemies on the first floor to try and get one. But as an unarmed character you don't usually want a buckler/shield unless you find a good artefact, as it prevents you from using your offhand attack.

[KoboldLord]

Thanks for your earlier replies! I am back with two new questions.

1. I haven't found a single interesting helm, buckler/shield, pair of gloves or pair of boots in the game so far (D16, Hive, Orcish Mines, Lair). Is this just bad luck, or are there specific branches where you can find such items?

Largely dumb luck for most of the game. You can bias generation somewhat by hunting down intelligent monsters that spawn with the desired equipment -- for instance, killing orcs in Orc will generate lots of various body armors, some of which will be branded, and elves in Elf will have the lighter body armors and some bucklers as well. A percentage of these will be branded just by random chance.

For the slots that don't have good monsters to harvest, you can either get crazy-lucky from random floor trash or you can explore a major vault such as a branch end or a portal vault. Most of these will provide you with some sort of 'acquirement', which has a reasonable chance to be armor and will be biased toward producing something interesting… although not necessarily something good.

2. I've been playing unarmed, using Ice Form and Blade Hands, and my skills are Fighting 10, Unarmed 14. No other weapon skills. However, I just defeated Agnes, and she gave me a +7, +1 lajatang of pain. The game claims that a lajatang is "extremely effective", and since I am currently training necromancy (skill level 8 and rising; I have found the Necronomicon and would like to use it!) that "pain" brand sounds very good. Would it be worth it to start training staves? Or am I better off just sticking to unarmed attack through the rest of the game? I noticed that staves are the only weapon my sludge elf doesn't have an aptitude penalty with.

Unarmed Combat is unique amongst the combat skills in that your skill level directly increases the damage you do. Every other combat skill just improves accuracy and attack speed, and you're expected to find or make your own increases in damage. As such, your unarmed attacks are already excellent, particularly when transformed. A weapon would have to be preposterously awesome to tempt you away from that.

Lajatangs are top-end weapons worthy of the post-endgame content, but with zero skill in staves they attack pretty slowly and will end up giving monsters multiple attacks between your own attacks. This is bad. Furthermore, Pain does not affect the vast majority of post-endgame monsters, so by the time your Staves skill catches up to where it's supposed to be you'll have already killed for xp most of the monsters that Pain's any good against.

[galehar]

Unarmed Combat is unique amongst the combat skills in that your skill level directly increases the damage you do. Every other combat skill just improves accuracy and attack speed, and you're expected to find or make your own increases in damage.

Weapon skills affect damage too. Although not as much as UC skill.