Some questions


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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Tuesday, 23rd August 2016, 18:49

Some questions

So it is time for another dumb thread of mine. I'm a quite bad player and I need some advice. Currently I'm doing this Naga greater race thing, and I'm at the point now when I have only "mage" backgrounds left (from Wz to VM). While playing other backgrounds I found a way to streamline my games, so to speak. I just picked the first good melee weapon I found, wore the heaviest armour, completely ignored magic and used some top or mid-tier god who can carry me through early-mid game. I did this on ALL backgrounds except En and Tm. Now, it may be not the best way to play the game, but it helped me tremendously. By limiting my options, I make my choices much easier, i.e. I don't have to worry about hybridising, different weapon types, different armour choices etc. If you look at my win morgues, I have exactly 5 core skills trained: fighting, weapon skill, armour, dodging, evo. I trained shields when I used them and invo on non-Trog characters. And those skills are even trained the same amount every game. This made my games consistent, in a sense: I knew exactly what I'm going to do, and what my playstyle is going to be, before even starting a character. I didn't have to think about strategy, I didn't have to worry about anything. This is what I mean by "streamlining".

Now my question is: is there the same consistent way to play "mage" backgrounds? I just played NaWz of Veh, and I died in Zot 5, because I didn't have an answer to 3 ancient liches simultaneously coming into LOS. I couldn't do anything, teleported into a bunch of other monsters — died. This is when I realized that I probably made some strategic mistake at some point. I guess Vehumet is a bad god for this purpose, maybe Kiku/Sif? What I'm looking for are some general guidelines for character development, which I can use every time and get consistent results, just like I did with melee chars.

I hope I made my point clear enough and didn't sound too retarded. English is not my best language.

My online profile: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/babyrage.html

Tomb Titivator

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Post Tuesday, 23rd August 2016, 19:09

Re: Some questions

BabyRage wrote:I just picked the first good melee weapon I found, wore the heaviest armour, completely ignored magic and used some top or mid-tier god who can carry me through early-mid game.

You can do this on book starts, too. Trog will carry just about any terrible combo if you can survive long enough to find an altar.

(That's assuming your goal is just to win all the backgrounds; if you want a simple rubric for playing mage starts as mages, I'm afraid magic opens up so many options that it's hard to simplify it in the same way as a melee-only playstyle. But I guess I would say: Learn what the spells in your starting book do; get the good ones at decent failure/power; train some defensive skills and pick up a decent weapon; pick a top-tier god; learn useful utility spells. At that point you can decide whether to let your weapon become your main source of damage or to pick up higher-level spells, but you're unlikely to go wrong either way -- and you can often do both to some extent.)

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BabyRage wrote:I hope I made my point clear enough and didn't sound too retarded. English is not my best language.

I think you explained yourself well, but I would suggest not using "retarded" in this way.
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cerebovssquire, Utis

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 23rd August 2016, 21:44

Re: Some questions

I guess the biggest thing for all Na is to have a reliable way to deal with the movement speed. Passage of golubria is quite neat. Haste is of course good, but swiftness helps too. Summons allow you to get distance. Gods can help with this. Zin pretty much gives you the get-out-of-jail-free card.

Kiku reliably gives access to allies to hide behind. Sif will likely gift good summoning spells. Ru gives leap, and so on. I wouldn't recommend Vehumet unless you're very good at not getting in trouble. At that point I wouldn't have any advice to offer.

I'd also advise you to use consumables more aggressively. I note in your morgue that you were not hasted, and not affected by agility when you died. Tree form might have been a tactical error too, probably better to tele again and blink around. Fear might have done something.

Also, you had a lot of spell levels left. Get some cheap summons (butterflies!) and other utility stuff (like apportation). I'm not good at reading console, but it looks like there were some rock walls that could've been dug to reduce enemies in LOS.

Swamp Slogger

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Joined: Thursday, 11th August 2011, 14:40

Post Wednesday, 24th August 2016, 00:41

Re: Some questions

Maybe invest a bit more into stealth? At decent ranks it's highly likely to give you one or more free turns upon finding yourself in a dangerous situation. Naga has great apts for it as well.

For gods, I agree with what others have said, and would also add Oka and maybe Chei or Ash to the list to consider; for Oka, +5 skill on armor/dodge/shield/stealth is just fantastic, it's so much exp you can spend on your offence instead. Chei is obviously very much more of a niche god, but in a way it does the same thing as Oka, with +stats kinda sorta being equal to skill ranks. If you do go Chei, consider decent stealth and using "step from time" liberally... Both Ash and Chei have the disadvantage of taking a long time to get running though.

Speaking of spells, if you want to cheese it, try scumming for controlled blink, with good stealth it trivializes Zot:5 (and most other places!).
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Post Wednesday, 24th August 2016, 18:03

Re: Some questions

I've won all of NaWz, NaSu, NaNe, NaFE, NaAE, NAEE and NaVM with Chei except NaIE(Okawaru) and NaCj(Vehumet).

you train your spells a bit so you can kill dudes, you don't need many skill points into magic schools because chei will boost both spells % failure and spellpower, which leaves you more exp to focus on UC, dodging, fighting, armour (+str and +dex will boost both offence and defence).

Maybe you don't like this chei+naga playstyle but it wokred very well for me.
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