Hexes do not become useless late game.

[dowan]

Please stop putting words in my mouth. I've said a number of times hexes aren't useless, just that they're not the best way to spend XP. In fact I said it in the post you quoted.
And something working 50% of the time against 80% of the enemies, many of whom are popcorn, doesn't make it great.
Unbranded daggers work 100% of the time against 100% of the enemies in game, and they're not useless, but they're also very far from the best way to handle most threats.


It's always interesting reading about good uses for brilliance, and you make a good point that you don't have to spend the XP if you're only going to cast it a few times. That's certainly something I'll keep in mind.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ok, let me put my words in my mouth then. HEXES IS THE BEST MAGIC SCHOOL IN ZOT. Those who say that Hexes become useless late game are very bad players.

[dowan]

Yeah, very true that they don't become useless late game. If you got level 27 hexes for free you'd be stupid not to use it throughout the game, including in zot.

Best magic school in zot, doubtful to me, but also irrelevant, as skill XP can be freely spent, it's not restricted to magic schools.

[VeryAngryFelid]

You don't need 27 skill levels to cast level 6 spells, 12 levels is enough. 14-16 if you really want to have them at 1% (like I usually do).

  Code:

 Action           |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
 Invisibility     |       |       |       |     9 |    41 |    22 |    28 |    25 |    27 ||   152


  Code:

 11718 | Lair:1   | Reached XP level 11. HP: 92/92 MP: 10/20
 12274 | Lair:2   | Reached skill level 12 in Hexes

https://crawl.project357.org/morgue/San ... 230138.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sandman25/m ... 131339.txt

[Reptisaurus]

Well there are generally enough scrolls of silence for liches, and like I said, evo can trivialize the same enemies that hexes can. You've also got iron trolls, golden dragons, juggernauts, various uniques, etc... There are a lot of enemies hexes aren't well suited for, generally due to super high MR or outright immunity.

Hexes are great in the places they work, and the school does have some non mr checking stuff, although a lot of the spells you listed are dual school. If mana viper is so great, summoning can be trained. If prism is good, any number of other conjurations are available.

Yes, the majority of higher level spells are dual schooled. I agree, I supose, that single school hexes have limited usefulness... but they're still a hell of a lot better than single school fire or ice spelss.

It's certainly true they don't become useless, they just become more and more situational. So I think it's a worthwhile question of whether it's worth the XP costs considering that XP could be spent elsewhere. As I said before, the level it's worth it to train hexes to is probably not 0 for all characters. But if you're ignoring better options just because hexes has a roundabout way of dealing with something you're making yourself weaker.

I agree evo is a bad investment if you've decided to impose a conduct on yourself not to use it, but that's irrelevant.

True, but also true of every magic school except maybe pure summoning.

[tabstorm]

Can you win with a hex character? Sure. Will it be worse in the mid-late game than a heavily-armored warrior or a conjurer? Yes, absolutely. Should you learn hexes like Confuse if you find it past early game, especially on a character without high int? Probably not. If you are a conjurer you have better things to put your experience into. If you are a warrior you don't really have any reason to go down the medium-armor route. You can train evocations and get something close enough to the function of confuse without needing to skimp on armor, and evocations is a lot more useful than hexes.

I hate these kinds of threads, because people always say "Well, you can Win With It!" You can win this game under all sorts of self-gimping conducts. A a better question is "Should I divert experience from my core skills into hexes when I find a book of maledictions or whatever" to which I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. There are, however, quite a few books for which you should allocate XP to cast spells from said book for most characters.

[Reptisaurus]

Can you win with a hex character? Sure. Will it be worse in the mid-late game than a heavily-armored warrior or a conjurer? Yes, absolutely.

That's true for trolls, minotaurs, gargoyles and tengu. Absolutely untrue for spriggans, felids, vampires, and deep elves. And highly questionable for most other races. Hexes provide you with a more varied and effective set of escape/fight reset options than weapons or conjurations (Although conjurations do have some, and they're all nicely lower level.)

[Siegurt]

Can you win with a hex character? Sure. Will it be worse in the mid-late game than a heavily-armored warrior or a conjurer? Yes, absolutely. Should you learn hexes like Confuse if you find it past early game, especially on a character without high int? Probably not. If you are a conjurer you have better things to put your experience into. If you are a warrior you don't really have any reason to go down the medium-armor route. You can train evocations and get something close enough to the function of confuse without needing to skimp on armor, and evocations is a lot more useful than hexes.

I hate these kinds of threads, because people always say "Well, you can Win With It!" You can win this game under all sorts of self-gimping conducts. A a better question is "Should I divert experience from my core skills into hexes when I find a book of maledictions or whatever" to which I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. There are, however, quite a few books for which you should allocate XP to cast spells from said book for most characters.

So what if you have already done so? Lets say you found rMsl, blink and regen, and can cast them all at 8% failure with your 12 int in your fire dragon armour, your halfway through your second S branch when you come across a spellbook with confusion and slow in it, do you still think it is suboptimal?

What if you're a conjurer, and you havent come across blink or swiftness yet (or any reliable spell ways to escape/slow down your opponent), you have enough spellcasting and int to cast confusion at 35% without touching hexes, getting it to like 8 is all it takes to be effective, and for that same amount of xp you can raise your primary attack skills from 18-20 by1 or 2, increasing your damage by < 1% is it still not worth picking up hexes for the disabling power? Confused things take a lot longer to get to you leaving you more time for blasting them after all, as do slowed things, and cause fear is pretty useful in the right circumstances too...


I think maybe you overestimate "the vast majority", the cases where it is a good idea to work in some hexes are certainly a subset of the whole, but how large or small the percentage is seems to change a lot with a different perspective of what kinds of characters are "regular"

[Reptisaurus]

and deep elves.

Since I know I'm gonna get called on this one, I'm calling DE blaster way over-rated and just not that good. You can kill a lot of things, but when you're done you have just a couple spell-points left, 80 hit points 16 AC, and you just made A LOT of noise.

I will grant that level one enchanters are the worst start in the game, though.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Can you win with a hex character? Sure. Will it be worse in the mid-late game than a heavily-armored warrior or a conjurer? Yes, absolutely. Should you learn hexes like Confuse if you find it past early game, especially on a character without high int? Probably not.

The same can be said about Conjurations. Hexes is less vulnerable to spell power because many spells don't care much about it: Invisibility, Silence, Darkness.

If you are a conjurer you have better things to put your experience into.

Of course. It's usually better to contunue doing what you are doing unless it is spells and you need to have a way to kill things while at 0 MP.

If you are a warrior you don't really have any reason to go down the medium-armor route.

It depends. It is not uncommon for me to switch from heavy armour to middle armour late game, some spells are OP and if you don't ignore Dodging, your defenses will be almost the same.

You can train evocations and get something close enough to the function of confuse without needing to skimp on armor, and evocations is a lot more useful than hexes.

That's arguable. Unlike evocations you are not limited with charges when you go Hexes.

I hate these kinds of threads, because people always say "Well, you can Win With It!" You can win this game under all sorts of self-gimping conducts. A a better question is "Should I divert experience from my core skills into hexes when I find a book of maledictions or whatever" to which I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. There are, however, quite a few books for which you should allocate XP to cast spells from said book for most characters.

I believe the answer is "it depends".
MuGl with Silence, Animate Dead, Phase Shift.
You can treat this character also as an example where I would switch from heavy armour to middle armour if necessary.

[tabstorm]

Can you win with a hex character? Sure. Will it be worse in the mid-late game than a heavily-armored warrior or a conjurer? Yes, absolutely. Should you learn hexes like Confuse if you find it past early game, especially on a character without high int? Probably not. If you are a conjurer you have better things to put your experience into. If you are a warrior you don't really have any reason to go down the medium-armor route. You can train evocations and get something close enough to the function of confuse without needing to skimp on armor, and evocations is a lot more useful than hexes.

I hate these kinds of threads, because people always say "Well, you can Win With It!" You can win this game under all sorts of self-gimping conducts. A a better question is "Should I divert experience from my core skills into hexes when I find a book of maledictions or whatever" to which I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. There are, however, quite a few books for which you should allocate XP to cast spells from said book for most characters.

So what if you have already done so? Lets say you found rMsl, blink and regen, and can cast them all at 8% failure with your 12 int in your fire dragon armour, your halfway through your second S branch when you come across a spellbook with confusion and slow in it, do you still think it is suboptimal?

What if you're a conjurer, and you havent come across blink or swiftness yet (or any reliable spell ways to escape/slow down your opponent), you have enough spellcasting and int to cast confusion at 35% without touching hexes, getting it to like 8 is all it takes to be effective, and for that same amount of xp you can raise your primary attack skills from 18-20 by1 or 2, increasing your damage by < 1% is it still not worth picking up hexes for the disabling power? Confused things take a lot longer to get to you leaving you more time for blasting them after all, as do slowed things, and cause fear is pretty useful in the right circumstances too...


I think maybe you overestimate "the vast majority", the cases where it is a good idea to work in some hexes are certainly a subset of the whole, but how large or small the percentage is seems to change a lot with a different perspective of what kinds of characters are "regular"

For the melee character, absolutely, it's a waste. Just train evocations and use a wand of confusion or paralysis if you really need to disable enemies. Many encounters that matter will be against ranged attackers against whom you probably don't want to sit there trying to cast confuse at 35% fail rate combined with a high resistance rate. This again restricts me to medium armor, which I think is suboptimal most of the time.

If you're a conjurer, why would you waste MP failing to hit with confuse? Also, considering that many fights are against packs, by casting confuse, you are wasting another resource, which is turns of spacing. The whole point of conjuration is to kill enemies before they are next to you. Casting hexes instead lets enemies close on you while you sit there, which defeats the whole point of it.

Also, I really would rather not rely on a hex as a reset option. They aren't reliable enough in a life/death situation. If you are needing to reset constantly, you are screwing up in some other way.

[NhorianScum]

Invis/darkness are pretty reliable escape options and blaster generaly has light hex training from early goodshit.

[Reptisaurus]

Can you win with a hex character? Sure. Will it be worse in the mid-late game than a heavily-armored warrior or a conjurer? Yes, absolutely. Should you learn hexes like Confuse if you find it past early game, especially on a character without high int? Probably not. If you are a conjurer you have better things to put your experience into. If you are a warrior you don't really have any reason to go down the medium-armor route. You can train evocations and get something close enough to the function of confuse without needing to skimp on armor, and evocations is a lot more useful than hexes.

I hate these kinds of threads, because people always say "Well, you can Win With It!" You can win this game under all sorts of self-gimping conducts. A a better question is "Should I divert experience from my core skills into hexes when I find a book of maledictions or whatever" to which I think the answer is overwhelmingly no. There are, however, quite a few books for which you should allocate XP to cast spells from said book for most characters.

So what if you have already done so? Lets say you found rMsl, blink and regen, and can cast them all at 8% failure with your 12 int in your fire dragon armour, your halfway through your second S branch when you come across a spellbook with confusion and slow in it, do you still think it is suboptimal?

What if you're a conjurer, and you havent come across blink or swiftness yet (or any reliable spell ways to escape/slow down your opponent), you have enough spellcasting and int to cast confusion at 35% without touching hexes, getting it to like 8 is all it takes to be effective, and for that same amount of xp you can raise your primary attack skills from 18-20 by1 or 2, increasing your damage by < 1% is it still not worth picking up hexes for the disabling power? Confused things take a lot longer to get to you leaving you more time for blasting them after all, as do slowed things, and cause fear is pretty useful in the right circumstances too...


I think maybe you overestimate "the vast majority", the cases where it is a good idea to work in some hexes are certainly a subset of the whole, but how large or small the percentage is seems to change a lot with a different perspective of what kinds of characters are "regular"

For the melee character, absolutely, it's a waste. Just train evocations and use a wand of confusion or paralysis if you really need to disable enemies. Many encounters that matter will be against ranged attackers against whom you probably don't want to sit there trying to cast confuse at 35% fail rate combined with a high resistance rate. This again restricts me to medium armor, which I think is suboptimal most of the time.

If you're a conjurer, why would you waste MP failing to hit with confuse? Also, considering that many fights are against packs, by casting confuse, you are wasting another resource, which is turns of spacing. The whole point of conjuration is to kill enemies before they are next to you. Casting hexes instead lets enemies close on you while you sit there, which defeats the whole point of it.

Also, I really would rather not rely on a hex as a reset option. They aren't reliable enough in a life/death situation. If you are needing to reset constantly, you are screwing up in some other way.

A 35% failure rate means that you have a 35% chance of success on the first try, a slightly better than 57% chance of success in two tries and a greater than 72% chance of failure in three tries. (Less spell failure rates, which are not huge for a 3rd level single school spell.) The monsters not dead, but it's stumbling around attacking the creatures next to it. Hexes are generally much more mp efficient (try it!) and quieter than conjurations... the trade off is that it takes more turns to kill enemies. You can often kill a strong-ish enemy in three turns with conjurations, but you can't do it for 6 or even 9 MP.

Also did you see where I said "quieter?" That part is important. You can disable and kill with much less retreating, because you're not bringing half the level on top of you every time you fireball.

Wands and evocables are fine - and I agree they're better for super-heavy armored characters - but there's also no comparison between the effectiveness of high level hexes and high-evo powered wands/gadgets. (Especially with the recent nerfs.) Invisibility is basically win the shoals free. Discord should carry you through V:5 with no trouble at all. Silence (with just a little positioning work) can make elf:3 into a cakewalk.

And even your most melee-focussed non Trog dude can use spectral weapon...

[VeryAngryFelid]

Also please don't use "melee characters" in the sense of "melee characters in heavy armour". There are many species who are better in medium or even light armour than in heavy armour, even if they don't have any spells, due to either size (Sp , Ko, Ha), EV-bonus (Te) or just aptitudes (Mf, DE). Many of those species have good aptitudes in Hexes, Stealth and Short Blades (though aptitude in Short Blades is not that important as only a few levels are required, especially if you use Long Blades, also you can just use trident or whatever.
Also Naga is better in light armour before it finds a barding. I think heavy armour melee characters are in minority: HO, Mi, Fo. All other species should be in middle armour and train Armour and Dodging to about the same level to maximize their defense.

[tabstorm]

Also please don't use "melee characters" in the sense of "melee characters in heavy armour". There are many species who are better in medium or even light armour than in heavy armour, even if they don't have any spells, due to either size (Sp , Ko, Ha), EV-bonus (Te) or just aptitudes (Mf, DE). Many of those species have good aptitudes in Hexes, Stealth and Short Blades (though aptitude in Short Blades is not that important as only a few levels are required, especially if you use Long Blades, also you can just use trident or whatever.
Also Naga is better in light armour before it finds a barding. I think heavy armour melee characters are in minority: HO, Mi, Fo. All other species should be in middle armour and train Armour and Dodging to about the same level to maximize their defense.

Having played heavily-armored characters with all the races that "are better in light armor" except Sp and DE, I'm convinced that said races are, in fact, better off using plate armor or a heavy dragon armor, than medium or light armor. Why would a Naga be better off in light armor when you have a terrible dodging aptitude, terrible dexterity, and an evasion penalty due to size?

[Rast]

Having played heavily-armored characters with all the races that "are better in light armor" except Sp and DE, I'm convinced that said races are, in fact, better off using plate armor or a heavy dragon armor, than medium or light armor.

I thin even spriggans are better in heavy dragon armor, so long as you get good str from background or items.

[NhorianScum]

Nagas have -2 in armor and dodge but until you get a fuckton of EA scrolls and near max armor skill dodge gives way better returns because mishapen/barding/scales.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Having played heavily-armored characters with all the races that "are better in light armor" except Sp and DE, I'm convinced that said races are, in fact, better off using plate armor or a heavy dragon armor, than medium or light armor.

So did I. Have you tried different armour? I was surprised to see that TeBe has better defense in light/medium armour than in plate armour, for example.

Why would a Naga be better off in light armor when you have a terrible dodging aptitude, terrible dexterity, and an evasion penalty due to size?

That's easy to see on D:1 when you are lucky to find a +0 plate armour or alike. Deformed body hurts a lot, you will have more AC in +3 leather armour than in chain mail, your AC+EV total will be higher in +2 robe than in +0 plate armour. Also Nagas have very good magic aptitudes and stealth.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I thin even spriggans are better in heavy dragon armor, so long as you get good str from background or items.

I have just checked SpBe with Str 20, Dex 20, Armour 5 and Dodging 10.
AC 7, EV 26 in +0 MDA
AC 14 EV 13 in +0 GDA
AC 9 EV 23 in +0 FDA

Though probably I should have set Dodging higher, current costs are 10.1 for armour and 6.5 for dodging.

[duvessa]

+0 dragon armour isn't good for anyone, though yeah, even SpBe shouldn't be in anything heavier than wamp

[Shard1697]

+0 dragon armor is good for ogres and trolls, unless of course you have +more dragon armor

[VeryAngryFelid]

+0 dragon armour isn't good for anyone, though yeah, even SpBe shouldn't be in anything heavier than wamp

I was lazy but I see I really have to do it.

AC 13, EV 26 in +6 MDA
AC 26 EV 13 in +12 GDA
AC 17 EV 23 in +8 FDA

Even +11 GDA is a clear loser, isn't it? And most Spriggans do want at least some spells.

[Utis]

Confuse allows you to disable the majority of the game's dangerous monsters for a few mp from full screen range. It's powerful because it's a safe and generally fairly reliable way to get kills on many dangerous monsters for a tiny investment. There's nothing to prevent you from using it with non short blades.

This.

Also, another way in which confuse stays useful throughout a 3-runer is tactical: In the terrain of Vaults, Depth and Zot there are often not enough corridors. Confusing one or two well-chosen low-MR monsters in an approaching group impedes the ones behind, blocking their LoF and more often than not delaying their approach enough to finish fights one-on-one or one-on-two without excessive luring and without having to dig a kill hole.

That and disabling draconian callers, deep troll earth elementalists etc. are late game uses of confuse on a char with decent melee. Not so much confusing a single monster that you can already melee safely with a weak weapon.

Is it worth the XP to get confuse powerful enough to disable monsters instead of training something that would make them not dangerous enough to need disabling?

That depends. Between the early game and the late game, there's S-branches and Vaults. At any given point the question is: What skill training provides the best survivability for XP investment. Successfully confusing a monster disables its ranged attacks, its spells or spell-like abilities and reduces its melee damage output to 1/8th. That's a pretty sizable advantage. Putting the same amount of XP into weapon skill, fighting or dodging might mean that you receive on average -- I don't know -- 2 damage less or dish out 2 damage more. Of course, that's unless you are already fully committed to heavy armour. And of course that's only right until getting a significant increase in success rate requires so much XP that training melee becomes the best thing to do again.

To repeat myself: It doesn't matter that there are monsters against which hexes are futile. IMO, once a player has the tactical basics down, crawl is essentially a game of risk and ressource management. So, the question is: Are there monsters, susceptible to Hexes, that are dangerous enough that you might come into situations where you'd have to spend consumables to be safe? And how many? The answers to these are: "Yes" and "a lot". The consumables you didn't use on these are the ones that you still have against magic immune foes: You might deal with that group of elven casters that surrounded you in Vaults with a scroll of silence. That might mean that you have to deal with that Lich later by reading a scroll of fog and quaffing a potion of might. Maybe you don't need invisibility, frenzy or confuse against that pack of draconians: You can safely melee them and if anything should go wrong, you still have a scroll of blinking. But, then, even later, when you encounter an orb of fire, you won't have that scroll, that potion anymore.

The only argument I can see that in my eyes would even have a chance of being valid against Hexes is an argument against the medium armour route in general. And I'm highly doubtful of that, to say the least. Not because heavy armour isn't good or at least decent, but -- personal preference in playing style aside -- I don't see how it can be that overwhelmingly good.

[dowan]

So you're saying that at basically any point in the game, if I find confuse, invis, darkness, or silence in a spellbook, I should train hexes up to be able to cast those spells, assuming I'm not following trog or playing a race with bad hex apts? Does that mean I should also improve int on characters I otherwise wouldn't, to help with those spells?
Or are you saying I should do this only on a character who's already built for casting spells?
Or are you saying I should only do this on enchanters and arcane marskmen?

I'd like to see some realistic numbers here. How much spellpower do I need to confuse an orc priest or wizard, a hydra, a greater naga, a convoker, etc. Things that are actual threats that I might be interested in hexing.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It is not that simple. I found enchanter book with SpAr on D:9 and still didn't train it because there were better skills to train.
Basically you should compare your options and pick the best. Sometimes it will be Hexes, sometimes not.

[Utis]

What VeryAngryFelid said. Also, personal preference factors in. I find the question whether an medium-armour+hexes build or a heavy armour build is moar optimal quite moot. It's obvious that the latter is good, I'm arguing that the former is really good, too. The tactics involved are quite different, though. The optimal build is the one you like to play more so you can utilize its tactics most effectively and most consistently.

[Reptisaurus]

So you're saying that at basically any point in the game, if I find confuse, invis, darkness, or silence in a spellbook, I should train hexes up to be able to cast those spells, assuming I'm not following trog or playing a race with bad hex apts? Does that mean I should also improve int on characters I otherwise wouldn't, to help with those spells?
Or are you saying I should do this only on a character who's already built for casting spells?
Or are you saying I should only do this on enchanters and arcane marskmen?

I'd like to see some realistic numbers here. How much spellpower do I need to confuse an orc priest or wizard, a hydra, a greater naga, a convoker, etc. Things that are actual threats that I might be interested in hexing.

I dunno how spell power works, but I'm generally able to confuse an orc priest of wizar at slightly less than 40% when you first meet them, hydra is around 30% success for confuse with 10-12 levels in hexes, Greater naga ia damn near impossible without scroll of vulnerability, and convoker is fairly easy once you've got hexes up in the 16-18 range.

[dowan]

Do you mean with an enchanter start, or a random character who found confuse in a spellbook when you talk about the orc priest or wizard?
12 levels in hexes is a pretty significant investment by lair, honestly, if hexes isn't your primary killdudes.
16-18 levels by vaults is what you'd want your primary weapon skill at, that's a lot of XP, and something has to suffer to pay for that. Being able to confuse convokers and wardens is really nice, but it's only worth so much XP.

This conversation comes up every so often, and while I see the claim that it's worthwhile for characters to pick up hexes, nobody has ever really shown the numbers to back up such a claim.
If the claim is just that hexes are sometimes worthwhile to use, I don't think you'll find much argument, but that's a long way away from hexes being the best magic school in zot, or being worthwhile to train up for casting level 6 spells for most characters.

I"m not even saying it's definitely not true, but my experience suggests it's wrong, and that's why I'm asking for some numbers and comparisons.

To be fair, your initial subject is completely true. Hexes never become useless. I'm questioning whether they're an efficient use of XP for most characters, not whether they're useful when you've already got the XP invested. For example, you can kill most anything with poison arrow, but if someone suggested every character should get poison arrow castable for zot I think most people would disagree. Even though poison arrow murders draconians, orb guardians, and any number of other dangerous monsters.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Nobody is suggesting to train anything for Zot, there are no mandatory skills in crawl for every character. I remember I had a heated discussion with a very good player when I suggested to train fighting higher than 6 for XL 20+ Spriggan and probably he was right, arguably there were better investments for the character.

[Utis]

This conversation comes up every so often, and while I see the claim that it's worthwhile for characters to pick up hexes, nobody has ever really shown the numbers to back up such a claim.

If you're really interested, rather than being argumentative, why don't you come up with a concrete scenario where you're wondering whether branching into hexes might be a good idea. And then we do the math together? (And if you're not wondering at all, then why bother continuing this discussion? The relevant things have been written, my life isn't enriched by "winning" a debate on the internet, I don't expect to learn anything more from this thread and I don't feel obliged to help others against their will.)

Otherwise, frankly, this just looks like an invitation to play the usual Tavern pinball, which goes like this:

  Code:

Alice: "A character at X finding Y should do Z.
Bob:   "At X you should do A."
Alice: "Z gives you more with skills/attributes/gear B than A."
Bob:   "You should have skills/attributes/gear C, not B. Also, A doesn't help you against monster D."
Alice: "Why are you supposed to have C? B or even E is just as good or better. As an added bonus, monster F is just a bag of XP."
Clara: "Monster F doesn't matter. You're making a mistake if you fight it."
Bob:   "At branch G, B is not good and E is even worse."
Don:   "Folks, I recently had a lot of success with Z in an arbitrary anecdotal case while doing wacky procedure F."

etc. etc.

[dowan]

Heh, I am interested, but I'll also be argumentative if people say things that don't seem to jive with reality. But I'm open to being convinced, I really do just want to get to the truth, not 'win' an internet argument.

Perhaps you're right that it's tough to talk about this in general terms, so I'll try to come back to this thread with some real characters, when they find their first book with some hexes in it, and we can maybe try to figure out some cases where it is in fact worth it to branch out to hexes.

Heh, your tavern pinball is pretty accurate... but you're missing the obligatory "Remove food" and "Remove traps" suggestions.

[xXxMemekMaestro69xXx]

So why should I waste exp on Hexes again if they don't even work against everything? And even if they do, you usually need a couple of tries for it to work. This doesn't seem remotely good at all

[jalala]

So why should I waste exp on Hexes again if they don't even work against everything? And even if they do, you usually need a couple of tries for it to work. This doesn't seem remotely good at all

Because flavor.
I dont want to tabdance everyday, i need a break.

[VeryAngryFelid]

So why should I waste exp on Hexes again if they don't even work against everything? And even if they do, you usually need a couple of tries for it to work. This doesn't seem remotely good at all

The same can be said about any other magic school or even melee, ranged and evocations. You know that you can miss 10 times in a row with your lajatang, don't you?
If you don't think it is a good idea to train Hexes, don't train Hexes

[xXxMemekMaestro69xXx]

The same can be said about any other magic school or even melee, ranged and evocations.

Not really.

Melee works against everything
Ranged works against everything
Evocations works against everything and has a lot more uses than just damaging things while some don't even require a single drop of exp to be useful like /tele, /HW and /haste.
Damage spellschools works against everything (Poison School might be an exception but it has pArrow)
Charms is allowed to work to yourself. When haste was still in this game, it always works when casting to your allies

While Hexes don't. And even if they work against susceptibles (MR0/MR1/MR2), they do not inflict any damage at all and they need a few tries. A few exceptions are Fulminant Prism, Mana Vipers, Spectral Weapon, Invisibility and Darkness but even 4 of these actually good Hex spells also have problems:

1. Fulminant Prism is a good earlygame spell for conjurers that inflicts reliable damage from afar only if they don't get destroyed. They could also be used as roadblockers to buy time on a 1x1 corridor while you're teleporting. All these considered, it doesn't mean that you will waste even a single drop of exp on hexes just because this is good. The best decision to proceed is to dump all exp on Conjurations and its spellpower will maximize by itself if you want to keep it.

2. Mana Vipers are good distractions and shuts down enemies of any kind that can cast spells. But like Fulminant Prism, just because it's good, it doesn't mean you have to waste a single drop of exp on Hexes. The best option is to dump all exp on Summoning and you would have access to even more useful and powerful summoning spells like Horrible Things, Malign Gateway etc.

3. Spectral Weapon iirc needs spellpower to be decent. This is always a useful spell for weapon melee regardless of Int. I guess only in this is the first case where training Hexes could be relevant but even then, raising the spellpower of Deflect Missiles, Regeneration and Shroud usually takes precedence.

4. Invisibility barely made it on the actually useful Hex spells since it does not work to most monsters in extended. Not to mention that its already tiny usefulness gets diminished further when your run has a Snake branch

2 tiles worth of LoS reduced from Darkness may be mediocre but at least it works against everything and is useful for every playstyle. It still doesn't change the fact that there is absolutely no point in the game wherein Hexes is objectively more efficient than any other skills and spellschools except if you're an earlygame Stabber. (take note of early game)

[Cimanyd]

The same can be said about any other magic school or even melee, ranged and evocations.

Not really.

Melee works against everything
Ranged works against everything
Evocations works against everything and has a lot more uses than just damaging things while some don't even require a single drop of exp to be useful like /tele, /HW and /haste.
Damage spellschools works against everything (Poison School might be an exception but it has pArrow)
Charms is allowed to work to yourself. When haste was still in this game, it always works when casting to your allies

Long blades and axes don't really work against hydras (unless you have a flaming one, which isn't guaranteed). Melee also requires melee range, which is a disadvantage against anything with a powerful ranged attack.

Spriggan air mages and probably other things I don't remember right now have deflect missiles.

Everyone already seems to think evocations are too good. I guess you could argue that you don't need to train hexes later since you can just train evocations and use wand of confusion etc. when you really need to hex something, while also getting an aoe spell and a bolt spell, and summons, and whatever you can get from rods. This might also be a good reason not to train summoning, conjurations, or really any magic since you might as well use heavier armor and evocables instead. (Wands that aren't affected by evocations are irrelevant to this discussion, unless you meant "what to sacrifice for Ru" instead of XP use)

There are things immune to fire, to electricity, and of course poison as you said. (not counting ice since it has two damage-ice-immune spells in starting book)

"But fire storm/poison arrow/airstrike!" But mana vipers. You didn't explain why they don't count; you just said it would be better to branch into Summoning instead of Hexes, in a way that makes it look like you've forgotten there are plenty of things hexes do work on.

[Shard1697]

Long blades and axes do work against hydras if you buff yourself, and if you don't, you can use weapon with crosstraining that doesn't chop heads.

There is nothing in the game I would really say melee "doesn't work" against.

[VeryAngryFelid]

There is nothing in the game I would really say melee "doesn't work" against.

Have you tried killing orb of fire, hell sentinel, curse skull, antaeus, cerebov etc. with short blades, preferably as Sp with Str 4 and 175 HP? It does not work without might, nets etc.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Melee works against everything

Enchantress with distortion weapon. It was awful every single time when I had the combo in my game. But my point is different. I spent 17 attacks to kill a monster when fsim showed that I was expected to kill it in 2 attacks. That's 15 wasted attacks and is not that different from Hexes. I will repeat again - if you don't have/want Silence/Invisibility, you usually don't train Hexes higher than to make Confuse at 1%. This is not really wasted XP. It is optimal to "waste" XP by getting Mephitic Cloud, Freezing Cloud, Poison Arrow, Animate Dead, even if they are almost useless in extended or Zot 5. And Invisibility is never useless, you will really appreciate it vs Neqoxecs, Flayed Ghosts, all Draconians. Silence makes Tomb hilariously easy (unless you are Naga or with Chei of course).

Ranged works against everything

I still remember my pain of fighting cursed skull with longbow as CeHu. Only Ha with slings vs orb of fire was worse.

Evocations works against everything and has a lot more uses than just damaging things while some don't even require a single drop of exp to be useful like /tele, /HW and /haste.

I treat some evocable items as cheating. It is not right when you can get unique pan lords into nets with tiny investment. Do wands/rods work on everything? I don't think so.

Damage spellschools works against everything (Poison School might be an exception but it has pArrow)

Do you think Necromancy is useless because it does not do any damage to demons?

Charms is allowed to work to yourself. When haste was still in this game, it always works when casting to your allies

Charms is the weakest school now. You basically almost never should train it for level 5+ spells. Regeneration and Spectral Weapon is all you want.

While Hexes don't. And even if they work against susceptibles (MR0/MR1/MR2), they do not inflict any damage at all and they need a few tries.

Invisibility. Zot 1-4 is hilariously easy and you usually need fewer tries than with your best melee weapon.

4. Invisibility barely made it on the actually useful Hex spells since it does not work to most monsters in extended. Not to mention that its already tiny usefulness gets diminished further when your run has a Snake branch

Barely, tiny. Do you train Short Blades and Stealth?

  Code:

 Stab: Sleeping          |    21 |    14 |    17 |    58 |   128 |   146 |    60 |    41 |    16 ||   501
       Confused          |     1 |    15 |    26 |    41 |    95 |    69 |    12 |    12 |     7 ||   278
       Invisible         |       |       |     1 |     1 |    42 |    87 |    74 |    94 |    40 ||   339

It's Mummy of Chei in armour of the Dragon King (yes, with Snake).

[VeryAngryFelid]

Wait, I missed an important thing.

Invisibility barely made it on the actually useful Hex spells since it does not work to most monsters in extended

You are probably underestimating XP you get before and in extended, you should not judge usefulness of spells on extended, you can have Invisibility and Necromutation and Exec. Axe and much more. Now I think you believe Mephitic Cloud/Confuse/Venom Bolt/Bolt of Draining/etc. are bad spells too, right?

[nago]

Venom bolt is bad

[VeryAngryFelid]

Venom bolt is bad

VM of Kiku
Shooting through allies is fun and very efficient. Later I switched to Bolt of Draining (which is higher level and uses a school different from what I started with).

[dowan]

Wait... venom bolt is really good, where it works. It's situational, but so is bolt of draining, another great spell. Both are really good for shooting through undead minions.

I'd take venom bolt over bolt of draining assuming equal-ish spellpower, based on how I've seen both spells perform in my experience.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I assume that if Invisibility "barely" made it into useful spell because it does not work on most targets in extended, then Bolt of Draining is useless because it does not work on almost all targets in extended.

Venom Bolt is amazing in Spider (and OTR is amazing too)

[WingedEspeon]

Venom bolt is bad

VM of Kiku
Shooting through allies is fun and very efficient. Later I switched to Bolt of Draining (which is higher level and uses a school different from what I started with).

bolt of draining and bolt of venom are both level 5 unless they have been changed very recently.

[VeryAngryFelid]

bolt of draining and bolt of venom are both level 5 unless they have been changed very recently.

Shows how often I use bolt of draining, maybe it's useless indeed

[ZipZipskins]

There is nothing in the game I would really say melee "doesn't work" against.

Have you tried killing orb of fire, hell sentinel, curse skull, antaeus, cerebov etc. with short blades, preferably as Sp with Str 4 and 175 HP? It does not work without might, nets etc.

"Have you tried weak tabbing against enemies that are strong against tabbing?"

This isn't really a valid case for saying melee doesn't work on everything, since there are an awful lot of other races, weapons, and stat spreads with more HP that can certainly kill all the things you listed in melee, and I know you know all of that because I'm reasonably sure you've done them

[VeryAngryFelid]

There is nothing in the game I would really say melee "doesn't work" against.

Have you tried killing orb of fire, hell sentinel, curse skull, antaeus, cerebov etc. with short blades, preferably as Sp with Str 4 and 175 HP? It does not work without might, nets etc.

"Have you tried weak tabbing against enemies that are strong against tabbing?"

This isn't really a valid case for saying melee doesn't work on everything, since there are an awful lot of other races, weapons, and stat spreads with more HP that can certainly kill all the things you listed in melee, and I know you know all of that because I'm reasonably sure you've done them

This is a valid case. Spectral Weapon ("strong" Hex of level 3) works vs almost everything too but guys keep insisting that Hexes are useless because "weak" Hexes (Confuse/Invisibility) don't work in extended. I have already written 3 times in this thread: don't train Hexes higher than for Confuse (level 3 spell too!) at 1% if you don't have Invisibility/Silence. It will make Spectral Weapon castable with some Charms too.

[Shard1697]

There is nothing in the game I would really say melee "doesn't work" against.

Have you tried killing orb of fire, hell sentinel, curse skull, antaeus, cerebov etc. with short blades, preferably as Sp with Str 4 and 175 HP? It does not work without might, nets etc.

I did not say "short blades melee", I said "melee". obviously if you are going melee only build you're not using a terrible weapon, that's implicit-it would also be pretty damn hard to kill those enemies with a club but that doesn't mean melee is bad

[VeryAngryFelid]

The better weapon you use, the more useful Hexes become. Spectral Weapon is OP.

Edit. As you can see I am really tired of arguing. Feel free to believe Hexes are useless, I don't mind.