The Tavern

Plain warriors tend to get boring after a while, and I suck at getting pure casters off of the ground, so playing a hybrid sounds like a good idea but I have no idea what the gameplan for one is, or what is most important for one.

For example, would a a Gl^Veh or Sif be stronger and more survivable than starting as a book class and min delaying the first decent weapon?
Basically, how would you play a character that you want to hybridize from the start?

It's a bad idea, you're better off learning how to play and hybridize book classes like Necromancer, Conjurer, Summoner etc.

Justification: early game is pretty hard, XP is scarce. Later the game relaxes and you start getting more XP.

I love hybrids.

Plan: Roll a HESk with their +2 apt in Long Blades (LBl) and keep riposting. Train only LBl until you have the slots for Spectral Weapon. Train only Hexes/Charms until ~20%. Train LBl to 8, then *LBl, +Fgt, +Ddg.

Pick Oka, get gear, memorize Tornado, switch to Makh, clear Zig, keep blasting Tornado, win.

15-rune variation: Pick up Necromutation on the way, train it up, a Zig will do. Then lichform/tornado your way to all the runes. Challenge: not die in the 4th Ziggurat to paralysis with 15 runes because reasons.

Sar wrote:It's a bad idea, you're better off learning how to play and hybridize book classes like Necromancer, Conjurer, Summoner etc.

Justification: early game is pretty hard, XP is scarce. Later the game relaxes and you start getting more XP.

So, play pure caster until hybridisation becomes a viable option? That tends to be my aim but the farthest I've ever gotten, even with easy book classes like EE, is Lair:2, until I suicided because I burned up a ton of blink and tele scrolls while fighting popcorn enemies, not even something like a hydra or a black mamba. AC just seems way too good of a safety net.

With a CIP, I cleared a Zig with a HEAE (http://pastebin.com/raw/f22FWkbZ) after 3 runes and without a High Elf win I feel the pressure to win one before they go.

Vajrapani wrote:So, play pure caster until hybridisation becomes a viable option?

Not in my opinion. I played a bunch of High Elf Skalds and Air Elementalists (AE) with a common theme: Sk trains Long Blades (LBl) and a bit of magic to get Spectral Weapon (SW) and later Regeneration online. AE trains Conjurations and Air Magic until Shock is at max power, then switches to LBl and both play the same from now on, except the Skald is more powerful in melee now with SW and Regeneration, but Shock is still great to weaken the enemies until melee.

I think you should play pure caster until D5 or so unless you are something like DE of Vehumet. Otherwise you should train dodging/fighting (required) and some weapon (optional, depends on luck with weapon).

Vajrapani wrote:So, play pure caster until hybridisation becomes a viable option? That tends to be my aim but the farthest I've ever gotten, even with easy book classes like EE, is Lair:2, until I suicided because I burned up a ton of blink and tele scrolls while fighting popcorn enemies, not even something like a hydra or a black mamba. AC just seems way too good of a safety net.

What race where you? GrEE could be pretty good, you get your AC and crazy Earth apt. DDEE is obviously great, but you kind of need Makhleb to have easy time with that. My first "hybrid" character was HOFE. I would recommend HOFE, or DrIE.

Vajrapani wrote:So, play pure caster until hybridisation becomes a viable option? That tends to be my aim but the farthest I've ever gotten, even with easy book classes like EE, is Lair:2, until I suicided because I burned up a ton of blink and tele scrolls while fighting popcorn enemies, not even something like a hydra or a black mamba. AC just seems way too good of a safety net.

A caster's safety net is distance. If you let something get to melee range, consider the battle a failure - don't take that literally but it's a useful direction to think in. I'm partial to starting as Wz and picking up a spear/sling/bow off the floor to poke with while Conjure Flame and/or Meph Cloud (with noise consideration) let me keep enemies at bay. That's after Magic Dart loses its usefulness.

There's weird ways you could do it, like TrWr or melee dude of Kiku, but start with something conventional then branch out. Like a Su.

Take oka, veh, or ash start as caster, train money spells to 1-4% fail, wear ring/scale when your god boost kicks in, bulk up and train to min delay on weapon + shield. Then just train bulk and spells forever.

Alternately start mele and go kiku.

Ogres, tengu, merfolk, formicids, high elves, and hill orcs all pretty stable hybrid picks, nagas and kobolds naturaly hybridize as well but it's some weird as fuck blaster/stabber shit.

Edit: Chei is incredibly good at hybrid, but thats playing chei not standard DCSS.

MfSk.

Necromancer's a good starter. You have to spend a lot of time up close but allies + draining give you tools to survive, even with whatever crappy weapon you find and 0 starting skill.

I like skalds a lot, too - I think they're stronger than a straight-up fighter.

You can focus down on one aspect of the hybrid at a time or shift training at some goal like master one spell level then switch to min delay for x amount of levels.

All depends on your choices.

What do you mean by hybrid? Melee with support spells? Conjurations mage that kills popcorn with weapons? These can be two completely different types of characters.

If you're playing hybrydy from the start you want a book background. You say AC is too good of a safety net, so a good training wheels hybrid that can pull you past where you've gotten so far is DrIE. Have you done IEs before?

Ah I remember asking a question much like this one years ago, the cycle continues

HEWz w/ light armor and Lbl

New player: "help, I'm having hard time with hybrids"
Tavern: "just roll HE bro"

Sar wrote:Tavern: "just roll HE bro"

Well, it's best to play lots of HE while they still exist :)

Vajrapani wrote:Plain warriors tend to get boring after a while, and I suck at getting pure casters off of the ground, so playing a hybrid sounds like a good idea but I have no idea what the gameplan for one is, or what is most important for one.

For example, would a a Gl^Veh or Sif be stronger and more survivable than starting as a book class and min delaying the first decent weapon?
Basically, how would you play a character that you want to hybridize from the start?

Fi^Veh or Gl^Veh in my experience can be a fun start and it's better than it sounds. That doesn't make it a really good option, though, just one that is surprisingly less bad than it seems. In particular, this start gambles somewhat on Vehemut giving you spells early that have good synergy with melee and/or give you options otherwise, such as Conjure Flame, Sticky Flame, MephCloud, F/P Cloud. If she doesn't, then you're essentially playing godless in the early game.

Starting with a book and branching into melee is a better way to go. I think it's wrong, though, to think in categories like 'hybrid' or 'pure caster'. It's more a sliding scale: The better you develop your melee, the more monsters fall into the 'popcorn' or 'can melee safely' categories. So, the better you develop melee, the more you preserve mana, but also the weaker your spells are. How far to optimally slide on that scale depends on the equipment you find. As for gods: Good ones are essentially the ones that are good in general. Aside from the obvious exception of Trog, you also don't want a god that demands a lot of investment in invocations: With both decent melee and decent spells, you tend to be somewhat thin in your skills. For this reason, Okawaru and probably (haven't played him in a long time) Ash stand out as, let's say, convenient choices. I do like Vehumet, but rather because she doesn't get on my nerves.

You don't necessarily have to get your whole starting book castable before you branch into melee. Some of the book starts have breakpoints where getting a spell castable provides a jump in your damage output, giving you the wriggle room to develop melee. E.g. for FE that would be either Conjure Flame (if you find a really good polearm) or Sticky Flame. I play AE exactly like ThreeInvisibleDucks. For Wz I like to rush to get MephCloud to ~25%, casting Imps only from starting Int and spellcasting, then I develop melee. For that I also like to develop Slow, which is a great melee enhancer if used right. With other book starts I either lack the experience or I find it more difficult to branch melee before I have the starting book online. For instane IE: Freeze fits the bill of 'providing enough wriggle room', but Ice Beasts are just too good to postpone.

Tactically, on chars with strong melee and conjurations, I use the conjurations to debuff the damage output of enemy monsters (via decreasing their HP) and then finish them with melee. Freezing Cloud (and PCloud) is naturally the spell that I want most, but Bolt spells and even single target spells have their niche, once the opportunity cost isn't prohibitive.

If you are new to hybrids maybe try a draconian or gargoyle

Utis wrote:
Vajrapani wrote:Plain warriors tend to get boring after a while, and I suck at getting pure casters off of the ground, so playing a hybrid sounds like a good idea but I have no idea what the gameplan for one is, or what is most important for one.

For example, would a a Gl^Veh or Sif be stronger and more survivable than starting as a book class and min delaying the first decent weapon?
Basically, how would you play a character that you want to hybridize from the start?

Fi^Veh or Gl^Veh in my experience can be a fun start and it's better than it sounds. That doesn't make it a really good option, though, just one that is surprisingly less bad than it seems. In particular, this start gambles somewhat on Vehemut giving you spells early that have good synergy with melee and/or give you options otherwise, such as Conjure Flame, Sticky Flame, MephCloud, F/P Cloud. If she doesn't, then you're essentially playing godless in the early game.

Starting with a book and branching into melee is a better way to go. I think it's wrong, though, to think in categories like 'hybrid' or 'pure caster'. It's more a sliding scale: The better you develop your melee, the more monsters fall into the 'popcorn' or 'can melee safely' categories. So, the better you develop melee, the more you preserve mana, but also the weaker your spells are. How far to optimally slide on that scale depends on the equipment you find. As for gods: Good ones are essentially the ones that are good in general. Aside from the obvious exception of Trog, you also don't want a god that demands a lot of investment in invocations: With both decent melee and decent spells, you tend to be somewhat thin in your skills. For this reason, Okawaru and probably (haven't played him in a long time) Ash stand out as, let's say, convenient choices. I do like Vehumet, but rather because she doesn't get on my nerves.

You don't necessarily have to get your whole starting book castable before you branch into melee. Some of the book starts have breakpoints where getting a spell castable provides a jump in your damage output, giving you the wriggle room to develop melee. E.g. for FE that would be either Conjure Flame (if you find a really good polearm) or Sticky Flame. I play AE exactly like ThreeInvisibleDucks. For Wz I like to rush to get MephCloud to ~25%, casting Imps only from starting Int and spellcasting, then I develop melee. For that I also like to develop Slow, which is a great melee enhancer if used right. With other book starts I either lack the experience or I find it more difficult to branch melee before I have the starting book online. For instane IE: Freeze fits the bill of 'providing enough wriggle room', but Ice Beasts are just too good to postpone.

Tactically, on chars with strong melee and conjurations, I use the conjurations to debuff the damage output of enemy monsters (via decreasing their HP) and then finish them with melee. Freezing Cloud (and PCloud) is naturally the spell that I want most, but Bolt spells and even single target spells have their niche, once the opportunity cost isn't prohibitive.

Thank you, and others, in the thread for really detailed advice. I haven't got much of a feel for magic-using characters but I feel like I am much more informed on how to actually play one now.

It's been said before by me and several others but Dr is ballin out of control so I highly recommend it

Regarding IE: it's pretty trivial to branch out into melee essentially simultaneously with other great spells in the book, because once Freeze and Ozo are rocking you have a ton of freedom to do whatever you like. Just my two cents.

This is also why a lot of people recommend MfIE, even though I like that less than DrIE, because polearms are such a snap on Mf

Wrt IE Summon Ice Beasts is great and amazing and provides a lot of damage and also allies allow you to safely retreat if you overestimated your hybrid hybridness. Key spell, IMO.

Learn Ice Beast before or after Ozo's on IE?

you can learn OA at XL3 and typically it will be useful immediately unless something terrible happened to your skills

you can learn SIB at XL4, but typically it's gonna be red and will require some more Ice Magic and Summoning to work reliably

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How to hybridize well from the start??

How to hybridize well from the start??

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