Higher-Level Summoning Spells


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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Wednesday, 4th January 2017, 21:00

Higher-Level Summoning Spells

I have a character that recently found Fen Folio, Grand Grimoire, Beasts, and Dragon all at the same time after finding its first rune. So it seems that Summoning of some sort will be the mid-game to end-game transition, but I decided to make a general DCA post instead of a CIP post because I realized that I haven't thought very much about most of the higher-level Summoning spells, and have experience only with Servitor for only a brief portion of one game. What I've done is listed below my preliminary thoughts on each spell, and I'd really appreciate your insight into where I'm on the right track and where I'm off base.

Shadow Creatures
Since it draws from the current branch’s monster list, it’s better some places than others. Where does it shine and where is it disappointing?
Monstrous Menagerie
If you get a Sphinx, its paralysis will be great. Otherwise, less useful. The batty harpies won't help your positioning tactics any. Are these beefy enough to last in combat?
Haunt
Smite-targeted, seems like it does a good job taking out single targets. I expect too that it would do a good job of clogging the targets LOS for its ranged attacks against you. Dual-school.
Malign Gateway
Continues to fight out of LOS. Chaos-branded attack. Seems really strong, but it is dual school.
Spellforged Servitor
This seems to me to be best when you have a limited conjurations spellset. Weak and or purely elemental conjurations don’t seem to be very effective. I’m not sure how well it plays with other summons, probably better with beam attacks than with clouds, bolts, or OoD. Dual school.
Summon Greater Demon
If you have Abjuration, good but still dicey. If you don’t, you’ll eventually really regret casting it.
Summon Hydra
Best for massive damage to low-AC targets. Because of short duration, wait until the target is close to you to summon it.
XXX
If you want several brutes on your side, this is it.
Dragon’s Call
This seems to be a level 9 spell actually worth learning. Lots of melee damage for extended fights.

[edit: forgot monstrous Menagerie]
Won (52). Remaining (15): 5 species: Ba, Fe, Mu, Na, Op; 5 Backgrounds: AM, Wr, Su, AE, Ar; 5 gods: Jiyv, newNem, WJC, newSif, newFedh

Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 00:03

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Shadow creatures:
Vaults - awesome
Zot - awesome
Depth - good
Pan, Hell, Abys, Tomb - meh


Menagerie
Harpy swarm is quite good, but actually this spell never worth Level 7 because you get lindwurms/manticores too often


Haunt
Awesome spell to take out single strong foe and protect yourself from it.


Malign gateway
Awesome. The real power from this spell is that, you know, the tentacles are immune to abjurations


Servitor
Good if you have LCS+OOD. Not for pure summoners, it's like a spell for conjurers


Greater demon
Just sucks. You must cast abjuration, and those tier-1 pricks cast damnations without taking care of you.


Hydra
Crap spell. Hydras disappear before they walk to enemies


Horrible Things
Pretty good, but you cannot use everytime because of int drain


Dragon Call
Good. Too bad that it eats exp too much because summoners have less xp.
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bel

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 01:36

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Monstrous Menagerie used to be lvl 6 single school, where it was ridiculously good. At lvl 7 single school, I don't have much experience with it, but it's probably good still. Harpies are the most useful, but all monsters summoned by it are useful.

Hydrae have very short duration, needs to be cast only when directly engaging the monsters.

I haven't used Summon Greater Demon much.

Others are roughly as papilio mentioned above, imo.

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 08:48

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Pretty much no summoning spells are worth anything. Better use of your xp would be learning conjurations or weapon skills.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 09:15

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

really? so meat shields are worth nothing?

Monstrous Menagerie

this spell can easily carry you all the way to zot, harpies are extremely deadly actually and you summon more of them as your spell power goes up.

Malign Gateway

even if it was the worst spell in the game it's still the most fun to use and branching into translocation is never a bad thing anyway.

Summon Greater Demon

i ALWAYS regret having learned this spell, it will invariably bite you in the ass

Summon Hydra

not really worth it

XXX

imho the best summoning spell, with high spellpower you can get multiple tentacled monstrosities and those are absolutely wonderful

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 10:15

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

XXX and MM are probably the most broken spells in the game whatever version you're playing (barring simulacrum with kiku and things like that).

Please note that monsters overall has much lower hp and defences than the player, so your experience of manticore or lindwurm being weak adversaries isn't true when they're facing other dungeon monsters, especially if they aren't alone but you keep summoning them and\or tank. Oh, harpies and sphinxes are simply nuts.
From my experience, a single cast of MM can easily kill two orb guardians, if rolls are good, for example.

Summon hydra is extremely strong, it can kill in a couple of turns most of the enemies, including things like liches, which makes it quite different from the others summons spells as you may consider it a weird conjuration spell. However, it requires to have that enemy close to you, so most of the times is just better to spam MM and XXX while enemies are still far.
If you have 7 spell slots free you may still learn it but probably you won't end in situation where to use it is better than MM more than 5 times in a game.

Dragon call's is good, but when you have MM and XXX there very little sense waste a lot of experience on it, at least for 3 runes game.

Greater Demon is bad - why summon a single hostile monster when you can summon several friendlies?

Haunt would be good, but it's quite bad to invest in a second school with zero synergy with summoning as necro to get a spell which perhaps is only marginally better than MM and decisively worse than XXX. There's virtually no char who should learn it.

The feedback on other spells are sensible.

Finally, you haven't listed lv.5 summons spells: summon forest and demon are quite obsolete after 1 rune - well actually demon would be still good if you hadn't found other higher spell yet - but mana viper is very good for most of the game, as side summon who help to disable nasty spellcaster while bigger buddies kill it.
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 10:42

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Doesn't Shadow Creatures possibly summon moths of wrath who then proceed to berserk enemies with their melee? I'm pretty sure I've had such experience in one of my games and since then I try to not use this spell in Zot if I have other options.

bel

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 10:48

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

That's a small price to pay for the possibility of draconian packs, dragons and other good stuff fighting on your side.

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Cimanyd, nago

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 13:47

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Also, it will berserk your other summons at much greater rate.

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 14:40

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

nago wrote:Finally, you haven't listed lv.5 summons spells: summon forest and demon are quite obsolete after 1 rune - well actually demon would be still good if you hadn't found other higher spell yet - but mana viper is very good for most of the game, as side summon who help to disable nasty spellcaster while bigger buddies kill it.

While I was away and you mentioned this, I realized it also. About Mana Viper: I know these can hit hard as melee aside from the anti-magic, at least I feel like they do when I am going through Snake; when do they stop being useful as melee summons?
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 14:52

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Shadow creatures:

By the time you can cast this it is always strong.

Haunt: GG i win.

Going past these isn't really worth it but horrible things is nice.

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 14:53

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

adozu wrote:imho the best summoning spell, with high spellpower you can get multiple tentacled monstrosities and those are absolutely wonderful

With high Fighting and weapon skill you can kill multiple tentacled monstrosities, so? You get free HP, too.
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 14:59

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Block the malmutation with tactics.

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 15:05

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

I had good results with Dragon's Call on a DESu ^ Sif. The miscast protection meant I could cast it at a dangerous success rate (~50%) and use the dragons to wreck Depths; I started using it at XL18. Then you have Sif's mana regen so that you can actually still cast other spells despite having the Dragon's Call active. They continued to be useful even into the extended game, though largely as meat-shields (by that point I was mostly killing things with a combination of my lajatang and conjuration, though Malign Gateway was deployed against tough enemies.)

For reference, here is how summoning skills were used over the course of the (14 rune) game. I've omitted the non-summoning skills and also bear in mind this was in 0.18, where MM was still lvl 6. Also interesting to note that this guy only raised Summonings skill to 19 (enough to get Dragon's Call to 12% with 27 Spellcasting and high Int, due to DE.)

  Code:
Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
 Cast: Summon Small Mamm |    39 |     4 |     5 |     2 |       |       |       |       |       ||    50
       Call Imp          |     4 |    14 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    18
       Call Canine Famil |     4 |    16 |    14 |    60 |     4 |       |       |       |       ||    98
       Summon Ice Beast  |       |     9 |    54 |   169 |    35 |       |       |       |       ||   267
       Summon Lightning  |       |     1 |    22 |    55 |     4 |       |       |       |       ||    82
       Shadow Creatures  |       |       |     3 |    18 |       |       |       |       |       ||    21
       Monstrous Menager |       |       |       |    11 |   236 |   105 |    31 |    26 |       ||   409
       Haunt             |       |       |       |       |    31 |   128 |    52 |    13 |       ||   224
       Summon Mana Viper |       |       |       |       |    11 |    16 |     2 |       |       ||    29
       Summon Butterflie |       |       |       |       |     1 |       |     1 |     7 |    23 ||    32
       Dragon's Call     |       |       |       |       |       |     2 |    51 |    42 |   105 ||   200
       Malign Gateway    |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |    11 |    53 ||    64
       Summon Horrible T |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |     8 |    33 ||    41
       Aura of Abjuratio |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |    49 ||    49
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 15:54

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Haunt is very nice, but it is not worth learning if you don't have use for both summonings and necromancy. For a summoner who first learns Regeneration and trains some necromancy and then learns Dispel Undead and learns some more necromancy, it is a natural pick imo.
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 16:16

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

kuniqs wrote:Pretty much no summoning spells are worth anything. Better use of your xp would be learning conjurations or weapon skills.

Now I may be wrong, but in my string of DgIEs I've concluded pretty much the opposite at least as far as conjurations is concerned. For 4 MP, an Icicle does damage once, whereas an ice beast does damage over several turns. In addition, you can hide from a centaur/hexer/etc. behind an ice beast, clog a corridor with it to get away, and use other positioning tricks. Now a conjuration does have a better damage/aut ratio, so when you want to take out something fast that's the way to go. Usually, though, it seems to me that MP is in shorter supply than time, so for my IEs I've been getting IB before TI. Ice Beast simply has a much better damage/MP ratio (I suppose a well-equipped Spellforged Servitor is the best example of an obscene damage/MP ratio).

Now you are right about weapon skills. a caster that's run out of MP without weapon skills is dead, whether they are a summoner or a conjurer.
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 16:20

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

nago wrote:manticore or lindwurm being weak adversaries isn't true when they're facing other dungeon monsters, especially if they aren't alone but you keep summoning them and\or tank.

Help me please with Tavern jargon. Does "to tank" mean to join melee with your summons and absorb damage for them with your better defenses so they last longer?
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 16:24

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells


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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 16:26

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

MainiacJoe wrote:
nago wrote:manticore or lindwurm being weak adversaries isn't true when they're facing other dungeon monsters, especially if they aren't alone but you keep summoning them and\or tank.

Help me please with Tavern jargon. Does "to tank" mean to join melee with your summons and absorb damage for them with your better defenses so they last longer?

Yes, more generally "tanking" in a gaming context means to absorb hits for others. (Often, but not always, by someone who is better at taking damage than the ones not being hit) it isn't particularly unqiue to this forum
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 16:40

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Sprucery wrote:Haunt is very nice, but it is not worth learning if you don't have use for both summonings and necromancy. For a summoner who first learns Regeneration and trains some necromancy and then learns Dispel Undead and learns some more necromancy, it is a natural pick imo.


Sublimation of blood is almost always worth powering up on a mage. Especially one that hides behind a wall of brodudes.

Seriously though is there such a thing as non-trog chars who lack a use for necromacy?

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 17:06

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

NhorianScum wrote:
Sprucery wrote:Haunt is very nice, but it is not worth learning if you don't have use for both summonings and necromancy. For a summoner who first learns Regeneration and trains some necromancy and then learns Dispel Undead and learns some more necromancy, it is a natural pick imo.


Sublimation of blood is almost always worth powering up on a mage. Especially one that hides behind a wall of brodudes.

Seriously though is there such a thing as non-trog chars who lack a use for necromacy?

TSO worshippers?
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 17:22

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Siegurt wrote:
NhorianScum wrote:
Sprucery wrote:Haunt is very nice, but it is not worth learning if you don't have use for both summonings and necromancy. For a summoner who first learns Regeneration and trains some necromancy and then learns Dispel Undead and learns some more necromancy, it is a natural pick imo.


Sublimation of blood is almost always worth powering up on a mage. Especially one that hides behind a wall of brodudes.

Seriously though is there such a thing as non-trog chars who lack a use for necromacy?

TSO worshippers?


I refuse to believe those exist.

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 17:46

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Siegurt wrote:
MainiacJoe wrote:
nago wrote:manticore or lindwurm being weak adversaries isn't true when they're facing other dungeon monsters, especially if they aren't alone but you keep summoning them and\or tank.

Help me please with Tavern jargon. Does "to tank" mean to join melee with your summons and absorb damage for them with your better defenses so they last longer?

Yes, more generally "tanking" in a gaming context means to absorb hits for others. (Often, but not always, by someone who is better at taking damage than the ones not being hit) it isn't particularly unqiue to this forum

Yeah, I got that part; I wasn't clear in my question. Here it's the PC tanking for the summons, not the summons tanking for the PC?
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 18:01

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

A word on higher-level summonings in general: This is the point where miscasts can really gimp you, so train properly as even yellow % could send you to Abyss 4. One of the reasons Sif is great if you summon a lot.

Shadow Creatures
-Very good overall despite the random factor, I don't recommend this your "main" summon however, it serves better as a backup. You can have 4 of them out and packs count only as 1, meaning you can get out whole war bands if you get lucky. Pretty bad in D, decent anywhere else but really picks up the pace in Depths. Be careful in Zot though, as "friendly" moths of wrath can really gimp you. The wiki is right, sometimes...

Monstrous Menagerie
-If you find MM you are a happy summoner. Or was it a harpy summoner? Anyway, this is THE B'n'B spell of the summoning school. Decent summoning limit, beef and damage, and the intrinsic abilties of the mons are useful, too. Think of harpy packs as super-powered bats and are good for shredding annoying backliners that other summons have trouble with. Masticore and Lindwurm have decent ranged attacks and the paralyze of sphinx sometimes comes in handy, but I wouldn't count on it. They are strong regardless. Smooth sailing through mid and early late game but not quite enough to close it out.

Haunt
-This summoning has a quite different role than most other summoning spells, but it is certainly worthwhile thanks to a set of useful traits: 1. smite targeted 2. tends to surround the victim 3. good chance to slow the victim 4. good damage. These traits combined make it one of the best summoning spells to quickly take down priority targets or at least keeps them from casting most nonsense abilites at you, sadly excluding any smite-targeted ones. Note that you can cast this multiple times on the same enemy, something I didn't realize for decades. On the flip side, it is quite hard to learn being dual school and the ghosts are bound to one monster plus casting it multiple times drains mp quickly. A staple in extended.

Malign Gateway
-Drag monsters to open space, drop this bad guy, leave, come back, witness the bloody mess that's left. Kinda annoying to use, but strong. Another extended staple.

Spellforged Servitor
-I don't recommend it on a heavily summoning focused character due to XP and spell slot restraints, but excellent on conjurers.

Summon Greater Demon
-Unlike its little brother, this is a very bad spell for reasons already mentioned. If you must use it however, use all safety meassures you have at your disposal (aura of abjuration, stairways etc.) or you will surely die.

Summon Hydra
-Not a big fan of it. The trick to understand this spell is to not see it as a summon, but rather as a slow-moving projectile. Incredible damage potential make it good to take out some uniques and other toughies that your other mons might struggle with. However, the duration is criminally low and hunger cost is actually a real issue if you use this often. Don't believe tavern memes. This makes hydra a poor stand-alone choice, but it will get you through a good portion of the mid to mid-late game if you have nothing else and you are patient enough to put up with it.

XXX
-Go-to spell for the mid-late to late game. You want this. Best "I need something between me and the angry mob of monsters right now" spell in the game. The monstorsities also lay down the hurt, large abos aren't too bad either but their performance is less reliable. The int drain is annoying but rarely dangerous. The 3rd staple for extended.

Dragon’s Call
-Absolutely worth learning for the final push (3rd rune/Zot/extended). Very strong; potential to wreck literally any enemy in the game, but note that it takes a while and a lot of mana for your dragons to come out and you are not invulnerable. You want crystal ball + Ash or Sif for chanelling for this. Hard casting this is a pain because of the incredible XP cost combined with the overall lower XP you get as a summoner (btw don't ever base any decisions in your game on that, but it is worth mentioning) so use any tricks you can to lower the %. A brillance pot will do in a pinch. Sif helps once again because you can cast it safely sooner than you normally could. The 4rd cornerstone for summoner extended.

Conclusion: Summoners have good draw of tools for the mid and late game, but it is best to use a combination of them since all of them serve slightly different purposes. MM stands out at as the prefered cornerstone mid-game spell while triple XXX is the same for the late parts of the game. Dragon's Call is worth learning for the very final part of the game where most summons get mowed down in droves.

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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 21:15

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

MainiacJoe wrote:
nago wrote:manticore or lindwurm being weak adversaries isn't true when they're facing other dungeon monsters, especially if they aren't alone but you keep summoning them and\or tank.

Yeah, I got that part; I wasn't clear in my question. Here it's the PC tanking for the summons, not the summons tanking for the PC?

In that quote it is the pc tanking for the summons.
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Post Thursday, 5th January 2017, 21:32

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Treat Summon Hydra as an Orb of Destruction and you will probably find it quite strong.

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Post Friday, 6th January 2017, 00:47

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

I never played a dedicated summoner, but haunt is pretty nice on a dedicated necromancer in extended. You wanna train summoning for abjuration anyway.
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Post Sunday, 8th January 2017, 17:47

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

I've heard, but not had a chance to confirm, that worshiping a Good God prevents Shadow Creatures from summoning evil monsters. Which would then makes it pretty strong in Pan for spamming Angels.

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Post Sunday, 8th January 2017, 18:26

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Speleothing wrote:I've heard, but not had a chance to confirm, that worshiping a Good God prevents Shadow Creatures from summoning evil monsters. Which would then makes it pretty strong in Pan for spamming Angels.


It's true. Specifically,

Pan - angels, daevas, cherubs, golden eyes, toenail golems (cool, but... look other branches)
Geh - only fire bats (silly)
Tar - only death drakes (silly again)
Tomb - only ushabtis (meh)
Coc - mostly ice beasts, some ice dragons
Dis - iron giants, iron golems (cool)

This is usually bad trade for giving up Malign Gateway, Summon Horrible Things, Haunt.
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Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Monday, 20th June 2016, 15:27

Post Sunday, 8th January 2017, 19:16

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

Speleothing wrote:I've heard, but not had a chance to confirm, that worshiping a Good God prevents Shadow Creatures from summoning evil monsters. Which would then makes it pretty strong in Pan for spamming Angels.


It also prevents dragon's call from summoning shadow dragons. Golden dragon's are fair game under TSO now though, since the ban on poison was lifted.

Edit: Alos, all "evil" summons are banned under the good gods: call imp, summon demon, summon greater demon, malign gateway, XXX.

Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Tuesday, 13th October 2015, 06:02

Post Monday, 9th January 2017, 10:13

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

I find it helps to consider the duration and quantity with each summon spell. Helps you understand how to get the most out of it.

Starting from the lvl 6 spells:
Both Death Channel & Simulacrum
Longest duration and no summoning cap.
These are the horde spells. Should have one or the other. If you have corpse delivery, then you want both spells.

Haunt
very long duration.
Will lock down one creature per cast.
Very good control spell

MG
A tricky spell. Strong when used right. lasts a long time. might need to kill it.
Summon it near a large party or in a choke near a large party then lure with sound. or summon it to cover your retreat.
Does a lot of damage, but it's not always a great opener.

*edit*
Summon Horrible Things
Summons several of them for a short duration. Basically, meat shields that hit hard. Good opener.

I'd say open with SHT then call out your desired attackers. then just have DD or Simulacrum read to go.

Slime Squisher

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Joined: Thursday, 16th June 2011, 18:36

Post Monday, 9th January 2017, 19:10

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

What's the origin story behind writing "Summon Horrible Things" as XXX rather than the more-readable SHT?
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Barkeep

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Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Monday, 9th January 2017, 19:17

Re: Higher-Level Summoning Spells

The monsters it summons use the X glyph in console, also "XXX" is kind of funny

SHT is funny too though so yeah
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