Survivability tips?

Monday, 10th April 2017, 04:18 by Augur

Spoiler: show

DANGIT!!! My latest and best character died stupidly. HOFi that got a lucky XP potion that put my fighting to 14 while I focused on dodging, then started to get momentum with my orc posse in the Orc Mines, and found an excellent crossbow to train him with. Then, I got my first rune from the Shoals, and was feeling good until I was confused without realizing it, and shot an Orc follower when trying to kill an orb spider. Then Beogh dropped 15 orcs on top of me while I was still trying to get out of there with spiders crawling all over me. Went from Orc Jesus to D-E-D dead in an instant. :roll:

I've been liking HOFi over MiFi so far... squadding up is definitely fun though I think I need to leave the majority of them behind and recall when I need them, to avoid AoE spell party wipes. Even then, 4-5 orc warlords on your back is a nice safety net. My strategy has been to level my weapon skill to min delay firstly, then go Fighting to 12 or so, then dodging/armor to 10 at least. I buy all identify scrolls in shops, and depending on my wealth, pots of healing and curing too; they are great to have early game. I usually just dump points into strength because it seems that weapon skill generally determines whether you're going to hit or not. Should I put some Dex in too, if I'm using melee? Does Dex increase damage for ranged weapons?

Without too many spoilers, are the runes necessary for a win? Or are they necessary because whatever is on the Orb of Zot's level is too powerful to kill without all the extra experience gained from pursuing them? I honestly felt like I could have finally taken a win with this guy after playing this game off-and-on for two years, but wanted to make sure to level him as long as I could in places that felt easy. Then the confusion bad-times happened. I've been able to get myself out of most bad situations; a couple that were very bad indeed (Learned that the Orc Mines can have stairs up to unexplored places with low hp while running from enemies lol) so I know the importance of retreating. I don't know when or if I should invest XP into things like Air spells, which may have helped my Orc in a number of occasions with Repel Missiles before he picked up an amulet and buckler of reflection. What do you think are necessary adventuring tools that I've been missing?

Also, any good guides for starting as wizards, rogues, and ranged characters? I've tried SpEn and HEHu before but never got too far. I've always felt more comfortable starting as a melee character and as the game progresses, see what I get and build them into whatever I wanted. Ammo in the beginning can be troublesome if you're unlucky like me, and my wizards always melt whenever they meet any significant resistance.

Monday, 10th April 2017, 06:35 by bel

Augur wrote:Without too many spoilers, are the runes necessary for a win? Or are they necessary because whatever is on the Orb of Zot's level is too powerful to kill without all the extra experience gained from pursuing them?

You need at least three runes to unlock the entrance to the Realm of Zot (where the Orb is found).

Monday, 10th April 2017, 07:42 by shping

Augur wrote:Without too many spoilers

Also, any good guides

Two things. Crawl is all about tactical roguelike combat, and spoilers / no spoilers isn't really a thing. If you want to make it a thing just for yourself, go ahead, but anywhere you see crawl discussed, you're going to run into unlabeled "spoilers".
You'll even find spoilers in-game if you inspect a creature with "x v", or if you press "? /" :mrgreen:

Secondly! Guides are generally full of spoilers, no? Well do you want them or not?! Also, most guides are out of date, if not immediately wrong upon being authored. The longer and wordier a guide is, the more likely it is that the author is bloviating about stuff they don't know. The learndb is usually good, though, and it does have a few succinct guides in it, like this one:
http://crawl.develz.org/learndb/index.html#hyperbolic

Monday, 10th April 2017, 07:53 by Sprucery

I wonder why you didn't quaff curing after reading the scroll of fear?

Tuesday, 11th April 2017, 01:38 by Augur

Sprucery wrote:I wonder why you didn't quaff curing after reading the scroll of fear?

I had a bunch of redback and jumping spiders come out of the area of the scroll's effect, so I wagered that I'd be more likely to survive by getting to the stairs before they can follow me up than trying to down a curing potion.

Tuesday, 11th April 2017, 05:39 by Sphara

Learning to take advantage of the items you find is one key element of survival. I'll just point out two decision flaws here.

You had an excellent +10 plate but only 7.8 Armour skill. Probably not the reason you died there but still, room for improvement there.

The real reason is probably ignoring that helmet that granted you evokable invisibility. You did not train evocations a bit after finding it and used it zero times. I can't remember a single spider/insect monster that has SInv. As you had no poison resistance, this would have greatly reduced the trouble there.

Tuesday, 11th April 2017, 09:44 by Zhorgal

Augur wrote:Also, any good guides for starting as wizards, rogues, and ranged characters? I've tried SpEn and HEHu before but never got too far. I've always felt more comfortable starting as a melee character and as the game progresses, see what I get and build them into whatever I wanted. Ammo in the beginning can be troublesome if you're unlucky like me, and my wizards always melt whenever they meet any significant resistance.

Same here, all my wizard types died horrible deaths pretty soon. I get the impression that their lack of armour makes them particularly hard to play. One small mistake and you're gone.

Tuesday, 11th April 2017, 19:08 by tasonir

Zhorgal wrote:Same here, all my wizard types died horrible deaths pretty soon. I get the impression that their lack of armour makes them particularly hard to play. One small mistake and you're gone.

This might be true at first glance, but chances are that the 'small mistake' is happening earlier than you think. With casters you generally need to keep things away from you, and use the 4-6 tiles they have to cross to reach you as your kill zone. Things should be generally dying by the time they get near you. You can survive a few turns with things nearby, but that's generally a sign that something has gone wrong (most likely, you're fighting too many targets at once).

This doesn't quite apply to a sticky flame fire elementalist, but most other casters play this way. If you want to try a caster with armor, IE's get ozo's armor which is quite strong. Just remember it makes you move slightly slower, so be careful trying to run away.

Wednesday, 12th April 2017, 01:24 by Augur

Sphara wrote:Learning to take advantage of the items you find is one key element of survival. I'll just point out two decision flaws here.

You had an excellent +10 plate but only 7.8 Armour skill. Probably not the reason you died there but still, room for improvement there.

The real reason is probably ignoring that helmet that granted you evokable invisibility. You did not train evocations a bit after finding it and used it zero times. I can't remember a single spider/insect monster that has SInv. As you had no poison resistance, this would have greatly reduced the trouble there.

I was in the middle of training armor when I decided I should start using my +10 arbalest since it looked like I wasn't going to get an axe to replace my normal +2 war axe any time soon, so I switched to training crossbows. What would be a good armor skill to settle on for each armor? To the encumbrance rating of the armor, or more?

Also, you're right, I don't often use evokable items. Should I just generally train them until I get a low % chance to fail, like spells? I assume for each type of effect there's easier/harder evoke chances.

Wednesday, 12th April 2017, 05:55 by Sphara

Also, you're right, I don't often use evokable items. Should I just generally train them until I get a low % chance to fail, like spells? I assume for each type of effect there's easier/harder evoke chances.

You start at 71 % fail rate with 0 skill points. So yes, it is pretty difficult to evoke. But invisibility isn't the kind of evoc you necessarily want in the middle of combat. You may wanna pop it up behind corner or upstairs before engaging. So fail rate isn't THAT important. More important is its duration which also increases with higher evo. Out of the hat I would say you should train minimum of 6 skill points with every character if you do find evokable invis item, asap.

Survivability tips?

Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Re: Survivability tips?

Who is online