[DECj] What spells to learn?

[quik]

Hi!

I'm playing a DECj. I'm about to go to Lair:5. As I haven't played a lot of casters and I don't know most spells, now that I got some books, I'd love some help on which spells I should learn next.

My skills:



My current spells:



Spells I have available:



I also have 4 scrolls of amnesia available.

Dump

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Vehumet has kindly offered me knowledge of Iskenderun's Battlesphere, which I'm going to accept right now.
EDIT2: I've also found a book of the Sky:

[Magipi]

I thought that battlesphere was removed. So it was only removed from the Cj book, but not from the game? Weird.

I would learn that, but none of the other stuff.

Also, I would not wear scale mail on a conjurer. It's too heavy.

[quik]

I would learn that, but none of the other stuff.

What kind of spells I'm looking for in order to win a 3-rune game? Bolt of fire? Iron shot? Orb of destruction? LCS? (Just guessing, based on my skills on Conjurations, Fire and Earth Magic).

Also, I would not wear scale mail on a conjurer. It's too heavy.

I thought that I could use it, because my failure percentages are good. Does it have more drawbacks?

Thanks!

[tasonir]

Failure %'s are the main drawback, and the only one you really need to worry about. It also lowers melee accuracy and EV, but since you can see your EV I'm assuming that the scale mail provides more AC than the EV you lost, or you wouldn't have kept it. Do keep an eye on your failure %'s in the future though - they may be low for your magic now since your highest spell is 5%, but if you want to move up to a level 6 or 7 spell, it may delay being able to cast them. Right now the ring of wizardry is fine since you don't have many other good rings, but when you have good rings you'll want to free up the slot for something else. But if you stick to level 5/6 spells, you can probably just train your magic skills high enough to overcome the armor without wizardry, which is fine. If you want to go all the way to a level 9 nuke, you'll probably need to train armor skill and maybe find some +strength equipment.

Shame you're already into fire, because I love bolt of cold/freezing cloud as a combo, but that's probably too much of a shift for you right now. I'd probably consider picking up necromancy and animate dead though, meatshields are very good for survivability. Later on if you find vamp draining/regeneration you can get some cheap healing options as well. Cig's embrace is good for temporary armor although I haven't really used it much - I usually just animate the bodies instead.

[TonberryJam]

first, I would say use sticky flame for melee range; bolt of magma for mid range. Get spell power of those two to 8# or 9# with two/three enhancers, and Lair + Branches will be easy enough. Like get 15 Conj then just enough Fire/Earth to hit 8#.

If you rolled shoals might want Deflect Missile at 6# or castable because you don't have fireball to make all those great steam clouds.

second, you don't really have anything ideal for long range with your skill set. So, I'd suggest for you to rush Air for conjure ball lightning and Tornado. This also nets you Airstrike and deflect missles, both great tactical skills.

[quik]

Updated dump.

Get spell power of those two to 8# or 9# with two/three enhancers, and Lair + Branches will be easy enough.

What do you mean by enhancers? I don't get what those are.

second, you don't really have anything ideal for long range with your skill set. So, I'd suggest for you to rush Air for conjure ball lightning and Tornado. This also nets you Airstrike and deflect missles, both great tactical skills.

Now I have Bolt of Fire and Orb of Destruction to fill the gap. Are those ok for a 3-rune game?

EDIT: And another question. Should I be using the staff of fire or the staff of power?

Thanks.

[nago]

Enhancers are things that affects your spellpower. This includes: staff of foo (like staff of fire), ring of foo, robe of archimagi, wild magic mutation, !brilliance, some spells.

Spellpower affects most things of spell. For conjurations for example, it determines how much damage the spell does and his accuracy, plus duration and size the spell has those variables too.
For example, bolt of fire:

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does six dice with a maximum total damage of (18 + (power * 2) / 3). At power 50 it does 6d8 damage; at power 100 it does 6d14

and

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To-hit: 10+power/25.

So generally speaking, more spell power means stronger spells, which is very good.

By the way, spell power is given by:

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(Spellcasting/2 + 2*avg school skill) * INT/10 * (1.5 ^ enhancer count).

but that shouldn't mean you should overtrain magic school after % spell failure get to a decent value, because on spell power there are a lot of cap, so it gives very bad returns. At most, you should use enhancers when you have them.

That said, you shouldn't follow very close TomberryJam's advices. Most of them are bad or outright false. Getting 2/3 enhancers by Lair is totally fantasy, and actually most of chars won't find (or use) more than one or two in their entire game.
You shouldn't Air for conjure ball lightning and Tornado. Bolt of fire and orb of destruction are enough to clear the game. Sure, with De's apts you may go for them if you want, but this is totally optional.


Being spellpower good and enhancers good, most probably you should use staff of fire over staff of power when using fire spells - as you should get more benefits from casting fewer but stronger spells than more but weaker ones.

[quik]

Enhancers are things that affects your spellpower. [...]

Thank you so much. Very interesting reply

[TonberryJam]

So every game you play you never find two, sometimes three enhancers that boost fire or ice in D:1-15 or Orc:1-2 or Lair:1-5? Every now and then you never find a magical robe or hat with Archmage?

Also, he didn't have OoB and BoF at the time of that post, so I suggest he focused on getting SF and BoM built up, then switch to Air because he lacked a ranged skill. And fyi SF and BoM are pretty potent on their own. BoM particularly shines at mid range.

The last caster I played had staff of conjuration, two rings of fire, robe of the archmage, and hat of the archmage. Before Lair was finished. Granted this is a 1 in every few hundred games, and two sometimes three enhancers is pretty common at Lair. Yes, i did roam around with XX ice res, and yes most ice giants and ice dragon's died to one fireball. And, yes don't get into melee range with very ugly white things.

[Hellmonk]

Saying that "two enhancers at Lair is pretty common" is just blatantly false; I'd wager that less than 10% of games will have two enhancers that early. You are far more likely to have zero enhancers by lair than you are to have two enhancers, so it is absurd to give general advice to use two enhancers in lair.

[nago]

So every game you play you never find two, sometimes three enhancers that boost fire or ice in D:1-15 or Orc:1-2 or Lair:1-5? Every now and then you never find a magical robe or hat with Archmage?

.

No in most games I don't.
BTW the hat with archimage was a fixedart now removed

[TonberryJam]

I never said, "two enhancers at Lair is pretty common". Unless you want to document 1000-3000 games noting every enhancer drop, including robes and hats of archmage, then stating something is likely to happen at 10% is not a sound statement.

What's absurd is how you go about being insulting.

Getting 8# is not difficult with skill training alone, as even 1 enhancer makes 100 spell power simple to reach. so when I said, "or 9# with two/three enhancers" you probably didn't think I meant you could get 9# spell power with 2/3 enhancers. And you go about creating the illusion that enhancers never drop. Granted, i'm not including -2 to -5 apts because slow is slow.

[Hellmonk]

I never said, "two enhancers at Lair is pretty common".

two sometimes three enhancers is pretty common at Lair.

[Sprucery]

Getting 8# is not difficult with skill training alone,

The question is, why are you even talking about spellpower wrt. sticky flame and bolt of magma? If you have them at 1% like the OP does, it is enough. They get the job done. There's no need to try to get some specific spellpower, let alone 8# or 9#, which is absurd at that point (my current HEFE has cleared Lair and Orc, both spells are at 6# and it hasn't even crossed my mind that I should have more).

[NhorianScum]

On not DE^Veh you just take bolt/blast/smite/single target and dump into utility spells/evo/invo/bulk/weapon. Here that would look something like bof/lrd/ood or iron shot as the offensive spell suite.

On DE^Veh you may as well learn chain lightning and tornado for funsies.