Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 17:24

cheap shots and dirty tricks

Occasional lurker, first-time poster here.

The gnoll just recently re-sparkled my diminished interest in DCSS (because yay for multi-school wizardry), so I am actually actively working on my first honest win (I have some once-or-twice-savescummed ones under my belt, but it doesn't really count). A first couple of attempts left my dungeon popuated with a fairly big number of ghosts... which is a fun mini-boss challenge for a change. But it also got me thinking about sucker-punching OOD enemies and overwhelming odds (especially since the gnoll way of doing things gives me a broad spectrum of spells, but low "top performance" spikes). Some just off the top of my head here, go crazy with yours:

- Most obvious beginner combo: Conjure Flame plus Meph Cloud in narrow passages= endless source of fun. More so if you cast it in the first space of a tunnel next to a bigger cave, with a couple of monsters crowded in front of it (always fun to watch massive friendly fire incidents). Pummeling things through the flame with polearms optional.

- Fireball for Cheapskates: Meph Cloud plus Ignite Poison. Actually, any AoE poison spell benefits from IP, but Meph Cloud is a cheapie, plus the resulting mayhem is nice to watch. Throw in some Inner Flames for extra disco.

- Precision sucker punch: Conjure Flame plus Gell's Gravitas. GG appears to have some bad rep here. Undeservingly so. It is cheap as dirt, and paired with CF it KILLS STUFF. Actually, anything is better with added CF (Lesser Beckoning? Check. Confusion? Check. CF plus Searing Ray? OH HELL YEAH!!!), but GG is cheap, hard to resist and tons of fun.

- Obvious but expensive: Petrify plus LRD

- Not yet tested: any enchantment plus Yara's Violent Unravelling - seems like it should be a good idea to enchant a monster myself, and then let it explode in its face

- Fulminant Prism= self-explanatory. I just figured out how good this one is. Some rather massive bang for the buck (if you are not a DE, and MP-conscious), smite-targeted, hard to resist, delightfully spam-able. A bit tricky to deploy, but with some good movement tactics (which a caster should always have, stationary tanking kills casters IMO) you can even blow up monsters standing directly next to you with it.

- For the coward killers: Sticky Flame+whatever increases your running speed. Again, Sticky Flame is a cheap solution to wear down and kill almost anything (without rF) up to mid-game. Staying alive before the target goes down is the issue, since Sticky only hits in melee range. So pour some napalm on them, cast Swiftness/Haste and run away til they drop. Alternatively, in narrow passages cheap summons (butterflies/imps) work wonders to create some distance between you an the enemy. Combine with Create Flame at your discretion.



As for non-spell sucker punches: Hill Orc Fighter of Quazlal is amazeballs, once you get some resistances running. Poison is a bitch. Amulets of piety plus a +3 invocations aptitude = cloudkills galore. Spamming Disaster Area is like having your own Nuclear Button Of Doom handy.

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