The Tavern

Hey Guys,

I'm trying to deal with Vashnia in snake:2 right now and as soon as I met her, her and one of her friends both pinged me with a bolt taking me from 101HP Down to 24 in a single turn. I read fog and ran away.

I have the DMsl spell available to me but I'd need to train some charms to get it castable. I'm a DE, so +4 aptitudes - and I have a ring and staff of wizardry.. So its not the end of the world.

However, I haven't played since repel missiles was in the game and it seems quite a lot has changed around these two spells (Repel has been removed completely!)

Looking at the wiki for Deflect missiles it mentions the following:



http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Deflect_Missiles

My character has 24 EV and 18 AC... Its not incredible, but its still pretty high for a DE.

Is it worth investing some skill training and a level 6 spell just to beat one unique? I realise it will also be useful elsewhere at times, But am I going to get much benefit from it over and above what my current stats are?

Thanks in advance

I am not sure why you are talking about one unique. DMsl really helps vs Bolt of Fire from orb of fire and LCS from ancient lich, for instance.
Knowledge base:

at this point I am thinking about specifically training charms only to get that spell up so I can beat that one unique. However - I don't want to "Waste" a level 6 spell if my EV is already doing most of the work.

I understand it has other uses too though, and from your response it sounds like I really will get a benefit from it over and above the EV I have right now; which is the answer I Was looking for. So I guess I'll go ahead and do vaults:1, pump my charms, throw on my wiz enhancers to make it nice and castable and learn DMsl then go finish snake.

Thanks

DMsl is pretty value on a DE, and you will probably want to pick it up roughly around vaults esp if you are having trouble with yaktaur packs. Vashnia is really strong and spawns with sharpshooters who are also one of the nastier mobs in Snake. Its pretty common to not be able to kill them when you first encounter the pack. Avoiding them and moving on to the next floor or another branch is also common.

So, if your defensive skills are low, its probably more value to train fighting/dodge/armor/shields. However, if you have a reasonable amount of skill points in fighting and dodge, are carrying a buckler thats skilled to for, and using a robe and trained armor to pick up the first value point or two, at some point deflect missiles provides more defensive value than more points in fighting/dodge/armor/shields. Deep elf casters generally reach this point during a 3 rune game because they have such good apts on spells so in the lategame the spell becomes very cheap (where going up for an extra point in fighting or dodging is pretty expensive).

In addition to other (good) advices, I'd add that this is absolutely wrong.
There's no reasons to try to kill an hard enemy or unique. Especially on S:2. Just ?Map the floor if you haven't found any staircase down and go to S:3.
100% easier, safer and better than risking the life.

Anyway, dmls is good on a DE for because it's kinda cheap for them.

On average it effectively (very) approximately quadruples your EV against ranged weapons (and triples it against beams), if that's sometimes worth the XP and spell slots (With a DE it's pretty often the case, unless you're like a DE in heavy armour with no dodging or something weird.)

Vashina is likely to be just horrible to fight with or without DMsl, Conjuration based characters with weak defenses pretty much rely on being able to kill things without getting into attack range of them, and prefer to isolate tough opponents with ranged attacks (with plenty of flee options) to kill them, Vashina is pretty much an anathema to them.

I'd suggest avoiding Vashina if at all possible and just working around her, it's not like you frequently are going to be traveling back and forth through snake once you've gotten the rune, so the most sensible thing to do is figure out a way to get past her without fighting her and fleeing at the first sight of her and her band, go get the rune, and avoid her at all costs.

If she's really blocking your only route down to the rune, go off and do something else and come back, it's likely she'll have wandered off and you can snag the rune unmolested.

Thanks guys. You are all completely right. I just worry a lot that if I have to stair dance on Snake:3 I'll run into stuff I'd rather not!

Luckily though it seems that there is a stair down from Snake:1 to snake:2. Right next to that is another stair down to snake:3 - and its on the opposite side of the level that I saw Vashnia. So thats my route I guess!

Theres nothing I can do about constriction is there except kill the culprit?

Blink or other "forced movement" should break constriction, I believe.

You can just try to move away to break constriction. I have no idea how the success rate is calculated, but successive attempts have a bigger chance of working IIRC.

Blinking counts as two attempts at breaking constriction, so it is not guaranteed to work. Fear, confusion, paralysis, enslavement and polymorph end constriction. Teleport also, but after a delay, of course.

Should also mention that you can get away with very high failure rates, like 50%, on dmsl since you usually cast it out of combat. You can also swap on wiz and int gear or change out of body armor before casting. Lots of characters want to think about getting it bc it's so cheap when abused this way.

DMsl is one of those 'always get castable ASAP' spells if I find it on a DE. As a DE, your biggest problem is squishiness, and any spell you can learn to mitigate that is gold. DMsl pretty much makes you nigh untouchable vs ranged combat, so the only thing you have to worry about (for the most part) is getting closed in on melee; this should happen rarely as a DE that has the apts to either blast (Conjurations) or let someone else blast (Summonings) things to death before they get to you

It depends. For instance, when playing DEGl or DEEn the spell is not high priority. As usual players should consider all options and choose the best in the short or middle run.