The Tavern

I am playing a DSMo of Oka. I met the Orc woman on D:10, and have taken her +6 demon trident. However, I started out with a mace, lather upgraded to a flail of protection and a +1 morningstar. So I now have 11.3 m&f and 3.2 polearms. And now I have found a basic great mace (D:11). The only shield I found was a buckler I bought early on, and I have 2.5 shields skill.

Any advice on what to do now? The trident is being very useful. There is the Oka factor to consider, too.

I also have the blue scales mutation, horns, and spines.

EDIT: Oka also just gifted me a +1 broad axe of chopping.

When did you find the +9 sling? That would have been an amazing weapon early.

I'm a sucker for axes, so I'd train those while using the demon trident.

I completely forgot about the sling, it was on Joseph on D:8.

I'd personally be tempted to go with the demon trident, especially if you have any brand weapon scrolls ready. If not, you'll probably find one eventually. Bucklers aren't too amazing but it'd be super cheap to raise shields to 4 and get some "free" blocking as well. Later on you can use a regular shield if you can find a good one. Only concern would be that if you want to do 15 runes demon tridents can be a bit weak (although still viable) for extended. Shouldn't be an issue for 3-5 runes though.

Interesting to wear plate on 13 strength...you value AC to the extent of losing that much EV?

They're both end-game levels of weapons. It's usually questionable to switch weapons, but if you want a shield demon trident hits min-delay on pretty small total XP investment.

I quite like the M&F progression, especially since dire flails hit min delay at 14 and have decent speed as an early-mid game weapon if you take the 2h path building up to great maces. 1h options are great too. Eveningstar does more damage than a broad axe with less skill investment. In general M&F take less investment; 17 damage at 20 skill compared to 24 for rare triple blade or 26 for executioner's axe/bardiche (these do 1 more base damage for that much more XP). And great maces are as common as any other typical standard weapon.

Demon whip might be better for now but if you want to 2h something great mace hits pretty hard.

That looks like quite a mess (sorry).

You don't have enough STR and armour isn't trained very high, you should probably get out of that plate and wear something a little lighter, hopefully something branded. Start adding more STR.

You have more DEX than STR yet you haven't trained evasion hardly at all, I'd bring your evasion up a bit. With a few points into EV, see if you can get your combined total of AC+EV higher than what you've got now.

Your maces skill isn't amazing at 11 to use the great mace effectively, all your other maces suck pretty badly compared to the demon trident. The buckler isn't much of a consideration in this. It's really a crappy situation. I might bring your polearms up just a tad to around 6-9 as a possibly temporary measure and rock the demon trident until you find a better mace (and who knows you might not for a long time). The broad axe of chopping is nice, but the +1 enchant is underwhelming and unless you have a bunch of enchant scrolls, it's going to be a rough ride to get it online anytime soon as compared with the instant mileage you'll get from the demon trident. I'd use that broad axe, but only much later on after you have your maces solid since you didn't train axes from the start (they also take longer to train than maces so better as a second weapon). Try pumping fighting more instead of maces and hold out that that Oka will gift you a better mace (demon whip, morningstar and eveningstar are all good).

You can also use the time hoping for another weapon to bring armour skill up since higher defenses and higher offense somewhat, sort-of work in place of each other.

This game has been over for some time. It does not matter which way you go on the weapon/shield choice. Personally I would commit to the demon trident over a possible future gift, only because I like dtrident/shield characters and the skill point issue doesn't matter with oka characters. Obviously it would be fine to switch to a good great mace or demon whip/eveningstar if one arises later.

The main thing that sticks out in this dump is that you have used heroism only 3 times, when you should use it over 200 times in a 3 rune game. Also, there is no point in training shields to use a buckler for an oka character.

I don't give much value to EV because it can almost always be substituted by running away. However, when you can't run away because of status effects, EV utility drops significantly. Since there are no MR+ items (I am doing shoals, and the only two that came up were two robes in Snakes; however, there are a few MR- ), I have been paralysed multiple times in a row. If I had relied on EV, I think that I would be dead. In practice, EV may be good in normal situations, but, when you need defence the most, it becomes useless.

For me, EV is mostly a happy by-product of sacrificing AC to be able to cast spells.

Oka ended up gifting me a couple of shields, ATM I am running around with a towershield and crystal plate.

I also got the wave of death mutation, so I am using the broad axe. I brought it to +5.

It's definitely true that I had been underusing abilities, now I am using them more often.

As a tip for your next oka game: You should not take your natural skill levels to weapon and shield breakpoints. You should only hit breakpoints with heroism active, i.e. with heroism you hit exactly mindelay, shield penalty threshold, etc. This saves a lot of skill points and makes a much stronger character. A lot of people say it don't be like that, but it do.

It depends. For character in CPA it is almost always optimal to train weapon/shield to min delay even with Oka. Basically the most general rule is to train skills which help the most. If it is weapon/shield, go for it.

Why?

And it's VICTORY!

The reasoning is probably that he doesn't anticipate getting spells decently castable before the game ends.

I'm not sure I agree, throwing/ranged weapon, evocations, and more fighting/armor come to mind as good alternatives and some of these continue to be useful to train into fairly high values (especially throwing with oka giving you a steady supply).

That said I'd be more keen to take a demon whip to min delay than a heavier/higher skill weapon too, just to tab through popcorn with less hassle.