Dumb AM ranger question 8 - What should I have worn

[grinrain]

My latest run was my best by far. LVl 21, 166 Hp, 20 skill level with bow. Here is my morgue file from the run, could some one tell me what I should have worn?

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/grinr ... 220307.txt

For instance, I was torn between +3 protection ring vs + 3 evasion ring, went with protection until I got till I replaced it with a +7 str +4 dex ring. Which of the 3 should I have paired with my +5 ring of slaying?

Which of all the Breastplate options would be best?

Any other suggestions?

[petercordia]

I would make the same decision wrt your rings, especially since the ring of Inaeqi Xull {+Blink Str+7 Int-4 Dex+4} also allows you to blink.
I wouldn't wear +1 pair of boots of the Engineer {rC+ MR- Int+4 Dex+4} if I can't get my MR up to MR+++.
Your breastplate +5 swamp dragon scales of the Cicada {+Inv rPois Regen+} looks good, but I would have trained a bit more evokations and abused invis.
For skilling I would have trained more evokations, dodging, translocations (for Passage of Golubria), a bit less bow skill, and no long blades skill.
I would use heroism more often, and if you use it this little I'd replace the amulet of faith.

[acoolguy]

Petercordia gear advice is correct. It looks like this death was due to the desolation of salt. In general, I don't think the desolation of salt is worth doing due to its danger (though loot is often good). If you do go in, get ready to bail if things get hairy.

In terms of skilling, I'd focus on training defensive stats before bringing bows past 15. Oka's heroism can be spammed in any non-trivial fight to reach min delay. In your case as you were wearing lighter armour, it would have been better to train more dodging than armor. I'd also train a bit of evocation earlier if you get decent wands (just 5 - 7 is fine, though evocation tends to scale relatively well). Also as you were in lighter armor, you had the option of picking several good spells namely summon lightning spire. You could have also picked up passage of golubria, regeneration, swiftness and animate dead (ok since you have portal projectile), but none of this is really necessary for your character.

[grinrain]

Ok, will follow the advice and take bow off 40% when i get to 16 if a long bow, still stopping at 14 with a short bow.

Killed myself in Desolation. Did not want to retreat and have the branch close. Also noticed all the explosions, but was not taking damage so was ignoring. Until the bright red DRAINED caught my attention.

[svendre]

I didn't extensively study your dump but I noticed a few things. First of all, you were drained when you died. That means your skills were reduced by negative attacks, (ghostly fireballs), which also killed you. The gear in this case which would have served you the best would have been anything with rN+ on it, and you had none on. So whatever skilling mistakes you may have made were overshadowed by being drained for lack of rN+ when fighting a creature with ghostly fireballs and perhaps not understanding the tactics needed to survive desolation (it is a tough place). They would have rocked you right through your armour, evasion, shields...well, I guess that they actually did.

In general, I think it's most important to look at whatever excellent piece of gear you have, be it body armour or jewelry and make some decisions based around it, because you're more likely to keep it and want to find things that match it. Rather than worry that every slot is filled with the best item for that slot possible, you should instead focus on balancing your resistances such that you have rF+, rC+, rN+ (at least), MR++ (at least) all the time - and based on player preference maybe rElec (I like it), rPois (it's nice but not crucial past early game). I don't generally worry about rCorr unless I'm doing slime pits. When you don't have the gear to have constant coverage on resistances, then you need to substitute it with knowledge of what you are fighting and swap (generally rings), even if they are simple basic rings, or employ special tactics to incapacitate the threats which can hurt you most. Once you have basic resists covered, build from there. There are always exceptions, and those exception are better leveraged the more experience you have, I'm giving you a starting point to practice from.

Evaluating what you had, the swamp dragon armour was pretty good, worth using at least for a good amount of time. You were doing something a bit strange having 22 int and having quite a bit of points into spellcasting while you only had a few low level hex spells. I don't think hexes are particularly great, and besides using them early game to get by, I think you'd have been better off saving a lot of that xp and putting it into having higher AC, and/or training axes as a melee weapon to compliment the bow. I don't like ranged weaponry as the only option for fighting, and I don't' much care for weapons that hit only one enemy at at a time. Try using the low level spells early game, then letting them drop off for mid-game and become more of a fighter, then, if and only if you find supporting gear for spells which boosts int without sacrificing str and resists, add more spellcasting ability. The things you want are utility spells like blink, aura of abjuration, deflect missiles, regeneration (if going evil, add vampiric draining and dispel undead). The really good spells for later compliment ranged/melee and hit a lot of enemies at once, such as toxic, vile clutch, ignition. tornado, shatter.

[acoolguy]

I'd base gear choices mostly based of of AC+EV and try to have MR+++ and rElec (if the games give it to you). Other resistances like rF, rC, rN, and sometimes rElec are often swappable as rings if a dangerous threat uses that element (though it is a qol upgrade to have it on your armour as well).

Peter is right that spellcasting was overtrained and generally should only be trained to give you enough spell levels to learn your spells.

In terms of learning ranged and melee skills, I'd generally advice against training both to minimum delay. Assuming you have enough ammo, it's much better to just train the ranged option as longbows and arbalests kill stuff very effectively and killing things with a melee weapon doesn't add much. Plus with oka, ammo is rarely a concern and heroism can give you enough of a boost to wack things on non dangerous threats.

As for whether or not to use spells on an arcane marksmen, that's largely dependent on the gear you find and then spells you can cast. An early plate could dictate to be a heavy armour character with few if any spells, while something other lighter armours may indicate going an ev based build.

[grinrain]

Been running

20% fighting
40% weapon
20% defensive (dodge/armor)
20% spells (spellcasting/hex/invocation/evocation and a level or two of stealth ..)

Which reminds me, if a spell shows two schools of magic (say hex and transport), you only need to worry about skill ups in one?

[acoolguy]

Training both skills would simply improve the success rate of a spell faster and improve spell power. Skilling in mostly one vs evenly mostly depends on the spells you want to learn. (If there are lots of good hexes you want to learn and only a few good translocations that train more hexes and put fewer levels in translocations).

It generally helps to set level targets to specific skills and avoid simply allocating experiences and not touching it, but the game is still very winnable doing what your doing.

[petercordia]

Been running
Which reminds me, if a spell shows two schools of magic (say hex and transport), you only need to worry about skill ups in one?

For two-school spells, the average of the 2 school skills matters. See http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Spell_Success

[wj69]

I know op was asking srategic questions but the most glaring mistake is tactical: you should had Heroism and Finesse on.