Struggling with DsFE

[Scrawl]

For this character I've been playing outside of my comfort zone and knowledge (I think it shows).

I've been winging it wildly (picked Ashenzari on a whim) and the whole game has been a struggle
from the get go (likely due to my hasty choices).

Around about Lair I needed more damage so tried getting Iron Shot online asap, letting me ping from branch to branch.
To address my abysmal defences I then trained Statue Form, although still worried about using it due to the chars
current lack of melee potential..

I need advice on what to do next to maximise survival odds, as currently I've hit the limit of my own experience keeping a
character like this alive. Spider 1 has Rupert right by the entrance, Shoals 1 has a welcome party, Depths has Saint Roka and Sojobo.
I'd normally do Elf 1/2 for experience in this situation, but poking my head into it has revealed another rough welcome party including two angels.

Most characters I feel I'd have a rune or two by this point, but everywhere still feels quite threatning to this character.

Any suggestions are much appreciated, thanks!

https://crawl.project357.org/morgue/Scrawl/Scrawl.txt

[petercordia]

The main mistake I notice, is you not having enough cursed jewelry slots. You shouldn't have cursed your armour if you don't have enough scrolls to curse your jewelry.

Even so, I think this character will have a pretty solid future. I'd try to get Orb of Destruction online. It's an amazing spell, and now it has 34% failure chance, which means you can get it online fairly quickly.
At some point, I'd transfer all melee skill into unarmed and use Statue form + claws 3 + UC for melee. (This allows you to treat many monsters as popcorn, even with low strenght & dex.) It probably would have been wise to curse on a polearm for piety, train for it, then transfer the knowledge from Polearms to UC later, but it doesn't look like you have enough cursing scrolls to do that. As it stands you might as well use UC immediately.
You have shatter in your library, and you're going earth. With Ash you should be able to get Shatter castable during a 3-rune game. (In part this is due to the jewelry-related skill boost, the other part because you can start transferring your stealth/conjuration/whatever into earth when Shatter failure rate gets below ~90%)

For now, Statue form + claws 3 + berserk should be enough to deal with one nasty situation. I don't know which fight I'd use berserk for. Maybe Elf. Rupert should be quite easy with OoD, once you get it. I guess you could also use brilliance to deal with him, but trying that might waste your potion of brilliance.

PS: remember you have evokable invis

[Scrawl]

Ah, thank you for the solid advice! I'm not very familiar with worshipping Ash. so it's good to know about the jewellery tip. Hadn't even considered utilising the innate UC + statue, so I'm feeling much more hopeful now.

I'll follow your suggestions and see how it goes, cheers!

[sanka]

I personally would not go for high level conjurations and statue form on the same character.

It is strange that you did not memorized sticky flame. It is your main spell as a fire elementalist. You also did not used conjure flame much. It is not a suprise you struggled in lair!

[svendre]

Fire and earth work well together, in this respect I think you're on the right track. Iron shot kills things that resist fire, but isn't good at hitting evasive targets and is a mana drainer. The fire skill you're missing to compliment it is fireball. It cuts through armour if they don't have resists, and it doesn't miss, and can clean up bigger piles of targets. So, I would take fireball, pump fire skill, and then my next spell if you don't find spell books or other options would be orb of destruction as your longer-range option for killing stuff that has resists and may even be evasive also. Some people like LRD and I think it's a good spell, but you don't have it... and I don't think it's the greatest spell anyways due to it's tactical limitations regarding needing walls, but it's another good tool for your build to be on the lookout for.

You have 8 str and lots of int. You are correct to have trained for statue form and conjurations. You need the defense, and you need a reliable way to kill things. I don't approve of the robes, I would urge you to try and get into something like steam dragon or acid dragon at least and get your non-statue form AC a little bit higher. It won't turn you into a tank, but you won't feel like every encounter is such an emergency always, and the effect will be that you can sometimes melee popcorn and save mana for more serious threats.

Your end game weapons are shatter and fire storm. I would try to get shatter online first since it'll take less experience. Ash isn't my favorite god by a long shot, particularly for your build, but I think it's an awful wrath to switch from. Next time, consider Vehumet, Sif, Mak or TSO for this build.

Last but not least, if you come across ring of flames, it's quite a good spell that doesn't get a lot of mention and I think is generally underestimated. It works well with statue form also.

[Scrawl]

Appreciate the advice, fairly new to casters so these perspectives are very helpful. I'd noticed Iron Shot had a weird accuracy profile, good to know what's going on there.

Definitely agree that the robes are less than ideal, and I do somewhat regret picking Ash. for this character, although they've been fun to learn with.

Conjure flames is something I use to block corridors with to escape or fire through, I'll try and incorporate it more offensively if possible (not being able to cast it on a hostile square means I probably underuse it).

[petercordia]

If you practice, you can get monsters to walk through 4 or 5 tiles of flame before they get to you. This works well against eg Yaks, Death Yaks, Hydra's. This will bring them close to death. The trick is to use a choke point to force them onto the 1st fire tile, then make sure they have a straight line to you, filled with fire. Some monsters (Yaks) will wait a few turns before stepping on the 1st tile of fire. If you play wizards you can get a lot of practice with this technique

I like the endgame plan of Robe of Archmagi + Statue form myself. It gives overpowering offence in most situations, and good defense when you want it.
If you couldn't tell, I also like Ash. I can see why you find Ash frustrating though.