The Tavern

Edit: Victory achieved!!
Final Morgue: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 201223.txt



Hi all,

I'm currently the farthest I've ever been (2 runes) and have some questions on my weapon choice. I'm trying to decide between focusing on 2H mace or 1H mace and a shield.

U - the +6 great mace of Deavic (weapon) {freeze, Dex+2}
(Trog gifted it to you on level 1 of the Elven Halls)

It has been specially enchanted to freeze those struck by it, causing extra
injury to most foes and up to half again as much damage against particularly
susceptible opponents. It can also slow down cold-blooded creatures.

It affects your dexterity (+2).
Y - a +2 eveningstar of crushing


My current Morgue can be found at: https://pastebin.com/v5tgeCcV
Should I stop training shields and depend on the great mace, or should I keep training shields and switch to the eveningstar? Is there truly a better option or am I just looking at choosing between offense/defense?

A great mace is a pretty small upgrade from an eveningstar, and a shield is a big upgrade from no-shield, Also you can enchant that eveningstar up, which you can't do with the great mace.

Also you've got a good sling to use one-handed for ranged attacks. Also you're at 14.2 shields and it only takes 15 to get rid of the regular shield penalties.

So I would use the eveningstar+shield, personally.

Also since you're relatively new to getting further into the game, a shield would give you more time to make mistakes and soften the blow when you misjudge your power against unfamiliar critters.

I would suggest strongly not using the ice dragon armour unless you can get to a net positive in fire resist, plain plate mail (or the rpois one you have) would be safer to wear generally. If a rF+ or rC+ plate is available you should probably use that instead.

Good to know. I wasn't sure if that base damage made a big enough difference. I'll switch to and enchant the eveningstar. I also picked up an enchanted large shield while getting the 3rd rune in Vault.

I dropped the ice dragon armor for shadow dragon, but I did pick up rF+ plate. I'll admit I was using shadow dragon just for fun, I've never snuck up on mobs before. I've read I should have rF+++ for Zot, so I'm going to work on finding better gear while training shield up to remove the large shield penalty.

You don't need rF+++ for Zot, definitely not for a MiBe. rF+ is enough. rF++ if you want to over-prepare. AC is more important in most cases.

Large shield penalty isn't too significant at the shields skill level you have. I would switch to a large shield as soon as I can.

I appreciate the tips here! I just wanted to followup to say I now have my first win!

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 201223.txt

Congrats!

As a follow-up I notice from your morgue you used a demon whip for a while then ditched it. For future information, a demon whip is about equal to an eveningstar for damage per time (it does less damage per hit, but swings more quickly, it sometimes feels like it take longer to kill stuff, just because of the additional button presses, but it's really not) so if you have the choice between the two in the future, just remember that a demon whip is about as good as an eveningstar.