The Tavern

Playing with a Draconian Transmutor and with a Sprigan Enchanter, but questions about the Draconian Transmutor.

Without weapons, how do you handle hydras? Do you pop into spider form?
As for skills, been growing fighting, un-armed, dodge, spellcasting, transmutations and poison. At exp level 10/D8 seems about the only thing I could be doing. What should I be doing? Did get a book with fire spells, but does not seem a legit path at the moment.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/grinrain/grinrain.txt

Ice form is probably the best form for hydras (ice branded attacks can slow them), also you can use wands or just avoid them (They move normal speed)

Spider form isn't so great, they're poison resistant.

If you have, use potions of lignification against hydras.

Going to have to try something different next time. Ice form did not work that time. All ouch.

Yeah, transmuters generally need to be higher-than average level to handle hydras without consumables (Like you can probably handle them in ice form once you *finish* the lair, presuming you're well trained and have decent equipment, and started the lair not-early). As Majang pointed out Lignification is a great choice for them..

So far, one Grey one, one Pale one. Not making it easy.

Back to this toon for a while, keep killing the Spriggan Enchanter.

Read some where that blade hands and ice are slashing, so not good for hydras. Probably can find out the hard way, but that is a restart . ..

Does it make sense for a DrTransmuter to train with a shield? How does the armor skill work with this combo? Does not show up as useful skill up, so guessing the AC does not count the way standard breast plates do?

Is there a range weapon useable while in spider or ice form?

Pretty sure Ice Form doesn't cut off hydra heads (though Blade Hands does); and Armour skill does nothing to base AC, so it's useful on a Draconian only to increase the AC from aux armour (so practically almost useless).

You're sort of lucky if you manage to have ice form and unarmed damage and enough ac and dodging to reliably kill hydras unless you take your time before diving into the lair. I'm not saying impossible, but going melee with a hydra early/mid game isn't for someone who isn't fairly confident they know what they are doing.

The game you can play with them (which applies to all characters) is something akin to rat-ball. What I mean by that is, use whatever dirty tricks you can. Mostly, early on, the most powerful dirty tricks come from evocable items, even if you haven't trained them much. Here's an example list of things that can help kill them, either on their own, or weaken them enough before melee that your odds increase greatly:

Wands of acid - you might stop after you get it corroded... or keep going
Wands of ice - they don't miss, so if you know you have enough space, and charges, you can reduce them heavily, and reliably
Any launcher with freezing brand - peg it with stones if you have to.. because it'll get slowed which could help you kill it with all other methods more easily
Wands of charming - lair has a lot of dumb animals.. so try charming them to help you fight the hydra or at least divert some of it's damage
Scrolls of vulnerability + wands of paralysis - you could do it without the scroll, but it's more reliable. The hydra isn't going to cast a spell at you, so it's a relatively safe option
Lightning rods - if you're lucky enough to find one early on
Potions of might, potions of haste, etc. - Well, there's a time to save them and a time to just use them. If you're in a close scrape to nail a hydra, I'd say, burn one or two.
Spells - even some low level spells can make a hefty difference in a fight. Take wereblood for instance, you could get +9 slaying killing rats before you engage a hydra

There's a lot more things, point is - don't fight something on it's terms. Minimize monster strengths and maximize your strengths. A Hydra is a high damage melee creature, so try not to melee it as much as possible! This stuff also kind of applies to early dungeon ogres too.

I simply use spider form against hydras. Early hydras are either killed with wands or avoided (they are not fast). Later when you have about ~40 EV, the hydras start to get much less scary. You may need to have good estimate of their damage (watch the number of heads!).

Use god abilities, wands, or avoid.

If you must use a tmut, maybe even beastly appendage is better than forms that make you so easy for them to hit/hurt.

Tmut can also learn other spells and use those to kill hydras, of course.