The Tavern

Is the 0.29 version of Demonic Touch any good? Would I be better off using a speed sword/elec dagger/quick blade and no shield, or just ignore it and aim for a two hander or shield+demonic sword?

I believe it's pretty bad. It's useful in the early game, (stronger than a buckler,) but when you have the xp available to get a kite shield or 2-hander, it'll be stronger to forget about it.
That's based on theory crafting though. I find it pretty hard to test this kind of thing practically.

Thanks, Peter. Everything I've found so far discusses the 0.28 version. As I understand it, they doubled the damage for 0.29, so I'm curious as to whether that changes anything.

The info screen says I have a "base damage" of 14, but I don't know how the damage formula works. Does Fighting or Slaying add to that damage? Is is 2-14 or (7-14)*(Fighting+Slaying) or something else? I wish this information was less opaque.

OK, so I played around with this some more in D13-15 and Snake1. Tried using a speed long sword, a flaming scimitar, and an elec dagger. Every weapon was a min delay and more or less the same enchantment.

It felt like I was killing stuff faster with the speed sword (which had the lowest delay). The touch seemed to be pretty strong. I was getting a lot of messages like this, so maybe it was doing solid damage?

I found a Freezing Triple Sword though, so I'll just go with that moving forward. But it seems like Demonic Touch is trading a loss of some AC later (from the no-gloves thing) in exchange for (maybe) an easier time early in the game before you have a shield or are ready to wield a heavy weapon.

tldr; Peter's theory fits my experience.