Midgame Spriggan Vm advice needed

[jackalKnight]

I have a Spriggan Venom Mage character who is Lvl. 14 with w stats of STR 11 (with a +5 Strength Ring), Int 18, and DX 18. He has cleared out Hive and Orc and is currently on lvl. 6 of the Lair.
This character (aside from the normal Spriggan "run like hell and Mephitic things) strategy was VERY lucky. He bought a Book of Power on the bottom floor of Orc and Iskendrun's Mystic Blast could handle the stuff that Poison couldn't (he was having to use runnning/Spammals earlier. THEN, Sif gifted him a randart book with Poison Arrow, which has killed the Death Yaks and stronger enemies as he goes deeper into Lair. He cleared the Hive with Staff of Olgreb's help, so hunger isn't a huge issue with all the honeycombs and jellies.

The big question is, what he should he try to go for to end the game? He has a Book of Dreams he found on Lair: 5 with Shadow Creatures, but he can also learn Bolt of Iron from the Book of Power. Should he try to raise Conjurations to the point Iron Bolt is reliable (its currently "cruddy", get more Summoning for Shadow Creatures, or is Poison Arrow usable even into Zot by itself? I've never gotten this far with a strong character before.

[szanth]

I haven't heard a whole lot of good things about Iron Bolt's accuracy, so I don't know that it's worth it.

[Kate]

Iron Shot isn't necessary unless you plan on doing extended endgame - Poison Arrow will wreck everything in Zot just fine (except electric golems and orbs of fire, but you should probably just run away from those anyway).

[jackalKnight]

I've seen some shops with rFire rings (mainly in Orc) but I haven't seen any rElec I can actually wear yet. My character has about 27 EV already, should I focus on hardcore EV (since Poison Arrow seems able to kill most things) since the Bravely Bold Sir Robin strategy seems to be in order for Zot? I know I can still Mephitic most Draconians...

I'm guessing when I start doing the rune branches, I should go for Snake, Shoals, and which other? Final Vault is pretty daunting, I've lost several warrior characters there, although no Spriggans. I guess the lack of resistances is the sacrifice for an otherwise superb character that outruns most things.

[KoboldLord]

I've seen some shops with rFire rings (mainly in Orc) but I haven't seen any rElec I can actually wear yet. My character has about 27 EV already, should I focus on hardcore EV (since Poison Arrow seems able to kill most things) since the Bravely Bold Sir Robin strategy seems to be in order for Zot? I know I can still Mephitic most Draconians...

I'm guessing when I start doing the rune branches, I should go for Snake, Shoals, and which other? Final Vault is pretty daunting, I've lost several warrior characters there, although no Spriggans. I guess the lack of resistances is the sacrifice for an otherwise superb character that outruns most things.

Vaults 8 isn't all that bad. If you can clear the infestation of yaktaurs, giants, and shapeshifters from D24-27, just think of each quadrant of Vaults 8 as one of those. The monster set is almost the same. You're going to want to drag the initial welcoming committee upstairs a few at a time unless you happened to pick up Intoxication, but honestly they shouldn't be too bad with your high EV. Lure monsters one-by-one or pack-by-pack to that central area with all the stairs, and you can always bail if it gets nasty in order to heal. Also, almost everything down there is vulnerable to poison.

[jackalKnight]

Well, I managed to take Snake without much incident, but unfortunately I died on Shoals due to some super-powerful merfolk unique armed with a trident of draining. In the future, I'll to Vault 1-7 first.

[tormodpwns]

Yep, Shoals is tough without Levitation. An easy way to get around it though is with Invisibility because nothing there, except possibly random uniques and random merfolk generated with SInv randarts will see you. Especially good for stabbers.

[Zicher]

I have a Spriggan Venom Mage character who is Lvl. 14 with w stats of STR 11 (with a +5 Strength Ring), Int 18, and DX 18. He has cleared out Hive and Orc and is currently on lvl. 6 of the Lair.
This character (aside from the normal Spriggan "run like hell and Mephitic things) strategy was VERY lucky. He bought a Book of Power on the bottom floor of Orc and Iskendrun's Mystic Blast could handle the stuff that Poison couldn't (he was having to use runnning/Spammals earlier. THEN, Sif gifted him a randart book with Poison Arrow, which has killed the Death Yaks and stronger enemies as he goes deeper into Lair. He cleared the Hive with Staff of Olgreb's help, so hunger isn't a huge issue with all the honeycombs and jellies.

The big question is, what he should he try to go for to end the game? He has a Book of Dreams he found on Lair: 5 with Shadow Creatures, but he can also learn Bolt of Iron from the Book of Power. Should he try to raise Conjurations to the point Iron Bolt is reliable (its currently "cruddy", get more Summoning for Shadow Creatures, or is Poison Arrow usable even into Zot by itself? I've never gotten this far with a strong character before.

Well, my personal strategy would be to focus on Poison Arrow - Iron Bolt would take far too long to train for little gain. IMB can usually do the tricks that PA would be too slow to do. Poison arrow can deal with most of the Zot stuff, excluding perhaps orbs of fire and electric golems. For the latter, Haste, DMsl and IMB do the trick pretty safely.

As complementary skills, Enchantments is a must have skill, due to Deflect Missiles and Haste (and perhaps Levitation for times of need). All of these spells are Ench/Air, so you can have a head start into these spells from Meph Cloud.

Another two worthy skills are Necromancy for Dispel Undead, and Summoning for Abjuration.

If you want to walk the Conjuration road, you may want to consider Vehumet, as he supports offensive spells much more then Sif. Wizardry bonus, +1 range bonus (which means Poison Arrow can hit the whole LOS) and reduced casting cost are all great benefits, which can make your character a literal Poison Arrow Gatling Gun.

[jackalKnight]

Yeah, I'm doing this character type again, but with Vehumet next time. The +1 spell range would be really useful, and this game would've been lousy without access to Power (which Vehumet gifts earlier than Sif). Hunger wasn't THAT big a deal (at least after Hive...) but he kept running out of MP, and Vehumet reduced MP for conjurations would be useful. Surprising how effective a character with -3 Conjurations can be for offensive casting can be, but Spriggan has the best early survivability of any caster I've used other than Sludge Elf Transmuter, so you can run away from the hard parts.

[danr]

I have a midgame SpVM too. Interestingly, level 5 spells have no hunger cost for me, but L6 spells are still "Honeycomb".

For the record, for that reason I went with Venom Bolt (5) over Poison Arrow (6) and I nearly one-shotted two trolls in a row with it. Someone here said Venom Bolt was crap but anything that can potentially one-shot a troll is good in my books!

I have selective amnesia so I can upgrade to poison arrow when the hunger cost comes down.

[lucy_ferre]

Try getting a staff of energy. My SpVM was spamming orbs of destruction and poison cloud in Zot without having to worry about spell hunger.

[jackalKnight]

VB is good for many things but is lousy in Snake. Poison Arrow is still insanely powerful in Snake and even one-shotted mambas and vipers for me! The main reason I was still using IMB and VB over it was the hunger cost. Poison Arrow was the only thing I found that took a dent out of really strong monsters like greater nagas and death yaks.

VB's main draw over IMB and Poison Arrow was its ability to hit multiple enemies at once, it killed lots of those bees in Hive that way for a fraction of the MP cost of spamming IMB.

[Zicher]

The hunger cost of Poison Arrow is a good reason to get Spellcasting and Int as high as possible. Once Spc*Int >= 550, Poison Arrow becomes hungerless.

Venom Bolt, in my experience, is not crap - but it's accuracy is very, very low, especially compared to PA. More hits in one shot is probably the only good point of this spell.