Evocations

[snow]

Does anyone use this skill for anything other than channeling and going Nemelex?

[BlackSheep]

Presumably you're lumping crystal balls in with channeling.

I'll raise it a little to make use of an item with +Blink or +Rage.

[Davion Fuxa]

I've pretty well used Evocations for the full gauntlet outside of Channeling and going Nemelex on a Kobold Artificer I ran on WebTiles - that run lasted for 6 runes and a win, and only really did Evocations start to lose effect in The Realm of Zot. I've found it to work pretty well in place of a ranged weapon while you have the wands to cast with, or luck into a Rod early enough. Getting the Hex Effects without having to train Hexes while getting the bonus of the Bolt Spells can give you a lot of omph for those panicky moments.

[snow]

Wands seem to work fine even with 0 evocations skill. Are rods really worth the investment? There's also those staves.

Would it be fair to say that evocations could probably use a buff?

[KoboldLord]

The mythical miscellaneous evokable item reform is, sadly, still mythical.

Early game, if you happen to luck into a good evokable item it may be a good idea to feed some xp into the skill in order to use it. Getting an amulet of rage to an acceptable rate of success doesn't cost too much for a melee character just entering Lair, and it will really help if used carefully. Some of the other evokable items are very nice, too, if only they were common enough that the typical player will actually know what they do when they finally appear early enough in the game to matter.

Ultimately, the main trouble with evocations is that evokable items spawn really unreliably. That good item you find might be the only one you get in the whole game, with other evokables appearing too late to do much good. If you pay xp to get the Fireball spell, you can keep using Fireball as much as you want, and most starting spellbooks have spells in them that are good right up until the end of the game. On the other hand, your starting hand axe might not be much good for long, but you'll have a multitude of battleaxes to choose from soon enough regardless on whether your luck is good or bad. Neither applies to most evokables.

It is not a coincidence that most early-game heavy evocations strategies involve picking the deity that gifts a steady stream of charged evokables items. Any other character who invests heavily will be specifically adjusting their build to a lucky item spawn, and many characters will already have their xp budget stretched pretty thin.

[Psieye]

I used to always raise it to about 10 on eveyr character so I could get free IDs on my wands. Nowadays I only do it if I find some useful evocable item but I don't consider the investment wasted given I get wand charge info as a bonus. Not exactly essential but very nice to have - sort of like stealth on a conj style.

[rebthor]

Wands seem to work fine even with 0 evocations skill. Are rods really worth the investment? There's also those staves.

Would it be fair to say that evocations could probably use a buff?

If you want to become a primary rod user, like say you find a rod of ice, it's worth it for the increase in recharge speed and spell power. I think I trained it once for evokable invisibility but that was probably a mistake since I hardly used it.

Edit: Oh I forgot staves. I always train evocations if I'm using a staff of fire/earth/air enough to get it to proc on every hit. Usually since I already have high elemental skill already, that's somewhere in the ~5 range. I don't bother training it higher for damage though because going from 5 evoc to 10 evoc adds 1.25 average damage.

[Sar]

Invisibility?

[Psieye]

Invisibility?

Ring of invisibility and Cloak of Shadows. Oh and randarts. At 0 skill it's at 70% fail chance. I suppose you can still spam it out of combat until it kicks in, not sure if the duration of the invis is affected by Evo.

[snow]

Evocable invisibility is horrible. It doesn't even last long enough to get a stab in even with high evocations.

[Sar]

Cloak of darkness. Those items are rare, but good for certain character types and well worth investment, I think.
Though you probably can spam it with 70% fail rate if you didn't disturb your targets or stairdance - can't use it as escape measure though, obviously.

[Sar]

Evocable invisibility is horrible

Um, I can't agree. I have a character now who used it through the game extensively since D:5-6 or so (DEBe). A lot of enemies just can't see invisible (storm dragons, you poor little things). Invistabbing feels very strong to me.

[Baldu]

Getting evokable invis/blink/rage to 5% fail can be worth it on the right char, also 10 evoc gets the freeze cloud rod from good to excellent and 5 for the other rods from ok to good, also ~15 evoc disc of storm can carry most chars to a win, staff of channeling with 5 for out of combat regen or ~15 for in combat regen, crystal ball at 15-20 to make it usable, or 20+ for conjurer with wucad mu for absurd power, 15-20 for max power on nemelex decks, ~10 evoc makes status wands somewhat reliable, 10+ for elemental staff fighting, ....

Plenty of good reasons to level evocations, i personally almost always get it to at least 10.

[KoboldLord]

Evocable invisibility is horrible.

I agree. Getting those cheap instakills on 80% of the monsters in a 3-Rune game is terribly unsporting.

[Lasty]

I don't often get evocation all that high, but every time I put a few levels into it, it seems worth it. The amount of improvement in wand power is pretty good by itself: confuse, paralyze and enslave are pretty strong effects when you can use them reliably in heavy armor with no food cost and for only 5-6 levels of a fast-leveling skill. Sure, the charges are limited, but you'll find more than enough to turn hard fights in your favor.

[Davion Fuxa]

Wands seem to work fine even with 0 evocations skill. Are rods really worth the investment? There's also those staves.

Would it be fair to say that evocations could probably use a buff?

Rods are worth the investment if you find them early enough or if you find a keeper: My Kobold Artificer for example found a rod of destruction [lightning,fireball,iron] in Elven Halls for example and I used that in Slime Pits to kill The Royal Jelly, on Greater Mummy's in Tomb, and on a few Uniques that required extra 'omph' (most notably Tiamat). A couple other wands I found were also useful for other effects, like I had also found a Rod of Summoning which I used for Recall, and a Rod of Demonology which I used for Abjuration.

I've found Magical Staves to take a really long time to get up to par, but they can allow for respective damage when you get all the experience in for the Respective Magic School, Evocations, and Staves; all while giving benefits for just wielding them. For longer games you'll benefit a lot from using them for sure.

In terms of Buffing Evocations, I'm not sure if I would say it is needed. It really is related to what you find in the Dungeon on your run that defines how useful Evocations will be to you or when you find your items; as well as how long you plan to play your game.

[ebarrett]

just iron shot everything and hit 5 a lot and you'll be fine, who needs evocations or tactics or common sense right

[mandor]

Evocations also affect amount of mp, this may be of some use i guess.

[Psieye]

It doesn't even last long enough to get a stab in even with high evocations.

Uh what? No. I have a history of characters who found an early source of evocable invis and sailed through Lair (and a bit beyond) after investing in about 10 stabbing (5 + heroism if Oka).

[dpeg]

The mythical miscellaneous evokable item reform is, sadly, still mythical.

Even if some ideas of that plan would have materialised, it'd only help a little with the problem you identify: there is no reliable source of evocable items.

For the record, the main idea was to give most (or all) evocable items several uses: for example a repeatable use (like the disc of storms) and a one-off effect (a really nice idea is the teleport anchor). That alone would increase the appeal of evocable items (more options!) and could help to make various levels of Evocations useful.

Another, more minor idea was to have several items of the same type (disc, stone, etc.). That was basically flavour but it could help with the unreliability KoboldLord mentions if we allow merging: as a cheap idea, one miscellaneous item could be transformed into another one of the same type given sufficient skill and another "reagent" item (say a scroll of Enchant Foo or a charged wand).

Finally, other sources of such options could be shops, and monsters who use them against you.

All that said, we should first discuss whether a Evocations-based playing style (apart from Nemelex) is desirable at all. It would certainly be possible to make the skill more attractive: high tier wands rely more on the skill since a while; high skill could give you a chance to save a charge.

[rebthor]

I don't often get evocation all that high, but every time I put a few levels into it, it seems worth it. The amount of improvement in wand power is pretty good by itself: confuse, paralyze and enslave are pretty strong effects when you can use them reliably in heavy armor with no food cost and for only 5-6 levels of a fast-leveling skill. Sure, the charges are limited, but you'll find more than enough to turn hard fights in your favor.

Odd. I find that the times that the paralyze, confuse and enslave wands are useful is when I'm at 0 skill, don't have any spare XP to use leveling Evo and am trying to get away. By the time I have enough XP to put into evocations, most things don't seem to be very susceptible to those wands and I'm better off using a method with higher reliability.

[Lasty]

Odd. I find that the times that the paralyze, confuse and enslave wands are useful is when I'm at 0 skill, don't have any spare XP to use leveling Evo and am trying to get away. By the time I have enough XP to put into evocations, most things don't seem to be very susceptible to those wands and I'm better off using a method with higher reliability.

Try playing as an artificer. Even having the starting 3 levels of Evo will decently extend the scope of monsters against which confuse and enslave can reliably disable monsters. Hex effects disable or even kill monsters, and being able to consistently deploy them against largish threats through the early and midgame without much investment is pretty sweet.

Re: early rods, I recently proposed a vault that would put a rod into the hands of a priest-type monster relatively early in the dungeon. It was met with some disdain in the Contributions forum, but it sounds like there are others who also feel that having improved chances of getting early rods might be good . . . ?

[flun]

One of my favourite weapons is the rod of destruction with bolt of inaccuracy. At 27 evocations, this spell can take down tentacled monstrosities in 2 or 3 casts and hits multiple monsters.

[crate]

Getting evo to 5 or 6 for power for your wands of fire/cold is fine, probably this is actually better than getting traps to 5 or 6 but people do the latter quite a lot and the former not very often.

[daggaz]

curious why all the hate on traps, minmay? i thought it was general board wisdom to bump it to 10ish for zot detection, at least thats what i remember reading more than a few times.. I suppose on an xp intensive character or in early game obviously its a bad thing, but otherwise? I dont seem to run into much xp problems even when im going wiz-ninja with my kobold assassin.

[Davion Fuxa]

Version 0.12 sees the removal of Mechanical Traps and I believe Secret Doors. Even with those still in the game, the Traps & Doors is fairly limited for helping people deal with traps before Zot Traps come along; having only 5 or 6 skill levels as well isn't really going to amount to much either in reliably letting you detect Zot Traps.