Best summoner build?

[blueeyedlion]

I want to make the best summoner possible. What race/god should I choose?

[PerverseSuffering]

A Wizard Mummy of Sif Muna. Certainly, early dungeon won't be a breeze, but once you pick Sif, things get way better - channel abuse, books galore, etc. You can read the details on skill development somewhere in the YASD/YAVP section - there was a MuWz ascension post not so long ago.

[cerebovssquire]

Skill developement with MuWz of Sif is pretty simple: get Magic Dart and Mephitic Cloud castabe at Good/Very good, spam imps and rush dragons, then get some "support" skills like Charms or Translocations, and when you feel the need pick up some low values of Invocations, Dodging or Shields along the way.

[greepish]

Eh, still mummies are severely bad unless you're playing trunk (bleagh, food reform) or a very old version. Consider you can easily channel spam as a kobold and not have such cruddy survivability.

Really summoners can be pretty much anything. But honestly, they're pretty boring and fragile if you're going "pure"(ish) summoner.

[blueeyedlion]

I play trunk, so MuWz of sif it is.

Any tips for surviving before mephitic cloud gets good?

[Blade]

imps. Lots and lots of imps.

My recommended skill allocation would be only conjurations until xl2, then memorize call imp and do only summonings until it's at great, then back to conjurations until magic dart is full power, and then some air/poison for meph until it's at great. Once meph is at great, you have no need for any more conj/air/poison; turn them all off and never turn them back on. At that point, you want to train summonings, with some invocations and spellcasting also. That's all you need to do until very far in the future. Also, macro "aa" to . as soon as you get Sif's channeling ability, because there is no downside to channeling and you will be doing it a ton. In every conceivable situation, it is better to channel than to wait for a turn.

Anyway, the general strategy is this: Magic dart everything you can initially; whenever you see anything that might possibly be dangerous (uniques, ogres, orc wizards, orc priests, gnoll packs, other dangers), back away and spam imps. And keep backing away. Either your imps will kill the enemy or they won't, but you will be away. If you are doing this right, it can get you to meph; at that point, throw it into the dart/imp rotation. Also, by this time, Sif's channeling should be available to you and you can really start spamming those imps. Eventually, Sif will begin to gift you higher-level summoning spells; once that happens, spam those instead of imps.

As a final note, don't be afraid to kill everything with summons. This build requires very little xp, and your summoning spells will progress quickly enough to overpower everything. The halved xp does not hurt.

[cerebovssquire]

Eh, still mummies are severely bad unless you're playing trunk (bleagh, food reform) or a very old version. Consider you can easily channel spam as a kobold and not have such cruddy survivability.

You do realise that 1) the food reform didn't nerf anything, only possibly made eating a lot more tedious and 2) your survivability is pretty great when you are hiding behind 20+ imps/demons/ugly things/dragons?
Also, we're talking about spamming Channel to the extent that it will bring you down from Engorged to Starving pretty quickly, sometimes even in one fight, which is annoying even on Ko.

[greepish]

Eh alright. I guess I shouldn't dis it till I try it. Just recommending mummy to a newbie sounds a bit much, since rF- can really stunt surviveability. D:16 dragons doin OHKOs and all. Also, I thought hive (craptons of food) got removed in trunk? Or are they saving that for later?

[cerebovssquire]

Yes? So? There's new food vaults (that steamer thing, merfolk vault, spriggan baker) which provide a decent amount, and even in games where you don't get food shops (which solve all problems) you usually don't run out of food. I thought you were talking about the nausea thing, which is totally insignificant - the Hive removal is probably more severe, but food is still a non-threat for most characters.
And yeah... MuWz of Sif that spams summoning spells is really easy stuff, it surprised me too when I tried it. I was bored very quickly though, because it was a four-button combo: autoexplore, main summoning spell, channeling macro on . (~m.aa), recall. This combo doesn't really change playstyles anywhere in the whole game; the only difference is that your are spamming imps on D:7 and dragons on D:27.

Getting oneshotted by a dragon on D:16 has nothing to do with race survivability. It's a matter of the player being stupid enough to run around on D:16 with rF-.
(and yes, you should wear a ring of fire or protection from fire over a ring of wizardry or +6 int or whatever unless you are currently casting big spells)

[BlackSheep]

Maybe it's just me, but I really don't ever have problems with food, with the exception of unlucky trolls. I always wind up stashing rations in the Temple, Lair, Hive simply to clear the weight. Do some people eat as soon as that yellow Hungry appears on their screen? I'll frequently go all the way down to starving looking for clean chunks before I'll eat a ration, and will snack on fruit before then.

My impression of the new system was that it's easier to eat now that you don't have to worry about stat loss from snacking on goblins and orcs. I'll have to find the change log and study it more...

[Blade]

Almost nobody has a problem with food (the almost in this is generally ely followers); it does, however, place a few subtle restrictions on your actions that become more obvious when you play a mummy (i.e. You can't channel indefinitely while summoning a tremendous herd of dragons).

[lifecoder]

Also a way is MuWi of Kiku for Haunt (because of their good necro apptitude), and further conversion to Sif Muna.. but Sif Muna as a first god is surely much easier option.

[rebthor]

I've tried this and the one thing to watch out on is stairs. Since your character is especially gimped due to only training summoning (pretty much), going down stairs can and will move your safety cloud of X away from you if you went down, saw that it was dangerous and went back up to cast even more summons. When you go down the same stairs, all the baddies will be right there pummeling your underleveled @ while your summons are 2-3 tiles away.

See my YASD at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3427

Another thing to watch out for is that being a Su does get pretty boring since you have limited control over your minions and little to do while they do their thing. One final drawback is that Sif, while the idea choice long-term, can make for a frustrating mid-game while you're still spamming out imps and fighting spiny frogs and running from hydra. It's doable, you just wish that you had summon hydra yourself instead of imps.

[Blade]

yeah, stairs are brutal. In my mummy wizard yavvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvsd, the two most dangerous moments came going downstairs to vault:8 and downstairs to tomb:2, because I was surrounded and had to just deal with it.

[lifecoder]

Ok, another few tries and I should say that Sif much more safer option. Maybe Haunt rocks, but as for me it's better to be live with Sif's channeling and swarm of hydras, than dead with Kiku without any chance to get Haunt (=. Anyway, I am just beginner, so more experienced adventurers could say it's all wrong.

Also, as a mummy you have infinity of time before vault:8 exploring, which is good for putting 3-4 points into Poison for Alistair's Intoxication (you surely have at lest 1 in Poison since Mephitic Cloud in the Withard's starting spell book).

[qululu123]

Try getting a polearm and training a bit of fighting and polearms. Hitting baddies over all those meat shields makes summoning much more fun and interactive.

[lifecoder]

It is fun and interactive right until the moment your first row die. For the Mu summonners I would prefer the second row of allies.

[omegasean]

jeeze guys why not be a vamp ?

they level 7% slower than mummys but have better apts and stats.

they can also drink potions and turn into a bat.

they have poor conj apt but good ice and air apts.

mummys also have poor conj apt.. so you're not losing anything there.

i would start as IE or SU and probably choose vehumet as your first god, so you can get all of your spells - however Sif or Ash would be good picks too.

if you start as an IE you will actually level faster than a mummy SU as you wont be loosing half of your exp to ally kills.

[rebthor]

Character leveling doesn't matter for a Su in general. You only need to be high enough level to cast your highest level summons. If you're funneling all or near all of your XP into summoning skills or summoning and spell casting, you should be able to do that with little problem.

Do you really care if your character is level 19 or level 27 when all you do is cast summon dragon?

You're also missing out on the reason why people choose Sif as a mummy. It's not for the spells, it's for the unlimited free MP via channeling. This would work with a bloodless vamp too but unless you feel like waiting out Veh's wrath it's easier just to go Sif from the start.

[rigrig]

Why is starting out as a wizard recommended if summoning is the main objective?
I made a MuSu of Sif, and spamming spammals/imps worked fine for keeping me alive until I got channeling, and now I'm at lvl9, happily spamming decent canines. Wouldn't starting out as wiz mean I'd have lower summoning spellpower/success right now? Mephitic cloud might be somewhat useful in an emergency, but so far I've always managed to easily get away before dangerous foes finished chopping through all my summons.

[Blade]

I start with wz because magic dart is a less annoying way to killdudes than spammals is. Wz also has more options than su, which is often helpful. Personal preference, really.

[cerebovssquire]

You get higher INT. Also, Call Imp is the only summoning spells will need till you get 6*, so you don't really need other summoning spells - so having ways to keep yourself and your summons alive (Blink, Repel Missiles, Mephitic Cloud especially since all imps are rPois) are actually more helpful than the summoning spells the Su starting book has.

note to self: look up "summoning spell" in the thesaurus

[rigrig]

Ah thanks, that makes sense. I didn't realise background influenced stats as well.

[sir_laser]

Don't forget about the 2 extra MP you get as a Wz.

[XuaXua]

For stairs, and I do this with Orc Priests, I tend to memorize Digging so I can get some space around them to aid the summons and friendlies for travel.

In my experiments with Octopode and Felid summoners, I discovered the value of Summon Canine: they can see invisible! Big plus.

[smock]

You get higher INT.

Does it seem to anyone else like the wizard background would be strong relative to other caster background even without higher INT?