DDEE Guide?

[Bobbunny]

I has yet to win a single game.

So, I come hear and learn DDEE is the easiest to win with.
But I suck with mages.

Can someone really explain the strategy and build for a DDEE?

[Blade]

Worship Makhleb. Cast earth spells. Use the wand of heal wounds to heal.

(more specifically, I would recommend raising earth magic with a bit of spellcasting and a bit of conjurations until LRD is ~10% fail, and branch out from there. Learn stone arrow and lrd from your starting book; probably don't bother with the others)

[KoboldLord]

If you're having trouble with DDEE, odds are you're not using your consumables enough. Earth elementalist is a dead simple background, and with deep dwarf as a species there's no ambiguity as far as deity choice goes (Makhleb). Use that starting wand of heal wounds liberally; you should not bother factoring in its utility in the later parts of the game. Sandblast with stones wielded whenever you see anything even remotely dangerous, which on D1 will be anything at all that is wielding a weapon. Upgrade to Stone Arrow once your skills are high enough, and then put it all into earth until Rapid Deconstruction is solid too. Do not attempt to save potions or wand charges by looking for a pack of weak monsters to kill. Makhleb's healing defrays your consumable expenditure; it does not replace it.

Don't hesitate to use your species recharge ability on your starting wand. At XL27 you're not going to care if you only have 40mp, since that's still more than enough to kill everything you meet. If you refuse to use your abilities, though, you're never going to see XL27.

[moocowmoocow]

As others have said, use those consumables. If there's a chance of you dying, don't hesitate to use those blink scrolls or whatever. I don't know if this is sound advice or not, but recently I've started read IDing all my scrolls when I've cleared a level. When you find ID scrolls, use them on unIDed potions. I started doing this after seeing a strong player do it and now I hardly ever die early game. As soon as you encounter a situation that is threatening, stop and look through you inventory and abilities. Make it a habit to do this every time. Never just fight or run without cycling through your options.

Once you get Mahkleb healing-on-kills and your magic skills up, game should be pretty easy from there. Damage shaving, high HP and life protection on DD is just ridiculous considering you're not sacrificing any offensive power. It's a great combo really.

[ebarrett]

Also, if you're playing locally, watch out for these DDEE ghosts you're going to make - for whatever reason, ghost stone arrow is ridiculously more powerful than a maxed out player stone arrow.

[BlackSheep]

Monster spells don't seem to have a spell cap, and a monster's spell power is 12 times its hit dice. I'm guessing player ghosts have hit dice equal to the former player's level? So yeah, once you get over level 4, ghost stone arrow damage starts to pull away from the player spell rapidly.