Skill focus and starting weapon for CeHu?

[Sketchytexas]

I'll start this off with a brief backstory since this is my first post. I'm a new DCSS player and fairly new to the roguelike genre as well. The only experience I had previously was a brief stint playing ADOM last year. I started playing DCSS after hearing high praise from a number of people, and was instantly hooked. It's an accessible, easy to understand roguelike that's fun even through the myriad deaths I've had since I started. The most success I've gotten character-wise has been with a SpEn, who made it to the midgame without too much trouble, who I haven't picked up since (I don't want to lose him just yet). In the meantime I've been fooling around with various MiFi and Kobold builds when I stumbled across a discussion on the power of ranged combat, and how CeHu particularly suited this role due to good aptitudes with ranged weapons as well as great speed and a good aptitude for Unarmed Combat. After reading what I did I decided to try one out and was fairly surprised to find that I reached the bottom levels of Lair and Orc with relative ease, until dying after I got in over my head (Saint Roka you bastard).

Now, onto the focus of the thread and the burning question I have: Is it better to focus bows or crossbows on a CeHu? The guide I've read doesn't outline any starting equipment I should choose, but based on the skill training it says to follow I'd start off with a bow. The reasoning it offers isn't overly compelling and I'm not sure what the benefits of a bow vs. a crossbow is, other than speed. After that choice, what skills should be turned on always? If I had to offer up a guess I think it would be Fighting, UC, and Bows/Crossbows with Bows/Crossbows being focused until the early-to-mid teens. After that I don't really know what to focus - fighting or armor maybe? The bottom line is this: I think I understand the baseline to playing a CeHu, but don't think I'll have much success unless I can understand the details. Any help is appreciated!

[rchandra]

As a weak player I find aptitudes make a big difference, so the Bow will be easier than a crossbow - this also has the advantage of finding ammunition earlier. There are various tradeoffs between the available special ammo for bows vs crossbows, but both are fine. Use a longbow of velocity when you can get / make one.

You can use UC for your melee, or use a polearm or staff or something. Fighting training can wait for a while, until your bows and melee option are more reliable.

Another easy way to get a ranged Centaur off the ground is to start as a berserker - train axes (or fighting/staves/UC/etc.) until you get a bow, then Bows alone. Trog can get you out of a lot of trouble fairly quickly if you start with him.

Armour will be much easier to make work than Dodging. Dodging (and light armour) will be useful if you want to cast Portal Projectile and other useful spells relatively early, but Centaurs aptitudes mean you could be waiting a while if you have to train armour, fighting, melee, bows, etc. first.

[Sketchytexas]

Thanks for the reply! I was thinking it over more and came to a similar conclusion about bow/crossbow use: Crossbows are more reliable for damage early game (at least from what I've been seeing) and I can reuse bolts easier than I can reuse arrows because they seem to break less, but they aren't very common. After I get through those initial dungeon levels I think it will be easier to use bows in the long run. I appreciate the comments about non-ranged combat, because I haven't really known what to do. I'll try out using polearms because a centaur's natural speed coupled with the reach of the polearm can make for some good kiting without using ammo, at least in theory. As for the Berserker start, would it make a huge difference following Okawaru over Trog, in terms of gifts alone? Or are the two roughly comparable in terms of that?

Would you recommend going heavy armor or light/medium? I wasn't planning on using spells, but I think it might make for an easier time, at least while I'm still learning. Perusing the morgue files from recent games, I saw a CeHu standard win from just a few days ago using nothing but the heaviest armor and a strong bow, so I think I might try out this method as well.

[rchandra]

Okawaru and Trog are both quite good. Here are the tradeoffs as I see them:

• Gifts - Okawaru will give you more wasteful ones to start, but eventually (hopefully) you will get useful items in many slots including barding (good barding would often take an acquirement or two otherwise). Trog will give you more useful weapons to start, likely including a high-damage branded longbow, and the valuable antimagic melee brand - less needed as an archer since you have the "spell" of arrow-to-the-face.
• Abilities - Heroism > berserk since it works with bows, berserk will let you beat down a tougher guy in melee. Trog's Hand is very useful in prolonged fights against weak enemies, and a bit of a boost against tougher enemies plus the MR. Finesse < Brothers in the early-mid game (maybe even late), but Finesse is very good with bows and eventually Brothers stop being that useful - for the end and extended game Finesse will be much better.
• Spells - Only with Okawaru, but it will be a long time before you can do much with them anyway.
• Skills - Okawaru will require some training in Invocations, delaying character growth one way or another. Trog's abilities all use piety for strength instead.
• Wrath - by the time you want to convert to TSO or Jiyva or whatever, you can handle either, but Okawaru's is milder.

If you could start with either, I'd choose Okawaru on a CeHu, but having a starting god is so very strong that I prefer the berserker. If you start with the Hunter, take whichever you find first.

Heavy armour until the endgame when you might try dragon armours for resistances/spellcasting.

[Sketchytexas]

Thanks a bunch! I just tried a runthrough with a CeBe with the idea of switching to bows after I found my first one. Initially it was pretty strong because I didn't have to worry about ammo conservation and being able to go Berserk to take out gnolls and bands of Orc was pretty useful. I found my first bow on D:5 after taking out a fellow Centaur, and by this time I had around 100 arrows and 40 arrows of Flame. Unfortunately, once I switched off Axes and started training Bows exclusively, I wasn't hitting anything. I might just chalk this up to bad luck though. I plan on giving it another, more cautious run today as well as re-trying the CeHu of Okawaru. You've been a huge help!

[tasonir]

If you're having trouble hitting things, try focusing on fighting earlier on. It will increase your accuracy, and you can raise it while using axes for more hits, and then when you switch to bows, it will still benefit you. I generally play melee characters who don't use much ranged weaponry, but usually pick up a stack of javelins at some point and keep them around just in case. Without getting throwing much over 5, it is very accurate due to 15+ fighting.

[mindlar]

When I tried something similar myself with a MiCK, I started with the axe and used that for quite a while until I switched to using a bow around the vault. When I found a bow I liked, I send all my experience to the bow skill until it had gained almost 10 ranks. This allowed me to not worry about putting myself in danger due to low accuracy and with Okawaru's Heroism/Finesse combo was able to destroy almost everything in Elf.

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/mindlar/morgue-mindlar-20120416-034721.txt