The Tavern

I've recently started attempts to play summoners seriously, and I've managed to get a couple pretty far (past lair/orc), but I'm finding them extreeeeemly tedious, and hope I can get some hints.

With both of my relatively successful summoners, I've found that I'm tripping the OOD timer on almost every other level and it goes something like this:

d4: run into something nasty, like joseph, and start spamming mammals, and duck into a corridoor or into a corner. It takes several waves before he's finally worn down, but eventually he succumbs.
d4: when he's dead, go to the next room and find Grinder, and spammal him, resting to regain mana several times, etc
d4: do this a few more times, going through many many turns.
d4: While I'm resting for mana back, a stone giant comes strolling along, and I spammal him too, and the next one, etc.

At this point, I'm like level 12, and finally I clear the floor (ie explore every room), and repeat the same thing on roughly every other level. It's quite time consuming and laborious.

Another question is efficiency. My best summoner, basically died to boredom, but I wasn't sure what the most efficient spell was. Summon Dragon wasn't online yet, so I was using summon ugly things, which cost 8 mana, but I could usually summon 6 at a time, channel, and summon a few more, and take down most things, but even seemingly trivial encounters could take about a minute to set up the summons, target my opponent and tell the things to attack it, and then back into a corner to channel, and resummon. very tiresome.

I'm loath to use summon demons, since I don't want to deal with a hostile summon. What is a good strategy to speed up my play-style here? I don't really want to hybridize into melee or direct damage unless it's really necessary, and I want to use my available experience to get Summon Dragon up, which seems to be what every self-respecting summoner should strive for.

Also, it's a pain to always tell my summons to attack. It seems that by default they only attack if you initiate, or if something attacks you. I'm getting tired of typing 'taf' over and over again. Is there a way to set up your summons so they just brainlessly attack whatever hostile is within eye-shot?

While "wait here" doesn't really sound like "attack everyone" this is what "tw" does. Even when you are out of LoS. Otherwise: stop being afraid of demons. Also, I don't think Joseph spawns on D:4 but I get your point You probably want to use Call Imp more. White imps are very strong.

Shadow imps are also very useful since you'll get permanent allies out of the zombies they raise.

But to your point OP, playing a summoner is pretty tedious.

If you want to make summoning less tedious you could play something like SESu, pick up a weapon, and fight alongside your summons.

Or start off as a Conjurer and gradually switch to Summoning as primary kill mechanism later on. There is a deity precisely for this career path.

actually, veh sucks for summoners

I think there are two types of summoners you can play. Or, at least, that I have played:

1. Pure summoner. You pick the summoner background or _maybe_ wizard, and then go Sif muna. Spam summons all day long, and channel MP when you need more. Summoning can be rather MP heavy, which makes Sif the best god for this. The best race is mummy or vampire for infinite channeling. Vampire requires more attention, but you'll get summon dragon castable earlier. Mummy will be easier to allrune. You'll hit xl 27 somewhere deep in the extended endgame, but that doesnt matter. This build is one of the easiest in the game.

2. Hybrid summoner. Like other hybrids. Cast your spells then back them up with melee (or different spells)... or vice versa. I play this kind of character a lot. Usually I won't even be casting summons until the late game, but once I start using them, they become a core part of the character. The extended endgame has a lot of high defense, highly resistant enemies, and chances are you won't be able to easily kill one of these. If you branch into summoning, suddenly nothing becomes a threat any more. Haunt and Summon Horrible Things are the best spells. Malign gateway is also strong if you have patience.

I dunno about vampires but mummy summoners (I prefer being a wizard, though) are insanely boring but at the same time can steamroll over most of the game. I don't know why you'd be getting OoD monsters are all. I haven't ever encountered anything OoD at all (I go with Sif) and I can easily take 50 turns or so. It's a bit boring but it's usually "summon things, shout, channel, tell them to wait, summon more, channel, move on".
The only problem I might have before the Lair would be Pikel or maybe Eustachio since both are a battle of who can spam more and usually involves me going up and down stairs or else returning when I have Sif with * piety. Even in the Lair, death yaks, hydras, etc are all easy with Sif and summon imp. I've never had any sort of issue with OoD.

BTW, once you're level 3 (assuming mummy) why not just use call imp? Summon mammals isn't really *that* good unless you have pretty high spellpower so you can get grey rats. For the most part, unless you can literally get 9 summons surrounding an ogre or something, imps are usually better. You have a 3/4 chance of getting a very useful imp and even then, the red imps are still useful.

Just get a spear (or any polearm), summon, attack through the summons and you're all set until you get to Sif at * piety, then just channel energy. Honestly, once you get to her and get the ability there's very rarely (apart from some uniques or things that summon a lot) any problems you can't just beat with spamming summons. Not to mention demonic horde and later on, summon horrible things is just downright insane for a quick burst of power since they have multiple summons. Haunt is the same.

If you're using the shadow imp to cast animate dead, only use it if you aren't surrounded by summons since he can't cast it if there's no space for them to pop up and I ony use it now and again (like when we have several corpses or something useful like a hydra).

I will not argue that MuSu of Sif Muna is objectively stronger, more reliable, etc. - but his question was how to reduce tedium. And the hybrid route does the job.

Summon ugly things costs 6 mana, not 8.

The demon summoning spells will actually speed up your summoning game nicely. Just memorize abjure. Don't be afraid of potentially hostile demons at the end of their duration! They're quite powerful, and abjure takes care of them easily.