Sludge Elf Transmuter of Cheibriados

[Jk]

Hi there. I'm trying to figure out where to take this character, who is just about as far as I've ever gotten. I'm trying to be careful and - if the gods be with me - attempt my first win (with 3 runes). Here is where I am so far:

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Apex the Level 20 Sludge Elf Transmuter of Cheibriados

Attributes:
HP 139
MP 34

AC 18
EV 33

Str 25
Int 36
Dex 36

Primary Skills:
Fighting 12
Unarmed 20
Dodging 16
Stealth 9
Stabbing 5

Spellcasting 8
Transmutations 15
Necromancy 8

Summonings 3
Fire Magic 3
Enchantments 2
Air Magic 2

Invocations 5
Evocations 3

Spells:
Fulsome Distillation
Evaporate
Sticks to Snakes
Spider Form
Blade Hands
Ice Form
Repel Missiles
Statue Form
Stoneskin
Iskenderun's Mystic Blast

Important/Relevant Equipment/Carried Around:
+2 gloves (slow)
+1 boots (slow)
+2 wiz hat (MR, slow)
+2 cloak (MR, slow)
+1 robe (MR, slow)

Amulet of Warding
Amulet of Clarity
Amulet of Stasis

Ring of Protection +4
Ring (rF+, rN+, Str-1)


So I have the following questions:

1 - I just memorized Iskenderun's Mystic Blast with the intention of using it to finish off fleeing enemies. I'm very slow, and I've been using wands for these final chip damages up until now, but it didn't seem like a great solution, and I don't particularly want to work my throwing up. Does it make sense to work my conjuration up and use this spell?

2 - I just found a lajatang of pain, and I have enough stored up scrolls to get it up fairly close to +9/+9. As the lajatang (stave) uses the second best melee skill of the SE and I intend to raise my Necromancy (necromutation!), does it make sense to work up Staves despite my 20 Unarmed? I also have dozens of other great branded weapons.

3 - What skills should I work on? I'm trying to keep raising Enchantments so I can switch to Deflect Missiles. Conjurations is addressed above in question 1. I think my current need is to raise Invoke higher to take more advantage of Chei powers, plus Necromancy in the hopes I'll get Necromutation. I have some good Earth spells (Shatter), so I could go down that path too...

4 - I also have other robes of MR, rF+, rC+, and rN+ and 9 scrolls of enchant armor. I have been holding out on using all my scrolls and turning them into a slow artifact in the hopes that I'll find a robe of resistance. What do you think I should do with this... keep waiting? Or try to get my resistances up through other means and invest in the MR robe?

5 - I have cleared the following:

Dungeon to 18
Lair, Hive, Orc - Finished
Snake Pit - Rune Taken
Shoals - Cleared except final level
Elf - Cleared except final level

Where should I go next? I was thinking Vaults. Since I have no need for a branded weapon, hall of blades seems like a waste. I can get up to rN+++, so would Crypt be worth trying when I can get to it? I don't have dispel undead and my evaporated potions don't work on them, but I can spam Sticks to Snakes and go into alternate forms.

6 - Should I think at all about switching gods? Chei seems pretty great so far, but no clue if he makes sense to continue with (again, this is as far as I've ever gotten really).

7 - Which 2 other runes would be easiest for me to get (already got Serpentine)?

8 - Right now I'm walking into Vaults:2 with rF++, rC+, rN++, See Invis, Stasis, and "extraordinarily resistant" MR. What am I lacking? I can get myself up to +++ on every resistance, but not at the same time, but I have no way to rElec except Stone Form.

9 - Any other advice you can think of?

PHEW, thanks! Again, this is the best I've done so far, which is why I'm being so over-the-top in asking for advice

[KoboldLord]

1) Grinding up conjurations is possible, but it might make more sense to use the transmutations skill you already have with Rapid Deconstruction. Just bump up earth magic a little, and it should at least be good enough to snipe runners before they escape. You can also just snap off a Slouch to finish off the runner, in most cases. Piety is a renewable resource.

2) You will already mulch everything that stays in melee with you with Blade Hands, so no matter how good the latajang of pain is, you can't double-kill your enemies. Unless you just really have to try out a weapon of pain, you might as well spend the xp on something else.

3) Invocations are good. Enchantments are good. Translocations are good, since they fix Chei's problems with emergency escapes. Necromutation is not worth aiming for in a 3-Rune game. That's something to use when you're ready to spam Shatter with reckless abandon.

4) If you don't find a robe of resistance on Elf 7, there's a slim chance of finding one on Zot 1-4… After that, you might as well give up. You might consider some of the lighter dragon armors, or check any leather armors for a good brand, but fire or cold resistance robes are good enough in most cases. Whichever you have a harder time covering, but with the nod given to fire resistance in case of a tie. Magic resistance, unfortunately, is just about obsolete, since you get slotless magic resistance from your character levels and if you get banished you can just kill your way to the exit portal.

5) Elf before Vaults? Not my usual order, but I guess it worked out for you. Shouldn't be too bad, then. Clear Crypts when you find it; it should be trivially easy just by punching everything to death. Not Tomb. Once you have Deflect Missiles you shouldn't have trouble with the Barnacled Rune, and with Slouch to clear the entry vault the Silver Rune shouldn't be too much harder to get than clearing the main dungeon to the end.

6) I can't imagine which alternative would be better than Chei at this point.

7) Barnacle and Silver. Deflect Missiles is probably good enough to get both of them for you, if you train for it, as is Control Teleport combined with Blink.

8) Have you found a ring of teleport control yet? Chei doesn't mind you casting Blink, and with teleport control available it'll move you away from danger as fast as a Spriggan can run.

9) Looks like things are well in order to me. Possible 15-Rune potential, if you want to go for it.

[colma]

1. Why not just use Slouch. With so many ponderous items, it should finish off anything that blade hands didn't.

2. That late in the game, probably not...others might disagree.

3. Dispel undead and vampiric draining would help you a lot, but its just up to luck to get them.

4. Roll of the dice either way. As soon as you enchant a robe you have, you'll find a robe of resistance on the next floor. Just have to pick your poison.

5. Crypt never gave me much trouble and you should be able to handle the Vaults by now. Its the Tombs you should stay out of.

6. I always stick with Chie for the stats, losing them hurts your unarmed damage a lot.

7. I would guess Shoals and Vault.

8. If you don't have it, you don't have it. Curse the RNG and hope for the best. I've rarely (as in 3 times I can remember) had all resistances maxed out, and didn't win on any of them . I will say that stasis is bad, it takes away your "oh shit" buttons of blink and teleport. The turn it would take you to remove the amulet could cost you.

I've never won with a Tm as far as I can remember, so good luck man.

[Jk]

Is MR really unimportant on items? I thought it was one of the more important things to have! That would be a big change in my play style on all characters.

Sadly, no Blink in any spell books yet. Controlled Teleport is avail in one book though. And no rings of control, either. So far my escapes have been through scrolls (which made Elf quite a challenge) ... I'm hanging on by a thread here!

[tormodpwns]

No MR really is important throughout the game. Getting slowed, confused, or paralyzed can be deadly (for example, youse find sphinxes in the Vaults and they will get you). But you're already "extraordinarily resistant" so you don't need more MR; if you were only "somewhat resistant" then that would be another story.

Can you get a randart with evocable Blink? That's almost just as good.

[moomoo]

Is MR really unimportant on items? I thought it was one of the more important things to have! That would be a big change in my play style on all characters.

Having a decent MR protects from insta-deaths with paralyzing and abyssing. I myself much rather keep some good MR on and switch to Rn/f/c depending on the situation.

[omndra]

I only care about MR before Doing the Elven Halls and after that for a three rune win you don't need to worry about it as much.
I always have done the Halls before Vaults with melee Characters and Vaults before Halls with magic Damagers.

Necromutation is super useful when one mainly uses conjurations, as it lets you spam Super powerful spells without starving.
Using it to boost your Melee attack and pain brand doesn't seem to be very cost effective.

At any rate you can't get +9 +9 fists so I'd use your scrolls on the Latagang and just give it a try.
If your hands are better than it nothing else could be, However you DO have blade hands, but it might be a nice fall back weapon.
I dont think you need to actively invest in Necromancy anymore.

What you need is some translocation spells. Spider form won't keep you out of trouble forever.
Get Some Earth Magic and SMASH those pesky fools who dare run from you!

P.S. DO NOT ATTEMPT THE CRYPT/TOMB WITHOUT DISPEL UNDEAD AND ABJURATION!
you WILL die

[vintermann]

P.S. DO NOT ATTEMPT THE CRYPT/TOMB WITHOUT DISPEL UNDEAD AND ABJURATION!
you WILL die

Not only have I done Crypt without those things, I just did it without any rN+ . It just requires a little preparation and care (and in my case, spamming legendary summoning decks and making use of the escape decks as the Ancient Lich turns up).

Tomb is another matter. It has a nasty tendency to kill my characters even when they have things that should supposedly make it easier (powerful summons, torment resistance, holy damage dealing stuff, fire spells etc.)

[KoboldLord]

Is MR really unimportant on items? I thought it was one of the more important things to have! That would be a big change in my play style on all characters.

Earlier on, MR is very important, but eventually your innate resistance grows high enough that it isn't worth taking up an item slot just for more of it.

MR works differently than any other resistance. Instead of having one to three pips for you to fill, you can stack any number of sources of magic resistance on top of each other for a slowly growing chance to be unaffected when hit by an appropriate effect. One of these sources comes from levels, and each character race has a different rate of MR growth. A L27 character with high MR growth is effectively already wearing several MR items, and the improvement provided by wearing yet another source is smaller percentage-wise than a lower-level character wearing that same other source.

At the same time, you have to consider the threat you're trying to block. There simply aren't that many monster attacks in the game that MR blocks, and it is not possible to be 100% safe. One of the big threats is being sent to the Abyss, a death sentence for early characters. Once your character is powerful enough, though, the Abyss that so threatens low-level characters will be a safe place for grinding xp and consumables. Indeed, once you're fighting your way through the Hells a trip to the Abyss actually counts as a breather where you can easily recover. The other big threat that MR can block is paralysis, which is potentially instant death with no chance to respond. Unfortunately, it just has a smaller chance to kill you if you have more MR, so if you're going up against a known paralyzer like a sphinx you should probably just switch to your amulet of stasis, which is guaranteed 100% immunity.

[lucy_ferre]

I wrote a pretty extensive guide awhile ago for this combo:

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... uter_guide

It might be of some use to you. Anyway, to answer your questions:

1 - You can learn Air Strike. It has smite-targeting and it's pretty useful for clearing the Hall of Blades.

2 - No.

3 - Invocations to 10 and Enchantments and Air Magic for Deflect Missiles and Air Strike.

4 - These are the robes I'd wear: (Great) Artifact --> Resistance --> Fire --> Positive energy --> Cold --> MR

5 - The Hall of Blades has a lot of experience for a single level. The Crypt is easy. Shoals:5 should be easy with ice form and repel missiles.

6 - No.

7 - I agree with KoboldLord.

8 - Nothing really.

9 - You're doing great! Are you playing 0.7?

[Jk]

(Edit: Yep, I'm playing 0.7!)

UPDATE!

I'm now level 23. I've cleared Vaults 1-7 and Crypt 1. It felt like a big accomplishment to kill Margery and crew on Crypt 1, since they took out my last best character. Crypt is a little challenging, but I will continue clearing Crypt 1-4.

Three follow-up questions:

1) Where to go next?

Cleared:
Dungeon to 18
Lair, Hive, Orc - Finished
Snake Pit - Rune Taken
Shoals - Cleared except final level
Elf - Cleared except final level
Vaults - Cleared except final level
Crypt - Working through 2-4 now.

My thought was to push a little deeper in the main dungeon and try Vestibules of Hell once I find it, or get banished to the Abyss. Or am I already to the point where I can try to snatch the other runes and make for Zot?

2) When should I try the final levels of Shoals, Elf, Crypt, Vault? Any advice for each of these beyond what I find in their wiki pages, specifically for my character?

3) What rings to wear? Of the ones I consider useful, I have:

2x rings of slaying (+0, +5 and +4, +1) - but do I really need more melee ability? I hit pretty hard.
ring of regeneration - I do get hurt pretty often and am not very stocked up on healing...
ring of sustain abilities - meh?
ring of evasion +4 - EV33 without it
ring of AC +4 - AC14 without it
ring of rF+ - already rF++ without it

I'm already wearing randart ring of rF+ rN+ Str-1, so I only have 1 other slot.

[Jk]

Regarding resistances:

I have 1 tick in all 3 from Cheibriados.
A randart ring gives me rF+ and rN+.
An amulet of warding gives me rN+.
I'm wearing 3 items of MR (hat, cloak, robe).

So that leaves me at:
rF++
rC+
rN+++

I have robes of resist each of the 3 that I can pump up to +8 with enchant armour, plus a robe of the archmagi (doesn't seem useful for this build). I also have a ring of fire resistance.

Since I can get to rF+++ with the ring and rN+++ with the amulet, my new thinking is to pump up the rC+ robe... that way I'll be at:
rF+++
rC++
rN+++
... with AC 21, EV 33.

I still need rElec badly!

[Jk]

I wrote a pretty extensive guide awhile ago for this combo:

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... uter_guide

This is the guide I've been following! Thank you for writing this.

FYI, I think a really great addition would be a section on how high to raise each spell skill (and why / what spells it effects), a la the conjurator guide:
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... cal_spells

[lucy_ferre]

1) Finish the Shoals, since it's the 2nd easiest rune you can get. A transmuter can handle all 5 levels of the Crypt. I wouldn't enter the Vestibule without Deflect Missile, since there are a lot of yaktaur captains and stone giants waiting for you. The Abyss has a reduced spawn rate for Chei worshipers, but I wouldn't go there (it's boring).

2) Shoals:5 - Ice form and repel missiles is enough to slaughter most of the merfolks there. Use slouch against tough groups.
Elf:7 - Shout and Slouch.
Vault:8 - Get full life protection for shadow dragons and rElec for titans and storm dragons. Slouch the guards to death and rake in the massive experience!

3) ring of slaying (+0, +5) or ring of regeneration

[TwilightPhoenix]

If you don't find any rElec in Elf 7, check Crypt 5. Crypt 5 is mostly like the previous levels outside of the vault. Inside of the vault there's mostly just a lot more enemies (particularly Skeletal Warriors, Bone Dragons, and Curse Skulls in my experience) and one or more Liches or an Ancient Lich hanging around the treasure. If you can't clear the Vault 8 entry super fast, you'll probably have to do a lot of stair dancing. Don't try teleporting around on that floor to escape until you've done a lot of slaughter since it's pretty packed, just use the stairs. Lots of good stuff there, make sure to check all four areas in it if you can for loot.

[smock]

That no one else mentioned this make me think I'm wrong, but...

I'd train up bows. Grab the best elf bow (or longbow), enchant it using scrolls of enchant weapon I, II, III and vorpalize, then pile-enchant arrows (using scrolls of enchant weapon I and II) by weilding them all. I've found that I can train bows quickly, and with enchantments they seem to do a lot of damage even at moderate skill levels. If you've found a good randart crossbow or sling, I suppose those would be swell, too.

[Jk]

I died on final level of Shoals I took over 79 points of damage in one tick. I should have been more careful, but I also don't think I was ready for it either. Bummer! At least this was my best character by a score 50% better than the #2, so progress! I am definitely going to try this sort of build again.

Thanks for all your advice!

[KoboldLord]

Assuming you've dealt with the omnipresent water with some reusable source of levitation or flight, the big threat in Shoals is that there is no cover. When you attract the attention of a bunch of top-end elves in the Elf end vault, you can retreat to a corridor or around a corner and be pretty much immune to all of them except the single one in front. In Shoals, there may be absolutely nothing preventing those javelineers from forming a loose semicircle and perforating you to death.

I usually like to burn a magic mapping scroll for Shoals 5, so I always know where the nearest cover is going to be. Sometimes I can get into one of the little vaults for protection, but most often it means kiting monsters around the edge of one of the rock cliffs. If I get spotted by some top-end merfolk, I usually Haste my way over to the nearest such cover and kite them around, but a Chei worshipper is going to have a much rougher time.