When should I head for Elven halls?

[nordetsa]

I guess lv 20 MiFi warrior is still not enough to clear floor 5, with conjurers throwing iron shot which killed me with 43 damage.

So far my plan has been 1) lair 2) swamp or snake pit 3) Orcish mines 4) Elven halls. Is Elven Hall meant to be cleared after progressing much farther? Perhaps I should try taking vaults before clearing it? On that note, can anyone please tell me in which order the dungeon branch should be cleared?

[defen]

Elf is not mandatory by any means. The bottom level of Elf is not worthwhile unless you are missing key spells/resists when going to V8/Zot.

[nordetsa]

So is it viable that I pass elven halls and so straight to the Vault? I figured the xp and items I could possibly earn there would help me later while clearing deeper dungeon floors.

[mikee]

Did you read the post I wrote for you about the bees?

[nordetsa]

Did you read the post I wrote for you about the bees?

Yes, but I don't think that has to do much with Elven Halls. I was constantly trying to lure 1~2 deep elves at a time, and on low health was trying to move out of monsters' LOS until that iron shot immediately killed me.

[mikee]

That tactic has everything to do with elven halls, but it requires some practice to use it properly (to develop a good feel for LOS/spacing and timing). You can trust me on this. I know about it well.

[nordetsa]

But how to do that luring tactic on Elven Halls, especially on the 5th floor? I'm bound to hit by multiple arrows and magical spells as I try to move out of elves' LOS.

[mikee]

Desired position 1:
#.#
#.#
#.#
#.############
#.......@......
#######.######
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#e#

Desired position 2:
#.#
#.#
#@#
#.############
#........e.....
#######.######
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#

Desired position 3:
#.#
#.#
#.#
#@############
#.e............
#######.######
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#
---------#.#

My apologies for the awful formatting. This is not a strength of mine.

[psch]

My apologies for the awful formatting. This is not a strength of mine.

Allow me:

Desired position 1:

  Code:

#.#                         
#.#
#.#
#.############
#.......@......
#######.######
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #e#


Desired position 2:

  Code:

#.#                         
#.#
#@#
#.############
#........e.....
#######.######
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#


Desired position 3:

  Code:

#.#                         
#.#
#.#
#@############
#.e............
#######.######
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#
      #.#


The [code]-tag is nearly made for drawing crawl maps.

As for the original question: I've learned in the last two weeks to simply not do Elf:5. There's obviously exceptions to this rule, but I haven't found those out yet.

[Dustbin]

Never.


It's a complete new player trap, everything in there feels squishy and not particularly high damage, and then suddenly the demonologists you were eating for breakfast crap out fiends and executioners, or an annihilator casts lightning bolt as you come round a corner in a corridor and triple bounces you etc.

Not to mention even the regular popcorn elves are a nuisance without sinv, and a menace without conservation. Oh there's also wonderful banishment, no ctele on the end floor.... Why would you want to go there again?


Take this with a pinch of salt since mainly I just hate elf.

[BlackSheep]

Have you been in the treasure room? That's the reason.

[Deimos]

I dont know, MiFi and MiBe are pretty much all I run, and I've never had a problem with halls. The only thing slightly scary are the summons, and you have a lot of HP to tele away with if things get hairy.

Their spells have never scared me, even the bowman usually manage to get off more damage then the mages.

I'm not really sure what to suggest, since your problem is something I pretty much ignore... Elf is a easy branch, honestly, because you can come back to it and mow everyone down after you're done with Vaults.

[Konebred]

Elf always seems to be way easier for spellcasters to me. My melee dudes usually have 10 evoc by the time I hit it, and I use all the wands I have been saving down there. Elves don't have a ton of HP, so all those wands of fire, cold, lightning and draining work pretty decent in the narrow corridors. Just run from demons until the poof and get on demonologists asap. I dunno, I am pretty nooby so take my advice with a grain of salt. Elf is totally skipable though, I wouldn't worry about it unless you are missing some sort of end game resist like Rmut or Rfire.

[o_O]

I guess lv 20 MiFi warrior is still not enough to clear floor 5, with conjurers throwing iron shot which killed me with 43 damage.

So far my plan has been 1) lair 2) swamp or snake pit 3) Orcish mines 4) Elven halls. Is Elven Hall meant to be cleared after progressing much farther? Perhaps I should try taking vaults before clearing it? On that note, can anyone please tell me in which order the dungeon branch should be cleared?

If you want to do elf it should probably be before Zot and for a melee character it should be considered part of extended. Its not really all that difficult but its the sort of place where things can turn bad very quickly so you want to be very over leveled.

[hxy]

It really depends on your build I think.
I recently had a DEWZ clear Elf:5 at XL16~17 and did not find much trouble with it.
With melee characters you might want to wait till later.

[KoboldLord]

Putting Elf after Zot is ridiculous. Zot draconians are basically top-end elves with more hit points.

I usually visit Elf after clearing Vaults 1-7 and most of D, but there's quite a bit of flexibility there. The OP got killed by a lowly Iron Shot, not one of the top dangers, so odds are the OP simply misjudged the situation and pulled more than he or she could handle. mikee's post about the bees is almost certainly exactly what the OP needed to be doing to survive.

[inkydood]

Treat Elf as you would any branch: come back later for the final level.

While not mandatory...do you hate loot and experience? Elf is a good place for both. It's also fun, but that's just like, my opinion, man.

[crate]

There is definitely a solid reason to not clear Elf:$ at all: it is a place where things can go very bad very quickly if you make mistakes, and the more time you spend in such areas the higher the chance for you to make such a mistake and die. Elliptic for instance rarely clears elf (and in contrast mikee almost always clears elf and it is one of his favorite branches).

Personally I think that if you do not need something from the loot in elf it is not really worth clearing out the ending. The high-tier elves are potentially dangerous for almost any 3-rune character.

[KoboldLord]

Doing Elf and Crypt are almost certainly bad for your final score if you don't need something specific that didn't show up elsewhere. You spend a lot of turns down there, and those turns aren't going to lead to a Rune to compensate for the wasted time.

I'm not so good that I can afford to worry about score, though, so I usually do go for the loot eventually. Elves are fun to kill; they're dangerous enough that I have to pay attention, but fragile enough that they squish with a very satisfying pop.

[cursednobleman]

Despite the final level of halls being my favorite level for its loot to danger ratio, take a good few precautions.

1. Can you dispatch summoners and spellcasters?
*Silence
*Killspells
*Abjuration
*Deflect/Repel Missiles
*Berserk/Haste

2. Can you dispatch Blademasters/Archers?
*Killspells
*Deflect/Repel Missiles
*Berserk/Haste

3. Are you prepared for an abyssing?
*MR Equipment, Abyss precautions.



Aside from the mess, it's a loot party. I tend to do it after doing vault:7 or the lair branches.

[ddubois]

I'm too much of a loot whore to skip Elf.

[Turgon]

It's interesting that the question "When should I head for Elven halls?"
lead to the related question "Should I do Elven halls at all?".

If you go for a high score or some minimum of turn counts you will be concerned with this question. In one of my last games, in which I wanted to beat a special number of turn counts, I had to think about this too.

I got advice from sirdond to do the halls. The result was (not mentioning the usual trouble you'll have there) to "lose" less than 4 k turns for getting three nice items, one in a shop in E:3 and two within the loot of E:5. All these items were useful for the endgame.

In other games the halls weren't worth doing: no useful treasure and no XP due to draining.

So I'd like to answer both questions with "It depends..."

Edit: "The Elven Halls are only three levels deep" in 0.11. Look at the changelog: https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/blobs ... ngelog.txt

[Mankeli]

I'm too much of a loot whore to skip Elf.

I hear you loud and clear .

[mrbobbyg]

One more tip on clearing the E:5 vault, maybe a basic one, but one that helped me a lot.

Go get one of your wands of digging and cut a few bolt holes around the end vault. What I mean is, dig some grids where you can lose LoS and pop a tele or drink a pot or whatever your emergency response is.

[Deimos]

In other games the halls weren't worth doing: no useful treasure and no XP due to draining.

If I'm not mistaken draining doesn't take away skill experience, which is probably the only kind you're hunting for at that point in the game. Albeit I have no idea how much XP elves actually give. I can't imagine it's much.

[Galefury]

Here are some outdated statistics. Note that Elf got shortened since these were generated. What hasn't changed is that the ending vault gives a pretty large chunk of exp, while the levels themselves give almost no exp.