Cerebovssquire, reading the resurrected thread about the wiki, I happened on your diary of a MuWr at
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... mmy_WarperThis is an extremely interesting read in itself, but especially the very first paragraph sticks out for me, because it concerns two points about which I have been thinking all the time:
I start training Polearms for my spear, but a kobold I kill drops a whip of venom so I promptly swap to Maces&Flails. It helps me kill a hobgoblin in plate armour - +2 plate armour, as it turns out, which I put on. Upon reaching level 3 I raise STR from 14 to 15. I'll eventually need 18 to negate extra penalties for the plate.
1. I have been thinking about disregarding shroud in favour of heavier armour -- essentially turning the Wr into a Fi with a guarranteed book of spatial translocations --, but I haven't done it until now. I find it particularly interesting that you don the plate despite the penalty ... Where would be the breaking point, i.e. would a +0 chain mail, for instance, already be good enough to abandon shroud?
2. In my latest attempts, I have chosen short blades, because I fancied that a) the chance to find a branded weapon early is much higher, and this would make my pre-temple life much easier and b) with the Kiku strategy speed would matter more than weapon base damage, anyways (or so I have come to believe ...). However, if switching the weapon category already at D1 is an option, there is no point in not going for spears, I assume? The advice to not train stealth at all (which would help me a little in dealing with orc bands) has led me to believe that at this point already 2 or 3 skill levels are way to valuable. Certainly, switching is not a good idea just at any point in the early game and not for any brand. Any rough guidelines which brands are worth it and up to what point in training one's starting weapon?
(To explain the background of my questions: I'm trying to go at this rather methodically. I did manage to get a couple of characters to the lair, including some HuWrs. At this point, I tend to worry that I depended too much on luck and start again with another character. My save file directory is slowly filling with XL 9-12 chars, which will probably come in handy when I take on the next stage. I think, I can really enjoy this next stage only once I more or less mastered the part before that. I seem to be slowly acquiring some not too bad habits, though. I tried a couple of DrTr, just for a change, and they felt extremely powerfull, steam rolling through the early dungeon, until they died due to carelessness at a point which I haven't reached with my HuWrs and thus had no habits acquired.)