Warpers. Instructions for use.

[Curio]

ok. I tried to understand this background. sincerely.
And it doesn't even matter that i can't even get to the temple with them. Now I just wonder in what role do they meant to be.

I saw them as throwing-users with ability to blink from melee and augment throwing with portal projectile.
But, hey! They have (as for Hu) 1 starting skill in Thr, 1 Fighting and 3(!) in chosen weapon school.
What. The. F**k?
So, are they supposed to be melee-oriented characters? With less useful blink for melee and completely useless portal projectile spell? And 2 types of darts at the start.
On a side note - their defence skills also weird - it's 1 armour and 2 dodging at the start. IMHO, it's gotta be either 3 armour (if warpers meant to be melee) or 3 dodging (if anything else).

If grand plan was to exercise melee, throwing and translocations at the same time - good luck with that.

PS. I'm sure that some of you successfully played warpers, but wanderers winnable too. I'm just confused, and quite despised (after another goddamn death with this background) about warpers right now.

[KoboldLord]

As a warper, you are a fighter or gladiator with better equipment, at least after you collect dungeon floor trash on D1 and D2. You'll probably want to stick to lighter armor to make use of your spellbook, so dodging-biased races are probably a better choice than heavy armor-biased. You're probably going for Okawaru or Makhleb either way.

They're probably a challenge background. They are very nice in Zot Defense, but you probably don't care about that.

[Curio]

heh, so it's more like I said before
"grand plan was to exercise melee, throwing and translocations at the same time"
therefore - another challenge class.
dammit.
I would like to play throwing/blinking combo from the scratch. But starting skills are killing me. Oh, well.

[danr]

I think I want to try a spriggan warper of okawaru.

[Curio]

Human warper of Chei died right now. Altar was, like, three steps from entrance.
Everything went fine until I found Crazy Yiufs chamber on a 4 XL.
"He gonna fuck me up" I thought to myself and went to another side of a level, just to come back in autotravel to stand right before him. Needless to say that my blinks ported me right into his room and not away...

How to exclude areas from autoexplore, dammit? Can someone tell me key-combination for that? I once accidentally did that but don't know how exactly.

[Jenx]

Use Shift+X, go to the square you want and press "e" to put an exclusion. Pressing it again removes all but the single tile you targeted and pressing it again removes the exclusion all together.

[Ashery]

I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure warpers are the only class that begins with access to 'control teleport,' so they're pretty damn good at surviving once they get over that initial hump.

One thing I'm surprised about is that the class isn't on the suggested list for halfings, despite the class having excellent affinity for translocations and ranged combat. Their only weakness is that they have a terrible mana pool early on, but that shouldn't hinder a warper all that much (Just can't spam that projectile spell).

Haven't gotten far with the class yet (Hell, only started playing DCSS a few weeks ago), but I tend to turn off melee weapon skilling early on and focus on a ranged weapon with a split between translocations and spellcasting.

[danr]

For the record, I find portal projectile kind of pointless. I play warpers to have a melee character who starts with useful translocations.

[Rapigel]

I won a DGWr recently (challenge game: could only learn Tloc spells). I played it as a light armoured fighter with awesome positioning skills. You don't actually need a lot of Tloc to get value from Blink and as Ashery says, access to control teleport is solid gold.

The whole throwing thing was a secondary consideration. In the early game, I used it for tactical deployment of poison needles (read ogre stuck behind a rat). It was only in the mid-late game that I used it for damage output, because making stacks of +7 javelins just takes a while. Throwing is a relatively cheap skill, so leaving it a bit before developing it seriously didn't seem to hurt a lot. Mind you, I always had heaps of xp because I wasn't blowing it all on 10+ magic skills... specialisation anyone?

(godless wasn't awful either - but a little bit of something always helps...)

[danr]

Thanks for the tip.

What is the to-hit bonus for PP? +5?

[szanth]

And what's the damage on it? I mean, can you PP an arrow or needle? And for the needle, will it poison?

[danr]

I believe damage is unaffected by PP. It just makes whatever more accurate (and apparently can warp through other creatures). On that note, can it go through transparent walls?

[mageykun]

I like warpers thematically, but they are kinda hard. Every starting character needs a gimmick they can use to kill things, and your starting book dun have one. So you need to rely on your racial traits and/or weapon and almost ignore casting for the first few floors. I've found nagas can work for a while by leaning heavy on the poison, and then you can transition to Chie and slouch for damage. It's a little tricky to survive long enough to set it up, but in theory a Chie-ite who starts with apportation and all the escape spells they'll need sounds pretty cool.

Personally, I think the school could be expanded. I'd love to see some kind of reality twisting spacial distortion damage spell (kinda hard to balance though, since everyone trains tloc for the utility spells, and you don't want to give them a free damage spell).

Banishment makes me sad. I remember being all excited the first time I ever got it, and then quickly becoming crushed when I realized how prone to failure it was, and that it gave no xp. I kinda wish it gave some fraction of xp, like summons, so playing pure tloc was an option.

I think I want to try a spriggan warper of okawaru.

I'm giving one a roll now. Seems to work pretty well actually! I mean, it's not the easiest sprig I've ever played, but he's having a much better time of it than many of my ill fated warpers.

I may be getting ahead of myself here, but I'm thinking warp weapon on a quick blade is gonna be fun.

On that note, can it go through transparent walls?

Nope. You can only PP things to places you can apport from.

[danr]

Do you have to go sif muna to have a good chance of getting the book of the warp?

[Tiber]

I dunno. Translocations is pretty much a niche school, and that niche is escape. That makes it excellent to go along with other magic, but horrible to specialize in. I'd kinda like to see more from it. Like, what about a spell to pull an enemy to you? It'd be great for ranged attackers like centaurs, or those pesky summoners you just can't get to. Pull a fish out of water, or just laugh at that creature that tries to run away from you.

[Ashery]

But then you'd have to deal with potential resists, whereas a controlled blink guarantees your location.

It may be a niche school, but it's one that practically every caster should at least dabble in, as even a random blink could save your ass one day (Or, should you have bad luck, result in you blinking into the swarm of enemies you wanted to escape from, heh).

[vintermann]

One thing I'm surprised about is that the class isn't on the suggested list for halfings, despite the class having excellent affinity for translocations and ranged combat.

And that stalkers are. New stalkers focus on transmutations most of all, which halfling are worse than ogres at! Unlike Ogres, halflings have spellcasting at -2 as well... a miracle (and a testament to the unnerfedness of Ashenzari) that I got one to level 20 yesterday.

Also, right now, since EV is so powerful and Armour is so weak, Halflings are actually pretty OK in melee - vastly better than ogres.

[danr]

There was a change to halfling magic aptitudes in trunk recently, and stalkers were also changed significantly, I'm guessing the list of recommended builds just hasn't been updated to reflect the changes.

[tormodpwns]

Ogre Warpers are fun because they have +2 to spellcasting, and they can focus on melee in the early game with Blink as an emergency button.

[danr]

I would like, someday, to use portal projectile with large rocks. It's too bad Ogre Warpers don't start with them. They do get them with the Hunter background.

I'm going to go make that suggestion...