DDHe Methodology

[wolfstalking]

Pacification allows you to avoid fighting things that would cause you damage, but you lose out on exp. If you kill them, you end up using piety to heal yourself. The enemies least likely to cause you damage are also the ones that give you the least exp, and are easiest to pacify for peity. Then there's this whole wand of healing deal where you train evo instead of inv and just use the wand? But that seems like another tightrope where you have a finite amount of pacifications and you lose MP to use them.

Basically, what should you aim to do when playing DD? Only pacify dangerous things or worthless things like normal? Err towards damage prevention? Just go all out then heal afterwards?

Also, it seems to me like max level DD damage shaving is basically 10 AC that applies to everything. Is this wrong or am I just understating the benefit?

[BlackSheep]

Healers pacify everything they don't want to eat. This makes skill training simple since all you need until Lair is Invocations. You can put on the heaviest armor and biggest shield you find since they don't interfere with 'aa'.

Once you've hit Lair, everything is easy to pacify and you can branch out.

[wolfstalking]

What about later on, once you have decent figthing skills? Is it worth killing a guy if you have to spend peity to heal the damage? Is it just better to run if you can't pacify?

[BlackSheep]

If something could deal damage in melee, just pacify it. Running from things you can't pacify easily is one option. Another is trapping it between pacified monsters and letting them deal with it.

[battaile]

Pacification allows you to avoid fighting things that would cause you damage, but you lose out on exp.

As blacksheep alluded to, the real barrier to pac'ing every-single-thing-you-possibly-can is hunger, not xp.

Then there's this whole wand of healing deal where you train evo instead of inv

This isn't really a thing, you don't get more healing from the wand with higher evo.

[wolfstalking]

Thanks, that clears it up for me. Does this also apply to >3 runes? Since heavy armor and invocations go together so well, and you will avoid fighting mostly, is it better to start as melee and branch into spells as opoosed to sticking with lighter armor so you can cast conjurations? Is there an appreciable difference in the damage you take?

Re: the wand, I seem to recall that crate said the way to play DDHe was counterintuitive, and I figured it had something to do with the wand. If hunger is such a big problem, is Ko a better than average healer race?

[rebthor]

In my limited experience with healers, Ko is a good race. The only Ko problem is -2 HP apt and a poor armour apt. HO is also a good race choice.

[crate]

If you want to do extended you will not be able to pacify everything since you will starve (unless you are a djinn). Pan has more food than normal characters need, but pacification--especially if you also have to self-heal with ely abilities, like DD does--is extremely draining on your nutrition. You can either stick with Ely and just use her for self-healing (not really recommended with DD imo) or you can switch gods to TSO (or Makhleb).

I'm not sure that playing healers is counterintuitive and I'm pretty sure I never said that. I have said that DDHe is not the best way to learn how to use Ely (because you have to deal with DD stuff as well as learn Ely), and I have said that Ely is not as straightforward as other gods.

[wolfstalking]

"not the best way to learn" was the one I misinterpreted, apologies.

So since switch to TSO doesn't give me any god wrath plus has better invocations, I'll train up armor and axes after invoc is maxed, assuming I get that far.