Escaping from the unescapeable?

[Laraso]

So, I recently had a promising TeCj who was working its way through the lair. I suddenly came within view of three jumping spiders who were guarding the spider nest. I couldn't run away because jumping spiders are extremely fast, and I didn't have any escape scrolls, so I decided my only chance to survive was to try and kill them before they killed me.

First turn, I placed a prism next to them. Second turn, I took a step back, but two of them jumped next to me and covered me in cobweb. Third turn, I tried to use force lance to push one of them away, but force lance missed and they bit me taking out around 60% of my health. Fourth turn, I tried to use a potion of resistance, but they bit me again and I died.

  Code:

14721 Laraso the Conjurer (level 12, -4/59 HPs)
             Began as a Tengu Conjurer on June 26, 2013.
             Was the Champion of Sif Muna.
             Slain by a jumping spider (5 damage)
             ... on Level 5 of the Lair of Beasts.
             The game lasted 01:28:06 (18451 turns).

Laraso the Conjurer (Tengu Conjurer)               Turns: 18451, Time: 01:28:06

HP  -4/59        AC  6     Str  9      XL: 12   Next: 12%
MP  23/32        EV  6     Int 24      God: Sif Muna [******]
Gold 434         SH  0     Dex 15      Spells:  8 memorised,  6 levels left

Res.Fire  : + . .   See Invis. : +   a - +1,+0 falchion "Ibuen" {venom, rElec rN+ S
Res.Cold  : + . .   Warding    : .   x - +2 orc leather armour
Life Prot.: + . .   Conserve   : .   (no shield)
Res.Poison: +       Res.Corr.  : .   (helmet restricted)
Res.Elec. : +       Clarity    : .   (no cloak)
Sust.Abil.: . .     Spirit.Shd : .   C - +0 pair of gauntlets
Res.Mut.  : .       Stasis     : .   (boots unavailable)
Res.Rott. : .       Flight     : .   (no amulet)
Saprovore : . . .                    f - ring of wizardry
                                     y - +4 ring of intelligence

@: mildly poisoned, held, somewhat resistant to hostile enchantments, fairly
stealthy
A: able to fly, beak, talons 3, wild magic 1
a: Fly, Channel Energy, Forget Spell, Renounce Religion


You were on level 5 of the Lair of Beasts.
You worshipped Sif Muna.
Sif Muna was exalted by your worship.
You were not hungry.

You visited 4 branches of the dungeon, and saw 16 of its levels.

You collected 714 gold pieces.
You spent 300 gold pieces at shops.

Inventory:

Hand weapons
 a - the +1,+0 falchion "Ibuen" (weapon) {venom, rElec rN+ SInv}
   (You found it on level 1 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   
   It poisons the flesh of those it strikes.
   
   It insulates you from electricity.
   It protects you from negative energy.
   It enhances your eyesight.
Armour
 x - a +2 orcish leather armour (worn)
 C - a +0 pair of gauntlets (worn)
Magical devices
 m - a wand of digging (11)
 u - a wand of cold (9)
 B - a wand of lightning (5)
 G - a wand of fireball (1)
 Q - a wand of confusion (4)
Comestibles
 c - 2 rotting chunks of spiny frog flesh
 i - 2 chunks of blink frog flesh
 n - 3 bread rations
 o - a chunk of blink frog flesh
Scrolls
 A - a scroll of fog
Jewellery
 f - a ring of wizardry (right hand)
 l - an uncursed ring of teleport control
 q - an uncursed ring of see invisible
 y - a +4 ring of intelligence (left hand)
Potions
 d - a potion of cure mutation
 e - a potion of brilliance {unknown}
 g - 5 potions of curing
 h - a potion of invisibility {unknown}
 r - a potion of speed
 v - a potion of magic
 w - a potion of mutation {unknown}
 D - a potion of heal wounds {unknown}
Books
 k - Sif Muna's Disquisition on Battle Magic
   (Sif Muna gifted it to you on level 5 of the Lair of Beasts)   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   Flame Tongue                       Conjuration/Fire             1
   *Dazzling Spray                    Conjuration/Hexes            3
   *Iskenderun's Mystic Blast         Conjuration                  4
   *Lightning Bolt                    Conjuration/Air              5
   *Fireball                          Conjuration/Fire             5
 p - a book of Control   
   
   Spells                             Type                      Level
   Control Teleport                   Charms/Translocation         4
   Control Undead                     Necromancy                   4
   Enslavement                        Hexes                        4
   Mass Confusion                     Hexes                        6
   Metabolic Englaciation             Hexes/Ice                    6
Magical staves
 b - an uncursed staff of poison


   Skills:
 - Level 2.1 Dodging
 - Level 2.0 Stealth
 * Level 12.2 Spellcasting
 - Level 13.4 Conjurations
 - Level 10.1 Invocations


You had 6 spell levels left.
You knew the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Magic Dart            Conj           ####         1%          1    None
b - Force Lance           Conj           ######       1%          2    None
c - Dazzling Spray        Conj/Hex       ######..     1%          3    None
d - Iskenderun's Mystic   Conj           #######.     1%          4    None
e - Iskenderun's Battles  Conj/Chrm      ######..     2%          4    None
f - Fulminant Prism       Conj/Hex       ######..     7%          5    ##.....
g - Fireball              Conj/Fire      ######....   7%          5    ##.....
h - Lightning Bolt        Conj/Air       ######....   7%          5    ##.....


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (9/27)             Temple (1/1) D:4             Orc (1/4) D:7
   Lair (5/8) D:8         
 Swamp: Lair:3-6    Shoals: Lair:3-6     Snake: Lair:3-6    Spider: Lair:3-6

Altars:
Ashenzari
Cheibriados
Elyvilon
Fedhas
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Nemelex Xobeh
Okawaru
Sif Muna
Trog
Vehumet
Xom
Yredelemnul
Zin
the Shining One
Lugonu

Shops:
D:7: =


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You can fly.
You have a beak for a mouth.
You have claws for feet.
Your spells are a little harder to cast, but a little more powerful.


Message History

The blast of energy engulfs the jumping spider.
The jumping spider is severely wounded.
The jumping spider pounces on you! The jumping spider bites you.
You are poisoned.
The jumping spider poisons you!
You hear a bark!
Read which item? (? for menu, Esc to quit)
Okay, then.
Drink which item? (? for menu, Esc to quit)
Okay, then.
Drink which item? (? for menu, Esc to quit)
You feel protected.
The jumping spider pounces on you but does no damage.
The jumping spider bites you. The jumping spider pounces on you.
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
You are even more entangled. The jumping spider barely misses you.
The jumping spider pounces on you!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
The jumping spider bites you.
You die...

....##
.....#      #
...#####   ..##
..>.##.## .....
..>.#.#.##..^.^#     #
...#.#...##...s.##  .#
.#......P###.....###.#
...##......###.ss....##
.....##..#P.#  #@...<.##..
....#.#..##### ##.........
..(..........####...####(.
%........#P......*..#
%...##..............#
....###...#.f.#.##...#
.%..#...###P...## .###
.%####...###....# ..
..#  #..f# ##........


You could see 3 jumping spiders.

What am I supposed to do in a situation like that? Seriously, it feels like sometimes Crawl just randomly decides my character should die, and throws me into a situation I can't escape from. I killed multiple Spiny Frogs, Black Mambas, and Hydras, only to turn a corner and die to jumping spiders within four turns.

[Davion Fuxa]

Sometimes you get situations that will just kill you no matter what you do.

[Laraso]

the way to survive this would have been to not waste all your scrolls earlier

I didn't waste any scrolls... I didn't find many escape scrolls for some reason. All I found was a single teleport and a single blink scroll, which I had to use to escape from a spiny frog. All the rest were utility scrolls like remove curse/enchant armor, which I left in the stash I made on Lair:2

[BlackSheep]

Fog would have prevented the spiders from blinking close. Not wasting turns quaffing a potion of resistance or casting force lance would've been good too. Not overtraining Spellcasting and Invocations might have let one of your other spells be strong enough to kill them all.

[mikee]

If this had been online, I would have been very interested in watching the ttyrec. It seems highly unlikely to walk into los of all 3 of them on the same turn, so possibly you could have reacted sooner (or you did and you were just unlucky). Even so, at a distance of like 6 tiles, so near the up stairs, and with such a weak character, your best decision was probably to escape. Next time, you could post a dump when this situation is about to happen. I could tell you how to escape or kill them.

[pickled_heretic]

Frankly I think you could have melted them with your speed potion, battlesphere and fireballs. Your very first action should have been to open your inventory and check your options. I couldn't imagine a worse spell to try to use against jumping spiders than prism, also.

It is true that there are circumstances that some characters cannot overcome. However, I think of it in the same way that I learned to think of defeat in StarCraft. You might hear someone whine 'how was I supposed to defend against those hellions torching my drones' and while there wasn't anything you could have done after they were already behind your minerals lighting stuff on fire, the proper response would have been to scout and prepare properly before it happened. Another way to look at it is that you already lost when you made your choice long ago but were still there just on borrowed time.

Yes, there are circumstances that cause unavoidable death but that waveform collapses (for me at least) somewhere in the lair.

[Implojin]

Yes, there are circumstances that cause unavoidable death but that waveform collapses (for me at least) somewhere in the lair.

I find that this tends to occur around the D:4 to D:5 area, sometimes slightly later with weaker combos. Around that point you tend to have found a few escape options and some potions; this by itself is usually enough to ensure survival if you play carefully and manage your resources well. By the time you've picked up a god you have usually found enough options that any deaths past that point are *probably* the result of an earlier mistake on your part.

What am I supposed to do in a situation like that?

The best option when you're staring at a screen of bad options is to pick the course of actions with the highest probability of not-dying. That probability tends to go down with each mistake that has been made on previous turns. Learning to identify and react to bad situations before they become so bad as to lead to guaranteed death is mostly what good play in Crawl is about.

Asking in ##crawl to get advice from more experienced players is another very good option, and can help you to identify good actions that you might not otherwise recognize.

As to your specific situation, any of these items might have allowed you to survive depending on where you were positioned relative to the spiders at the time they came onscreen:

u - a wand of cold (9)
B - a wand of lightning (5)
G - a wand of fireball (1)
Q - a wand of confusion (4)

h - a potion of invisibility {unknown}
r - a potion of speed
D - a potion of heal wounds {unknown}

Walking away tends to be a very strong action in Crawl, and in the case of playing a character that you think might not be able to handle a spider entry vault you could also have just walked away upon recognizing the edge of the vault. This requires enough familiarity with the game to be able to say "Hey, that's a vault edge right there and not a random part of the level, maybe I should set an exclusion if my character is relatively weak and stay away until my character is stronger."

[kenmtraveller]

Good advice here, especially the 'stop and look at your inventory' and 'use the potion of speed'.
There is almost no fight that doesn't get way easier to survive when you drink a potion of speed, it's almost never a bad first action.
I would probably have tried to kill them after that with the Wand of Cold or Fireball, depending on where they were, unless it looked like I could get to stairs quickly.
Keep in mind that even if 1 follows you up the stairs, it's like you just killed the other two.
And yeah, 10 invocations at this point in the game is a bad idea for this character.

This character does raise an issue for me; with the new conjurer it's hard to know when to train an element, because you don't know what future spells you will have access to. I would probably have put points into fire , but that then becomes non-optimal if you end up finding great ice spells and no fire spells.

Ken

[cjo]

This character does raise an issue for me; with the new conjurer it's hard to know when to train an element, because you don't know what future spells you will have access to. I would probably have put points into fire , but that then becomes non-optimal if you end up finding great ice spells and no fire spells.

Ken

Getting the right mid/high level spells isn't usually an issue with Sif Muna. I think either air or fire would have been a good move (with the caveat that I'm not terribly familiar with the new conjurer spellbook yet). I would leave spellcasting and invocations lower. I'm content with invocations of 4 through lair.

I used to massively overtrain spellcasting. Now my rule of thumb is that spellcasting should lag my offensive spell schools by a few levels. I started doing this when I saw rchandra advise another poster that you actually come out the same or ahead on food if you push schools harder than spellcasting. The spell schools help your power more than spellcasting does, so this way you can kill stuff faster, you can kill more things with your hungerless lower level spells because they have more power, and you end up resting less. (Rchandra, I hope I'm doing justice to your advice.)

[prozacelf]

Slightly off topic, and not applicable to the OP but anyone who takes Vehumet should probably put quite a few levels into Spellcasting to take as much advantage of the gifted spells as possible since most are only available for a limited time.

[joellercoaster]

I can't remember who said it, but one of the best pieces of Crawling advice I ever saw was: always carry one potion of speed, and stash the rest so they don't get destroyed. Running away is winning!

Prism was certainly the wrong choice, but dying with a source of haste unused is the worst/most frustrating kind of dying.

[Laraso]

Yes, I understand that walking away is usually the best course of action in situations like this. I usually play as a melee character, and I have a decent enough understanding of what I can/can't handle that I was able to pull of a three rune win recently. Since I won with a melee character, I decided that it would probably be more interesting to start playing as a spellcaster, so lately I've been playing as nothing but spellcasters. I'm still trying to understand exactly how powerful I am and what I can handle at any given time when playing as a spell caster, and it's considerably more tricky than a melee character since you have so many different combinations of spells.

I've cleared the spider nest multiple times with melee characters, so when I saw those jumping spiders I knew what I was getting into. Since I was playing as a spellcaster, I figured I probably wouldn't be able to last more than a few turns against the spiders (I was right), so the very first thing I did was look at my inventory. However, I didn't see any escape options. Scrolls of fog have never ever worked for me, monsters always seem to know where I am even if the LoS was broken, so I ignored that option. I really considered the potion of speed to escape, however I knew that jumping spiders are capable of blinking right next to me and tangling me in cobweb, and since my character was so squishy I figured that running probably wouldn't be a safe option. Had I been playing a melee character, I would have used it and ran away without thinking twice. In the end, I decided that the only way I was going to survive is if I killed them as fast as possible. I knew that the prism spell would be capable of hitting all three spiders simultaneously, which is something that my other spells were not capable of. Fireball was too small for how spaced out they were, and dazzling spray was too short ranged.

That's exactly why I posted this in the first place. I literally didn't see any possible form of escape from that situation, so I was hoping that someone else could.

I was training spellcasting to lower the massive hunger costs my spells had. Since I had nearly eliminated hunger costs, I was planning on turning it off once I got it to level 13.
I was training invocations so I could rely on it more. At low levels of invocations, I only regenerate like two or three points of magic each each time I use channel, but at level ten invocations I can refill my entire magic gauge as fast as six turns.

[Lasty]

No matter what happens to you, Potion of Speed is always among your most effective escape options, because even if you can't outrun your foe, you at least get significantly more actions in which to do whatever else does need to be done.

Scroll of Fog breaking LOS isn't meant to prevent opponents from knowing where you are, it's meant to prevent them from targeting you. So, for example, the spiders couldn't jump to your location and tangle you in webs if they couldn't see you.

If you knew the spiders could jump, then you knew fulminant prism was unlikely to hit them.

On Spellcasting and Invocations, what people are trying to say is that while it's undoubtably good to have hungerless spells and to refill your mana bar relatively quickly, what's even better is having your conjurations deal enough damage that it kills your opponent in fewer casts, causing less hunger and obviating the need to channel (which, btw, also costs significant hunger). In this example, if all of the XP you had in Invocations and about 3-5 levels of Spellcasting had been put into fire and conjuration, you might well have been able to straight-up nuke the spiders, particularly if coupled with Potion of Speed to get the spells off faster.

[cjo]

I was training spellcasting to lower the massive hunger costs my spells had. Since I had nearly eliminated hunger costs, I was planning on turning it off once I got it to level 13.
I was training invocations so I could rely on it more. At low levels of invocations, I only regenerate like two or three points of magic each each time I use channel, but at level ten invocations I can refill my entire magic gauge as fast as six turns.

I die all the time, so I don't mean to make it sound otherwise. But I have won a couple of spellcasters, and I think if you try training spellcasting less and spell schools more, you will really be pleasantly surprised. You don't need fireball and lighting bolt at low hunger in the lair; you can do a lot with mystic blast and battlesphere. (Or stone arrow, or throw icicle, or sticky flame + throw flame.) If the spells which you cast constantly are at ## hunger, you're totally fine. Probably even ### is okay.

(Yes, if you're with Vehumet you will want to make sure you have some free spell levels. But even then, not dying trumps making sure you don't miss a particular spell.)

Channeling costs a ton of hunger. It's for cases where you don't have time to retreat and rest to get mana back, and yet you do have time to take an action which neither removes you from danger nor harms your enemy. In other words, you shouldn't be using it all that much early on, except when you have chunks to burn and want to save turns spent resting. It's good for when you need just that tiny bit more mana to polish off an enemy that's nearly dead and that isn't going to kill you in the next couple of turns.

Edit: (I know Lasty basically said all this, but it bears repeating )

[Zargon]

If you're after your first win as a caster (as am I), I would seriously recommend a fire elementalist, since their starting book makes the early game so easy - you can just pile all your exp into spellcasting, conjurations and fire and you've got something that should get you to at least the lair every time:

a) Flame Tongue and Throw Flame together take down everything barring imps early game.
b) Conjure flame blocks corridors, keeping the clever dudes at bay while you roast them with the above, while the dumbass dudes or dudes who think they're hard (skeletons, zombies, some ogres, hill giants, yaks, ugly things, orc warriors, knights and warlords to name but a few) will just step into the flames and do the job for you. A 1-tile corridor with three flames in a row will take down almost anything dumb or crazy enough to try and reach you through them.
c) Sticky flame works wonders - if something gets too close, just napalm it. If you can blink away, even better (but not near any conjured flames or it'll be YASD).
d) Later on still, fireball is superb for its power and 3x3 area of effect (as you've found out) - great for clearing out rooms and small open areas as well as killing uniques, but be careful of the noise in large open areas.
e) If you decide to get access to minions via whatever path, inner flame gives you a never-ending supply of suicide bombers

After this, if you're with Sif, you'll get fire-related books, so you may well get Ignite Poison by mid-lair. If you don't know, let me let you into a little secret: Ignite Poison totally rocks. It turns spiders into free experience, so you would have had no problem taking down those jumping spiders and indeed the whole spiders nest. It also turns all hydras (including the Lernaean one), all snakes barring guardian serpents and anacondas, all nagas, demonic crawlers, swamp dragons, swamp drakes, scorpions, bees, wasps, kobolds and ants into free experience (I may have missed some from that list), providing you can keep the mana up (which shouldn't be a problem if you're with Sif or Vehumet). So essentially three out of 5 possible swamp branches become one big potion of experience. Plus you can use it with poisonous cloud later on to get a kind of low-level firestorm - great for taking out packs of yaks and footaurs. It also lets you train transmutations which will help towards necromutation later on should you want it.

You'll then also get bolt of fire, which will take down most tough monsters into the late midgame and is superb in corridors. Works great with ring of flames.

Towards the end, you'll get firestorm online, and then it's game over unless you get overconfident and do something stupid like I did the last few times.

Hope this helps.

[Laraso]

If you're after your first win as a caster (as am I), I would seriously recommend a fire elementalist,... *snip*

Yeah. I prefer playing as a Tengu over a Deep Elf, since even though Deep Elves have much greater aptitude in Spellcasting, the Tengu are surprisingly superior in many schools of magic, especially conjurations. Tengu also have natural flight, and while flying they have natural speed increase, essentially giving me free flight+swiftness on any character that reaches level 5, which then becomes permanent upon reaching level 15. I've tried a few Tengu FEs, and usually I use Conjure Flame liberally to take care of any undead enemies and block off choke points. This combined with the Tengu's speed increase when flying lets me kite just about any enemy. It also lets me use Inner Flame on enemies safely, as I can make space between me and the explosion. I haven't been able to get a single spellcaster past the lair yet, with the exception of summoners which I do exceptionally better with. I've managed to grab two runes and make it to D:25 with summoners, but for whatever reason I have a much harder time with normal spellcasters. I'll just have to keep playing as spellcasters until I get the hang of this.

[Lasty]

You can also train transmutations which will help towards necromutation later on should you want it.

Don't train up Transmutations for Necromutation. First, don't do it because Necromancy is a much more useful skill, and you need it as much as you need Transmutations. Second, don't do it because Necromutation takes a huge amount of experience to get castable and isn't really very good.

[joellercoaster]

I really considered the potion of speed to escape, however I knew that jumping spiders are capable of blinking right next to me and tangling me in cobweb

Not fast, though! They won't go from "Jumping spider X squares away" to "you are tangled up and dead", while you are hasted. This was much more important than the currently-fashionable discussion of whether your skills could have been more optimised (they could have, but this is not what killed you).

I have found Prism to be very un-useful against advancing enemies at the best of times. It's tactically useful sometimes, and very cool when you get it right, but when you need to kill a bunch of a dudes right now it's worse than useless

FWIW, the same situation you were in with coming unexpectedly on the Spider Nest hole has given my casters hassles too... Wolf Spiders are jerks.

[pickled_heretic]

I also notice you said you spent your second action walking away. This may be unorthodox advice but you may benefit from playing a naga or worshipping cheibriados for a bit. Mainly to train you on how foolish it is to walk away from things that are much faster than you and can murder you quickly (not as a rule but generally). I believe your first two actions were about as productive as pressing .. Would have been, and frankly the rest were not a lot better. I am not good, I die often and have only won twice, but I generally believe that I asses the cause of my deaths accurately.

I think that HOFE is a good compromise for a spellcaster. They are considerably more robust than any of the more popular choices for spellcasting and they have apts where they need to for fire magic. They also have a great fighting aptitude which is a skill that all characters want sooner or later. Being able to cast easily in orcish heavy armor is pretty sweet too since you can usually find something worth using in the mines.

I think your death had little to do with your skills. Keep in mind that haste makes you better at everything, not just running away. Don't just use it to escape, you should also assess when crawl is trying to murder you (clearly this was one such case) and scale your resource consumption appropriately.

[crate]

Mainly to train you on how foolish it is to walk away from things that are much faster than you and can murder you quickly (not as a rule but generally)

i dont necessarily agree with this

btw it is kind of silly how some particular spider entrance vaults (like this one) are probably the most dangerous thing you are likely to find on lair 1-6, especially since if you don't autoexplore you can avoid them entirely but if you do autoexplore you can't

[pickled_heretic]

I knew someone would take issue with that statement after I posted it. What I am trying to say is, repositioning against foes that are considerably faster than you or can blink around does not work the same way, chei is a fast way to learn this. Running would have probably been fine, so would fighting, but not both at the same time and the sequence of actions to me represents either a choice to try to do both or a poor understanding of fighting tactics against this type of enemy. Prism and walking away is a pretty common tactic against enemies that move about the same speed as you, it doesn't work against everything.

[Zargon]

You can also train transmutations which will help towards necromutation later on should you want it.

Don't train up Transmutations for Necromutation. First, don't do it because Necromancy is a much more useful skill, and you need it as much as you need Transmutations. Second, don't do it because Necromutation takes a huge amount of experience to get castable and isn't really very good.

Sorry - What I meant was that you can train Transmutations to give Ignite Poison more power and a lower failure rate, and it won't have been a waste of exp should you want to get Necromutation later on.

[joellercoaster]

btw it is kind of silly how some particular spider entrance vaults (like this one) are probably the most dangerous thing you are likely to find on lair 1-6, especially since if you don't autoexplore you can avoid them entirely but if you do autoexplore you can't

Yeah. I don't autoexplore Lair any more with most character (now Spider entrances and previously bee vaults). Which is a pity, because of the branches it's the one I most like just hitting 'o' in.

[Laraso]

FWIW, the same situation you were in with coming unexpectedly on the Spider Nest hole has given my casters hassles too... Wolf Spiders are jerks.

I don't really have a problem with any of the spiders aside from jumping spiders. On any character at any point in the game, jumping spiders are usually the most potentially deadly thing on the screen. It's basically a scorpion with double the everything, see invisible, blink close/away, and a pseudo-paralysis spell that completely ignores AC and MR and must be escaped like a throwing net (i.e. it never ever ends until you spend multiple turns trying to melee your way out). Not only that, but they often come in groups, unlike scorpions which are almost always by themselves with the exception of a few specific scorpion-themed vaults. Even if my character is powerful enough to kill them by simply sneezing in their direction, their blink close + web tangle abilities are enough to pose more of a threat to me than nearly any other monster on the screen. Seriously, jumping spiders are bad news.

I also notice you said you spent your second action walking away.

The idea behind taking a step back was not to try and escape, but to merely buy me some time before the prism went off. I was playing off the chance that the spiders might not use blink close just yet, so taking a step back would keep some space open between me and the spiders while the prism was detonating. Obviously that chance failed and two of them used blink close after I took the step back.

[mikee]

Jumping spider is my second favorite monster. Incidentally, they punish the extremely suboptimal practice of not training dodging.

[Moose]

Do tell, what's your first favorite monster?

[Igxfl]

Jumping spider is my second favorite monster. Incidentally, they punish the extremely suboptimal practice of not training dodging.

When would you opine that one should start training Dodging?

[mikee]

Do tell, what's your first favorite monster?

unseen horror

When would you opine that one should start training Dodging?

If you are not in heavy armour, then by the start of lair you should train or have trained to some extent dodging.