Dungeon gives

[siprus]

So i've been crawling around early dungeon with this demonspawn skald. (few days ago i got almsot every character to dungeon 7-11, but today almost every one dies to ogres or gnolls in dungeon 1-3, or just by some adder or hobgoblin)

Then i'm doing this again and dungeon first gifts me with buckler of protection! I decide to train buckler skill to 5 to be able to cast spells normally, then i get randart chainmail with +8 enchantment! (+rC). This of course makes my every spell uncast able... So should i just forget about spell casting for now and go with gifts i have got.

My orginal plan was to eventually learn haste and ring of flames and go melee with some supports spells, but am i probably (semi probable) to find almost as good or as good armor which would allow me to cast. (or can i learn to cast spells even with this medium armor without hampering my other build too much, and at which point i should start pumping points in casting skills)

I plan to use demonblade as i'm demonspawn, and i plan to worship ashenzari. (though i'm i'm not gonna cast spells i plan to go with some other god, maybe makhleb). Since I have never succeeded a run i'll probably go with only 3 runes, though if things are looking well i might test my luck on extended end game.

So is it resonable to expect that i'll be casting spells again someday?

[Lasty]

You can definitely cast spells wearing chain. Even platemail is fine. It just means you have to train your spell schools and/or raise your Int that much further. If you want your spells online faster, train Charms to get success rates up. If you want better AC, train Armour. Incidentally, the latter will also lower your casting failure, but not by nearly as much as training Charms will.

My recommendation would be to train Armour to at least 10 before you put much more effort into Charms, since it'll significantly improve your AC (read: survivability), and it sounds like you plan to go toe-to-toe with foes.

[siprus]

Ya, shroud, reg and haste ftw. I should still probably train my melee skill to minimum delay, correct?

[ackack]

Well, if you're planning on killing things mostly through melee, then yeah, mindelay is a good idea. What are you using right now? It's probably going to be a while before you have a demon blade. If you find a good scimitar you could use that for a while. I would probably think about training to great sword skill anyway and using one until you find a dblade.

[siprus]

I have +4 +4 scimitar of flaming, and i'm pretty happy with it. I'm not gonna use great sword 'cause i got such nice buckler. Gives me 15SH which gotta be worth something (even enchanted since i was having trouble wtih 9-11 cyclops and some elites. (haven't found single potion of might, and used my berserk potion to kill orc warrior who i started fighting, cause hubris of my new armor.

Finally found the lair doing, pretty good expect there are few skeletal warrior on level lair is located... I fear the might gang bang me when i leave the lair... I noticed one of them with ? mark be fore i went into the lair... i hope he wanders off. I have 5 points in evocations to help me with uniques... though at this point i'll probably need at least 5 more to overcome MR of uniques I might run into lair and later branches. But since i'm doing pretty well, i think skill investment there might be wasted. Instead i should focus on armor skill.

Anyway my skills set:
Fighting: 8 Longswords 16*, armour 6, shields 7, evocations 7.9*

*= skills gets bonus from ashenzari.

Key items: Scimitar of flaming* +4, +4, buckler of protection* +3, ring of evasion* +3, amulet of resist corrosion*.



*= items is cursed.

Stats str 12 int 17 dex 13

Plenty of scrolls to enchant stuff even further but i'd rather save them for later.

Plenty of wands, including paralysis, fireball, teleport, confusion and digging. Also plenty of scrolls but most important ones being: Scroll of blinking (used 3 to get out of fight which didn't go too well), 4 scrolls of teleportation and i'm saving 3 scrolls of remove curse for future use.

Edit: And enough perma food to cause carrying problems. And clock and gloves.

Edit2! LoL found demon trident of draining! Should I change to that and stick with it for rest of the game? I have ashenzari so i guess i can switch my skills around a bit? Though just changing 14 skill point investment feels bit silly + i have relatively good weapon anyway. On other hand i might have just got my hands to my potential end game weapon :/ Oh and got boots and clock of cold resistance clock is +2 and boots are +1. I'm starting to get pretty exited by this run

Edit3! And now i found hat with +2dex +2int which is perfect, since i can't use helmets with my horn... my luck with this run is starting to get out of control.



NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! I died in elven halls level 2 T_T. tried to fight Wiglaf, but tesla appeared from behind corner. Teleport scroll saved teleported me nect to and elf priest, who i killed, but while waiting for my health to return night elf conjurer found me and blasted me to death with first fire ball he could cast :/ Well I knew tesla was on the level... should have just found some other place of the dungeon to search expecially when i found the other unique... it just didn't occur to me that they might both show up at same time. Would have probably survived had i quaffed potion of berserk rage as soon as I saw then conjurer :/ Well with those gear drops i got i can't blame anyone else than myself for this death.

[Igxfl]

That's okay -- you just learned a lot about the game and probably got way better. That's the main goal of characters until you start getting near Zot.

[ackack]

I have +4 +4 scimitar of flaming, and i'm pretty happy with it. I'm not gonna use great sword 'cause i got such nice buckler. Gives me 15SH which gotta be worth something (even enchanted since i was having trouble wtih 9-11 cyclops and some elites. (haven't found single potion of might, and used my berserk potion to kill orc warrior who i started fighting, cause hubris of my new armor.

Oof. That buckler is a terrible use of enchant armour. The extra value of a little extra SH is almost certainly not as good as extra AC (since AC protects from basically everything, SH doesn't). Also, while protection is an excellent brand for a buckler, that buckler is not strong enough to build your entire character around. Even if you found a good 1h (dtrident of drain is pretty good although that is a somewhat inferior brand) you would probably want to move up to an actual shield at some point, or even switch to a buckler with resistance.

[siprus]

Plan was to change it to a shield eventually, but i felt that putting enough points in shield skill to wield medium shield without penalty would be waste. I couldn't enchant my armor cause it was a randart, and gloves and clock were bit meh, since they didn't have any special property. (i hoped i'd get better from lair or orcish mines). And i felt that dungeon was getting tiny bit too dangerous, to my gear at that time (I didn't have as many potions as i would have liked to so i feared few unlucky shots from cyclops which seemed risky enemies at the time).

On hindsight i could have saved them for later, or used them on gloves/clock if I really needed more protection.

[Sandman25]

I would recommend avoiding Elf (even first two levels) until you are "extremely resistant to hostile enchantments", at least for melee characters without rod with Poisonous Cloud. Those characters usually have much easier time in D10-20.

[Volteccer_Jack]

i would recommend avoiding elf

[BlackSheep]

On hindsight i could have saved them for later, or used them on gloves/clock if I really needed more protection.

You're better off with fully enchanted gloves now than with fully enchanted gloves of strength or whatever 20000 turns from now. If you had fully enchanted gloves, hat, cloak, boots, etc., I'd recommend saving the scroll over using it on a buckler.

[siprus]

So... the lessons of the story is to avoid elf, i'll keep that in mind. Going down spawn harder and harder uniques. Is level(of the unique) standard for each dungeon or branch level. For example: elf 2 will have same chance of deadly uniques no matter the order i clear or visit the dungeon or my character level, or does it depend on something else.

[raukolith]

do not do subbranches in the order you meet them in... elf is generally left until right before zot5 iirc

the difficulty of levels are fixed, it doesn't matter your level or how far you went down

[siprus]

Is there a list of dungeon level which lists all levels in increasing level of unique spawns

[raukolith]

each unique has a list of different levels it could spawn on

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Unique

i don't think anyone's made a list of the levels and the uniques that can spawn on it though

[daggaz]

If you have high MR, at least one pip of rF+, preferably conservation, and can kill things fairly quickly without making tons of noise, then Elf is pretty straightforward and can be a great place to dip into if, for example, you are still looking for a buckler for your build.. Except for the vault. I would steer well clear of the vault (or even the third floor entirely) until you have done the entire dungeon and can kill things pretty much by looking at them.

Too bad you died. There is always next time and next time and next time and next time and next time and next time....

[njvack]

do not do subbranches in the order you meet them in... elf is generally left until right before zot5 iirc

Whaaaa? Regular draconian packs are probably as nasty as the stuff you'll meet in the Elf final vault. It's not a place to screw around (and yes, you do want good MR) but it's not, like, Vaults:5 either.

[rebthor]

Well, I agree to an extent with raukolith in that I almost never do elf, but if I do it's right before I do Z and especially Z:5 if I'm short on resists or something. That's mostly so I can ROFLSTOMP pretty much everything there and don't waste time and turns and don't have any significant danger.

[siprus]

Hmm :/ I'm having somewhat promising start with my another demonspawn skald. I'm starting to radiate miasma. I really like Ashenzari on this build and weapon skill boost in early game is huge. I wonder if i should just go polearm and poke people form distance who are too afraid of my smell :/

On other hand then i can't curse my weapon, and ashenzari weapon boost bring huge advantage mid game.

Currently i have 2 points in short sword and 6 in fighting, (as i plan to ditch short swords as soon i find a decent long blade. But on other hand polearms too feel like a good idea.

Is mid game skill boost worth trading for poking over miasma clouds?

[BlackSheep]

Why can't you curse your weapon if you use polearms?

[siprus]

Need to chop my food.

[BlackSheep]

So use a halberd.

[Kate]

Or uh, just press c because you can always butcher with any weapon.

[BlackSheep]

Or that

[Igxfl]

"You carefully kebab the corpse. You have 3 chunks of yak flesh."

[bobross419]

Why wouldn't you do elf? Its so easy and usually contains some decent loot. I usually do it after clearing D to V but before I do V as long as I've got some decent spells on my casters or a wand of dig/disint on a melee.

[siprus]

Another DSsk going...

This time I have been relatively unblessed in item department, but my mutations have carried me throug. I'm have tier 3 Life steal and spikes + tier 2 Black scales, and I'm augmented by High health. (Nice combo btw. Stuff kills itself around me and if stuff dies i get health, if i stay high health I get boost.) And again i'm worshiping ashenzari.

I was exploring lair untill i ran into some dire elephant After trying to fight with it i decided that it's probably risky.

I went down orc untill i found orc warlord, which i thought might prove to be quite a challange, so i decided that I'm not gonna do it straight away.

Explorer bit of elf 1, but after ranning into aizul (and Nessos) I teleported away (this time with health to spare) And got out as fast as I could.

After that i went few level down the dungeon, And found Cursed Demonblade of ziggaraut +7, +3 (venom, contam, rPois, rElec, MR Dex +2) So that contam probably makes it useless weapon, even with the nice resists? I currently have Scimitar of Flaming +4, +6.

How long should i dwel deeper inte dungeon? And what do you think would be the easiest place to continue from? In lair there was slime pit, snakes pit and shoal.

My important skills with buff are:

Longswords 19
Throwing 10
armor 10
doding 12
shields 7.5 (i have a buckler, but haven't found a real shield.)
charms 10
necro, trans, poision 4.4
evocations 15

I have few spell books but none of them feels like it really supports my build. (my plan is to get utility/buffing spells and deal most of my damage with my sword) I guess hex is probably best for now. I have Hexbook, airbook, few transmutation books, ice book and necromancy book. Of those only invisibility(hexbook) would probably fit my play style, but i feel hexes is bit big investment just for invi. (+ also bit boring)

As writing this i ran into mummy priest. Which forced me to once again TP out.

So any tips where should i go next. (btw I have flight spell, if that makes shaol easy?)

[Hurkyl]

After that i went few level down the dungeon, And found Cursed Demonblade of ziggaraut +7, +3 (venom, contam, rPois, rElec, MR Dex +2) So that contam probably makes it useless weapon, even with the nice resists? I currently have Scimitar of Flaming +4, +6.

Check the description; doesn't it only contaminate upon unwielding? And IIRC, it's not enough to make you glow (assuming you're clean to begin with)

Looking at the wiki, it says it changed in 0.12 to the behavior I just described.

[Volteccer_Jack]

It's only on unwielding, and it's enough contam to possibly mutate you once.

More worrying is the +3 enchantment and the venom brand imo. Since you can't easily swap, I'd just stick with the +6 flaming scimitar.

[Amnesiac]

I wouldn't use it

[Tiktacy]

I wouldn't use it

Unless you are having issues with poison resist and elec, I completely agree. And even then...