The Tavern

So I cant decide what would be more useful
OoD
Iron shot/bolt of magma
Or taking Venom bolt and poisonous cloud now in the hopes that I get access to some fire based magic later and can get ignite poison and poison arrow?


From other games, Im pretty sure that iron shot is better than the poison arrow as the outright damage tends to just make shorter work of things than the poison. OoD seems decent but the delay and swerve of the orb plus being dangerous in hallways makes me think otherwise.

Any advice? Currently following vehumet.

I believe PArrow is better against monsters without rPois, iron shot is better against monsters with rPois and PArrow is trash against poison immune targets. I don't know anything about your skills and I'm guessing you are tackling midgame (?), so it's hard to give advices. PArrow works nicely against midgame mobs.

Iron shot can't be bad, because you can use it against anything. But it's good to have a bolt spell for multiple enemies or enemies with shields.

Huh? Were these games in which you had poison arrow? =P Most of its damage is immediate, and it is a truckload of damage. In fact, for the past 4 years, poison arrow has been the best conjuration in the game, frequently receiving nerfs and still being good.

Yeah I had it. Iron shot just always seemed better, and didnt seem to be as inaccurate as I've seen people saying it was. Maybe ill give them both another try and see how they compare again.

Oh, but poison arrow is awesome against things that don't have the resistance. It has good accuracy and range and can kill most living things and there are a lot in every part of the dungeon, except demonic and the undead domains.

Poison arrow continues to be usable even against resisty things, it is merely not as overwhelmingly awesome. It still has great range, which is a lot of what is good about it.

Seriously. I always take PArrow over iron shot unless I've already got a significant earth investment, asssuming I have both available.

Poisonous Cloud is one of the best spells IMHO, especially for fragile races like DE. Poison Arrow is overrated IMHO so I would not train Poison magic if I didn't have Poisonous Cloud. Even then don't train Poison Magic above 10 (even less with Vehumet).
Iron Shot is quite different, you can train Earth all the way up to 27 if you want.

The nice thing about PArrow versus PCloud is that cloud kills baddies in like 15 turns and arrow kills them in like two. Cloud is absolutely more MP-efficient (against crowds) and great versus things you can kite but you can't safely kite everything.

Clouds let you kill things you can't see, too.

Poison arrow has 2 more range than iron shot, and can deal more damage to most targets. It does not disappoint.

I regularly use cloud mechanics to poison enemies well beyond LOS with PCloud. It really does make Elf:3 a joke and is useable up until you start working on runes 4+.