New book of Air

[sanka]

I've just noticed that Mephitic Cloud was replaced with Lightning bolt in the air elementalist starting book in trunk. I'd like to give some feedback as I tried to play with air elementalist of them, but also to ask some advice (maybe I should create it in the advice section?)

I agree that Mephitic Cloud is overpowered, and in addition it is very common in starting books (still two backgrounds are starting with it). So this may be a good change - but in my experience it made the air elementalist the hardest magic background.

Lightning bolt is absolutely not useful - by the time it's reliable, I've usually found something else, Level 5 double school spells are not very useful in a starting books (sometimes maybe when you are unlucky), in fact I do not like them in starting books - I like more when I find something myself, and work towards it. Also, I found that early, even if I can cast it excellent, lightning bolt is not very reliable. It misses two often, I feeled with low power it lacks the stopping power of other bolt spells. Sometimes it does no more damage than shock, and it cost too much food and mana to kite with it with swiftness.

My problem with the background is that its very hard with a large number of early threats. I know that meph cloud was too strong - it completely trivialized most of them. Ogres and centaurs are defeatable. Melee monsters are not dangerous. I don't count uniques as they supposed to be hard, and some of them are still defeatable - mostly melee ones and slingers. Casters are extremly dangerous tough - repel misseles does not protect, and shock is not powerful enough.

But I'd like to hear some advice how do you deal with orc wizards and orc priests now. Kiting is not working - they do more damage on range, and shock is not powerful enough to kill them without bouncing - which is very hard to set up with them. They are very common even at low level, sometimes there are 5-6 in one level, so leaving them behind is not a good option. I tried : melee them, when I was out of mana - despite I tried to build up my weapon skill from the first level, I was too weak. To reach static discharge as early as possible: since it's only melee range, it was not always useful.

Conclusion: from one of the strongest (overpowered?) backgrounds this change made a little frustrating background. I needed to burn trough my resources, and retreat till there were no way to go, and usually died in running around with swiftness, trying to avoid undefetable treats. Even with some luky finds (like ring of mana on D2), I was not able to reach the temple. Just to compare, I tried fire/ice/earth elementalists, and it was easy to reach the temple most of the time. It's maybe just me tough - I think more experienced players can win with harder combinations.

Maybe just stupid, but wouldn''t it be better to replace Lighting bolt with air strike? I know that air strike is not supposed to be in a starting book, but I'm not sure why not. (Maybe smite targetting? Then whats with LRD?) It would make the backround much stronger, sure. But mephitic cloud is much stronger than airstrike early on.

[LunarHarp]

Once you get good at bolt bouncing everything you fight with shock, lightning can be extremely strong. You can kill a dragon in one hit with it by quadzapping. I like this change since it gives AE a viable spell through the midgame like all of the other elemental starts have so you don't feel you have to worship one of the magic gods to get other spells.

Orc priests and wizards can be taken down with shock. It is all about bolt bouncing.

[sanka]

Well, not for me - altough I may do it wrong. Thats because to bounce you need to position yourself and the enemy. Wizards and priests sometimes damage you really fast. Priest can smite you if they can see you, so kiting is not a good option - so I usually cannot withdraw to a place where I can bounce. Wizards blink or move fast (if not confuse you) - hard to force them to a place where you can quadzap them.

But maybe I'm not very good with bouncing.

Also, I found that Static Discharge is level 3 now - it can be very strong. I like the changes, altough I lost a dozen new air elementalist before the temple - while in 0.8 I was almost garantueed to reach it, it was very easy.

[Jeremiah]

Haha, I've tried starting a number of kenku air elementalists myself; never mind trying to set up quadzaps, I've found it difficult enough to set up situations where the bolts don't bounce and kill me. At least not without walking halfway across the dungeon and having all the monsters chasing me.

[absolutego]

Also, I found that Static Discharge is level 3 now - it can be very strong. I like the changes, altough I lost a dozen new air elementalist before the temple - while in 0.8 I was almost garantueed to reach it, it was very easy.

reaching the temple was easy, but the problems came later, when your sole offensive weapon against anything poison-resistant was a level 1 spell (with a small power cap), and a pretty bad, short range level 4 spell. it wasn't rare to reach your first hydra with no other tools, beyond what training you put into melee, so it was a life of running away. i find this setup more appropriate in principle. (haven't tried it yet; i started a KeAE a few days ago on CDO and i had to use the pre-release version with the old book... you may guess how it worked out for me. bad, baaad ghosts and no lair by d:12 didn't help either.)

[sanka]

Well, I never had any problem with them after the temple. Usually you need not to kill a hydra, you can run from it with swiftness. And I usually have some wands by then, since I usually never used any. And a lot of potions. Altough sometimes the orc mines were easier than lair with an air elementalist, with mephitic cloud.

I liked that I need to build up something to face with the middle game. Every game was different. I found a fairy dragon armour - I picked up a buckler, worshipped okawaru, and had pretty good defenses even against a hydra (skill boosts were really useful). I found a book with summon elemental - air elementals killed everything. I found a book with sticky flame - I branched into fire. Basically every time I reached the temple, I evolved into something strong, but different every time. (Of course sometimes I died because of stupidity - but I'm not a very good player, and it was no fault of the character being weak. Usually I die when its strong

I'm not a very good player - yet I think that caster backrounds are too good because they give you enough power for a long time. I do not think that >4 level spells should be in starting books.

[KoboldLord]

I'm skeptical of this new book, but it's because I think it might be too good. I don't think a starting book should completely cover your needs for the bulk of the game all by its lonesome, but the Lightning Bolt is an extremely powerful attack to pair with the highly desirable Swiftness and Repel Missiles. It pretty much demolishes anything pre-Zot that isn't completely immune in one or two casts, as long as you have a good bouncing gallery set up.

Giving the book of air a high-powered nuke also reduces variation between elementalists. I suppose if there are plans to merge them eventually they might as well all be elemental cannons, but I rather liked how the old air elementalists were subtly nudged towards hybridization. Ideally, all four elementalists would have wildly different play styles, and handing out Lightning Bolt at the start of the game seems to be heading in the other direction.

[sanka]

I think magic backgrounds would be more different and interesting if we nerf all of the starting books. Remove fireball and bolt of fire form the fire book, freezing cloud from the ice, and lightning bolt from the air book. Elementalists are my favorite classes, yet I think a nerf like this would do more good to them than bad.

About differentiating from wizards - I would also remove mephitic cloud from the wizard book, and only let the venom mage start with it.

Some other starting books can also be nerfed by removing the highest level spells. Haste need not to be in a starting book. Conjurers also get level 6 conjurations, I do not like it.

Its a personal taste, but I myself think that the starting equipment should be useful only up to lair or something at most.

Summoners, necromancers are fine, and I'm not sure about invisiblity - the stabber role is very special.

But maybe I should start an other thread about this, if anybody thinks it's a good idea.

[SinsI]

As a standalone, this change should be reverted.
If you want to remove Mephitic Cloud from starting books, you also have to at least nerf orcish priests - their overpowered Smite is only countered by easy availability of equally overpowered abilities like Berserk or Mephitic Cloud.

[Jeremiah]

I think the problem with Mephitic Cloud is not just that it's overpowered, but that it's so overpowered compared to everything else that it trivialises the early game to such an extent that if you rely on it you will never learn to be a better player. Then you will be in real trouble when you get to the stage where it is no longer effective.

This is why I have been deliberately playing backgrounds that do not get it in their starting book (though I've still always learned it if I find it later.)

This is also why the new Grinder is a good thing, as he is a potentially dangerous early threat that is not negated by Mephitic Cloud.

[LunarHarp]

You can probably tell that I for one love this change. It makes AE more interesting and less like wizards. It puts AE in with the other elementalists in the fact that you no longer need to go with one of the magic gods just to get the spells you need to get though the lair. Want to make a KeAE hybrid worshiping okawaru? Ashenzari? Why should IE get all the options? This makes it possible to not have to worry about getting more books.

Also as awesome as lightning bolt is, as soon as you hit an area with lots of metal walls, or a large open area (grr shoals) you have to rethink your options since there is nothing to bounce off of. It is also stupidly loud and can wake up lots of baddies.

On the other hand, didn't they add lightning bolt to the ice book of conjurations instead of freezing cloud? This does in fact make AE very similar to Cj, only with Cj you get BOTH meph and lightning bolt. So that is 3 starts with meph now: wz, vm, and Cj.

(bolt bouncing in a nutshell real quick) When in doubt set up a bizap on a corner. Aim at the wall behind the enemy and not the enemy itself. There is a thread somewhere about this in Advice. The crawlwiki page is all wrong since bounching changed in 0.6. Maybe I should be the one to update that.

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#o# <- aim on this wall space
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[Waywinkle]

I've found getting the hang of bouncing hard as well. Both the multizap thread and the wiki were confusing to me. Perhaps it is because I use tiles where most of the advice is in ascii mode, I would ave though this made little difference though. I can see what you mean from your illustration though.

[Jeremiah]

On the other hand, didn't they add lightning bolt to the ice book of conjurations instead of freezing cloud? This does in fact make AE very similar to Cj, only with Cj you get BOTH meph and lightning bolt. So that is 3 starts with meph now: wz, vm, and Cj.

I think if anything, Mephitic Cloud should be removed from the conjurer's book, as IMO conjurers should focus on attacking/damaging spells - maybe they should have Throw Icicle instead, though this would probably create too much overlap with Ice Elementalist.

[KoboldLord]

Throw Icicle should not be in anybody's starting book. It's flat-out too good, and an elementalist shouldn't start with the best spell in the whole game for ignoring their own focus school's elemental weakness.

[Sjohara]

Swapping out Mephitic Cloud for Lightning Bolt was an excellent change for two reasons, neither of which is "Mephitic Cloud is overpowered":

1) Air Elementalists had no natural power progression with the original book. Shock is excellent for the first three or so floors, but its power caps really early and requires multizaps to be worth the turn it takes to cast it pretty soon after that. Its direct damage is so weak that even enemies under Mephitic Cloud often won't die even if you throw your entire mana pool at them (especially since multizapping a confused enemy is basically impossible). Since Static Shock is weak and dangerous and there was no other nuke in the book, before long you need to respond to almost everything with "Mephitic Cloud, Swiftness, and run like hell". You'd have to leave huge chunks of levels unexplored due to danger, getting further and further behind the experience curve until you finally got crushed. With just the starting spellbook I don't think it was even mathematically possible to not die to the very first Spiny Frog you saw unless you had a strong attack wand or a scroll of teleportation. You were 100% reliant on finding another spellbook early to survive, except spellbook generation doesn't really pick up until late Lair, and relevant gods start gifting them at about the same time, and Air Elementalists had no chance to survive that long without phenomenal luck in item generation. It wasn't good design.

2) Air magic is loaded with fun and unique mechanics on its nukes. Lightning Bolt bounces and multizaps. Airstrike is smite-targeted. Chain Lightning has its quirky semi-AoE behavior. I don't even know how Orb Lightning works. It's all very distinct from the point-and-shoot workings of the vast majority of fire, ice, and earth nukes. But what did the Air Elementalist class get for mid- and high-level spells in their starting book? Frigging Mephitic Cloud (which everyone and their mother has) and Static Discharge (the one dud in the air nuke lineup). Even if the gods shine on you and you actually find a decent spellbook before your situation is totally hopeless, odds are pretty high that it's not going to be the Book of the Sky, so you wind up with Mystic Blast or the starting spellbook for another, better elementalist, with a good possibility of never seeing the real air magic in spite of playing the class devoted entirely to it. Total waste of potential.

Before the change, I started dozens of air mages, all of whom died quickly and humiliatingly without a snowball's chance of reaching the midgame (typically dying on Lair 1 or a bit before after having been hopelessly outclassed in every single encounter over multiple consecutive floors) except for the one who found a ridiculously early Double Sword, worshipped Vehumet, found a Book of Fire a few steps from the stairs on Lair 1, and never cast an air spell again for the rest of the game (except Swiftness, Repel Missiles, and Mephitic Cloud, but EVERY spellcaster uses those spells to supplement whatever it is that they normally do). The very first Air Mage I started in trunk cruised relatively smoothly to the Lair relying on honest-to-goodness air magic nukes in all their bouncy and positioning-dependant glory. (Until I died in the spider vault. That place is a deathtrap. I've never not died there, nor have I ever seen a single piece of loot, and yet I keep going in every time I see it.) Lightning Bolt is by no means too weak or too late. On a High Elf I had it at Very Good by dungeon level 6 and Excellent by the time I was through 7. You need to be cautious before then (and still afterwards too, really) making sure you pick your battles and stay close to favorable multizapping geography (corridors with corners in them, mostly), but with Swiftness and Repel Missiles you generally have the tools you need to do that. The class actually works now. Mephitic Cloud isn't necessary. It'd be useful, as it is for everybody, but you've got enough power and synergy in your other spells to survive without it.

[KoboldLord]

1) Air Elementalists had no natural power progression with the original book.

This isn't really a problem. Why do casters need to have everything they want for the entire game in their starting spellbook? If you were playing a melee character, you'd start with a +0/+0 hand axe and you'd be scrambling for absolutely any upgrade at all. Suddenly floor trash that is beneath an air elementalist's contempt is more precious than gold to you.

Shock is excellent for the first three or so floors, but its power caps really early and requires multizaps to be worth the turn it takes to cast it pretty soon after that. Its direct damage is so weak that even enemies under Mephitic Cloud often won't die even if you throw your entire mana pool at them (especially since multizapping a confused enemy is basically impossible).

Perhaps your tactics are the problem. Air elementalists use Mephitic Cloud for disabling casters or particularly fast monsters, and in the early game the relevant targets are pretty squishy. If you're trying to kill a durable monster such as a hill giant, just lure it into a bouncing gallery.

Since Static Shock is weak and dangerous and there was no other nuke in the book, before long you need to respond to almost everything with "Mephitic Cloud, Swiftness, and run like hell". You'd have to leave huge chunks of levels unexplored due to danger, getting further and further behind the experience curve until you finally got crushed.

I have no idea how you make it past the early game with a non-caster.

With just the starting spellbook I don't think it was even mathematically possible to not die to the very first Spiny Frog you saw unless you had a strong attack wand or a scroll of teleportation.

Perhaps you shouldn't rush the Lair if you don't yet have the means to deal with its denizens. The majority of starting backgrounds have no way to deal with spiny frogs with their starting equipment.

You were 100% reliant on finding another spellbook early to survive, except spellbook generation doesn't really pick up until late Lair, and relevant gods start gifting them at about the same time, and Air Elementalists had no chance to survive that long without phenomenal luck in item generation. It wasn't good design.

An altar to Vehumet is all-but-guaranteed since the only possible overflow vault that an air elementalist couldn't get into was the one inside a ring of trees. Her first book gift for air elementalists had Lightning Bolt in it, and you could easily get that first book before entering Lair if you were so inclined. Certainly by Lair 3 or so. Poisonous Cloud and Mystic Blast came in the second book, and at that point you're set until Vaults 8 or Elf 5.

Sif Muna and Kiku both gift spellbooks with Lair-killers in them, too, so it isn't like you're even restricted to Vehumet.

The class actually works now.

It worked fine before, too. It works fine now, too, but I think that the old version had a unique play style that was not duplicated anywhere else. Backgrounds are defined as much by what they lack as by what they have.

[Sjohara]

Perhaps your tactics are the problem. Air elementalists use Mephitic Cloud for disabling casters or particularly fast monsters, and in the early game the relevant targets are pretty squishy. If you're trying to kill a durable monster such as a hill giant, just lure it into a bouncing gallery.

Hill giants aren't nearly as dangerous as, say, a Spiny Frog or a pair of War Hounds, and those aren't even considered out of depth at the problematic stage of the game. Luring the nastiest thing on the floor into a multizap gauntlet is all well and good when the rest of the level is all orcs and gnolls, but at some point I'd find that damn near every monster in every direction on a floor is unkillable with anything less, which makes it extremely difficult to map out and clear a good multizap gauntlet to fight in (assuming the floor has any at all, which some don't). I'd wind up barely able to fight my way through mundane threats, unable to get a good foothold on the level, and eventually things would descend into enough chaos that I had no choice but dive in hopes that the next level was easier, which of course it never was.

Perhaps you shouldn't rush the Lair if you don't yet have the means to deal with its denizens. The majority of starting backgrounds have no way to deal with spiny frogs with their starting equipment.

The stuff in the main dungeon a couple of levels past the lair entrance isn't really any less dangerous. Plus, y'know, spiny frogs can spawn there too.

An altar to Vehumet is all-but-guaranteed since the only possible overflow vault that an air elementalist couldn't get into was the one inside a ring of trees. Her first book gift for air elementalists had Lightning Bolt in it, and you could easily get that first book before entering Lair if you were so inclined. Certainly by Lair 3 or so. Poisonous Cloud and Mystic Blast came in the second book, and at that point you're set until Vaults 8 or Elf 5.

Sif Muna and Kiku both gift spellbooks with Lair-killers in them, too, so it isn't like you're even restricted to Vehumet.

Did they change Vehumet's gifts recently? The last time I took Vehumet as an Air Elementalist the lowest-level air spell I got was Chain Lightning, and since I'd been relying on fire spells, Mystic Blast, and Orb of Destruction since like spell level 3 going back to air magic for a level 8 spell wasn't really worth the effort.

But that's not really the point. Pretty much any level 2+ nuke of any school from any source was sufficient to give you a chance of getting yourself through the rough patch; the problem is that both Vehumet and Sif Muna don't give up their first spellbooks until five stars of piety (I think), and I tended to be sitting at around three when the downward spiral described above kicked in (and your odds of finding a good spellbook just lying on the ground earlier than that aren't stellar either; in my experience, natural spellbook generation doesn't really pick up until about the same stage in the game where the gifts have started). If the first gifted spellbook came about four dungeon levels' worth of piety earlier it'd render the problem moot, but they don't.

Kikubaaqudgha does start way earlier, but Pain isn't really a big improvement over Shock and Raise Dead-type spells are pretty firmly at odds with the rest of an Air Elementalist's tactics. Vampiric Draining might help, I guess; I never actually tried. But then you have almost no chance of getting to play around with higher-level air magic, and someone who just goes ahead and starts as a Necromancer is probably going to have Swiftness and Repel Missiles by the Vaults or earlier anyway, so that kind of takes the fun out of starting as an Air Elementalist to begin with.

It worked fine before, too. It works fine now, too, but I think that the old version had a unique play style that was not duplicated anywhere else. Backgrounds are defined as much by what they lack as by what they have.

What unique playstyle was that? Cast Mephitic Cloud on something and whittle it down with peashooter spells? Venom Mages, Wizards, and Conjurers all do the same thing, except they're better at it because their nukes are better-suited to the job than Shock. Cast Mephitic Cloud and Swiftness and play as a cautious melee skirmisher? Replace Swiftness with the functionally-similar Spider Form and you've described the Transmuter's early game precisely, except they do massively more melee damage through their forms than the average Air Elementalist (unless you find a really sweet weapon). Stalkers also work similarly without the Swiftness, or Crusaders without the Mephitic Cloud. The Air Elementalist's real claim to fame is the multizap and the tricky positioning requirements that come with it, which Mephitic Cloud doesn't play into at all while Lightning Bolt does. Big packs of enemies in wide-open rooms are probably more dangerous now than they were before; the difference is that with the new spellbook you can afford to get your ass handed to you now and then and make up for it later in more favorable circumstances, whereas with the old spellbook "favorable circumstances" quickly stopped being a thing that existed, at least until you finally got a new spellbook and ceased to play like anything that could be called an Air Elementalist at all.

Look at a Wizard or Conjurer or Fire or Ice or Earth Elementalist or any other caster in the game (except maybe Stalkers) and you'll see a character who gets progressively stronger or gains access to progressively more tactical options as they advance in level at least until experience level ten or so (usually later) without relying on five-star piety or extremely lucky drops, usually with room for slower advancement purely through increasing spellpower for a good while after. Then look at the old Air Elementalist and see that their offensive power and tactical diversity has totally peaked at level three and it's all downhill from there, at least until you get spells or equipment good enough to allow you to effectively switch your profession to something completely different (a fluke Book of the Sky find notwithstanding).

You can argue that every other spellcasting background in the game is overpowered if you want to, I guess, but the Air Elementalist was clearly the odd one out in terms of early-midgame prospects. It might take dozens of turns and a huge amount of non-hostile space for a level 10 Air Elementalist to set up a single Shock quadrazap, and they'd probably do less damage than an Ice Elementalist casting Throw Icicle one time, which you can do absolutely anywhere, multiple turns in a row if you want, with no restrictions except your mana. And that was the absolute PEAK of the Air Elementalist's damage potential. Why the disparity? It wasn't a playstyle, it was a handicap. The current Air Elementalist has fewer offensive and defensive options than most other casters when in the open against multiple foes (no Mephitic Cloud to disable most of them, no Ozocubu's Armor to slug it out in melee, no Throw Foo-esque nuke both time- and mana-efficient enough to weed most of them out on the approach and still have enough juice left to survive against the rest at close range), but more offensive power than average when you're in a position to control the environment and get brutal Lightning multizaps. To me, that seems a lot more sensible and a lot more distinctive than the way they used to be.

[KoboldLord]

but at some point I'd find that damn near every monster in every direction on a floor is unkillable with anything less, which makes it extremely difficult to map out and clear a good multizap gauntlet to fight in (assuming the floor has any at all, which some don't). I'd wind up barely able to fight my way through mundane threats, unable to get a good foothold on the level, and eventually things would descend into enough chaos that I had no choice but dive in hopes that the next level was easier, which of course it never was.

I don't consider myself an especially good player, but once I got the basic playing style of the background down I stopped experiencing this problem. Perhaps the situation for you is the same. You can't play the old air elementalist like you would an ice elementalist.

Did they change Vehumet's gifts recently? The last time I took Vehumet as an Air Elementalist the lowest-level air spell I got was Chain Lightning, and since I'd been relying on fire spells, Mystic Blast, and Orb of Destruction since like spell level 3 going back to air magic for a level 8 spell wasn't really worth the effort.

The Book of Conjurations [cold+air] now has Lightning Bolt in it. I'll grant it was a little tricky to make it to Mystic Blast before that change, though. Poisonous Cloud is also a magnificent air spell that can clear several midgame branches almost on its own.

But that's not really the point. Pretty much any level 2+ nuke of any school from any source was sufficient to give you a chance of getting yourself through the rough patch; the problem is that both Vehumet and Sif Muna don't give up their first spellbooks until five stars of piety (I think), and I tended to be sitting at around three when the downward spiral described above kicked in (and your odds of finding a good spellbook just lying on the ground earlier than that aren't stellar either; in my experience, natural spellbook generation doesn't really pick up until about the same stage in the game where the gifts have started). If the first gifted spellbook came about four dungeon levels' worth of piety earlier it'd render the problem moot, but they don't.

Six stars of piety. Sounds like you need to manage your piety better. Remember that Vehumet's piety decays rapidly, so find a target-rich environment and make with the killing. Orc 1-3 are almost perfectly safe for either version of air elementalist, and they're good for around two stars of piety if you don't dawdle.

For Sif Muna, lure some of those big bruisers you're skipping into a bouncing gallery and start victory dancing. You can't get piety with her unless you have xp.

What unique playstyle was that?

The old air elementalist was a ranged harrier. Manage your line-of-sight to stay out of range of your enemies and lure them into kill zones you've set up in advance. Mephitic Cloud is less an active killing tool for the build than a way to mitigate the risks of luring monsters around. If a surprise pack of orcs suddenly show up and you're sandwiched between the hill giant you were baiting and these new arrivals, you Meph and run.

With the new air elementalists, there's no reason to resort to this because you can just kill everything with Lightning Bolt. You don't even have to bounce it, most of the time. The 'Kill Everything with a Big Conjurations-Style Nuke' playstyle is a valid one, certainly, but how many backgrounds do we really need that are made up of Basic Popgun, Bigger Gun, Nuke, and Buff You Never Need to Use Because Everything Dies Too Fast to Hurt You?

You can argue that every other spellcasting background in the game is overpowered if you want to, I guess, but the Air Elementalist was clearly the odd one out in terms of early-midgame prospects.

I'm less concerned with raw power than the fact that all elemental conjurations are basically the same, and making the one special standout more bland is not moving in a direction I like.

they'd probably do less damage than an Ice Elementalist casting Throw Icicle one time, which you can do absolutely anywhere, multiple turns in a row if you want, with no restrictions except your mana.

Yes, I'd be willing to agree that Throw Icicle is wildly inappropriate for a starting spellbook.