Friday, 5th February 2016, 16:44 by njvack
In general, ranged is good because you can hurt lots of monsters (most of them, really) when they can't do anything to you.
Missiles are especially good because they're full LoS range, do lots of damage, aren't resisted, you basically never run out of ammo, and you train a single skill to improve them. Also, they're more widely available than most spells -- you're going to find a ton of good crossbows once you start meeting yaktaurs, a bunch of tomahawks in Orc, a ton of large rocks once you start seeing cyclopses and stone giants, and so on. But Bolt of Fire exists in two books; if they don't spawn (or you haven't taken Vehumet who also may not offer it), sorry.
Yeah, conjurations can be great for crowd control but you can usually decide not to fight crowds in Crawl.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.