VpEn of Kiku - help me keep having fun !

[owentm]

So I'm normally a hack n' slash player - my only wins have come with big armored MiFis or MiBes, so this was a stretch for me. And most of my non-tabspam characters end with an early death. But dang it, I'm starting to become fond of this guy... if I can't sneak n' stab, I can peel away enemies/confuse, and when I see a wad of angry enemies I can typically pin them with Borgnjor's Vile Clutch and move away fast enough.

Dump: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/om/om.txt

My general plan was to start going towards air so I could use lightning bolt and tornado against things that resist, but looking at my available spells I think that was wasted training - now I'm considering using one of my scrolls of Amnesia to forget the lightning bolt I never casted & refocus towards earth.

Where should I go next? Start focusing that and go around Spider a bit? I tend to stay bloodless most of the time so rPois is covered.

My rapier worries me a bit: MR+++ works well most of the time but when I get unlucky with damage and *Slow hits I have had to pop an annoying amount of blink and teleport scrolls.

Help me avoid YASD and keep having fun

[TheMeInTeam]

Air's not bad, but more so for airstrike rather than lightning bolt. Airstrike shreds stuff like dancing weapons, and if you get summon lightning spire it can hit orbs of fire while the spire is between you + the OOF. Lots of fast, annoying flying enemies to kill with it otherwise too, including some otherwise dangerous stuff like floating eyes. Swiftness is probably worth your time too, especially if you take air up more.

As a warning, you'll need to have air magic in the ~24 range to use tornado. It is a powerful spell but you're probably not going to be able to use it much before Zot (maybe on occasion with brilliance when nearing end of depths/3rd rune).

You should probably be using a shield, since you're using a short blade. Even a buckler for now.

If you want to improve your offense, pick up that +1 dagger of speed lying around in the dungeon, buy one more enchant weapon scroll, and you have a +9 dagger of speed. Add confusing touch to your confuse + dazzling spray lineup. Dagger will do more stab damage for you and with speed you will proc stabs more often (you will also inflict confusion using CT very fast). This is especially good for VS since you have antimagic bite. You can spend basically the whole game stabbing stuff until you get tornado and such online for orbs of fire.

[petercordia]

You're also pretty close to infestation and if you ever find it simulacrum can be incredible - though beware simulacrum scales strongly with spellpower.
I echo the shields suggestion.

[owentm]

Thanks to you both for the advice! I've got two runes now (spider & swamp) and am going for silver next.

Air's not bad, but more so for airstrike rather than lightning bolt. Airstrike shreds stuff like dancing weapons

Airstrike made Elf:2 and that +7 unholy double blade playable - and the smite targeting makes it play nicely with my crowd of helpers...

You should probably be using a shield, since you're using a short blade. Even a buckler for now.

If you want to improve your offense, pick up that +1 dagger of speed lying around in the dungeon, buy one more enchant weapon scroll, and you have a +9 dagger of speed. Add confusing touch to your confuse + dazzling spray lineup

Done - and were you ever right: confuse/hibernate/dazzling spray makes stabbing so simple. I'm looking for a decent shield now - nothing has dropped but bucklers so far.

You're also pretty close to infestation

This has become my new favorite "room full of baddies" lever. Those death scarabs are really nasty