Air or Earth on my DeWz, Veh, circumstances inside

[morik]

I've done lair & orc, and am on D:16.

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My current spell list:
Your Spells                       Type                          Failure   Level
 a - Magic Dart                    Conjuration                   1%          1
 b - Iron Shot                     Conjuration/Earth             3%          6
 d - Iskenderun's Mystic Blast     Conjuration                   1%          4
 e - Poisonous Cloud               Conjuration/Poison/Air        12%         6
 f - Bolt of Draining              Conjuration/Necromancy        1%          5
 g - Fireball                      Conjuration/Fire              1%          5
 h + Bolt of Fire                  Conjuration/Fire              1%          6
 i - Sting                         Conjuration/Poison            1%          1
 j - Orb of Destruction            Conjuration                   4%          7
 n - Repel Missiles                Charms/Air                    1%          2
 B - Blink                         Translocation                 1%          2
 G - Delayed Fireball              Conjuration/Fire              4%          7

I have 5.2 in earth (put a few points in when I got Iron Shot from Vehumet).
0 in air so far.

Veh just offered me fire storm (yay), LCS, and chain lightning.

I'm not sure whether to go over to air or to keep going with earth...

With Air:
- easier time with deflect missiles when I finally find a book with it... (Though with +4 apt in charms, it shouldn't be too hard to get it decent without any air?)
- chain lightning is kind of nice for non-fire aoe damage, especially on more spread out enemies. But probably not necessary?
- will get poisonous cloud out of the danger zone faster if I put some points into air. (Though my poison only has 5 or so points in it, and conjurations only 11 or so; I can get it castable relatively easily without investing in air.)

With Earth:
- more power for iron shot
- can eventually pick up LCS as an iron shot replacement/supplement from Veh if I keep putting points in earth. (Maybe replacing ood with lcs)

Any considerations I'm missing?
After writing that it seems to me I'd be better off with Earth, but I'd appreciate any advice.
Thanks!

[cerebovssquire]

Elemental schools are sort of redundant with regards to each other. They do different things, but at the end of the day they all damage monsters, and you have sources of irresistable damage anyway. For this character, Earth and Air aren't useful, especially at this early point in the game; without knowing the character I would say that Dodging, Fighting or other spell schools like Charms or Translocations would be more useful, but I can't say anything specific.

[morik]

More info:

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Skill            Level Train  Apt      Skill            Level Train  Apt
 a - Fighting          6.0         -2   h - Spellcasting     17.1         +3
 b - Staves            5.1          0   i + Conjurations     11.3   100%  +1
 c - Unarmed Combat    0.0         -2   j - Charms            5.2         +4
                                            Summonings        1.1         +1
 d - Throwing          0.0         +1   k - Necromancy        7.0         +2
                                        l - Translocations    4.1         +1
 e - Armour            0.0         -2   m - Fire Magic       11.9         +1
 f - Dodging          10.4         +2   n - Air Magic         0.0          0 -4
 g - Shields          11.0         -2   o - Earth Magic       5.2         +1
                                        p - Poison Magic      5.0         +1

                                        q - Evocations        7.7         +2
                                        r - Stealth           2.4         +3


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morik the Eclecticist (Deep Elf Wizard)            Turns: 44618, Time: 04:03:55
HP  88/88        AC 15     Str  8      XL: 16   Next:  7%
MP  13/41        EV 21     Int 27      God: Vehumet [******]
Gold 2486        SH 22     Dex 13      Spells: 12 memorised,  2 levels left
 
rFire  + . .     SeeInvis .     a - staff of fire
rCold  + . .     Clarity  +     Q - +2 robe {Archmagi}
rNeg   . . .     Conserve .     R - +0 shield {AC+3}
rPois  +         rCorr    .     b - +0 helmet
rElec  .         rRot     .     P - +3 cloak of Flash {+Fly EV+4}
SustAb . .       Spirit   .     t - +0 pair of gloves
rMut   .         Warding  .     C - +1 pair of boots
Saprov . . .     Stasis   .     k - amulet of clarity
MR     +....                    i - ring of poison resistance
                                u - ring of protection from cold
 
@: somewhat resistant to hostile enchantments, fairly stealthy
A: no striking features
a: Renounce Religion, Evoke Flight


Plan was to train Conj til OOD & delayed fireball aren't yellow (so just a tad more I think), then switch to poison to get pcloud out of the red (and then out of yellow).
I want pcloud for elf/spider/etc. (It will be a nice big-aoe spell till I get firestorm.)


I have yet to find a book with any charms or translocations I want (well, except regeneration maybe).
I assume you mean put into charms/trans in preparation for eventually finding haste, dmsl, cblink, etc?
I figured it would be more prudent to get my "holy crap kill that thing now" spells a bit stronger & less dangerous to cast, and getting pcloud castable would help immensely in elf & spider.

I feel like I don't need to make a beeline for firestorm quite yet. (I.e., I don't need to drop everything and just pump fire & conj till it would be castable.)
Maybe after I get charms & trans & a bit more dodging, fighting, and staves.


Would I be better off forgetting about iron shot/lcs and just using OOD as my holy-crap-kill-it single-target spell? (All 3 of those can be blocked by shields, right?)

[Sar]

Training a spell school because you expect to probably-maybe find some useful spells belonging to said school would be a bad idea.

[cerebovssquire]

I meant "put exp into charms and translocations if you have some good books", I would never put exp into something to obtain a benefit I may or may not be able to obtain later in the game. Your spells are fine for now, your Dodging and Fighting are very low, so I would train some of that first. Yes, you should forget about LCS, at least for a long long time (like halfway through extended you have nowhere to put your exp long long time). Fire storm isn't a good idea either for quite some time to come.

[duvessa]

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m - Fire Magic       11.9

you don't need to train earth or air or ice

[morik]

Train fighting/dodging before getting the bit extra conj I need to get delayed fireball & ood out of the yellow-zone? (My instinct would be to get those to a good place first, which shouldn't take long--if that is not the right decision I'd love to hear why, so I can learn. Is it that I can just use iron shot & not bother with keeping an emergency delayed fireball for now, and getting my defenses higher is more important right now?)

I suppose if I do depths next as opposed to something like elf I don't need pcloud up and running yet. (Though I'd like to have it ready for elf.)

Unrelated question: I found a treasure trove that wants to see the slimy rune. How much should that steer me towards doing slime ASAP? (I haven't found rCorr yet.)

[cerebovssquire]

Spell success is irrelevant for a spell you won't get any bad miscasts on and that you cast before combat (delayed fireball). 4% for OoD is fine, but I guess you could get it down a little bit more if you like seeing as you only have 11,3 Conjurations. The thing is, your Fighting and Dodging are very low, so don't spend too much time on it. I personally would go for Fighting and then Dodging immediately, since Bolt of Fire is a much better spell anyway and I wouldn't be concerned about offensive power if I had it and a robe of the Archmagi. Iron Shot will handle rF enemies just fine.

[Klown]

Elemental schools are sort of redundant with regards to each other.

Not redundant enough to be merged into an 'Elemental Magic' school though.

But I agree with the point. -4 goes so slow, might as well stick with Earth.

[morik]

Spell success is irrelevant for a spell you won't get any bad miscasts on and that you cast before combat (delayed fireball). 4% for OoD is fine, but I guess you could get it down a little bit more if you like seeing as you only have 11,3 Conjurations. The thing is, your Fighting and Dodging are very low, so don't spend too much time on it. I personally would go for Fighting and then Dodging immediately, since Bolt of Fire is a much better spell anyway and I wouldn't be concerned about offensive power if I had it and a robe of the Archmagi. Iron Shot will handle rF enemies just fine.

Ok, thanks for the advice.
How should I generally go about determining when to switch from one defensive skill to another?

For offensive skills I can usually determine what is "enough". E.g., get main offensive spells castable is easily measured. Get main weapon to delay 1 (or mindelay) is also measurable.

Get main offensive spells more powerful, or get main weapon skill higher than needed for min-delay to get extra to-hit or whatnot, is less easily determined for me.
Same with defensive skills.

So 2 questions:
- In this particular case, how long would you train fighting before moving on to dodging? To a specific skill level? (10? 14?) Till I have a certain # of HP? (90? 100?)
- In the general case, how do you make decisions about what is "enough" for a defensive or offensive skill?

[cerebovssquire]

Probably I would do something like Fighting -> ~10, Dodging -> ~15, Fighting -> ~15, interrupting Dodging + Fighting training if you find a useful book. Training the skills to exact numbers isn't useful, but the numbers are approximately what I would do (if you gain a HP or EV point around these levels, stop training, if you want to be exact about it).
In this case, I base my choice on (1) your Fighting skill being very low and the next levels requiring little investment and (2) your EV isn't terrible and you have decent SH as well, so avoiding hits isn't your biggest problem.

In general, exp cost (aptitude and current skill level), species aptitude (e.g. small size will make using a normal shield harder) and current character state factor into the decision, and also whether my current HP losses are more easily compensated by training offensive skills (e.g. when my weapon is still slow).
Probably the most hard part of that is making a judgement on what your character's biggest current weakness is, you should look if almost no hit is missing you (EV + SH become more useful) or if your problem is that hits that do hit you take large chunks of your HP (AC and Fighting become more useful). I hope that's specific enough to be of at least some use, I don't have much mathematical reasoning behind my skill training.
General guidelines are also that having high AC and EV is better than having very high AC with low EV or the reverse, and that AC and EV are both better than SH, and that you can use a shield without the appropriate skill (unless it is affecting your spell success too much, so this mainly applies to spellless characters).

[morik]

Sounds good. Thanks for the help!

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Get main offensive spells more powerful, or get main weapon skill higher than needed for min-delay to get extra to-hit or whatnot, is less easily determined for me.

This is not too hard, fortunately. Getting main weapon skill higher than min-delay is extremely low priority in general. In this case in particular you will never want more than 12 staves skill unless you find a lajatang that you want to use in addition to/instead of your staff of fire. (But getting 12 staves skill is low priority right now.)

Similarly, for nearly all spells, investing more in your skills beyond just getting the spell castable is also very low priority, because you get a much better bang for your buck by simply getting the next level of spells going. When you have an enhancer effect (or two, good lord!) you *really* don't need to worry about spell power, just success. There can be exceptions if you are casting stuff with stacked wizardry bonuses and no enhancers, and certain spells like summon butterflies and sublimation of blood can be exceptions even without wizardry, but none of that applies to your situation.

Same with defensive skills.

This is harder to generalize. Having less than 115 HP in vaults sucks—and the more the better. (This is why Deep Elves are frustrating IMO, the aptitudes are not ultimately worth the low HP.)

In your particular case I might actually defer from cerebovssquire and suggest quickly getting a bit in poison so that poisonous cloud is at around 6 or 7% failure, should come very fast. Especially with rPois that spell is very strong and easy to use, it is smite targeted and has good range, it is a good way to take guys out with minimal noise from a distance. (You can also use average speed or slower melee enemies to block ranged attackers' line of fire, then throw a poison cloud behind them to kill the ranged guys.)

However immediately after that I'd train fighting to around 10 or 12, then dodging to around 15 or 16. After that I might continue to train defensive skills but if good utility or buff spells have shown up in the meantime I might get those online first.

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xxx

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Sorry, that got triple posted somehow. My bad!

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[See above]