Yo, I’m a new player, really appreciating the combat depth right now and I’m enjoying YASDing. I’ve read through a lot of the new player stuff on the wiki and put everything into Conjuration with a secondary Stealth focus while playing a Deep Elf Fire Elementalist.
The character itself is irrelevant, I’m mostly curious about how optimal skill growth looks. I’ve gotten Conjuration to a solid 12 and Stealth to 10.
I’m actually mostly curious about what the rough breakpoints are. I’ve seen on guides what the theory behind them is, but I’m curious about the rough numbers of it.
At what point in the game is investing in defense like Evasion better?
At what point does Spellcasting or Fire Magic help more than putting another point into Conjuration?
If there’s any other new player tips related to this, I’m also open to hearing more. Thanks
There are some breakpoints, but they’re not usually what I think about.
For spell success (Spell Success - CrawlWiki): you can look at the cost of the next skill level. For a 1-school spell, it’s more efficient to train the spell school if the cost is 4x as much as the spellcasting next-level cost. For a 2-school spell, 2x as much.
The other big breakpoint for spells is when they become “usable”. For some spells you want/need a 90% success chance, for some 70%, for some you need the spell failure to be white or better.
Stealth has a big break point where you hit 0 stealth. Before that point stealth skill is useless. The effect of this break point is that many characters train 0 stealth.
weapons have a breakpoint where they hit mindelay.
Fighting and evasion don’t really have break points as such, except [spell skill that helps get a new powerful spell online] > fighting > evasion > [spell skill that increases your spell power of spells you already have]
Optimal skill growth looks really nitpicky. You gotta be in your skill menu a lot. But you really don’t have to worry about skilling optimally… good enough is good enough.
Since skills cost more the higher they are, it’s better to skill two skills to level 6 than 1 skill to level 9. This is especially important for multi-school spells. The optimal play for a DEFE would be to put points into both Conj and Fire until your starting spells book is online (everything under 10% success). Some people will throw a couple points into Stealth first just to give a better chance at not waking up any bad guys.
Once your spells are online you want some more HP and MP, so a few levels of Fighting and Spellcasting will go a long way here. After that about 6 levels into dodge will give you a couple extra EV, and if you find a buckler give it 6 points as well.
By this point you have your base skills and should be looking at Lair. You might have found some extra spells you want to flex into, or maybe put some points into Invo if your god requires it. Another 6 points into armour if you’ve found a ring mail or swamp dragon armor will help overcome the minor hit to your spell success. Evo is also a great place to stick a few points. Even with crappy aptitudes 5 or 6 points in any skill can be considered cheap.
Beyond that you need to just go with what the dungeon gives you. Don’t raise casting skills unless you actually have a new spell available that you’re going for or you’ve found an end game spell that you want to max out damage wise.
Melee brutes need to skill a bit different. Start off getting your weapon to mindelay then put a few points into fighting, dodge, and armour. The same rules apply so 6 points into dodge and armour are going to net you more total D than 9 points into either one explicitly while costing you the same experience. You can lean more into one or the other based on drops, but even in plate armour, 14 dodge & 14 armour will net you more total D than putting 19 points into armour (for the same cost).
Bobross419 broke it down really well. I’d add, if you worship Sif Muna and hit * or ** of piety, after getting your initial spells to a comfortable success rate, get Invo to 9-10 in order have Channel Magic at 1%.
