How to kill OOF's with magic

The Tavern Dungeon Crawling Advice
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We all know one of the biggest baddies blocking our characters from the sweet, sweet Orb of Zot are those miserable Orbs of Fire. The fact that OOF’s are practically omniresistant, move fast, have large HP pools, and scary offenses make them particularly vicious. There are always just enough OOF’s goaltending the Realm of Zot that you can’t just avoid them (unless maybe you are an Imperceptible Spriggan), you’ve got to dispatch a few (or sometimes a dozen).

As a melee brute I feel it’s not too hard to get OOF’s 1v1 via stairdancing, and quaff !might or !haste or !berserk–whatever you gotta do to take 'em down. Training 16 throwing and using silver javelins is also a favorite technique for STR-based characters. However, I’m still learning what to do as a mage. Therefore I’d like to ask the Tavern community what your favorite spells are for dealing with OOFs. I am by no means a qualified candidate to make a comprehensive list, but I thought I’d share my limited experience and maybe we can crowdsource and discuss techniques y’all have used.

Without further Ado, and in no particular order:
Spells I Have Used as My Primary OOF-Slayer

  • Malign Gateway (Very effective, but takes time and positioning to set up)
  • Dragon’s Call (Very effective)
  • Orb of Destruction (Very effective)
  • Permafrost Eruption (Mediocre, but does the trick)
  • Bombard/Iron Shot (Decent, range is limited though)
  • Lehudib’s Crystal Spear (Very effective, range is very limited though)
  • Spellforged/Spellspark Servitor (paired with OoD or Bombord/LCS, good power boost)
  • Firestorm (Decent, IIRC)
  • Polar Vortex (Honestly don’t remember how well it does)

What other spells have you used as OOF-slayers? Any you’ve tried that surprised you, pleasantly or unpleasantly? Which are your favorites? Which spells do you think win the prize for most effective OOF-slayer?

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Here’s what I would add to your list:

  • Maxwell’s Capacitive Coupling (the easiest way by far)
  • Haunt (slow, but inevitable, needs open space)
  • Summon Horrible Things (positioning matters)
  • Sphinx Sisters (same as above)
  • Enffeble (+Mana Viper, +!might on a short blade user)
  • Irradiate (budget version, needs spellpower, but it works quite well, especially good with undead species)
  • Hellfire Mortar (slow, but safe)
  • Splinterfrost Shell (sometimes OoF will blow up several segments at once and just die instantly)
  • Diamond Sawblades (will need you to tank a bit)
  • Platinum Paragon
  • Fulsome Fusillade (controlling LoS matters)

Honourable mentions go to:

  • Summon Forest (can do pretty good damage to OoFs with berserked trees, tricky to keep dryad alive)
  • Airstrike (at high power in open space does quite some work)
  • Ozocubu’s Refrigeration (same as above)
  • Stone Arrow (beggars can’t be choosers kinda deal)
  • Gell’s Gavotte (it does some serious irresistible damage and at high-ish power you can cast it every 3-4 turns)

It’s worth keeping in mind that you don’t have to fight OoFs straight up as a caster. Scrolls of summoning, wands of acid/light/quicksilver, Box of Beasts/Sack of Spiders are all good at dealing with them (you need Evocation in high teens at least though). Also many gods just give you a solution with their toolkit (Fedhas, Sif, Nemlex, Hep for example).

I’ll also mention that trunk just introduced new end game Orb variants (Orb of Winter and Orb of Entropy). You’ll know which flavour you got in your run by the time you reach Temple. They have a different set of spells and resists than OoFs and require you to find a somewhat different strategy. I find them lots of fun, personally.

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