Ranged/magic user tactics

The Tavern Dungeon Crawling Advice
1

Hello everyone,

while I’m trying to win as a MiFi I’m also trying something different to not be bored about the game: usually I go SpHu or GrEE, I’m not going too deep but basically I think I’m missing some kind of strategy about these type of species/background. The biggest thing is that I don’t understand how to manage big groups of enemies:

  • with SpHu I can outrun ad kill them slowly, but if there is a ranged enemy on the group how I can manage this?
  • with GrEE I went well in corridors-type of floors but in open spaces groups of mobs can easly kill me, some idea about this?
2

Even with casters/ranged characters, I still try to (a) wake up as few enemies at a time; (b) lure the enemies back to an explored area; and (3) use choke points, corridors and corners to limit the number of enemies I fight at once (i.e., try to make it 1-on-1).

Since you’re in light armor, investing in 3-4 Stealth early can really help with waking up fewer opponents. I often do this right after I get my kill spell online–i.e., before I invest in Dodge, for example. Course, that depends on the combo and stuff found.

Presumably you already know about luring and choke points from your melee runs.

If not, here’s what I try to do. Enemies can only hurt me if they are next to me (meleers), have direct line of fire (most ranged), or at least be on screen (smiters, summoners, tormentors, etc.).

As soon as an enemy shows up, I back away. Ideally, they are just at the edge of my vision and of the same speed. Backing up forces them to follow me, so if they are equal speed, they never get a shot off. Now I can lead the opponent to favorable terrain at virtually no risk. (If they are faster, I still try to back up since that limits the number of time they can shoot me as I reposition.)

If there is a group, I go for a corner and get around it. Then I back up enough to put whoever comes around the corner is in range of my attack spell(s). Then I blast away. (Centaurs are an exception. Those I want to be in their face so they stop using their bows.)

All of the above requires EARLY threat identification. Some enemies are so dangerous that I use a consumable (teleport or even blink/haste) to get out of the fight immediately. I’ll then come back from a better direction (i.e., one with closer corners/choke points). Chugging HW or desperately reading Tele at 10 health (i.e., waiting to use a consumable until the last minute) tends to lead to splats.

2 Thanks
3

Thanks for the reply, about magic user I’ve got another question:

usually they have EV, is it good to have SH?

4

I like to have some of all three, really. AC is pretty core, but w/o heavy armor, the max amount you can get is limited.

EV is good too, but there are a lot of ways for the enemies to get around it (AoE, smiters, getting paralyzed, fighting an invisible enemy, etc.). I don’t invest in Dodge until (way) after my main guns are online. If I found a wand, I tend to let Dodge wait until after I get 4 Evoc too.

SH provides a third layer of defense which is really sweet. Now the enemy has to roll vs your shield, then roll vs your EV, then roll vs your AC. Three layers add up. I’ll put on a Buckler or Kite Shield, with no Shield training, and check my main kill spell’s failure rate. If the failure is less than 5%, I usually keep it and try to get Shield to 5 or so. If the failure is higher than 5%, I’ll take it off and slowly work my way up to Shield 5 and try again.

It all depends on what you find, of course, but the tldr is: yep, SH is good.

(Oh, and I forgot to add: even as a caster, don’t neglect Fighting. It took me a while to learn that, in Crawl, Fighting isn’t just for Fighters. These days even my casters run around with Fighting on all the time. I only route xp away from Fighting when I have a really good, specific reason to do so.)

5

Thanks for the reply, so it’s good to train even armor, nice.
in my current run as a DjSu I’ve got a SH skill at 6.3 and my spells fail is under 5% so it’s good (with the kite shield)

I’m not a big fan of EV cause I see that, as you said, there are too many ways to avoid it.

I think I’ll try to reach 10 in SH then go something with armor.

I didn’t understand your suggestion about Fighting: my Djinn avoid contacts, so why I’ve to train Fighting?

Another question (sorry if I bother you, guys): is autoexploration viable for casters or is bettere a manual esploration?

6

The Fighting skill increases your gain of max HP when you level up (without training Fighting, your max HP is still raised as you level up). Djinni uses HP for casting spells instead of MP, so when you’re battling tough monsters, you’re at even higher risk of dying due to lack of HP.

I put the following in my configuration file to make auto-exploration safer:
travel_open_doors = avoid
This would ensure auto-exploration tries to travel around closed doors, and if there’s no way but to open a door, it leads you right to the door but requires you to manually open it. This is because there can be dangerous monsters right behind doors, and because doors can creak loudly sometimes.

7

wow!

Amazing tips, thanks!

1 Thank
8

It can be worth training Armor, but for my casters, that usually comes really late.

Armor rewards you with “free” AC–i.e., as you skill up, it gives you a couple AC points based on your gears’ combined base AC. So for example, Cloak is 1 base AC, Steam Dragon is 5 base AC, etc. The enchantment level isn’t considered for this calculation. So +5 Steam Dragon and +0 Stream Dragon benefit the same amount from AC skill.

Add up your combined AC and it’ll give you a sense of how much of a benefit you get from Skilling up. If your base AC is low (say, you are wearing Robes), the bonus is also going to be low. You can figure out how much Armor Skill you need to get another point of AC offline with WizMode, or online with !a, I think (I don’t play online much, so someone will probably come around and correct that if it’s the wrong command). 5.5 and 11 are often good breakpoints for casters (5.5 gives +25% to your base, 11 give +50%). So if you have Steam (5), Cloak (1), Helm (1), Gloves (1), 5.5 Armor gives you +2 pts of AC (25% of 8 is 2). If you have just Robes, Helm, Gloves, 5.5 gives you only +1 AC. Anything higher that 11 on a blaster probably not worth it for a 3 rune caster. The xp will probably do more good going into guns or HP or Evoc or Invoc.

Armor also reduces encumbrance, which penalize a bunch of things, but I don’t bother doing that math for my casters. I just put it on and check the % and defensive drops. As a general rule, I aim for Troll Leather or Steam Dragon for my casters. I might wear Ring Mail or Acid/Swamp/Fire/Ice Dragon depending on the build, gear, artefact benefits, etc., but that is up to the generosity of the RNGs.

So Armor gives better return when you are running around in heavier armor. My blasters are usually not ready to wear heavier armor (e.g., Fire Dragon) until much, much later in the game (like, Vault or Depth time). Armor takes a backseat after main guns, HP, Evoc/Invoc, Dodge, Shield.

Lastly, I definitely invest in EV for my casters, even with the ways around it. Ideally, I want at least ~10ish for everything by the time I go for a rune (more is better, ofc). Btw, there are ways to get around SH too–e.g., beams.

Even “small” layers are good. Let’s say your AC is enough to stop 25% of the hits, you EV also stops 25%, and SH is the same 25% chance. With one layer, your enemy gets through to you 75% of the time. With two layers (say, EV + AC), they get through ~55%. With three layers, they are down to ~45%. That’s why I stack as many types of defense as I can. Esp since the first few levels of a Skill are pretty cheap, even with cruddy apts.

9

Just a small note: starting with .32 there are no more skill breakpoints for AC or EV or SH. You get fractions of a point instead, for example 4.3 AC 70% of the time acts as 4 AC, and 30% of the time as 5 AC.

2 Thanks
10

Unless I’ve found really good robes/leathers, I like to throw 6 in here on almost everything these days once my early kill dudes is online. It’s enough to give you an extra point or two of AC and not take too terrible a hit to casting success in ring mail.