o.com> wrote:
This started as a short e-mail to a friend who's new to Crawl, but
turned into a sort of review/guide to this fascinating and challenging
combo. It is *highly* opinionated, imprecise, and probably more than
a little misinformed. Naturally, comments, criticisms, and
corrections are welcome.
Incidentally, this is all based on Stone Soup 3.4. I didn't realize
until today that I haven't been playing the newest version.
---
If you wanna see some *interesting* spellcasting, try a Transmuter.
Sludge Elves make the best ones, since they're good at Fighting,
Unarmed, Spellcasting, Throwing, and of course Transmigrations. Have
you heard of the spells Fulsome Distillation and Evaporate? Oh my,
it's so cool you could plotz.
Here's what you do... you pick up all the small corpses, like rats
and bats and stuff, and lug them around till they rot. Then you
Fulsomely Distill the noxious corpsejuices into potions of poison,
slowing, confusion, decay, etc. Then you cast Evaporate on the
potions, turning them into rotbombs, and throw the disgusting things
at hapless crowds of goblins. Then all the goblins are confused and
poisoned and die in a choking, puking heap, gouging each others' eyes
out with the last of their energy. Then you go and brew more
corpsejuice from their stinking remains. It's awesome!
That is a nifty trick I hadn't tried before. But, what about Mephitic
Cloud? It does the same, with less effort. However it's in the
Poisoner's tool box.
All that starts when you reach XL 2. Then, once you gain some more
levels and can cast Spider Form and Blade Hands... well, that's when
the fun really begins and you're glad you've been practicing Unarmed
this whole time. >:D (Note: skip Ice Form, it's suckful.)
I haven't found much use in Ice magic, on the whole.
I definitely concur that Unarmed is worth practicing in any race...if
you can get away with it, that is.
And if you're really smart and lucky and worship Sif Muna
faithfully, you'll start getting gifted all kinds of spellbooks.
Transmigration overlaps a lot with Earth Magic, so hopefully you'll
find the Geomancy book, which is crammed with 4 (!) rather nice Ear/
Trm spells. Practice Sandblast and Stoneskin a little, and soon
you'll be casting Dig whenever you don't feel like going around an
obstructive pillar.
Naturally, because you have good Spellcasting and Int and worship
Sif Muna, you will soon be able to cast the most important spell in
the game, Blink, without fail and without hunger.
Blink is without a doubt one of the best spells. I practice
Teleportation specifically in the aim of getting control over Blinks.
Since you do a lot of fighting, you'll be tempted to occasionally
raise your Dex or Str when you gain a level... but don't do it. You
are a *spellcaster*, albeit a very weird one, and you *will* want
every Int point you can get to cast the really awesome spells like...
<shiver of delight> DRAGON FORM.
Right, Int is it for spellcasters, mostly...although I like mine to
have a bit more Strength or Dex, so they can fight well too. There are
beasties that are best countered with physical violence.
Speaking of fighting, you are that rare beast, a spellcaster who
likes melee. Your most valuable early-midgame combat spell, Blade
Hands, does not help your HP or defense in any way. Your HP won't be
as bad as some spellcasters', because you're good at Fighting, but you
will still need to poison and/or confuse every really dangerous
monster you meet before engaging. Things that are immune to these
effects (especially ghosts) are your most dangerous foes. If you're
lucky enough to find a disruption or holy wrath weapon, keep it and
use it against undead. If not, you'll probably have to use wands or
simply run away from most ghosts that you meet.
The undead don't like fire. The two most useful Fire spells are Sticky
Flame and Conjure flame, for countering the undead. If you can summon
beasts to fight for you, all the better. Sneak in and keep casting
Sticky Flames on them, then dart out and let your henchmen work.
So, obviously, you need to rely heavily on stealth, mobility, and
positioning. Your best wands are Hasting and Healing.
I wish I found more of these. They seem rare in 4.3.
Your best
resistances are Res Poison and Clarity (so you can run through your
own gas clouds).
Getting confused is an excellent way to get killed. It's essential to
have resistance before sacking the Elven Halls.
Your lucky numbers are 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21. If
you're lucky enough to find a spellbook with Swiftness in it, it's
worth practicing Enchantment just for that spell. (Swiftness gets my
vote for second most useful spell in the game if you're not an
Okawaruist or Trogglodyte.)
Cheap and extremely useful like Blink.
Hmm... what else...
The Sandblast spell jibes nicely with your good Throwing skill.
When potions or MP are in short supply, you can chuck those rocks!
Even though you favor Unarmed combat, don't neglect weapons,
especially before you've learned Blade Hands. It's very useful to
have a few specialized weapons to deal with troublesome foes. A
weapon of Draining can be incredibly useful against OODs, Uniques, and
gnolls wielding halberds of slicing. And you certainly don't want to
plumb the depths of the Lair with Blade Hands as your only strong
melee attack.
You don't need to worry overly about practicing weapon skills; they
will sort themselves out. Don't turn off weapon skills unless they
are starting to eclipse your Unarmed and Spellcasting skills.
I regularly turn them off in order to focus on beefing up Fighting
and/or Unarmed. Fighting increases HP. I only practice a weapon skill
if I have a particularly good one in my possession and want to commit.
If this
happens, you probably should be casting Evaporate and Spider Form more
often anyway.
Remember that, even while wielding a weapon, you'restill practicing Unarmed every time you get a bonus attack.
The things I like most about SETms are:
The originality, grotesquery, tactical depth, and tactical strength
of the Fulsome Distillation / Evaporate spell combo. It seems to fit
perfectly with the description of Sludge Elves in the manual as
"somewhat degenerate."
lol
they also drink a lot of other Distillations.
The emphasis on Unarmed combat through shape-changing. Finally, an
unarmed combatant in an RPG who isn't a martial artist!
Shape-changing is surprisingly powerful I have found, but I find it
disturbing to abandon my armaments and armor. It's not for me but I
can see where it might add a new luster to the game.
The flexibility of a race with a 70 in Spellcasting and an 80 in
Fighting. The average of their Spc and Fgt is 75, the best of any
race. They are a rare example of a true fighting spellcaster.
Are you refering to the source code?
What I hate about SETms is:
They're very likely to die on the first few levels. Their well-
balanced stats are not an advantage in the first few levels when an
extra HP or point of damage would make all the difference.
Their really *good* spells tend to be very hunger- and MP-intensive,
until you find some more spellbooks. This is why I recommend boosting
INT every chance you get.
That's about it, really... There's not much about them that I hate,
which is why they're my favorite race/class combo!
They seem very colorful with the ability to change shapes. However the
point you mentioned reminds me of why I prefer Beserkers. No spells to
mess with, Trog rains down gifts and three very powerful abilities,
and there's nothing quite comparable to the Beserk state to
eliminating a whole mess of monsters. And once you have an amulet of
resist slowing, baby that's all she wrote.
