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If you are just starting I would actually suggest not worrying about skills very much. Either put them on auto training and just leave it alone, or for things like MiFi you can on turn 0 turn on fighting + weapon skill + armour (probably focus weapon) and then not touch it for the rest of the game unless you finish training all three. Training skills in a better order will make you more powerful but probably 80% or so of winning crawl is tactics, not strategy (especially with stuff like mifi where you melee everything--melee combat in crawl is hard!!). If you play well you can do an awful lot with a weak character, and if you play poorly you can make even a strong character die quite fast. In other words, good tactics can overcome bad strategy, but good strategy will usually not make up for bad tactics ... you will be punished eventually.
As long as you train reasonable skills--and auto training mostly ensures that this will happen--your character will be "good enough" as far as skills go. When you know what you are doing you can make decisions yourself and train what you want. Most really awful skill training I see actually comes from people doing things that auto training would never let happen.
Probably no one else will give you this advice because people like to talk about crawl strategy instead of crawl tactics.
If you want tactical advice I will gladly give you some but you should give me situations where you want advice, because giving general tactical advice is difficult. One thing that I can say is that the biggest thing about melee combat in Crawl is making sure that as few enemies as possible are in LOS while you are fighting.
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I am pretty sure my first win came about two weeks after I started playing, it was an MDFi of Okawaru back in 0.4.x. I don't remember how long it took to get my second win though.
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If you want something instructional I have a ttyrec I posted where I give commentary as I play a TeNe, it will probably teach you some things about my tactics ... they're not perfect (and I've probably improved some since I made this) but they are much better than most players. I die to Rupert in lair as I do something stupid (and I say on the ttyrec that I know what I am doing might get me killed!!) but that was a good time to end the ttyrec anyway.
You can play this with termplay. My water is messed up because termplay doesn't handle unicode and this was before I switched to char_set=ascii, but the rest is fine.
The files are here:
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate/2012-04-03.03:42:11.ttyrec.bz2
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate/2012-04-03.03:53:18.ttyrec.bz2
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate/2012-04-03.05:45:21.ttyrec.bz2
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/crate/2012-04-03.06:45:28.ttyrec.bz2
I think termplay can uncompress them itself, if not then you have to uncompress the file and then play the .ttyrec.
If you want you can also watch the .ttyrecs of any player who plays online on CAO, CSZO, or CDO. Good players who use char_set=ascii (so they're watchable with termplay) are me, elliptic (hyperbolic, hyperelliptic), 78291, mikee, probably others. I haven't checked if my new cloud glyph works in termplay, so I guess I should check that sometime, but everything else should.
You can only watch these in console so this would be my reasoning for endorsing console instead of tiles!!!
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Two WEEKS? Christ, you really are a god, Crate. It took me like, three years playing on and off...I still haven't won twice. Damn...
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Thanks for all the quick replies! Just managed to fight my way through the orc mines and down to level 8 of the lair, but that seemed a bit scary, so I'll get back there later. The skill advice was very useful, I'll take a look at the recordings when I get back from the gym. It will probably take me a bit to get used to the console version
One specific thing I ran into that one of you may to able to shed some light on: Is it worth keeping stuff like a robe of cold around for the rC even though I normally wear plate armor. How does the AC bonus weigh up against the specific resistance bonusses?
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Get resistances from jewellery if you need them. Don't wear robes if you're training armour skill. Resistances beyond the first pip are almost completely unnecessary, and you will almost always be able to get at least rF+/rC+ from jewellery by the time you need them (with some exceptions like finding Fannar or Harold early on and such, but those are uniques).
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Thanks! It was indeed finding Fannar early on that made me wonder, I managed to barely beat him, but had to blow 4 heal wound potions in the process.
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On November 05 2012 21:08 crate wrote:
If you have a scroll of vorpalise weapon please don't make it worse by flame/frost branding your longbow.... Velocity brand stacks with all ammo brands, whereas flame/frost do not.
That's true, but you're not going to have enough flame/frost ammo to last you forever since they got rid of missile enchantments. Like I said, I don't know how vorpal stacks up damage-wise on missile weapons, but you're going to be firing a lot of plain arrows.
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On November 05 2012 22:26 Tarias wrote:Out of curiosity, how long did it take you guys to get to your first win? The amount of knowledge required seems massive, I don't see myself winning any time soon
I had a really weird experience with wins. I got to Zot:5 with a Naga Ice Elementalist only about two weeks after I first started playing (this was version 6.0)... but I died there after grabbing the orb. Then it took me MONTHS to get back to Zot:5 and actually win my first game. In that NaIE game I must have been extremely lucky since I was terrible. Since then I've won about 10 games, playing very irregularly over the past couple years.
For me, Spriggan Enchanter is by far the easiest character to win with. It's different for everyone depending on what you're good at and what you're bad at as a player.
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If you worship oka/trog you will have more than enough flame/frost arrows to last all game. If you don't, then vorpal is still usually better on a bow because you always get bonus damage, compared to bonus damage against some things some of the time and then no bonus damage the rest of the time.
I don't know anyone who actually enchanted flame/frost ammo before missile enchantment removal, so you actually get more of that ammo now than in the past.
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Can't believe theglow won 18 games, all different races and classes in a row without dying. Talk about killing the RNG god.
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If you're just going for a normal win- no tournaments or specific build or anything- would the benefits of going MiFi be greater than MiBe or less? Are there any good gods for Mi besides Shining, Trog, and Okawaru?
Oh I always hear about these attack delay diminishing returns for weapon skills but I haven't found a table or anything on the wiki. If any of you could point in the right way I'd be greatful.
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MiBe is definitely better because Trog on turn 0 is way better than Trog on d:4 or later.
Good gods for Mi include most of the gods. Mi is secretly pretty good at casting spells since you have a crap ton of "free" xp from your +2 apts which is where all your xp is going. It is actually easier to get haste in plate as a minotaur (after good weapon/fighting/armour skill) than as a human ... and additionally you're much stronger every step of the way.
Attack delay:
<Wenzell> attack delay[1/7]: Attack delay is 10 time units for a weapon with base speed 100%.
Every 2 levels of weapon skill lower the delay by 1 unit.
<Wenzell> attack delay[2/7]: A weapon's minimum delay is half of its base delay (rounded down)
but no more than 7 (5 for sabres). For example, a club (base delay 13) has minimum delay 6,
while an executioner's axe (base delay 20) has minimum delay 7.
(This is not true for ranged attacks)
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I like Mahkleb on fighters a lot for healing on kills as well as summons and destructive magic via invocations. He's a nice "hands off" god that fits the "o and tab" style of play.
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my first win involved an early speed lajatang and faith powered nemelex (he's been nerfed a bit since then). I was pretty clueless*. I'd just wander into trouble then draw a bunch of summoning+destruction. no big deal.
*case in point:
On December 17 2011 01:50 myopia wrote:
working my way through shoals, havent broken a sweat yet. opinions on the sword I just found?
falchion +2, +11 speed -cast rC+ MR dex+2
I barely use spells and can spare the xp to train long blades and shields. does MR prevent mesmerize? that would be nice.
there are a lot of things wrong with this post
oh and sorry I failed the team guys, my one 3 rune win should've been an allrune or two, I just didn't have the patience or time this time around.
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+ Show Spoiler +Why does my targetting in tiles seem buggy? eg. In console, when I press "z", I see the following + Show Spoiler +Casting: Magic Dart
Confirm with . or Enter, or press ? or * to list all spells. After pressing enter I see + Show Spoiler +Aiming: Magic Dart
Press: ? - help, ..........
Aim: a training dummy While in tiles, after the first prompt, I press enter that I want to cast magic missile, but the screen doesn't update to show my aiming cursor or the + Show Spoiler +Aiming: Magic Dart
Press: ? - help, ..........
Aim: a training dummy " etc. Pressing enter again will fire the missile THEN update the text.
edit: Okay, so you need to move the mouse in order to show the targetting cursor. Is there anyway for it to default to the console behaviour?
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Press . to fire at the default target, or Tab to switch between targets. You can also set a macro to a key like '1' and have it do 'za.' which will make it cast Magic Dart at the default target.
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My MiFi just died on floor 16, walked around a corner into a room full of centaurs and couldn't get out in time. Don't really see what I could have done differently there to survive. Was honestly surprised I even managed to get as far as I did.
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On November 06 2012 22:56 Cel.erity wrote:
Press . to fire at the default target, or Tab to switch between targets. You can also set a macro to a key like '1' and have it do 'za.' which will make it cast Magic Dart at the default target.
cool thanks
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On November 06 2012 23:20 Tarias wrote:
My MiFi just died on floor 16, walked around a corner into a room full of centaurs and couldn't get out in time. Don't really see what I could have done differently there to survive. Was honestly surprised I even managed to get as far as I did.
Run away as soon as you see them
Chug an invis pot
Teleport/blink scroll asap
Idk, just do whatever to get away.
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Scroll of Fog! Everyone forgets the scroll of fog. Crawl monsters follow the HHGttG theory of potential danger: If you can't see them, they (probably) can't hurt you (unless they're invisible)!
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United States10328 Posts
On November 06 2012 23:20 Tarias wrote:
My MiFi just died on floor 16, walked around a corner into a room full of centaurs and couldn't get out in time. Don't really see what I could have done differently there to survive. Was honestly surprised I even managed to get as far as I did.
Did you play online (do you have a morgue file?)
Generally you should try to clear Lair and perhaps Orc before going to D:16 
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EPT
