Neither :D
Dodging/fighting to mid teens is the priority.

Spellwise, I'd get:
Repel missiles and Regeneration from Book of war chants, Swiftness from Book of air, all of which helps surviving with no cost in skills and 8 spell levels.

Iron shot would be better than the crystal spear I think. It does less damage, but has one more range, and doesn't recquire much to cast, if anything. For a 3 runes win there is no point in Lichform and getting enough xp for an ultimate would mean less utility (like charms for Haste, maybe some Translocation for at least control teleport+blink, if you find any of those).

Necromancy wise, Death door and Borgnjor's Revivification (especially the latter) are good panick buttons. Like, really good.

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 27 2014 01:37 GMT

#1563

Spider is hard D:

Cynry

810 Posts

February 27 2014 01:44 GMT

#1564

Welcome to Dungeon Crawl !

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 27 2014 02:14 GMT

#1565

Yes. Also, 4 levels of fighting in and 15 hp, so yeah. Thanks :D

crate

United States2474 Posts

February 27 2014 02:24 GMT

#1566

LCS is basically always better than iron shot. For one thing, it's actually a good spell. Iron shot kind of sucks.

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 27 2014 02:29 GMT

#1567

It is, but my non conj/necro skills suck and I'm trying to get defense, so I can't afford to invest into LCS. Also, I am still on spider:2, so lcs would be overkill against a lot of the stuff I am fighting.

crate

United States2474 Posts

February 27 2014 02:34 GMT

#1568

so use something good instead of iron shot then

also please put dumps and the like in code tags so they are readable. I can't tell if this is a specific character you are talking about but regardless I am not going to bother trying to parse the dumps posted on the previous page.

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 27 2014 02:39 GMT

#1569

What would you suggest? I have already invested in iron shot, and I have a malus to fire magic cuz of my ice, don't want to use poison/draining cuz of undead, and don't have access to bolt of cold.

crate

United States2474 Posts

February 27 2014 02:45 GMT

#1570

In general I just don't think iron shot is good, I only ever learn it if I'm playing EE and it still doesn't feel very good to me then. I dislike orb of destruction but it at least does lots of damage for its xp cost. Bolt of fire/cold/lightning/draining (assuming you're in a version where draining is level 5) are all very good, venom bolt is decent, poison arrow is like iron shot if iron shot were good. But I don't know what character we're talking about so I can't say what you should learn.

Cynry

810 Posts

February 27 2014 04:30 GMT

#1571

I don't get how you don't like Iron Shot but still think LCS is a good spell. Is the damage difference the only reason ? 'Cause it's a lot more xp to invest and a shorter range, so for a dude that got Iron Shot castable with no Earth skill I don't see a clear winner.

crate

United States2474 Posts

February 27 2014 04:33 GMT

#1572

LCS does much more damage per turn (this is the thing you care about) and is also noticeably more accurate.

Cynry

810 Posts

February 28 2014 06:36 GMT

#1573

So, VoidedWarrenty, any news about your dude ? Dead, I would assume, but one never know :D

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 28 2014 17:24 GMT

#1574

Been busy with school, so I've only played him a bit over the past few days. He got down to Spider:3 and I went "SO MUCH PAIN!" and decided to try out the depths. MISTAKE. I got 3/4 of my health taken away by going down and up the stairs again, and only survived because I had 1 fire, 1 storm and 1 ice dragon zombie sitting around on the top (they had been guarding the entrance when living.) When I start back up again, I'm going to go SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY through spider, get more hp and dodging, then maybe elf or vaults upper levels before shoals. Good plan?

Cynry

810 Posts

February 28 2014 20:26 GMT

#1575

You could do Shoals 1 to 4 right now, it's easier than Vaults, around Spider difficulty, but of course different and scary in its own way.
Elf 1 and 2 as well, but it's a bit trickier because you can stumble upon powerfull elves that can mess you up really bad, the ones that you usually find in the ending vault of Elf 3. I can't remember their names from the top of my head, so it's up to you. Loot there is usually good for spellcasters though, and I'd say that the first 2 levels are actually easier than Siders or Shoals.

SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY sounds like a very good plan !

Blazinghand

United States25557 Posts

February 28 2014 21:08 GMT

#1576

My general advice for Elf is don't go into Elf unless you're fine with being banished, because even across Elf 1-2 there's a non-zero chance you'll get banished.

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 28 2014 21:46 GMT

#1577

Sounds unpleasant

. In other news, feeling kinda silly for spending my Kiku max piety gift on necro, as I literally found 2 on spider:3 or 4. Also, how long does OOD stay viable? Because right now there is very little I cannot kill with 2 shots. I killed frances and jorgrun with it(separately) before I could even see what kind of abilities they had, and still had ~75% of my mana left and sublimation of blood. I'm thinking of getting rid of iron shot and grabbing more utility spells, like reviv/death door etc.

EDIT: Would you consider 35-odd potions of curing acceptable for trove? I have 16 now but want to know for the future. In a related line of inquiries, what areas typically have lots of potions?

DOUBLE EDIT: Is grabbing necromutation, getting it castable, then branching into longswordsman with the sword of Zonguldrok an ok idea? Reasoning being, I don't need food in lich form, and the minimal weapons skills I have(6.2) are already in long swords

Cel.erity

United States4890 Posts

February 28 2014 22:07 GMT

#1578

On March 01 2014 06:46 VoidedWarranty wrote:EDIT: Would you consider 35-odd potions of curing acceptable for trove? I have 16 now but want to know for the future. In a related line of inquiries, what areas typically have lots of potions?

DOUBLE EDIT: Is grabbing necromutation, getting it castable, then branching into longswordsman with the sword of Zonguldrok an ok idea? Reasoning being, I don't need food in lich form, and the minimal weapons skills I have(6.2) are already in long swords

The point of Necromutation is to eliminate spell hunger so that you can spam high-level spells freely. I don't really see the benefit of training weapon skills on a pure caster, you're going to do infinitely more damage with spells and summons. You don't need a sword that casts Animate Dead when you can do better yourself.

As far as the trove, if you get 40+ potions, go for it. Better to open a trove than sit with all those useless potions in your stash. It really depends on how many you pick up/can buy. I think I usually end with less than that in a full run, but then again, I stop picking them up after awhile.

VoidedWarranty

42 Posts

February 28 2014 22:40 GMT

#1579

Just got gossamer rune! So happy! :D Had trouble with the endless swarms of wolf spiders, demonic crawlers and emp scorps, but i had the idea to lure a scorp out and blow it up, then make 6-odd simalacrums which proceeded to 1shot everything my previous hordes had not finished off.

Cynry

810 Posts

March 01 2014 08:56 GMT

#1580

On the contrary, I'd say getting some weapon skill can be a good idea. It lets you melee weak dudes and saves mana. At this point, with already some skills in long blade, it won't take long to bring it to 12/14. Dunno about Zonguldrok though, seems like it's annoying to use (recurse itself, leaves no edible corpses... and no, learning Lichform for that isn't worth it). Is it longsword or double sword in your version ? If it's the former don't even bother. And the demon sword would probably be better overall IMO.

Congrats on your first rune !