Warriors survival guide

[runequester]

So I tend to prefer to play warriors in rogue-likes, but I think I am getting to the point where I need some tactical aid.

Some questions in no particular order of importance:

How much do you rely on various wands, staffs and rods?

Are the various "resist" potions worth the inventory space at lower levels ? (say pre 20?)

Further on potions, what sort of potions are worth hanging on to, and what is trash?

What are the main considerations when looking for a weapon in the below level 30 part of the game?

Are the dragon scale armours worth picking over heavier conventional suits with more armour class? (gut says yes, but I'd love to hear other people's opinion)


Any general tips and tricks for warrior types in the early game ? (let's focus up to about level 30 for now)

[d_m]

How much do you rely on various wands, staffs and rods?

The essential staves are detect evil and teleport. Identify, Mapping and Light can be OK sometimes. Later on Banishment and *Destruction* are really important.

Attack wands are often not worth it, unless you happen to find a "ball wand" early or you have bad luck finding good ranged weapons. Teleport other is amazingly important. Wand of light can be good early on.

Detection rods are really important: detect traps, detect doors/stairs, detect treasure. Eventually rod of detection is important. Rod of illumination can be important to. Eventually you find rod of teleport other which is super useful as well.

Overall, these are really important for warriors since they lack spells.

Are the various "resist" potions worth the inventory space at lower levels ? (say pre 20?)

Not really. I will carry them when I find them until I run out of room, in case I need them, and will store them at home between trips. They get more important later on.

Further on potions, what sort of potions are worth hanging on to, and what is trash?

Cure potions are obviously a big deal... ideally you'll have a stack of CCW. Heroism is important before level 30 to deal with fear (and to get attack bonus). Berserk and Speed are super great, and I often try to save them for important situations. Obviously stat potions are really good. I guess the potions I mostly don't bother with are things like Boldness, Neutralize Poison, Infravision, True Seeing, etc.

What are the main considerations when looking for a weapon in the below level 30 part of the game?

Damage per round is the biggest one, unless you have good ranged attacks and find a weapon with other great bonuses. Once your STR/DEX get higher you start trying to find heavier weapons. There are some *slay* weapons (dragons, demons) that are worth hanging on to as well.

Are the dragon scale armours worth picking over heavier conventional suits with more armour class? (gut says yes, but I'd love to hear other people's opinion)

Eh, it depends. If you are excited by the activation, and have base4 covered already, then they can be good. Also, some of the exotic ones are pretty nice (obviously power dragon, as well as chaos/law/balance and maybe multihued). In general I wouldn't find myself wearing black DSM unless I found it really early or it had a great ego.

Any general tips and tricks for warrior types in the early game ? (let's focus up to about level 30 for now)

Carry tons of phase door, lots of cure potions, stay in corridors, don't hold down arrow keys (use ESC/tilde to clear messages), try to aggressively go after new item types (e.g. unknown wands, rods, etc) to collect what you need. Try to find a +9/+9 or better longbow/xbow as quickly as possible, and use ranged combat to soften things up.

Carry detect evil and teleport staves as soon as you can, and don't be afraid to bail on any fight/level to stay alive. Once you're out of cure potions don't try to stick around and win a close fight. Until you find a great weapon/ring of damage/etc you will not have fantastic damage output, so be patient.

Sorry this advice is kind of stream-of-consciousness. I am sure others will have better advice but I play warriors pretty often and tend to do well with them.

[runequester]

your advice is most excellent.

My biggest issue in these games is usually the "I'll try one more swing at the critter" and then I find myself one turn too late to bail

I've been able to find a double pair of rod of lightning a few times, which worked nice to thin down a corridor full of critters.

[Derakon]

My biggest piece of advice for warriors is to play with no-selling. Above all other classes, warriors have the biggest inventory constraints, because they can't pack multiple utility abilities into a single inventory slot and they have to rely on archery for ranged combat. Having to leave slots open for loot to sell only makes things worse.

Otherwise, detection is the warrior's biggest weakness. Until you get telepathy and Rods of Detection you won't be able to reliably know what's in the dungeon around you, so you need to be prepared to flee at a moment's notice. That means carrying Teleport / Teleport Level (scrolls for 0% failure rate, and staves if you lack both confusion and blindness resistance). Off the top of my head, the top inventory items for warriors are:

* Cure Critical Wounds (never leave the town without at least 15)
* Phase Door (why get hit in melee when you can wear your opponent down with ranged combat?)
* In the early game, Heroism (being frightened almost completely shuts you down)
* Speed (vital to turn burly uniques into manageable fights) -- once you get a Staff of Speed, save your potions in the home for the endgame fights where the enemies can drain charges
* Escapes (Teleport, Teleport Level, Teleport Other)
* Detection (Staff of Detect Evil early on, Rod of Detection once available -- also, Staves of Mapping are surprisingly handy)

Optimize your weapons for damage first and foremost. Extra defensive abilities do warriors relatively little good because they have the strongest innate defense (read: hitpoints) of any class -- though of course Free Action is vital. Also if you have a weak weapon with telepathy it can be worth using as a swap.

Again because you have such strong HP, resistances are comparatively less important, and you can dive much more aggressively. You'll want to get the basic 4 eventually, but I often put it off a lot longer than I'd be willing to with other characters. Poison resistance can also be delayed if your max HP exceeds 800; just don't go exploring at less than 800 HP, and know what can breathe poison at you.

[runequester]

What are the basic 4 resistances?

So you'd emphasize damage output over defense?

[ghengiz]

What are the basic 4 resistances?

They are fire, cold, acid, electricity.
I'd put poison here too, for it's important quite soon, but the basic four are the ones listed above.

[Djabanete]

RFire, RCold, RAcid, RElec are the basic resists. Like RPois, they don't matter too much until the mid-20's, but become progressively more important later. As a warrior I also prioritize RConf and RBlind when I have that luxury (RBlind lets you skip RLite and RDark, but they're reasonably useful if you don't have it). Telepathy and Free Action should be prioritized as soon as you have access to them, and the same goes for See Invisible if you don't have Telepathy (which is almost always, in the early game).

Warriors should almost always prioritize dealing as much melee damage as possible; shooting damage can come in handy if you find a nice bow or crossbow.

TL;DR --- a warrior will do well in the 0-30 stretch if his gear emphasizes See Invisible, Free Action, and damage.

As for items: I'm not up to date with the current Vanilla, and others have given great advice. But I'll give you my take on warriors. They need 3 things:

Healing: As much as you can get. Prioritize healing that clears Blind and Conf. When inventory crunches, cut the stacks that are worth less total HP.

Evasion: The main thing here is a healthy stack of ?PD. ?Tele is even better if you have them. Wands of Sleep Monster and the like can *sometimes* do in a pinch. Basically, you just need ways to run away, the faster the better.

Intel: Identify. Illumination. Light beams. Detect objects. Mapping. Anything you can get your hands on.

When you're spending money in town, you can basically blow it on ?WoR, ?PD, ?ID/_Percep, and !CCW.

[Raxmei]

The significance of the basic 4 is they are the most common resistable damage types and the damage cap for breaths in the basic 4 is high enough to kill anyone stone dead instantly. The point where you can reasonably expect to be killed instantly for wandering around without the basic 4 is somewhere around level 40ish when ancient multihued dragons show up and deal 616 damage (this is actually well under the cap, but more than many characters will have at this point) and you'll have plenty of encouragement to find resistance before then. An ancient single color dragon only deals about 200 damage per breath so a moderately advanced warrior could reasonably survive long enough to teleport away even without resistance. Well before then you should notice that certain attacks are inflicting bothersome amounts of damage to your character. The basic 4 aren't terribly hard to cover by the time you really need them, poison a fair bit harder.

Poison's damage cap is lower at 800 compared 1200 for the basic 4. This is a lot of damage but you could imaginably survive it. Resistance in the basic 4 and poison divides damage by 3, so that 1200 damage breath that kills you instantly now deals a survivable 400 damage. If you have both permanent and temporary resistance at the same time you divide damage by 9.

The other damaging elements are less common and have lower damage potential. Some, such as chaos, come with really nasty special effects attached which resistance will reduce or prevent. However, they're mostly rare enough that you can mostly get by without resistance if you're careful. You won't have to worry about this sort of thing at all for a while.

[Derakon]

Quick note: the damage cap for the basic 4 is 1600, not 1200. Note that this means once you have resistance to the basic 4, you can still take up to 533 damage in one shot from a high-level monster.

Damage dealt by a breath attack for the basic 4 and poison is 1/3rd of the monster's current HP, or the cap, whichever is lower.

[runequester]

okay, so I think I have definately neglected those defenses in my games.