A Cheery Wave Hello and Some Newbie Questions

[Timo Pietilä]

Maybe....I love priests myself, but I prefer High Elf priests. With 2 rings of escaping and a lot of +stealth, orbing when they have mana and retreating when they dont.

I find it sad that clairvoyance doesnt detect item types anymore, though. This spell was the "reward" for a hard early game

Early game with priests is hard only if you choose race like hi-elf with penalty to WIS and very slow level gain. For Dwarf early game is easy. Mid-game before getting Godly Insight is hard (if you get lucky with GI it's easy too). Then it is easy again. For stealthy priest I would choose hobbit over hi-elf.

[Estie]

Early game with priests is hard only if you choose race like hi-elf with penalty to WIS and very slow level gain. For Dwarf early game is easy. Mid-game before getting Godly Insight is hard (if you get lucky with GI it's easy too). Then it is easy again. For stealthy priest I would choose hobbit over hi-elf.

Hobbit priest is great, too, but has low hit points. There is this phase when I feel invincible with priests, when I have good artifacts, clear GVs deep down and nothing wakes up because im so stealthy that I have to remind myself constantly to be careful because con isnt maxed yet and hp are low (like 300).

With hobbit, it is harder to get out of this before the Phoenix catches me offguard than with high elves despite the xp penalty.

[krazyhades]

I want mages to have access to Detect Treasure (again? iirc they used to have it)

[Derakon]

I want mages to have access to Detect Treasure (again? iirc they used to have it)

They get Detection and Enlightenment, which functionally supercede Detect Treasure. That spell itself has never been a part of the priestly spell list IIRC.

[krazyhades]

The key word was mages. No enlightenment for them.

[Derakon]

The key word was mages. No enlightenment for them.

Oh, duh, my mistake. Mages get access to Detect Treasure in the fourth spellbook.

[krazyhades]

I thought they get the lesser Detect Objects. Maybe I have those two names mixed up. I want them to have the rogue one.

[Derakon]

So far as I'm aware the only difference is that the mage version is available later. Does the rogue spell do something special?

[Monkey Face]

So far as I'm aware the only difference is that the mage version is available later. Does the rogue spell do something special?

The rogue spell identifies specific objects (?of WOR, Mace, !CCW, etc.) rather than the generic * with other detections. Enlightenment is the only other way to get specific object detection.

[Derakon]

Oh, weird. Well, there's a very good reason to keep the other classes from getting access to that ability: it's cheesy as hell. We want the player to have to weigh the pros and cons of diving into that vault full of nasties without being able to make a fully-informed opinion. If there are no unknowns to exploration, then it ceases being exploring.

[krazyhades]

I have a lot less fun playing with Detect Objects than Detect Treasure. In my mage-playing experience, the mage is motivated to avoid vaults that have one-shots in them until Banish-all-the-things or 0%-fail-TO is online (depending on which one-shotters are non/unique). Mages' low hitpoint total and lack of reliable non-consumable healing makes them heavily reliant on !Healing, !*Healing* (and also !Restore Mana, and !Experience because of their difficulty with many fights) , but without access to Detect Treasure, they can't target those consumables in dungeon dives. Slipping up and having to expend consumables is extra costly for a mage for this reason. Further, a mage relative to other characters is more-often forced to expend a good consumable (!Healing and !*Healing* for the most part, sometimes !Restore Mana) because of his slimmer instagib margins and lack of non-consumable 0%-fail heals.

tl;dr In my games I find that not having access to Detect Treasure incentivizes me to play even more cheesily to make up for mages' reduced access to and increased reliance on consumables.

[Derakon]

Hm, I don't recall my mages being especially heavy on the consumables use, except for Restore Mana which is generally fairly available. Just don't stand in melee, ever. None of your attacks have a range of zero so the only reason to not use Shoot 'n Scoot is if you're afraid of what you might teleport next to -- which speaks to bad local "terrain" and/or pre-fight preparation.

Also, don't underestimate the attack wands, especially Dragon's Flame and Dragon's Frost. They can go a long way to extending your combat performance before you get Raal's Tome.

[Philip]

Mages shouldn't need too much !healing. A staff, combined with paranoia and choosing targets carefully will help. Restore Mana is only necessary if you have to kill something badly, and quick. !Experience is completely unnecessary.

[WanderingBard2014]

I love that my innocent intro thread is not only yielding lots of good information for me, but inspiring friendly debate among all you veterans. Next question, for anyone with the time and inclination to answer: What does the item description for the Scroll of Acquirement mean? Does it drop weapons or armor, or just generic items? If it does drop weapons and armor, is there an upper limit to what it can drop? For the matter of that, are there any outside factors that influence the "goodness" of the drop (CL, DL when read, etc)?

[Mondkalb]

Dungeon level is the only outside influence (the deeper, the better, obviously; but don't wait too long or the next fire breather wil turn it into smoke). You can get any ego armor or weapon or even an artifact (I don't know if other items can be created, I think I always got weapon or armor).