Out of the frying-pan into the fire

[brbrbr]

Out of curiosity I have tried Kobold Rogue, and it is my favourit combination now.

I fell in love the first time I cast Object Detection!!!
I'd see the object I need, head there, grab it and move over. With kobold's stealth I truly choose my own battles. Sometimes I don't touch a monster on a level, I'd "steal" the objects move to another.

Heroic stealth is also super-useful on the last levels, where too many monsters can insta-kill me and CON is not maxed yet.

That combo is increadibly fast. I managed to get from 0 to Winner in 3(!!!!) days. (That was 13th attempt, though, but all attempts took no more than 2 weeks in total). I just cut the crap out and go where I need. Love it.

Now I get into frying pan of Half-Orc Paladin.
Every man and his dog on the level comes after me. I am sick of hordes of orcs and trolls. Every second beast poisons me, as it seems.
I can barely recover from battle to battle and have to fight everything moving on the level. That is tiring!
In addition to that, I cannot disarm the traps and pseudo-id takes ages to kick in.

Do you have similar experience with Half-Orcs?
I mean - Dwarf Warrior has similar stats. When I played it early levels were breeze. Now, with Half-Orc is feels as madness.

[Pete Mack]

Yes Kobold rogue is a powerful combination. And paladin is difficult until pretty late when you get 5% fail on heal. After that, you can just stand in a corner and whale away--it's ridiculously easy.

[brbrbr]

Holy crap!!! I've found boots of Feanor!!! I've never seen them before..
WOW

[Fiquin]

What about a Yeek?

Kobold Rogue, nice!

When do we get to roll Yeeks?

[GrandpuhTy]

Been playing with a kobold rogue myself recently and am really enjoying it. My best character was actually a kobold warrior who made it down to level 44 or so.

What's actually best for a kobold character, though? A rogue or a ranger? They seem almost the same in the beginning, except the ranger gets some extra ranged attacks.

[Derakon]

What's actually best for a kobold character, though? A rogue or a ranger? They seem almost the same in the beginning, except the ranger gets some extra ranged attacks.

Define "best". The classes aren't really meant to have equivalent power curves over the course of the game -- that is, they aren't balanced. Hence the repeated comments about how mages are a challenge class.

I would tend to say that rogues are easier than rangers for a newbie, though. Rangers can completely stomp single targets in the mid/late game, but before that they have bad melee, mediocre spellcasting, and their archery is only a little better than other classes. Meanwhile, rogues have a comparatively strong start, with much better melee and stealth that starts paying dividends immediately. And since they're so bad at spellcasting, you're more likely to just ignore spells altogether and focus on melee, as is right and proper.

Meanwhile, an inexperienced player trying to play a ranger is likely to try to get good STR, DEX, and INT, and then discover that they're still bad at melee and they aren't very good at spellcasting either. Rangers really are mediocre until they get levels and a good bow. Not a problem if you know what you're doing, of course, but if you haven't played the game a few times you're liable to get into trouble.

[Pete Mack]

I feel the strongest character is Rogue rogue with 17/16/16 distribution, with INT entirely ignored. You can start taking Intellect to catch up, once your other stats are above 18/50 or so.
Detect monsters and detect objects is all you really need out of the spellbook. Those are real increases in character power. Everything else for a long while is a convenience to allow a bigger inventory. Once you can use spellbooks 4 and above, things start changing. At that point, !Intellect becomes worthwhile. It occurs to me that stashing it at home for a late game burst is a good idea. Make all the extra !DEX, !CON, !STR actually worth something.

[gglibertine]

I'm all about the kobold rogues right now, though my very best attempt so far has been with a dwarf paladin. Being able to ignore poison from the start of the game is pretty sweet, and kobold stats aren't half bad! You just have to grab a missile weapon ASAP to avoid dying before you can get your hands on some decent armor.

[brbrbr]

I had a streak of win-at-first-attempt with Mage, Priest, Warrior, now back to Kobold Rogue with randarts=yes.

4th attempt with Kobold Rogue now, I struggle for some reason.
I wonder if it's randarts=yes or I just get bored and less careful...
Good weapon is hard to come by, monsters hit hard and initial stealth is not that useful as I'd hope.

I agree with Peter Mack that INT at birth can be ignored.
Object Detection and Find Doors is all I need for fist 40 levels.
%30-50 failure chance on 6 mana is very annoying though (STR=17, INT=10, DEX=18/30)
I spend too much time resting to replenish mana - wouldn't be good for competition turn count.
STR and DEX are much more important, though.
Bows are big help.

[Derakon]

I would not even bother trying to cast spells with that kind of failure rate, personally. Resting to recover mana is a dangerous idea, because the longer you spend on the level, the more monsters spawn in, and newly-spawned monsters are always awake. Use magical items to handle your detection needs. Object Detection of course you can't perfectly substitute an item for, but you don't need to always have perfect object detection. Carry a Rod of Treasure Detection and only cast the spell if you need to know what specifically a * is.

[brbrbr]

I would not even bother trying to cast spells with that kind of failure rate, personally. Resting to recover mana is a dangerous idea, because the longer you spend on the level, the more monsters spawn in, and newly-spawned monsters are always awake. Use magical items to handle your detection needs. Object Detection of course you can't perfectly substitute an item for, but you don't need to always have perfect object detection. Carry a Rod of Treasure Detection and only cast the spell if you need to know what specifically a * is.

That is, actually, very good advice. Thanks, Derakon.

[Pete Mack]

Ignore spell-cadting, except for detect monsters, which is cheap and valuable. At that stage, you advance very fast, and there's mostly nothing worth picking up. You will have 10-15% fail soon enough on the other detection spells. (Don't bother with anything else except the occasional Light spell in big rooms.) Absolutely don't use the phase spell. Carry a stack of ~10 scrolls instead.

[Bogatyr]

Another "me, too!" for kobold rogue: great combo! object detection makes stat gain and consumables hoarding a breeze. I like the high stealth approach to the game: monsters are frozen usually until I decide to fight one. It's quite fun sneaking into a vault and picking through the goodies while surrounded by monsters. Especially if there's a breather who could at any moment wake and cause a chain reaction of waking by breathing, it's a real rush!