[poscheng] How to play Mindcrafters

[budswell]

So playing my 2nd mindcrafter, and beginning to remember why the last time I tried a few years ago I suicided (almost never do that).

I am finding it very tedious. CL-11 now and still using Neral Blast which seems to very much be "death by a thousand cuts". Everything seems to resist. And the trusty old "hook shot" doesn't work either.

Am I missing something? Or is it very much an early game grind where you have to carefully pick your battles (I find that annoying - prefer to be a level clearer, probably why I've never been remotely close to winning).

Got a new "Pulverize" spell which may be better in a few levels when the failure come down. But otherwise I just have to pepper away until I get some better items. Until then I have no way of dealing damage in any quantity and thus no hope with uniques.

[debo]

Mindcrafter is basically: You get an overpowered set of abilities that make it pretty easy to survive, but your damage sucks and you have to do tedious things forever to win.

Poscheng helped a bit by adding a final spell (psycho storm or something) -- older variants just had psycho spear, which does reliable but pretty low damage. (This may have been added in hengband, I'm not sure.)

I think it's good to use a low-xp-penalty race with mindcrafter so that you can get your whole spell list as quickly as possible.

[budswell]

Thanks, for me it has to be fun before CL25 as I rarely get past that

[Sideways]

Mindcrafter gets a lot of spells in the early game, and those are mostly good though there are a few duds; but there aren't many late game spells, basically just psycho-storm, though some players do seem to have "what else do you need anyway?" views of that. When I played Frog mindcrafter it was neither weak nor unfun in the early game, although admittedly that was coffee-break so the early game went by more quickly. I don't think either Frog or latest Pos has changed that class much, so Pos mindcrafter should be about the same.

Mindcrafters are decent at melee and not completely hopeless as archers, so you don't need to rely just on spells for damage.

[Bucephalus]

I think a lot of new players come to POS with a fundamental misconception about what playing the game is. It's not you dictating to the game how it should be played, according to an arbitrary concept of who your character is and what he does. It's the game dictating to you what is required to beat it, and you then acquiescing, concepts be damned, with whatever tools you have.

To wit, classes in POSlikes are not well differentiated. Even the pure casters have to lean on archery and melee early on. Hybrids (anything that isn't a mage or pure melee) are basically melee characters with utility spells, and I'm specifically including rangers, time-lords, monks, priests and, yes, mindcrafters.

Trying to play a mindcrafter in the classical sense will probably just frustrate you. Get your AC up, buy some potions of heroism, and find a decent weapon, and I think you'll have fun.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Unlike a more melee dedicated character who might game significant skill with a weapon, most Hybrids suck equally at weapon skills. So, since it is the weapon that is carrying you feel free to switch to anything that comes to hand.

My Monk, Mage, Ninja might spend more time using a Bow than whatever is their supposed focus. Neural Blast is a sad joke of an attack in my opinion, half the mobs resist or reflect it.
The Carrion in the Crows is nearly immune to Fire/Cold/Neural so I use a bow, some scrolls of Illumination and Teleport/Phase Door, and the early bosses fall easily. In the Mimics, a Bow handles them all quickly from range while walking up to melee gives them far too many chances to kill you. A CLvl 20 quest I often finish at a far lower level.

[budswell]

Thanks for the tips. He died anyway, next was a timelord which felt similar, but the utility blaster was better - noone resisted. Hes also dead. Now playing a warlock the new frog.

The the most fun I've had the past few of years was a Balrog (that's what I think a warrior-mage should feel like), and a hounds warlock (once you get hounds which can tunnel it was hilarious - detect mosters, set pet target, watch them swarm).