Background and race combinations for beginners

This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised. Take advice as you see fit, and read at your own risk!

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Crawl allows you to play using widely different play styles, depending on your character and god choice. The wide variety of choices offered might intimidate or even overwhelm new players. These are a selection of strong combos from the main character archetypes in the game. Please keep in mind that any accompanying strategy guides are severely outdated.

Melee Brute

• Hill Orc or Minotaur Berserker/Fighter (strategy guide): Pure melee builds. Find a big weapon and the heaviest armour, worship Trog or Okawaru and beat things to death.
  • Gargoyle and Troll are similarly strong options. Troll has a particularly strong early game; making it easy to get the gist of the basic game systems.

• Troll Hunter: Strong melee + ranged character; able to hurl fearsome large rocks from a distance, and using deadly claws up close. Okawaru gives you more ammo to throw and a strong buff to unarmed combat.

Hybrid

• Gnoll (Any Class): Gnolls are the ultimate hybrids, able to use just about anything in the dungeon, albeit without a great proficency. Fighter and Gladiator are good melee starts, while Hedge Wizard or Ice Elementalist are good casting starts. But you can really try anything - even Wanderer, to embrace something new each time. Notably, Gnolls start with high skill levels due to their nominally high aptitude.

Caster

• Djinni Fire Elementalist: Removes the entire process of selecting and forgetting spells from a library, and only has to train one magic skill. This streamlines the process for newer players. Scorch carries its weight all the way to the Lair, at which point new random spells will be naturally granted. Worships Ashenzari for additional bonuses. A good choice for a first attempt as a caster.

• Gargoyle Earth Elementalist (strategy guide): A durable, more standard caster with powerful destructive spells. Typically worships Vehumet.

Stabber

• Spriggan Enchanter (strategy guide): The classic stealth and stab build. Spriggans are a great stealth class for new players since their high speed lets them flee when stealth fails. Ensorcelled Hibernation makes stabbing things really easy.

These are just few examples, there are lots of other combinations that are reasonably easy to play. Feel free to experiment.