Background and race combinations for beginners

Version 0.32: This article is up to date for the latest stable release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised.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!

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 Please keep in mind that accompanying strategy guides may be outdated.

Melee Brute

• Minotaur Fighter (strategy guide): Pure melee build. Find a big weapon and the heaviest armour, worship Okawaru or Trog and beat things to death.
  • Berserker is another melee build, worshipping Trog for the start.
  • Mountain Dwarf, Gargoyle, and Troll are similarly strong melee species.

• Troll Gladiator: Strong melee + ranged character; able to hurl a fearsome large rock from a distance (gaining more rocks later), and using deadly claws up close. Okawaru gives you more ammo to throw and a strong buff to unarmed combat.
  • Fighter (strategy guide) of Wu Jian is another good choice for Troll, using martial attacks to move and attack at the same time. Later uses Statue Form to improve defenses.

Hybrid

• Gnoll (Any Class): Gnolls are the ultimate hybrids, able to use just about anything in the dungeon, albeit without a great proficiency in any one thing. Reaver is a very fitting pick, though you can also start with melee (Fighter, Gladiator) or magic Conjurer, Ice Elementalist. But you can really try anything - even Wanderer, to embrace something new each time. Remember that a start is a start - e.g. a Gnoll Fighter can still cast all sorts of spells.

Caster

• Djinni Fire Elementalist: Removes much magical complexity; you train all magic schools equally, and you don't need to choose spells at all. 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: 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.