Mid Game Character Building

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

Characters in the midgame will often have a god, but haven't finished obtaining the two runes from the Lair branches. From now, your skills no longer reflect your background, but rather reflect your general strategy, species, and god choice.

Melee / Armour Focused

While nearly all players should consider some spells (barring Trog-lodytes), melee focused players tend to wear heavier armor. They'll tend to cast low level spells.

Weapon

Your weapon class should by far still be the most focused skill. Your goal is to reach minimum delay for your weapon. Viewable by selecting the weapon in the iventory, the minimum delay is 0.5 to 0.7 auts, taking between 8 to 24 levels. Raising your weapon skill beyond mindelay still raises damage and accuracy, though no longer increases swing speed.

Warriors need to make a choice: how many hands will you dedicate? Two-handed weapons deal more damage... but take more investment and restrict your shield slot. Of course, you still need a reasonable delay to even consider a two-hander (or a big shield).

Range

Melee fighters have a big weakness -- they have to fight in melee. Diverting some experience into ranged weaponry can help even things out. Throwing is an obvious choice; it doesn't require you to wield another weapon. Ten (10) skill is useful to get the penetrating javelins to 1.0 delay. The Shoals generates many a merfolk javelineer to take your ammo from, while Okawaru will supply you with a surplus of ammo.

Evocations is an interesting skill to train. Ranged attacks are best for enemies that are sketchy to fight honourably; these are what wands are for. Even a wand of polymorph can neuter that scary orc warlord or unique! 5-10 skill into evocations is another viable option, especially if you generate the Swamp.

Defense

Fighting still remains the most important defensive skill. HP is the only defense that can't be ignored, while the actual skill also boosts your combat prowess. Once you hit a weapon's mindelay, Fighting should be your main focus. Even before then, it should be prioritized just under your weapon skill.

Your other defensive skills: Armour, Dodging, and Shields, are simply less important. But still very useful. Armour should be above 10. Dodging might not be very useful to someone wearing a sluggish plate armour, but it'll be cheaper than raising your main skills, so get a couple levels. Shields, if you are wearing one, is also useful to train, around 10+ for a kite shield or 15+ for a tower shield.

Spells

With such heavy armour, high level spells are simply out of the question. Instead, look at the utility of passive spells. From Translocations like Blink, Passage of Golubria, to Necromancy via Animate Dead, there are plenty of useful non-damaging spells. Getting these spells castable in heavy armour should be a tertiary focus - and only those spells, unless you plan to move to a lighter armour like fire dragon scales.

Spell Focused

Players wearing light armour tend to be spell-focused.

Weapons

Casters tend to use weapons to clean up lesser foes and deal with resisting enemies. Just as common, especially by the mid-game, is to use no weapon at all! Casters using weapons should not pour lots of experience into their weapon skill. One nice application is to invest in 12 Staves skill to get a matching magical staff up to mindelay. These deal respectable damage, with their damage scaling off your magic.

Spellcasting

Spellcasting is a useful skill, though not extremely impactful for actually casting spells. Characters running out of MP, should, of course, invest a couple more points into this skill. Once you get into level 5-6 spells, you can defintely afford to invest 10+ levels into casting.

Spell Schools

You want to have your spellcasting "engine" up and running as soon as possible. A reliable, heavily damaging, level 5-6 spell that can power through the Lair branches and Vaults, at the very least. Spells like Lee's Rapid Deconstruction and Lightning Bolt fit the bill; Iron Shot and Orb of Destruction remain effective in the halls of Zot. Make sure these spells can be casted reliably (<10% failure).

Unlike melee, spellpower remains important for keeping spells competitive, so don't neglect to train even further.

Defense

Defense is useful. Getting a nuclear spell up and running is more useful.

Even spellcasters should invest in Fighting, especially those whose species makes them fragile. This becomes more important after the Lair branches, when you start facing more ranged attacks and conjurations. You can leave Fighitng trained the entire game, or just leave it in the upper teens. The same strategem also applies to Dodging, but with less levels - 8-10 will be useful.

Stealth is only marginally useful. Many spells are loud, for one.

Most players will want a buckler, and thus should choose to put a little (4) skill to offset some of the penalties. Upgrading to a larger shield is defintely possible, though always keep your main spell at a reliable casting rate. Ten skill for a kite shield is probably enough; you don't want to put five more levels just to offset 2 EV.

Auxilliary

Spells like Blink and Passage of Golubria are very useful, especially to a squishy caster. Sublimination of Blood relies a lot on spellpower (i.e, a high Necromancy) to be effective, but will restore MP in a pinch.

Evocations is less important than with a melee character, though still very helpful for delaing iwth tough enemies. A few levels is all you need. Plus, using a magical staff or an orb of energy will demand more of this skill.