Berder's Deep Elf Enchanter of Sif Muna guide

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Berder's Guide to Deep Elf Enchanter of Sif Muna: the mage generalist

The purpose of DEEn of Sif Muna is to become a mage with a repertoire of useful, high-level spells from many schools of magic. By the midgame, Spellcasting will be your main skill. Here's a taste of what you will eventually be able to cast with reasonably low failure rate (ranging from around 0% to around 10%).

For damage: Orb of Destruction, Spellforged Servitor, Discord, Haste, Enslavement

For keeping enemies from reaching you: Enslavement, Cause Fear, Discord, Animate Dead

For escape and survival: Haste, Controlled Blink, Deflect Missiles, Swiftness, Summon Butterflies, Passage of Golubria, Invisibility, Death's Door

Utility: Apportation, Flight

Overview

Gameplay

The main idea through the endgame will be to kill your enemies or stop them from reaching you in just a couple turns after you see them, and be very cautious. Use your many escape spells if enemies that you can't immediately kill or disable are about to reach you, or if you're getting low on MP, or if you are below about 75% HP. As a DE with a total magic focus you can't afford to enter melee. If a fight is going well you'll barely be touched, while chaos erupts around you. It's a great feeling to see your enemies frenzied and murdering each other, or running in fear, while you and your hasted servitor constantly hurl OODs so that three are in the air at any time, one- or two-shotting everything and blasting them into little bitty chunks all over the battlefield.

Sif Muna

Sif is a great choice for a mage generalist. She gives you tons of spellbooks, so you will actually get all these spells. She also protects you from miscasts, which is a huge help when you're casting spells from so many different schools. Sif's channeling is very useful because you'll have downtime while enemies are frenzied or fighting your slaves or fighting your servitor, or while waiting for OODs to hit, and you can use this time to regain MP. Channeling is also useful to get just enough MP to cast an escape spell or that one last OOD to kill the enemy in your face, provided you can survive that long. Finally, Sif's forget spell ability is esential as you tailor your spell set for the endgame.

Skills

The final goal is to have approximately these magic skills by around level 25:

• Spellcasting 25
• Hexes 20
• Conjuration 20
• Other schools (that you use) around 10, or possibly a bit over 10 if it's really necessary to get failure rate down. This includes Summoning, Charms, Necromancy, and Translocation. Be aware that Spellcasting and increases in intelligence will also get your failure rate down if you're patient, so don't train these skills over 10 prematurely.
• Elemental schools of magic mostly untrained
• Dodging 25
• Fighting 15

Don't worry about spreading yourself too thin by training all different magic schools. As long as you have enough skill to cast your spells reliably, you're good. Remember these facts:

• It takes more than four times the XP to train a skill from 10 to 20 than from 0 to 10.
• As you level up a magic skill, you get diminishing returns in spellpower. There's a much bigger gain in spellpower going from 0 to 10 than from 10 to 20.
• Skill level 27 - spellpower 110 (given a few assumptions). Skill level 20 - spellpower 100 (with the same assumptions). It's not worth getting uber high magic skill levels.
• Robe of the archmagi and staff of conjuration will do much more for your OOD spellpower than training Conjurations to 27 will.

So you don't really lose much in the way of final spellpower for your main skills (Hexes and Conjurations), and what you lose in power you more than make up for in versatility.

Okay so that's the goal. How do you get there?

Early Game

Level 1

At level 1 you are very weak. Any two enemies can probably kill you if you engage them at once. A hobgoblin has a chance to kill you one on one. A worm or an adder will most likely kill you. Make sure you fight enemies one at a time, maintain awareness of your escape route, be ready to run if your HP gets dangerously low (circle around an obstacle while the monster chases until your HP regenerates, then turn and fight) and try not to engage anything without casting Corona on it first. Use Corona to lure enemies to your corridor one at a time. Stay the hell away from any orcs or gnolls. Heal fully before fighting again.

For skills, switch to manual mode and train dodging, fighting, spellcasting, and hexes equally. Don't bother training any weapon skills - soon, you won't need a weapon much.

Level 2

Level 2 is much like level 1, with just a little bit more HPs. Don't memorize either level 2 spell - they aren't very useful, and you need your spell levels for level 3.

Level 3

Level 3 is where you get some power. Memorize dazzling spray and confuse, and start training Conjurations (as well as Hexes, Spellcasting, Dodge, and Fighting). These are both quite powerful spells; confuse lets you take out lots of enemies, and then either stab them to death or run from them. Dazzling spray blinds and disables enemies, but it also deals quite a bit of damage and it can hit several of them. Until you find more spellbooks, dazzling spray will soon become your primary way to deal direct damage, capable of handling anything up to and including hydras and herds of yaks. For now you can stick to corona and melee fighting for the easier enemies, so that you conserve MP, but don't hesitate to confuse or dazzle any adders or ogres you find. For most enemies at this level, confuse has a higher chance of disabling an enemy than dazzling spray does; for an ogre you'll want to confuse it, then dazzling spray until it's dead. Do _not_ fight worms or ogres up close, they will kill you in two hits. Be sure to run away from any uniques and mark travel exclusions on them.

Level 4

At level 4 you get Enslave and this is where the fun starts. Now bands of orcs and gnolls present more of a challenge than a lethal threat. Enslave a few orcs, tell them to wait, and let them kill their non-enslaved friends. If you have a leftover enslaved enemy, you can confuse him first, then kill him.

However, watch your MP very carefully, and always make sure you have a safe escape route planned; if your MP starts to run out and there's still danger, get the heck out of there.

Lair

You can use those basic tactics and spells from level 4 until well into Lair. By then you'll be worshiping Sif Muna, and midway through Lair you'll probably max out piety and get your first gift spellbook. Train magic skills so you can cast whatever spells seem useful. Keep training Fighting and Dodging at about 15% each - you need to be as durable as you can be. Be mindful of the spell list from the introduction - any of those spells are good ones for you. And keep training Spellcasting as your highest skill. Shoot for approximately the skill levels in the overview section.

Remember to check the wiki for stats on each monster you encounter - specifically check their magic resistance to see if enslaving or confusing them is likely to work.

Dealing Enough Damage

Dazzling spray starts to become frustratingly weak by midway through lair. You can rely on enslaving things and letting them deal damage, instead, but you'll also need a better direct damage option. If you don't get a book with OOD you can settle for Iskenderun's Mystic Blast or Battlesphere to deal your damage, or a bolt spell. But don't train the bolt element that much - it's just while you're waiting for OOD. Mostly train conjurations if you want the bolt to be stronger. Mana Viper is also a good option to deal damage in Lair or Orc, though it starts to become unusably weak later on. Not a problem with sif muna since she'll let you forget it.

Gear

Go for gear that increases your magic power, or failing that, that increases your defenses. Dump any gear that just increases strength or melee damage. Robe of the Archmagi is great, and so is a staff of conjuration, or a staff of summoning once you find Spellforged Servitor.

Blink Frogs

Blink frogs are extremely dangerous to you since "enslave and let them kill each other" doesn't work because they're spread out, and they're so spread out that dazzling spray often can only hit one at a time, and running from them is not very effective. If they swarm you they can deal a surprising amount of damage. Try never to fight a blink frog unless near a staircase up, with plenty of MP.

Post-Lair

Work your way towards the goals of the first section. By now you'll have tons of spells from books you found and sif muna.

Throughout the game, keep devoting around 15% each to dodge and fighting. You'll never be durable, but it will help a little. Once you get deflect missiles, keep it up all the time.

Ghost Moths

Make sure you have invisibility (the spell, or several potions) and see invisible before going anywhere you might find ghost moths (spider's nest or realm of zot). These things can make you instantly helpless. What you have to do is turn invisible the moment you see them, which prevents them from draining MP, then blow them up with OOD when you get a shot.