ARCHIVED Majang's Fire Elementalist of TSO Guide

This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised.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 0.15: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This guide assumes that you want to not only ascend with the Orb of Zot, but also carry along 15 runes and the loot of at least one Ziggurat. It approaches this goal with a somewhat risky strategy, based on the hope that you find access to a Book of Annihilations by the time you reach the end game, for which there is no guarantee. But even if you don’t, you should be able to at least find Tornado, and this may win this game for you just as well.

Why this background?

Changes in recent versions of this game have made it exceedingly difficult to win it as a pure melee fighter, no matter how much tanked up the character is. Descending down the stairs to Vaults 5 will very likely get you killed, if you cannot deal with the vault warden who lazily stands at the edge of your line of sight and blocks the stairs up, watching with glee while hordes of giants, titans, draconians, ancient liches and who knows what bring you down, how ever long it takes. Trying to get your third rune in the Abyss or in the Slime Pits will get you into a similar fix. So, if you want to win, by the time you reach the need to get your third rune, you will need access to a high-powered spell that takes care of crucial enemies that you can’t get at with melee or even ranged fighting options.

The obvious response, of course, are high-powered conjurations. Fire Storm and Tornado clear even the most crowded screen, and usually one takes the road as a Fire Elementalist or a Wizard to get to casting these late-game nukes. This is also the assumption for this build. When it comes to God-choice, most conjurers rely on Vehumet, Sif Muna or Kiku, with some people also successfully trying Cheibriados. This build, however, suggests The Shining One (TSO) as a very viable choice for blasters. He has to offer a lot of desirable benefits for those in his worship. Although not up to par with Vehumet’s MP restoration, he restores some MP on killing evil monsters. But this is complemented by a very welcome HP restoration, that, once you have tried this, you will painfully miss next time you play under Vehumet. In the late game, where MP and HP restoration are most needed, almost all enemies are of the evil kind. Clearing out a Ziggurat floor full of undead or demons with Fire Storm and Tornado will usually get you out of the fight without ever having to channel MP or using a means of heal wounds. This is quite fun, indeed!

Other recent changes in the game also make this build more desirable: 0.15 has given the usefulness of sublimation of blood a nosedive – Gargoyles can’t use it at all any more, and most caster characters are so frail that having to tap into their own valuable HP to restore some MP does not sound like an attractive option, particularly in a fight involving hellfire-capable monsters. So the idea of not having access to Necromancy spells does not sound so bad anymore. And when surrounded by evil monsters, unleashing another Tornado under TSO will give you much better results health-wise than using Death's Door with any other God. This of course also means that you won’t have to train the necromancy skills anymore, freeing up this experience for other purposes, such as getting to cast your high-end nukes faster, or to build up good defenses using shields or armour.

TSO’s other benefits are also very welcome to casters: In effect, he provides see invisible, eventually to the complete LOS by the time you need it, which means that you can wear a helmet or hat of intelligence at all times. He gives full negative energy resistance, again freeing up an equipment slot for other, more pressing matters. His cleansing flame, at least at high invocations, will soften up any evil masses crowding on you, but usually Tornado works better in these situations. Finally, having a high-quality holy wrath-branded weapon such as a quickblade or sacred scourge (in 0.15 they are much more efficiently brought up to the maximum +9 enchantment) will make your end-game much easier, allowing you to kill some weaker enemies without investing any MP.

But there is a price to pay for worshiping TSO, particularly as a high-end caster. He will not help you a bit with your magic, like Vehumet does, so if you are used to playing under his protection, you may now find that it will take considerably longer before you can cast a difficult spell, or that you can finally throw away your ring or staff of wizardry. But towards the end game, there is no difference playing TSO or Vehumet, when all your spells are down to 1% failure rate anyway. Also any spell involving poison (such as the otherwise priceless Mephitic Cloud) are out of bounds for you.

Also it needs getting used to that sometimes you are not able to cast an area of effect spell on a cluster of monsters, because one of them still happens to be napping, or is confused or distracted. The game will warn you before that happens, so there is no danger of doing it inadvertently. At worst this means that you will have to waste another half turn on a yell, or that you have to adjust your targeting somewhat. The biggest difficulty, however, is that you have absolutely no guarantee that you will find the high-level spells that you need to win this game. If by the time you enter Vaults 5 you still have neither Tornado nor Fire Storm online, then most likely you have lost the game. You can try anyway. Good luck.

Suitable Species

Obviously, no evil species can pick this background, and Demigods are also excluded. Orcs will do somewhat fine (TSO accepts them!), as they have a very high invocations aptitude, and easily build up defensive skills. Their spellcasting in general, however, is worse than just mediocre. You’d rather look for a species that comes with high intelligence, and has good chances of reaching the high-end spells by the time they are needed. The following come to mind:

Gargoyles

The Gargoyle is the species that got me to the idea of writing this guide, as it gave me a complete 15-rune run, including a Ziggurat. It’s many mutations are well complemented by what TSO has on offer, so that in the end all resistances are easily met. From the beginning you don’t need to bother about poison and electricity. You can fly permanently when you need it, are immune to rotting, and even somewhat resistant to torment. On top of that you have obscenely high extra AC and GDR, and the shield and armour skills to go along with that. On the flip of the coin, however, your intelligence does not match that of any elf species, and also your magical skills could be somewhat better. But still, all in all this is a very good choice, which shines particularly in the late game branches such as the hells, The Tomb and Pandemonium. You will want to equip your gargoyle with a sacred scourge.

High Elves

The High Elf is very adept for the hybrid type that this build envisions. They are good at magic, quite intelligent, and have a good weapons aptitude for long blades and short blades. You will want them to enter the late game branches with a highly enchanted quickblade of holy wrath, or with an eudemon blade.

Deep Elves

The Deep Elf is more frail than the High Elf, but also much more adept at magic, and a lot more intelligent. They will have their high-level spells up and running long before they enter Vaults 5. Their weapon of choice will be the quickblade.

Tengus

A Tengu has excellent aptitudes for playing a blaster, and can also handle any weapon. His defensive skills are also outstanding, but he is a bit frail, and does not like to serve a god that requires you to train invocations. His ability to fly permanently gives him a huge advantage in some branches.

Basic strategy outline

You start out as a pure caster, switching off almost all skills until your fire magic spells reach #### power. This should happen pretty soon. Next you train your skills on a rather broad scale, developing your defensive and weapon skills alongside your magic skills. Since one of your goals is to cast Tornado, start learning air magic as soon as you can get your hands on it. Reaching the mid-to-late game, when you already have decent melee and defensive skills, you again start focusing on your attack magic skills, until you get Fire Storm or Tornado online. It may be a challenge to find access to them, and you should try everything possible (which isn’t much) to make that happen. When one of these two spells work for you, you are ready to clear out almost any level of the game.

As suggested by others, you may alternatively want to not start out with TSO, but with Vehumet. His spell-gifts would almost guarantee that you get the high-level spells you need. Once all is well, you may try to ditch him for TSO before you hit the late game branches. I have not tried this strategy, and Vehumet's wrath is not trivial, but if you manage to outlive this wrath, it would give you a less risky approach.

Equipment choice

Your weapons choice is determined by the aptitude of your chosen species. Armour choice is less straightforward. Except for gargoyles and tengus, the other suggested species have poor aptitudes for armour and shields, but still you should work towards having decent levels of both. Maybe a buckler does not provide much blocking power (don’t be deceived by the low numbers you see since playing 0.15 – shields are as efficient as before, it is just a different way of crunching the numbers in the game mechanics), but there are some amazing branded and artifact shields out there, which can contribute nicely towards your resistances. Just keep your hands off a shield of reflection, as it may have bad consequences for your worshiping TSO. As soon as you can get your hands on it, make yourself a light dragon armour, such as a mottled dragon armour, or maybe a swamp dragon armour. If you are not playing a gargoyle or tengu, then anything beyond that may imply too high an investment into the armour skill. Even the gargoyle has difficulties keeping the spell success rate down with an armour of encumbrance rating 11, such as a fire dragon armour or a pearl dragon armour. Otherwise, keep your eyes open for any kind of artifact secondary armour, with a bias towards gaining more intelligence or needed resistances. The removal of item destruction in 0.15 allows you to wear something more useful than a cloak of preservation, which is great news.

Spells to learn

From the starting spell book you learn to cast Conjure Flame, sticky flame and fireball. These will give you sufficient offensive and defensive options to make it through the early dungeon, the Lair and the Orcish Mines. You want to be on the lookout for any spellbooks containing air spells, as Tornado may be your first option for a level 9 attack spell you have in the game, and you may want to learn flight or airstrike anyway. If you have a good aptitude for earth magic (being a gargoyle or deep elf), there is now no reason not to learn some good earth spells, since as of 0.15 there is no more antitraining in the game (just remember to timely remove any earth-or-air spell enhancers, because they still dampen the magic of the opposite school).

If you are lucky, you will find a Book of Annihilations early on in the game, either lying around or in a shop. If so, all is well, and you have good chances of winning this game, as it contains Fire Storm, your mainstay for obliterating large groups of dangerous enemies in the late game. As soon as you can cast it (employing the help of a source of wizardry and a potion of brilliance), learn it and use it to walk from victory to victory. Your second mainstay will be Tornado, which can be found in at least two books (Book of the Sky and Book of the Tempests). Again, learn it as soon as you can cast it.

Now, if you have not found any of these spells by the time you need them, you can try your luck using a scroll of acquirement. These should be kept until you either find the spells you need on the dungeon floor or in a shop, or until the time you want to enter Vaults 5. Then read as many as you have to hopefully get the book you need. Having high relevant skill levels, together with the exclusion of all books already found, will hopefully influence the acquirement generator sufficiently to not throw you another volume with useless summoning spells, or even a manual of stealth! It therefore is good to wait as long as possible before reading those scrolls.

Other useful spells for you are

• Ring of Flames – this not only gives you double protection against fire, but in spite of its C-- penalty it will actually protect you from most sources of cold damage.

• Orb of Destruction – your best single-target option for killing difficult enemies such as uniques.

• Bolt of Fire – cheaper than Fire Storm, but just as effective when your opposition is nice enough to line themselves up for a good shot.

• Bolt of Magma – excellent option against fire resistant monsters.

• Blink – good to reposition yourself, for example to make a Fire Storm or a Tornado more effective. Particularly in a Ziggurat, blinking yourself into the middle of a pack of evil monsters and then unleashing a Tornado will be a highly rewarding exercise.

• Lehudib's Crystal Spear – since you are not learning any costly necromancy spells, you will have some spell levels left for this towards the end. Having no antitraining to consider, getting this spell online from scratch is surprisingly fast, when spellcasting and conjurations are already at high levels. It may only take two or three of the final Ziggurat levels to get the failure rate down from 100% to 1%.

Skill management

In the beginning, your starting spells are rather pathetic, and you need to work particularly at fire magic, conjurations and spellcasting to make them more powerful. When your fire conjurations reach #### in spell power, you need to branch out broadly to train all the following skills: Fighting (you should never switch that off again until you have maxed it out), your melee weapon skill to what it takes to reach minimum delay for your weapon of choice (only 8 for a quickblade!), armor (up to six if you are aiming for a mottled dragon armor), dodging (initially up to 10 or so), fire and air (never switch those off), invocations (to increase the effectiveness of TSO’s gifts) and evocations (up to 10 initially, but later more if you want to use a staff of energy or a crystal ball of energy for channeling). Don’t ever train stealth (with TSO you don’t want to be stealthy), and leave all non-elementary magic skills except conjurations switched off. What you need here, you get through your spellcasting skill.

Once you have cleared out the Lair, the Orcish Mines and the first two leveles of the Elven Halls, it is again time to focus on your magic skills. Switch off all the support skills (except fighting, and if you still have to train some armor or shield skill to eliminate casting penalties), and focus on spellcasting, conjurations, fire and air until you can reliably cast Fire Storm and Tornado. If you have not found a Book of Annihilations yet, there may be a hard choice for you to make. You are more likely to find Tornado than Fire Storm, but if you are not a High Elf, then air magic may not be your strong side. It may be wise to switch off fire magic and conjurations anyway, and focus all your effort on air magic, so that you have the Tornado when your time comes. Too bad, however, when you then find Fire Storm, but don’t have the skills to throw one. As I said, it is a hard choice.

In the end-game, you may max out some of your skills. Train shields and dodging instead – these will all increase your survivability in the late game branches. It feels good to carry a large shield into a fight without having any of the penalties!

Order of Branches

0.15 also eliminated the item weight feature and anything to do with it. This means that you can now carry any number of anything with you without ever being encumbered. This, together with the elimination of item destruction, changes the game-play dramatically, even to the point of the order in which you do things. For example, there is now usually no need to establish a stash at the Temple, because you can carry almost everything until you reach Lair 2. Another example of a resulting strategy change will be discussed further down.

After clearing the Lair and the Orcish Mines, follow up by sanitizing the first two levels of the Elven Halls. Return to the Lair to attack the first four levels each of the two side branches (of course you leave out the Slime Pits for now). Having done that, you work yourself down all the way to the last level (15) of the dungeon. Return to the Lair to finish off the two side branches to get your first two runes. The first four levels of the Vaults are considerably easier than any level of the Depths, so you want to start out here to increase your experience. Some characters may already get to the point of using level 9 spells during this exercise. You may now want to also clear the last level of the Elves. This is a good place containing more spell books, so you may be lucky here to find the one big spell that you are still missing.

Now it is time for the Depths. They always give me a scare with their high concentration of angry bad attackers. But this is also the first place where TSO’s MP and HP restoration has a real effect. And again, the loot you encounter may give you your lucky find.

From now on your path of progress is somewhat dependent on your spell portfolio. If you are set, you can just continue with clearing the Vaults for good. But you still have not found a Book of Annihilations? Well, TSO is now fully on your side, and you need not fear entering the Crypt. The third level is hard, but you have what it takes to conquer it, and you will not run out of MP or HP.

By now you should have at least Tornado at your disposal (if not, you are really unlucky). This should be enough to attack the final level of the Vaults. Again, there is plenty of loot down there, including maybe a few more scrolls of acquirement that you can try. As a gargoyle, you should also not fear entering the Tomb and loot that. Rot immunity and torment resistance will help you to get through pretty much unscathed (take a ring of sustain abilities, though).

Tornado on its own is also enough to enter the Slime Pits. You need to go there anyway to get all 15 runes, so why not now, at least if you have a source of resist mutation? Corrosion is not as bad as it has been before 0.15, as long as you don’t take too long killing The Royal Jelly. You will not trash your valuable equipment that way anymore, and there is plenty of good loot down there, plus another rune.

Having cleared all these places, by now you should hopefully have your spell-portfolio complete, and all the runes you need to enter the Realm of Zot. Before you do that, you should be strong enough to also conquer the Vestibule of Hell, opening up a whole new world for you, and a new stash. This may also be the time to get your sixth rune from the Abyss. Don’t get lost – even a strong character may get killed down there, and the loot is not that exciting.

There will be a few minutes of intense terror when you brave Zot 5, but with the help of TSO you will stand over the Orb. Don’t touch it yet, because you still have many plans.

In the old days, you would have stashed a lot of valuables in the Vestibule, but now, with restrictions on your loading capacity and item destruction gone, I find myself carrying a lot of stuff with me at all times. All potions of brilliance, heal wounds, curing, magic, cure mutation, restore abilities; all scrolls of magic mapping, remove curse, recharging, teleportation and blinking, the full stack of one food item (and then I tend to snack on the other odds that come in to keep my inventory tidy) – these now give me peace of mind that I don’t lack anything when I need it. With these goodies all right under my belt, I now find it a lot less daunting to enter a place like Pandemonium from which I cannot return anytime I want to stock up on my supplies. In the old days this drove me to the hells before going in there, but these are actually a lot more difficult to navigate than Pandemonium – it’s just that you can return from the hells when things get too hot.

Anyway, Pandemonium is not that difficult a place when you have mastered Zot already, and the loot is quite good. On top of that you have the chance to find another random Ziggurat and raid it at least partially; up to level 20 you should actually always be able to tackle. This will net you a lot more potions of restore abilities and cure mutations, it will increase your experience (through kills and potions), and get you all the better prepared for the final fights in the hells.

I would definitely attack the Ziggurat found in the Depths before going into the various hells. You are most likely to survive, and it is so much more fun to die in a Ziggurat than in a hell. But you have TSO, Fire Storm and Tornado on your side, so you need not fear. And when you come out, you have enough potions of restore abilities, cure mutation and curing at your hands to also master the final places of horror, including the Tomb, if you have not done it so far. If you are not playing a gargoyle, however, you may want to consider switching to Zin before entering the hells, as his protection will take the bite of the various punishments Hell's mystical force inflicts on you. TSO won’t mind, but you have to remember that there won’t be any MP and HP restoration on kills any more!

Some final warnings

• As long as you do not attract too many non-evil enemies at once, you should be pretty safe in almost all situations. But there is one little change in version 0.15 which can ruin your day compared to older versions. Previously, TSO made sure that most holy beings left you alone. Not anymore! Each brother in faith you encounter apparently now thinks that you are from a split denomination, and will therefore attack you as fervently as if you were an Ancient lich. Usually they come in small numbers, and you can get them down without difficulties. But there are occasional levels of a Ziggurat or Pandemonium which are entirely populated (and heavily so) by all kinds of holy high-end creatures. Because you don’t get MP or HP restored on kills, you can’t win here, so from the first inclination that this is the case, do your best to get your holy neck out of there. Read a map to find the exits (in Pandemonium), and try to get there with all dispatch, if possible using controlled teleports or blinks. You may still have to burn through a stack of healing devices or potions of magic to get there alive.

• Hellfire you cannot resist by any means. Kill its source before it kills you! And keep your HP high by training fighting throughout the game. Remember, as a reward for the kill TSO will grant you some HP and MP, so it is wise to prioritize hellfire-capable monsters before turning to lesser threats.

• One of TSO’s gifts is providing powerful summons, holy warriors from your own denomination who for a change fight on your side against the forces of evil. Unfortunately, your background as a caster interferes heavily with this. Having your daeva fighting it out in the midst of the enemy crowd means that you will incur penance if you unleash a Fire Storm in the general direction. The same happens when they stick close to your side and get fried in your ring of flames. You are a conjurer, and you don’t need any summons! Whatever these angels and daevas may accomplish for you, you can accomplish it faster with a well-placed Fire Storm (if your allies don’t stand in the way), and it does not even cost you any piety. On the note of penance: If you find yourself in this situation, TSO is still good enough to provide you some protection against negative energy. And, given that you are fighting hordes of evil creatures, the penance won’t last long.