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 have found a god, but have not obtainined two runes (from the Lair branches) yet. From now on, your skills no longer reflect your background, but rather reflect your general strategy, species, and god choice.

Armour Focused

While nearly all players should consider some spells (barring Trog-lodytes), melee focused players tend to wear heavier armor, and will be stuck to casting low level spells as a result. Ranged characters, without an explict need to go light, will often go heavy too.

Weapon

Your weapon school should still be, by far, your most important skill. Your goal is to reach minimum delay for your weapon. Viewable by selecting the weapon in the inventory, the minimum delay is 0.5 to 0.7 auts, taking between 8 to 24 levels. Raising your weapon skill beyond mindelay will still raise damage and accuracy, though it will 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). This concern is less noticable for Bow users, who want the power to kill before enemies even get close to you.

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. Okawaru will supply you with a surplus of throwing weapons, while the Shoals generates many merfolk javelineers to relinquish ammo from.

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! Anywhere from 5-12 skill into Evocations is often viable, 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. Fighting is one of your most important skills, period -- especially once you've finished training up your weapon.

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 a few levels will be very cheap in comparison to your main skills. Shields, if you are wearing one, is also useful to train. Around 10+ for a kite shield or 15+ for a tower shield will suffice.

Spells

With such heavy armour, high level spells are simply out of the question. Instead, look at the various utility spells in your arsenal. From Translocations like Blink, 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, 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. However, 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 cast 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.

Once you get those spells ready, though, even spellcasters should invest in Fighting. This becomes more important after the Lair branches, when you start facing more ranged attacks and conjurations. You can leave Fighting 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.

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.

Auxiliary

Spells like Blink and Passage of Golubria are very useful, especially to a squishy caster. Sublimation 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 dealing with tough enemies. A few levels is all you need for this task. Plus, a magical staff or an orb of energy both benefit a lot from this skill.

Stealth is only marginally useful. Many spells are loud, for one. If you can obliterate your enemies from afar, who needs to hide? Unless you're relying on Hexes, stealth does little to help your gameplan.

Invocations

No matter if you are a brawler or a caster, you'll most likely have picked a god. Of course, some gods require more Inovcations than others.

• Gods like Nemelex, Elyvilon, and Fedhas scale well with the Invocations skill, and their godly abilities can be used many of times. For them, Invocations can almost be treated like another weapon skill. Kiku replaces Invocations with Necromancy, so fits in the same boat.
• Gods like Okawaru and Cheibriados do rely on Invocations, but more so to cast a high-level ability (Finnese and Step from Time, respectively) than to boost power. Get those abilities up and running in a timely manner, replacing a defensive or aux skill, then don't worry about it.
• Finally, gods like Trog, Vehumet, and Gozag don't care about your Invocations. Just keep on working on your melee, magic, or greed, respectively.