User:Hordes

Specialization is a choice to invest XP in a few specific skills, rather than attempting to learn many skills at once. It is often essential, at least in one form or another.

Useful Info

More skill level means that skill is more powerful. Weapons will hit harder, attack faster, and are more accurate. Spells are stronger, less likely to fail, and higher level. Defensive skills will give more defense.

Strategy

In Crawl, the goal of the skill system is "to get the most out of your XP as possible". Sounds simple, and it really is. There is not a Pros and Cons with specialization, more so Pros and Caveats.

Pros

1. Specializing in a skill often leads to less "wasted" XP.

Usually, but not always, "wasting the least XP" is an efficient method of skill training.

Let's say you could either have {6 Polearms, 6 Conjurations, 6 Ranged Weapons} or {10 <one skill>}. The former may sound more appealing, as you can take advantage of 3 skills at once. However...

• A. This can lead to skill waste. If you blast things with Conjurations before enemies get into melee range, then Polearms and Ranged Weapons skill aren't doing anything. If you are wearing heavy armour, to make your melee more effective, then Conjurations skill is wasted (it is very difficult to cast in plate armour!).

• B. There are more than just these three skills in Crawl. For example, a Polearms user could go {8 Polearms, 5 Armour, 5 Shields}, and a caster could go {8 Conjurations, 6 Dodging, 2 Spellcasting}. Both will be more effective than the original 6/6/6 distribution, which invests no XP into defenses.

• C. Investing in a skill you're already good at gives a more immediate benefit. A Polearms-based Fighter may need 4 levels of Conjurations before they can cast their first spell. Before you reach 4 Conjurations, you aren't getting much from that skill. Meanwhile, having 4 more levels of Polearms would help for a longer period of time.

This is most important in the earlygame, and becomes less important as you progress. Judge whether a skill would help in the short- or medium- term.

This is not to dissuade "hybrid" builds entirely, but to put them into perspective. (See the next point for more details)

2. There exists skill thresholds, and specializing allows you to reach these thresholds faster.

In Crawl, there exists quite a few skill thresholds.

• For weapons and destructive spells, this is when you can "comfortably kill things at <a certain level>".
• For casting in general, this is when a spell goes from "unreliably castable" to "castable".
• For defensive skills, this is when you receive the next point of AC / EV / SH.

Training skills too liberally will delay the threshold. E.g. going for {6 Polearms, 6 Conjurations, 6 Ranged Weapons} may prevent you from 'comfortably' killing things at all.

In other words, having one reliable way of killing things is better than 3 unreliable ways of killing things. If you want to go for a "hybrid" build, it is best to train one skill to a competent level, and then the next.

Of course, when things are 'competent' or 'comfortable' is very arbitrary - it depends on both the character and the player.

Caevats

1. Higher levels of a skill are more expensive (the first few levels of a skill are cheap).

For each level of a skill, the next level is more expensive. Is it really worth the XP to train from 25 Fighting -> 27 Fighting? Relative to the XP cost, the benefit of 2 Fighting is small. No matter how much you value extra HP, you may want to train a different skill.

This is not exclusive to the late game. For instance, training 14 <weapon skill> in order to reach mindelay may not be the wisest choice. You could, as an example, get {10 Weapon, 8 Fighting, 8 Armour} instead, which is more effective.

Investing a few levels into Evocations or Throwing can also be effective. 3 levels of Evocations can be more effective than 1 level of weapon skill - (if you have a good wand to actually take advantage of Evocations).

2. "Avoiding wasted experience" is not always the most beneficial method of skill training.

Poison Magic is perhaps the best example of this. Spells like Olgreb's Toxic Radiance are great in the early game. But as enemy HP increases, and as more enemies have rPois, poison starts to wane. If you then find a great weapon and wear heavy armour, then all that Poison Magic training would be wasted. Yet, this doesn't change that melee is (could be) the most beneficial thing you could train right now.

Plus, all that Poison Magic wasn't useless - it got you past a good chunk of the game. And if you decide to stay in light armour, then you could still benefit from OTR and other poison spells, even into Zot.

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