Early Game Character Building

This guide gives general character building advice for the early game. Early game ends when you've reached the latest Ecumenical Temple spawn level, Dungeon level 7.

Build a Basic Plan

Beginning

At the very start, focus on your primary killing skills. For melee characters, this involves raising your weapon skill (and usually, only the weapon skill) until it reaches minimum delay or kills your foes at a comfortable rate. For magic based characters, this is getting the useful spells in your starting book to acceptably low (at least less than 10%) failure rates by training their respective spell schools.

Defences

The consensus on character building after that is usually to work on your defense skills until that reaches comfortable numbers as well. For robe or leather wearers, this is likely going to be Dodging (which contributes to EV), and for heavy armor wearers this is likely going to be Armour (which improves your AC proportional to your armour's base AC).

Shields provide an EV like boost to your defenses, allowing you a chance to block some incoming attacks, but early game EXP is precious and shields cause encumbrance issues. If you insist on wearing a shield early game, a buckler's penalties will be removed by 5 Shields skill, provided you are a race of normal size.

For any character, Fighting skill is also a must; the bonus to physical combat is useful, but the extra HP is precious, especially to squishier caster types.

A note on hybrids

Even if you are aiming to be a "hybrid", don't try training both your magic and your melee at the same time. You will have two ineffective killing methods, and they won't benefit you simultaneously.

Stats

Your character gets an allocatable stat point every 3 levels. Where you put these in the early game depends on your character and perhaps, your plan for their future.

Stat-zero is a valid concern for some starting character combinations. Getting your stats to a minimum of 8 each (regardless of whether you benefit much from them) will ensure that you'd have at least one turn against a single stat-draining source to quaff a potion of restore abilities.

Strength

It alleviates some of the penalties of wearing armour, and also improves your physical damage dealt. A valid choice for wearers of heavy armour.

Don't let the removal of the weight system make you think strength is less desirable now.

Intelligence

It improves your spellcasting rates and decreases the hunger costs associated with them too. It'll also increase your spellpower. Spellcasters who suffer from low starting int or non-Elvish aptitudes for magic may consider putting a couple of early stat points into intelligence.

Dexterity

It improves your accuracy, and your Dodging skill scales off of it. An excellent choice for anyone wearing light equipment, and early game accuracy bonuses are a boon.

For stabbers in particular, it'll improve your chances of landing a "stab" while unseen/unnoticed.

Gods

Some backgrounds begin worshiping a god, but characters without gods should consider which god to initially worship. Read the section on Choosing a god if you need help with that.

Training Invocations

The Healer and Abyssal Knight backgrounds begin worshipping Elyvilon and Lugonu respectively, and their early game can make excellent use of the Invocations skill; how much and when to start is up to the player, but don't neglect training your other skills in tandem, since healing and banishment will not replace your main offensive options.

Skills by background

In the early game, preferred skills are directly based on the character's background, with a few variations due to race.

Review the Skills page if you are not sure how to turn skills on or off. Life gets much easier for characters who focus on just a few skills while getting started.

Warriors

Whether ranged or hand to hand, Warriors kill by using weapons. (In the case of Monks, that weapon is their bare hands and feet, but for game purposes, those are weapons governed by the Unarmed Combat skill.)

All warriors should turn off all skills other than their primary weapon. Improve the weapon skill to at least twice it's starting level. After that, begin to branch out into fighting, throwing, armour, or shields depending on class and character design, but always leave weapon skill turned on during the early game.

Zealots

Like the warrior classes, by far the main focus is to improve weapon skill. When the character begins branching out to other skills, invocations should be turned on as well.

Hybrids

Transmuters should get Spider Form castable and pour the rest into Unarmed Combat. Spider Form easily suffices for a killing tool, but Blade Hands will vastly eclipse it in damage once it is castable.

Enchanters should train Hexes to increase the effectiveness of Ensorcelled Hibernation and Confuse and pour the rest into Stealth. You can ignore Short Blades until your Hexes have enough power to reliably mess up your enemies; if your stealth skill keeps up, you'll one-shot any sleeping foe for a while yet.

Warpers should get Shroud of Golubria to acceptable failure rates, then pour everything into their weapon skill. At the tail end of the early game, they should switch to charms and translocations to make Control Teleport usable.

Skalds should focus on getting Shroud of Golubria and Regeneration to solid levels, then focus on their weapon skill. Depending on the route you take them, stealth or ranged weapons are both good choices.

Mages

For almost all mages, spellcasting is not particularly important in the early game. It is much more important to get killing and/or escape spells to Very Good, so casters should turn off all skills other than the necessary magic schools. Use 'I' often to check how easily you can cast your important spells. After failure rates for your critical combat spells are less than 10%, branching out into spellcasting and other magic schools becomes appropriate.

The important exception to this is spriggan spell casters. Spriggans can use their considerable speed to escape almost anything in the early dungeon, so mere survival is not the first objective. Spriggans should begin preparing for the middle game, when their onerous dietary restrictions can actually make spell hunger a life-threatening problem. If you will be casting spells frequently, train up spellcasting until you have a sizable reserve of edibles.

Wizards, and Venom mages should focus on getting their low level attack spells and Mephitic Cloud to <10% failure rates. These classes, particularly venom mages, may wish to branch into a weapon so they can kill confused low-level enemies more effectively. Poison as a magic school is generally looked down upon, but the early skill levels are quite cheap and, if they make the spell more castable, will be worth the boost in survival and early game offense.

Conjurors have a couple spell and school options. Searing Ray gives you good killing power in the early game and works wonders in corridors; jackle packs and orcs will fall to it quickly. Dazzling Spray is a cheap multitarget spell that deals moderate damage and disorients foes, and the Hexes skill is also used for Fulminant Prism, which conjures a sphere of energy that deals great damage to nearby units after 20 auts. Battlesphere was nerfed; it's a level 5 spell now, which trains Charms (not usable by any other spell in the starting book) but it deals unrivalled damage for a starting spell, and combined with magic dart is an extremely efficient and effective killing tool.

Elementalists and Summoners can focus entirely on their spells or train a weapon after they have some spells that can help in melee combat like Conjure Flame, Sticky Flame, Ozocubu's Armour, Summon Ice Beast, etc.

Necromancers should focus on their spells. If the character wants to dabble in melee, branch out to a weapon skill to make use of Lethal Infusion. Polearms (for swinging over a line of meatshield (boneshield?) skeletons) or staves (preparing for an eventual staff of death) are recommended.

Other

Artificers should focus on a weapon, being essentially a gimped fighter unless and until good evocable items drop. Temple diving for Nemelex enables early access to decks, the most easily obtained evocable items.

Wanderers should wing it. Take a look at your early possessions and try to make a plan.

Weapons

Because of how Attack speed works, one handed weapons or polearms are the best in the early game.

The first goal is to find a usable weapon with a decent brand. Consider weapons where the character has good aptitudes, especially if it cross trains with the current weapon of choice. Always pick up every blue or randart weapon that fits this criteria until a good brand appears.

Armour

Mages should never wear anything other than a robe in the early game. Getting spells to Great is the top priority. Even leather armor or a buckler will greatly slow gaining sufficient spell proficiency for the early game.

Hybrid builds that need supplemental spells should not wear anything heavier than leather armor or bucklers in the early game, or their spells will be too unreliable for use.

AC builds are typically spell-less, and should equip the heaviest armour and shield they can wear without affecting their damage output.

Similar to weapons, players should pick up and ID all blue or randart armors that might be useful until they find armor with decent brands or resistances.