Talk:Lawman's Skald guide

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To do

- I guess if this is to be general crusader guide we should work on expanding the strategy away from the classic trident using MfCr and discuss alt useful skills, gods, etc. - What other races are good crusaders? - expand on item strategy because it seems rather lax. - maybe expand on the gameplan and include alternate routes? (for example doing tomb early if you worship kiku)

--Lawman 0 21:14, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Changes as of 0.9

Really I only notice one thing, that the starting book for Skalds no longer contains berserk rage, but does have Shroud of Golubria, spell strategy has changed.Headache 21:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I've begun playing with this build, and I'm finding that I'm having difficulty developing the stopping power to reach mid-game, using only the skald starting spellbook. Perhaps future additions to this guide could address this? The switch from Beserk Rage to Shroud of Golubria really lowers attack power. All in all, this guide is pretty outdated now--or so it seems to me. Idk, i have only just started playing with skalds.CapnCrunch 07:49, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

SWEET CRACKERS, skalds are fragile characters. I seriously think this needs addressed in the guide--just going by the strategy given here, i'm getting destroyed by the weakest enemies. Lack of berserk REALLY needs addressed; the problem is, idk what to say. For starters, ranged weapons need to be used at low level, i feel. Basically, every potential item needs used early game, as these characters are super squishy and shroud of golubria is very low level.CapnCrunch 15:37, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I realize that my problem is that i simply don't know what i'm doing, but if you play this character like a fighter, using spells to supplement you, even Ijyb is likely to kill you. Even quokkas are threatening. Going by the guide, you would have NO IDEA this was the case. Any thoughts? Anyone?CapnCrunch 15:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree, the guide needs a massive overhaul. This background seems very, very weak initially (I don't know about later in the game, since I never manage to get one past level 7). I've tried playing it as a pure fighter (mostly ignoring magic and just focusing on weapon skill, dodge etc), or the other way around - trying to get fail rate down to 5 in the most critical spells... All without much success. Jonatanhedborg 17:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


Glad to see I'm not the only one with this issue, Jonatan. Here are some tips that HELP players--maybe you and me can develop a build strategy that actually works.

  • Examining Evilmike's win--the top score on the akrasiac server, so far--seems to indicate a few things. 1. Freeze and fire brands were an order of magnitude less useful then poison (as opposed to the guide's advice); regeneration was used a ton--as was shroud of golubria and repel missiles (again, save for repel missiles, different from the guide); armour, as a skill, WAS trained (probably after dodging); charms was trained EXCLUSIVELY at first (probably turning OFF spellcasting), THEN, after learning regeneration, he ALSO trained spellcasting, and extremely late in the game, summonings and translocation. Once he learned all the spells in his starting spellbook, he turned off spellcasting entirely. It looks like he only bothered bumping up spellcasting again when he found spells he liked--hunger was probably not much of a deciding factor in how to train the skill. (This last tip about spell skill order is particularly important, given how squishy the new skalds are) All these tips are almost completely opposite what the guide suggests--and when I say opposite, I mean Mike did the exact opposite! I hesitate to change anything simply because I have little experience with skalds, but this sounds like solid advice and a desparetely needed update to an extremely outdated guide. If you guys agree, I'll change it. Unless you want to do so.
    • So: using this data, turn off ALL spell skills EXCEPT charms. Every single one. Focus charms. Only train spellcasting when you need more spell slots, and even then, only if leveling up isn't a feasible option. Once you have all your core spells at a high enough success rate, turn off charms, too. Spellcasting shouldn't be trained past 4 until you reach the temple.
    • Learn Fire brand, Shroud, and Regeneration first; Then Repel Missiles and Poison Weapon, then whatever. If you need spell slots, forget fire brand as soon as you have a decent replacement weapon and need more spell slots.
  • My guess is that fire brand needs learned early on, to deal with monsters immune to poison or cold, but should be the first spell to go with an amnesia scroll (again, saving spell slots and keeping your spellcasting skill low). It does look like Mike focused exclusively on Int for stat increases. He started with Okawaru and ended with The Shining one, as per the guide. Shields should be trained to where they no longer interfere with your spells (7 and 14, respectively). Ice magic--unlike the race description in the guide--is almost completely pointless now that shroud of golubria and phase shift can be favored over ozocuba's armour.
  • As far as spells go, this guide needs HEAVILY revised. For starters: 'possibly useful' isn't really useful advice. Deflect Missiles wasn't on Mike's spell list and is probably going to be waaaay to hard to learn. Dispersal... was on his list but quite frankly I've never used that spell and have NO IDEA how useful it is. Likewise with Passage of Golubria. No idea.
  • This is my own tip, gleaned from painful experience--a good, unbranded polearm is extremely useful early game, to cast freeze or poison on, as appropriate. Be extremely careful trying un-ID'ed scrolls. The LAST thing you want to do is turn your +4/+4 glaive into a vanilla vorpal weapon. Make sure you either wield a secondary weapon, or cast poison weapon on your main polearm when you read a new scroll, in the event that it's a scroll of vorpalize weapon.
    • Please give feedback! CapnCrunch 17:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Are Merfolk even still the best build for skalds? They were initially useful because of their variety of magical skills, polearms, and decent stats. But the way the spells and skills have been overhauled, you only need charms (which they are only decent at). As for weapons, are polearms still the best choice? If so, fine. But one weapon skill seems like a poor reason to base this build off merfolk, especially since the water-based bonuses are only useful later in the game, and even then, only sparingly. It seems like any fighter-species with decent charm and dodge skills would be a good (maybe even better) species. Idk, I haven't crunched the numbers. Given how little investment there is into charms (again, studying past winners seems to indicate stopping charms training at 14ish) having a +0 or even a -1 don't seem like that bad a strategy. Basically, Skald spells suck, is what I'm saying. Thoughts?CapnCrunch 19:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the design goal behind the skald is - as you say, the spells are quite weak. You essentially get a decent short term brand (which could be good, but you might just as well find a +3 branded weapon on D:1 and render them useless), two defensive spells that I can't really say much about, and regeneration (which I guess is quite good, but won't really help you in a way haste or berserk would). Is it destined to be a challenge-mode background? As for races I guess what you want is a good weapon skill, charm, dodge and decent fighting. High elf maybe? That would open up for more spellcasting/ranged combat once the "skald"-part of the character is done. Jonatanhedborg 20:52, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
It clearly wasn't always a challenge mode design--I can totally see how Berserk made this a viable, perhaps even overpowered, build. Basically a berserker who could also caste haste, regeneration, and defense spells. But without Berserk.... it REALLY lacks hard-hitting abilities. I'd say the overall strategy should be to focus almost entirely on fighting and only buff spellcasting enough to be marginally useful--that appears to be the only viable strategy. Frankly, and someone should do the math on this, any species with a high fighting, dodging, and weapon skill can probably make a good skald--as long as the first three skills are high enough to make up for the skill points lost by focusing charms. I don't have a solid grasp of the math behind the experience point system, so I don't know how high those skills have to be to make up for it. I'm going to try a fighting species with +0 or even -1 in charms, i think.CapnCrunch 00:05, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

A cursory examination of the high score halfling/skald combo (by Shotax) indicates the same general strategy--learning as little charms as possible. After learning the core spells--a brand, regen, shroud, repel-he doesn't touch charms for a looooong time, and spellcasting for longer. It looks like he only bothered upping magic abilities when he found an artifact book which had see invisible and deflect missiles. The general success strategy seems to be: Once you can cast regeneration, shroud, and repel, don't even bother with spellcasting unless you find some great books.CapnCrunch 00:16, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

More thoughts: on account of skalds sucking a whooooole lot, you have to be prepared to use every item you find. Other classes may be able to get away with saving up wands, potions, scrolls, etcetera. Skalds are threatened by even the weakest uniques; approach every encounter like it's more dangerous than it is. Because it probably is.CapnCrunch 16:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah. I dont know what happened to merfolk in this, or recent iterations of the game, but a kobald skald? The standard assassin style? Soooo much better survivability. I'm redoing this guide. I'll do a little at a time. But I feel confident in completely overhauling it.CapnCrunch 19:35, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for making that in table format, Palin. If you're interested, the table in his morgue file has spells broken down by dungeon depth, too. But I plan on writing things out instead of using the table--I will, soonish. For now, thanks.CapnCrunch 17:33, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I had to sort it for myself, better to make sortable for everyone, even if it's temporary. --Palin 09:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Species selection

If nobody objects, I'm gonna delete the "challenge races" section. It seems like a waste of space to list the races that people COULD play if they didn't want to use this guide--you don't need a guide to tell you to ignore a guide. You just need to ignore the guide. I'm assuming these things are aimed at people who DON'T have the knowledge and game skills to play challenge games--if so, why would they be reading this guide in the first place?CapnCrunch 01:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Makes perfect sense. Go ahead.--Flaming Corpse 02:50, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm getting the skald strategy actually semi-playable now!CapnCrunch 23:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Top scores

Here are the top skald games for each race. I need to go through them and look for patterns and strategies... but there's a lot, and i have little spare time ever. But here they are, if you guys wanna look at 'em, maybe you can find some useful data. PLEASE NOTE. These all have varying levels of success. Some of these can no doubt be ignored because they would be 'challenge' races and sub-optimal builds. Please note which, if any, you end up deleting. I have excluded Tengu, for example, because nobody has ever won with TeSk. We should focus on the best scores from these games when looking for patterns. Furthermore, some are from version .9, and some are .10. Also, whoever the heck Shotax is, get HIM to write this darn guide!CapnCrunch 15:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The following should be considered challenge races, and are not included in the list above, because their wins were not many runes: Tengu/Kenku, Deep Elf, Demigod, Ghoul, Mummies, Sludge Elves, trolls. MD, obviously, are obsolete. Other races should be excluded, too, but this is just a cursory examination.CapnCrunch 23:36, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

On the subject of Merfolk

Tasonir, can you go into detail on the Merfolk issue? The old guide was based on Merfolk and even worse than it probably is right now. I'm guessing that MfSk is a good build but right now there's no advice for new players on how to use such a build. Like I said, the guide that existed before I started editing gave only one piece of advice, which was to use Berserker Rage. Needless to say, not applicable now.CapnCrunch 18:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

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