Miek's Centaur Enchanter Guide (DCSS 0.16)

Miek's Centaur Enchanter Guide (0.16)

Hey guys.

I just finished a centaur enchanter, so thought I'd write a guide to show you guys how to do the same. This is just a 3 rune guide for an early XL win. The guide is a pure stream of consciousness so digesting it may be difficult. Enjoy.

Reasons to play CeEn:
1. You accidentally randomed it
2. Someone dared you to and you have the self control of a rabbit in mating season.

That said, CeEn is quite a strong combo, if only because Centaur is a strong race. You have excellent HP aptitudes, excellent ranged aptitudes, fast movement, low aptitudes required for shields, okay melee aptitudes and potential for very high AC when using a barding and intrinsic AC boosts.

The first thing you're going to want to do when you start up your CeEn is to drop your book of maledictions. It is awful for you, and its not worth entertaining any notion of making use out of it. In fact it is unlikely that you will cast any spells at all during this run, and that's completely alright.

At first you're going to want to enable manual training and go all out fighting. Its doubtful you're going to use short blades for any longer so be on the lookout for a better melee weapon.

On D:1 there is a high probability of finding some stones lying around, but low probability of finding a crossbow or bow. A sling is a maybe, so its up to you as to whether or not to use slings or throwing, but by the end of the game throwing is much more powerful. It could be worth considering training slings first for a small amount, and then changing to throwing, taking advantage of the cross training.

As soon as you decide upon your ranged weapon of choice, (and find one) change from training fighting to that weapon type. Your general tactics at this point are going to be: chip away with ranged damage, and run to safe areas when the enemy gets close. Its horrible and tedious but incredibly powerful in terms of not dying.

As with any crawl game, be on the lookout for something amazing, and don't be afraid to contradict the guide if it happens. In my game I found a demon trident of elec by lair and didn't train any polearms until that point, but if you found one on d:2 for example then that would be a good time to start training polearms instead.

Be on the lookout for heavyish armour, but its not a huge requirement, as you will be engaging most things in ranged and they won't hit you. Finding a blowgun is incredibly useful, especially if you're training throwing for your ranged.

For god choice, Okawaru is definitely the best. One of the problems with throwing is that you find less ammo than you need, except for rocks. He supplements this by giving you ammo as gifts. A barding is also very useful for a centaur's survivability but they're rare. With okawaru you're much more likely to get a good one.

If you can't find Okawaru early, Trog is another good choice for the throwing gifts. Okawaru's heroism is probably more useful for throwing skill than Trog's abilities, but they're both pretty close as gods go. Fedhas is another good option, where you can shoot through your plants at the enemies.

Keep an eye out for an amulet of faith if you can. Its a gamble as to whether you'll get one, but the extra ammo gifts are worth it.

After about 8 or so throwing skill (after this point, just assume that when I say "throwing" I mean whatever skill you're using) you should consider also training fighting at the same time. It helps with accuracy problems and gives you extra HP, which is always a great defense option.

Remember to keep running away from stuff. You're faster than almost all of it. Be liberal in your use of heroism if the fight demands it.

Lair should be done before Orc, although if you're a good player you may have the tactics needed to go to orc first and grab some tomahawks. Anyway normally you would clear lair, relying on throwing, poison needles and running away lots. Then clear orc, and then clear dungeon down to D:15.

There are four rune options you have for your first two, but only two spawn in each game. One of the water types (swamp or shoals) and one of the poison types (spider or snake). Which order you should do really depends on how lucky you've been with gear.

If you have any source of useable rPois (that is, rPois on a ring, armour, or artifact without any sort of huge drawbacks) then put it on and go via this order:

spider > swamp > snake > shoals (as in always do spider before swamp)

If you don't have rPois, then do this order:
swamp > spider > snake > shoals

As always, trust your own experience more than this guide. If you're not that experienced or just feeling a bit weak, it can be worth doing levels 1-4 in both before doing level5 in either. If a significantly difficult enemy shows up in one of the levels and you're worried, its okay to only do one of these runes and save the other for later. A good example of this would be Mara spawning by the stairs at spider:5.

I'm trusting you guys to be smart about how to stat your character by this point. Don't be all out throwing/fighting, but also chuck in armour, dodging, shields (if you've found one), a weapon skill (but only a small amount as you have heroism), invocations and evocations. Invocations should be about 5-10 by now, but doesn't need to be any higher for the whole game. Evocations should be able 10 and can safely go up to 15 by the end of the game. Dex should probably be what you're levelling up at each point.

Since you probably worship Okawaru you're probably doing okay on equipment at this point. That's cool. Once you've gotten your first two lair runes (or one if you had to bail) then there are three good options of places to go.

elf:
Monsters here are high on EV, which is a bit annoying for a ranged character. They can be tough. Even worse the demonologists and sorcerers both like to cast banishment a lot, so make sure you have plenty of MR+ if you choose this option. In my CeEn game I did not go to Elf at all, but I don't see any reason why it would be a huge problem. The XP gained here is nice, as is the loot at the end and the weapons from the hall of blades. If you have a ring of teleport, then it may even be okay (although tedious) to go here without MR, and just use the ring to escape bad situations in the abyss until you find an exit.

vaults1-4:
This is probably the default option most people do at this point. It has its plusses, but one thing I don't like about it are the amounts of ways you can find the whole level attacking you at once. Vault sentinels put mark on you, ironbrand convokers summon other monsters, including more ironbrand convokers. Boggarts can shadow summon ironbrand convokers too. Its a good option, but just something to be aware of. There are some monsters here that can banish you too (such as Ogre Magi) but its less prevalent than elf. Do not do vaults:5 yet, as that is so much worse than the rest of the branch.

Depths1-5:
Probably the least commonly used of the viable options but its the one I did for this game and it worked well. The monsters in depths are on average more difficult than both elf and vaults, but you'll gain XP faster, and the layout is often conducive to better tactical positioning. There are no monsters like ironbrand convokers that put the whole level on you at once. The EV isn't a huge problem here either, except for spriggans. As like everywhere in the game, run frequently and respect the danger the monsters give. For the most part you can clear depths1-5 without huge increases in difficulty. Again some monsters can banish you in this branch. Things like dragons, liches, deep trolls are common threats, and some nasty uniques can spawn here. One new threat to look out for (new to 0.16) are the caustic shrikes. These bad boys can attack or move 2 times for every move you do, do 40 damage an attack, cause corrosion, and have reasonable defenses. Just one of these is tough to deal with, but they often come in packs of 3. If you find yourself engaging more than two of these, I recommend reading a teleport scroll immediately, recovering and then trying to separate.

Of these three options, its possible you might want to follow on to another one. This gives you more XP and chances to find better gear. Of the three options, depths is probably best for XP, elf is probably best for gear, and vaults is a good balance of the two. Once you're happy though, its time to think about your third rune. Your options for these are:

Slime:
My recommended option here. If you have rMut and rCorr amulets available then this is the no brainer option. You'll probably have some silver ammo lying around (silver javelins? hopefully) that you haven't used. Great. TRJ is vulnerable to those. You'll want to dive to slime:6 here, spending as little time in slime1-5 as possible. This is because shining eyes will mutate you, so you want to engage with as few as possible. In slime:6, just run around the outside, killing stuff (but very much respecting its danger). Acid blobs should probably only be engaged one on one, and fully rested between to get your corrosion worn off. If you've killed the acid blob but there are non-acid blob enemies around, consider running away to get your gear repaired. At each of the stairs around slime:6, go up and clear the imminent area, making a safe escape zone for resting. If you do this, then you don't need rCorr at all, and can just kill the acid blobs while being very careful. If the royal jelly comes out of the central area (which he probably will, the bastard that he is) then teleport away and do not engage him. You'll want to get the full outside cleared, and then make your way to clearing the center, again trying to make sure you do not engage TRJ and run away if needed. Eventually it'll be just you, and TRJ (possibly out of his chamber, in which case you need to find him and pull him in). Once he's in, quaff a haste potion, a resist potion, agility potion, put on heroism and finesse, by this point he's probably right next to you. This is perfect as it means you'll always be able to hit him without other jellies in the way. Lay the silver javelin smack down into him until he's dead. Teleport out away from the jelly spawns and come clean them up one at a time. (You may want to pick up your ammo where TRJ was first). Nice and easy 3rd rune. At no point did you even need rCorr. rMut is nice if shining eyes come into view, but since you're ranged you can often just kill them the turn they come into view, with a low chance of getting mutated.

Abyss:
Should be entirely possible. I didn't do it, but you run fast. If you find a ring of teleport then you've got the chance to just teleport away if the situation gets really bad, and its gone for good. Dive to Abyss:3 if you can, and run around looking for some sort of distinctinve landmark that would be the third rune. Remember to take off teleport ring when you find stairs you want to use or rune chambers you want to explore. Amulets of regen and amulets of rMut are nice here too, making it a bit easier to keep in control, but teleportation is your best friend. The actual rune chamber has the easiest fighting of all the third rune options here, but sometimes non-rune chamber threats give you grief.

Vaults:5:
This is the most common third rune across all chars, but I don't recommend it for this char. You can do it if you want, but you're on your own.

So now you have 3 runes? Cool. Go win the game. If you're boss you may have done it without touching vaults, elf or abyss at all. Kudos to you. Now go to Zot. Your choice whether to dive to zot:5 or just clear the chambers. You may be a bit low on XP, being only XL22 or so, in which case its probably a good idea to clear the zot levels. Otherwise just dive down, keeping an eye out for short routes on each level.

Once you're on zot:5, read a magic mapping if you can. Make sure you have rF+, and preferably rF++. rElec and rC+ are both nice here too. Resists are probably more important in Zot than really most other parts of the game. In my game for example, I swapped from a +2 plate armour to a golden dragon HIDE (not armour). I had no enchant armour scrolls, so this was a weak option. I lost about 7 AC from it, but gained rF+, rC+ rPois etc.. I also chose a +3 cloak (rElec slay-2) because of electric golems, black draconians and storm dragons. Even so at one point I did get dangerously close to death with an orb of fire.

Because this is the end point of the game, you should basically put up heroism on every fight (no joke). If you've stopped your throwing at 22, this puts it to 27 making it min delay and totally worth it. You have no other use for the piety really, except finesse but Okawaru will be giving more to you during this process too. Clear zot:5's out area. Then move in to the main chamber, choose a lung, and start clearing that. Remember to constantly run away and pull stuff. Depending on you consumables available, use lots of hasting against orbs of fire (I only had 3 potions of haste and no wand, so I couldn't really, but if you're better than that then use them). Also use potions of might, finesse, etc.. Orbs of fire are your main threat here, but don't underestimate some of the other options like curse toes or ancient liches, or almost anything else if a moth of wrath has had its way with it.

Once you've got to the orb, and the area in your immediate vicinity is clear, you're basically going to want to pick it up and hightail out. Make sure you've recharged your relevant wands up (digging, disint, teleport, hasting, HW, all depending on availability) and again, if you're good on consumables for it, put on haste before grabbing the orb. This is the end of the game, so getting mutations isn't a huge deal, getting contam doesn't matter, haste up as much as you can, and spam heroism when fighting. Run to your stairs, best to be done using 'X' and '<' and pressing enter to move there.

On the orb run, your worse threats are Ice Fiends, Brimstone Fiends and Shadow Fiends. If these come into view, consider reading a scroll of fog and then using teleport. Pan lords can also be dangerous, but can also be harmless. Everytime one comes into view, use ctrl+X to select it, and check its speed. If it moves fast, its probably best just to run away past it. In 0.16, it is also possible for Holy Pan monsters such as Seraph, Daeva etc.. to spawn. You move faster than these, but don't be afraid to fog and/or teleport. Other threats are: executioners (fast), cacodemons (dig, ruining your positioning), tormentors (torment), hellions (smite-targetted hellfire) and hell sentinels (hellfire). For the most part you should avoid fighting stuff if you can, but sometimes you will have to. Executioners are a good example of something you'll have to fight. If the situation looks bad, still put on teleport and get away.

Continue doing this until you get to the end. Congratulations, you've won.