Incursion guide

Incursion guide, by Pacra

Whew, Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King. It's a shame this game still has a lot of rough/unimplemented edges to it, because even in its current form, it blows 95% of all other roguelikes out of the water. Mensch has made a game of incredible complexity and the wedding-together of a tabletop rpg and roguelike just feels so... right. There is a SHITLOAD of things to cover in this post, so bear with me. It's taken me hours to find and sort through all this information. I'm going to ignore any options that would put the game into Explore Mode, since that's like wizard mode in crawl or nethack and is tantamount to cheating.

STARTING OUT OPTIONS - You need to do these to save tons of headaches when you play
At the starting screen, choose Change System Options. You can also access options ingame by pressing '='. You turn options on or off by pressing 'space'.
-Turn on Gain Attributes with Levels.
-Turn Roll Attributes First to YES.
-Turn off Out-Of-Depth Monsters. Both of these don't count towards wizardmode.
-Turn on Disable Complicity Transgressions.

Press the right arrow key for the next options screen.
-I like having Shift Arrow Keys to RUN instead of Ranged Attack.
-Keep Auto-kick Doors, Auto-Knock Locks, and Repeat Kicking Doors off. Turn Auto-disarm Traps on. Turn Use Container Cursor on, if you are confused at how to use the inventory screen (it's not that difficult; without this cursor on, use numbers to select an item, press space to get it ready to be placed somewhere, then scroll down to where you want it on your person and press space again, or press tab to cycle through your available containers, whether it's your pack or a chest on the ground. While it's ready to get placed, if you want it in a container, press 's' to stow it inside.)
-Turn Allow Selection Jumping Off.
-Turn Default to Direction Selection Off.
-Turn Learn Spell Menu Order to LEVEL.
-Turn Dwarven Auto-Focus to Off.

Press the right arrow key for the next options screen.
-Turn every option that begins with "Highlight' to ON.
-Turn every option that begins with 'Stop running' to YES.

Press the right arrow key for the next options screen.
-If you like how Crawl has you center the map on your player, turn Center Map on Player to YES.
-Turn sidebar to "Recent Only." For some computers, and people running OSX, the bottom two lines of the screen are cut off. This means you can see your hp, mp, and fatigue next to your stats. It's better this way anyway.
-You don't need to mess with many things here unless you dislike the resolution/tile size.

Press the right arrow key for the next options screen. Some of these options on this screen will vary depending on the kind of character you play.
-Set Two-Weapon Fighting to Always, or Shield Bash if you know you want to use a shield.
-Monk Preferred Attack Form is only important if you play a lizardman. They can choose "Natural" instead of Martial for a super buff attack sequence that sacrifices the usual martial stuns.
-Turn Poisoned Missile Stacking ON.
-Turn Automatic Hide in Shadows ON.
-Turn Counterspell Tactics to NEVER. This kind of sucks, because you can't stop enemy casters from casting now, but there's an extremely good reason for it (it's bugged and can cause you to die easily when there's a lot of casters around because it takes turns for any type of action, whether you do or don't counterspell JUST DO IT OK.)

The next options screen is Macro Bindings, autobuff is important for casters - they can press f5 while looking at their spells (m) to put a persistent-duration spell in their autobuff slot. pressing f5 outside of the spell screen will autocast all those buff-spells (or option-f5 if you're on a mac.)

okay finally done! time to make a charact-HOLY SHIT PACRA THERE ARE SO MANY OPTIONS AND SCREENS AND FEATS AND SKILLS WHAT THE FUCK
Yes. There is a shitload here. It's fun to just treat it like a D&D book, and read all the info about each race and class. It's not needed though, I'm going to list some easy builds to get your character rolling.
You can choose one of the starting 5 attribute sets if you want to get a few bonus perks at the expense of not choosing your attributes, but for all these guides, I'm assuming you are going to (p)oint buy.

My personal favorite,
STUPIDLY GOOD ORCISH NECROMANCER
Go to Point Buy.
Str 12
Dex 14
Con 4
Int 18
Wis 18
Cha 4
Luc 15

-Choose Orc for your race. Choose Mage for your class.
-Choose "Chaotic Evil' for your alignment. Choose Necromancy for your school.

-You can choose two feats. Choose "Great Fortitude" and "Iron Will."
--(this means that when you get to level 3, you can choose "One Body, One Soul" which uses your wisdom score to calculate hp and fortitude saves instead of your 4 con! Your health will double and lots of things get easier.)

-At the Skill manager screen, put two skill points into Concentration (always level up concentration as a mage), and one each into Searching and Spot (always level these up on any character). The rest into Decipher Script and Alchemy. This helps you read/write scrolls or drink/make potions, very important for any character.
-When it asks if you want to worship Khasrach (the orc god), decline. Worship the multitude later on if you want to dabble in the god stuff, but its pretty complex to start out with.

-You get 4 spells to choose before you start. I go with Shield, Magic Missile, Floating Disc (unencumbers your pack), and Alarm(lets you sleep safely). When you start the game, put Shield and Floating Disc into autobuff. When you level up to 2, get Mage Armor and put that into autobuff too.

-When you press m to access spells, you can choose a number when selecting a spell to use that number as a shortcut. Minor drain is your workhorse, I put it to 4. Magic missile, for now, will kill undead, I put it to 3.
-remember you can press 'l' to look around, and look at monsters; pressing 'x' while on a monster will give you a description of that monster, what its resistances are, what it's carrying, etc.
-while you're in the inventory screen and holding something in your ready hand, you can press 'x' to examine it if the slot your cursor is on is empty, or press 'x' to examine something already equipped if your cursor is on it.
-also, you can wield your orcish ranseur/longspear early to keep enemies from getting in melee range with you. as soon as you find a buckler though, wield it in your weapon hand for the added defense and just never melee.

Orc Necromancer Strengths: That minor drain spell will instakill most things on level 1, because orcs use wisdom modifier x2 for bonus damage in spells. It'll instakill most things for a long time in your game, and the best part is IT HEALS for the same damage it deals (a lot). This is important because in Incursion, you don't regenerate health like in crawl; you have to sleep to regain health usually, which takes time and food, and if you're not prepared, you can get ambushed. Mana does regenerate, but slowly. (some feats, spells, items, and god powers can allow you to regenerate hp.) Once you get One Body, One Soul, you are no longer a glass cannon! Also your fort and will saves are amazing from the prerequisite feats.
Orc Necromancer Weaknesses: You have fuckall for Con or charisma, so if you get poisoned or diseased before you get one body, one soul, you're dead. Also always identify potions before drinking, because a potion of unhealth will damage your con and kill you, or a potion of stammering and stuttering will damage your cha and kill you. I put enough points so that monsters that drain con in melee can hit you once and you can survive, but you shouldn't letting them anywhere near you because you are nuking things with your all-powerful Minor Drain. (sorry, a cha-draining monster will instakill you but ive never ran into cha-draining monsters.) If the game ever asks you to raise an attribute on levelup, always choose Wisdom, of course. You can also eat faeries/pixie-ish monsters for a permanent cha bonus, I would do this! Make sure you have a way of curing disease though! (Also when you reach level 5 you can cast Major Drain, which if it kills an enemy, has the ability to take their intrinsics or stat bonuses if applicable. super op.)

A NOTE ON LEVELING since I'm guessing this is your first character:
-Once you have enough xp to level up, press 'd' to access your character sheet. then press 'g' to gain the level. if it's level 3, it'll ask what feat you want (remember for this char, its one body one soul you want.) if its level 5 it'll ask you for a stat gain (wisdom!!!)
-Press 's' for the skill manager again. put two points into concentration again, then one each into searching and spot. the rest in whatever. Avoid metamagic on this character, you don't have enough fatigue points for it anyway and that shit gets complicated (see below.)
-Press 'l' to learn new spells! on the 'd' character screen you can look at your spell levels, there will be one or two purple numbers, those are the amounts of spells left you can learn. the 'd' screen is really good for looking at your character, and also you can press 'c' while on it to see what poisons/diseases/buffs you have currently. You can also multiclass via the character screen, but i'm leaving that till later, because it makes character builds much more complicated.
when you eventually die (cmon, it's a roguelike, it's going to happen) and you don't feel like going through character creation all over again, you can choose to Reincarnate your character, it's one of the choices in the main menu. You can reincarnate, starting the entire game over but without having to go through char creation, any character that hasn't reached level 5 yet.

Don't try other combos until you have a feel for the orcish necromancer!

In incursion, unlike crawl, heavy armour characters are extremely hard to keep alive, because they run into traps like idiots.
Here are a couple builds for various races/classes you might want to try out.

Human Rapier-wielding Light Armor Warrior aka "I will Never Get Hit"
(p)oint buy:
Str 12
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 14
Wis 10
Cha 8
Luc 15 (note I put Luck pretty high on most characters. That's because drinking from fountains can cure disease or remove curses, and high Luc means bad things usually dont happen and the good things usually do; also better equipment spawns in the dungeon with high Luck.)

-choose human, warrior.
-Choose Listen and Searching as your class skills, so you can sleep safely and find traps.
-choose whatever alignment you feel like.
-for your feats, choose Weapon Finesse, Expertise, and Dodge. (Later on you go down the Dodge fighter tree, and should pick up the feat Riposte when your base attack bonus is 6.)
-when it asks you to choose a weapon focus, choose Rapier!!!
-put skill points into find weakness, use magic, decipher script, healing, spot, and searching.

Remember that orc necromancer you started with that had no armor and 12 defence? If you take that kite shield on your left shoulder in the inventory menu and put it in your ready hand, you now have 32 defence, while also having leather armour on, and your attack speed is extremely fast, like 165%. Drawbacks: Humans depend on light sources (torches and such) instead of orcs' infravision. You'll want to upgrade to a brass lantern asap. Infravision races like orcs and drow are all much easier to play with for this reason. P.S. the oils of transformation in your pack can be used on other weapons to change it into whatever weapon you like, in case your main rapier gets damaged, you can then make a new rapier.

DWARVEN SPIKED CHAIN WARRIOR aka "this weapon owns"
(p)oint buy,
Str 18
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 10
Cha 8
Luc 15

-Choose dwarf. Choose warrior.
-whatever alignment you like.
-choose Exotic weapon, then choose Spiked Chain.
-there are three ways to go here. you can go down the mighty fighter chain by choosing Power Attack feat, then next feat would be Knock Prone, all the way to the cleave feats.
-or, you can take Roll with It to go down the tough fighter tree, then take toughness, all the way to Resilient (regenerates health.)
-or, if you don't like using the spiked chain in both hands, you can take power attack, then for your next feat, take Monkey Grip. then go down mighty fighter chain like usual.

The spiked chain is an insanely good weapon that can hit foes from two spaces away instead of only one, like a polearm, and they have to close with you, like a polearm. You can trip dudes with it, and it entangles enemies on a critical hit or 1 in 3 normal hits (good.) you can also grapple with it (!!!!). You can also attack from one space away, unlike polearms/lances! So yes, super good. Searching will help your character because it's in heavy armor, but dwarves get bonuses for being in heavy armour, thank god. Ekliazeh also owns for dwarves because he is the dwarfgod, you can press ? ingame, then k, then type EK to read about ekliazeh and what he likes and how to worship him.

LIZARDMAN NATURAL MONK aka "rip and tear"
(p)oint buy
Str 18
dex 14
con 14
int 15
wis 15
cha 8
luc 8

-choose lizardfolk. choose monk.
-it will ask you what god to worship. Immotian is the Zin of incursion, but actually good, he's an easy god to worship but you have to be a 'good boy' and not get diseased or attack nice people. xavias is a knowledge-crafter Good god, dont recommend him to start out. Essiah is a super easy Good god to worship, and gives some remultially nice buffs. Mara is a Good god of necromancy, and is interesting to play as. Don't worship hesani or Aiswin until you really know what incursion gods are about, they're tough. The Multitude is the Chaotic Evil god(s) and are the easiest to gain favor with and worship because then you can go around murdering everything. the only drawback is they hate it if you heal yourself with potions of healing. which is kind of a pretty big drawback. you can heal by resting/vampiric draining or any other ingame way with them, just not potions/wands.
-when it asks for alignment try to not choose Lawful Good, you have to do a bunch of shit to not cross alignment and blaaaaah.
-for feats, you'll want, in this order: Multiattack, power attack, knock prone (get dodge instead if worshipping immotian), lightning fists, falling star strike (you need find weakness +10 and melee bonus +4) and lastly freeze the lifeblood (find weakness +12, melee bonus +6.) Actually come to think of it i dont remember if these last two work with natural attack, so forget everything back to power attack and get either the tough melee feats or the dodgy melee feats.
-put skill points into hide in shadows, move silently, find weakness, searching, spot, then decipher script, use magic if you want.
--Most Importantly, after you start, press '=' for game options, press left arrow twice, and set MONK PREFERRED ATTACK FORM to 'NATURAL' instead of martial. Congrats you are now a clawing destroyer.
-you might want to later on get a lot of favor for zurvash, he has a high-favor ability he gives you which improves your claw attacks considerably.

FIREBALLING ORCISH EVOCATOR (In incursion, evocating is casting damage spells, conjuring is summoning spells, the Use Magic skill is crawl's Evocations.)
(p)ointbuy;
Str 10
Dex 10
Con 10
Int 18
Wis 18
Cha 4
Luc 15

-Choose orc, choose mage, choose whatever alignment you feel like, choose evocations.
-Choose the Feats Bind Spell and Empower Spell.
-put two in concentration, two in Metamagic(LEVEL THIS UP as much as possible), one in spot/searching, rest in decipher script/use magic/alchemy.
-by the third level you want to choose the feat Transmute Spell.

The way this character works is you use multiple metamagic feats (by turning them on in the spell menu, it'll say the letter you need to press to turn it on for Force Bolt or Fireball) to throw fireballs of hilarideath at mobs of enemies. By the time you get fireball, you'll want Bind Spell (so your fireballs don't kill you,) Empower Spell (50% stronger fireballs), and Transmute Spell sometimes (so they do different elemental damage to things immune to fire) on Fireball in the spell menu. This char is harder to keep alive if you don't have access to minor drain early (that's true for any mage though), that's why orcish necro is the #1 best starting character.

Okay, those are the builds I've gotten very far with, after reading a bajillion pages of stuff on incursion. Still haven't won yet, because be forewarned, Incursion is still very buggy
There are obviously tons of other builds, I haven't touched on things like diplomacy-focused bards, archery or twoweapon rangers, combat priests, barbarians, etc. !!!

Other Character Builds I have found across the internet

These were all made by "Popo!" from TWI brigade. I'm putting them up on pastebin because the TWI brigade site is extremely slow and impossible to navigate, but I want to give credit where credit is due! They're all solid guides.

Warrior introduction build, including feat trees, favored races, and what spells to get when multiclassing (***so you can regenerate health and such by worshipping Zurvash or Xel or Khasrach and getting Pain domain from one level of Priest***)
http://pastebin.com/uw90BS5e

Warrior dual spiked chain build, insane, definitely look if you liked the spiked chain warrior
http://pastebin.com/Nh4Z8M4H

General Monk build, with optional Tattoo Mystic prestige class
http://pastebin.com/GN4LMcKa

Two-weapon Drow Rogue guide build, including feats, skills, and how-to
http://pastebin.com/FxQQyeaZ

General Incursion mage guide, good reading for any spell school
http://pastebin.com/0zzPZeY1

Combat Mage build! crazy!!!!
http://pastebin.com/UsUgeTCy

Advice for the final dungeon level of Incursion and the goblin fortress (spoilers!!)
http://pastebin.com/TJggJb2N

If you want to read about Incursion's really awesome god system, read this overview.
http://incursion.wikidot.com/gods
This wiki is also good for just general knowledge, it also has a good FAQ. Read up on the Domains as well.