Bay 12 Games Forum

All the status-inflicting infusions trigger sorta' rarely. Further, blind is more heavily resisted in the early game than the late, while stunning (which is what resists freeze) resistance is more prolific in the late than the early game. So acid infusion is better than cold infusion, but cold infusion helps more early on. You'll definitely want two infusions by the end game, though, if only so you can murder wretchlings (wretchlings! *fist shake*), which are immune to acid.

Golem survivability is massively improved once you pick up supercharge, which insta-resurrects the golem and gives it a hefty regen and damage boost. The effect is further boosted by the innit +50% healmod you get from 5/5 resilience.

Eventually (if you're a bit lucky), you'll find Wozzname's Rock (disclaimer: Not actually named Wozzname. Starts with a G) and possibly get ahold of the lifebinding emerald, and stick the both of them in the golem (either in the eyes or imbuing one of them into the golem's armor -- the third potential gem will be a pearl) for an additional 80% healmod. Between that and the resilience healmod, you'll have a golem that has some damned impressive healing capabilities and is tremendously hard to kill.

If you're going infusions, go acid/cold, in that order. Blind is more useful than freezing, generally. Just make sure protection and explosion expert are maxed before putting too much into the infusions (just one point into acid is good enough for a while).

Note that the advice in that thread is somewhat outdated now that golem power and resilience have been boosted -- an svn run of an alchie (between b31 and b32) had a max resilience golem being very hard to kill, even up 'til Reknor and beyond. A few of the golem's own talents were boosted, too, though pound is currently buggy. Still, golem is definitely less dead weight than it was (and it wasn't before, it just wunnit doing enough heavy lifting.).

... do you not remember/know of the mermaid bone discussion?

I don't think dwarves do in the raws, though. Not like it wouldn't take three seconds to fix that.

Haven't played in a long time, but I had decent luck with a Yeek Monk[...]

Wrong ToME

Yeek brawlers work about same way, though, since brawlers' base damage scales with level a bit, and yeeks have good cunning/alright dex, so they can run a finesse/pugilism build decently. It's a right pain getting a yeek brawler off the starting island if you don't find a decent set of ego'd gloves, though, and more than a little nuisance getting out even if you do.

Dwarves... are dwarves. 

Hyper-greedy dwarves that dug too deep. Can't forget that. The dwarves left in the game are basically sitting on top of a hellbreached fortress. Except instead of HFS you get cthulhunoid horrors, though fortunately the lesser versions.

Orcs are fantasy Klingons. Orcs are considered to be nearly mindless beasts by humans and halflings, despite being able to talk, write, and cast spells.

Don't forget perform hyper-advanced fantasy biology! The non-steampunk orcs (the steampunk orcs we know basically nothing about, so far, except that Word of God says they exist) produced a fellow that was capable of performing incredible feats of formshaping/gene manipulation and basically save his species. There were some issues involved, but...

... but yeah. Orcs have produced among the most impressive characters in the fluff, so far. You really get a feel for this when you go up against a particular critter in the game who Garkul basically headbutt to death. Said critter is probably going to kick your ass seven ways 'till sunday, especially in the latest beta.

Time to find an ashenzari altar and start reskilling

They are basically better-than-thou humans. They're not really interested in being a ruling-class type thing, if the racial talent fluff is anything to go by, but they're apparently good at it. They're also probably inbred to a certain degree, but that doesn't necessarily have negative consequences for them (magic!). It probably would for the cornac humans. ... and of course, highers are still human, if with some odd quirks, with all that entails, and not the Thalore. That means they've probably screwed up something or other in the past, or are currently screwing up something or other in the present, or at least have a few of their members doing stuff-you-should-get-killed-for. That's true for everyone except, maybe the Thalore. They just want to be left alone

The innate magical nature thing probably isn't a good thing in T4, though. About the only power sources that don't potentially entail something nasty is stamina and, maybe, the celestial magics. Mana-casters have already come close to breaking the world, once, the equilibrium users are apparently all batshit insane (we have seen no particularly stable EQ users in fluff ), vim users are basically feeding off what the mana-users' world-crack attempt unleashed (oh, and blood/death/life force, and not in a good way), the afflicted are powered by hate, paradox users are, well, screwing with time (and time screws back, hard), and psi-users have enabled the Way.
The celestials seem like they might be alright. They're basically solar powered, heh. Celestial power is still arcane power, though, which probably means they either had a hand in the world-shatter attempt or potentially could. Nasty stuff. Well, that, and they've got all of one actually-benign talent tree. The rest of them are about killing people

Re: Use magic: Make sure the wand you're trying to use is in a shoulder or belt slot.

If you're using them from inside your pack, it adds extra time to the action, as you're having to remove it from the pack then use it. This applies to everything, by the by, though force backpacks lessen the time malus. If you're really insistent about swapping weapons or using stuff from your pack often, consider the quick draw and faster than the eye feats, and keep whatever weapons you intend to swap out outside of your pack.

Re: Ranged -- if you're going to go heavy ranged, pick up point blank (defensive shot pre-req) and defensive shot (removes attacks of opportunity when you shoot in melee) as your starting feats, then take sneaky as your level three. Otherwise, disengage or flee and back off a bit (anything increasing movement speed can help here) before making more shots. Alternately, just make sure to switch out before you're in melee range, heh.

For your particular build, you could also switch in weapon finesse for either of your starting feats instead, and just ignore range. Skill wise, you seem pretty solid. You could probably dump appraise for something else, but it won't hurt terribly as is -- it's an excellent int trainer, which will help a lot of your skills. Alchemy won't help you get any potions, though. That takes a particular feat, brew potions (which takes magic), and is pretty bloody useless. Alchemy gives access to some interesting utility items, but is pretty ignorable, in my experience.

Your cha is... dangerously low. If you have any stat below 7, you're risking a stat-death via curse, which can give a -6 luck penalty to a stat. There's also some cha damaging diseases, iirc.

Anyway, s'all I got at th'mo. If you really want to run a ranged character, though, definitely try ranger. Pick up animal bond, mounted combat as your first levels, get as high a dex and wis as you can, then mounted archery as your 3rd level feat. Ride nighthunters (which fly, are fast, and hit decently hard) and just stay out of melee range.

Ah, that means you've been cursed. You have to drink a remove curse potion and target yourself with it. Could also try the remove curse spell or scroll, but those aren't guaranteed to work.