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[Soadreqm]

I'd recommend Okawaru. Heroism and armour gifts.

[Naryar]

I'd recommend Okawaru. Heroism and armour gifts.

so how do I avoid getting raped by hydras ?

[Soadreqm]

Find a flaming sword. You don't need skill to cut off hydra heads, you just need to be able to survive a few turns standing next to a hydra.

[Robsoie]

So in the end, what is best to kill things quickly :
Troll with high unharmed skill + Claws
Troll with high Maces&Flails skill + Giant spiked club

I imagine the possibility of having a shield for the Claws based Troll is a good advantage, but the possibility of having a branded/artifact Giant spiked club could compensate ?

[Graven]

I believe GSCs can get the speed brand, so that should be ahead, but Trolls have claws:3 and damage calculations have never been my strong point x]

[Cthulhu]

A randart GSC can have speed which would make it broken as hell.  Outside of artifacts though clubs never have brands.

[Graven]

God gifts do have brands, though [to be fair I had to knowledge-bot this ._.] - that's why TrBes are slightly more successful than they should be.

edit : Though I just checked in Wizard mode and Trog seems to just gift randart GSCs. I did get a speed one within 5 weapon gifts, though, so the point still stands, I guess.

After some more testing, out of about 250 gifts 3 were randart GSCs of speed... though the second gift ever was  the first of those.

[Cthulhu]

As for Hydras, Trog's brothers in arms can usually take a hydra, even the ones that slash.

[Naryar]

I have currently started a DrTm.

I love draconians, I love transmuters, but I seem to lose them all above XP level 11.

although i've been playing DDNe quite a bit.

[Leafsnail]

Actually yeah, a GSC of speed is the only thing that can outdamage troll claws.  They're rare and you lose the shield, though.

[Cthulhu]

I'm not a big fan of shields anyway.  I feel like if you counted up all the low level characters who've died because their shield made them whiff attacks, nobody would use them anymore.  Not to mention they don't work against most of the really nasty things like torment and hellfire.

Overall I'd rather kill a monster faster with a giant weapon than poke it with a small weapon and hope I can tank its extra attacks.

[Leafsnail]

Yeah, I guess in the extremely rare case that you receive a good GSC of speed randart and you're planning to go for the extended endgame and you have 22 levels worth of XP at a negative apt to spend then you might as well make the switch.  I'd think most characters would take the slightly lower attack but significantly better defence of the UC/shield model though (particularly with all that XP invested in dodging/armour instead), especially since trolls don't tend to do extended.

[Robsoie]

(after playing so many other RL i forgot how much fast hunger is in Crawl, if you're not engorged -> press O to autoexplore -> you're hungry, eat, press O again -> you're hungry again)

In other news, most stupid death ever

My Minotaur character was level 9, nearly full health, fighting a surviving gnoll (his pals having been crushed few turns before) and a scorpion that popped up from the other side of the corridor.
Decided that killing the scorpion first would be a good idea (the other gnolls having posed no threat), except that it was right there that bad luck decided to strike.

Nearly impossible to hit it, while half of my Minotaur health went away (fortunately the gnoll wasn't hitting), and poisonned of course.

I drank a heal wound potion (only potion i identified so far, not having found a single identify scroll since the beginning) just because i didn't wanted to take any risk, as while that scorpion was standing no chance, with how bad luck annoyed my hit chances better wasting a potion now than letting this kill that character.

Then i decided that maybe i should get rid of that poisoning with a regular heal potion, it wasn't really needed, scorpion and gnoll were surely going to die, but that's Crawl , bad luck kills character.

I had only a few potions (until now didn't found much), and on the un-identified potion (i had not identified the normal heal yet) , i had a stack of 5 unknown potion.

usually such stack when my character is level 9 is a good hint of it being the heal potion, so my Minotaur drunk it.

You got to be kidding me ... it was a potion of paralysis.
I think that's the first time since i started playing that game that so early ingame i get a stack of 5 potions of paralysis...

And level 9 minotaur died from gnoll and scorpion hitting successively for several rounds without being able to get out of this status.

For a come back to it testing a latest trunk build, i see that Crawl still does not like me.

[MaximumZero]

Find a flaming sword. You don't need skill to cut off hydra heads, you just need to be able to survive a few turns standing next to a hydra.

That, or use a blunt weapon.

[Moron]

I think a GSC of holy wrath (possibly also blessed triple sword) will outdamage troll claws vs demons and undead, but not other monsters.

Also, troll with blade hands > troll claws, though you don't get as much advantage as a normal species.