Priest basic questions. The 7 base spells

[runequester]

okay, so until you can get another spell book, there's 7 spells in the book you start with.

Some observations and questions:

Detect Evil
Initially, this doesn't seem very beneficial, since a lot of the critters aren't evil, but it seems as you descend, more and more are, so I am guessing this will be better later on ?

Cure Light Wounds
Healing 15% of your wounds isn't a bad deal. Pretty useful overall, if you get a breather, and low level, there aren't that many other "combat" uses for your spells.

Bless
I end up using this a lot, as its quite handy.

Remove Fear
Does this always work or is there a roll involved? Handy against a fairly small range of enemies.

Call Light
This seems a bit useless. Does it affect any monsters other than orcs? The damage doesn't really seem worth it, or am I missing something?

Find Traps, Doors and Stairs
Seems one of the more usefull low level cleric spells as far as I can tell

Slow Poison
Edited due to an error on my part. However, is this generally useful, compared to just spending less magic points healing the damage?


Please correct me if I am missing something obvious there

[Taha]

Call Light is handy for lighting dark rooms, especially large ones. On the first few levels most rooms are lit, that is not true as you go down. Fighting in a lit room is generally less dangerous, plus you can see any objects.

Remove Fear is rarely much good - just not an efficient use of mana. The monsters that can scare you early tend to do it enough that you run out of mana; later you are using that mana to orb them to death or portal away.

There is a poison counter that inflicts damage every turn, with the damage and duration determined by the size of the counter. Cure light wounds makes you healthier, but does not change the poison counter; slow poison reduces it. A later neutralize potion spell that cuts it to 0.

Detect traps/doors/stairs, detect evil and call light are on my first three macros for the first 2/3 of a priest game, until they each get replaced by better spells much later. The others are situational or quickly replaced by better equivalents.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by runequester

Detect Evil
Initially, this doesn't seem very beneficial, since a lot of the critters aren't evil, but it seems as you descend, more and more are, so I am guessing this will be better later on ?

It's the only monster detection spell you have, and it's a hell of a lot better than nothing. Particularly, you'll want to know where groups of orcs (or Mughash and his gang) are so you can avoid them. It's also useful in that it detects ghosts even though they're invisible.

Cure Light Wounds
Healing 15% of your wounds isn't a bad deal. Pretty useful overall, if you get a breather, and low level, there aren't that many other "combat" uses for your spells.

Never cast healing spells in melee; you're just giving your opponent free whacks at you. Create some space and heal up while they close the distance. CLW is the best healing spell the priest gets after the 300HP Heal; it has fantastic HP-to-mana rates and remains relevant even in the late game by letting you minimize the time you spend resting.

Bless
I end up using this a lot, as its quite handy.

Its effects are negligible, but if you have nothing else worth doing you may as well cast it.

Remove Fear
Does this always work or is there a roll involved? Handy against a fairly small range of enemies.

Always works, but it doesn't prevent you from being frightened again so it's basically useless against monsters with fear-causing melee (or monsters in groups with cause-fear spells, like novice priests or ghouls). Potions of Heroism are better.

Call Light
This seems a bit useless. Does it affect any monsters other than orcs? The damage doesn't really seem worth it, or am I missing something?

It's a vital utility spell. Cast it in a dark room and the entire room is lit. Knowing where your opponents are and what they are doing is one of the most important aspects of Angband gameplay, and it's all the more important when they have LOS on you. Sometimes it's worth casting in corridors too when fighting groups (and you don't have a Wand of Light handy).

The damage is completely pointless though. I wouldn't even use it to kill worm masses.

Find Traps, Doors and Stairs
Seems one of the more usefull low level cleric spells as far as I can tell

For the traps aspect, certainly. IIRC in 3.4 traps will be getting the overhaul that was implemented in v4, so that part of the spell will be going away (the idea being that needing to cast trap detection every 50 steps is boring and adds nothing to gameplay).

Slow Poison
Edited due to an error on my part. However, is this generally useful, compared to just spending less magic points healing the damage?

Not really. Poison broadly falls into one of two categories:

1) Very lightly poisoned. Wait for it to wear off; if you're low on HP then cast CLW.
2) Very badly poisoned. Chug a CCW, or cast Neutralize Poison if you have it.

The problem is that when poison's bad enough that you don't want to just wait for it to time out, it's also bad enough that Slow Poison doesn't actually accomplish anything particularly useful. If your poison timer's at 150, then sure, Slow Poison knocks that down to 75, but that's still 75 turns of being poisoned. You have to cast it repeatedly to actually do anything about the poison, when there's typically more effective solutions available. Which is as it should be, because poison is otherwise mostly just an irritating status effect that prevents you from running or resting.

[ekolis]

Hmm... player priests have "remove fear" which is basically useless, while enemy priests have "cause fear" which is quite effective... why not replace the player's "remove fear" spell with a "cause fear" spell - it would be quite useful for crowd control!

[Malak Darkhunter]

Originally Posted by ekolis

Hmm... player priests have "remove fear" which is basically useless, while enemy priests have "cause fear" which is quite effective... why not replace the player's "remove fear" spell with a "cause fear" spell - it would be quite useful for crowd control!

Because in the early levels remove fear *is* very useful it only becomes useless during late game and you should have a permanent source of fear resistance by then, like wise cause fear, sleep, confuse i found to only be useful at early levels as well

[fizzix]

Re: bless

Originally Posted by Derakon

Its effects are negligible, but if you have nothing else worth doing you may as well cast it.

I disagree. In the early game it's actually very useful. You can get an increased chance to hit of 10-15% against some monsters which is actually considerable. Also the 10 extra AC is nothing to scoff at when you're at dlevel 5.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by runequester

okay, so until you can get another spell book, there's 7 spells in the book you start with.

Some observations and questions:

Detect Evil
Initially, this doesn't seem very beneficial, since a lot of the critters aren't evil, but it seems as you descend, more and more are, so I am guessing this will be better later on ?

It detects invisible monsters (if they are evil), which detect monsters doesn't do, so you detect major monster group of ghosts with it. It's fairly good spell at detecting anything dangerous, main group of dangerous monsters that it doesn't detect are hounds.

Originally Posted by runequester

Bless
I end up using this a lot, as its quite handy.

Especially early. Nice boost to AC and fighting.

Originally Posted by runequester

Remove Fear
Does this always work or is there a roll involved? Handy against a fairly small range of enemies.

Works always (not with items that make you afraid, or "terror" from mushrooms though). Doesn't give you any immunity so if monster hits you again, you get afraid again. Better carry potions of heroism with you (they also give you boost to combat which is cumulative to bless).

Originally Posted by runequester

Call Light
This seems a bit useless. Does it affect any monsters other than orcs? The damage doesn't really seem worth it, or am I missing something?

Call light is room illumination spell. It isn't supposed to be used as attack spell. The fact that it damages monsters at all is just result of some of them having very bad case of light allergy (susceptible to light, most low level trolls and most orcs basically).

Originally Posted by runequester

Find Traps, Doors and Stairs
Seems one of the more usefull low level cleric spells as far as I can tell

You need to cast this frequently, at least until traps are fixed. Some of the traps are too deadly as they are now.

Originally Posted by runequester

Slow Poison
Edited due to an error on my part. However, is this generally useful, compared to just spending less magic points healing the damage?

I think this is about the least useful spell in all of priest spells. I can't really tell if it does anything at all, and CLW is far better at keeping you alive until poison wears off.

[edit] CCW->CLW

[Raxmei]

I mostly play priestly types.

Detect Evil isn't a spell you cast all the time. I mostly use it if I suspect there's a ghost nearby and I don't have See Invisible yet, or to track down thieves after they've run off with my gold. Smeagol usually ends up within detection range so it makes it easier to wear him down.

Bless is handy enough and cheap, I mostly use it when I'm in a hallway fighting a group, I have a turn without somebody walking into melee range and I don't need to heal up just yet. I don't bother with its longer duration advanced variants.

Cure Light Wounds in its present form is useful right up to the endgame. It's the most mana-efficient healing you have in most circumstances, though Heal edges it out in some cases and obviously it's action-inefficient. I never cast cure serious or cure critical, though of course I don't turn down the potions. I cast CLW when I'm wounded and have an action to kill. For much of the early and late game (there's a significant bit in the middle where Orb of Draining is awesome) it's more efficient to bash things with your mace and use your mana to heal than it is to try to kill things with magic.

I'm disappointed when I get handed remove fear. Fear doesn't come up often and when it does a cheap potion does the job better.

Call Light is a detection spell, not a weapon. Use it when you enter a darkened room so the mass of horrible nasty things on the other side of the room won't get the drop on you. You'll also be able to see any objects that happen to be on the ground. It does lose much of its luster late in the game when I'm just casting Clairvoyance everywhere I go.

Detect traps & stuff is pretty important right now. Aside from the obvious aspect of detecting traps it's also helps you ascend and descend quickly, locate secret doors, and give a hint at dungeon structure.

Slow Poison is another disappointing spell. Narrow applicability and low power.

I have the following town spells macroed: Cure Light Wounds, Bless, Call Light, Detect Traps Doors and Stairs, Portal, Resist Fire and Cold, Orb of Draining, Sense Surroundings, and Heal. I do cast other spells, just not often enough to macro them.

[runequester]

okay, this is all quite helpfull. Thank you!

Hopefully my next priest will survive long enough


I am assuming the advice above also mostly goes for paladins, correct?

[Derakon]

That depends on how strongly you emphasize their starting WIS. In current Vanilla I tend to play paladins like slightly weaker warriors (optimizing starting stats for STR/DEX/CON) for the early game, and only pay attention to spellcasting once I find enough potions of Wisdom to make spellcasting not horribly painful.

Paladins can also never get below 5% failure rates on their spells, so they have to be a bit more conservative with when they start casting the big heals.