Getting the first win

[gut]

> dwarf healer who absent mindedly walked into a doppleganger king

I also want to mention that this is not out of the ordinary.
Doppleganger kings can be walking death. Next time
though, you will be able to get a PC to that point in the
game with much less effort.

[Grey]

I would suggest swapping out RoTHK with at least a blessed ring of damage. And contrary to Grey, I do most of my melee on 'very aggressive'. If you kill something fast enough, you're safe from it.

I do very aggressive too, but you need very high strength and a very high damage weapon. My point before was just that missiles are intrinsically safer than standing next to a powerful monster on aggressive tactics!

[mike]

I do very aggressive too, but you need very high strength and a very high damage weapon. My point before was just that missiles are intrinsically safer than standing next to a powerful monster on aggressive tactics!

Ah, I see... I misread you. I was posting on very aggressive tactics.

[Necropassion]

From your stats I take it you do use herbs quite a bit - at least morgia on this char, no?
For avoiding deaths like this one I would suggest a few precautions (which you may, or may not already use):
1. Use 'w' command when walking around, rather than simply pressing the appropriate directional button.
2. Always have your tactics set to "coward" when casually exploring - I learned this the hard way; hidden opening + ghul = chain paralysis death.
3. Use the 'l'ook command often - if you see a new, suspicous looking foe you can simply look at him and press 'm'ore in order to at least know his speed.

As others suggested for damage output - piety! There are some really nice artifacts out there who will really help overcoming this problem. Also, I suggest you stock up on stomacemptia herbs as they can be very valuable when encountering a vault of ettins/giants of different sorts - though some may consider this last mentioned tactic a bit scummy.

Anyway I'm not sure how helpful my advice is, since you seem to be a pretty advanced player having beaten the ToEF and all. Best of luck to you!

[Grey]

When eating giants remember to remove any St boosting items. Your chance at a stat raise depends on your current stat level, not the base stat. Thus you won't get any boosts whilst wearing the fire Orb (st 29), but with st 19 you'll easily get several more points.

[tapi]

When doing pure melee PC's, and I mean guys that rely 95% on melee for killing, bar for some monsters that you just don't want to take on (dopler kings, mimics of any type worse than the basic without -para, etc) you need to get your main stats (ST,DE,TO) up. When I didn't know about guidebooks or anything, most of my chars used to be melee PC's who almost never used missiles or spells. I won two or three times with guys that had ST, DE, TO in the 25-35 range, but it really helps getting them all preferably somewhere near 40's come late game.

[F50]

I like melee characters as well, with a caveat:

I *much* prefer if my characters are able to use spells, and usually like them to be somewhat proficient at doing so. Particularly, teleportation/ethereal bridge. My first win was with a dwarven paladin, and my second (ultra) win was with a dwarven priest.

Bolt spells can be extremely useful in a few cases, and ball spells, if you can cast them, and especially if you can get your Wi up, can be real lifesavers. Even just having a wand of fireballs with 10 charges can be a decent enough weapon to take out the cat lord (if you have the DV, naturally).

As a melee character ALWAYS be wary of dopplegangers. A doppleganger king can ruin a character that cannot reasonably be killed any other way. I've had it happen *sniff*.

[UnknownSoldier]

You could try a semi caster, like a paladin.
My first win, not that long ago was with a drakish paladin. The casting a utility spells were very useful (invisibility, strength of Atlas and mostly teleport). But most monster died in melee. I didn't get above level 3 in bow and Xbow but finished level 12 in swords.

[ZiggyMcjoney]

Thanks for all the great suggestions, everyone!

One thing that irritates me a little about missile weapons is that when you don't have a stack of a fairly substantial size, it's very hard kill anything as you have to keep reloading.

This 19 healer I'm on who is currently heading to the tomb of the high kings has level 6 bows and seven league boots, which helps. I was leveling them quite quickly but now I tend to shy away from them when I have to reload every shot.

Would you recommend leveling crossbows as well?

[tapi]

If you're going to go with missiles, go with both bows and crossbows. Naturally you'll have more ammo then and can use more of the slaying ammo that you'll find. Both skills level quite fast