You're playing the wrong race

[Blasphemous]

I did count starting gear. Otherwise GE would have ended up much worse. The thing is, even including elven chain, there are usually a handful of other races that still end up with better starting PV and pretty much all of the others have starting To. Having 5 PV and 10 To is not nearly so good as having 3 PV and 20 To.

I was referring to 7-8 starting PV (and around 12 To) which is pretty common for classes that start with elven chain mail and other parts of armor, each of which can add variable PV.
That makes up for the lack of toughness in my opinion.

Sure, but that's because mid-to-endgame counts for very little. Every character is going to have decent stats, maxed skills, huge damage, etc. Exactly what you end up with will depend on the RNG and your playstyle more than anything else. But most characters who make it passed the ToEF win the game, regardless of race and class.

I think you're too harsh. I had many chars I knew were going to win long before ToEF. Mid game is I think the most exciting part of the game where the most stuff happens.
I believe it needs at least as much consideration overall as early game, which is more about survival than actual comfortable exploration.

Yeah, but 20 St and To is still garbarge. A level 1 orc who was beaten by his parents starts with that. 20 St still means you probably need a girdle of carrying or take Porter/etc. talents to avoid being burdened with a modest endgame inventory.

Again I disagree. 20 St and To are very fine values, which usually let me comfortably kill anything I encounter during the mid game and survive pretty much all attacks.
At this point also certain monsters start appearing that present a very tangible threat irrespective of how much HP or To you have - paralysis is nasty and when it lands, DV is your only defense, which elves usually have plenty of due to high Dx.
Porter talents are useful regardless of strength, more carrying capacity is always welcome and there are not that many talents that are otherwise a must.
Quick line is understandably desirable but I almost always take porter as well, if only to entertain my packrack nature.

I've given elves good scores for casters already. For non-casters, of the stats you mention here, only Dx matters, and that is trainable fairly easily.

I'm not talking about good caster scores, I'm talking about good overall scores for any class that doesn't rely on brute force alone (or predominantly).

And if you love roleplaying, then by all means. Have fun. As I said at the top of the thread, my concern is about winning. And non-caster elves generally suck at that compared to other races.

They only suck in early game, that's my point. Past early game, they are better than pretty much any other race.
You named the thread "You're playing the wrong race" when you should have named it "You're playing the wrong race for early game survival"

I have enough wins with exceedingly fragile elven characters but it's not about winning alone.
You mainly address early game survival and you consider the value of races solely through their ability to beat early game with relative ease.
That is a flawed logic because you extrapolate the experience of the whole game only through the perspective of early game and survival thereof.

To illustrate my point (this is estimation not actual data):
Out of 10 gray elven chars I roll, 3 may survive early game and 2 will close the gate after that.
Out of 10 drakes/orcs/trolls etc., 8 will survive early game but 3 will perish in the mid game and 3 more will fall in the late game.

Which is the better measure of success? I'd say that in the very least, neither is a bad choice, the end results are the same.

Perhaps it has something to do with my inability to effectively make use of clear advantages like strength and toughness.
I think however, it has more to do with the fact that high To and St combinations are slower in becoming more powerful and their ability to consistently beat early game doesn't translate to beating mid and late games with similar ease.
That is untrue for elves as they tend to be ahead of the game most of the time, except early game.

In other words, elves are weaker. They need more grinding and effort to get the same results as races that are easier to win with. That's kind of my point.

They do need more grinding and effort in the beginning. Mid and late games however are somewhat easier, I'd say even easier than for tough and strong chars most of the time.
My turncount is more a result of being a completionist rather than grinder. I just like to have all locations visited and all quests completed.
You seem more oriented towards quickness, turncount and the related final score. I'm more interested in exploration and adventuring.
The journey beats the destination.

[JellySlayer]

I was referring to 7-8 starting PV (and around 12 To) which is pretty common for classes that start with elven chain mail and other parts of armor, each of which can add variable PV.
That makes up for the lack of toughness in my opinion.

Yes, but all classes with multiple pieces of armor have this available to them. This isn't really anything special about elves, and it's not like elves start with more individual pieces of armor than other races do (they start with less, on average than a typical dwarf or orc, for example). On average, a elven assassin, say, is going to have around 5 PV. So will a troll, but the troll will average 26 To versus the elf's 10. PV is important, but it only protects you against certain types of damage. You're vulnerable to traps, vortices, poison, etc. in ways that characters with the same amount of PV but higher To is not.

I think you're too harsh. I had many chars I knew were going to win long before ToEF. Mid game is I think the most exciting part of the game where the most stuff happens.
I believe it needs at least as much consideration overall as early game, which is more about survival than actual comfortable exploration.

I do feel that the early game (which I consider to be everything before DT, roughly) to be the most important part of the game since that's where the majority of players spend the majority of time, and where the majority of deaths occur. That said, I don't honestly believe that my evaluations would change much by giving more emphasis to the midgame, and I don't necessarily feel that a stronger focus on the midgame would favour elves, particularly. (FWIW, I consider midgame to be everything before the ToEF, minus the Maze, Bug Area, and Rift... and maybe Ice Queen area). As I said, by the endgame, the effect of starting race and even class is pretty minimal, and it depends a lot more on individual playstyle and the RNG.

Again I disagree. 20 St and To are very fine values, which usually let me comfortably kill anything I encounter during the mid game and survive pretty much all attacks.
At this point also certain monsters start appearing that present a very tangible threat irrespective of how much HP or To you have - paralysis is nasty and when it lands, DV is your only defense, which elves usually have plenty of due to high Dx.

Dx only grants a very small amount of DV, especially compared to other things (shields, in particular). And much like how 20 St and To are reachable my midgame for elves, 20 Dx is reachable by the same period for trolls. The difference between 20 Dx and 30 Dx is only 5 points of DV, which is not that big of a deal. OTOH, the difference between 20 To and 30 To could be a hundred HP in the midgame. While PV won't protect you from a stone ooze, higher HP and To will mean that there's a better chance you'll beat the paralysis lock, especially since Toughness is the stat that determines how quickly you recover from and how well you resist paralysis.

They only suck in early game, that's my point. Past early game, they are better than pretty much any other race.

I don't see any particular reason to think this is the case. Dark elves may have a stronger midgame thanks to Alertness and Find Weakness becoming more important. Gray elves don't offer anything over, say, a Dwarf, in the midgame.

I think however, it has more to do with the fact that high To and St combinations are slower in becoming more powerful and their ability to consistently beat early game doesn't translate to beating mid and late games with similar ease.
That is untrue for elves as they tend to be ahead of the game most of the time.

I don't find elves to be particularly ahead of the game. If you're massively scumming your way through the game, then, sure, you'll be ahead. But you'll be ahead with any race.

They do need more grinding and effort in the beginning. Mid and late games however are somewhat easier, I'd say even easier than for tough and strong chars most of the time.

With an equal amount of grinding, I suspect you'll find that the mid and late games are of similar difficulty. It's just you're putting in more work with your elves to get them caught up. If your elf is taking 20000 more turns in the early game, yeah, they're going to be ahead in the midgame.

[grobblewobble]

Gray elves don't offer anything over, say, a Dwarf, in the midgame.

Although I mostly agree, to be fair a gray elf does offer something: a small chance to receive Sun's Messenger.

But more to the point would probably be to discuss in detail how one deals with ghosts, in particular the guaranteed ones on D:50. I vaguely recall that the behaviour of invisibility was changed, just like darkness, and that it is no longer the foolproof protection it once was. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

[Carter]

Although I mostly agree, to be fair a gray elf does offer something: a small chance to receive Sun's Messenger.

what about Hammerhead!!..... ... ...

[JellySlayer]

Although I mostly agree, to be fair a gray elf does offer something: a small chance to receive Sun's Messenger.

But more to the point would probably be to discuss in detail how one deals with ghosts, in particular the guaranteed ones on D:50. I vaguely recall that the behaviour of invisibility was changed, just like darkness, and that it is no longer the foolproof protection it once was. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Well, a Dwarf doesn't really need to worry about ghost lords. If you're taking 500+ years unnatural aging, you're doing something very, very wrong. For shorter lifespan characters... if you don't open the main room, you should be avoid to avoid all but a few of the ghosts just by stealth (and while monsters do have a better chance of detecting you by randomly bumping into you while you're invisible, they won't seek you out en masse). The ones you do pull, you can knock out with thrown RCT or missiles if you're feeling paranoid. Ghost lords, even the very experienced ones on D:50, don't have much more than 100 speed, AFAIK, whereas a typical endgame character is probably going to have at least 130, so a little hit and run should keep you out of trouble if it comes to that. Or if you have pretty high PV/DV, you can probably just kill them in melee. Or read a SoFS and let your pet kill them.

[Blasphemous]

Stealth + invisibility mean that many of the ghost lords will not even move from their initial positions.
From my experience, they don't have a high to-hit chance so with 50-60 DV you should be pretty safe.
Even with invisibility, they have a hard time finding the PC and are rather susceptible to undead slaying, of which there are guaranteed sources as you all know.

[grobblewobble]

Exactly.. that's the main reason why I don't play elves much.

Although I once stumbled into a threat of ghost kings with a drake - scary sight!

Another one of my drakes nearly died the moment he arrived on D:50. Speed 10, ghost lord next to the stairs down.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Nice, flameworthy thread.

I mostly agree with the OP suggestions, but I think you're underestimating gnomes a lot. I'll take a gnome over an elf for caster classes any day. Better stats, faster levelling which is important for casters as it heavily affects things like spell learning, and much better early game survivability due to better To, PV, and said faster levelling. Yeah, the skills are bad but so are gray elves', and spellcasting classes are not that dependent on skills anyway.

My ranking for wizards would be 1. drakeling, 2. gnome, 3. gray elf. Drakeling just gives top early-game survivability with decent stats and the spit, then it storms through the ToEF and by the late game as a wizard you're a tank anyway. Gnome works fine as I mentioned earlier. Mist elves, I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole if I wanted to win. Casters are shielded from many of the dangers of the game, but they can still fall to traps, one of the most dangerous things for mist elves.

In general I think elves are overrated. They obviously suck for melee, and for casting, what they do, gnomes do better. OK, if you really want to have the ultimate caster you should probably choose an elf, but it won't maximize chances of winning which is the subject of the thread.

Regarding ratlings, they're not a top tier race but they are not that bad either. Detect item status is heavily underrated IMO. Yes, it doesn't do anything that you can't do manually with an altar, but if 80 weapons are dropped from a vault, doing that would take several strained! trips to the altar. I don't know if scumming-friendly people do that, but I don't, as it's really boring, so the result is that I will only lug some items around and miss the outliers with really good boni or prefixes/suffixes. So I tend to have better early and mid-game weapons and armor with characters with detect item status. I think it's even a rather wish-worthy skill. And for classes like a duelist equipment is important, so ratlings make rather good duelists (apart from the role-playing reasons) as others have pointed out.

[auricbond]

Detect item status at a 100 just takes a bit of the headache out of inventory management if nothing else, since everything neatly piles into b/u/c status with no fourth 'unidentified' piles.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Detect item status at a 100 just takes a bit of the headache out of inventory management if nothing else, since everything neatly piles into b/u/c status with no fourth 'unidentified' piles.

That's useful for potions and suchlike, but typically not that much for weapons/armor, as there is variability in to-hit and damage boni and you typically won't generate so many identical instances of the same weapon as to have b/u/c piles.