High Elf Wizard Guide (This is written for trunk, there will be a few differences in 0.7.2)

A joint #rrogue effort, penned by ophanim

High Elf Wizards are a fairly robust combination. They do almost everything well, they're easy to play, and their only major downfall is that they level slowly.

Starting:

1.) Hit "m" and bring up the skills menu. Press b, c, and e to turn off stealth, spellcasting, and translocations. We want only to train our conjurations and dodging.

2.) Go and kill everything on D:1 & D:2 using Magic Dart, resting to refill your MP after every encounter. You should maximize the distance between you and your enemies before you attack them but don't go running through the floor if they start moving to you -- just fall back into a hallway you've explored and start casting. Learn to pillar dance if necessary. Keep your eyes out for a short blade or long blade and once you have one, use "c" to chop up corpses and eat them if you're lucky enough to have good chunks when you hit hungry. If you have to melee you're still okay and you should be able to take anything but a kobold or a monster with an enchanted weapon.

3.) At level 2, learn Call Imp and Repel Missiles. Use Call Imp when enemies start getting too close. Watch out for Summoning to train and turn it off once it shows up under "m". Use Repel Missiles when you run into a kobold with darts but let Charms and Air to train. Also watch out for your weapon skill to train (short blades or lond blades) and turn it off, too. If Fighting shows up, leave it on.

4.) At level 3, learn Mephitic Cloud. This spell will make the early game much easier. Now, casting this spell will cost you a choko's worth of hunger so you need to avoid it when you can. Use it on groups of enemies, ogres, centaurs (after you cast Repel Missiles!), and orcs. Don't use it on snakes, slimes, or smaller things. If you find that you're castinng it a lot, turn Spell casting back on and everything else off and train Spell casting up until it no longer costs you food to cast.

5.) Continue through the dungeon until you find the temple. Play safe, drag enemies into corridors, and dive to a lower floor if you run into a scary unique. Memorize Blink and then Conjure Flame when you have the available spell levels, skip Slow.

Temple:

1.) Worship Vehumet. You can worship Sif Muna if you're more experienced but Vehumet is a more straight forward blaster god and he'll help keep your mana full, get you your needed attack spells, and improve your blasting.

2.) Start a stash, Drop your spell books, misc. gear, extra weapons/armour, and any potion or scroll you only have in a quantity of 1. ID scrolls and potions you have in quantities of 2 or greater and hope you don't quaff a potion of mutation or strong poison. ID your wands. Do NOT use scrolls of identify on these items -- save those for rings and armour you find later. Note that you can stand over a spellbook and still memorize spells from it.

3.) Continue through the dungeon looking for the Lair. Remain playing safe. Once you hit Conjurations 10, turn if off and consider turning Spell casting on and leave it on until you can cast all your important spells at no hunger cost (just don't forget to turn it off once you're casting hunger-less). Turn Poison off if it trains.

4.) Watch out for uniques, centaurs, orc priests, or large packs of enemies. There's nothing wrong with running and going down a floor to avoid them. Just remember where they are and avoid it until you have enough leves/spells to go back and kill them. This is where I usually die, in the awkward spot where enemies start having more hp than magic dart can empty and before I find another spell book with a better attack spell. Mephitic Cloud + Dagger + Stabbing can help but often I just dive until I get to the Lair and avoid some of the really nasty stuff.

Lair:

1.) Work your way down to L:8. If you have rPois this will be a lot easier. Note that Mephitic Cloud wont work on most of the snakes or hydras. It *will* work on bears, dogs/hounds, elephants, and slugs/snails. L:8 has special endings and you're luckiest if you get the elephant ending. Do not go into Snake, Shoals, Swamp, or Slime yet.

2.) Most players put a second stash on L:2 so they don't have to track all the way to the temple. I usually go grab anything *important* in temple and move it here.

3.) Around here you will need to upgrade your attack spell if you haven't yet. See the spell section for my suggestions.

Orc:

1.) Orc 1 and 2 will probably be easy so long as there isn't any uniques. Do a lot of stair dancing to pull groups of orcs up or to escape and refill your mp. Mephitic Cloud *will* work here and it will help make this a much easier section.

2.) Orc 3 and 4 is harder. In fact, Orc 4 is sometimes so hard you can skip it. Take these levels very slowly, inching forward and pulling orcs closer to the stairs so you can escape when you need it. If you ever see an Orc Sorcerer, you either need to kill it ASAP (their demon summons can not only kill you, but mutate you, drain your levels, rot you, and just ruin your game even if you live) or flee ASAP.

3.) Once you've cleared Orcish Mines, grab your loot, drop stuff off at the stash, and paat yourself on the back. From here the game tends to get much easier.

Remaining branch order:

1.) Do Hive as soon as you have rPois.

2.) Do the dungeon until it gets difficult. This can be anywhere from D:15 to d:27, depending on the loot you have and the spells you can cast.

3.) Do Vaults until it gets hard. Do not do V:8, even if you cream V:7.

4.) Do Snake:4 > Swamp:4 > Shaols:4. rPois and levitation/flight help a lot.

5.) Do the Elven Halls if you have SInvis. Note that Elf 5 is very hard and unless you may want to put it off if you still aren't casting one of your level 9 attack spells.

6.) Do vaults:7 and D:27 if you haven't yet.

7.) Do Crypt if you have rN+++ or torment resistance/immunity.

8.) Grab your runes (Easiest to hardest, Snake > Swamp > Shoals > Vault). Note that if you don't have rN+++ you might want to be ready to lose levels.

9.) zot.

Spells:

You'll want every spell in the starting book except slow.

Magic Dart - costs no hunger to cast but only does 1d8 at max level. Great for goblins, kobolds, megabats, and snakes, but giant kobolds and ogres will laugh it off.

Blink - A great escape spell. Much better with cTele. Wait until a monster is next to you to cast it to provide you with space.

Call Imp - Summons imps. Most of the time you'll get an ordinary imp but you'll produce a special imp (frost, iron, or shadow) about a quarter of the time. This spell is *fantastic*. You can spam it without problem, imps can out damage magic dart over the course of a fight, and the special imps can either grant you undead slaves or solo anything up to an ogre or gnoll pack. Use this when you have a few turns to prepare for a fight and cast it multiple times for a small army.

Repel Missiles - This *will* save you from a centaur or kobold with darts. As soon as you know you can be hit with a ranged attack, cast it. Cast it before you even run. Cast it before you attack. See that centaur? Cast this first. Kobold threw a dart? Cast this first.

Slow - An okay spell. It can let you run away if you get it off against someone.

Conjure Flame - A very underestimated spell. You cannot cast it on an occupied square but you *can* cast it before an enemy and while they wont step into it and take damage, *they wont step into it and take damage*. Cast it in hallways and then start hitting them with your attack spells OR running, whichever is more appropriate. It can also let you train Fire up early.

Mephitic Cloud - The ultimate early level spell. Produces a 3x3 cloud of poison/confusion. This makes ogres, orcs, and other scary monsters very easy to handle. If you have rPois you can even cast it on yourself. Learn to hit enemies that are next to you by aiming a square back and to the side of the target and train spellcasting up so it doesn't cost you food and this will get you through the dungeon, part of the lair, and orcish mines. In fact, you wont stop casting it for a long, long time.

Once you join Vehumet, you need to decide between Fire, Ice, or Air. Each has advantages and each is a good a good choice.

Fire: Firestorm is awesome. All the fire spells do great damage. Sticky Flame, Bolt of Fire, Fireball, Conjure Flame, Ignite Poison.. all great spells.

Ice: Icestorm isn't as good as Firestorm but it's still good. It has a few more "buff" spells, like Ozocubu's Armour, Enscrolled Hibernation, and Ozocubu's Refrigeration.

Air: Tornado is *awesome* in trunk but Vehumet isn't promised to give it to you, which is the only disadvantage to air. You train it far quicker than you do Fire or Ice, you will have trained it up before you get good fire or ice spells, AND it has great spells like Repel/Deflect Missiles, Air Strike, Flight, Chain Lightning, and Lightning Bolt. But, again, you'll have to *find* Tornado and that might later than you could be casting Firestorm or Icestorm.

I personally go with Air and hope I found it before too long but any choice is good. Just turn off the other elemental skills and if you pick Fire or Ice, victory dance spare xp into them until they're higher than your air skill. Whatever you do avoid Earth as you're at -2 to train it. Poison and Necromancy also train slow and I tend to turn them off unless I really want a spell in the school.

Other spells you'll want include all the classics: Haste, regeneration, deflect missiles, teleport self, control teleport, dispel undead, apportion, abjuration, and phase shift.

Equipment:

Weapon - Early on it's impossible to beat a weapon of venom. Later you'll want a sabre of speed or a good longsword. Keep your weapon skill turned off so you train fighting up. I find that I usually have a staff of energy or wizardry in my hand until I get into a fight and then I switch to a katana or elven longsword.

Armour - Best randart or unrand robe you can find. Trunk no longer lets you enchant robes to +8 so it's best to use this slot to get as many resistances covered as you can.

Shield - It would help to have a buckler. You need to train your shield skill up to 5 to completely negate the impact on spellcasting but that shouldn't be hard. A regular shield will take 15 ranks and that's harder but not impossible and there's a number of good unrand shields that make it worth it (bullseye, shield of resistances, shield of the gong).

Jewelry - Early game, nothing beats an Amulet of the Gourmand. Later, I prefer an amulet of conservation over almost anything unless I'm in danger of being mutated or hit with acid. Ring wise, rPois and Sustenance are great in the early game before you get fantastic randarts to replace them.

Everything else should be used to fill up your resistances as much as possible. rF+++, rC+++, and rN+++ are very important. After that you can choose between that Int+2 or Dam+4 gear. Of course, don't underestimate the Boots of Running if you're lucky enough to get them.

Carry around wands/potions/scrolls of buffing and dump the rest in your stash so you're not carrying it around. Particularly, haste, healing, heal wounds, blink, restore abilities, and teleport are pretty necessary.

Stats:

Train strength up to 8 and put the rest in intelligence. If you really want to carry a lot of loot you can add more to strength but I frankly find intelligence to be of more use.