Getting back into the game and I'm having a lot of fun with the necromancy background on the new mountain dwarf. Anyone got any tips? One thing I really do want to know is how heavy should I be willing to go with armor?
I'd say there's two routes to go with MD: Medium armor(say ring/scale/chain mail range) with little to no spellcasting penalty (due to your racial bonus), or just go full heavy armor(plate, GDS, CPA) and overtrain magic to still cast.
It's likely most dwarves will start in group 1, and try to move into group 2 as they gain levels. Spellcasting penalties in heavy armor are actually pretty easy to overcome with the Mountain dwarf racial bonus and armor skill around level 15+. Obviously they can't be completely removed, but you'll be able to cast level 5-6 magic reliably.
You can cast lvl 5-6 spells reliably as a minotaur in plate in the late game. For MD you can go crazy. Ignition is very easy to get online.
Link a morgue please?
I'm a month away from a pc and reliable wifi, but I recall getting shadow creatures for zot a couple times. Remember, minotaurs may have shit aptitudes for magic, but they have such good aptitudes for melee that they can spare sinking loads of xp in a solid single school spell. Edit: here you go. 5/7 of my minotaur wins have 6 level spells online. One in GDS, all the others in armors with base AC of 10. Of the other 2 wins, one was trog, one I just didn't go for magic. Last one is cheating cause those gloves are insane. But most one of these got is 4 runes, and in one of them I even got deflect missiles, a two school sixth level spell. Notice that all have maxed fighting and high defenses anyway. http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Silurio/morgue-Silurio-20180815-192554.txt https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Silurio/morgue-Silurio-20200429-044937.txt https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Silurio/morgue-Silurio-20190925-023122.txt https://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Silurio/morgue-Silurio-20180820-033936.txt https://crawl.kelbi.org/crawl/morgue/Silurio/morgue-Silurio-20190214-014356.txt
Edit2: links broke, but if you copy and paste them they work. Redimdit added sone strange characters in the end.