Arcane Skeleton, not Egyptian Mummy
It's confusing to think of Mummy as a classic mummy, because classic mummies don't have well-defined roles and capabilities. Are they zombies? Wraiths? Meleeists? Priests? Liches? Hexers? Sand elementals? It varies.
It's more sensical think of Mummy instead as a mummy so ancient and dry-rotted that he is little more than an Arcane Skeleton shrouded in mummy wraps. In other words, the player Mummy is not an Egyptian mummy at all. He is much older than that – so old that his flesh has completely disintegrated.
Being nothing but (cloth and) bones, an arcane skeleton is terrible at nearly everything besides dieting. However, his empty skull does have a tremendous aptitude for mana manipulation, thanks to his arcane nature. This explains the Spellcasting +2. He is also decent at Necromancy (+0) due to being a skeleton. The -1 Hexes is mummy curse flavor, albeit important to the build.
Lore: Starfall
Lore introduction for the Atlantean Mummy:
For millennia your spirit walked the Shining Path, communing with Star Kin ascended and native. After long and wise service to the Empire, a dignified and peaceful afterlife was yours.
But one eon the Shining faded, the gentle words of the Emissaries growing muddied and distant. A fog obscured and slowed your thoughts. You realized you were falling, not knowing how long. At some point all light vanished, and warmth faded from your soul forever. Yet you felt no fear. You felt nothing at all.
Dimly, you realized the darkness before you held a pattern. Fuzzy, interlocking rectangles. Your eyes followed the lines, trying to count the intersections. You lost the count. You started again. Time passed.
You didn't notice the first mana pulse that jarred you from catatonia, but you're certainly aware of the second and ongoing eruption. It is as if someone had created an open sewer nearby and filled it with several centuries of a large city's defecations. Per minute.
Vainly, you tried to wave away the horrid "smell". With a dry click, the fuzziness was marred. The wooden branch had scraped drunken paths through the… the… dust. Beneath were… bricks.
The branch seemed to be anticipating your desires. Obediently, it turned palm up and stretched its fingers – hand.
Tilting your head up with a crackle, you looked at the far wall. Also bricks. You suppressed an urge to count them.
"This is a tomb," you realize. The statues and hieroglyphs are clearly visible, despite the absence of light. The heavy internal wards sit unpowered now, dead.
You realize you must be dead too.
You pause, awaiting some expected reaction. None occurs.
This is all wrong. The Atlantean Empire should have been eternal. It girdled the globe, measured the stars, tamed the wandering planets, bounded the planes of the cosmos. What could have laid them low, while still leaving a planet for him to awaken on? Yet the facts are undeniable. If you are here in this preserved mortal shell, then the prayers and sacrifices of the Atlantean Empire have long since ceased.
All that you labored for has turned to dust – save your own bones. You wheeze a chuckle, tasting dust from useless lungs. Perhaps there is a lesson in that.
Experimentally, you send a ball of light to balance on your fleshless finger. The brightness causes no pain; your retinas are long gone. You extinguish the obnoxious thing anyway.
So, you can still command mana, your soul's source bound within your fragile ribcage. Otherwise you would have rejoined the Great Wheel, always learning and always forgetting, never finding true enlightenment.
It would seem you have forgotten anyway. What was your name? Do you even need one?
Undeath was abhorred by your people, a negation of everything human. You once cared about such things, but can no longer understand why they matter.
Flesh and blood, it seems, are no proof against perpetuity. Well, what is more permanent than Death? Therein lies the key to avoiding a repeat of your first life's errors. If even Empires die, then Man is a fool to resist his destiny!
Most of your old spells elude your still-foggy memory. The ambient mana, however, stands out with unparalleled clarity. That incredible stench of sewage must be from a large dungeon reopening after centuries sealed. Why would the living squander such a valuable resource as a mature Dungeon? All the more reason for a change in ownership, you conclude.
With patient snaps and crackles, you gradually unbend your body from its fetal crouch. Death's lesson is for everyone. You will instruct the juniors.
Background: Why a Wizard?
Why a Wizard? Why not a Necromancer?
Because the Mummy is only good at two jobs: wizard and necromancer.
This terrible inflexibility means that Mummy can't hope to piece together a viable build from early Dungeon drops. To become strong, he must become both a wizard and a necromancer.
The necromancer job is available early via Kiku, but the wizard job is available only via the Background. So Mummy starts as a Wizard and worships Kiku for Necromancer.
Stats: Int or Str
Ozo's Armor and Troll Leather Armor are an appealing combo for Necro steamroll, so don't compromise spell failure chance by rushing to heavy armor. MuWz should wear armor light enough to avoid significantly harming failure chance of Wizard's top castable spells, because spells are all MuWz is good at. That means spending some early Dungeon floors in Leather Armor.
Pick Intelligence unless Strength is below the encumbrance of the next armor tier.
Skilling: Necro Velites
- Armor and Shields primary, Dodging secondary. Mummy is desperate for defenses.
- Slings primary, Throwing primary eventually. Blink, allies and Mephitic can enforce ranged combat distance. Bow and Crossbow may be secondary, before a suitable shield is found.
- Fighting and Spellcasting primary, magic schools secondary except Necromancy, once the first book is learned.
- Cautiously hybridize melee weapon skills. Rarely raise other than Polearms to primary.
Why hybridize a species with such low aptitudes? Because the big +2 apt advantage of Fighting over melee weapon skills, and the huge +2 to +4 advantage of Spellcasting over magic schools, incentivizes hybridization. The narrow skills are minor important than the role skills. In other words, Mu will be a generic mage and warrior more than a weapon or school specialist, Necromancy excluded.
Polearms fits with Conjure Flame, Imps, Blink, and Kiku Necromancy. It crosstrains with Axes and Staves, which is suitable. Thus Polearms is primary, with Axes and Staves crosstrained only. Short Blades is secondary for flat damage brands and stabs. This is a generalization, and implementation should adapt to gear variance.
Dilatory Early Dungeon; Necro Steamroll War Criminal
Beware! Unlike other essential combos, MuWz is actually weak at XL1. MuNe would be much stronger.
At XL 2 MuWz will learn Slow, which has a slightly better aptitude. He also learns Call Imp, which he can repeat until he rolls for a suitable Imp other than Crimson. But at XL1 even a Jackal pack can overwhelm him. MuWz can Magic Dart kite Leopard Geckos but not Jackals due to their higher AC. Jackals are the prime threat. Stay in corridors and near doors to mitigate. A dispersed pack is little threat, so try to separate them.
D1 is a patience game. Magic Dart will be enough initially. Clear in a concentric circle, retreating to the center. Noise will draw towards the center. Have an escape planned. Keep MP full between battles.
Embrace the fact that early MuWz is complete garbage. You're playing a boneheaded arcane skeleton because you want to spend 1,000 turns pillar dancing.
Besides +2 Spellcasting, Mummy's only advantage is hungerless patience. Shamelessly manipulate free regeneration and hungerless pre-casting. The basic sequence goes like this: Scout a sleeping monster. Pre-cast Call Imp if the pull looks dangerous. Open by throwing a Stone. Then 1x Magic Dart. Then retreat until full MP. Then reengage until both MP and HP are below max. Then retreat again, regenerating both bars to wear down the foe. This basic cycle minimizes chances of being ambushed by patrols and caught unprepared. High MP regen from +2 Spellcasting synergizes with kiting abuse.
After D1, Orc Wizards with Confuse and Throw Flame are deadly, Sigmund most of all. Bypass them. -1 XP aptitude means Mummy doesn't feel much difference from skipping a floor. Fight around the stairs. Confuse is survivable on a stair. Reset rather than letting the confuser step adjacent.
Orc Priests are also a major problem for a different reason – MuWz lacks blitz damage, meaning Orc Priests have many turns to Smite the MuWz to death. Shamelessly deploy your best weapon, Call Imp, to counter this threat, while bravely running away.
Allies are a great way to counter Orc Priests, because the latter will waste their attacks on the former. A Monster gets a ? over his tile when his foe has switched away from the player.
Does this playstyle sound pathetic? Well, Mummy is undead. He has no honor. His balls shriveled away centuries ago. He only engages when his advantage is overwhelmingly unfair. In a real duel with a warrior, he'd fold around the axe like the lightweight bundle of dried twigs he is. And Kiku forbid he runs into a pyromancer – he'd blaze up like a vampire at midday.
Death, though cheated and dodged 10,000 times, never fails to collect his due. In time, even mountains fall.
Like any Wz, MuWz doesn't mind getting stuck with a disto weapon, so he should wield ID weapons once he has Remove Curse, rather than waiting for Brand Weapon. This compensates for his early melee incompetence.
Slow seems too low-spellpower to be much use at first, but it does serve a purpose – as a kiting opener. Kiting with full MP is a waste of potential regen. Using Magic Dart to open is a waste because the Monster's regen will erase the damage. Opening with Call Imp is a waste because one must tell the Imp to attack, losing another turn, and the Imp is likely to ineffectually fall behind the monster during kiting.
The solution is to open kiting with a single cast of Slow. If it lands, great. Call an Imp to harass the target. The Imp doesn't need to be told to attack. Even a Crimson Imp will land hits on the Slowed Monster.
If Slow doesn't land, then no big deal. Just kite to full MP and Slow again.
Now do you see why MuWz is strong? That's some serious cheese. It's even thematic: the Mummy's curse.
MuWz really comes into his own, though, with Mephitic Cloud. Instead of running from his problems, now he can just gas them with his fetid tomb-funk. In addition to being a war crime, this is a critical skill. It permits MuWz to manipulate Monster movement with renewable loud noises. More importantly, it protects MuWz from getting overwhelmed, to which he's incredibly vulnerable.
NEVER memorize Conjure Flame before Mephitic Cloud.
Yes, Mephitic initially has a higher failure chance and requires more training with three skills instead of two. However the strategic impact of having an answer to getting overrun is invaluable. Normally the early game solution to overrun is to drink a potion, but MuWz obviously can't.
The amount that 1-2 Armor skill reduces Mephitic's spell failure chance due to Ring Mail is minimal, so stay in Leather Armor and leave Armor untrained except to increase AC, which at most justifies taking it to secondary. Mephitic is much more important than a little extra AC. Armor becomes primary later.
Kiku has a quick piety decay clock, so Necro steamrolling is incentivized. This is very doable thanks to MuWz's high Spellcasting and factional rPois with Mephitic. Mephitic red noise at separate stairs confuses and separates packs by making them traverse the level. They can then be defeated in detail and added to the steamroll. Gas warfare with Skeletons and Imps charging out of the fog is a terrifying prospect, the MuWz following safely behind to finish the wounded and raise the fallen. Now that's a proper undead lord!
Mephitic does wake the floor, resulting in better-equipped foes. However, those foes are then added to one's skeletal army, with much of that same equipment! The potions they quaffed weren't usable anyway, and Mephitic generally counters potion buffs.
Mephitic Cloud is the iconic MuWz spell, and what takes him from playing like an arcane skeleton to a true mummy. Mummy breath attacks are no joke; that 10,000 year funk when he airs out his wraps is devastating.
And it's mechanically overpowered. + 2 Spellcasting favors 3-school spells; -2 for most Schools increases the relative advantage. Innate rPois++++ of self and allies and hungerlessness make it relevant to most difficult combats.
God progression
Start Kiku, obviously. Those Necromancy spellpower boosts are one of the few advantages Mummy has. To ignore them is folly.
Don't select Necronomicon as gift. Brand Pain Quickblades instead. This will be enormously powerful with Mu's high Necromancy level, exploiting the lack of rN before Extended. By contrast, the Mummy cannot learn 3/5 of the Necronomicon's spells, and he will have ample opportunity to learn the remaining two from Gozag and Sif Muna.
Mummy doesn't fear Kiku's wrath. Switch to Gozag (hoard Acquirement) once Abyss entrance is reached, to handle corpseless and chaotic branches, starting with Slime. Mummy gets geared.
Gozag's wrath is also minor, since Mummy can't drink anyway. Once Mummy has bought all the goodies necessary from Gozag, he now faces a choice:
If Mummy still lacks Clarity, Ashenzari is advisable. Mummy should by now have some exceptional gear worth cursing, and a huge stack of Remove Curse. MP is renewable from Staff of Energy and Crystal Ball. Ash skill boosts compensate for terrible Mummy apts, and foreknowledge assists patient play.
Otherwise, Mummy's true power is hungerlessness, which fits Sif Muna's +Cast. Sif synergizes with Mu's +2 Spellcasting.
Presumably megazig Sif is stronger than Goz and Ash for that reason, although I'll have to test it.
Ash's divine wrath means less in a Zig, since the early-floors warmup can supply the two XLs before things get too bad, and because Stealth is severely disadvantaged in the claustrophobic Zigs. 19 Zig floors is enough to be forgiven by Ash. There are 27 floors.
Ash's wrath anti-stealth effect can be beneficial in Zigs by making crowds group together for expensive AoE and fullscreen attacks, rather than arriving in successive waves that deplete MP prematurely.
Chardump
MuWz Acaemana is overpowered already at XL8, unless he's facing his bane – fire. He has Polymorph for that. Skilling pretty standard so far. Short Blades is often primary early due to good drops such as the Elec Short Sword. Now he's found the Axes manual and the Vamp Battleaxe, he'll be training Axes to at least secondary. He already has Vamp Drain so maybe the Vamp weapon is less important.
He definitely feels like a proper necromancer when he lures the Orc Warrior onto a corpse tile, Corpse Rots, Protection Daggers, and then tops off with a sip from Vamp Drain. Renewable energy!
Exhibit
Mummy: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13 14 15
Arcane Skeleton: 0 1 2
there doesn't seem to be anything here