So I've just unlocked the summoner yesterday, and decided to give it a go. As my previous experiences with Tome4 were only limited to getting a warrior up to lvl 11, I'd say I had no idea how hard it will be.. but I was able to survive the first 6 levels, and kill the boss in the first dungeon. This post is just a very simple strategy guide for those early levels for others who would like to try this class.
Level 1: Run!
The first rule of survival is simple: summon and run. Your main goal here is to get some weapon, which can be accomplished in two ways: one is to find a suitable weapon (it helps if you raise your str to 11), the other one is to collect enough useless stuff to sell them and buy one in the shop. For this, you need to explore the wilderness, but - because your are pretty squishy yet - the best possible tactic is to stay close to the entrance and flee if needed.
If you learn the turtle - which is a very good idea to do, btw - you can try to hold back single monsters. Summon it, wait until the monster starts to attack it, then run away a few steps. When the turtle disappears, summon your ranged pet a few steps away from the monster, and move again. Then the same with your wolf, next to the monster. You can repeat this until the monster dies or until your equilibrium prevents you from summoning. In that case (and the same for several monsters coming towards you at once) run to the entrance and leave the area.
Level 1-3: Deal damage
After you found at least one decent weapon, you can change your tactics. First of all, improve your ranged pet, so it will deal decent damage, and maybe also your turtle, so it will stay for a longer period of time. Now you can team with your pet: You can tank for your ranged pet, you can work together with your melee pet or you can deal damage while your turtle holds back the enemy. The damage you can deal together is now enough to kill a group of enemies - if they come one after another. Never stay in the open, always get to some corridor where you and your pet can hit, but there is space only for one enemy. A useful tip here: if you don't see any space where you can summon your pet, try to summon it on top the monster. If there is an open space next to it, your pet will appear there, even if it is behind the monster or outside of your LoS.
Level 3: Kill the troll
Now you should be able to kill that first boss. It helps if your cunning is 20+, but not required. Probably the easiest way is to run around and use your turtle to hinder it and your ranged pet to damage it.
All in all, the first levels of the summoners are not easy, but doable with a little patience. On the other hand, it's good fun, I really enjoyed it, and I suspect that the summoner can become really powerful after some levelling.
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I found the opposite - that
I found the opposite - that summoners are way more survivable than other characters, simply by using the summon-and-run approach you described. The best use I've found for weapons is to get magical ones that boost your defences, willpower, cunning, or one of the stats that are passed on to your summons (armour penetration and stun resistance, for example.) I actually like paired daggers for this, since they give you two items and thus two enchantments without wasting skill points to be able to use a shield. Actually attacking with weapons is pretty pointless unless you want to waste a lot of stat points boosting your strength and dexterity instead of working on willpower and cunning.
Summoning
Cunning is only useful at every 10 pts as it changes the number of summons. (:
Thanks for the comments, as I
Thanks for the comments, as I am fairly new in the game, every new information is indeed very useful. :)
@groovyj: Yes, that tactic is very useful, but it may be somewhat risky if the terrain is not known, because you can easily run into another monster. On the other hand, if you are lvl1, it doesn't really matter if you die, so I guess you are right. :) Still, I found the other classes easier to start with, at least, in the troll forest. The dwarven starting area is very different, especially because of the companion.
Summoners
My first and only summoner was pretty early and got farther than anything I'd run, but it brickwalled *hard* at some of the early bosses that are pushovers to easier classes like fighters and mageblades and archmagi and alchemists. I lost several lives running from things my pets couldn't scratch in the sandworm hole and couldn't even threaten the lake ruins boss.
I went towards firedrake, hydra, and pudding spam with high mental stats and avoiding melee.
More thoughts on summoners
My favourite tactic with a summoner is to simply summon a flame ritch at a corner before turning it, or in the middle of an open area before entering it. This guarantees that monsters in that area target the summon instead of you, since they don't even see you, and it reveals their existence. True, you occaisionally waste a summon this way, but once you have the jelly summon it becomes trivial to reduce your equillibrium. I've literally dropped it from 150 to 0 just by standing in a narrow hallway throwing jelly after jelly in front of my opponents. Then, once equilibrium reaches 0, bam, fire drake time.
Even if you end up in melee combat, your time is still better spent summoning or healing yourself than attacking. It's useful to boost your defence and armour, but if you're reduced to attacking with your weapon, you're not doing very well. It does help to be a dwarf, as their racial power makes it easier to stand around getting hit while your summons take care of business. A good healing and regeneration infusion are very useful here, too. I got lucky on high power psychic infusions for both, but if you watch the stores you shouldn't need too much luck to get those fairly common items.
And yes, it's true that boosting your cunning only makes a difference every 10 points, but what a difference! Reaching 30 cunning is a critical, high priority goal for any serious summoner. Having three minions means you can produce a melee summon like a jelly or war-hound to hold the enemies off while you bring out some ranged support, and still have a slot open in case you get bushwacked by unseen foes and need to pull out your reserve hydra.
If you realy want some personal combat abilities for emergencies, wait for the sand-drake powers to become available and spend a category point. Unlike melee attacks, they'll take advantage of your high willpower.
My best moment was when I beat the boss in the spellfire scar without ever even seeing it, as my fire drakes and hydras kept running off around the corner and dying, so I just summoned new ones in the same place.