Dread Collectors are pretty fun, on my current run (using mods, see the signature link), I went up to floor 1 and gave Brax a punch in the face. I then walked all over floor 1 killing all the Dread Collectors I saw... Here's the funny thing, by my estimate I scored killing blows on over 1500 Dread Collectors. Due to the number of fruit I have now. Many more may have died due to friendly fire.... I think I gained experience of over 40,000 in total which means 2,000 dead. They now seem to not spawn anyway, even though I have left 2 Brax(es) alive in the level by closing the door to their shop. Anyone else noticed this?
It's 2,000. 40,000XP/20 per kill is 2.000. Somehow I was thinking I had farmed 400,000 xp or somethingn dumb like that. But by now the death toll is sitting at 6,000, since I've gained roughly 120,000 XP from killing them. At 4,000 kills, dungeon level 3 seems to have slowed down in spawning Dread Collectors. This is with the Elvish Reality mode though, which increases monster spawn rates. The DCs are their own worse enemy, surprisingly... I went back down to level 1 and walked around. Not a single Dread Collector... which is a bit of a pity since they're easiest to kill on level 1. I killed all the level 2 Braxes, which I shouldn't have done since that would be better than level 3 for killing DCs. ------ DCs drop a fruit when you kill them with the Fruitful Staff, it's hilarious to imagine an army of demons being turned into a basket of fruit. EDIT: After about 5,000 dead Dread Collectors, level 3 seems to be clear of them . , DL 1 took only about 2,000 kills by comparison EDIT2: When I started I was 80% of the way through level 14, and halfway through DL 7. Now I'm closing in on level 19. This will make for a fun Training Montage section in my story
Does anyone know how much experience it takes to gain a level? I'm trying to see how many DCs I've killed but I didn't record how much XP i needed for each level. The old wiki has the wrong xp numbers.
They cast a spell called Corpus Burst. Check http://dredmor.stosic.org/ for details, specifically the Monsters -> Special section. Corpus Burst explodes a corpse and among other things leaves an AoE cloud. The cloud does 2 Asphyxiative and 2 Toxic damage, And I think multiple clouds can affect a single tile. Dread Collectors do not resist Asphyxiative, Toxic damage. If you have a room full of these guys, pretty much every corpse will be exploded in short order. You can resist the damage and just sit in the cloud, or even stand on corpses as they explode. The AI cannot. EDIT: Took maybe 9,000 to 10,000 kills to empty DL 5 of Dread Collectors. They do not spawn anymore All three Braxes alive.' EDIT2: Seems that if you stand on the square where DCs spawn, they cannot/will not spawn from there. Only 3,000 kills for DL6....
After the dred collectors are all dead, can you steal at will from the shops? Does brax let you sell stuff to him afterward?
It's nothing special, just that no Dread Collectors spawn. You can of course take things out of the shop, and even enter your pocket dimension (outside the shop). Brax on THAT dungeon level will still be hostile. Like in any other case when you aggro the shopkeeper, you can still trade with the shops on other dungeon levels. EDIT: My hunch seems to be right. I've been farming DCs on DL 1 now. So far I have only "cleared" two rooms but by staying inside and letting DCs spawn outside and come in, I've already racked up ~5000 kills and no sign of slowing down !!
In which I admit to Being Wrong So I had a hunch I was going about it all wrong. (On a different character) I tried the following: look for a nice large room with multiple DC spawn points (like the entrance room on DL 1) and then patrol outside. Since DCs spawn only nearby the player, they will appear in the room, and then immediately begin moving towards you. However, if you kill them OUTSIDE the room they spawn in, the game will not stop spawning them. Which means infinite weak DL1 DCs. It can be a bit troublesome though, as they tend to kill themselves. While this gives you XP, your on-kill/on-hit effects like Lucky Find, Sporification, Fruitful Staff etc won't work. Thus far, from the below starting character, I have killed 12,170 (approx) DCs, mostly all spawned within the DL1 starting room and killed just outside. It's pretty hilarious, I guess? The character is not 100% proof. If standing on a corpse as it explodes, I take about 2 damage. Also the DCs could crit it for decent damage. Normally ~40 ( + ) will be sufficient, but due to Elvish Reality I need something like 48. Specifically, DCs normally have 30 and 5 : so 35 damage normally and 40 on a crit. These guys apparently have 9 so they can crit for 48. I'm not sure how much easier they were on Going Rogue. A nice way to get at them "early" is to make use of encrusts, shields (dual shield works, they'll kill themselves for you), AA encrusts and especially CHEESE encrusts (which add crushing resist). Oh and 4 and 8 resist to be completely immune to exploding corpses. You only need 1 and 4 if you stand still and make sure to never be caught on an exploding corpse. With Fungal Arts, getting enough is easy, and since you aren't anywhere near likely to be caught on a corpse (they seem to explode them randomly) it isn't a big deal. Each cloud does 2 and 2 , so make sure you're prepared. I stole a boilerplate helm from Brax, otherwise it wouldn't be easy to get that so early on. (With 6 Tinker you can make boilerplate armor which will cover you). And you WILL be standing in like 8 clouds at a time. The DCs can't resist either of the damage types, so the one next to you is eating 32 damage a turn and will die in 2 turns or so, and then his corpse will be exploded by another one of them, adding to the carnage. As long as they die past the door that segments rooms, they continue spawning. Presumably because the game looks for how many of X spawned in a room I've killed in that room. If I killed them inside the room, they'd stop coming after a few hundred kills or so. Oh yeah, that level 8 character hadn't even finished DL 3. After a lengthy training montage, it's now level 18.
Haha don't over nerf it. if you give DC some resistance, even just +1 and+1 they might be able to survive longer to reach the player. You guys HAMMERED the sapphire ring of lovely magical rain.
Nah I was expecting it. It's why I made a whole thread and then documented stuff, after all. If the DCs are just supposed to kill players they could simply have 999 damage but I don't know where they are supposed to be on the killable scale from Diggle to Vlad Digula. Besides, how often do you see someone tell you they've killed 12,000+ mobs just to see if they could? Also, I don't know if it qualifies as "fun". On DL 5+ or so they start being able to shrug off the poison cloud, though this may be due to Elvish Reality boosting their level and HP bonuses.
They are supposed to be something you can run from if you are good enough, and can (to limited degree) but do not want to fight. Meaning akin to a slightly out-of-depth monster, only in hordes instead of single units.
It's not that easy to be invulnerable to their melee attacks. However, I haven't sat down and worked out just how much you can stack though. Certainly you will want to abuse Filgree encrusts, Cheese Encrusts and Service Pack encrusts (the last two are , which is the DC's attack type...) , and tack on steel plates etc etc ... That said, running from them is easy given all the Invisiblity fungus. Might be more challenging to get to Brax and kill him, and in any case it would still leave you with half a map of ubermobs. ADDED: I don't think any normal mob hits for as much mundane damage as a DC. Now, Chest of Evil mobs at high DLs do tons of exotic damage types, of course....
