We all love melee, because dying is fun. Our gluttonous souls cry out for the punishing challenge and the sheer joy of hitting things in the face. Because hitting things in the face is awesome. DavidB threw down a gauntlet in the dual wielding thread. I'm picking it up. So, without further ado. Thus begin the adventures of Sir Kirkus, the not so sharp. The trials will be great, but this isn't the first rodeo of Kirkus. No sir. Here's what his first room looks like. This is gonna be rougher than I thought.
So I ate my grunge ear and clubbed the blobbies into paste. A harrowing experience to be sure, the rest of the floor was much easier despite krong conspiring to kill me by cursing my armor into near worthlessness. I don't need him though, after clearing the second floor I'm better geared than most Sherman tanks. Anyone who says Smithing is a weak skill hasn't worn full plate on DL2. At the start of Dungeon level 3 my skills are: Plus the second level in maces. The RNG has been very kind to me so far, this can only rebound in some kind of horrible cataclysm. Hopefully my full plate can save me.
Not at all. You may want to take another look at DavidB's post in the "Dual-Wielding Should not double..." etc. thread.(post #28 I believe.) Though I have beaten the game with a double shield build which is arguably tougher, I've never actually beaten the game with a dual-wielding character, nor have I ever used maces before with any degree of success. So this a bit of a new build for me, and any excuse to try something new is good enough for me. As an extra bonus, this run will hopefully provide a bit more data on just how broken or not dual wielding is... for me at least, if not demonstrably for the community. To make things more interesting I could try and do it without any bolts or thrown weapons. I haven't really put them to use so far anyway. What do you think?
What I'd really like to see is you running this build, and then running another character with Shield Bearer swapped in for Dual Wield. My personal assessment is that DW is plenty good, but one-weapon characters are under par.
If you want a challenge, try one of the builds in my Worst Possible Build thread. They'll make one-weapon melee characters look downright good!
Alright sounds interesting. Once I get done with this run, I'll do one with a build that you gents propose.
Yeah! I'm famous now. Looks good so far. Here's hoping you don't get eaten by a grue. I wish you the best of luck on your endeavor sir. May you have fun.
Mmm, if I were doing this I would have replaced Mastery of Arms with Archaeology and Assassination with Alchemy.
Both excellent choices, but I wanted to keep this as pure melee as I could without taking redundant warrior skills. Assassination, while a rogue skill, still forces melee combat. Alchemy is a wizard skill. I didn't want any pansy wizardry slowing down my fearsome burl progression, so alchemy was out. I took burglary for the holy triumvirate: sweet loot, running away, early xp. Archaeology might have been a good choice but I just couldn't find room for it in my world. *sigh* I'll never get tenure. Anyhow, D3 came out recently so I've been a bit sidetracked but I managed to get in some DoD time. Here's what Sir Kirkus looks like now. and skills are thus plus 5 ranks in smithing. Assassination remains unchanged. Despite Krong cursing three sets of gloves, two weapons and a nice pair of shoes I've managed to persevere. I might stop talking to that guy entirely, he's such a jerk. Thankfully I can smith what I need and Brax has also been quite helpful, though not by his choice. I lifted the rocket boots and explodey crossbow off of him on the last floor. This floor had a zoo full of hungry diggles who ate all of my food, so I ate them with my blungecaps. That stack of five used to be a stack of 13. The zoo yielded a crownstar which i promptly sold to become almost wealthy enough to regret all of my acts of banditry. Almost.
I hate Hungry Diggles so much :/ whenever I reach floor 8 I just dump all my food in front of the first staircase down I find.
So... One marathon game session later and we're on the 15th floor looking for Dredmor. Here's what we look like after the DL 15 monster zoo. and once again here are the skills. plus level 6 blacksmithing and assassination is still unchanged, but blackjack has made the tree worth it nonetheless. Krong has been unkind to me and my gear has become somewhat corrupted despite my best efforts, so facing dredmor head-on in melee is unfortunately out of the question. My mad blacksmithing skills have allowed me to create a massive stack of knives however and the sale of several crown stars has allowed me to empty every dispenser of holy hand grenades and clockwork sawblades. I threw about 70 sawblades at this zoo so I hope my remaining ammunition is enough. P.S. All those squares to the right of me are caltrops. Dragon's breath caltrops to be specific. If you haven't started playing the beta yet, you will learn to fear them.
I managed to gain one more level along the way which I used to cap out the rage tree, but I was beginning to worry there were going to be another 5 floors or some such madness after clearing almost all of the 15th floor before finally finding Dredmor. Here he is in all his fearsome majesty. The smarmy so and so. I had to slog through dozens of slicks, tesseracts, and deep ravens to get this son of a diggle. Forget what I said about ranged weapons, my weapons are cursed but they still have high damage numbers, and I never let Krong touch my magnetronic plate. I'm gonna smash Dredmor's face in. Anything less would feel shallow and unsatisfying. I came to punch things in the face and by all that is good, I'm going to punch Dredmor in the face until he dies, or die trying. Time to buff. and now it's on. All of the hours are riding on this.
After smashing him in the face with dual mace action a few times Dredmor decides to beat a tactical retreat with a teleport. I'm doing pretty good health-wise though, so I just walk up to him. This is me, three steps and two fulminaric bolts later. I go invisible and drop some healing potions and resolve that all further approaches will be done from stealth or surprise. Those bolts just hurt too much. Even with magnetronic plate and a voltaic potion. I come back out of hiding and recommence the beating. He blocks most of my attacks but the sheer weight of the damage is still getting through. He batters me down to 50 hp and I suck down my last phylactery. He teleports away with just a sliver of red left on his bar, but I've had enough. I mysteriously move next to him and then not so mysteriously smash his face him. Mission accomplished and good riddance. This took forever, I'm going back to NTTG from now on.
Congratulations! Good job. Glad you beat him. I can't afford to throw a parade in your honor, but know that I am indeed, impressed.
I'll just take my bow and move on. Thank you, thank you very much. One of these days I'll put up a thread where you gents can force a build on me and I'll run it. With NTTG however. I'm a masochist it's true, but this took way too long. It will probably be at least a week or two however. I'm pretty burnt out on DoD right now.
