Radiant Wizard is made of silly putty and explodes when hit.

Discussion in 'Stories & Fan Fiction' started by lccorp2, Apr 21, 2012.

  1. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    "Radiant Wizard is made of silly putty and explodes when hit."

    "Radiant Wizard is for the terminally insane."

    "Radiant Wizard is OP."

    However, having studied extensively (and indeed, created much of) that particular school of magic, the brave wizard Icandoit is undeterred by these remarks and sets forth into the Dungeons of Dredmor to hopefully prod Dredmor's buttocks once more, like his predecessors before him.

    While he did read of various Radiant Wizards venturing into the dungeon before him, he had nevertheless resolved to keep his skill choices as "vanilla" as possible, yet optimised for maximal efficiency. This gave him a number of options to choose from, but he eventually settled on the following build:

    [​IMG]

    The idea was simple: knowing the weaknesses of Radiant Wizard, Icandoit wanted to get as much spellpower, mana recovery and avoidance and support options out of the present wizard and rogue skills. He was tempted to take Blood Mage over Ley Walker for mana recovery, but didn't think the extra damage from Meltdown was worth it.

    The skills in order:

    Magic Training: For pumping up spellpower and mana efficiency.

    Promethean Magic: For ranged damage, which Radiant Wizardry did not provide well for.

    Burglary: Primarily a source of lockpicks, although invisibility and the teleport became useful avoidance skills later on.

    Fungal Arts: Considering the heavily utility and recovery the skill provided, he took it. Night caps, mob-bonnets and inky hoglanterns soon became his best friends.

    Ley walker: Important in getting up to 1/turn mana. The first point Icandoit put from his first level up was into thaumatheurgic tap to ease mana issues.

    Mathemagic: for single-target damage and the teleports.

    With these combination of skills, Icandoit had access to three pets to take hits for him, four teleports, a whole number of mana recovery options and avoidane options as well. Knowing that one mistake on Going Rogue, Permadeath could mean his death, Icandoit hoped to play it safe and think ahead, which was key to surviving as a Radiant Wizard.

    Unfortunately, he didn't think to keep a log of his progress until he'd gone some way into the dungeon, so here it is...
     
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  2. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    [​IMG]

    A quick overview of Icandoit's current stats. A lucky trip into a mysterious portal netted him a steel crown and some other swag, which should help him somewhat. Considering that RW spells have weak base damage and have large scaling with magic power, he stacks as much of it as possible for maximal damage output. Haywire is also important, because a single resist means monsters closing in. He's also got a little health and armour, but is pretty much neglecting combat avoidance. If it happens, it's nice, but he's not going to rely on it.

    [​IMG]

    Knowing that invisible monsters lurk on the level, Icandoit stops when he's supicious and uses light bending to check for Diggle Commandos; he's heard of his predecessors walking or worse, teleporting into a horde of the things. Note that he keeps up as many defensive buffs as possible at one go, just in case.
     
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  3. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    More hijinks ensue!

    [​IMG]

    Here is an example of a classic situation many Radiant Wizards face: mana efficiency or safety? If Icandoit tags the monsters one by one, he'll be spending more mana and turns to do it, but be relatively safe. If he skips one turn to allow both monsters in range of his charged beam spell, he'll be more mana efficient and have double the chance to get some mana back from charged beam, but on the offhand chance the spell is resisted, he'll be hit and forced to retreat. The choice varies from situation to situation; in this case, it might be worth taking the risk. Or not.

    [​IMG]

    Finding a sash of the blue wizards in a shop was a break - he happily ditches the trapper's toolbelt to stack even more spellpower.

    [​IMG]

    Classic example here - while walking down the dungeon corridor and minding his own business, Icandoit is ambushed by a swarm of...well, swarmies. He hasn't put enough points in mathemagic yet to get the good teleports, neither has he worked his way up to Move In Mysterious Ways in Burglary yet. Invisible Geometries isn't going to help much here, either. Icandoit pretty much has one turn to act before the swarmies tear him a new energetic one.

    [​IMG]

    This is the kind of situation Dazzling Blast is made for - remembering that the stun is not resistable, Icandoit blasts away, then considers the best way he can sweep up all of the swarmies with the arc of his prismatic spray before they can recover. It works.

    [​IMG]

    Chicken mana-draining monsters can prove a bit of a problem; a radiant wizard minus mana equals death, and walking up to them to hit with the major spells' limited arc and range can very well be asking for a draining. While light dart may have been obsoleted when it comes to heavier monsters, it's still useful for taking down these dead heads and gnomes in two to three hits.

    More to come...
     
  4. doorhandle

    doorhandle Member

    Interesting... while I'm FAAAR too impatient and bellicose to play a full-wizard copentetly, I will continue watching this in the hopes of learning how too, particularly as your character is (now almost literally) a glass-laser-cannon.
     
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  5. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    This right here is why I haven't played Radiant Wizard yet. With all of my mods installed, my Floor 5? (The one with hardwood floors) is absolutely crammed with magic-sapping dragons. I suspect they're part of RR, but really the spawnrate is ridiculous, we're talking like 1 in 3 enemies on that floor is a mana eater. I ran out of mana constantly, as a Gish with Fungal Arts, on EE.
     
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  6. Frelus

    Frelus Member

    All dragons are a part of FaxPax, afaik.
     
  7. Megaron

    Megaron Member

    No. The dragons in FaxPax are the Dragon Aspirant SKILLS. The only monster FP adds is the dreaded Tacow.
     
  8. Frelus

    Frelus Member

    Oh, damn me. Sorry for that misinformation, then!
     
  9. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    Yeah, I'm almost completely certain that these anti-mage enemies that have been cropping up everywhere are part of RR.

    It's also possible they're part of the core game, I suppose, but urggggg mage builds no longer viable in GRPD so I don't think that's the case.

    I just got to level 8 and I keep getting no-resist anti-magic-fields slapped on me by these statues.
     
  10. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    I claim full responsibility for Mana Hunters and Arcane Disruptors. The frustration you feel is the equivalent of the counter-crit-crit and onhit corruption melee feels, so it's only fair. I play with my own mods on (yes, with mage builds too), only on GRPD, and yes, it can be done. They are specifically designed to cause pain and unending agony to anything that uses mana, and shake up "open range, open fire".

    If you're a gish build, you should have reasonable melee capabilities - Mana Hunters have a negative armour value that makes them take extra damage from base damage types, and Arcane Disruptors are very weak in melee. To be fair, Arcane Disruptors have a low aggressiveness and span in their AI, are chicken mobs, and won't notice you until you get within a few tiles of them. Antimagic field is 1/12 cast chance, off the top of my head.
     
  11. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    Small addendum: in the base game, there is not a single monster that is specifically designed to be anti-mage, or at least not off the top of my head. Neither is there a single monster possessing the magic reflection stat. Melee is forced to, on a number of levels, not use their main playstyle at all for fear of the numerous horrible on-hit effects that can be done to them; that's actually perfectly fine and good, as it encourages players to think around various situations. The problem is that as Snitkch once said: "open range, open fire" is the number 1 solution to anything in base-game Dredmor at this point; wizards have no such equivalent of this issue. They're never forced to use a bolt or wand or beat things with their staves because the the mob in question is caster-unfriendly.

    I understand that not everyone may agree with my solution to this problem, or the placement of said solution, but it's very gratifying to see an Obvious Fireball reflected back at the player, especially the first time it happens.
     
  12. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    Well, it's mostly all right, but in, say, Monster Zoos, it's quite likely that the caster will be shut down while there's still a large horde remaining. And, since the caster's a caster, they've got some serious incentive to take Mathemagic as their teleport skill, and since it's not cooldown-based it's affected by anti-magic. Furthermore, while warriors are weak to on-hit effects, especially corruption, and somewhat vulnerable to counter-crit-crit (though not as much as they used to be); pure mages tend to be woefully lacking in the defense department. So you end up with a situation wherein a player finds a monster zoo, closes the door, prepares all their most powerful insurance policies, opens the door, is silenced immediately, and gets one-shotted by the named Archdiggle that's waiting on the other side.

    It gets especially bad when the anti-melee and anti-magic enemies gang up on you. My gish nearly died on EE because she encountered about 8 Gold Golems (resistant to melee damage) combined with 3 or 4 suits of anti-magic-field-casting suits of armor.

    ...Man, this game needs a haste/slow mechanic.
     
  13. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    The charge mechanic that's being introduced in wizardlands may be of some use, I'm looking forward to seeing how that might be modded.

    One of the problems is that for some reason, the silence effect is tied to a buff, which in turn cannot be resisted. I'm not sure why it isn't it own effect when every other status effect (stun, sleep, root) is. It's puzzling.