The 'Builds That Won' Thread

Discussion in 'Dungeons of Dredmor General' started by Essence, Oct 15, 2012.

  1. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    We need to have a thread for builds that actually kicked Dredmor's ass. With proof. Unfortunately, I can't really contribute because my saves from way back in the day when I actually punched the lich's face in are long since deleted -- but you can.

    The process is simple. Post your 'tombstone' page that shows your character's name and the "Defeated Lord Dredmor" so we know it's legit, and then post a screenshot of the Load Game screen that shows your character's name and their skill selection. Then say a little bit about the experience you had defeating the lich with that particular build.

    Then we'll have not only a great resource for new players, but an examinable catalog of success that we might be able to use to look at skills that need nerfing, skills that are being ignored (or at least that don't contribute much to beating the game), and so forth.

    You in?
     
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  2. Here, I got one for you.

    It's a risky build, but it's still probably my favorite. The idea is that you max necro asap. Hex, nightmare curse, power of magic steel, and radiant aura will get you through floor 1 until you can get void, at which point you are almost unstoppable up to around floor 7. Dual wielding little black books will also help with your necro resistance until you can get some orbs. Pact of fleeting life gives you lifesteal against everything and you get a lot back too. The risky part is that you are fighting in melee with a very small life pool. You're going to see your health bar jump up and down a lot from using pact, but the damage output is high. Fighting animals with pact on will almost always recover you fully. After necro is maxed, you want to get a few levels of alchemy so you can make some potions and maybe even a lower level orb if you've got the recipe + craftables. After that, you want to level up blood magic because haematic phylactery is your best friend. You want to try to use it twice before drinking one. Even better if you can gather up some potions of purity to remove the curse. You can level whatever you feel you need after that and focus on trying to raise your magic power.

    With this build, you are your own worst enemy. You really need to be aware of when you're about to step on a trap. Traps have killed me using this build more than anything. You also want to make sure that you aren't opening rifts in range of yourself. Try to kill whatever you can in melee so you can get mana back with blood magic. Ideally you want a staff to boost your melee damage and an orb for obvious reasons. Don't be afraid to wear heavier armors if you find you're taking a bit too much melee damage early on either. Having both of your viking toggle buffs will also boost your damage by a lot.
     

    Attached Files:

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  3. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Member

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  4. Nacho

    Nacho Member

    I'm not sure how well it would work on floors 11-15, but before I got the expansions, I beat the lv 10 Dreadmore with Maces, Berserker Rage, Battle Geology, Master of Arms, Smithing, Shield Bearer, and Mathemagic. I remember Dredmor was almost impossible to beat. I only managed it by using Killing Blow, Seismic Uppercut, then rushing up the steps to reset both their timers and fully heal while he was dazed, rushing back down, and repeating the process.
     
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  5. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    (For those confused by SkyMuffin's plethora of screenshots, the built there was:

    Unarmed
    Berserker
    Master of Arms
    Necromancy
    Archeology
    Smithing
    Killer Vegan.)
     
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  6. Shwqa

    Shwqa Member

    • Unarmed
    • Tinkerer
    • Archaeology
    • Rogue Scientist
    • Perception
    • Artful Dodger
    • Alchemy
    The first few floors I got "It belongs in a Museum", "Baromatic Pusle Device", "Trap Sense" and maxing Unarmed. Then I did a mixture of maxing Artful Dodger and getting :tinkerer: to 7. At that point I made as many clockwork rail launcher as I could until I got one with either :dmg_aethereal: or :dmg_righteous: (sacrificing the rest to museums). If you can get this build to level 15 then you have won the game, unless you get extremely unlucky or make a dumb mistake.
     
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  7. Shwqa

    Shwqa Member

    • Smithing
    • Dual Wield
    • Battle Geology
    • Shield Bearer
    • Alchemy
    • Archaeology
    • Burglary
    For the first few floors I got "Lucky Pick", "It belongs in a Museum", and focused as quickly as I could to get 100 :block:. That meant maxing shield Bearer, getting 4:smithing: for aluminum armors, using shield, ambidextrous defense, and some Battle Geology. The idea is that you need near 100:block: by floor 5. That makes you immune to corruption and that is when you first start finding corruption monster. It also near gives you nearly 60% more health in melee. At that point you basically max burglary, dual wield, battle geology, and get 2 :alchemy: in no particular order. Horde invisibility potion and health potion. With max battle geology and a good stack of invisibility and healing potions dreadmor is no problem.
     
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  8. Warlock

    Warlock Member

    Tinkering, Promethean, Mathemagic, Astrology, Wandcrafting, Battle Geology, Rogue Scientist.

    Enjoy your broken game. Once you have as little as ~40 magic power, recursive curse destroys all single target enemies, Promethean carries you through the earlier floors, Stars Aligned breaks face in monster zoos, and Battle Geology and Rogue Scientist both have nice skills, Tinkering for a chunk of your needed 16 TA, and there's an end to that.

    TANSTAAFL, however. Step on a few traps (well really, one or two) and you'll be vaporized since some of their effects scale to MP.
     
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  9. Indiggles

    Indiggles Member

    • Dual Wield
    • Mace
    • Berserker Rage
    • Demonology
    • Arms Master
    • Smithing
    • Archaeology
    Was a pretty straight forward game; though I ended up killing Dredmor with Thrown weapons. Started with points in Demonology because it was my first time using that skill. Traps were an issue early game but I shrugged them off by the later floors. Had a ton of fire resist with this build and pretty much beelined for Dredmor after I picked up the Diggle God of Healing's buff. Felt like the RNG was kind to me. It started off as a theme-build that riffed off the line in Demonology's flavor text "a path that has worn out many hammers."

    EDIT: Oh, was on DM;PD;NTTG
     
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  10. pizdabol

    pizdabol Member

    I've had four runs with the following clockwork builds now, all doing pretty well untill I hit levels 9-10, when I start to get cocky and open doors with 30 something health. Once I beat raped sodomized the game with the unarmed one. That one time was also the first time I used encrusting. More on this later. Now the builds.

    Axes or Unarmed for the second variant
    Dual-wielding or Master of Arms for the second variant
    Berserk
    Smithing
    Tinkering
    Clockwork Knight
    Perception

    Perception is a great skill, especially for crafting. By the late game you'll be swimming in Potions of Invisibility\Health, Gems, Mushrooms and Steel! Also dodge reduction and second sight help a lot since your DR is gonna get wrecked by clockwork gear.
    Also sight radius is a good thing to have to aim your jumps and ranged attacks. Also loot :).

    My first two levels are Tinkering to get rid of traps, then usually two levels Clockwork for the rocket punch and jump, then Unarmed/Axes and Perception. It's a good idea to get perception to third sight early, to get the most out of Lucky Find. Eye Lasers are nice early on, but not essential and a bit of underpowered late game. Then it's either max Clockwork or a few levels in Smithing or Tinkering if I've found some good recipes already. I don't raise Smithing above 6 and if I have Tinkering Goggles I leave Tinkering at 6 also (the stats not the skills). Then Berserk to More Rage then it doesn't matter.

    You want all clockwork gear and dual ravagers or magnetronic shields\mirror shields for the Unarmed one. Use crossbows\eye lasers on boss monsters until you're strong enough to take them in mele and Grappling Bolts to get those pesky casters in punching distance. Perception brings you a lot of Invisibility, which coupled with Rocket Jump makes escaping hairy situations and stealing from Brax trivial.

    As I said this build does pretty good up to level 10, but onwards I'm not so sure since the only time I beat the game I feel I kind of cheated. I'm relatively new to the game so all the crafting and ingot keeping kind of dazed me to the point I only recently tried encrusting. Turns out you can do the same encrust over and over and armor instability only works if you can get hit. There's the rocket something encrust for boots which nets you 5 dodge. At around level 7 I easily had enough materials to get over 100 dodge while wearing magnetronic shields and armor, though I switched the shields for Mirror ones encrusted with offensive shielding. Now once you have 170 dodge, 100 magik reflect (also 80 resist, though that was not from crafting) and 100 critical everything else is pretty much irrelevant. You're an Unstoppable Game-breaking Machine! After 5 minutes of play like that I seriously considering deleting this character and never encrusting again, though curiosity overwhelmed and I made haste to Dredmor, steam-charging his a** into oblivion in a matter of seconds. Same thing happened to Diggula.

    So from now on I strictly forbid myself to use more than one instance of the same crust, untill the devs do something about it.

    By the way I dropped the dodge boots to see what kind of effects instability has, turns out it's not nearly enough to cover for being able to get, say 100 critical for example. Also, I encrusted a helmet with 20 something eyesight, for the eye lasers and I'm pretty sure It did nothing for the damage, anyone know something about this?

    I still thing beating Dredmor is quite manageable without encrusting for either of the builds. Just save the inky mushrooms and invisibility\healing potions you'll inevitably get, equip two mirror shields and a good crossbow and blast him with drill bombs. Use Rocket Jump to stay out of mele range (perception will help wit this a lot), when he uses the Lightning Bolt chug an invisibility potion and hide somwhere to regain helth, repeat.

    Gotta run now, will refine and post screenshot later.

    [​IMG]
    Notice the kind of lowish score. It's cause I didn't bother killing monsters on floors 10-15, just took the stairs and straight to Dreadmor. The second score is with the same character, I had some save left, dunno why, I thought they'll all get deleted after I finished the game. Scores 3 to 5 are the same build without encrusting. The spellmines were, if I recall correctly, form a thermobloby once and from my own fiery tome or sumthin. I have no idea how it happened since both times I had more than 50 percent health and fires don't do that much damage, unless they stack on each other, which I think they don't, right?
     
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  11. Shwqa

    Shwqa Member

    They changed the encrusting, so that it can happen when you are walking or when attacking.
     
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  12. pizdabol

    pizdabol Member

    Is that per version 1.1.2? I'm playing 1.1.1 and it only procs on being hit (for armor).Though, even if it can happen whilst you're walking, the instability effects are barely noticeable compared to what you can do with multiple instances of the same encrust, You can easily get resistances to negate most of the damage from instability, for example.

    Seriously, nothing in the game nets you nowhere near as much stats as encrusting can.
    NERF!
     
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  13. Kazuhiro

    Kazuhiro Member

    "Berry Stabs" was my first Dredmor kill after I don't want to think about how many hundreds of hours of Dredmoring. It's downright embarrassing that it took me this long.

    She used Drunken Boxing, Vegan, Assassination, Unarmed, and Poisoneer.

    Think about that for a minute. We have Drunken Boxing's huge rogue stats. We have Vegan's huge warrior stats. We have Unarmed's huge stats. We have Vegan's blinding flash, then Neurotoxin and Et Tu. This was horrifying.

    Berry here was rocking 70 dodge and 70 crit while wearing enough AA to protect her from anything except Dredmor himself. Turn on Inebriate Uber-Combo, carry around Blessing of Silence Mordekai, carry a Mirror Shield, and you've got near invincibility.

    Thoughts about skills:

    Fluttershy's heal is broken, broken, broken. There is no fixing this skill without just changing it completely. Fluttershy is basically The Cure with no cooldown and without the drawback. Mostly it helped me avoid vegan penalties, but there are so, so, so many more possibilities. Imagine a vampire pony abusing the +regen buff she leaves you with. God damn, that's beyond unfair.

    Yes, Vegan is as broken as I thought it was. I do not use the term 'broken' lightly, I think some serious blunders were made with Vegan. The fact that some of the scariest and most design-relevant monsters in the game ignore you changes everything. Magic Dragons, Eelys, Lutefisk Paladins, and horrifying end-game diggles don't attack me even if I attack them? That's ridiculous. Something needs to be changed here.

    Drunken Boxing is one of those skills that falls off in the late game, and it feels like it shouldn't be. Because the whole thing is only good on a rogue/warrior, Celestial Fire is bad. It burns your mana, so only a very rare character can actually take advantage of its scaling. Conversely, a character who kicks major ass as a drunken boxer deals no damage with Celestial Fire. Also, you lose the effects of Ubercombo and Chaser much too easily. It is very likely to only last a couple of rounds in anything except the simplest encounter, which is completely lame. Towards the latter part of the game, the only things about drunken boxing that mattered whatsoever were Staggerstep and the constant Drunken Style bonuses. The worst part about this is that Drunken Boxers then tend to be permanently mana-blasted.

    Will post a screenshot proving Berry Stabs' victory later.

    I am now going to try to win with a hardcore wizard. It is tempting to do something with the same kind of mega-synergy again, like a War-Weaver/Vampire/Warlock, but I want this win to be honest.

    Who am I kidding? That build sounds awesome. I also want to try out just plain old Promethean.

    Edit: Dang! War Weaver anti-synergizes with Puissant Touch! At least I'll have more shenanigans to make up for that...
     
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  14. Rakankrad

    Rakankrad Member

    My favorite hardcore wizard always includes Radiant Wizard. It makes for a very difficult game, but yeah.
     
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  15. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    Has anyone actually beaten Dredmor with a barrier maiden wielding character? I haven't, so I'd like to hear about it if someone did.
     
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  16. Kazuhiro

    Kazuhiro Member

    Barrier Maiden?

    The one that gives me five different kinds of resists, some of which are relevant to Dredmor, more armor than a warrior who's been RNG-screwed, and the most mind-blowingly powerful capstone I've ever seen? That Barrier Maiden?

    I'll let you know if I can pull it off. GRPDNTTG, naturally.

    Here's the plan:

    Barrier Maiden
    Warlockery
    Vampire
    Master of Arms
    Blood Magic
    Leywalking
    Staff

    Blood Magic + Vampire should let me keep burning all that mana. If I'm right, this will make me just about invincible. It's got no trapsense and is squishy, so I'm probably going to die a lot before getting it going, but... once I get it going, it's close to overkill on how hardcore it synergizes. We'll see.
     
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  17. I never thought I was going to be able to in this thread :p
    But now I got the right:
    I won on easy (I have been months MONTHS to beat the game for first time on easy :oops: )
    I did have some mods installed and they DID helped me in one or two REALLY hard times.

    Linkt to the happy moment of victory :D
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=106271526
    Link to the RIP page:
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=106271569
    (look at the name...I didnt have any hopes on this build)

    The skill build was:
    Psionics (healing and :dmg_conflagratory:, :dmg_conflagratory: everywhere... )
    Astrology (helped in late game with Righterous damage, not much...)
    Viking Wizardry (Unholy warcry is SO over powered, also I had the buff 100% of the time:melee_power::melee_power: )
    Promethean Magic (never used it LOL @ :dmg_conflagratory:)
    Magic training (Oh yeah baby, gotta keep those buffs up and running...:mana_regen: )
    Blood Mage (Same as magic training but different...:mana: )
    Perception (Useless until level five, gotta love laser eyes...)

    I was basicly meleeing everything (Dredmor included) with a full wizard... Unholy warcry NEEDS a nerf or a chance to fail.
    5 MP is way to spammable with the right equipment based around magic deflection (Mirror Darkly shield) and mana regen.
     
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  18. Essence

    Essence Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Wow...I've never heard anyone sing the praises of Unholy Warcry before. That's amazing. :)
     
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  19. mining

    mining Member

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  20. zuyx

    zuyx Member

    Rogue Scientist build won it for me

    Skills:
    Rogue Scientist
    Tinkering
    Alchemy
    Perception
    Burglary
    Fungal Arts
    Artful Dodger

    I leveled up Rogue Scientist so that I have skills to kill stuff with, Barometric Pulse Device can kill anything in one hit on the first floor, and deals a lot up until the later levels. Alchemy was leveled up until I got 5, so that I could get the max amount of Brimstone Flasks when crafted, Tinkering leveled to 7 for the same reason, to make equipment, got lucky and found the recipe for Clockwork Rail Launcher, used it on every anvil in the game. Perception was leveled for eye laser so that I had another damaging skill. Burglary for lock picks and invisibility is a life saver.

    On the topic of invisibility, opening doors doesn't take you out of stealth, so you can use it before opening every door on level 10 so that if dredmor is there you can close it and prepare. Cooldown is only 20 so doesn't waste too much time and helps you be safe.

    Playing through was pretty simple, use the powerful rogue scientist skills to kill stuff, cross bow while it was on cooldown. A helpful hint about zoo, the canister can make clouds through the door, and acidical projector also goes through doors, so you can kill zoos without having the door open, takes a while due to cooldown but it is safe.

    For killing dredmor here is a video of it http://www.twitch.tv/roxorion/b/338273714 find him around 14:20
     
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