Useless Skills

Discussion in 'Dungeons of Dredmor General' started by RF, Jul 15, 2011.

  1. RF

    RF Member

    What do you guys feel are the "useless" skills at the minute? The ones that don't feel like they really work or synergise properly with other skillsets or aren't even viable as first level picks?

    For me, it's probably Unarmed, Vampirism and Blood Mage. Maybe viking magic on top of that (although it's supremely useful as a level 1 skill for a warrior character).

    What do you all think?
     
  2. Keemossi

    Keemossi Member

    Unarmed, Perception and Blood Mage mostly. Viking is not useless, but things like Astrology are just better choices, I think.

    Compared to making a basic warrior most choices seem pretty useless anyway.
     
  3. riceshock

    riceshock Member

    Pets trigger Blood Magic Mana returns on their kills.

    I would consider Blood Magic in my top three most useful skills for my current build.
     
  4. Chiatroll

    Chiatroll Member

    I think they did a really good job of making all the skills somewhat useful in their own way. Vampirism requires level 2 to be useful though it's level one skill could probably be looked at.

    unarmed is useful especially since you can use it with two shields and after the level 3 skills bloodmagic is great.
     
  5. Animation

    Animation Member

    Weird. My most successful character is a vampire monk berserker and I am slaughtering eveeything with enraged vampiric kicks. If other weapon skills make my unarmed vampire seem weak, then I cant wait. ;) Other than vampmonk, ive been doing mage and mage/monk characters.

    Is there something bugged about unarmed that makes it suck?
     
  6. Zzinged

    Zzinged Member

    Perception is useful for the dodge and hit chance increases.
     
  7. afterstar

    afterstar Member

    Unarmed Combat is mediocre until you level it all the way up first.
    Then it's very nice,with great knockback abilities and allows to hold two shields.
     
  8. TopHatCat

    TopHatCat Member

    Perception is also mega useful for finding traps.. It's not useless at all, stacks nice with Dodge aswell as Zzinged said.

    Vamparism seemed kinda annoying for me but I can see how its useful after level 2.

    My only problem with Viking is the mana costs are SOOO high! For a mainly melee buff driven mage build it's really expensive.

    I haven't found any skill that's useless so far. Golemancy's first skill sucks balls tho, deals very low damage and is hard to set up.. But hey atleast it's cheap.
     
  9. Skyblade799

    Skyblade799 Member

    I haven't really found a useless skill.
    But I know that unarmed and perception are NOT useless.

    I've found unarmed to be VERY useful. You probably didn't know, but the second level of unarmed gives a skill that allows you to not only knock back enemies, but objects. You can kick iron bars out of the way, allowing for alternate entrances. You can kick items into areas to block off enemies. You can kick objects infront of arrow traps, so you can continuously try to disarm them without a damage problem. You can for some reason, also kick traps out of the way. (I haven't leveled it past level 3, and I know it's awesome)
    Perception allows you to see very far, and see traps, making sight items useless. basically: you can see enemies for a distance before they see you, so you have more preparation time! I haven't tried leveling it up to max, so I don't know what the maximum levels bonus is.
     
  10. Rikkard

    Rikkard Member

    My unarmed vampire made it the furthest I've been. Only died to like 3 bosses ganging up on me at a Zoo once.

    I found archery to be pretty useless. A character with no archery skills can still shoot a squid bolt or two to clear out a Zoo.
     
  11. TopHatCat

    TopHatCat Member

    That is very true.. I did find Archery to be alittle difficult to base a character around, the only time you'd ever use it is to fire off an odd special bolt or 2 just for the effect, even if your untrained. I see very little reason to take it as a skill as most the time you end up having to battle with some other weapon.
     
  12. Lactose

    Lactose Member

    The % of your ammo that doesn't get destroyed when used needs to be bumped up much higher. Unless its like other games where your enchanted ammo lasts longer than regular ammo.
     
  13. Zzinged

    Zzinged Member

    Aye, despite having rank 3 archery my ammo recovery rate is still too low for it to be useful. Not to mention how hard it is to find ore/metals to make bolts with!
     
  14. SwiftSpear

    SwiftSpear Member

    Almost all the crafting skills, except for tinkerer (because it allows you to find traps) are useless in comparison to any combat skill. Raw materials are harder to find than the weapons and items they create. Magic that doesn't do any damage seems completely unusable the way the current mana pools are balanced. You barely have enough mana to cast 2 or 3 spells, which is usually the amount required to kill one creature. Summon magic however, is absurd. You can cast mustache and virtually clear out the level 1 and level 2 dungeons with almost no difficulty. There seems to be very little balance for mana cost vs effect of ability.

    I don't really have a problem with some skills being more support type skills and other skills being more main skills. Archery for example, seems to be more a support ability, as is most magic, asside from summon magic. Some skills really synergize poorly though, like summon magic and fire magic. Fire magic constantly damages and hurts your summoned creatures, and eats up mana that is hard to justify using when you can just summon a mustache and rape everything. I'm not sure if skill synergism should be considered a negative, or if you're just supposed to figure out what skills not to take together and leave it at that.
     
  15. Retloc20

    Retloc20 Member

    I agree with Swiftspear. I spent points on Tinkerer and Archeologist, and never used it for anything other than the Trap point boost to rip them out of the ground and place them myself. Also agree on the balance, though I never bothered with the magic after seeing how long it took to recharge even with maxed ley lines.
    Burglary wins the game on its own. Invisibility and teleport-to-doors. Boom. Also, loved Unarmed, managed to get through most of the endgame unscathed by knocking enemies back, Perception and Dodge helped with the dodging.
     
  16. RF

    RF Member

    Alchemy is pretty useful and forging is nice to be able to equip characters early on (quickly gets useless, though). Alchemy lasts the entire game just for making mana potions etc.
     
  17. Lord Blade

    Lord Blade Member

    I'm looking at Archaeologist as being a must have skill for me. Just to be able to use the altars twice. That's an insane bonus.

    Pretty much every item I use is something I've made uber through using the altars.
     
  18. Raneman

    Raneman Member

    Mathemagics is pretty random, aside from a few skills I have to go through the skill tree while only gaining some debuffs and suicidal teleport spells and stuff. Meanwhile other people can summon things to destroy every living creature within a 10km radius. It's absurd. Either nerf summon magic, or buff the others.
     
  19. Chiatroll

    Chiatroll Member

    Alchemy bonuses are great for a boost when those zoos pop up and not only does smithing give you early boost armor to survive the first few dungeons but later on if you are lucky you will find some really nice book recipes you will want to use. So I find them both pretty useful in the long run but in the middle when you aren't on the hidden recipe you might find and you would normally be at the level where the crafted stuff takes you it isn't quite as useful.

    Mushrooms didn't give me anything as powerful as alchemy did but I had like an unlimited supply of shrooms which had their own uses especially since I tossed things and it gave me throwable things and then summons.

    Can't say I didn't love all the craft skills.
     
  20. Greg72

    Greg72 Member

    Archaeology is a necessary skill in any build. Being able to re-use altars and re-roll items is crazy good