Not sure if there's any rules against this kind of thread here (I haven't exactly looked for a forum rules compendium) but there's only one way to really find out right? Anyway, I've got 6 out of 7 skills locked in and I can't decide on my final choice. Bear in mind that all of my experience with the game amounts to floor 3 so...yeah. The skills I have are: 1. Assassin 2. Artful Dodger 3. Tinkering 4. Smithing 5. Dual Wielding 6. Swords For my Seventh skill, I can't choose between Master of Arms and Berserker Rage. Feel free to make other comments on my skill build, but I would just like a quick justification for each choice. I deliberately went 3 rogue skills and 4 warrior skills because I want a tough and hard hitting hybrid. I am not fond of magic. Assassin, Swords, Dual Wielding and (to an extent) Artful Dodger were all taken for the deeps (in a roguelike game ). I figure I won't be needing pirate because it's a hybrid build and I'll be getting a lot of anyway. I chose Tinkering and Smithing because I want to craft and my understanding is you can only really craft good items if you have both. I also really want that extra +7 from Smithing and I do not want to have to get Killer Vegan for extra . If you guys think I an survive without crafting, I could just switch Tinkering for Perception, Smithing for Beserker Rage and I'll be set. I don't like the idea of wasting all those crafting items though. Alchemy I can live without. I've never much cared for alchemy in any game.
Okay, immediately I can see that you need some form of healing available to you. Currently, you have no way of recovering whatever damage you take aside from regular means. For this reason I would strongly recommend taking Fleshsmithing. After only 1 skill point it grants one of the best healing skills in the game, and it will service you nicely all the way to Dredmor. However, if you really cannot stand taking a Wizard skill, then definitely choose Master Of Arms, which will help you take less damage and can help with healing off what you do take, with the extra you get from Suit Up and Walk it Off. Personally, I would drop Artful Dodger so that you can take both Fleshsmithing and Master of Arms- all that high-level gear you intend to be crafting will heavily take away from your , which will nullify much of the bonuses you get from Artful Dodger.
^What he said, except you might want ditch something for Big Game Hunter - (assuming you have the expansion, ofc, which i really should not take for granted, but it's a great game at a very affordable cost, so i'm gonna make the assumption anyway) - What the tree gives for a Capstone rush is just silly. MoA gives you durability by decreasing the damage you take/increasing your regen. Big Game Hunter dramatically increases the odds of you hitting your mark early game and gives you a metric ton of free food. That may not sound like much given how much meat regens, but is way better than it sounds because food in DoD is a finite resource. Getting butchery lets you produce an infinite supply of food just running around and killing random spawns. This can, at length, be turned into money and powerful items by exploiting the whole "1. Kill diggle., 2. Grind meat, 3. Lutefisk Ground Meat, 4. Give lutefisk to shrine, 5. ???, 6. Profit" gimmick. That being said DoD is very much a game that punishes you for trying to get a fair amount of everything. The problem with a "tough gish build" is that you'll find yourself doing decent damage, but also taking a fair amount of damage as well in the process. This damage is going to pile up, room after room, until you find yourself strapped thin for sustain. These "bits of everything" builds typically end up performing well early game (because of the swiss army knife of what, for the early levels, are decently powered abilities), but quickly degenerates into a toolset that doesn't do anything very well. Good example: A Tinkering and Smithing combo will give you a lot of Ingots from which to craft an arsenal of bolts. However, your build does not include the crossbow mastery you need to really maximize on your shots. So yeah, that's kind of an issue. What's more, the other major merit of getting Tinkering + Smithing is that it allows to get early clockwork gear, which does not really synergize with your centric build. Also, there's no real point of getting Tinkering and Smithing (or clockwork gear, for that matter), and not Getting Clockwork Knights. So yeah, there's that to think about as well. Next - you have a combination of Dual Wielding, and Swords. That means you're planning on spending a lot of time being in melee range, and a lot of time counterattacking (because counter is the stat that's gonna go sky-high from dual wielding swords). You have artful dodger as well, which means you clearly intend to spend a lot of time in melee, and not getting hit in melee, at that. Except, you don't really have a consistent way in there of GETTING into melee range. Or of GETTING OUT of it, for that matter. It might not sound like much of an issue, but you are going to hate your dualwielding life once you run into roomful of chicken ai mobs that spam 2-3 nukes at every odd turn. Communism is a decent early game answer and Burglary does the job that after you invest a few points. Next, you've gotten assassination, which does not increase your chance to crit by an awful lot, but gives you passive procs that scale on (Sneaky shiv) and (Et tu, if memory serves)... and you don't really any of that in your build. Now, if you were going for a crit centric build, then what you wanted was Axe Mastery, not swords (Dual wielding axes with the capstone gives a stupendous 28, which makes the extra points from assassination count for far more that it would otherwise). Long Story Short - Try to do one thing very well, and get the bare minimum of everything else. Example - If you get Burglary, Dagger, Dual Wield and Assassination, You're going to end with someone who can either Burst (sneaky stance+assassination) or Parry on demand (Dual daggers only give 4, but have that +25 from the stance. With MOAR from dual wield, expect to get very scary, very fast). You can also get in and out of combat at will via burglary, while infinite picks will allow you to get into rooms without drawing attention to yourself. And that, altogether, is everything you could need in terms of doing/avoiding damage, and getting into/out of combat. With that out of the way, you have 3 slots left over for sustain/durability/etc. There's a lot to choose from, but i'd pick at least one casting tree (astrology/fleshsmithing/viking wizardry are great stopgaps, and aren't too mana hungry to boot, as long as you have only one tree) and one durability tree (MoA/Big Game Hunter). Since you have decent utility from burglary, you might want to double up on either casting or durability (MoA + Big Game hunter will turn the early game into cakewalk, astronomy + fleshsmithing will give you stupid late game durability and feed you for et tu?), or you could just get more utility (smithing to help your items along, tinkering for bolts and/or items, perception for loot and vision - A combination of Perception + either Tinkering/Smithing is noteworthy because it will let you gain access to some high end items relatively early on). P/S: I played this build a bit, but it's not for the faint of heart. I call it "Going Rogue". For obvious reasons. Lawl.
Okay, so now it's 1.Fleshsmithing 2.Master of Arms 3. Dual Wielding 4. Axes 5. Assassination 6. Artful Dodger And I'm still stuck with number 7 with either Berserker Rage, Piracy. P.S.:Is Berserker Rage really not worth it? Would it still be viable if I dropped Fleshsmithing for it?
Berzerker Rage is only "worth it" if you survive being in long enough to get it going. Same with Dual Wielding, Really (unless you are using it to feed a specific stat) and imo, not getting hit (artful dodger) is not compatible with either. Given you've picked up fleshsmithing AND master of arms, you "should" be able to afford being in melee. Also, You "still" don't have a reliable gap closer somewhere in there. I recommend Burglary over artful dodger (frankly, artful dodger doesn't do much the way it is right now). It gives you exp steroids (via lockpicks), and will help you overcome the threat of early game traps. Piracy isn't too bad as an alternative, but it's a bit meh overall. Consider these alternatives 1. having something that will either help you get to big items faster (smithing/tinkering - It's an even toss up between the two - Smithing is more power early, tinkering is more power late, and trap clearing). 2. having something that has a huge capstone. Non mana hungry Capstones include Clockwork Knights and Battle Geology. CK is a bit dodgy without Tinkering/Smithing to back it, so i'd recommend battle geology. It might seem counter intuitive why you'd want a build who's first ability zeroes crit for a little bit of melee power - What you need to think about is that you'll only have crazy crit late game. Once you start building your crit up, you can just turn it off. Aside from the capstone nuke, you'll have big sources of exotic damage mitigation, and anti-boss (because we have those now - unique named monsters) abilities along the way (plutonic fist will dramatically decrease the damage potential of named monsters, unique or otherwise). Overall though I like your build that much better than your previous one. Your see, you have a clear game plan now - You big thing is centered on getting a lot crits out, and assassination + dual wield axes give you that. You have fleshsmithing, master of arms, and dual wielding to help you survive doing that. And, to top it all off, fleshsmithing includes a mechanic that allows to turn the corpses you are making into something useful (damage and/or early game meatshield). The one flaw you have i feel you lack is nothing to let you close the gap safely. Trading Artful dodger for burglary will let you do just that.
I think I can get behind dropping artful dodger for either Tinkering (for the , and ) or Burglary (for the , movement and invisibility). Piracy also gets me the and I really want while giving a good debuff with "The Black Spot" and escape/CC with "Mists of the corsair". Bottom line though, I really want at least 3 rogue skills to help build my and - which means I could really chose any combination of 2 skills from the 3 (Tinkering, Dodge, Piracy). I'm also curious as to why you're not fond of Artful Dodger's "Aikido for Adventurers" and "Knightly Leap". Couldn't Knightly Leap be my gap closer? Also, I'm not sure about getting the nuker skill. It just doesn't feel right if the nuker skill isn't a melee thing (i'm already pushing it with flesh smithing). I would love to have smithing for the but I already have MoA, Dual Wielding and Axes - my 3 warrior skills that I really like. As it stands, I feel like my healing from MoA and Fleshsmithing should allow me to just get in there and whackrit (whack&crit) the crap out of everything so I don't think I'll need something like Battle Geology. My current build is 1.Fleshsmithing (wizard) 2.Master of Arms (Warrior) 3. Dual Wielding (Warrior) 4. Axes (Warrior) 5. Assassination (Rogue) 6. Artful Dodger/Piracy/Burglary/Tinkering (Rogue) 7. Artful Dodger/Piracy/Burglary/Tinkering (Rogue)
Artful dodger sounds good on paper, but it just isn't that great in practice. Also, knightly leap is wonky (works like the knight's move in chess). Burglary > Artful dodger by miles because it gives you free exp/items (via lockpick - note you can also lutefisk extra picks for even more items), lets you clear early traps easily (kind of a big deal, they can easily kill a low level character, and being able to clear all the early traps is A LOT of free experience). Later on, Burglary gives a debuff, invisibility, and a teleport. Artful dodger isn't bad, but everything else you can get is just THAT much better. Piracy is pretty much the same - If you want debuffs, Go battle geology. It gives at level 1 (almost zeroes crit and counter) what Piracy only gives at near capstone level, and gives even more of that as you pump more levels, has a crazy capstone nuke. Having a crazy capstone nuke might seem underwhelming to you, but bear in mind that you need one of those to power through later zoos. Also, unless you have a crafting skill to go with piracy, the gem production is just wasted. Mists of the corsair is good, but given it's only "the one" ability, it doesn't really compete with all the tools burglary gives. The only thing that's therefore "really" worth it in this tree is the you get for just a one point investment. The strength of piracy comes from what it does for crafting centric builds (you'll definitely get yourself a pair of emerald rings early with this), and the amount of durability/damage it gives for a one point investment. Beyond this, the tree just pays for itself without dramatically changing how you play. If you're not combining it with smithing/alchemy (the gem hungry trees), then it's an ability you're really only getting as a stopgap. Ideally, you only get one of those if your build is already doing everything you want it to. Imo, you're not quite there yet with your build being what it is. If you want, no matter what, to have 3 rogue skills, consider Tinkering/Crossbow. Crossbow doesn't sound like much on paper, but the maxed tree gives infinite ammo, while tinkering will supply you with trap detection and clockwork chainaxes and what have you. Also, you'll get to abuse your silly base at range, and dramatically improve your chance of hitting in melee (the + from Crossbow applies for melee attacks). Also, crossbows obviate the need for a gap closer because you can just pound chicken AI (and anything you don't care to fight melee) at a distance.
Based on this, I'd go with Burglary and Tinkering for 6 and 7. You get the mobility from Burglary (plus stealing something from every vending machine in the game is nice). Tinkering gives you crossbows, bombs, and encrusts, enabling you to kill from a distance. Both help you deal with traps. That's a pretty complete character (though handling zoos might be tough because you're reliant on consumables). If you're dead set against Wizard levels, instead of Fleshsmithing, pick Big Game Hunter (Meat everywhere and a nice experience boost to help you get the first few levels under your belt) or Perception (gives you EDR and you can find food and fariywodgers to heal, plus steel ingots to fuel your crafting). Of the 2, BGH is more focused on giving you lots of healing material while Perception is more versatile in the long run.
Thanks for all the help! I've sort of got a lot of possibilities now, so I figure the only thing I really can do is to test their viability. Will be back with the results in a few hours, I guess.
