Help break me out of my comfort zone!

Here's what I used the two times I beat Lord Dredmor.
Archaelogy, Burglary, Perception, Smithing (people need to use it more), Dual-wielding, Maces, Artful Dodger.
Yes, that's a good bit of rogue skills, but you end up turning into a melee supertanker.
Especially if you get two Flail of Peladies with 2 AA each.

They worked for me, but Elvish Easy is still easy. Unless you go into a Mysterious portal without 20 AA.

 

If you want to melee Dreadmor there is one skill that helps more than any other, Battle Geology. Get yourself enough damage to be able to hurt dreadmor, 100 , Alchemy, and Battle Geology and you can handle Dreadmor no problem. Here is how the battle will go.

• Use Petrifaction on Dreadmor.
• Use Plutonic Fist on Dreamor. With 100 that only add 2 extra damage turn while removing his ability to counter or critical hit.
• Get close to Dreadmor and get all your buffs and start whacking him.
• Once Dreadmor get out of Petrifaction use Seismic Uppercut to give him the Daze status. He now can't cast spells and has -40 and -30 for 8 turns
• Wail on Dreadmor for 8 turns
• Use earthquake to daze Dreadmor again
• Wail on Dreadmor for 8 turns
• Use Seimic Uppercut to give him Dazed again
• Wail on Dreadmor for 8 turns
• Pop an invisibility potion and wait for Petrifaction to come back
• Repeat until you win

At any point you get under 150 health pop an invisibility potion and use healing potion to recover all your health.

 

To be honest, I don't think Dredmor can do 150 a hit with 100 block on you.
In fact, combine that with Diggle God of Death, and Dredmor will do around 3 damage a hit.
His melee damage is necromantic/hyborean/crushing.
And Putrification, I think.

With Alchemy, you won't need to worry about the Diggle God of Death nuking your health regeneration.
Every time I fought him in melee with diggle god of death, he did like 15 or so damage on a critical. 25 AA + Diggle God of Death = Dredmor in melee is weak.
And that was crushing damage. He hits hard, but in melee range, he logically wouldn't use spells enough to be a danger to you. Especially if you do hit him with Plutonic fist.
Also, other ways to hurt him would be a dual sword build with two rings of iron throns/shrike's ring, any amulet that's awesome enough to boost counter, and a helmet of iron thorns.
I'm pretty sure you'd end up with 104 counter from that.

 

Yeah but in case you miscalculate the daze time can he get 2 thor's fulminaric bolts on you in a row and the first one stunned you then you would still survive. It is not likely but it is possible. I would hate to spend all that time getting to him just to lose because I was too hasty.


Edit: I did go the high route myself but it is less reliable than the 100 unless you get all the items you want. You can pretty assume you will always find the high armor you need. Where I have games without any shrike rings or the recipe for one. If you do find both shrike rings,crown of thorns, and dual swords than yes you are invincible against a dreadmor who can't cast spells.

If you have 100, plutonic fist on dreadmor, diggle god of death, and 15, then dreadmor should only be able to deal 8 damage to you in a single turn.


Edit 2: I tend not to go the diggle god of death route. Diggle god of digging is my preferred god with battle geology. First it gives enough piercing damage to overcome Dreadmor's defenses. Second with fleshbore (which you'll fully debuff him while he is petrified) you gain an extra 26-34 damage to him per hit. Third with the fully debuff fleshbore he shouldn't have any more and very little . This will easily shave 10-20 turns off how long it take to kill dreadmor.

 

Ah. Okay.
The fight should be made easier in melee range. Not require one to stun him to death.

Maybe on Elvish Easy he almost never casts Thor's bolt. I do know in melee, at nearly 80 damage a hit, he takes a long beating to finally go down.
But from what I heard, Thor's voltic can do way too much damage, and I'm not sure why it hasn't been nerfed yet.
It does enough damage that 16 voltic resistance does not put a scratch in it.
That's extremely unbalanced compared to A. your ability to do damage with it, and B. how much damage any spell in the game does.

Also, if you need Diggle God of Digging to pierce his resistances, maybe you should try for a Righteous damage boosted weapon.
Even without Diggle God of Digging, I've never been able to do less than 60 on a blocked hit to him. Which still takes awhile. Mostly by the time I get to him, I do well in excess of 130 damage in melee to anything else in the game.
Dual-wielding is fun.

 

I guess a possibility to deal with his damage would be to chop it into 2 or 3 (no idea how much damage it actually does vanilla right now) hits, each with 1/2\1/3 damage, respectively.
It would double or triple the effectiveness of the resist, while still keeping that nuke potential for unprepared players.
Oh, and discard the stun, of course.

 

From what I heard, it kind of needs 50 voltic resist to counter completely. I could be mistaken though.
That said, I fully agree with your idea.
That will keep it strong enough to require resistances, but it won't make it into a death sentence.

 

TFB is currently his only good spell. And people want to nerf it to nothing? Why?! He is *THE* boss monster of the entire dungeon. It is not like you have to kill 10K Arch-Diggles to win. You just have to kill him. He is also quite easy to murder with a boatload of traps. (Only use good traps. Each counts as a separate attack and thus his resistance makes lesser traps do nothing but add a line to your combat log showing that it did nothing.)

You can summon a cheap ally right next to him and have him waste a turn to kill it. (Items, spells, and skills.)

You can shoot him with a bajillion bolts and kill him relatively easily. The odds are he will die before he manages to double TFB you. Same goes for throwing weapons. Just make sure you use those with high enough damage to actually damage him. Use the best first, since once he dies you have won the game and any good stuff left over is wasted.

I do not remember if the fixed the fire thing, but if not, set him aflame and run until he is no-longer burning. Then set him aflame again.

There are more ways by far to kill him. And besides his massive health and resistances, he is not even close to the hardest monster in the game. Corrupters will ruin your entire set of equipment and laugh at you. He will not.

You want him easier? Edit him in the ModDB.xml and do not feel proud of your "Victory" if you do.

 

It's a cheap tactic if he can do extreme damage with that skill. I'm sorry, but the stun-locking needs to go.

35 damage from that spell would still make it a threat!
But you could then have decent resistances and reduce it to 1/2 that.
As it stands, it's way overpowered to do nearly 50 damage a shot from a spell. When no other spell in the game does close to that.

And besides, I really should not be forced to use cheap tactics at all.
And he can corrupt your equipment to crap as well. Which is even more silly. Since he's the final boss.

We're not asking to nerf it to crap. We just want the stun-lock removed and the damage reduced by 15 points.

You really think that will make the final boss super easy?! He has 97 block! He takes 50% damage from all attacks from that alone. Including ranged and throwing. You basically need to do double damage with all your attacks to bypass his AA and his block chance.
Keep in mind, a counter against him will still be negated by block, I believe.

He doesn't even need spells to be a threat, that's how strong he is. He doesn't need an overpowered spell that does 50 damage a hit and can only be reduced a maximum of 15 damage from resistances. Unless you're lucky.

He hits like a nuclear bomb in melee without Diggle God of Death, he outshines champion Big Reds, which can do almost 60 damage on a critical.
He doesn't need any more advantages. Hell, give him the spamming ability the Megadeths and Red Deaths have. Wait, he probably already has that.

I've fought him and beat him twice already, and I'm sorry, he doesn't need a spell that can three shot you at the highest health possible while fighting him, and can stun-lock you that prevents you from hitting him or doing anything at all.

His resistances are off the chart. The only thing he doesn't resist is Righteous.
He really doesn't need any more power than that. You silly goose.

 

<onhit spell="Corrupt Equipment" onechancein="1"/>

<spell name="Corpse Reviver"/>
<spell name="Shroud of Darkness"/>
<spell name="Thor's Fulminaric Bolt"/>
<spell name="Arctic Vortex"/>
<spell name="Obvious Fireball"/>
<spell name="Corrupt Equipment"/>
<spell name="Icebolt"/>
<spell name="Electrobolt"/>
<spell name="Gargoyle Acid Bolt"/>
<spell name="Monster Blink"/>

I fear he does.
And yes, I know he is the boss. I have not encountered him yet, sadly, because my DL-14 DM save was erased, so I cannot judge how strong he is.
Will have to test once Wizardlands is out, don't want to make a new char and have that save broken by the xpac.

 

He does, but he is the last monster you kill, so unless you want to fight a battle of atrophy, you don't really care about the corruption effects he casts.

 

Dreadmor's TFB doesn't do 50 damage it deals 66 and 22 damage.

Anyways I think Dreadmor is still pretty strong even without the TFB. His arctic wind does 24 a turn and gives you -1. He can corrupt equipment with a spell and through melee. He deals 90 damage in melee and 71% of dealing 180 damage. He has a ton of and . He can cast anti-magic or he can drain your mana by 288. His only weakness is that is that he has a ton of weak spells that he can cast and has no or .

 

90 damage? How the hell does Diggle God of Death plus 25 AA negate his damage to 9 on average?!
Diggle God is only 20 resistances to a bunch of stuff.
And if he does 66 voltic, it needs at least a 25% nerf to be balanced compared to his other abilities.
Yes, that includes Arctic wind.

It's not really logical to have a final boss have an attack that does more than 3 times the damage of all his other spells?
Have we not learned anything from cheap fighting game final bosses?

It's Baby's first rouge-like, I know, but this isn't a cheap fighting game.

 

Diggle god of death gives 15 and 5. Blocking an attack removes 75% of and 50% of the rest of the damage types. just straight removes damage each attack. With 15 , 100, and diggle god of death removes all but 8 damage from none-critical hit attack from dreadmor.

Edit: In fact the diggle god of death only reduces 8 to 0 when you got 100 and all the bonus damage and procs you get don't affect dreadmor because he of his huge resistance. That is why I prefer to go with the diggle of digging to remove 60, 6, 6(which is 3) and 3 from dreadmor's stats

 

It's simple, David. I your block is 100 or more, that 180 points of damage is reduced to 45 points. Subtract the armour absorption and resistances and voilà, what was a helluva ton of damage is reduced to a prod.

 

Well, that's odd, I could have sworn I got 20 from the Diggle God of Death.
I still prefer him to anyone else though, since that cloud effect on hit murders everything but Dredmor.
Or just about.
I don't want to deal with Diggle God of Digging, because I'm already doing around 110 on a non-block to Dredmor in a fight, I'd rather resist him long enough to go toe to toe with him, then deal with him hitting like a mack truck.
By the time I get to him, with Diggle God of Death, I take almost no major damage from him.
I'd rather have that safety zone, and stab him to death, then a war of attrition.

 

Yeah you got to be safe around Dreadmor but that extra 8 damage isn't that big of a deal at this point.


However without debuffs, meleeing dreadmor is a huge pain. basically roll a 10 sided dice 3 times. The first roll if you get a 6 or lower then you miss your attack. On your second roll if you don't get a 5 or lower than you attack misses and dreadmor gets 2 attacks that round. Then on your third roll if you don't roll a 9 or 10 then your damage is reduced by about 70%ish.

With Pluntic fist, daze, and 3 fleshbore debuffs you only roll that 10 sided dice twice. On the first roll If you get a 1 or 2 you miss. On the second roll if you get a 1 or 2 than your damage get cut by about 70%.


I believe you will save more health in the long run with that much of a better chance to deal full damage to dreadmor.

 

Also, if he drops a nuke on you and kills you... You failed to kill Dredmor. Do better next time.

 

Wait. In all my times I've fought him, which is twice, I've never run into anything in melee from him besides blocking and an occasional dodge. His counter chance can't be that high, especially with his health as it is. Otherwise he'd be unkillable in melee.
Maybe it's been a long time since I fought him, but I've never had issues doing over 60 damage a hit in melee to him on a block.

I think the big problem is you're using the stats for him on Going Rogue. Unless they're all the same, which would be even more weirder.
Now, I fully admit it's been awhile since I beat him, but if he's been made too strong, they really have to nerf him down a lot.

I'm nowhere close to killing him recently, and my computer is a pile of monkey crap, so I don't think it will let me get down to floor 15 to kill him.
Last game I played blew up on floor 7 and never let me down the stairs.

If push comes to shove, I'll still take Diggle God of Death, because I'll be able to resist almost all his damage, and really, chipping his health down slowly is worth it to me, because by the time I get to him, his 8 damage or so a hit won't bother me.

 

I've beaten him several times now. He is tougher on Going Rogue. Considerably so. However, he is very killable with a melee character, especially if you are rocking some high armor along with some dodge or counter. His melee damage tends to be negligible even when he crits if you have (capital W) Warrior armor. Diggle God of Death is very helpful. The real threat is his spellcasting.

At least this was my experience. I still think Thor's Bolt is ok where it is. It does a ton of damage, but can't kill you outright unless you are grievously ill prepared. Make sure to go invisible and heal/purify/rebuff, when the going gets tough. This is usually after the first bolt. Try to go invisible or teleport away before he drops the second one. He does that the next round sometimes when he's feeling particularly cruel.

Fighting Dredmor is like the ultimate test of everything the dungeon has taught you. Use every trick at your disposal to win and you should do alright.