Bragging about my Piercing Wand find

[CznRhubarb]

So apparently the piercing wand lowers resists past 0, into the negatives.
I decided to see just how powerful this was. I did get a little lucky along the way as well, but...
Unfortunately, I didn't take enough screen caps for a full walkthrough, but here are the highlights.

TLDR: Scroll through for the screens that I did get.

Decide to try Dragon Isles to test myself, as it is the toughest Vicious dungeon for me.
I chose Elf Sorcerer for the extra 5 MP, and because the Sorc is my favorite class.
Prepped: A whole bunch of stuff, but the important things are...
Fireball (Sorcerer practically needs this prep)
Piercing Wand
Mystera


Things start out a little rough as a magic user with a 7 cost Fireball and all enemies having 15% magic resist. Luckily the Sorc excels at the early game. Oh, also? I find BLUDTOPOWA in my first 25 tiles or so.
I fireball things left and right before and after finding Mystera who is all the way around the back of that starting wood grove. Take the first +MP boon, then FB my way to Mystical Balance. Things are starting to get a little easier now that my FB drops 2 MP/cast, and they get even easier after I take the first Weakening boon.

I find Firstborn and I am level 5. I decide to go for it.


I regen fight the Firstborn down to -79% magic resist before striking the final blow. At level 5. With at least 30% of the map still covered. So far so good, and all this without the Crystal Ball I usually love so much.

This is when I catch the second lucky break of the game and find the Crystal ball in a store. The Matron is in for it. I descend into her lair and then realize that weakening does not penetrate underground. Oh well.


I regen fight my way to the Matron, killing all the guards and still not having hit level 10. The Matron starts with 65% Magic resist due to my Mystera prep, but ends at -52% due to the Piercing wand.

At the end of it all, I was still level 9 (After killing the Matron), got Feeling Parched and Specialist (WITH MAGIC!)

[Darvin]

Since BLUDTUPOWA is so important for this approach, the Bloodmage would work very well. Otherwise, Wizard for reduced spell cost or Assassin to swift-hands weaker monsters would be ideal. Sorcerer is more of a hybrid caster/fighter and for a pure caster approach like this you're better off just sticking with an elf or attack->MP to boost your max MP.

Seems like this is a bug, but worth having fun with until it's fixed.

[q 3]

I hate to rain on anyone's bragging parade (that's a lie, I love it), but negative resists have been a known factor since the current iteration of the Piercing Wand was first implemented. It's a powerful ability to be sure, but I think that the real imbalance is Mystic Balance - without it, that extra +1 cost is pretty hefty. Still, congrats on your total domination.

For the record, I'll repeat my suggestion for fixing Mystic Balance - make all glyphs cost the average MP cost of all glyphs in your inventory, excluding BLUDTOPOWA. It's probably still need a penalty on top of that since a Wizard could get a 3 MP fireball even with the Piercing Wand (7 + 1 + 1 = 9 / 3 = 3). Maybe have BLUDTOPOWA count as a 10+ MP cost glyph just to balance things out and make that combo less tempting.

[CznRhubarb]

Darvin:
Yeah, I figured that there is no way this is sticking.

And you are right about the Bloodmage (Although I would also consider them a fighter/caster hybrid). Unfortunately my thinking has gotten pretty narrow minded when it comes to class selection and I seem to always pick the same few, Bloodmage not being one of them, because as pointed out by somewhere else in another thread: All of their class traits (with the exception of Power Hungry, which isn't that great) can be replicated by other classes that find BLUDTOPOWA and Dracul. But that is a different discussion anyway.


Q 3:

[q 3]

Aww, don't be like that. Everyone's been ignoring the piercing wand (or at least not discussing it) for so long that it's like a new discovery.

[Darvin]

[The Avatar]

Without mystic balance, it really wouldn't be that great. But it'd still be good.