Fighter races / strategies

[Darvin]

[Blovski]

It's the wall-breaking thing that's ridiculous. I mean, the effect's good enough without it.

[Tinker]

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

@Tinker:

It's funny because prepping a goblin sorcerer and mystera is enough to destroy anything. Yes I go goblin + mystera, you go more glyphs and you have excellent control over your CP shennanigans. I don't think I ever prepped Yendor for anything, that's not worth an inventory slot if you can just go goblin (as Darvin said). If I felt like gobbo + spellcaster + mystera wasn't OP enough, I'd prep Crystal Ball. Worth lugging around since I can squeeze a bunch of reffils off it (on top of my gobbo and mystera refills) as opposed to yendor.

Basically, when Vicious Token just came out and was tougher (if I remember correctly) I went and destroyed 75% of the map basically the same evening all with a Goblin Sorcerer + Mystera. Not for one second did I consider Yendor to be a thing in the game, let alone something worth prepping or lockering XD (it is, it's just gimmicky). I personally consider that specific combination (Gob - Sorc - Mys) to be one of the most powerful in the game (not a figure of speech, top 5 easily if not top 3), for a variety of reasons (several textwalls worth).

I also don't really prep kegs much. I did a few times, but eh, locker slots and all that. Also never was a fan of prepping elite items (for a long time I though of even unlocking them as needlessly clogging up the shop pool ^^ With good cause, vet's might know about the unlocking or not unlocking business, used to be a thing. I got used to them later do enjoy randomly bumping into Alch Scroll right at the start of a level, and the boots and gloves are obv. good.)

Just out of curiosity, how long have you been playing the game, exactly?

[Lujo]

Sorry for double post, but I gotta clarify this - I came of ass bombastic and an elitist "old blowhard" kind of guy, but I actualy have a reason to ask which has nothing to do with dissing people.

It's always easy to go pure maths and deterministic end-fight outcomes and conclude that for spellcasters "Gnome über alles", and generally feel like you have a really solid grasp of what the absolute best and most optimal solution for anything is. And then you discover that something you wrote off completely and never took into account is totally legit, and in many cases this can open horizons you had no clue were there. This often happens whith Tikki Tooki (or earlier in the player development with Monks). And halflings, obv.

The ability of goblins to time their level ups pretty much regardless of just about anything is well and truly ludicrous. If you use Yendor right at the start with a sorcerer, you lose out on at least 30 mana. If you use yendor for a single level up during the boss fight, you lose out on any resources you might've saved leveling up (or time, because if you can level up on the spot several times, each time you do it you get at least 15 mana, more stuff that's still alive becomes popcorn etc, all that mana means glyph use which could fuel your crytal ball / get you more mystera piety etc.)

But the problem here is the same as with a common misconception (or theoretical approach) which comes with a lot of experience - is it worth to blow resources on leveling, or do you hoard everything for the end fight, and the answer to that is: it depends. Vicious Dungeons and VT runs pretty much mandate spiking stuff other than bossess (or spiking one of the many bossess way before you're ussually ready for a boss fight).

But without plenty of experience you can't really be aware of all the opportunity costs involved (or all the opportunities), which can lead to rather inflexible statements like "Yendor can fully replicate the effects of Goblins". No it can't! You'd have to misuse the goblin quite a bit to replicate Yendor, but that can be done - hoard everything for the end fight and dump it for an expensive level up. But that's a "consolation prize" for a goblin. If you pop Yendor early, and if you convert enough stuff with a goblin early, the goblin is up a load of health and mana compared to the yendor guy since he's passing every level one at a time, and the yendor guy skips them. So generally speaking a goblin > yendor pretty much always except in the worst scenario where they're about equal in raw math terms.

Except the issue there is the aforementioned question of whether you trade your race for a free level up (in the worst case scenario, otherwise a lot of power and shennanigan potential), or do you trade off your item prep and an inventory slot for the worst case scenario of what you get out of trading your race (and getting to prep something else, which can easily be more powerful than even a late level up).

I mean, I'm not a likeable person but I really don't mean anything bad and I see you're impressively active and I appreciate it a lot and I don't want to discourage you by patronizing - but I seem unable to throw this stuff out without it (or cumbersome textwalls), it seems. Comes from being a socially awkward moron and a DD grizzled old fart. But could you please answer me this: Where would you rank Tikki Tooki among gods, and where would you rank Monks among classes? Please?

[Tinker]

Wow, such a reaction. I went around thinking that I can just play the game the way I like it, and exchange opinions with like-minded individuals, maybe I'm doing stuff wrong?

I've said it myself often that I'm not a terribly experienced player. I only bought the game recently and I've progressed with it decently, in my opinion, but I still find new stuff in it. That said, I do consider myself to be at least intermediate level, maybe even better, with at least a decent grasp of the basics of DD.

Anyway, I have no intention to turn this thread into a n00b-bashing so please excuse me if I offended anyone (I really did not intend to, I just gave my opinion on what I've found to work well for me in DD, then again maybe I'll find it later on that other things work better - who knows).

[Lujo]

So sorry, I tend to overreact and my attempts to not come across as a noob basher (or any other sort of moron) tend to turn into textwalls. I was just trying to say you kinda came out with something that makes sense from an intermediate perspective (actually several times ^^), but then us old farts who've been up and down the mine shaft too many times jumped at the opportunity to try to explain something which actually takes a bit of a learning curve leap to really figure out.

It's just that you seem to be active on the wiki and while I'm certainly glad someone is writing stuff up I guess I was a teensy bit concerned that that might end up with strange advice being written up there. Not that there's anything wrong with it or that it's truly avoidable, but I sort of got the sense that you're more confident about your reasoning than you should be (because I know what happens when you get overconfident with assumptions in DD, and how much progress is made by just dropping them XD).

And if you're not far enough on the learning curve, advice, for example such as I could give you, might end up sounding like giberrish or nonsense to you because there could be any number of steps you've yet to take. The game only really being finished recently is only a part of why the wiki was underwritten, the other part was that noone was really sure we've got it all figured out well enough to go about making bold claims.

I REALLY don't mind, I love your enthusiasm, you just have to keep in mind that when you're talking theory and stuff (especially if it's gonna end up as part of the wiki), a bunch of vets here are basically Cthulhu and we actually do know stuff that could make a newbie's mind melt (because it happened to us many times with many silly builds and discoveries over the years).

So, kinda, what I'm trying to get across is that if you throw bold assumptions around (please do! we love to dissect DD stuff and bicker and throw bombastic epithets and synonims for "silly" around), anyway if you're gonna throw bold assumptions around - expect this kind of thing and learn from it. Don't be annoyed by it! We're the kind of guys which made the Dev's make Gaan'telet progressively more difficult several times. Just remember that just about whatever you discover COULD result in a "no, no, no, if you wanna really blow it out of the water you gotta..." followed by some sequence of things which may not make sense at first glance. Or it could be that you were pushing a square peg in a round hole like with the whole goblins - yendor thing.

Just don't stick it on the wiki before you run it past us! XD I mean, just for potential hilarity sake. And if you do, then you can be sure you're giving good advice

Oh, and if you could, please - what's your take on TT and monks, respectively? I'm not gonna rattle off on a lecture, I just wanna know where our wiki enthusiast is along the way to becoming Cthulhu

[Darvin]

[Blovski]

I've been fiddling about with Yendor as a result of this thread... working out how good starting with GG and Patches and getting a big piety boost and four patches effects right off the bat is for you. Still kinda working out which classes really benefit from this and whether there's much point to going for beads and Enlightenment with non-Paladins right now.

@Mr Lujo:

Monks are glorious and terrifying. WRT god rankings... I dunno, I feel all the gods are deeply dependent on what stage of the game you find them at rather than rankable in a linear way. I kinda prefer JJ and Dracul myself.