New broken strategy

[Lujo]

It kinda depends on what one's comfortable/familiar with. One man's challenge is another man's favourite strat and all that. If you're up for a learning experience, you can take a class you always play one race on, and play all the other ones in a row (also gets that class out of places if you're looking for completion). Or you can take places wich are supposed to be tough but try to do them without bullshit solutions (Vicious Steel without knockback, for example). And/or you could go without prepping Elite Items and/or Crystal Ball.

I could go more concrete but I'd have to think about it a bit. For pure leaning you just find a dungen which you absoultely despize and do a bunch of non-Human Transmuters in it, for insanity just go to Namtar's Lair or Vicious Steel without vicious rewards, elite items, knockback and damage reduction (not resistance, resistance is legit) - some class/race guys can make it look easy, but most don't.

There's also a bunch of pissorff challenges which aren't so much challenging as much as "huh, so that's possible" (or even look awesome on the victory screen like what Tinker did with the rat), like getting specialist with spellcaster Gnome Berserker on a VT run.

[Nurator]

We can always take the "PQI screwed me" thread and try to solve these.

Like the first I could find : Vicious Steel with a Elf Monk Purist. Can someone pull that off?

[eastless]

Go ahead.

[Lujo]

^ Ooooooh, that one's AWESOME! Several ways to go about it too. (Halfling Warlord Warmonger). Educational experience, for sure!

Purist Elf Monk on Vicious Steel... I think someone did it but I'm not sure, and that sounds really murderous (however, it's purist so it doesn't cost anything but time to keep spamming them just to see what works. Purist Goblin Monk did Naga City for me on the last playthrough, but that's different). Who wouldn't be badass for getting that one done? Or even coming up with extra restrictions for it?

Also, playing those kind of things and pulling them off often has a landslide effect where you go "wait up, if this combo just did this, then does that mean that it can also do..." and you go off exploring weird situations you've never seen before.

[eastless]

Almost done, few things: no Platemale, so too much recources wasted on Indomitable, also no high level Wraiths, L5 max, and BlahBlah was behind L8 AA and L4 Golem, I converted ENDISWAL without breaking last wall blocking way to him... Zombie Gold was perfect sub for this, a lot of blakcspace for BLOODTUPOWA.
Monk is an awesome bloodmage actually, fast regen replaces sanguine quite well! But it's a pity looking on all of these unusuable bloodpools.

[Lujo]

I'm a bit worried about that elf bussiness, that there's nightmare territory. I think that was an old PQI of Tinker to which she responded with "go away PQI, you're drunk" (if I remember correctly, not sure), and that makes her no less of a grade A asskicker in my book. I think she also did it later on, and I think it's doable but... there's a thread I can't find due to the forum search being messed up where you got a who's who of old veterans all agreeing on vicious steel monk being the hardest run in the game. I'm not sure we were really up to speed with all the options, there's always a meta and there's always groupthink and false assumptions and vast quantities of noobdom you only discover after some time, but, err, it's wasn't a far off assessment.

Getting a gobbo monk (don't remember the badge) through there on the last playthrough (twice in a row by accident) was quite traumatic for me and I resorted to quite a bit of stuff that's overkill otherwise. Still, I hadn't tried some of the best Vicious Steel stuff during those attempts (and Monk, bless his broken regen fighting soul, is probably the only guy who's just not that good with Pissorf, too).

So if anyone's hungry for challenges, tackling that one might be just a tad too insane. Or not, but I wouldn't want to go into spoilers territory concerning what I'd use if someone wants to get it done and swagger around mad with power and self confidence afterwards. Would be well deserved even with outside help IMO, so if anyone'd like I could spoiler tag it.

I could also bust out a spoiler tagged bit of info on WHY that place is so terrible from a historical perspective, that "vets grumbling about it" thread ended up on a pretty unanimous conclusion that the place could use a nerf for some solid reasons, I find it an interesting story. I do remember one of the best guys ever, guy called Wald0, saying with utmost conviction that Monk and Vampire Vicious Steel were the hardest of his full rainbow runs (including VGT ones), and he wasn't talking about purist monks with a race he wasn't accustomed to, either.

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As for the halfling - well, there's something that you can approach from several directions, say that the badge is bullshit-proofing enough and hit it with your best shot and still feel like a complet boss for getting it done (and a possible conclusion that there's more to the little bastards than they get given credit for most of the time). I've done a fair bit of PQI Halfling Warlords with seemingly crippling badges, and if you're the sort of person that could make use of a bit of warmup, doing a few rounds of grims grotto with the same setup is probably a good idea. If anyone's up for that achievement, I probably got tips on them too.

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[eastless]

Another one. Explosive signpost, blacksmith, Platemale. Too little blackspace in subs I guess. I'm sure I can do it! Looks like BLOODTUPOWA always spawns...

Edit: No, not always.

Okay, looks like there could be two solutions...
First - BLOODTUPOWA+MA/JJ+Platemail+a lot of blackspace.
Second - EM+WEYTWUT+PISORF, so called by Lujo 'broken' knockback strat. Need also some way to fuel EM's Greenbloods, need like 15 of them. So it's cool to find Binlor fast, getting access to secret sub also, then farm 100 piety, convert to EM, desecrate Binlor, spam Greenbloods, teleport something to BlahBlah, push into him, level, repeat... Should be doable I guess, in both ways, but need a LOT of luck with everything.
I'm tired of scumming for now. Did ~dozen attempts and few more dozens restarts so...

[eastless]

Oh yeah, and surely you need base damage items (so probably blacksmith sub) and Crystal Ball for knockback strat, I just vetoed it ages ago and never use so forget about it. So you can just create new kingdom, get to Vicious Steel, unlock only CB from quests and only Platemail and Trisword may be in challenges, then buy 3 veto slots for junk like Troll Heart and Dwarven Gauntlets, to scum more comfortably. Unlock only EM, MA, JJ and Binlor, so you will be always getting two of them... But no, Binlor unlocks after Taurog... nevermind... so scumming just for WEYTWUT or B2P and subs.
Okay, so I did it in theory and I'm fed. This isn't real challenge, if only challenge translates like 'do you have patience to scum enough for this'.

[Lujo]

^ Told you it was murderous. The scumming part is mostly down to it being purist, so the only thing you can do is veto a lot of stuff and hope for the best. So just not going purist would make it signficantly easier while not changing much (allthough still not easy). It's not a FAIR challenge, because reasons (I could textwall why, as that place doesn't conform to rules of other dungeons in terms of how they were balanced in some regards making it pretty unique and quite unplayable in some scenarions. Not unwinable in theory, just unplayable in practice.).

You probably don't need all that much, though, EM alone does that place over pretty well, and you don't have to scum for platemail because of Vineform, and you might actualy level up because of Imawal (even though you still can't really fight anything). EM + Pactmaker for Alchemist Pact, if you run into him, too. Oh, and both Imawal and one of the boons (I forget which) takes off Curse if that's a problem. Also, if you stack enough magic resistance via Binlor and swap into something else, you can usually beat it easily (at least that was what it was like with the Goblin Monk). Last time I was trying to do it (not purist, something else was the badge) I deliberately avoided EM because of not wanting to use Vineform DR vs the indomitable. It's probably doable non-purist without much bullshit and without vetoing anything but it's bloody murderous. Not in shape to prove that point ATM, though.

Also, I wanted to tell you that your first attempt landed both B2P and Zombie Gold, which is basically a free win on most dungeons... except this one with various monks. But as far as increasing your capablilites, that's the biggest possible jackpot, and it still ended up with Blah Blah only at half health. I wanted to say that you probably weren't gonna get much luckier than that and to simply not go purist, but I figured I might get misinterpreted.

And, err, why did you veto the Crystal Ball?

[eastless]