Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[Lujo]

Right, so let's list 'em:

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Was an easy dungeon so I thought I try a spin I haven't tried much on this playthrough:



Was a nice little hip experience, TT Gorgon was. Did get a bit lucky with the Wonnafyt and the Moster Zoo sub.

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And then I quickly did this Hobbler:



Nice, no spread between the Halfling Assassin and the Dwarf, now to get them both to even out with the next guy

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And I suppose I'll be looking at these for a while:



It's actually a PQI I played very carefully in order to win - Unstoppable, but this is the secon time I misteriously fail it even though I'm 100% sure I killed all the stuff. If this happens one more time we've got another Unstoppable bug on our hands, CO doesn't let you fail it, and something in Magma mines causes you to fail it (occasionally) regardless of what you actually do.

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Then I decided it was high time I goated something, since I've been working hard to winkle other monsters out and kinda let him slip by:



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And another LedgerGoat:



I did try to do it without the Ledger, but it's Murphy's Law - when you prep the Ledger, you find Wonnafyt, when you don't prep the Ledger, you don't find the Wnnafyt, fail once, go back in with the Ledger.

Interestingly, for all the "wth is the actual deal with this dungeon anyway" bussines regarding Sothern Swamp, I kinda find you can't really pull stupid shennanigans in it. It's surprisingly difficult somehow, or I'm just getting really forgetful and lazy about cleaning plants, or something.

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Then I did this with the Guitar, because I wanted the Vamp out of there, and he's also kinda a challenge class regardless of the map (despite the late game power):



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I just had to :



Went for the Very Stupid PoS Shennanigan TM, landed everything and the Kitchen sink for it. You can do it with an Elf Monk on a blank Pactmaker, really, I got nothing at all from JJ XD Even deserated Binlor, and only reall killed anything because Bleaty was to skinny to last through the whole Stheno.

Nice to see that I've finally evened out the Gobbo Monk with the Elf, especially since I've got shennanigans for both (the Gobbo kinda kicks ass with MW JJ or DG GG, and the Elf is a monster with Codex EM, if I get saddled with them in Vicious). Curious to see who's next - I played a LOT of Monk thorughout the years.

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Halfling Rogue is a bit of a shenanigan-based combination, but I thought I'd go Healthmonster withot GG:



Did it ever work XD Could've likely done it VT, really. Extra Boosters and Alch Scroll fixed the penalty in a way which also involved potionspiking stuff left and right, with a rogue, no less. Spent most of the run in a blank Pactmaker with Warriors Pact, although I'm kinda suspicious about how much that really added. Still, it's a halfling a.k.a. portable Drac altar, and there was an actual Drac Altar just in case I wasn't going full crazy with my health bussiness.

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And yay, got my 60 000 Bank upgrade. One more (or is there 2 more?) and I go fiddle with the final triple quest ^^ Lemme just quickly see what the daily's about.

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[Lujo]

Right, so, bunch of them today:

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I kinda took a break from Taurogdragon and did a Binlordragon, inspired by Tinker's comment on how well the Dragon in general does on Creeplight:



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Then the PQI finally set me up with a Vicious run, and I almost did it:



Ended up one Schadenfraude short of Miser, which was the PQI, but then I bought it and won, and I'm keeping it Because I kinda recklessly wasted the Schadenfraude I brought in for no good reason, otherwise it woldn't have been a problem.

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Then I tried to do this for my flaming run, and it took 2 tries:



The first try was a disaster and the second one was a breeze. Differnce was that I found a Wheytwut right away on the second try.

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And then another Tinker inspired run - I kinda promised her to play more gnomes, but my PQI set me up with everything else, because I've historically underplayed everything else for most races:



PoS job, sure, but it was still a VT with Mage Plate, by the book, and stuff.

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This guy is actually better than I thought, or rather, there's a clear and rather effective gameplan:



Use cydstep to level, kill stuff as a late game healthmonster, which incindentally works very nicely on CO because all the curse everywhere means resists are kinda not an option. I kinda always considered overly sinergistic, streamlined warlords an abbearation onto the game, who's only purpose is to make everything else look bad - but these guys are rather cool and fun and don't just lean on one thing until it breaks.

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Wasn't purist becaue I prepped Bet on Boss... and Dairy Diary XD



Haven't been playing monsters on Doubledoom, JJ Gorgon turned out to be rather playable.

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And then my Ledgergoat turned into Super Cow! Er, Spirit Goat!



Seems actually less broken than you'd think, since you kinda run out of piety.

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And then i tried a PoS Goat, with predictible results:



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Then both Hex and Berserker Camp PQI streaked (same map flaming, same map same race same class PQI), and the PQI was halfling rogue, and I've allready done the Rogue there(bug? there were 5-6 things to choose from it chose the one I allready did 2 times in a row), so I took the Vamp out of Hex:



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Then a quick Hobbler's PQI:



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And a quick caster-Goat, as Venture Cave lit up:



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And then I finally actually scored Unstoppable on Magma Mines (no bug suspicions this time, I went in there to try to bait it as well as play around with the curious combo):



INTERESTING: Alch Scroll Halfling with some health boosters and such, makes even the Rogue a healthmonster - an effectively Faithless one . Well, I did get a lot of strangely lucky dodges here, but it seems to be qute effective.

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Then I realized that Hobbler's goat won't ever come up in a PQI or a Flaming run, and all the runs I'm doing are either one or the other, so I took that off the list:



Well, after many, many missclick deathes, it's still a maze map Goat, and it's a bit tricky even on Hobbler's.

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Then I went GG + Scholars Pact on an Dwarven Gauntlets Orc Transmuter that the PQI set me up with:



Spent some time looking for the second boss after the Goo, not having realized I'd allready done him in thinking it was a random creep XD

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This took 3 tries:



And I understand why I failed the first two, but I'm not exactly sure what went right on the third one becuse it was a complete breeze. Would be curious to know, Goblin Priest in the Labyrinth having a huge discrepancy made sense (having Wheytwut from the start was just a blowout vs not having it), why this guy got off so well on this run as opposed to the previous 2 - complete mystery.

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And that's that for today, wasn't there supposed to be an update to the test build going up?

[dislekcia]

Is anyone reading this thread anymore?

Lujo, might I recommend that you start a blog and put this there? Or post these updates on Steam maybe, where it's more closely tied to an individual account for when/if people go looking for it? (Basically, I don't think people are looking for this here)

[Lujo]

^ I was wondering about that, too, but it seemed to have quite a bunch of views yesterday, and it's also kinda close to done. If the pictures are taking up too much space I can move it somewhere, sure. Main purpose of it is to kinda show all the stuff that doesn't get played or talked about much is perfectly playable, dwarves, halflings, goblins etc, and it's sort of a repository of builds/research for the wiki so that I can finally get work done on all race/class combo stuff over there instead of only having Orcs recommended for everything. People don't respond to it much, but they do read/skim it it seems and pick stuff up.

That's actually pretty good, because people tend to stick to the idea that only "massively prepped up + supremely streamlined obvious sinergy" = "playable", and that only ends up messing up their PQI, which ultimately leads to getting bored with the game and not discovering a ton of stuff. Also, it's close to done, when it's done I do some work on the wiki and take a long break both from the game and the forums, if you don't mind me finishing it.

EDIT: It's also a bit in the response/views doldrums because I'm curently mopping up the monsters and the last sub-vicious stuff, when I'm done with the monsters and move into the Vicious dungeons, there'll be a lot of interesting things here.

[Lujo]

Getting close to the all-vicious clearout and stress-testing of all sorts of stuff, only 3 or 4 things left in most sub-vicious places Many of these were actually intersting, and I learned stuff today:

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PQI - Dwarf Tinker - Parched - Creeplight Ruins



This guy kinda set the tone for today - I wanted to prep the Crumbling ward but wasn't sure about the god, so I took conjunstion. Ended up with GG, Crumbling Ward was a guaranteed Humility which is nice and this theme kinda followed me through several runs.

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But not right away, as I saw a flaming run where I haven't done a Warlord, and decided I'll be doing Dwarf Warlords in vicious because I like them, and went to get some more practice with it:



Level up w Cydstep, turn into a healthmonster - looks like a cool plan, just have to work out my God game.

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Then I did this so I can post the picture for educational purposes - "get payed to clear stuff out with an Orc Paladin"



And, well, a faithless Orc Paladin is also kinda less brutal than they'd generally be, which makes it more fun. Barelly pulled it off, too

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Then I saw a Faithless Vampire PQI, loled and did it:



Arrrgh, 'twas a tough one, but meh l337 sk33lz nabbed meh teh badge. Arrrr.

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And then, just as I thought I went from the nice Dwarf experiments straight to grind city, Dun-dun-Duuuuun:

Vicious PQI - Faithless - Elf Priest - Daemonic Library



Oh, boy. First try I failed because I was just getting the feel of the place when you play it wihtout knowhing you've brought in a CB and Pissorff, and trying to see what it looks like without gods. I was also intent on bringing in the Zombie Dog, even though it was going to be semi-dead inventory slot for a good part of the run, and it kinda was, so that made it a high-risk high reward extra step.

Then I took a page out of Tinkers book (having seen her results with unorthodox Priests), and took my time with the second try. I didn't go mad with power after I found Pissorff, I used it to level up against Animated Armors and stuff, but when I found Wheytwut I knew to topside was solved. I did probably make a mistake by using dodge+whoopaz on the first Deamon Lord. I used up my mana potions and killed all the red guys using PoS into each other, which left me with a lot of popcorn. And DL is loaded with tricky popcorn.

What I did then was move the Avatar to the entrance but I used up all the blackspace I had left to take all the DP's off the remaining rather high Doom Armors, and also turn two lvl9 cultists into lvl8 Zombies. I ended up not needing (or being able to even use) all of that, but after some inventory juggling and turning the Avatar into a Zombie, I got Whurgarble and finally picked up the Fireball, but I could only take one hit per bar. But then all the prepared popcorn topside got me up to lvl 10, which let me tank 2 hits, whereupon I just dumped all the remaining mana into burning stacks and used a bunch of healing potions I saved to sort of easily murder him.

Cool ole run. Looking forward to more of them, and while the PoS component kinda muddles the waters, Elf Priest can certainly do Demonic Library with a god on his or her side I took the tinker approach of using your mana potions to level an Elf, as I've brought in the Zombie Dog counting on a melee finish, but I suppose in another place health could be used to level and mana to kill the boss.

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And then I was rather surprised at how well this ended up working out, O.O:



Badge was level Max, but I ended up doing it both Purist and Faithless. Partly because both bossess were friendly to melle, and I took the Dwarf approach. Use glyphs to get your level high as duck and then just potion spam. Since I had Imawal, it was even easier, but I get two things out of this 1) Wizard didn't need to lose the damage penalty and 2) I'mma do something Vicious with a non-goblin healthmonster wizard of some sort.

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And then I was back to where I'd have started, at Dwarves, and this worked beautifuly:



Had huge health so I could tank the first form! Had a bag of indulgences so I could potion spike the second form! Had a cleansing dispenser and a ton of leftover popcorn so I could murder the third form!

Funny how these guys actually work and are sooooo different than other crusaders that also actually work. Which is why I learned:

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That you shold never try to make one PQI into another PQI crusader because it won't work as well, the previous one was a breeze, this one was a squeeze:



I tried that 2 times and the first one was terrible and crashed and burned (same preps), and the second one was a series of biggest luckouts ever in all possible deparments. Halfling Crusader =/= Dwarf Crusader, not in terms of power but in terms of how you play it and how comfortable they are with other features.

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The Half-Dragon, on the other hand, is kinda broken, but I enjoyed playing some non-Taurog ones, and just took the whole GG train that started out with Goblins and applied it to him to see what happens:



And it was so brutal, that for the next one the only thing I was sure about is that I've had enough of GG for one day (better save him for the Gobbos) and see if I can get something out of one of the last few remaining dragons left on the map:



And I ended up stomping hard with an EM dragon, even thogh my opponents both had magic reists. Plenty of Glyphwork, but pretty stompy results.

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Monsters are almost done with completely, so more interesting race/class combos and deffinitelly more unorthodox Vicious stuff to try for yourself hopefully coming up soon. I've got a bunch of Crusaders left all over the place, but I'll do my best to play each as a unique snowflake, as that's in fact both possible and prefferable to do with Crusaders. Maybe even remember to bring Patches along, too

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

Right, so with the inspiration I got from Tinker's post I kinda did a lot of runs between other stuff during the previous day - I expected a cluster of Crusaders but it turned out to be a very varied and sorta exciting bunch, enjoy:

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So, Tinker's comment about Gobbo Monks made me remeber that I didn't actually try them out with Martyr Wraps, because I've kidna always gone for the Dwarven Gauntlets - 20% base is +1 dmg per level, and it has +2 HP per level, making them extra great on Gobbos. And Tinker also notice I've been slaciking on the Vicious Token, so I went to see what the little bugger could do:



Cool stuff, it seems. It took a million tries and was very frustrating, not because of the build but because something was REALLY wrong with the game earlier today. Not sure if it was the game, my computer, mouse or anything, but I was getting those hiccups again where a single click registers as a double click and I kept randomly dieing all the time. Was frustrating as hell.

Still, I was kinda avoiding the VT with these guys, but now that I've got their God and overall plans down pat, I'm pretty comfortable with it.

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Then I fell into the "GG Trap" again, where you just pick him up on the next run / pick the next run because you can just pick him again, and did this fat ole Healthmonster who utterly wreced the place:



And it resulted in my first Gold rim on this playthrough!



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And then a wonderful thing happened - I was expecting either Crusaders everywhere or Vicious Dungeon PQI's but what I actually got was - Gnomes!



This guy was a crazy spellcaster, B2P Gnome Priest with endless JJ piety (and also stat boosts), wow.

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And this guy was an actual PQI!



Turned out way more Melley than I thought he would - but it worked! Trisword and Fireheart were very nice ^^

--- Try This As A Tough Challenge! ---



Right, so this guy was a consciouss experiment for wiki/science purposes. I've heard good things about this guy from Astral and somebody over at Steam Forums considered him (at some point) the most balanced all-purpose option out there, but I've not been getting great results with him when I tried to VT stuff. So I was really curious whether I could make this work.

It was one of the most epic runs I've ever been on. Took every bit of skill and experience I could muster, took facetanking snakes (which I ussually avoid even touching before cleanup), took every trick in the book and I barely made it. I think I need to play these guys with Drac, but I've been a bit dissapionted with Dwarf Paladins on VT difficulty but this totally boosted my morale. If you're getting bored and are looking for a challenge - give this a shot.

--- OMG Deffinitelly Try This! ---

And then the next run managed to blow even that out of the water:



O M G This was amazing, amazing, amazing. I have no words to describe it. It took two tries because on the first try, which was completely different except with the same preps, I got killed by the game registering a false double click two hits away from killing the boss (I just had to drink a potion and I would've still be writing this about THAT run). Holy wow... Take these exact preps and unless you score a Wonnafyt or a Wheytwut it should be one of the best runs you've ever been on. Those two are gameruiningly strong and the decision to make them always spawn next to the entrance was, in retrospect, quite detrimental as they destroy cramped maps, but this was epic.

PRO TIP: If you're on a map with walled off exploration, and see Apheelsick, don't convert it untill you've made sure Lemisi is not on the board as well, and same with Lemisi. If you find Lemisi consider leaving it there and not scouting with it so you're not tempted to free up inventory space. If you hit hard enough/got enough health/dr, those two make an insane combo. Get your levels up, and screw dings - Byceps also makes a great third cog, as it also scales very well with levels. Both runs looked like undoable suicide, but Lemisi + Apheelsick rocked my socks both times

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And then an old friend I discovered on my last playthrough as a scrappy PQI reject turned out to be my least played Sorcerer again (I've been avoiding him after rampaging all over last time):



Couldn't resist it ^^ Whish it was a tougher dungeon, though, as I've only delved into JJ hard on this playthrough and never even tried this guy as a JJ Gobbo, which should be VERY silly.

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Then CO was flaming and the only things I had there were 4 monsters, and the Goat couldn't possibly turn up in a PQI, so I decided to take him:



I barely did it, too. Was quite tough, and I also discovered that when you go from Curse World back to the regular one, the altar kinda gets left behind. Was annoying.

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Then this run made me realize something:



The Slime Pits and Eastern Tundra were nicely designed to make you waste popcorn, as getting cheeky on them is actually a tricky proposition. It would work, too, if the exploration glyphs weren't coded to spawn next to the entrance, and the more I play the more I regret that fact as it takes a lot away from these maps and they're far from useless even if you're not handed them by the RNG as a stupidly powerful prep you didn't actually prep.

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Then my least played BM showed up, and I decided to try to VT it:



It was actually quite tough and I barely made it. Bloody lifestealing bastards.

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I'm getting dangerously good with these guys:



I got to lvl 8 before I found a dmg Glyph, just off a Blood Curse, Health Pendant, Hero's Helm and Lifesteal. I didn't have resists or convert Health Potions for piety, either, and the reason I was parched if because I found a Viper Ward for Jormugandr. I also got the Shifty Brickwork wall avoidance down pat and only triggered it once or twice before the final mopup.

I hated these guys because the PQI kept throwing them at me worse than it did Goblin Thieves this time (and it's technically still throwing them at me two playhthroughs in a row), but now I grin when I see it and enjoy playin a nice melee assassin.

--- Dun Dun DUUUUUUUN ---

And now the Vicious PQI madness:



Oh, god... Took, 5 tries at least. But I saw Vampire PQI and knew It'd also get the Faithelss badge out of Naga City which I really, really wanted to do, so I felt like I had to figure it out. And I was cheezing vamps out of the PQI with cheap tricks, and my skill with them totally degraded to the point that this wasn't just doing NC with the Vamp, but also doing with a class which I felt like I never played before and didn't understand one bit (I Yendored and half-assed my way around with them, and yes, the Dagger and Yendor are so stupid they make you forget how to actually play, no joke).

Also, it was a nice reminder that Vampire was probably the main reason Naga City had shops and popcorn added to the basement. I think.

Anway, it took me a few false starts to even figure out how to get Unstoppable (kill everything topside) in the most favourable way, as I needed to remember how to even play the Vamp properly. While also avioding all the debuffs and stuff, it's a nasty roster. I did try to just get the run done without doing the Unstoppable part just do clear it, but that failed too. In the end I even seriously considered vetoing stuff for the first time on this playthrough, but I REALLY hate scumming for items (which is what kinda kept me from vetoing stuff so far, I just can't bring myself to do it).

In the end I kinda caved in and decided Dragonshield it was, as the Goo and Frank (and to a degree Gobb and Aequitas) below were enough of a challenge considering all the popcorn is bloodless. I packed Patches, and hoped to score the Platemail too. Then that burned out because I only got one hit of resist from patches and didn't find the platemail. And then I scored the tower shield and the trisword with about 6 lifesteal (I overdid on the liesteal and didn't have eough damage to make use of it on most other attempts) and I got the extra Yendor in the Essence Potion from Metal Spider temple (and nothing else to avoid debuffs), and this ended up working, barely. 2 res hits from Patches on the final attempt, 3 mana (was quite important) and probably a little bit of damage.

Whooh, this drained me, but I got it done. I was way too rusty with the Vamp, and I realy hope other Vicious places are less difficult for him than this was. At least I'm back to being competent with him.

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And for the last run I did a very enjoyable thing I'm likeing more and more:



I was wondering how well it rolls faithless, and it rolls beautifully, at least at regular difficulty. I said it before, I'll say it again, this is probably the most rewarding and deep warlord. I despize the class overall, and gnome warlord cheezing is some of the most reductive crap there ever was in the game which kidna soured me on gnomes, and soured me even more on halflings back when they were Trisword monsters (big reason why my PQI is infested with halflings in general - playing that was less fun than even PoS is, apart from Tinkers), but Dwarf Warlords are totally worthwhile and really powerful and open-ended in a non-facepalmy way. Two thumbs up!

Also, I had to do it even if the Vampire tired me, because it resulted in this:



Gold borders finally showing up!

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Hope you enjoyed it, guys!

[Astral]

Usually I read your writeups too Lujo, this time I was quite behind due to RL stuff. Yesterday I almost missed the daily as well

With all the Goblin talk around I'd like to mention the Goblin Monk is an outstanding combination. Prep a TT and any Monk friendly item, like VB for maximum poison silliness. An early conversion will level you up and create popcorn you can munch on, further conversions will keep you leveling and help in the piety generation. Grab Dodging and at least 2 poison, more is better and convert out to something safer.
The result is a Monk that murders any non-undead stuff way above his level, and with clever CP use you can battle poisonous targets as well. Load them with your own poison, level up, and burn him to the ground while he struggles to recover.

On easier dungeons mono-TT is viable too, but you'll need a buffer in piety, so less poison to play with.

Nice Dwarf Pally run!
I'm surprised Drac Palas gave you disappointing results before. They are incredibly strong, like I casually click +2 higher foes to death on VT runs strong.
Sure it has some very important elements you need to follow: prepped resist item, very early Blood Shield, heavy conversion to bring your health to insane levels, and not worrying about piety midrun, just casting Halpme when you need it. To make sure you'll be able to take boons late game, you should save your health potions, non-undead popcorn and sometimes even your sparkles on the ground

Awesome Elf Priest run too.
Though you didn't really have to choose between being an Elf or a Priest that time, and quite often you don't have to choose on other runs either. Cast melee glyphs and you can benefit from both. You even had a Halpme for example.
Did you really save Burndayraz against the magical resistant Avatar?

That Orc Tinker run was very cool too. Though I'm wondering if the Balanced Dagger was really helpful there. You locked yourself into +3 bonusXp kills, and to get all your bonus xp you had to explore more. Killing fewer, but stronger monsters would have required less exploration. You even had the glyphs to pull it off with Cydstepp, Bysseps and Gettindare.

Good tip about the Apheelsik!

About not playing VT monster classes:
I can understand why you don't want to play VT Goats or Gorgons without practice, but why not Vampires? The VT is actually a 'buff' to them, monsters have slightly more damage and way more health, everything is a bloodcow.

Nvm, I scrolled down and saw your NC run
What do you mean you overdid on lifesteal? You should be able to support 8 with those preps, more if we take into account your items. Unless you stacked up too much Weakening and didn't clear it.

Can I give you a tip about weakening? It has a cool interaction with Vamps. When you play them again somewhere with weakening foes keep an eye on your damage and the health of you bloodcows. Sometimes after levelup you will barely oneshot your previously useful bloodcows, take some weakening deliberately and you can use them longer. Genenerally having 2-3 stacks can help on multiple occasions, and when you no longer need it, chug a Fortitude.

Btw congrats on the win, NC is challenging with a Vamp. For a refreshingly easy Vicious run, I recommend DI.

[Tinker]