Strategy Thread for talking about Strategies

[Blovski]

[Darvin]

In their current state, the booster swap are essentially worthless preps, so we may as well just repurpose the wizard tower as a glyph locker at this point and dump the other preps.

[Lujo]

[gjaustin]

[The Avatar]

I'd love a glyph locker, especially for PISORF exploits.

Hmm... Involving Gold, piety or CP into glyphs? Perhaps WONAFYT could be like an arena thing that gives you gold if you kill it and it is your level.

[Blovski]

Pisorf is a worse tunelling tool but it's generally pretty useful for opening up the map a bit. I agree a glyph locker would be a really nice addition to our current preps set so we can fiddle around with glyphs we like without scumming loads (maybe at the price of getting two less glyphs in the run itself or -20CP/glyph or something) but at the very least the Glyph: Defend needs to guarantee you getting *a* wall-breaker glyph in the same way Fireball does.

Personally I think the wonafyt/weytwut balance is mostly fine at the moment. Get wonafyt early, use it up to level 2 or 3 depending on whether to pick up a solid 10 or so bonus XP, declog the level and save up your popcorn, then get the conversion bonus. Get weytwut later usually, use it a bit more over the course of the game but sacrifice other glyph use and the conversion you'd get from it.

I don't use Imawal much, to be honest, might do if it was a little stronger.

[The Avatar]

It's good, but I don't really use it. I probably should, as 50% exp is awesome, but since monsters clog tunnels it's risky to petrify.

[gjaustin]

The odd thing about IMAWAL is that finding it is generally pretty bad. The only glyphs I like less are LEMISI and BLUDPOWA.

But at the same time, getting one for free from Earthmother is amazing. You get so much piety and experience off of it.

[Darvin]

The big thing with EM is that you generally don't worship her on levels that are clog-prone to begin with, so one of IMAWAL's key downsides is less of an issue.

[Blovski]

Resurrectaboom!

I've been thinking that I haven't really played with dwarves at all for a while so I thought I'd work out at least one Dwarf-friendly strategy that can take a vicious on.

SO HERE IT IS

Golden Guardian Dwarf Paladin. I've just taken this one through Naga City w/o any buys in the underground bit (and 217 gold left over). I believe it could take on other viciouses as well.
Essential preps: compression seal, fire heart, GG.
Strategy: get your health very high, very early, through absolution + conversions of non-GG friendly glyphs, keep building up fire heart power. I tend to go for 10ish absolutions (+40HP, 10 piety, which is really nothing) and 2 rows of your inventory full. Get one level-up (preferably on something undead) with a strength potion or other leverage. Humility, then keep catapulting. The massive amount of HP you have and fire heart should allow you some three or four-levels higher catapults on vicious, especially if you've got a decent glyph, keep attacking. Use fire heart when it's full (don't waste accumulation time if you can help it), try to level when your health is really low since you'll take a *ton* of exploration to recharge.
Anyway, to engage the boss, you want a fullish fire heart. Most hard or weaker bosses are stompable just because your *massive* amount of health is supplemented by protections, enlightenment level up or bonuses, depending on when you do it, cleansing to beat phys res., fire heart and, once you're out of piety (Ideally do this before a conversion or a level-up), health potions as well, all of which provide %-based healing.

On NC...
I got getindare, and kept that as my main glyph most of the game. Not much eventful above ground - went down at level 8ish with a metric sillyton of HP having used the weapons subdungeon for GG piety - Did Enlightenment once underground to get a midfight level up. Used cleansing to deal with goo and tormented soul, dodged most of Tomithy's stuff with getindare (isn't he not meant to be there now?), used the aforementioned ludicrous healing powers and stomped Kinisch with no buys yet (inventory was full but I could've converted getindare and then fireheart to use all three of those items) and a consensus spare for another 3 or 4 protections.

Obviously with NC items/glyphs will probably determine how you deal with the downstairs as a GGer but I think there are a load of good substitutes for getindare available (wolfalok/fireball, endiswal seem like they'd be great, byseps would work fine as well) to charge up your fire heart. Main thing is not to fill up your inventory with more than11-12ish prayer beads topside so you have enough clearable space for cleansings and protections.

A win with plenty of resources to spare to spare but not a walkover. I think this could nail DI pretty happily as well since it relies on health not resistance. Anyway, it's not at all a complex strategy (basically just relies on keeping up momentum with levelling so you don't waste too many tiles regenerating and on knowing how GG piety gain works) but happy with a good slightly odd NC win : )