Sidestepper's Newbie-Friendly Annotated Playthroughs

[Gavster]

Sometimes the learning curve gets steep and I look through the forums for strategies I have missed.
Learning how to stack items/glyphs/level catapulting/race & class benefits/gods/regeneration/unlocks is where its at. If you feel like you struggle with an area read strategy guides, the wiki and search the forum.
I avoided the crap out of tikki tokki and Im not keen on GG.
I'd say the best thing to learn is level catapulting. Can you take down a weak lvl 2 at level 1 if you buy a sword and worship a god and use a glyph? The annotated playthroughs help loads as each one shows different strategy and it will round your strategies out - props to sidestepper.

[Sidestepper]

Posted that Western Forest run I talked about earlier. It demonstrates a lot of basic concepts, and I'm happy with how it played out. I actually want to talk about a few concepts here while I'm at it.

http://www.qcfdesign.com/wiki/DesktopDu ... ern_Forest

Popcorn xp versus Hard xp
In DTD, monsters aren't your enemies. They are actually resources that require investment to harvest. Less monsters on the map would make things harder, not easier.

The best kind of monster to have is what we call 'popcorn.' Popcorn monsters are weak monsters that are below your level that you can kill in one hit. They are xp resources that require zero investment to harvest. Your goal in the beginning to level as fast as possible while killing as few low level monsters as possible, so that you have lots of popcorn at the end.

Some monsters are never popcorn. Monsters from levels 7 and up are never popcorn unless you are doing something special. The reason I say this is that you usually start fighting the boss at around level 7. Once you begin that fight, it is too late to try to invest in hard xp. That means that any 7+ monsters will have to remain unharvested.

There are 3 7s, 3 8s, and 2 9s on every map. Getting as many of these guys as you can before the boss is very important.

Some popcorn is less useful than others. Goblins and Gorgons have annoying first strike powers that force you to pay resources even when you out level them. Low level ones are tolerable, but starting around level 5 or 6 the investment cost starts to get too high to harvest them in the middle of a bossfight. Give level 5 and 6 first strikers higher priority when playing in the midgame.

Some popcorn is "chewy." Goo blobs, meatmen, and midlevel zombies and dragons typically take 2 shots, even from higher level heroes. This is usually more manageable than first strikers, because cunning players can prep chewy monsters with a pre-emptive attack, leaving them softened for later harvesting.

Leverage
The game is roughly balanced so that a vanilla hero with no items, boons, or powerups can take on an equal level monster at Normal difficultly if he craters all of his health into it. To win the game, you need to do better than this. As you acquire magic, items, powerups, and boons, you start to operate at a power level above your actual level. I call this "leverage." Your leverage grows as you explore. At the start, it's hard to even fight one level above yourself, but midway through you can handle monsters that are 2-5 levels higher than yourself.

Most classes start with some sort of innate leverage. The Fighter is an exception. He has no leverage at all (the one shot death protection doesn't count). Instead, he gets the Veteran power, the most powerful support ability in the game. If you can deal with the Fighter's lousy leverage in the beginning, he can use his xp-related powers to pull enormous amounts of resources out of thin air.

I'm hoping that these concepts will be useful to beginners, especially when coupled with this playthrough, where the ideas of popcorn and leverage were important parts of my gameplay.

[Darvin]

Sounds good; looking forward to seeing the full annotated playthrough.

[Sidestepper]

?

The link to the game is right under the first paragraph

[Darvin]

Huh, weird; thought I looked at the link and didn't see anything written yet. Fixed your link for you, btw.

[Sidestepper]

That is way weird. I submitted that wiki edit hours ago. The internet is a mysterious and frightening place.

Thanks for the link fix, btw.

[The Avatar]

Nice job. We really need to get some more playthroughs up. Any suggestions?

[Sidestepper]

We have zero content on Namtar. That might be a good one. Or any VICIOUS content, really. The Cursed Oasis is by far the hardest of the HARD dungeons. That one would be good too.

[Kuranes]

If I could make a request, I'd like to see a run of Shifting Passages. Mainly because both the North (play one of the Tower classes) and Bank (Unstoppable) quests lead you there, and I'd like to see some tricks.

[Gavster]

Ok guys, i decided to do a playthrough for a human tinker on Namtar's lair. Tell me what you think.



http://gavsterdd.blogspot.com.au/2012/1 ... rd_31.html