*SPOILERS* Dailies Thread

[kravac]

Speaking of class appearance frequency...

Gnome Monk, Ick Swamp

*groan*

Felt like doing something interesting, so I went for a different kind of score today.

[MTaur]

Ewwwwwwwww. Do not want.

[Yoshi]

Rough run, but I pulled through.

[Nic]

I accidentally unpicked between health boosters and heart. Don't do that! You might need that health if you don't want a stressful run!

Otherwise, not as hard as expected. As you might expect, having either Viper Ward or Soul Orb makes Ick a lot less ick.

[lordatog]

Somehow, I always wind up in Earthmother on Ick Swamp. Mid-late game, of course. That fireball spike is just unreasonable. This one felt rough, but I'm pretty sure I was never in any actual danger.

[Naoya]

*snort*



Textwalltime!
I started the run off like almost every Monk run: With Taurog. Pretty standard, really. I used the occasional health potion for poison, chewed down manaburn plants like nothing, and leveled up comfortably, while shredding my mana bar with reckless abandon. Stol- err, translocated the Agnostics Collar on the hope that there's someone besides EM out there, but I was disappointed in that regard, and I figured I'd need EM for Bleaty.
The fun started about level 7, when I started running low on blackspace. Started fighting IItssaammnnaassaa, and had to purchase the Fortitude Tonic midfight, since he started to outregen me. This happened again at the end of the fight, but a fireball was thankfully enough to finish him off.
This is where I started grinning; I've just shredded both my damage and my manabar, and there was still Bleaty! And then followed a couple of dumb mistakes. Number 1: Figuring another level up wouldn't hurt, I tried to regenfight a level 5 Naga. Yup. Regenfight. Fireballs? If you're not a big fat goat, we don't have any.

Whatever was left of my damage got brutally slaughtered, so I had a whopping 9 mana/1 damage to face Bleaty on. I started laughing; never before have I faced a boss with such underwhelming numbers, not even on my first Ick Swamp run.
Switched to EM, and made my next mistake. Consensus. I wanted Alchemists pact, and I have that habit that I will absolutely always pick up Consensus, even if I'd get less piety - which was the case here, since I had still 17 left, so I've relieved myself of at least 1 clearance, if not 2. Started Quaffing Manapotions, leveled up, quaffed more Manapotions, hey, this seems to be working. Came up 4 piety short of plantation; part of my brilliant masterplan, all I needed to do was get that little piety spark under that pla- oh crap. Desecrated Taurog, and got plantation after a very impactful punishment.
Started converting stuff, found 2 mana potions still lying around, and came a couple damage short. If I hadn't lost my remaining damage to that Naga, or not worshipped Taurog, or managed my piety better... ah, whatever, it's a joke run at this point anyway. I skim over my inventory last time, and then... then it struck me. I had still one mana potion left, wich left me at 3 mana. And 4 bona fide items that I could convert for a lot of CP.

For driving this in the ground pretty hard almost deliberately, it worked out very well.

Made my day =]

[William]

That was an interesting run with an ending that gave me the fright of my life. I killed both bosses before reaching lvl 7 (fireballed both down with the help off mana potions and EM), and decided to mop up. The fright came when I had no mana, no mana potions and no piety for EM's clearance boon, and I noticed that with my last use of EM, she had placed a Barbing Bush on the boss trophy . Luckily I had enough conversion fodder in my menu to get one more mana potion for a quick BURNDAYRAZ.

[Darvin]

I dislike Monks to begin with, and an unfavorable dungeon/race combo just makes it worse. That said, this wasn't nearly as bad as it looked at the outset. In fact, it was relatively smooth. The venom ward was an ideal prep, and the presence of Mystera meant you could just fireball spam your way through the bosses and ignore your class features. Still took this one really slow and carefully, though.

[Zazzlegut]

I said it before and I'll say it again..I hate Ick Swamp more than any other map. And monk? Ugh.

I admit, I'm not good enough to win this combo and I proved it true...not for lack of trying. Am I correct in saying that this map is pretty unwin-able unless you play the gods properly? Did anyone win it playing Faithless?

I hate gods almost as much as I hate Ick Swamp. Just seems like such a carrot and stick. I think it's a philosophical disposition with me. Have to get over that if I want to win more.

[MTaur]

People don't tend to like caster Monks very much. My run sounded kind of like Darvin's, only "slow" means 3-4x as long as it does for him.

I started with Taurog and Taurog's Blade for early damage and easily farmed up 100 piety. When I saw Mystera on the map, I became a lot more eager to take magic popcorn enemies off the map (piety bonus instead of penalty!). I also converted many glyphs early (Taurog likes). Both bosses had 50% MR, so I ended up getting +2 mana from Mystera before spamming Weakening four times (eventually). I had prepped Conjunction, and Agnostic's Collar let me desecrate the two non-pactmaker deities I wasn't worshiping for 50 piety before I converted it.

Prepped Troll Heart instead of Health Boosters - the difference is you lose an inventory slot for most of the run, but you get CP for it. It was a tough call.

Having Troll Heart and Midas Gloves made it a little tricky to pick up Spoons and Wisp Gems, but I coped by leaving glyphs on the ground for most of the run, only picking up PISORF after converting out of Taurog, using it a few times to clear obstacles, and then trading it for BURNDAYRAZ.

Bossfights were essentially a drinking game. Odd class/race combo. I played the class while leveling, and I played the race for the boss fight, with little overlap. Bleaty was mostly fireballs, but with some help from Pactmaker, I was also able to tank hits and use Health Potions. Itsssama took a shot of Whupaz and then another stack of fireballs.

Gods were pretty important, I think. Seeing as Weakness stacks are pretty horrible, it probably wasn't practical to do much with Earthmother even if you felt YOLO enough to even try it on Ick Swamp - Gnome does a lot that Clearance would have done, and Vine Form wasn't going to be the best approach to the bosses, either. I have a hard time believing that anything other than Weakening was going to carry the boss fights. (The only way for Mystic Balance to win out is if it's 4 Weakening+MB vs 5 Weakening)