Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[sitnaltax]

[Lujo]

Not for me, but you can't run in with having done it once and say "Naaah, what's all the fuss I did it in one try", if the way you did it is practically the mirror image of my runs (possibly even less favourable in terms of items and stuff) but with RNG blatantly in your way. That thing is nowhere near silver difficulty, or any difficulty at all, it can randomly screw you over, and will more often than not.

Unless you buy one item which completely eliminates the RNG part that can screw you over, then it just takes forever. Two failed runs and I knew exactly what was wrong, went around the map doing cores for the witch, picked up the burn salve as an apothecary item - beat it on first attempt, because it's really just that. Knew I would before I did it.

The way I wrote about it looks silly, but I really did dismantle that level to bits (regardless of what the "intended" solution is), burn salve made the difference between "beat it to dust" and "you can't win". Not sure that's good. In fact I'm sure it's not.

[Lujo]

What's more is that Bloodmage gold ammounts to "A Single-boss Purist BM run, where the solution is to walk up to a guy and cast pissorf at him untill he croaks". You have to use bloodpools while leveling, omg. Except if you keep popcorn alive (which you would anyway) and immediately drink the bloopool after you've killed it during the boss fight. Which you would, because it lets you cast the pissorff.

If those two were to be aligned properly regarding the ammount of effort they respectively take, and figuring in the time it takes to play either + the really silly RNG deathtrap which you can 100% certainly avoid if you do 4 other runs to get the salve to 100% guaranteed spawn in your potion shop, there'd have to be a whole separate difficulty above gold to put the BM silver in. Bloodmage silver, regardless of how difficult it is, makes many golds look like bronze runs.

I set out to pick up the Vampiric Blade on Friday, for random Dwarf nonsense, and spent a fair amount of my weekend playing DD, and I got it, and it's now Monday, except I would've had it in half an hour on Friday if I set out to do it in the exact same way but it became available after I've unlocked the salve. If I had a reason to do Bloodmage Gold, for, say, a veto slot, I wold've had that veto slot in 10 or so minutes after I've set out to do it 100% certainly, because Pissorff is a guaranteed spawn in that level. Because that's what happened - I poked my head in to remind myself of what the deal is, then went in for serious and did it.

[sitnaltax]

OK, here's one more.



This was my second shot. As you can see, I had to take three stacks of corrosion, but by using PISORF a lot early on--"wasting" mana by not fighting monsters--I was able to clean out a lot of the chokepoints. And even 4-5 more stacks of corrosion would have been manageable.

You may say, hey, you lost one. I think it's OK. I played sloppy and there's no requirement that every mistake is recoverable. In this one, my sloppy play made me spend way too many resources fighting the troll. Oops. Bail, start over, five minutes lost--hardly oppressive. All the best challenges you lose a couple of times getting the hang of them, or they wouldn't be fun.

Sidenote: Even after I figured out the gimmick, Bloodmage Gold was still a struggle for me. I feel like without very tight play, the resources run low. My idle speculation is that that's a map that suits itself better to your potions-at-the-end playstyle.

[Astral]

I never had a problem with BM silver before and most of the time I tried it without burn salve. I don't know if Endiswal is guaranteed, but if it is, then the level is even easier than it looks.

You mentioning the boss blinking away indicates you're not using Bearmace. Knockback disables blinking as long as the foe does not end up next to you after the hit. Now the only thing you have to watch out for is your bloodpools not getting covered under corrosive plants. Solution = keep many monsters alive and only slay them when needed.

If you want to have the easiest time on BM silver your preferred race should be Gnome. You spike early game with up to 4 health potions + B2P, midgame with manapotions and B2P, lategame with remaining manapotions, super strong bloodpools and B2P (all the potion uses save up TONS of blackspace for the end).
By the end your sanguine will be nearing 50%.

I will get back to the other things you wrote later, just wanted to quickly mention how much easier the challenge is with Bm and Gnome. Bm even enables you to cut extra passages early game. But no disputing, if you bring burn salve on top nothing can screw you.

Edit: If you think BM Gold is way better, than you're luckier than me. Half the time the boss spawned in a corner/edge for me with no tools to move him away. Thankfully my main strat never involved Pisorfing, but that makes it a lot harder.

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

My frist PQI!

PQI - Elf Fighter of Taurog - Warmonger - Halls of Steel

Well, this place is kinda easy for Taurog, and there's also the Magic Resist orb I totaly forgot even existed, just went around killing stuff, then got 3 compression seals from Venus Patrol, killed the easy Indomitable, took Pactmaker for the potions pact, (I did bring a keg of health in), slammed Frank into a lot of walls (used a few DP's too). Made el dinero, and also got the indomitable Helm, which I carefuly left on the ground as to not mess up like I did with Rex. Was short and fun.

RUN - Halfling Bloodmage of JJ - Den of Danger - The Realms Finest

Er, I went in with Penance again, fireballed a lvl 8 gorgon at lvl 2, started on Frank at lvl 3, neded up not needing Chaos Avatar or the Pactmaker (overheal pact would've been really nice on low levels with all the extra health ) Easy dungeon, easy run, but I do want that Crystal Ball and the money to finally unlock the Assassin and the subdungeon. (Edit: Which I can't get without first unlocking the Assassin, d'oh!)

V Cool run:

PQI - Halfling Sorcerer of JJ into Taurog + Pactmaker - Slime Pits - Warmonger!

Hah, I decided to try out peekabooing properly for the first time on this run of all things... It kinda worked, but I prepped Titan Guitar which desoriented me. Still, got 3 hits of health + Chaos Avatar before converting into Taurog off consensus. Then I chose the XP for Potions pact (over the overheal one, turned out to be the right choice this time) because piety was kinda tight (needed all of T's junk) and I've kinda run out of popcorn, slammed SMM into the goo (Whoopased Goo), used STR + Reflex too, bought another STR (had alchemist prepped), ended up killing the goo first (knockback seems to go through resistance or something), and eneded up using 2 Taurog DP's and also converting the helm which I picked up at a dumb time. Only warmongery thing in the shops was Tower Shield on the last unrevealed square. Still, converting a bunch of junk for potions did help.

Would've been better if I had peekabood properly, and not killed Glenrick when I ran into him. Made many mistakes and questionable decisions, but I'm still kinda sastisfied with how it played out. Also finally got the Assassin upgraded, yay!

RUN - Goblin Assassin - Den of Danger - Purist! - Crystal Ball Unlock + Hero's Helm Unlock

And then just a quick nip of the DoD to get those two quests done at the same time and get money to relocker the Titan Guitar. Went in, found Warlock Boss, B2P and Mage Plate, started fireballing as lvl 2 and converting glyphs to lvl up, then munched on popcorn and drank potions it was over at lvl 5 (poisoned him first, first strike for the win). Didn't even bother playing, tbh, combo's way to strong for an easy run.

[Astral]

Sorry for making bold assumptions about your BM Silver play, it sounds then it really was impossible to win with those RNGs. You're right that Burn Salve eliminates the luck factor, though maybe going Gnome would have been enough to give you an edge with your skill to still win. In such an altarless map it's mathematically better than a Halfling.

I kinda disagree about spellcasting Gold Challenges boiling down to Orc + Pisof. Sure, Orc is the most reliable in 2/3 of those, but the glyph isn't guaranteed to spawn. The msg is somewhere in "just because you're a caster you can still excel is something else/choose different race".

But enough of these, let's see your runs.

I LOL'd hard at you taking LC instead of the safer CA. I once took LC at 23 piety and it fantastically worked out, however I had several dings set up, enough to earn me CA by popcorn slaying alone. It was stupid even from the perspective that taking the refill later would have been much stronger too

The Wizard.exe is very cool sub, but not good enough for badgemongering. It's best on Gorgon runs where you run into a duplicate Endiswall and get a 3rd one from Binlor.

What do you mean by Sanguine getting nerfed? What was it like before?

Binlor Halflings aren't bad. If you've set out to stone skin spike, what else could give such an easy universal healing?

There is a truth about BM Silver being harder than most golds, but that's mostly due to the fact that none of the golds are hard, they are just gimmicky (minus Monk Gold). Speaking of Gold Monk do you think it's a hard challenge?

Impressive fireballing in DD! And nice job peakabooing on a Warmonger run. Now imagine the insanity if you were spamming cheap glyphs too
And of course very cool run! Indirect knockback is a very mysterious thing. For example if you slam a corroded guy into a target, that will suffer exactly as much damage as the corrosion count. Haven't tested it for all scenarios but it usually works like that.

[Lujo]