Max CP pops out of a run

[Lujo]

[sitnaltax]

Man, I never really got the hang of Gorgons. I mean, I figured out how to use Binlor with them to mitigate the awful weakness to magic, so I could get completion on the Vicious dungeons, but all the time I just wished I could roll an orc fighter or something that can make use of whatever resources are handy.

[Lujo]

I kind of felt offput by her because she's sort of plays like a combination of 2 things which are supremely cheezy when optimized (or sufficently overprepped). It's like she's a high resist + poison strike girl (which I once broke the game with in ghastly ways) and an "overexplore and cherrypick your targets" kind of girl, which got nerfed right before I set out to figure her out because it was too popular of an approach*. So exploring her as a class kept bringing up the "done that, was cheezy, so I let it go" mixed feelings.

She's actually pretty well designed, but that particular design, whichever way you take it, requires her to be kinda complicated, awkward and gimpy because if she wasn't she'd be a complete monster.

*The most ridiculous incarnation of a solid poison regen fighter would be an old resist-everything Monk with old TT's poison strike which was broken beyond belief. The king of the "overprep, overexplore, overkill" approach would be the level 1 bosskill rogue, who, well, is a guy who takes out a bosses at lvl1. So I felt I was threading cheezy old ground when playstyle and the motions involved were concerned, even if poor Gorgon couldn't be blamed for anything. But if you go through those motions with anything but her, boy are you overkilling everything...

[gdn]

[Astral]

Sorry for leaving you there waiting for my "big" post, looks like I'm bad with datelines
Also hi gdn, welcome on the forum!

So, what is this secret I mentioned earlier?
It is something I like to call the "limitless lifesteal". Most characters are bound by the amount of health a moster has when it comes to stealing life, but not Gorgons! If the killing blow is a deathgaze strike, you can steal max amount of HP even from a 1 HP foe.



How do you like it? Gaining possibly 20HP*your lifesteal from popcorns?

Though it's not that easy to use. For limitless lifesteal to work, your opponent has to be below your dg%, so no easy HP farming from fully healed popcorns.
There are 2 ways to get around it: poking the mosters and possibly preserving them with poison, or raising your deathgaze to 100%.

But this isn't everything. Playing with Vampires you may have noticed that you can steal life from corrosive creepers.
See what a Gorgon can do with it:




I find it amusing how nearly every monster class has a cool plant-related combo. Also this makes the term "plant spiking" legit

Btw I'd like to share how you've contributed to these discoveries:
- FDru mentioned using Spirit Pact with a pietyfarm on Ick Swamp which turned out to be better than my original method (same but on Havendale Bridge) and more fun too. And let's not forget that on HB I never have found the corrosive creeper trick.
- Lordatog and Darvin gave me very good subdungeon tips, didn't help on the 100%dg run posted above, but definately useful to consider on future runs.
- Also thanks to Darvin about suggesting GG, thanks to him I found the amazing interaction of Spirit Pact with the bearded guy: free extra CP for converting big items and potions, viable even with a late joining Gorgon.
- Unrelated yet fun, thanks to Zaratustra:


- And of course 1000 thanks to Lujo for countless tips and helps in msgs and for encouraging me to post my findings.


Btw there have been a few reasons why it took me so long to post this. Apart from beeing bad at meeting deadlines.

- Not being sure if these fun things will be changed/removed. Today's posts in Ask a Dev reminded me that these could fall under the "planted stuff" category, not just bugs
- That infinite BURNDAYRAZ wizard combo was very inspiring and after some calculation I found that 110 health is enough to pull it off with PISORF instead. I even came up with a crazy way to do it at only 55 health, but it requires you to find an item in the shops you already bringing with you as a locker prep.
In this post I wanted to show a successful attempt of it, like a VT VHoS lvl1 bosskill, but I don't have the patience for so many clicks so instead I share a method:
Orc Wizard of JJ with more glyphs(reduces scumming), prepped bearmace for added peity farming options, quest items (to pull Rock Heart, Fire Heart, that anti poison medal) and take more gold. Sounds crazy, but Spider Amulet as locker prep, and now you only need to find the health pendant and go monotheistic or find 1 more health giving god.
With JJ 4 health boosts + 2 amulets = 100 extra health, enough to reach 110 without being dwarf. Orc will save your sanity when it comes to clicking over and over again.
For the combo you'll need: 110+ health at lvl1, PISORF, IMAWALL, BLUDTOPOWA, Rock Heart, Fire Heart and enough health potions for JJ.

Cycle: You cast IMAWALL (-4 mana, regain 2), pisorf the monster(-3 mana) into this wall (+1mana/health by RH,FH charges by 10%)
so far -4 mana, +1 health
Then 4 casts of B2P covers the mana for 11 health, and a click on FH heals you back. Rinse and repeat.
And don't worry about screwing up the order a few times, with 110 health you have plenty of room for error.

I guess that's about it for now, out of curiousity how many of you knew these Gorgon tricks before?

[Astral]

Oh lol my previous method fails because IMAWALL does not charge Fire Heart in that circumstance :/

But it's insignificant because I found a new one that will blow your minds!
Just a little teaser: it takes less scumming and works as low as 80 HP!
But it's a bit long to explain so I'll post it tomorrow.

Btw are my posts boring or annoying?

[TheSchachter]

[Astral]

No I don't always go for heavy conversion with Gorgons, in fact I do it rarely and only for fun.

Anything that increases base damage and damage% is welcome for the Gorgon.
The best deity choice for straightforward play is definately Binlor. I recommend Taurog too, or if you want to become versatile Mystera or JJ.
In a lot of respect Gorgons play like Monks, but you have to pay attention to the differnces. Unchanged base damage let's you fully use any sort of knockback (bear mace is recommended, can save a lot of mana too) and % based damage bonus.
Lower resist and no double regen means you shouldn't try to go for regular regenfighting without aid.
I personally prefer to play Gorgons as hybrids: posion comboes nicely with fireballs, toss in a Witchalok pendant and now you can stretch the fight longer and finally the trick: always keep an eye on enemies' health when they are about to die, because you can get some easy kills if you raise your dg% by just a little ammount. You don't have to go dedicated but 25-35% often helps. It's an important thing to build into your strategy, fish for dg kills and when you get good at it you will enjoy the Gorgons much better.
Btw the resist ignoring part of dg can be useful too, don't forget about it either.

Now let's see the perpetual mana generation
Since imawall is not supported by wizards, and taking mystic balance would only make it worse all in all, that means wizards shouldn't be used for the strat, because they are actually worse for it than most classes. Sad, because glyph sensing and small glyphs would have been really useful.
Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that GG is not a viable health source without a lucky selection of altars. To grab many absolutions and a possible humility you would need a great amount of piety, which is unobtainable even with 'heawy conversion' (you have to keep 3 glyphs some items and save HP potions for JJ). Then convert out to be able to spam B2P.
That leaves us only EM and JJ. I'd personally start with EM, more reliable for piety farming and it's easier to gain a lot of health with her then convert into JJ with 100 piety, than the other way around.
Btw how much health would we need normally? An imawall and pisorf costs 7 mana together, -1 thanks to RH. That is 6 cast of B2P, -17 health per cycle. The 10% charge of FH should give back at least this to keep the combo, so 170 health.
At this point it's also obvius why BURNDAYRAZ can't be used: for 6 mana it only generates 5% charge and takes 18 HP.

Back to pisorfing, what happens if we try it with less than 170 health but same setup? In each cycle we'd lose 1/10 of the health difference so 7 HP at 100 health for example.
If we had a 2nd FH we could make up for that, and the necessary health would be 85 only. We can't get another FH, but we could use health potions. And that's when it hit me! Pick a Halfling Transmuter!
Now all we need to do is to raise our health to the point where the HP lost per cycle equals the hp gained from new health potions. If we need some help, we can add the Naga Cauldron too, to boost our potions.

Transmuters gain 3 CP/spell, in a cycle we start with at least 1 mana cast 4 B2P then 1 IMW (2 mana remains), 2 more B2P, 1 PIS (here comes the starting 1 mana), so 8 spells which is a whooping +24 CP. In 4 cycles we already surpass the 80 CP barrier to get a potion.

In my ridiculous example I picked 80 HP. That's fairly easy to reach with HP boosts or vine forms alone.
How would that work? In each cycle we'd lose 11* health, 4x11=44 and a Naga C. boosted HP potion gives 80x0,55=44 at 3 debuffs already. Take a 4th (corrosion,weaken, curse, manaburn) and now you generate health, that can solve possible problems from badly timed Spirit Swords too.

Um, have I mentioned that Transmuters start with LEMMISE? Scumming never has been easier!

So in short just take a Halfling Transmuter of EM with a compression seal into a dungeon with quest items and your choice of prep (FH/NC/titan guitar for easy walking and petrifying), scout at the beginning, restart if needed then petrify everything and enjoy! Take a couple of Greenbloods too, so you can kill the boss faster.

EDIT: *Screwed up the math lol. We only lose 9, and 1 debuff is enough. Btw it works at 70 HP too, that's where 4 debuffs are required. Now I go to sleep...

[dislekcia]

This has to be one of the craziest strategies ever. I can't wait to try it

[Nurator]

This is just... this game amazes me once more. I had that "Ok now I know ever strange strategy in this game" moment so often, I dont believe we will ever reach this point

Best 20 bucks I ever spent