General-Purpose bragging topic!

[Astral]

VGT can be done very easily with any class if you prep for it.
My brainless general strat which won 100% of the time so far is picking Orc as a race, prepping Taurog for more damage and easy early resistances, Dragon Shield, all sorts of extra attack, Patches, anti debuff potions and more potion shops.

Being an Orc let's you score very good early kills which saves up blackspace and a lot of popcorn. Thanks to Patches and Taurog most of the time you will be stronger than a Human even at level 10. If you find Bysseps/take a trip to Binlor it's not even a question.

So at the beginning you may use some glyphs before joining Taurog, then convert stuff and start murdering. During this stage is deosn't matter if Patches poisons/manaburns you, you usually ding on 1 kill. When you get to the point thath you need 2 kills for the ding you can still ignore manaburn thanks to your supreme attrition. If you play any class that doesn't need a lot of mana (so not Warlord or Paladin), then you should take all of Taurogs items for the bonus attack despite only wanting to hold 1-3.

Most glyphs can be converted without worry, only Halpme, Bysseps and Gettindare are worth keeping. You can use these with Taurog and beacause you will be playing a really efficient character most monsters will go down with less than 2 casts. So you are completely safe 'piety farming' under him by the time you join Drac you will always have 100 piety.

The combination of DS + Taurog's gear + Scroll + Blood Shield means that all classes will get a minimum of 53% resistances. This alone would be enough to beat Horatio with such high damage, but Patches can make you hit the cap for hilarity.

Only leave Taurog if you can convert into another peity farm (Binlor or early MA/GG) or you don't have Halpme so Drac is 0 downside. It's important to never take Body Pact, it may give a little short term benfit, but will interfere with Drac's sanguine stacking and Taurog's easy going nature and also robs you of Consensus.

No matter what curses you encounter you will always be able to deal with it. You can wipe both debuffs up to twice, you will be swimming in popcorn to counter curses, your high damage ensures that you kill stuff in few hits. You can safely ditch Burandayraz, you will be able to melee last floor Goo Blobs too.

You could spice the strat with taking detours to TT for posionstrike/dodging or Binlor for Stone Form but they are completely unneeded. Drac's sanguine alone kills H. And you haven't even considered bloodswells yet.

TL,DR: Orc X with Taurog, DS, Patches into Drac = 1 try 1 win with every regular class.

[Lujo]

^ If you also have Getindare it saves a hard-to-believe amount of blackspace, with both the effect and random dodges. My own personal twist on that whole thing is starting in GG as a pure piety farm and cleansing dispenser, and also for extra damage and health from humility, but is otherwise what you describe. The starndard res stacking deal.

EDIT: Reason for GG was that I wasn't in a habit of scumming for my second god for a while, and stating off with Taurog Orc, while probably silly enough to really be a 1 try 1 win with every class, did result in shoehorning various classess into something they weren't while giving up on their potential benefits a smidge too early. Would be especially letodownish if Drac failed to show up in time, because the before-after resist difference was kinda substantial, so I liked have my options open for the first few floors - as well as my inventory unclogged and my mana pool up. The occasional protection and a more than occasional cleansing worked really well because it let me get through wraiths, blobs, various floors and other things with relative ease, and all that. Not sure if it's actually that great for every class out there, but there are classes which benefit from it enormously.

[sitnaltax]

I concur with pretty much all of Astral's tips. Prepped Taurog->Drac is a winning gameplan. I will also say that that there is lots of wiggle room. Monotheist Drac with Pactmaker served fine for my first win, for instance.

The other thing about VGT is, with practice, you will stop making mistakes, you will get better at it. For instance, on my early attempts, I would fight a Wraith, get mana burned, drink a potion, go up to the next floor, and get the mana burn misfortune. WTF. But eventually I learned to check for that. Likewise, I used to waste a lot of blackspace on the floors. Now I look carefully for the monster blood around the bosses and stop exploring once I get all five. I might have to wander around the next floor to find the right bad guys, might as well save this blackspace for later. On early runs, I bought too many shop items that don't help enough. Stuff like Whrbargl, the Fine Sword. Now, I don't buy anything until I have an idea of where all my gold is going to go--the early floors aren't demanding enough to require the use of early shop items. (Hard to ever go wrong with a Soul Orb, though.) Your second win will come so much easier than your first, you'll think they nerfed the monsters.

Random hint: On the Binlor floor, you can sometimes make out the blood patches that surround monsters on the half-explored tiles that show up across the water. This can save you lots of wasted blackspace.

[sitnaltax]

[Astral]

Even with scummed GG I usually lose thanks to some BS. Do you need a an early Pactmaker to make it work? Or a lucky glyph in combination (Getindare/Halpme)?

[Lujo]

[sitnaltax]

[Lujo]

Also, what do you guys use Pactmaker with GG for?

[sitnaltax]

[Astral]

I tried the human rogue too, vampiric dagger + extra health from GG/EM can make you barely survive warlock hits, and usually that's all you need, since your damage will be 180-200.

@Lujo: I'd use it for body pact, but scumming for 2 altars is ridiculous.