Extreme East Spoiler and Discussion Thread

[shade_of_ox]

Classic Desktop Dungeons... plan out your scouting run very carefully, then get some extra stuff you didn't know about thrown in your face at the end, losing you the run

I'll check back when I've actually started making attempts.

[The Avatar]

Don't worry, there's no real surprises or curveballs to upend your strategy wrapped up in the final fight. It's not like descending into the underworld for the first time as a Berserker only to have 75% physical resists rubbed in your face. In theory if you planned for the first stages well enough you could win this on your first try, although I doubt anyone would It's basically just there to inform you that the strategy which you presumably thought killed all 8 bosses fairly efficiently has vast room for improvement.

[maya]

alright I just realised how much potential refreshment has with the power of spirit sword because after the boss died I am still able to hold onto three of my glyphs. I may have also had byseeps for every hit and found a fine sword but still I had a bloody sigil I could have bought and converted. also why is halpmeh considered a good find for act 3 since you worship Dracul?

[Nurator]

Yes refreshment is huge! Dont use HALPME, use APHEELSIK instead

[The Avatar]

HALPMEH is a better glyph than purely having PISORF, but it ends up effectively locking you out of the pricier choices with Dracul (like a 2nd/3rd shot of sanguine, or any blood swells). As Nurator mentions, APHEELSIK is the ideal, although you should *always* bring PISORF. I'd rank your glyph options in part 3 as roughly APHEELSIK > GETINDARE > HALPMEH > BYSSEPS > PISORF (only), although this is of course dependent on other factors (i.e. Stone Sigil makes HALPMEH more palatable, Platemail makes GETINDARE weaker, base damage boosting items make BYSSEPS much stronger, etc).

[shade_of_ox]

Here was my first serious run in Heretic Gold:
http://prntscr.com/l1j4mx

I got the (hopefully) last boss down to 3000 HP before I ran out of resources, but obviously since this was the first time I'd seen him, I didn't ever really have a chance. I think if I'd known what was coming, I probably could have killed him - in particular, I converted BYSSEPS pretty early which reduced me to using my mana on PISORF for Stone Form, and just casting GETINDARE for dodge chance after all the popcorn I had left on the surface to smash into walls were dead. I also forgot I took Consensus and wasted a bunch of piety on TT, which prevented me from taking as many Reflexes as I would have liked. I think I needed more resists for the H-style battle than I had - I only had 15% from Taurog, opting for two stacks of life steal instead, which simply wasn't enough damage reduction in the long run. I think using PM for Body Pact, despite the difficulties in doing so, is key - I think it's feasible to get 45% physical resist at least, with the help of Dracul, at which point it's probably a good idea to take Blood Hunger once.

Some other notes I have:


All in all, I really enjoyed this (failed) run! This dungeon is extremely well balanced. I wouldn't say it's as daunting as VGT (though on the other hand I've rainbowed VGT so that's probably taken some of the sting out of long dungeons like this). I like the lack of shops - it keeps the focus on playing the class, rather than scumming for certain items the way VGT often ends up for certain classes. I think probably the lack of shops also made this challenge much easier to balance, which showed, because it feels very well balanced and fun to play. Great job from you guys here! I'm looking forward to beating it.

[The Avatar]

I think what I love most about Heretic Gold is the fact that neither your, nor the guy who posted a victory screenshot of it before, nor I have remotely similar strategies. You don't use MA, whereas she is absolutely essential to my strategy. I never touch JJ except maybe last second for a chaos avatar/last chance, while you start with him. You hit level 9 before tackling a single boss, while I finish my first one off at a mere level 6. Our god orders and even boons taken vary pretty wildly. And yet, somehow, all of our strategies are equally viable and repeatable due to the almost no variance style of this challenge (with its fixed god and glyph spawns plus lack of shops to bail you out).

Really, this challenge really is the crystallization of why the Heretic is my favorite class. It stands as proof that with proper play the Heretic can reach incredible amounts of power--you are tackling a boss *tougher than Horatio* with no shops and no preps--yet at the same time proof that whatever you imagine "proper play" to be is just a single possibility among many incredibly different yet equally powerful options. On top of that, I suspect each solution has something that it can take away from the others to improve itself somewhat.

Also, as a humorous aside, this run still isn't nearly as tight as it could be. When originally designing this challenge I imagined the 8 bosses would take a large toll on your characters resources, so the Faithful Ascendant had a mere 750 health and 75 damage. Amused by how much my strategy dunked on him, I buffed his stats to 7500 to see how much of that I could remove. (Coincidentally, this can be a very effective design tool for figuring out what a boss' health should be. Just set the health to something you can't beat and see how much you can whittle off on average.) However, I was shocked to find that not only could I beat the 7500 version, but I absolutely dunked on it. So, to shout out to Horatio, I added the resists and buffed things to all 7s for theming. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this changed things very little given the ease with which resists can be stripped. I even had a run where I won without taking any sanguine. So, out of near frustration with the Heretic's power I buffed the health all the way to 10,000 health and added the berserks for good measure. Turns out even that version was beatable, but my strategy could no longer do it with near 100% win rate, so I figured it'd be good to push it back. Hence, it finally settled on 7777 health, resists, and berserks. I've still managed the current version without sanguine, but it was one of the tightest runs ever. (I ended up using every last piety sparkle, losing precisely 34 piety for one conversion bonus, wasted no piety on level ups, and explored ridiculously efficiently. I doubt I could reproduce said run now without a fair bit of practice.)

[shade_of_ox]

Just out of curiousity, how did you leverage Mystera? I can't really see a way unless your strategy hinges on WEYTWUT and BURNDAYRAZ... but you said you don't touch Jehora so WEYTWUT is out, and even if it were in, GETINDARE is so much better...

[The Avatar]

ENDISWAL is a very efficient cast vs the boss when it provides 20% physical resist and might for a mere 5 mana. This is doubly true when it also opens up 1-3 blackspce, which will be the case for many of your early casts. On top of that, before the fight whenever you use it you can free up more piety sparkles to be used with a god where they provide more value (TT for poison, Drac for Sanguine, etc). The fact that BURNDAYRAZ costs 5 is just icing on the cake that lets you tackle the physical immune bosses much more easily and earlier for more exp bonus which translates to potentially even reaching second prestige during the boss fight. Furthermore, while 3 cost GETINDARE is solid vs. the boss, its efficiency drops off steeply after the 50% mark since it takes more than 3 tiles to regenerate for a hit (leading to wasted casts).

EDIT: Once you beat it I could post a victory screenshot to demonstrate all the places where our strategies differ. Then we can both point out how poorly we each played it and how we could improve our own strategies.

[shade_of_ox]

Yeah, that sounds good to me. I wouldn't want to spoil it for myself