Bloodmage Silver

[Wargasm]

I think my problem is I keep not getting Dragonspawn or Druids for enemies. I keep getting Snakes and Goblins and Zombies. That's Poison, First Strike, and Bloodless, all of which screw me to varying degrees. I'm giving up on Goblin for now. I'm going back to Gnome. Man, what I wouldn't give for an EM altar to spawn on that map. All that extra Clearance mana. Even if you dip into subzero piety, it doesn't matter. You're planning on drinking a burn salve anyhow.

EDIT: Okay, going in with the following setup;

http://imgur.com/EBjJj15

There's 22 pools there (one's under the bottommost shop) I got the early Gloves of Midas I wanted, and was able to use it to procure the Elven Boots, Burn Salve, and Schadenfreude Potion exactly. I can BURNDAYRAZ the snot out of his first form without touching the pools hopefully, and then convert BURN and possibly the boots for another couple of potions, with HALPMEH to keep me going. I even have the Soul Orb. I really _shouldn't_ lose this time, unless he manages to spawn plants over pretty much all my blood pools. 40% magic resist. I really, really should win this time.

EDIT EDIT: Yeah, that worked just fine. Ended with a health potion and five blood pools (three under acid) left, without having had to convert anything (which I should have done before using the pools, to take them to 44% instead of 40 - could have made a difference.) I should have at least converted BURNDAYRAZ at the second form, leaving the mace and boots (in that order) for later if need be. Le sigh. Playing this game is like a science and suboptimal moves can cost. VHoS should have taught me that during the beta.

[Galefury]

I did it with an elf, it was pretty hard. I won on my second try, but barely. The first time I didn't even really get to start taking down the death protections, so the second run probably must have been pretty lucky in some way. Don't remember what items I got though. Didn't bring the bear mace.

[FDru]

I beat this challenge before they nerfed the plants, but that was before they nerfed the bloodmage mana pool, and even then it was still difficult. It's really kind of ridiculous now. I came close with a Gnome because I got a Soul Orb and a Viper Ward but that was just lucky, and I still didn't win with 44% sanguine.

Okay I beat it with a Gnome very easily after posting this. First bought item was pendant of health, and then an alchemist's scroll. Basically, I did huge level spikes with the massive HP pool, using the mana potions to trigger the alchemist scroll and boost sanguine. Having a LOT of health and high sanguine allowed me to melee the boss to death during both forms (since I was mana burned to hell and back). I couldn't afford anything from the apothecary and had to do it with 8 stacks of corrosion and only one imp spawned so only 5% magic resist. But I think I still had some blood pools leftover buried under corrosion plants if I needed them.

[Galefury]

Ah crap, I misremembered, my successful run was also with a gnome. I had elven boots for MP and extra MR, and a bunch of imp spawns. The first form was somewhat close, but I had two health potions left. This made the second form easy combined with all the MR.

[Wargasm]

Yipes. At least with Bloodmage Silver I had some idea what I was doing, just having bad luck getting it done. I've sent something like eight or ten lemmi...err...Tinkers into Tinker Silver and still have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing. No subs, stores fully of mostly crappy items, no potion store to get a Burn Salve if you want to use the Draining Blade, lots of irritating enemies and about all you can prep is the Silver Challenge Standard Bear Mace. :/ Oh, and enjoy not being able to convert anything.

[Wargasm]

Silver is humbling me with the Explorer guild classes. Transmuter and Tinker are both eating me alive. I've pretty much given up on Tinker. I'm missing some kind of trick with Transmuter; I've tried Goblin and Elf for various reasons, but I always have to waste so much fog looking for same-or-lower level targets that even with Balanced Dagger I can never hit L10. The concept is interesting, but I wish they'd let you fight one level higher. :/ Amusingly, Tinker would be awesome for the Transmuter challenge, since you could spawn a bunch of shops with low cost/high conversion items on a good run. Of course that's not an option. Anyone have tips on these? They're definitely not worth the 400 gold but I'm trying to get the achievement for all silvers. :/

[Grakor456]

I will agree that Bloodmage silver, and the three Explorer's Guild classes, are significantly harder than all of the other silvers. Bloodmage took me just shy of ten tries to successfully complete, and even then I won just by the skin of my teeth, having expended every resource at my disposal by that last, winning hit. It was quite frustrating.

Haven't managed the three EG classes yet, though. Crusader silver and Tinker silver seem quite annoying just because it seems unavoidable to get completely covered in debuffs. My biggest problem in Crusader silver is trying to get any decent level without getting overwhelmed in weakness stacks, since naga seem to always make up the majority of the higher level enemies.

[Wargasm]

I got through Crusader at least by using a little trick I discovered while doing it. Not sure it always spawns, but using PISORF does NOT break your Momentum ability stack, so you can build a chain that only drops when you level if you PISORF things in the right situations so that you only need more than one hit to kill the boss. Not sure if it's necessary to do that, but I found it extremely helpful. (Still stumped on other two. :/ )

[Naoya]

I'm not to savy on those, but I'll try to give you a few general tipps -

Tinker Silver : Earthmother. She's prolly the most useful thing you'll find on this challenge, so use her. IMAWAL and Entanglement make levelign way easier, and allow you to ignore WONAFYT if you should find it. They only other deity on that map is Taurog, but I don't know if he works since he fills your inventory and you can't convert glyphs.

Since you can't convert stuff, make sure you only pick up stuff that you actually need; Bloody Sigil and the fake beard are great buys early, and the fine sword or the compression seals are probably must-buys. Cursed Scroll and Zot are also rather useful. Use the transmutation seals on Walls. With enough popcorn and Clearance, you should be able to beat him.
You probably know this, but: Dont pick up APHEELSIK. It's a Trap!

Transmuter Silver: Well, Goblin is a must have. Spam Glyphs as hard as you can, Balanced Dagger is great if you can find it. Keep your potions for the boss. Keep your item conversions for the later part of the challenge, once you've run out of Blackspace. Not sure what to say on this challenge, honestly.

Crusader Silver: Thanks to his "Scars" Trait, the Crusader is immune to Poison, Manaburn, and Curse. This allows you to destroy a great deal of plants without getting debuffed, since you can just ignore Corrosive Creepers. Try to fight Wraiths and Snakes; theyre rather weak without their debuffs, so they become fodder for the Crusader.
Among all the plants, there are at least 1 Burn Salve and Fortitude Tonics; unfortunately, I don't know which plant type drops what; I think its random. Yes, PISSORF is *awesome* for the Orc Crusader for that very reason.

If those tipps don't help you, I'd recommend to just go on and do them later - they don't really have a trick to them like most of the other challenges - instead they require you to play more efficient.

[Wargasm]

14 tries on Tinker Silver and nothing I'm doing is working. I haven't seen EM at all. Mostly I see MA and Taurog. Dracul just once would be perfect. Generally I'm picking up BURNDAYRAZ, GETINDARE, Bloody Sigil, HALPMEH, Bound Sword, Fine Sword, Spoon, and prepping the Bear Mace. I have no idea which part is wrong.

The boss shapeshifts, so HALPMEH and BURNDAYRAZ seem like requirements. GETINDARE greatly facilitates leveling. Maybe I _have_ to have Tikki Tooki or EM to get bonus XP so I can hit L9 and catfight the boss. My only other guess is using the Mace to stop the blinking and knock the boss in a circle while using the Sigil's regen boost to regen fight him, but that potentially gets screwed if he switches to 100% death-gaze and I fireball him and he blinks into fog and heals. There's so many things where if they were slightly different, I could do this, but I keep not having the luck. If I could get even one conversion in, have one more prep, ugh. EDIT: Not having _two_ monster species _constantly_ draining my life 40% and overhealing themselves would be great. The Vicious dungeons aren't even this stacked to screw you.

This isn't interesting or fun. It's just frustrating. :/