General-Purpose bragging topic!

[Lujo]

[Blovski]

Um, I prepped the Platemail and I never used the Crystal Ball. Was just a purchase-refill for the rat.

[Lujo]

I know, but that's just the thing - you prep CB on a Pissorff guy (or even just Binlor without the CB), that dungeon is toast as long as the indomitable doesn't spawn too stupidly. With literally anything, you start the bossfight at lvl1, levels just roll in. Sure the rat ends up doing a crapton of damage, but cheezy-fast-forwarding is a forgone conclusion for anyone with Pissorff in there. Most of them don't even need platemail. Rat's good because you can knockback the Indomitable into stuff for a long time without him dropping, ofc, but take a dungeon that's not like that but folds to Pissorf spam and the rat's not necessarily even close to being the least brain-intensive or most powerful option.

The rat could probably easily VT Vicious Steel though, but there's not much difference to Vicious Steel VT and regular if you play it like that anyway.

[Blovski]

That's really the whole point of my post. The Rat Monarch VT'd Vicious Steel with Parched, no converting out, no shop items that helped (I picked up the amulet of health and crystal ball for refills late on and didn't use either) and no access to the secret sub because it was behind a Golem flanked by unbreakable walls I didn't want to fight, on the first attempt. I don't doubt other classes could do it as Pisorf specialists (Orc Wizard or Assassin especially) but not this easily and with this little reliance on shops, general decent play and clever god trickery, for me at least.

[Lujo]

Sorry I overreacted I'm just miffed at how at the same time it's the most straightforward and obvious thing for a Rat, pissoff spamming, but how he's only really exceptional with it in very narrow circimstances (namely if there's a low damage hit sponge like SMM or the Indomitable). But you have to think in places where almost anyone else at all can prep that setup just so they don't have to think... Miser Gorgon in Taurog, how do I beat the map? Explored whole map at lvl1, only relevant class feature -40% dmg penalty. How she does it? Pissorff Spam! No shop or god luck there, either, no stacking corrosion, no reason for it to even work let alone be the simplest way to do it... yet no problems, play the same as every other "guard", go next run, repeat, go next run, repeat...

Q: Purist Dwarf Crusader, how do I play that?
A: Same as Miser Taurog Gorgon, ofc, Pissorf spam!
Q: D'oh, ofc! Why didn't I think of that, they're basically the same thing - they both level when they ding! Should I also be in Taurog when I do it?
A: Dunno, didn't hurt that Gorgon...



Ok, that Gorgon did have a Yendor in the shop and Glenrick, but it's still a miser Taurog Gorgon spamming Pissorff. Makes sense that she can use a leg up. What's the Rat's excuse for needing a Yendor to use his cheeze strat in places where anyone else using the same strat can pretty much do it blindfolded? Not that he necessarily needs the Yendor, but he'll pop it as soon as he sees it and it'll make a huge difference, most of the other folks'll just pop it for one random level somewhere if at all...

[Tinker]

[Blovski]

The only real challenge is initially wearing Indomitable's first few DPs down, and given with a rat's tiny mana pool you'll get more hits out of Pisorf, thus more corrosion damage with the same resources (that said, JJ really equalises it). Given I like Fewer Glyphs on the Rat instead of mana boosters or anything, Binlor definitely works better for me on this dungeon. I suspect I've gone the other way by using JJ ALL THE TIME.

[Lujo]

Actually, if you want to, for some reason, knock DP's using pissoff, then slapping the Indomitable into walls (with anyone) is the way to do it (or yes, fireballs + popcorn). I think that takes 2 off, while hitting him into a target only takes one. But the big deal is using the Indomitable and the resources you use to kill him to also wear down Blah Blah as much as possible, so once you've got the indomitable's damage down to size you don't want to wear off his DP's too fast unless that's the only way to ding & refill. Melee KB takes off 2 DP's, Pissorff just one, so you can do more damage on Blah Blah with more pissorffs and just finish it off with melee, but the rat can do a ton with just KB.

The sorta best way to do it with other folks is to slap the Indomitable into other stuff to level up using the other stuff untill you knock off a few DP's, then heal him up using a subdungeon. Then whoopaz blah blah and slap the indomitable into him. I, err, had to play that place a lot to rainbow it and I got bored of dubass brute forcing it and kept myself entertained by optimizing the procedure

[Tinker]

Doesn't matter who you knock someone into, it's only 1 DP per knockback. It becomes 2 when you couple knockback with melee, so the melee hit takes off 1 layer and then the knockback takes the other.

By the way I just got a PQI on VHOS for a Goblin Thief, and I tested going with Binlor (but without PISORF). I fireballed Blahblah until he popped up close to The Indomitable, then slapped him next to BlahBlah, and then wore him down via regular attacks. Then popped a few layers with fireballs, levelled up, and popped some more layers with fireballs, and then his damage was already tolerable. So I kept knocking using only regular knockback, and then I leveled up and used my fireballs to wear down other monsters and just kept slapping. Probably the silliest approach, but still it worked, I got BlahBlah down to about 40% of its health without any corrosive strike. I even lost my resists because I wasn't paying attention to leveling (shows how much I play Binlor I guess...). So I won the map without using PISORF, without playing smartly, or without having Damage Reduction. (I used the Bear Mace mostly for initial Piety generation, and took Binlor's boons and spammed stone skins mostly to build resists, I didn't pick up either of his free glyphs, and even converted the Bear Mace as soon as I got Stone Fist.)

Moral of the story: if you can place The Indomitable next to BlahBlah, and have knockback of some sort, you can pretty much use killing The Indomitable to also wear down BlahBlah considerable. Having PISORF or Corrosive Strike can greatly speed this up / help finish BlahBlah without needing any extra resources, but is not even needed outside of the VT.

[MTaur]

Beat a Vicious dungeon on my first try for once. I can't recall if this happened with any of the others... at best, it may have happened on the first try with a second or third class.

Decided I should probably go ahead and unlock the Vampire so I can earn my everything-but-Dark-Souls badge finally. Elf Sorcerer with Avatar's Codex. I had some good luck - prepped Conjunction just because I didn't want penalties and I felt there were enough possibilities, but I liked what I got: Earthmother and Mystera. Platemail dropped, which may have saved the run - Count BBB is a beast. I would've needed MR just to get my Whupaz in, not to mention I needed a little DR to stretch my dual-potion Codex approach to spiking. The armor boss was a joke, though. I think the corrosion was bugged, because I wasn't taking damage even with 20-30 stacks.

Overall, I had to skip some enemies, but others were breezy due to the Codex Sorc set-up. Animated Armor is a joke when you can double-pop DPs without having to look for popcorn. IMAWAL let me level-up while being choosy, but I missed out on blood pools (and I derped on Plantation, needing some emergency IMAWALs just to get enough for a conversion from the altar piety specks). I probably would have done the animated armor boss first and tried to arrange for a mid-fight ding left over afterward if I were to try again, though, with a burn salve from the store to smooth things over. Count BBB is a pain.

I'll probably try Berserker next, because I can't remember who else has MR.