Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[Astral]

Nice experimenting!
If you'd like more debuffs you could switch up your god and try EM instead. She guarantees corrosion, poison and curse. While she can't increase your max mana, green blood is a fantastic caster boon and the lack of Mystic Balance can be offset by the powerful Pissorf + Corroison combo at times. Or by going Wizard, but then you have less potions.

What's cool about EM is that since she is a piety farm she combos greatly with other spellcasting dieties to build your character stronger.

Also if you don't mind a 'little' cheese, you could work the Spirit Sword Bug into the combo. In case you find a max mana item triger SS, convert the item and next time when you convert stuff you get a mana refill instead. If you prep more glyphs it doesn't interfere with Refreshment either. Effectively all your glyphs will be ~200% mana refills then (potion included).
With a prepped/bought Strength Potion you don't even need CP for the 1st SS.

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

Also one more thing. If at 18 or 19 mana and Spirit Sword can't be leveraged against the boss for whatever reason (run out of healing potions of whatever) the thing you want is the Blue Bead, as is often the case with Machine Gun Builds. Much like with the Mystera Bloodmage (B2P + Kill Popcorn + Drink Bloodpool = 1 Mystic Balance Fireball). In this case, 18 mana => 1 Glyph/Potion = 9 mana => munch random popcorn = 2 fireballs, nothing gets eaten by next Spirit Sword.

The only annoyance is that often a bunch of your popcorn will be magic users which annoys Mystera, but with her being the monster that she is and you having the cauldron, you're propbably loaded with indulgences by that point anyway.

[Astral]

Trying to go at the Avatar with such a purecastery build was quite brave without a prepped PW. Nice win btw!
If reaching 20 max mana is so important, why don't you toss in Patches? As soon as he gives you the 1st max mana upgrade you can ditch him.

While these are not NC builds, Transmuters sparked some ideas:

An Elf Transmuter can be played with TT as an alternate Micheal Bay build, you'll have even more mana and fun spiking. Also Gettindare is very great for CP stacking.

Less unique, but Halfling Transmuter of TT should kick ass too. When you convert a glyph you get a health potion to be turned into dodgestep and have SS on top. It's like having a melee version of Refreshment.

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

^ Replies and thank yous (sometimes invisible but sincerely felt by me) up there, more bloggy playthroughing below:

First run of the day:

PQI - Halfling Warlord - Northern Desert - Purist



This place is easy, but purist + halfling + one boss a Goo? Tricky, tricky! I did find an early Lemisi, and all that Transmuter play teaches you to pay attention to the damend thing as it's a maphack masquerading as conversion fodder. Found Mystera and the Golem.Exe subdungeon and also B2P, scored some fat loot. Went Halfling + Mystic Balance + B2P "do it yourself bloodmage" (including the traditional hugely sofisticated battle plan of "Stick a Health Pendant on and chaaaaaarge!!!11!one!1") on the Goo (which would have otherwise been a huge pain in the nethers). Health potions - silly cp bonus. Then went regular warlord on the rahther skinny Northern Desert Aequitas.

Halfling warlords look so badass (their art), but tbh, Lemisi found Mystera across the map, and B2P halfling was a huge solution to what would otherwise have been an actual problem. Oh, well, go halfling - shennanigan your way out of anything!

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And then Hobblers set me up with this (and I just had to do the 1 badge + vicious challenge):

VT PQI - Elf Monk - Hobbler's Hold - Faithless / 1 Badge Vicious Challenge



It was harder than it sounds, cramped map, vicious difficulty, too many magic damge monsters, badge challenge, early morning... Used Bycepss and Venom Dagger in the end fight (and would've also got a lot out of a late Lemisi because of all the poison on the boss if he was tougher).

Tricky, Tricky!

I'm getting lovely PQI's so I'm playing them, and Shifting Sands is flaming and I've done it with too much stuff I'd like to play prepped right now.

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Apparently the PQI also heard the phrase "melee Refreshment" and decided it was too cool not to make it happen, so this happened:

PQI - Halfling Transmuter - Western Jungle - Miser



Kinda/sorta a wrong map for it - but on the other hand the exact perfect right badge for it. Make money, tribute like a boss, and it works about as well as you can imagine - provided you can trigger Dodge ofc. Which is kind of a problem because if you can't then the spirit sword is wasted. Still, if you can tank a hit from the boss, you can just reflex into him, dodge be damned. This makes, at least IMO, Dwarven gauntlets a good prep (alchemist scroll for mega health also not a bad idea, you can swill mana potions while you level), and if not miser like I was now grab some DR from the shop if available.

Plants kinda screwed up my dodging here and there, but on a different map, this ought to roll just fine.

V cool, all in all ^^ Especially since you can actually go extra glyph - lemisi will still find the fireball for you, and the getindare will kill something big with the first spirit sword anyway, so it's kinda like starting with both magnet fireball and false beard at the same time. And your CP threshold is 80, so extra glyph means nothing even if you don't pad out the CP bar with spells. V nice - one more highly lethal, yet deeply comedic halfling build!

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And then the PQI decided I have to play something I don't like:

PQI - Dwarf Crusader - Havendale Bridge - Hoarder



Hoarder, the tricky badge that takes out half your setup... To be fair, I was gonna do this Warmonger, as the Tinker Silver thaught me that hoarder Taurog is both tricky and doable in extreme circumstances, but the presence of the Goo put a stop to that plan (in hindsight it's a good thing it spawned right next to the entrance). So I knew I'd be going fireballs by the end, and kinda used momentum to level and what was left of it to dodgestep Zin Kibaru in several hits. Liberally desecrated altars thanks to the collar and transmuted it for inventory space, then went B2P + Bloodswells + Mana Potions on the Goo. The map was cramped, so I didn't agonize over keeping momentum perfect, I kinda winged it as I went along.

Don't enjoy this badge a lot (maybe that changes some day), but you just have to get stuff you don't like out of the PQI otherwie it just sticks there and pulls on your sleeve until you do it. I guess part of not liking hoarder is that PQI is a great way to explore underexplored race/class combos and races in general, and it's just a no-fun badge in that regard.

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Ugh, I just had a disenherteningly facepalmy moment when I realized that I'm gonna be ass deep in Hoarder runs from now on, and that made me so... well, sad, that I decided to go comedicly mad and take it out on the flaming Shifting Passages (and aslo get the Warmonger and a bunch of loot out of there at least):

VT RUN - Halfling Taurogzerker w Namtar's Ward - Shifting Passages - Warmonger / Vicious Token



Well, at least the little buggers are fun. Scored a Keg, went even more berserk and decided to go unstoppable, which almost bit me in the ass! I was stuck at 49 Taurog piety and 0 ways to get one more (or a DP out of him). So I took a 1 piety consensus (facepalm) to get into TT, whereupon I converted my bear mace and namtars ward to get the only health potion I could get (double face palm) for dogestep which I had to tribute for (triple facepalm) - and then I lucked out massively (with a NW Halfling Taurogzerker w a Keg no less, which is like all the over the top warmonger stupidity you can imagine piled on top of each other), anywho, I lucked out because the dodge triggered imediately and I only had one shot of triggering it off a fat imp in the basement if it didn't.

Eh, Halfling Berserkers - for when you really want to blow some steam off.

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And then Southern Swapm flared up and the PQI was Purist Goblin Monk in the Labyrinth, so I went and did it again:

VT RUN - Halfling Berserker - Southern Swamp - Vicious Token / Warmonger



I was actually trying to also get Miser but forgot about it at one point and bought the Trisword because sinergy. I've never really played Halfling Berserkers much before, but the steady stream of Healing potions to spike stuff with on top of the Namtar's Ward makes them kinda crazy versatile for a Warmonger. And powerful, doooooh. Also, I've never really played Namtar's Ward much, was much more of a Dragonshield Monk person (Codex Shennanigans guy too) so when it comes to cheezing this is quite a breath of fresh air for me.

Also feels like some bizzaro universe where you charge at the Magic Damage guys and avoid the other guys. Or just quaff potions and beat up the other guys, too XD Also, you don't need to budge from Taurog much - spike stuff w Potions, have leftover potions, dump DP string into boss. If more than one boss, possibly swap or at least use your head a bit while leveling.

Silly litle buggers ^^ It's like you're roleplaying honey badger.

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A flaming Northern Desert got Honeybadgered to chase all the badges out. Honey BADGEr, I just noticed what I did there

RUN - Honey Badger - Northern Desert - Warmonger / Hoarder / Faithless / Miser - failed due to absentmindedness



Couldn't resist the urge to air the Really Big Sword. Missed Miser by hasty Platemail purchase, don't regret it that much - it doesn't gimp race/class relations that much. Picked up most other badges too, except I allready had them here. Think I'll go Honeybadger something else, too ^^

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But not, it appears just yet - turns out I've done a Berserker in Berserker Camp (a Gnome Berserker Pissorf Spammer), but I haven't done a Transmuter in there so I took the Cauldron jockey for a spin It was WEIRD.

RUN - Gnome Transmuter - Berserker Camp - Pulling it off



I didn't make my life harder than it needed to be by takign the VT, because the place is loaded with magic attack enemies and it's really a Mystera friendly level to begin with, not to mention that the berserker dude has 50% Magic Resists and the build needs stuff besides Weakening spam. I also brought patchs - but got lucky with the items.

But this place is CRAMPED. There's, like, bigger subdungeons than this! I swear, there was a row of like 7 guys in a corridor. And Fireball was on the other end of the map - the roundabout way, since the bridge was all the way west, and the fireball right south of the enterance across the bridge. Luckily I got Endiswall and made great use of both it and Getindare. And there was the Mage Plate in the shop, so I didn't get mana burned by patches so Mystic Balance was in quickly, and I deserated Dracul at some point for Refreshment (overheal from health potions meant I still get to get hits in). There was even a piercing wand!

BUT! There's no way to get debuffed on this map! You can get mana burned, and that's it. And that's useless (shuts down refreshment completely AFAIK, and falls right off if you chug a potion). So I looked long and hard, and figred I could get myself poisoned of Jormugandr (which I did), but in order to get the other debuff - I picked up Martyr Wraps from the shop! Leveled up with them once before the bossfight and got rid of them Still, my cool vicious prep item would've been completely useless if it wasn't for a random shop spawn which didn't have to show up and a random boss which didn't have to show up. So I kinda lucked out massively.

Otherwise it was a fun puzzle, just moving around and getting M piety and not losing it and all that. I suppose more meleey folks could use the Cauldron to overheal massively here, but that thing just feels so unsupported most of the time.

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And then the Honeybadger (well, a NW Berserker) went to weed out some badges in a flaming dungeon:

RUN - Halfling Berserker - Doubledoom - All the remaining badges



Eh, if I'm gonna be doing this hoarder stuff I might as well use some other race so you guys get to see other pictures. Wasn't all that easy, either, with all these badges being chased at the same time, but eh, Namtars Ward, silly little thing. Still, takes a bit of figuring out to get the most out of it.

Got all the badges on Doubledoom, that's a first on this playthrough ^^

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And then this showed up on the Labyrinth and I remember looking to try it out somewhere

PQI - Halfling Assassin (w Codex) - Labyrinth - Faithless



Ho-le-crap.

This is some evil s**t, I tell you. I've seen this thing mess VT Vicious before, and I've done Codex EM a ton before (so I know it's busted), but I've never tried it with Assassins before. Let's just say it's ludicrously sinergistic, and let me just recomend it to you guys. I've had more difficult Labyrinth runs with Titan Guitar prepped.

I did have to convert the codex because the other guy was Bleaty, but if it wasn't a faithless run, I would've totally gone Binlor Stoneskin Halfling on his ass, just to see it happen.

Wow.

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And an illustrative Halflingzerker run:

VT RUN Halfling Berserker of Taurog - Grimms Grotto - Miser / Preps



I made use of Lemisi, Apheelsick (here and there), Imawal, Getindare. I didn't touch: Drac, Pactmaker, Secret Subdungeon, Shops... And the item prep. And the thief prep was Bet on Boss. Cramped map, VT run. The boss was sorta Easy, but it's not like I couldn't take on tougher ones. It's not an advanced strat at all. It's just a very basic, very strong natural Berserker build.

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Question - Any of you guys know of an intelligent and hopefully fun way to do a bunch of flaming stuff to weed out all the hoarder badges out of everywhere? Because if I go an do this every time I don't feel like doing a hoarder PQI I'll run out of Warmonger and still have hoarder everywehere...

[Lujo]

All the "halflings on the wiki" controvery yesterday made me want to make a short illustrative vid, but I ended up just doing a run. Halflings complicated or advanced?

VT RUN - Venture Cave - Halfling Bloodmage - Faithless / Vicious Token



Noooooope. Stick a health boost on you, go find the boss. If tougher boss, use more resources. If more than 1 boss - you ding off one boss, get to second bossfight tougher, also have popcorn, exploration, gods, bloodpools, glyphs, potions etc left over, because you sure as hell don't need much to kill just one boss. And possibly don't fight him at lvls 2-3, but slightly later. Writeup in the Halfling thread otherwise.

This isn't a strat. This is just a halfling with a health boost and B2P. This is ANY halfling with a health boost, B2P and a fireball. Most ussualy have a whole class on top of it, more starting mana and ussually use gods and items and stuff.

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And another one, I forgot to prep the Vicious Token, but here's a big victory screen image just so all stats are shown.

RUN - Magma Mines - Halfling Bloodmage - Was Flaming and the PQI was a Hoarder Vampire



Anyway, if it was a VT run I might've... drank a single bloodpool maybe? Not wasted the entire health/mana pool by killing the second guy right after killing the first guy? Used, like, anything apart from potions and B2P (and, well, the badge I used to whoopaz the boss). Done it in more than 7 minutes? Used my brain a bit?

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[Tinker]

[Astral]

There are 2 methods to counter Hoarder, depending on which part of the badge annoys you more.
Lack of CP? Go Transmuter.
No inventory space after a while? Wizard, Tinker or GG prep. As silly as it sounds wiping your inventory can help a lot at times, but obviously needs forward planning.

Also you could do 'masochist' runs to better appreciate the easiness of the badge. Pepper your hoarder run with prepped JJ and Patches
This last bit is only if you're getting bored. Oh and when playing Hoarder choose a race that seems an unlikely pair of the class. You're less likely to forget the objective and can also watch a rarely seen portrait.