QCF Design Community

Hello all, new player here, and have started unlocking some of the much harder dungeons just using basic tactics like killing higher-leveled monsters, now that I've started getting destroyed by the vicious dungeons, what strategies and tricks can I start applying to become a better DD player overall?

Just a few off the top of my head...

Regen fighting: hit a monster til it will kill you, regen 1 square til you can hit it again.

Level catapulting: level up mid-fight by killing a weak monster, allowing you to finish off a strong monster. You're probably familiar with this strategy from killing bosses, but it's useful for killing other things too.

Sometimes you can get in a hit on a new monster before killing your current one if it's going to level you up. This is useful for enemies that poison or mana burn. I also like to kill off plants before leveling up.

Try playing an assassin and revealing an entire dungeon before killing anything. It can actually be viable sometimes, and is a completely different way to play which makes it interesting.

Vicious needs extremely specific strategies to win Vicious. Use the bosses stats to formulate a strategy.

Regen fighting can be very powerful, although at the moment if you want to maximize your potential you'll often need to break out the calculator. (Note: you never actually need to do this, but it can significantly improve your potential.)

Calculate how much damage you deal to a monster with a single hit: your attack power (base damage * bonus damage, including any applicable bonuses like Warlord, Berserker, or Priest class bonuses) times the monster's resistance. (Actually the inverse of the resistance: to apply 25% resistance, multiply your attack power by 75%.)

Calculate how much damage the monster will deal against you with a single hit: the monster's attack power times your own resistance.

Now divide the damage the monster will take by the monster's level (times two if it has fast regeneration, in which case you probably shouldn't be regen fighting it anyway) to determine how many tiles it will take the monster to fully regenerate from the attack; then divide the damage you will take by your own level (times two if you're a Monk) to determine how many tiles it will take you to fully regenerate. As long as you require fewer tiles than the monster, you can kill it via regen fighting provided you have enough tiles.

(The calculations can become even more complex when you factor in your and the monster's staring HP values, your ability to cast spells and regenerate MP, and various other traits, but that's the basic approach. With experience you'll get better at estimating whether you can out-regenerate a monster or not.)

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It's also helpful to become very familiar with the existing deities. You can often benefit quite a bit from piety farming - take advantage of an early Mystera or Binlor altar to gain piety by casting spells while you explore, then convert to a different deity once you hit 100 piety, resulting in 50 starting piety with deities who are often much stingier about what they reward. Binlor + BLUDTOPOWA is a very potent combination, since you'll end up with more than enough piety to use his resistance-stripping boon repeatedly. If you don't have any starting resistances, you can also desecrate his altar immediately after converting out; that plus a free glyph to convert can make it feasible to get GG's Enlightenment at a very low level, setting up the potential for massive bonus experience.

Finding out your deity selection is one of the most important things to do early on - making Scout Altar a very useful preparation in every dungeon other than the Tower. You generally want to refrain from picking up or converting glyphs until you know your deities, as some deities reward conversion with piety, and some deities have a preference for or against certain glyphs. Likewise, you often want to avoid killing too many monsters until you've planned out which deities you want to use - save magical enemies for Taurog, save undead for GG, save low level enemies for Tikki Tooki, kill undead before worshiping Dracul, etc.

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One other, simpler but very important strategy: take advantage of spells that can be pre-cast - i.e., cast it and then regenerate the MP it cost before attacking a monster. CYDSTEPP, BICEPS, IMAWAL, ENDISWAL, and to an extent WEYTWUT and GETINDARE are all most effective if you pre-cast them.

Yes. This is exactly it. All of that. It's fairly easy to factor in fireballs. Add the first two to your original attacks, and then add one for every 6 tiles.

Hm... Perhaps. An easy win on Namtar is CYDSTEPP rogue. In fact, all of them, excluding naga city and gaan-telet, are handleable as a CYDSTEPPing halfling rogue. You basically need a can of Whupaz, so if you're having trouble without this item, get it. It is super helpful for all dungeons. SUPER helpful. Witch 3 if you don't have it yet.

WItch 3 has also been a huge thorn in my side. I've been jumping around as each dungeon frustrates me, but perhaps I'll focus again on that quest.

If you are about to level-up, use whatever magic/health you can spare to attack a stronger enemy. Then go back to the enemy that was going to level you up. When you level-up, you will have replenished health/mana and a strong enemy who is now weaker. Often, I try to get my experience 1XP away from leveling up just so I can do this easily. It's kind of like getting 2x health and mana to kill a single enemy.