by Darvin on Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:31 pm
Dragon Isles
The Taurog Berserker is your most reliable standby, but other options do exist: Gnomish followers of Jehora Jeheyu. The assassin and warlord are both excellent selections against the Matron. Now that she has magic resistance, the Assassin (who will use a fireball-based strategy) may have additional difficulty, but the Warlord's CYDSTEPP'ing should be unaffected.
Also remember that there is the LEMMISI/WEYTWUT combo. Using LEMMISI in the final subdungeon, you can reveal the Matron's guards. Use WEYTWUT to swap places with the last one of her guards, allowing you to bypass them entirely. The upshot of this is that you avoid fighting six level 9 opponents with nasty status ailments. The downside is that you'll need to pay a total of 16 mana for a round trip to the surface if you need to visit shops or alters.
Naga City
It's all about the deities on the lower floor, bouncing from one to the next and desecrating altars to keep your piety up. You'll need to find a good way to defeat every single type of enemy here, and you'll need to keep BURNDAYRAZ to knock through the final boss's death protection. Caster characters and CYDSTEPP characters are going to have significant trouble with Frank and SMM. Tank characters and CYDSTEPP'ers are going to have trouble with Wall of Goo. Pure casters will have trouble with Ironman, and Tanks will have trouble with Tomithy (and will need to find a way to deal with Bleaty, who isn't very difficult once you can survive a single hit).
The Gnomish Warlord is a solid pick here. The Orc Rogue also works, but you'll need to boost health to get your HP up to very high levels. The Orc Rogue plays best as a hybrid CYDSTEPP'er/tank, and will require careful boon planning to get both resistances and hit points (most likely some combination of GG, JJ, Pactmaker, and Dracul on the surface). You could also try a caster hybrid; I find thieves work quite well even with the potion nerf. Boost your resistances to deal with some enemies and use your spellcasting powers against others.
Vicious Halls of Steel
Good luck buddy.