by Sidestepper on Wed Jul 25, 2012 11:33 am
Tried something new, a dedicated damage reducer using the Earthmother prep. It's kind of janky, but it did let me beat Slime Pits as a Wizard, so it's not all bad.
The Setup:
Human Wizard
Platemail
Earthmother
Shield (yes, the one from the blacksmith)
Everything else is optional, but Smuggler's Den/Extra Gold, Extra Glyph, Translocation, Elite and the potion kit of your choice would all be fine compliments.
The idea is to stack DR to exploit SMM's low damage and beat him in a physical regen battle. Wizard lets you comfortably handle Tower of Goo and gets the most mileage out of Clearance of any class. Human grants you endgame melee power that is not significantly different from any other non-striker class.
The strategy tries to exploit the preparation penalty for Earthmother by turning it into an advantage. The extra plants are tolerable on an open map like Slime Pits. More importantly, they give more targets for IMAWAL and more fuel for Clearance. If the odd plant ends up blocking the odd chokepont, it's okay to chop it down. You'll have piety to burn by the end.
Basically, you want to brick plants whenever possible and catfight as hard as you can, reinvesting piety into Vine Form as you can. DR is outrageously strong at low levels, and you will be beating things so hard that you'll forget that you're a wizard. Avoid bricking monsters if you can help it. Not only does this cost you xp, but it also denies you an extra plant from Plantation.
Keep track of how many bloodpools you have. You don't want the number to get so high that you lose piety to overkill. If you have been catfighting with ENDISWAL, you should hit level 7 or so with very few kills, which is important. Midway through level 7, start fireballing Tower of Goo. Pop off Entanglement (preferably in the middle of a battle with a hard monster), and then harvest your popcorn to level up, and then invoke Plantation for massive piety and massive plants. Sometimes Plantation will cut off the path between ToG and the altar, so do this after you've emptied your mana, so that you can use Clearance without wasting potential mana. If you are still blocked, kill a plant or two, it'll be okay. Use Clearance and the odd mana potion to spike ToG to death. This would be the best time to use Schadenfraude if you have one.
Once ToG goes down you should at or near 9. Get your DR as high as you can with Vine Form and your remaining piety. With around 30 DR, you will be a beast. I started the fight with very little black space left and was shocked at how little I needed to win.
As much as I'd like to say that I've broken Earthmother, this is a highly specialized strat that relies on a specific boss combination and map terrain. It feels wonderfully perverse, because Slime Pits is usually frikin hard for Wizards, between SMM and all of the assorted meatmen and meatmen-related-food-products, but with high DR its more like playing a Monk without the damage penalty.
Last edited by
Sidestepper on Wed Aug 01, 2012 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.