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Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

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Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby Lujo on Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:00 pm

Something Avatar said relating to VICIOUS dungeons struck me today. He said Namtar was easy these days, and I distinctly remember Namtar's lair being my least enjoyable VICIOUS dungeon. It always seemed excessivel difficult compared to most other stuff.

He said he just prepped Binlor and then ??? and proffit. So I gave prepping binlor a whirl in the Rock Garden quest for the witch. It was... unreal. I prepped him, got him right away, got the knockback, got the might on wall destruction (which I triggered from subdungeon walls later), got above 50 piety and used the rest of the walls for the -enemy resists boon untill there were no more topside walls left. Oh, and a pretty chunk of magic resistance.

Then I switched to mysteria and proceeded to play the game. :shock: So, I basicaly started playing with 50% knocback, half the map explored, some mysterea piety, no walls anywhere, and might on subdungeon walls destroyed, oh, and - about 30% resists off any enemies present. If what avatar said is true, the same thign works equally well on Namtars Lair, and in my expirience, whatever non-specific game element works there is really, really powerfull.

So, apart from really low wall levels like Ick Swamp or the new Eastern Tundra, is there any reason not to prep Binlor wherever you go? 10 prep gold gives a player the following:

- Certain extra ENDISWALL spawn. This translates to extra 100 CP if you find another ENDISWALL.
- 25 Piety if joining another god at 50, acuirable at lvl 1. This goes up to 50.
- If Binlors desecration penalty still hit's resists, and you don't care about resists, then you have an easily desecratable altar for sure.
- 50% knockback.
- Free might on wall destruction, with limited chance if you use up all the walls. Easily explotietd with knocback, and with walls in subdungeons.
- Practialy as many hits of -5 resists on all monsters present as the level allows.
- Bonus magic resistance per boon taken (mitigated if you choose to desecrate, but that depends on your strat).
- No problem exploring / no problem reching every dark spot, with consideration for a lot of wated exploration for the initial piety buildup.


Anybody has thoughts on this? I know I could get all sorts of stupid mileage out of all this even if it's "working as intended", but I'd feel like a doofus every time I beat something that way. I couldn't say I tested a level properly, seeing how my strat would start with: "Step one - remove all the walls from the level, step two - kill your first monster..."

Honestly, the only thing missing is a way to get gold out of all this...
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby Fran on Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:22 pm

You pretty much summarized it. Although you have to see that you could afford many things in a similiar way in the game already. For example, BYCEPS gives you might and lowers resistance on enemies for less MP and is not dependent on walls (although you also lose the 20% phys. resistance and it's only a single enemy, but you won't affect offscreen enemies with the boon either). It's still pretty overpowered at the moment but at the same time most boons are opposed to each other; knockback and might are less valuable without the walls as you said yourself and although you clear alot of space to explore, you also loose alot of mana this way (which you could have used to fireball enemies).

The only things not opposed to each other are the resistance shifting (lowering enemies, buffing your own, which is pretty useless when there are no resist heavy monsters / the enemies have physical damage / curse interrupts you quite well) and the huge piety payout for converting. Although I wouldn't consider removing walls from subdungeons as an exploit.

Just consider Binlor a terrain-diety instead of a class-build-diety, like EM. Everybody profits from him if the dungeon is narrow and you more easily profit from EM when the dungeon is more open. You can use him quite well on certain maps and not so much on other maps. He may be good for namtar but shouldn't be to great for dragon isle. As long as you can't abuse him on every single map, I think this is fine.
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby Lujo on Sat Jun 09, 2012 10:01 pm

Yeah, this is so to a degree. And especially about the cost/benefit of taking all you could take from Binlor, but on the other hand, if you can gauge what you need, you need to invest a lot less into him which then translates to the piety bonus, the wall destroying bonus, the knockback (bouncing monsters off each other) and a free EDISWAL, with everything else situational but great if it works.

I still have a feeling I'd prep him everywhere just for that, most likely, except if there were a very specific deity/level advantage for another level. Or of the level had no walls like Ick Swamp. Even getting half of the list for 10 gold, some mana and exploration, while letting you play any level as a very open map is probably what I'd choose over mostly anything else. Needs testing, though.

And another thing is that iit might turn out that he works too good on certain maps, and doesn't work at all on others. I'd consider this a bit of a problem, if the too good part translates to getting too much stuff from the list in the original post for a very small investment.
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby fall_ark on Sun Jun 10, 2012 12:35 am

I think the thing is that unlike most gods, Binlor pretty much doesn't interfere with your normal gameplay: The only thing you have to worry about is 10 piety lost when levelling up, and that's very easy to overcome with ENDISWAL. And he utilize a resource that you won't have much mileage out before: walls.

So unless the opening is really favourable with easy-to-kill high level monsters (which is pretty much impossible in the current version in harder dungeons), you can always go to Binlor: You are going to waste exploration regeneration anyway, so getting some piety & physical resistance out of ENDISWAL is a no brainer. And if you find another god later on? BAM. High piety conversion. Hell I'd have Binlor even if he has no reward at all. The fact that he has such a useful reward theme(lower resistance & gives magical resistance) right now is just cherry on top.
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby The Avatar on Sun Jun 10, 2012 2:29 am

Okay, here's what it is. For wall heavy dungeons, especially Namtar and Avatar, my newest strategy is get 100 piety, use stone forms to seriously boost magic to 40. 100 more piety, use 50, convert out with 1000% or so stone skin, 60% magic res and 25 piety in your new god. If getting rid of resists is more important than magic res, as in the case of the avatar, you use your piety on Stone Heart.

Also, you are guaranteed a secret subdungeon in 90% of dungeons.
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby Darvin on Sun Jun 10, 2012 3:23 am

Binlor has benefitted enormously in subtle ways over the versions. You pretty much always want to find ENDISWAL now, so it's one of the best free glyphs anyone can give, and your biggest problem early game is wasting tiles. As a Binlor worshipper, you only waste tiles if you've busted every last visible wall or if you're mana burned (both situations avoidable). Binlor is a great piety farm, offers a variety of potent boons, and is a great launching pad to jump to other religions.

Binlor is the only preparation that lets you reliably carve a path around blockages (JJ gives WEYTWUT, but I'm loath to place "Jehora Jeheyu" and "reliable" in the same sentence), he's one of only a tiny handful of deities that can reliably piety farm at level 1 without having to kill anything, and he has the only way to reduce enemy resistances en-mass, and he's the most cost-effective way to build up magic resistances.

That's a few too many things Binlor is best at, and when he can do all of them at the same time it gets to be a problem. When the factors converge such that all of these things are important, then Binlor becomes obscene.
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby The Avatar on Sun Jun 10, 2012 4:19 am

The funny thing is I've been abusing this for so long that it never occurred to me that not everyone did it...

Anyways, if you need any more proof I just got a Goblin fighter in Namtar's Lair through Binlor into Taurog (Probably the worst conversion option other than TT).
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby Lujo on Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:55 am

So we are sort of agreed that Binlor has become one of those "harmless looking utility singularities"? Any decent powergam... erm, PRO, can bypass too much gameplay just by prepping him.

Sorry to bust an exploit of the month like this, but I guess Avatar allready busted it, as usual. It only occured to me just how exploity it is because I wasn't active when they allowed to prep gods for low penalties, so I didn't even think about prepping them untill now. And it only works if you have other gods to convert to, so it was a bit off my radar... I guess I have a bit of a problem with touching stuff that seems theoreticaly broken. I just can't believe something like that would be sitting there in front of me...

Well, lets gloriously abuse the livig crap out of it to unlock stuff untill they fix it. :)
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby TigerKnee on Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:13 am

I think the biggest help Binlor got this version is the 50 -> 10 gold prep cost and the changes to loans overall. I used to prep him every time I'm actually trying to beat dungeons instead of earn gold because Binlor is a god that you LOVE to get as soon as you step in the dungeon, but if you didn't prep him and find his altar in the middle of the dungeon, then he's not that useful an altar except to kick over if you aren't playing a resist class.

One problem with converting to Binlor is that he doesn't give you EndIsWall if you do that, and if you didn't pick up the Glyph elsewhere you suddenly kind of have a problem where you can't earn any piety but he's draining 10 per level anyway.

I guess if there's another issue with him, it's that breaking walls is pretty mana hungry. Certain classes like Warlord and Assassin are already pretty mana hungry inherently and adding the need to smash walls on top of that doesn't help.

But yeah, he's a strong god now if prepped. Unprepped he's a bit iffy.
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Re: Thoughts/Questions about Binlor

Postby fall_ark on Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:13 am

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