So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby Sidestepper on Thu Mar 07, 2013 6:11 am

I just went back to VGT to secure my official Rogue victory and had one of the luckiest runs in a long time. The tower exterior contained Glowing Guardian, BYSSEPS, Venom Ward, Soul Orb, and the Martyr Wraps. I kept Patches until near the very end, and got an amazing FIVE hits of resistance from him, for an extra 20%. o_O

I took five doses of Absolution, but only because I was playing a Rogue. Took Enlightenment once my piety maxed out and then quickly rebuilt to 100. Found Tikki Tooki and Earthmother right as my piety finished refilling, allowing for a painless dip into TT for Dodge and Poison before desecrating EM and switching to Taurog for the armor. The really nasty curses like First Strike and Counter Fireball happened mercifully early and the reveal all curse happened on JJ's tiny little island floor. Dracul showed up on the very last floor, but because of Patches' generosity, getting Blood Shield so late didn't hurt as much as it might have. I actually converted the Ritual Scroll because at that point my resistances were at 65/63 and it didn't really have anything to offer me.

With BYSSEPS on the board, you can basically desecrate Mystera for free once it's down to just you and Horatio + popcorn. Between that and Consensus, I had enough piety for many, many Blood Swells, plus two indulgences for potion use. The Martyr Wraps were just icing.

The only real mistake I made was to forget to use the Long Rant. I literally never remember this thing. As in, there has not been even one occasion where I remembered it.
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby Lujo on Thu Mar 07, 2013 11:07 am

The post above has been very helpful!


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Ok, finally did it. My kingdom gold dropped by about 8000, though, but mostly because I kept killing myself on the retaliate fireball floor. Luckily, this time I hit is soonish, and I managed to survive the obligatory "forgot what floor it was after 3 monsters" ^^

It was a very, very, very strange run. I decided to bring patches in, inspired by sidesteppers last post, but the opposite happened - the little bastard gave me 0 hits of resistances. 0. In 15 level ups or so... Gave me 15 mana post taurog, a big bunch of health and some gold, so that's something.

Anyway, I prepped GG and found an early GETINDARE, found the resist scroll soon enough, but since patches wasn't putting out, I decided to join Taurog pre-enlightment, but post illusion boss (handling that guy without cleansing is asking for fail). No absolutions, those aren't too good on VGT, especially if you're a patches sporting priest, and cleansing is working out incredibly for me.

I decided to convert gloves of midas rather than patches, which turned out to be a good move, and upping your resists asap is the best way to save resources - taurog got me through two floors on that +15 res. I joined Drac afterwards, took two hits of sanguine because I decided to save exploration rather than bloodpools. Ended up saving a lot of bloodpools in the end.

For the boss fight I had platemail and byceps, and long rant (but I forgot to use it :D)

The most curious thing is that I didn't actually desecrate EM at all this time. I had viper ward so I managed to save 2 health potions and the alch shop for the boss fight, but I had no mana whatsoever (Patches, for the love of Jehora!). I did have byceps, so, Inspired by sidestepeprs observation, I bought a schadenfraude potion. Used my health potions while in drac for lesser piety hits, used up all the bloodswells, used up all the sanguine in the process, and got horatio down to 2% res and rather low on health. Had some exploration though, but not enough gold for the assassins dagger which woud've been nice,.

So I took consensus (he he, saved it), and joined GG, and started spamming protections for the mana refill on top of the health refill, and converted everything I had left + desecrated Mystera. And took away her penalty with Byceps. Scraped through (even though I still had one protection and a bloodpool left), on a byceps + getindare hit.

So, all in all, I managed to not kill my own stupid self and played it well, got lucky in places, got very unlucky in places, some floors gave me a hard time, but all in all, the priest isn't half bad at it. Big health makes for big sanguine, 2-3 healing potions make for a lot of damage once you stack resists, and the +100% undead damage helps you not get mana burned by wraiths (if you can do the whole 2 fireballs + getindare, and I've sometimes bought the mana pendant precisely for that).

Nice, what's the next tricky proposition? I suspect I could do a monk, and I think the crusader might be doable (understatement, but still, Rogue is the only thing close to easy mode I've seen so far).



EDIT: All this VGT bussiness makes me think I ought to go grind a huge bunch of gold for more veto slots. I allready took some stuff out and put some other stuff in there, but I have one more to unlock and I have more stuff that keeps coming up unnecessarily. Hmmm...
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby The Avatar on Thu Mar 07, 2013 12:28 pm

I think you can beat VGT with any class. If you can win with the priest, you can win with any of them. If you want a challenge, try gorgon.
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby Sidestepper on Thu Mar 07, 2013 12:37 pm

Nicely done. Glad to see I'm not the only one with problems when it comes to the Long Rant.

I just finished a successful Wizard run. Went Human, and followed a modified Punchomancer strategy where you sac only a few potions and all of your mediocre glyphs. Because Wizard basically starts with a pile of virtual compression seals, I took a Transmutation seal instead and used Ach Wheesht's trick of transmuting one sensation stone right before converting the other. Scummed for GG again (still don't have the courage to not do that), taking a beadless Enlightenment for the mana alone. Between Midas Gloves, Patches, and the Transmutation, I had enough gold to buy a pair of Dwarven Gauntlets. I didn't get much health from them, but the +20% damage was nice. My final damage clocked in at 198. I found the Vampiric Sword, so I was able to get 65% resistances AND Life Steal at the same time. Delicious.

I unthinkingly cleaned up my popcorn right before Horatio, forgetting that I'd need them to to remove Bloodswell curses. I ended up blowing my piety on Blood Tithe instead. Took 4 layers of it, which is something I had never done before. If you have lots of bloodpools left, it's a better deal than Bloodswell. I'll remember that the next time it comes up.
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby Lujo on Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:06 pm

Wow, that was a good call - both the wizard and the sanguine, if you're swimming in health and piety ^^

And yeah - inventory space is huge in VGT, and a compression seal per glyph gives the wizard an unique edge in being probably the only guy who can keep both "the sheep and the money", as they say 'round these parts - he's also probably the only guy who can work the utility glyphs, and also get the conversion benefits from converting the generally largeish floor items for GG piety and all the conversion on top of it.

If there's a sort of reliable candidate for the "one VVGT run needed for completion", i'd say it's either him or the rogue. Not to mention that he has transmuter-like scouting benefits, which are also huge, so if you're scumming for getindare, he's your man.

As for "if priest than everything", I'm not convinced - as I've said, the priest actualy has relevant class features, and strong ones at that. My usual complaining about the priest has to do with regular play and him not being a proper priest causing learning curve issues. Big health, easy wraith/zombie killing and bloodswell-per-health potion are actually much better than most guys have in VGT, it's just not that obvious. I've killed myself stupidly 4-5 times more (multiplication) on possible sucessful runs then I failed because of being a priest, and to be honest, the ones I failed as a priest would've been much harder for many non-priests.

Gorgon, however, has so many problems that I wouldn't contemplate it without somehow having endless scumming gold. No bloodpools or no acessible bloodpools, an inventory slot clogged by ENDISWAL, exploration/mana intensive gameplay, poison strike making GG mad every time you strike something cutting you off from cleansing and humility, damage penalty without the ability to "fix" it because of not being able to go human, randomly needing to endiswal stuff to clear chokepoints, getindare not being so hot because of low damage and rbs eating up another inventory slot... I don't know, but if she's doable, she's not doable in any way reminiscent of the way other guys would go about it... And I seem to be pretty good with her, even if I don't like her too much...

EDIT: Scratch what I've said about the paladin, Human Drac paladin did it with ease. I didn't join up right away, but leveled up off undead, and then joined him, picked up the shield right away (had a bunch of join up piety from kills), worked up 2 hits of sanguine, converted patches before joining because I had 50 resists allready. RBS was prepped as well and I scored a platemail for the run and whurgarble for the kill. Didn't convert halpmeh, but kept using it indiscriminately untill I ran out of mana on the board. Mana burn was tricky but I timed my level ups well. Heck I ended up buying a uselsess fortutude instead of scahenfraude in the end as a complete mistake. Guys who start off with resists => RBS good deal, everybody else, expecially big damage guys => getindare.

I even fought the goat with 6 or so corrosion stuck on me for the whole game, because I wanted to stay low with Drac untill I did all the Halpmeh I could (which included a fair bit of pure blackspace attrition, since I saved almost half of the binlor floor). Ended up with 45 somehow before a halpmeh intensive floor so I took the 3rd hit of sanguine. Didn't even touch pactmaker, and had bloodpools and bloodswells to burn before I needed to reach for consensus... Rbs really makes those goo blobls melt, easpecially combined with halpmeh. I'd say he's another candidate for VVGT, with proper pactmaker use, and possibly scumming for Drac to have more bloodpools handy if anyone's into that...

Gorgon's looking interesting. I'm open to a pleasant surprise with her, and if it somehow miraculously works out then we only have the fighter and head scratching to figure out who the trickiest guy is :D
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby Sidestepper on Thu Mar 07, 2013 6:09 pm

Well, what I said exactly was that the Priest is probably the hardest of the non-standard classes. I had the Gorgon specifically in mind when I made that qualifier. In retrospect, Fighter might be harder than the Priest. The -10% xp per milestone is huge, but we don't have much control over our xp gain in the tower. You have to kill all five monsters in each floor to progress, period. If all the monsters were jammed together into some kind of super floor, then I think the Fighter would shine.

Sorcerer won't be hard exactly, but his advantages don't translate well into the extended endgame that is VGT. I think the big find for him would be HALPMEH, which is the only real way to leverage huge mana pools on the upper floors. Berserker might have trouble because his best power requires him to be lower level than the enemies, and that circumstance doesn't last long in this dungeon. Warlord might also be harder than normal because his usual tactic of "Use tons of resources all at once to win an overwhelming victory" doesn't work as well when you have to score FIVE overwhelming victories in a row per floor.

Glad to hear the Paladin worked out. Like you, I thought that Dracul would be the way to go. The tower creates an insane number of bloodpools, it's just too good to pass up.

I'm glad you've seen the light about the Really Big Sword. The drawback only matters if you are scumming for GETINDERE, otherwise it's all gravy. By the time you are harvesting popcorn, any VGT hero is going to have insane resistances and just doesn't care about low level counter attacks anymore. The biggest problem with the sword is the opportunity cost with Badge of Courage.
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby The Avatar on Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:55 pm

Yeah, that and maybe inventory space problems. I'm not really surprised about the paladin, so I suppose Warlord or Fighter are the hardest. For warlord I would just go ahead and convert CYDSTEPP off the bat, then play it like a guard.
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby dislekcia on Thu Mar 07, 2013 9:26 pm

Warlord Mystera -> Tiki shenanenanegans! ;)
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby Lujo on Thu Mar 07, 2013 11:52 pm

I really wanted to post a gorgon win here, but all my ideas fell through... Any human can complete GT, probably - even warlords and fighters. Regular cydstep was really good on a rogue in there, so a guy who has a guaranteed might on mana potion and +30% damage when below half health is bound to manage.

The Gorgon, however... I think I need a break just to get out of the routine mindset, because she either can't do it, period, due to ridicoulously low attack damage (she caps out really low compared to what you're looking for), or she can do it but I need to figure out the exact best inventory/prep/play setup for a binlor-into-drac guy. Technicaly, if you could get to the boss with an IMAWAL, knockback and might on wall destruction, you could keep making blank walls for 3 mp and knocking horatio into them for both the resist removal and a net +70% of your base damage. Once he's out of resists and at half health, you're double striking (and probably out of mana).

But I can't even get to him, because of low, low damage. The paladin managed without either soul orb or viper ward (I think), gorgon just dies to either eventually... Anyone have any ideas? How would YOU try to get the gorgon through VGT? I suppose there is a way, but I'm a bit stumped, so far...
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Re: So I took the Transmuter to VGT...

Postby The Avatar on Fri Mar 08, 2013 12:27 am

Winning with the gorgon seems like an almost impossible problem. Her damage is too low, she's shut out of GG, she's cut off from bloodpools, and everything she kills becomes a roadblock. I guess this is just more proof she's the weakest class out there. I think your best shot is Binlor to Tiki (go CRAZY with poison) to Taurog (resists and damage %) to Drac (resists and endgame). Then use Knockback (binlor+bearmace[?]) and IMAWALL to take out Horratio.
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