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Cursed Oasis with Transmuter

PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:07 am
by Bloggorus
Really close to nabbing that Dragon Soul, now all I need is a Transmuter run.

Really struggling, advice would be wonderful. My only strat with Trans is exploiting ridiculous amounts of CP, but health monsters are my least favorite kind of class.

No idea how to play this class, let alone deal with Cursed Oasis shenanigans.

Re: Cursed Oasis with Transmuter

PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:28 am
by Darvin
I'd agree that Transmuter is the most annoying of them. Try the human and go for damage stacking if you don't like HP stacking.

Re: Cursed Oasis with Transmuter

PostPosted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 7:59 pm
by Naoya
Dwarf Transmuter. Ugh.

Well, I relied on Gods for it. Either Dracul or TT - Quicksilver + Reflex is VERY helpful if you try to do it without killing the shade, while Dracul should simply give you enough Power to outlast both, especially if you spam spells like a madman.
Unless you want to fight the shade, I'd try to avoid bandits - try leveling up via carefully weakening AA's or Thralls instead. Fight Shades only if you've uncovered large parts of the map. Keep glyphs conversions for the boss.

Re: Cursed Oasis with Transmuter

PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 3:54 am
by sitnaltax
Being a Dwarf isn't great--I think Transmuters prefer to be human--but you work with what you have. The extra HP can allow you to take a single hit from an Animated Armor that you wouldn't otherwise be able to, that's probably the biggest advantage. I wouldn't focus on health; attack is still preferable when you're buying items in the dungeon. Namtar's Ward is a good prep if you have it; otherwise, try Dwarven Gauntlets or maybe even a Fine Sword. Prep a Compression Seal so you can carry more stuff into the cursed realm with you.

Transmuter is really not an awful match for Cursed Oasis. One of the big challenges of this dungeon is that in the cursed realm, you don't have access to the overworld goodies you need. With Transmuter, you can LEMMISI a bunch at the beginning to find the important stuff: glyphs, altars, boosters, maybe a good shop item. Because Spirit Sword gives you a single big attack, GETINDARE and WEYTWUT are uncommonly useful. CYDSTEPP sort of works too, I guess. After you've got what you need, convert LEMMISI and use that big attack (hopefully with first strike; possibly with fireball support) to drop a level 3 monster. Take this strategy of converting a glyph and then hitting a monster hard as far as you can; this should give you lots of bonus XP and conserve popcorn.

General Cursed Oasis advice: Manage your popcorn carefully. You need it for fighting Animated Armors, for midfight level-ups, and for removing curses strategically to make a trip or two back to the normal realm to pick up boosters and shop. Bandits are by far the easiest monsters to kill, but they curse you. An ideal board has lots of bandits in the level 6-9 range so you can get a couple levels using mostly them immediately before tackling the first boss. Higher-level Animated Armors have relatively low HP, so sometimes with the help of a mana potion or something you can fireball them to take off a level of death protection, ignite the Burning to take off another, and then they're weakened enough that you can survive a hit.

The WONAFYT glyph is helpful in this level if you find it, because it lets you pull Shades out of blackspace without them draining your HP. The Piercing Wand is helpful for lowering the Cursed Shade's resists, as is BYCEPPS, but neither is necessary; it has a very shallow HP pool. The second boss has Retaliate: Fireball, so either spend your mana resources on the first boss or have another glyph available that will allow you to turn mana into damage (CYDSTEPP, PISORF and an appropriate layout, APHEELSIK if you happen to have blackspace left).

Re: Cursed Oasis with Transmuter

PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:39 am
by Lujo
Three things that should work with the Dwarven transmuter is:

1) The general rule of transmuterdom - when you gonna fight something time your glyph conversions. Spend your mana, convert a glyph, hit something, convert another if necessary, hit it again.

2) Earthmother - IMAWALLING popcorn removes curse and gives XP. Entanglement keeps wraiths from blinking and messing you up, and saving LEMISI for the curse realm to reveal a few of them is nice.

3) If you know how to use the avatar's codex with EM it works spectacularly well on CO, especially since the dragon has retaliate fireball anyway. Being a dwarf and using glyph conversions to spike monsters with phys damage once your mana runs out should net you a big health pool by the end.