Vicious Token Talkin'
Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 4:28 am
Just some idle chit chat about the Vicious Token.
1. I really like the presence of the Vicious Token. It really lets an expert go all-out and still struggle, but have a manageable challenge.
2. I've beaten all the dungeons with the Vicious Token, except for Hard Gaan-Talet and all of the natively Vicious dungeons. Of the Hard dungeons, I would say Halls of Steel is the easiest; if you find the Orb of Lusory early, and something to not have to fight Steel Golems, you have it made. Cursed Oasis was probably the toughest. I expected Rock Garden to be easy; I consider it to be one of the easiest Hard dungeons, with its extra spoons and extra popcorn. But it turns out cranking up the difficulty on the bosses means that three of them together end up being quite tough. Conversely, Hexx Ruins was easier than I feared. You don't have enough resources to kill all the monsters and revenants; luckily the monsters I couldn't finish added up to only 36% resists, the boss is relatively weak, and I was able to whittle away those resists with a Piercing Wand.
3. I started with a Dwarf Rogue, which is the combo I used for most Vicious dungeons including VGT, but ended up switching to Human Sorcerer for most of these runs. The ability to heal early on is a big advantage and helps kill those difficult level 2 monsters at level 1. Later on, having the big mana pool is nice, although the healing becomes mostly irrelevant.
4. I mostly prepared Dragon Soul. I don't know whether Namtar's Ward, the Dragon Shield, or heck even the Avatar Codex might be better.
5. An early Balanced Dagger is a huge help, because fighting monsters even one level higher means using resources or a lot of blackspace. Balanced Dagger + WONAFYT is awesome. The Witchalok Pendant is also very nice. By contrast, Martyr Wraps are pretty much worthless unless you happen to hit Super Meat Man I guess. Whrbargl is surprisingly helpful for those big damage spikes on bosses where you put in a melee swing to activate Schadenfreude. An early +HP item is also very nice.
6. The "basic" boss melee attack is 120, and most characters will top out at level 8 (hard to get bonus XP, hard to kill the level 9 monsters), so you either need a way to boost your resists or a way to never take a hit. I ended up using Tikki Tooki a lot; it's not easy, because saving enough popcorn is hard, but Reflexes is a great source of damage. The warlock boss is pretty much untankable.
1. I really like the presence of the Vicious Token. It really lets an expert go all-out and still struggle, but have a manageable challenge.
2. I've beaten all the dungeons with the Vicious Token, except for Hard Gaan-Talet and all of the natively Vicious dungeons. Of the Hard dungeons, I would say Halls of Steel is the easiest; if you find the Orb of Lusory early, and something to not have to fight Steel Golems, you have it made. Cursed Oasis was probably the toughest. I expected Rock Garden to be easy; I consider it to be one of the easiest Hard dungeons, with its extra spoons and extra popcorn. But it turns out cranking up the difficulty on the bosses means that three of them together end up being quite tough. Conversely, Hexx Ruins was easier than I feared. You don't have enough resources to kill all the monsters and revenants; luckily the monsters I couldn't finish added up to only 36% resists, the boss is relatively weak, and I was able to whittle away those resists with a Piercing Wand.
3. I started with a Dwarf Rogue, which is the combo I used for most Vicious dungeons including VGT, but ended up switching to Human Sorcerer for most of these runs. The ability to heal early on is a big advantage and helps kill those difficult level 2 monsters at level 1. Later on, having the big mana pool is nice, although the healing becomes mostly irrelevant.
4. I mostly prepared Dragon Soul. I don't know whether Namtar's Ward, the Dragon Shield, or heck even the Avatar Codex might be better.
5. An early Balanced Dagger is a huge help, because fighting monsters even one level higher means using resources or a lot of blackspace. Balanced Dagger + WONAFYT is awesome. The Witchalok Pendant is also very nice. By contrast, Martyr Wraps are pretty much worthless unless you happen to hit Super Meat Man I guess. Whrbargl is surprisingly helpful for those big damage spikes on bosses where you put in a melee swing to activate Schadenfreude. An early +HP item is also very nice.
6. The "basic" boss melee attack is 120, and most characters will top out at level 8 (hard to get bonus XP, hard to kill the level 9 monsters), so you either need a way to boost your resists or a way to never take a hit. I ended up using Tikki Tooki a lot; it's not easy, because saving enough popcorn is hard, but Reflexes is a great source of damage. The warlock boss is pretty much untankable.