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VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

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VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby Lujo on Tue May 07, 2013 7:48 am

So, Waldo's been clearing everything with everything, and has a mysterious unorthodox strat that beats even vicious token naga city. I've chipped in with the monk VTNC win in case anyone wants to take an othodox approach and get full completions on everything but the two Gaan'Telets. Avatar's allready cleared other vicious VT runs with goblin assassins, and I can attest that between various warlords, rogues, bloodmages, goblin sorcerers and mysterea overuse you can clear all the VT sub vicious runs. The easier one-boss ones can be done by fighters if you know your way around mysterea.

But the vicious badge on vicious (and hard?) Gaan'Telet still eludes even the insanest of the insane vets, it seems. So do a few other badges.

We seemed to be in agreement that regular VGT was too insane until the dam broke and we've had a phase which yielded a big bunch of wins which left only the fighter and warlord as questionable. Gorgon turned out to be a beast. The Priest went a lot better than expected. Transmuter thoroughly stomped. Wizard was really good, and oddly enough I've yet to clear it with the regular cheeze. Except Rogue who went parched. So it's doable. And most badges probably are, if not all but the VT.


Now, assuming Waldo's mystery strat fails, there are problems with the VT VGT. There are problems with regular VGT, make no mistake:
- there is no way to tell what god/floor/item is coming after level 1, so you can't plan ahead. This has yielded a controversial scummy gold intensive approach of prepping one god a scumming for the first floor deity of choice (in my favourite combo it was Binlor + Pactmaker). A successful and worthwhile attempt can have you wasting thousands of gold in preps until you align just the altars.
- Monsters on any floor can significantly challenge any strat, so you have to always be ready for anything with whatever you play. This rather restricts your options in terms of what you're building for. Since wraiths and goo blobs have physical resistance you need either RBS or overwhelming fireball capabilities, but fireball is worthless against golems and meatmen, and rbs denies everyone but the gorgon first strike which means Warlocks and several mini-bosses will mess you up, and pretty much the only thing that works against goblins is big resists
- Eventually everything gets fat enough that nothing but huge resists and huge damage works. This makes dedicated binlor so good if you can make it work because he provides much needed magic resists as well as knockback. But whatever you do, later floors will mess you up if you don't have big resists, and so will horatio
- You also pretty much need a way to take away horatio's resists for most classes otherwise no dice. So binlor, piercing wand or byceps
- The random bosses and items range from "insignificant" to "hell yeah", and depending on which you find when your power can vary wildly.
- The "maluses" on different floors can also range from "no problem" to "insta death" depending on which floor you find them. This can go from "how deep into the dungeon" to "specific floor + specific malus". If you get a fully explored binlor floor you're pretty much screwed with anyone. It mostly revolves around resists - maxing out your resists makes most floors trivial, and having enough popcorn to clear curses helps with other tricky ones. In case you can't do/have either on time you're screwed.
- Several mini-bosses pretty much mandate pre-set solutions. For example, being in GG in time to get rid of the illusion can mean it only costs you 20 piety and 2 small inventory slots, not being in GG can mean it cripples you fataly. Not being lucky to time burn salve / fortitutde potion use to desecrate EM and clear the golden statue debuffs can also be significant.
- Getindare. A few guys can do without it. Most can't.
- For most classes picking sanguine up at some point is mandatory, and bloodswells are also huge so munching popcorn for anything but curse removal is a tricky proposition. Blue Bead usage can still get you places, you just have to be careful.


So what it boils down to is you have to be rather lucky with the floor composition which you can't know anything about in advance past the first floor. Then you have to have ways to kill the early enemies significantly above your level to save as much resources as possible, and time your level ups to get rid of poison and curse. At some point if you don't have enough resistances (and damage) you're f****d, because dedicated spellcasting costs too many resources and you run into the fireball retaliate floor/boss anyway. You cant really make the popcorn munching gods work as well as you generally do because there is around 10 mandatory curses in there which will deplete your supply, and you need some for bloodswells.

It's quite inhumane, takes way too much time and practice, but once you get to think of it as roguelike in your roguelike, it's actually quite fun and addictive. Also doable with pretty much anything. But adding the VT to the mix kills it in the following way:

The monsters get too fat/strong too fast.


In regular VGT the monster composition mandates you go max (as high as possible) res with pretty much anything. And you still get challenged. Now, the point at which this is do or die in regular VGT is floor 3-4, even 7-8, and you spend the first 3 floors fighting pretty much regular lvl8, lvl9 and lvl10 enemies and strategize your way through it - timing dings, exploring between fights, building up, getting mileage from "temporary" items like gloves and troll hearts. The point where you have to have your best setup online comes late enough that you can still get enough piety to pick the relevant boons (or delay picking them up). Then you generally make a headlong rush to the boss, pick up your endgame gear (maryr wraps/byceps) and go to work with the resources you have left.

In VT VGT, you have to have the floor 4-7 setup online for floor 1.

In regular VGT, for the first couple of floors, you have trouble with specific monsters which hurt your particular strat before you have max res. In VT VGT monsters you'd otherwise feel glad about seeing are as fat as regular bosses, and the monsters that would give you trouble cost you as many resources as a whole floor would (or something like that). Sure, a fighter can do a VT run of an easy/low hard dungeons, but it takes him a whole mapful of resources to take out one or two of those guys.

EDIT:*See Below

And you can't really get the setup which would take more of them down online in time. You don't really have any advantages in VGT. Naga City gives you all the altars to choose from and refreshes your exploration, there are keg shops, the amulet, a subdungeon and a bonus subdungeon, and before you face the bosses there is a much bigger map for you to suck resources out of and dismantle completely. Here you have 2 altars to work with, no bonus subdungeon and a 5 boss vawe to work through while being insanely carefull about not overexploring a smallish map.

Now, it might be doable, who knows? But if it is doable, whatever strat, class, combo or whatever can do it is so broken that it's the only place demanding enough to even contemplate using such power. If it turns out a monk can do it I'll laugh my ass off, because then apparently you just can't nerf that guy enough :D

As for other badges:

Purist - Not sure, but a binlor monk would be my bet. Several guys only really need to scum up the right god on the first floor, and might be even better.

Parched - Done it with a Rogue without trying

Faithless - If Vamp is doable then it's doable. Ironicaly when I did it Vamp could use Pactmaker, so I don't have it :D

Cheeky - Obvious

Specialist - See warmonger, because I'm not sure there is a way to reach H with enough resources to burn him out, especially since spellcaster specialist can't whoopaz him.

Ding! Max, Unstoppable - Unavoidable

Miser - Pretty doable, since you can practicaly prep an optimal setup for a Rogue/Monk. For resists, Pactmaker + Binlor with a prepped dragonshield. I'd consider Translocation to snag mana burn immunity ward. Oddly enough The wizard could compensate the lack of CP by leeching glyph CP off of floor drops.

Hoarder - Quite a bit trickier. I am not actually sure how to do this one, but if Tinker can pull it off, two compression seals and two transmutation seals to get rid of temporary utility stuff might give him an edge (although the lack of a secret subdungeon in any map hurts him badly)

Warmonger - A Really StupidTM Dragonshield Knockback Binlor Monk outght to be able to do it. Pretty much the only way to get rid of resists from horatio with miner bombs and saving a really fat meatman and a row of walls to knocback for might. There might be better solutions though, but I've converted all the glyphs before fighting H often, and with RBS (no getindare so why not), you only need a few knockback mights to make him manageable (Rbs + 2 miner bombs + 1 on his level + one before you descend if youre lucky = 13% res Horatio).


EDIT:* One more big thing about 400 HP eneimes on floor 1 in VT VGT is that you can't ding your way through the first 1-2 floors. I generally start fighting floor one enemies at level 4-5 in VGT and without the dings it would cost too much resources I will need later. XP from killing lvl8 eneimes at lvl 5-6 for one thing. In VT VGT fighting them before lvl7 is both too resouce intensive in terms of killing one guy and dinging through the whole floor. This means that not only do I can't have the items/boons/levels when the map demands them, but I also have less resources than I would have in VGT. Regular VGT is like fighting uphill while the enemy pours oil down the slope, VT VGT is the same but in the middle of a s**tstorm with both of your ankles twisted.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby The Avatar on Tue May 07, 2013 12:02 pm

On the first points, I agree that it is just too random. Most dungeons have 5 or so random variables (items, glyphs, gods, monster composition, placement and maybe boss). VGT includes 4 or 5 extra, and to beat it you basically need to get lucky (or not unlucky) on all of them. It just seems overly scummy and ridiculous, and the VT VGT run is even more ridiculous.

Vicious: Probably impossible, totally ridiculous, and incredibly luck reliant. Anything that can beat this should be nerfed.

Hoarder: If Tinker can't no one can. I suppose just a standard res stacking tinker who shops very carefully.

Warmonger: What? A Binlor monk? How are you getting Binlor piety without spells? Unless you want to wait out or scum for the miner (a 1 in 81 chance to get them both on floor 1) and desecrate EM on floor 2 (1 in 648 for all 3) it seems impossible.

Purist: Maybe, but you'll probably have to scum for a tower shield. Rogue night work too.

Of course, we can point out problems with VGT all day, but what about solutions? I would suggest taking out some of the luck variables. Tie a malus and a mini-boss to each floor.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby Lujo on Tue May 07, 2013 1:10 pm

Thought I'd write up the state of things such as they are. As for solutions - well, plenty of it is out of our hands, really. I think some of the special luck actors are allready tied, but not nearly enough. The regular version could use adjustments and possibly a subdungeon or something. Some of the random items are very lacklustre while others are incredible so something could be done about that.

As for badges - sorry about the purist binlor monk. Completely forgot about him not being able to get knockback in any way. But I bet it's doable in some way.

Binlor monk warmonger would probably work rather well - prep a bear mace scum for binlor and you can get 100+ piety just off of the inner topside ring and a goo blob at lvl1. Now, you need the might on wall destruction for further down, but whether you need more knocback is possibly debatable. On the floors past floor 1 just slap stuff into walls at every opportunity. I've done Binlor Warmonger Gorgon in Grimms Grotto, not sure if this would actually be easier or harder.

Hoarder - yeah, that's one way to go about it, but maybe you don't even need the tinker (tinkers get a lot out of conversion). On the other hand they can get rid of 4 items without converting anything, so it's just a question of what's the bigger issue.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby Darvin on Tue May 07, 2013 3:41 pm

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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby The Avatar on Tue May 07, 2013 8:04 pm

@Darvin: It seems off to nerf VVGT and not all vicious token runs. It would probably be best just to nerf VGT and have that nerf affect VVGT also.

@Lujo: Perhaps, but how many walls are there on the main floor? His boons cost a total of 40, +20 more for 100 piety.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby Lujo on Tue May 07, 2013 9:12 pm

Well, weird thing is VVGT is pretty much only one run, so nerfing how the token affects it wouldn't really be off. Especially since VGT itself is so different from everything else.

Nerfing, or adjusting, VGT would probably be fair enough regardless of anything. Nerfing it enough to make a VT run feasable with a wide variety of characters, under the current rules for the token, would be pretty much impossible. Assuming that it's indeed impossible now, and as all 3 of us have said, it probably is and probably should be in its current incarnation ^^

- Binlor monk - I'll give it a shot tommorrow morning. I can't get past the first floor with a fully prepped monk on VT, but that isn't saying much.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby The Avatar on Tue May 07, 2013 9:30 pm

The way I see it, vicious should be beatable with all characters, but vicious vicious should be beatable by 1-3 extremely strong/tailored strategies. If they can nerf it just enough so both conditions are realistically met then they'll be in good shape.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby Sidestepper on Tue May 07, 2013 9:37 pm

It probably won't happen because of interface issues and complexity of concept, but one thing that would help a lot is the ability to veto one of the floor effects right as it gets announced but right before it triggers. This would let you swat away really horrible combos like Binlor+All Reveal or high floor + whatever is antithetical to your build.

The ability to surgically remove one effect like this might be just enough to tip the scales.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby The Avatar on Tue May 07, 2013 10:35 pm

Agreed. I just got a Vampire to Horratio (none VT run) only to find he was bloodless.
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Re: VT, VGT, and badges in VGT

Postby Darvin on Tue May 07, 2013 11:10 pm

Problem is that certain classes would always veto the same effect.

I think that certain combos need to be precluded, that's all. Bloodless Horatio and revealed Binlor are the two worst offenders.
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