QCF Design Community

So, I was reading earlier forum posts and this post by Nandrew by Nandrew reminded me that I wanted to try Paladin Gold again. I'd beaten it before, but it was thanks to a lucky Piercing Wand found in the shops. While that kinda felt like cheating, I'd been trying it for quite a while and didn't feel like trying again at the time. Well, seeing that he called it the easiest challenge to beat consistently, I thought I owed it to myself to beat it without the challenge-specific gameshark which is the Piercing wand

But...

I just...



Can't...



Do it! T_T

So I thought I should bring it up here... The strategy I'm going for is:

-Be an Elf (or Gnome?)
-Worship EM right away and make a point to *only* get the Greenblood (corrosion) boon (with perhaps Entanglement once or twice)
-Petrify as many monsters as possible - Anything that you're not planning on killing (such as a level 9 zombie or goo), with a preference for undead as they are bloodless, plants (though make sure there's enough for clearance to refill as much as possible), assuming of course that these options won't get you blocked
-Try and time boons so that you are at 0 (or almost) Piety right before level up blow, so that you can take out the more troublesome plants without losing Piety in the process.
-Levelling up should happen fairly fast because of the near-constant XP bonus from IMAWAL, level/stats don't appear relevant for the boss because of ridiculous resistance
-When out (or near out) of blackspace for piety accumulation and you can tank one boss hit, use up all physical attacks in conjunction with BISSEPS (which appears to spawn every run?) to remove a small percent of the resistances. (Not sure if using Halpmeh for extra bisseps hits is better than conserving MP for fireballs - )
-Proceed to unload firery hell onto boss, which will stack burning along with the corrosion that had been accumulating since the begining so that fixed damage bypasses the 95% resistances(80% or so after BISSEPS)
Things being used for the above step:
-Potions
-Schadenfreude potion from Apothecary
-Plantation/Clearance (This boon is not to be touched at all before the boss fight, as its cost increases surprisingly fast)
-Mid-fight level up (if elf, make sure to convert as much as possible first, to have max mana filled out by level-up)

That's the basic idea behind my playing this challenge. It could very well be that I'm just not playing well enough; my exploration tends to be a bit too wasteful,though the plants everywhere make this very difficult to do well here). However, It also feels like i'm missing something if this mission can be reliably beaten, And yet, my last two attempts brought the boss down to about 50HP (see screenshot!), which feels like I was very close to beating it...
So I wanted to know what the forum's residents thought!

So, am I doing wrong? Am I just bad? Is there a *secret* to beating this (other than Piercing Wand! )

(note: I would add more details but I'm falling asleep on the keyboard)

Cheers!


-

I'm also sort of curious about this place. Once upon a time when challenges were new (and some of them tougher), this was the only gold challenge I had beaten (I think). I think it was an Orc paladin and something and somesuch. And for a long time it seemed to be the easiest one to me (or among the easier ones). But on the last playthrough I banged my head against it a bunch of times and I remember also somehow "cheating" my way through it.

Which is a bit odd, since I've pretty much never had problems with either plants or resistant weakening naga bossess even when everybody else did. Whish I could help, though.

lol

Okay, this one just feels kind of mean...



Probably not insurmountable? But certainly mean


EDIT:

Took a hit of clearance... was not dissapointed.

I did it! And I'm amazed that worked! XD



I owe you, Lujo! You said the words "Orc Paladin" and that flicked a switch in my head. A rather strange switch, which was linked to a number of strange rotating contraption involving a few miniature monkeys, but hey, a lightbulb's a lightbulb, no matter how strange it is!

Now, I have no idea whether or not this was the intended solution (I don't think I'd have won that round without Pissorf, which I don't think is guaranteed, but it's hard to tell with DD), but it was quite wacky and I have to admit I'm rather pleased with myself for coming up with it, even if it turns out it's the way you're supposed to do it. So, the modification I did to the above strategy was...

(This picture being from my first, failed attempt at the modified strategy)


...to explore the entire map at level 1! After all, the Piety gain with EM comes from petrifying enemies, which you can do regardless of levels. You can deal with the plants/exploration with Endiswall or Weytwut (I guess Pissorf could work too?). So I reached the same level of corrosion on the boss and was ready to start fighting... and yet I still had 7 level-ups' worth of additional mana with which to kill the boss! A combination of the IMAWALL exp bonus and entanglment, along with the 12 points of corrosion on the lower level monsters (easy level3 kill at level 1) allowed me to keep levelling up using only my physical attacks, along with the health potions at the higher levels. At level 8, I had harvested enough popcorn to go from 0 to 100 piety with plantation (exactly 100 piety, actually!), which kept the mana coming (along with schadenfreude). I tried once as an orc, figuring I'd need the base damage to clean up the monsters, but fell quite short. I then figured I ought to take an elf instead, since each level up could be getting me around 20 mana instead, which ended up working, as I could knock the boss into a plant 4 times per level up. By the time I killed the boss, I still had a mana potion lying around, along with the 8 mana you see on the screenshot.

The reason I suspect this wasn't the intended solution is that the only glyph I think actually spawns every run is bisseps, which I assume we're meant to use to chip away at the resistances... and as far as I can tell, this would've failed without Pissorf, which let me land more attacks (both had the same damage, since the resistances nullified everything except the corrosion; burning, it turns out, is reduced by resistances). But still... I like that this game let me run with this silly idea. It's one of the reasons I love Desktop Dungeons.

I hope you'll excuse me for indulging in this little writeup, but I can't deny I feel quite proud of myself for basically coming up with this myself. =D

Wow, that is indeed a fun strategy. I've always been a resistance chipping person, but this is unique and fun. Good for you for thinking of it.

Haha, oh wow. Okay, that's a bit of abstract genius, I'm glad you had such a lot of fun with your solution (and that it actually paid off, my mind's blown!)

(--edit--)

You should try taking that tactic into standard dungeons and see how many situations it works with!

Wow! That's an awesome way to do him in Very glad that I helped, and I like a nice lengtly writeup

Also, a nice fellow called Sidestepper turnd "acid everything and burn to a crisp" into an arform, whish I knew where the thread was. You took punishments from EM untill you were a walking blob of corrosion, right?

And Pisorf spam is basically what gets you through the Wizard Gold and Sorceror and Bloodmage challeges (at lest it got me). Last full playthrough I had a phase where I was actualy glad I learned a lot about the tchnique through challenges and ended up using Pisorf a lot more than I did before. A lot of rarely mentioned items combine into good support for it and what you've learned here is great because it'll be easier for you to figure out when it's in fact the best solution to a conuncdrum, so thumbs up!