General-Purpose bragging topic!

[Lujo]

Here's a brag - Purist Halfling Wizard in Grimms Grotto. Vs Super Meat Man (about 1400 HP). On a new profile with barely anything unlocked (pretty much only the berserker, in fact I think that IS the only thing), and my only available god was a rather late Taurog. Took shennanigans, and careful Taurog junk conversions for health potions. Tower shield was involved, so was Bloody Sigil, and it was a tough ole run.

[Astral]

That's quite nice. I always like dungeons so intense they involve Taurog gear conversion. Apart from Halflings not a lot of crowds benefit from it.

[Blovski]

Oh I banged my head against Thief silver for soooo long when it first came out. Cracked it at the point on my one last try before giving up. They made it a bit easier/less luck-based I think since.

[Lujo]

[Astral]

Oh that's true.

This reminded me of a cool application of Taurog on spellcasting Transmuters: abusing the spirit sword bug for multiple 100% mana refills. If you activate Spirit Sword, don't hit anything but reduce your max mana with buying a Taurog boon and then activate SS again you won't get a working SS, since it will be weaker than your previous. The mana refill does happen though, so it's like having a double powered Refreshment that works on any CP not just glyphs.

It's kinda kept at bay by the fact that Elves would increase their max mana on each conversion, so the SS bug turns off very soon, and the other Transmuters won't reach high mana with Taurog.

[sitnaltax]

Holy cow. I just got Hoarder on VGT. I finished off H with the last resource I had available--the death protection from Yang's Sword.

My first couple of attempts were with a Paladin. The nine subdungeons were fine, but even 65% physical resist doesn't punch through H, especially with no lifesteal. It was clear that I just needed more raw power.

The only class that seemed to offer that power is Wizard. The additional power comes from two sources: first, the additional items I can take because my glyphs are small; second, switching gods. (Getting GETINDARE for cheap is also awesome.) I chose Human, because amazingly, it matters.

Preps: Translocation Seal, More Attack, Black Market, Dragon Shield, WHUPAZ/Reflex/Dodge/Burn Salve, Perseverance Badge, Quest Items, and the one you maybe weren't thinking of: Earthmother. As in my Triple Quest win, I had a bunch of quest items I didn't want vetoed.

It turns out Earthmother is a critical prep here to get some precious piety sparkles AND to give an extra altar to desecrate. You can desecrate both of her altars, and you don't even get extra corrosion for the second.

Anyway, the overall gods plan is this: Drac -> Jehora for the two free fillups (one from Chaos Avatar, which is why being Human is good, and one from Last Chance) -> Consensus + desecrate/gather sparkles for Tikki Tooki -> Reflexes at the very last minute. I go back and forth between taking Blood Hunger vs. the extra resistance possibility; but because I wanted piety to go switching, I took one level of Blood Hunger and two of Blood Tithe. (Didn't really have the piety for a third, and the lack of max HP starts to hurt.)

The glyph/item loadout was about as good as I could hope for. GETINDARE is a must, and I found HALPMEH which was great before and after Drac. I Translocated the Vamp Blade, bought a Piercing Wand which I knew I'd want eventually, and bought a Fortitude Salve. GETINDARE, vampirism, some lucky Golem and Meat Man monsters, and judicious use of resources got me through the subdungeons with what turned out to be a barely adequate amount of blackspace and blood remaining.

Before the end I bought two items I had been holding out on all dungeon: Platemail and Martyr Wraps. The combination of these two was as potent as you might expect, and was the only way I can even imagine taking H down. Even so it was a struggle. I knew I needed to switch into Tikki Tooki at the end for a shot of Reflexes, but I had to wait until the very end because I couldn't afford a weakening Horatio. So after all the blood and potions were gone, I took Consensus and converted, tried to eat the sparkles (only nine remained) and desecrated Drac for the last of the piety I needed. Horatio finally dropped to the last of my resources: the DP from Yang's Sword.

The moral of the story is that Hoarder is a killer--this is probably the toughest thing I've done in DD so far, and I feel like I got incredibly lucky with the loadout. The only thing that would have made it easier is having BYCEPPS spawn. Having my attacks do 40% more damage would have saved resources at every step of the way and made the whole thing pretty comfortable.

Next step, Purist I guess? So far my attempts there have come up short time and again. The Dragon Shield is just such a big deal.

[The Tapir]

Fantastic job sitnaltax - kudos for making what seemed to be impossible possible.

In terms of completion, how many classes and badges are you at with VGT right now? Purist is one that you've said you don't have, but what else are you missing?

[Astral]

Yeah that's an amazing job sitnaltax!

The only good thing about purist is that if you decide to scum for a good altar load out you won't lose any gold in the process.

[caviar]

Decided to fire the game up after some absence from it to grab the bull by the horns, and..

http://i.imgur.com/m0Hym5t.jpg

Wow. After previously (with no results) pouring more effort into the Gorgon badge than the Purist and Hoarder badges combined, it clicks on my first try today. Even with a complete crapshot of a strategy. Though, admittedly, the RNG gods could hardly have been more generous; midas gloves, halpmeh, soul orb, martyr wraps, first-floor binlor and an early bridge troll.. The list goes on. From the point where I reached maxed resists after the 6th floor (before taking bloodshield!) the run was on full cruise mode. I even got away with mindlessly converting endiswal before tackling H despite that it'd have been useful for stone form, and I still had 3 floors' worth of bloodpools left.

I'm really happy that my somewhat unorthodox GG approach worked so well. The plan was to stay faithless and hoarder until I had both GG and Binlor available (or possibly go to Taurog inbetween, were he to appear before Binlor), and then commence Namtar+transmutation seal shenanigans to buy out most of the shops. Go into GG, convert all shop fodder/glyphs, grab humility and then go straight into Binlor after that. It'd probably not have been very effective if I hadn't found Binlor so early, but I suppose it'd also be possible to go from GG to Taurog with similar results.

Despite insane RNG, after finishing this run I feel like I never gave the gorgon the credit it was due for a VGT class before. Maybe it was due to bad luck on previous runs, maybe it was because I didn't use Binlor at full efficiency (this time around I was pretty liberal with spamming stoneskin to tank my way through the earlier floors, which worked out pretty nicely). Whichever the case, it's finally done, and only the Goatperson is blocking my path to the rainbow halo now.

[sitnaltax]