Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

The first run today I have to thank Astral for:



I used Bycepps to take off almost all of the Goo's resistances, and got a lot of mileage out of both Drac and the Scholars Pact. Dwarf Drac paladins rock socks and I recommend them too.

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Then I wanted to be reaaaaaaly sure I don't run into the Goo with my pants down on this one:



And Goo it was, lol. Two shot-the bugger off a huge Momentum - bigass elven mana pool + Str Potions = fun Was a very fun Non-Orc Momentum based Crusader for a change ^^ Plenty of ways to play an Elf Crusader, it's nice to be aware of this one, especially if the PQI decides to streak them on you.

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Then I just ran through this:



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Then I decided to not wait around for the PQI to set me up with the right stuff as that could take ages and took things into my own hands and went to do what Astral nicely pointed out - a poison striking Gobbo regen fighter:



And it was a lot of fun, and would've been even more fun if I didn't mess up horribly, horribly, boxed myself in with Rex with no way to get out for stupid reasons and only managed to barely win in a puzzle worthy hopeless-looking scenario. Otherwise would've been a very fun romp.

Now there's a Paladin you don't see often, amirite?

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And all that rumpus reminded me I've actually underplayed TT in any combination but Michael Bay types, so decided to keep it up:



He, he, he, I used to be the resident TT abuse expert, I felt young again ^^

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However, I did decide to take the PQI up with this guy, so it maybe sets me up with a nice Dwarf (I was still expecitng it to set me up with a Vicious dungeon PQI and I was itching for a Dwarf Warlord in one of those):



That's a VT Parched Halfling Warlord there, it was tricky as hell, and totally awesome - barely managed too (allthough probably due to missplays and getting carried away with the sheer audacity and the TT binge high from before).

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And well, after beating a VT Cashrun with that guy I thought I'd just get this guy out of the way:



And managed to fail cheeky many, many times in a row. D'oh! I so wanted to get back to TT shennanigans!

--- Epic Run! ---

And then I totally did. Or rahter I got to play the poisonous Gobbo Monk, on the best Body Pact map in the game and also get a ton of use out of the Venom Dagger which I'm very sad for and of the opinion it otherwise might need a buff:



Cultist + Body Pact + Wonnafyt + Monk + Gobbo + Meatmen RNG Spawn + Taurog + Venom Dagger. Good lord what a romp. Didn't take a single boon from Taurog, the little low dmg bastard went unstoppable, even though I only popped the Shade Goat after killing all the cultists and the zombies.

Purist.

Wow.

--- EVEN EPICKER RUN! ---

And then the TT train just wouldn't let up and took me on a very strange trip:



How, what, I don't even...

I found TT and decided to roll with it (converted the Big Sword) because it was early and because I had plants to clear, but then I found the Pactmaker and decided to pick up an early consensus and an early Scholar's Pact, which then meant that in order to stop the piety overflow from all the Wonnafyt I kept turning my Health Potions into Dodgestep thinking I'd go momentum + dodgestep on the boss. Which I totally did, and it also fueled the Tri-Sword, but then I kinda ended up with no potions and no sword and no plan, really, against Itsssamna. I joined GG, converted a bunch of stuff and used protections and my huge health and thought that was it, but then I thought - I wanna get unstoppable here, let's see if I can do it.

But I had no money, was weakened, and had no potions... but the sub was Metal Spider Temple, which the Crusader laughs at, so I picked up the fortitude potion and the translocation seal and scored a Platemail - and ended up dinging for Scholars pact with Platemail and Dwarf health (and the ocasional GG boon) and actually got through this Parched and Unstoppable.

PRO TIP: You know how Dwarves kinda lack damage and kinda always need god swapping to get the most out of their bonus and all that? Well the Crusader is the king of god juggling shennanigans with a damage boosting ability and also doesn't care for most debuffs. They are very, very good! It looks stupid, but if you know how to keep your momentum stable at, say above +40% you got +2 damage per level from that, and you're looking to be pretty high level anyway with hopefully a bunch of popcorn saved. Strangely good combo.

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Aiieeeeee! My kingdom is beset by the dreaded:



There's one standing right behind me I bet, and there's on in the cupboard, and one right across the street and one...

I gave this one a magazine and run him through the run, failing the PQI about a million times because I was playing while I was cooking and forgot which PQI I was on about 6 times in a row. Lol.

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Then this little guy managed to do the best impersonation of actual RL crusaders:



By being a heavily armored bloodthirsty vandal. Really, that's what they were. Whenever they could, Italians payed them to raze Croatian cities for them even though we were both Roman Catholic. Like, on the way to the actual Crusades as payment for transport. Thats why the Croatian city of Zadar is internatinally known by it's Italian name "Zara", even thogh it's been known as "Iadera" since the days of the Roman Empire (it's on the Adriatic, that's what the name means), because, hey, pay half the knuckledraggers of Europe to conquer a city for ya... This little guy came from that school of quasi religious vandalism - worship Taurog for all the cool stuff, then when you don't need him anymore raze the altar... and convert the junk for healing potions (good CP on those things ).

Barbarous, hypocritical and brutally effective. Sorry for the random history tidbit, this little guy's opportuinstic approach to devotion really reminded me of the real thing

Plus, haven't played a proper god juggling resist stacking Crusader up till him on this playthorough.

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Then I decided I wanted to play a human, and gold up the Ick Swamp:



And I totally scored Tinkerbell! It was brutally effective, and I played it like a Dwarf, get those levels and with levels the damage. Felt so nice and refreshing I hung around for the badges!

--- ZOMG ---

Then I found the god for the Dwarf Warlord:



I went in with the RBS and the Platemail, got my Imawal and a hit of Vineform, and went to town. Good lord, does it ever work. Just look at all those Corrosive kills that just kept getting themselves done! Ended up at the actual bossfight at a very easy lvl 9 with no use out of Entanglement, very few Vineforms, maybe one Greeblood (some clearance here and there), but then I face tanked the Goo, and after that face tanked the SMM. With Drac and GG untouched on board! And also an untouched Getindare! And all the stuff I picked up right before the SMM!

These guys are NASTY.

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Then I did something else in the Ick Swamp, I forget what, because it was streaking. Forgot to take a snapshot.

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And then I chased these two out of CO, using straight up PoS just to get rid of them:



Old dagger, not new dagger. Good riddance



Vamp cold've been an overheal deal only ended being PoS because I found the gear and it's the laziest solution, this was pre-meditated.

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And there we go - no Vicious PQI, but only five more places non-golded Getting closer and coser to getting this done

[Lujo]

Well, today I got everything sub-vicious nicely golden and shiny, but that might be just my perspective. And then the PQI brought it on, and I totally did two Vicious PQI's, allthough, again, it might just be from my perspective. Should be pretty intersting from here on now, next PQI is Naga City, allthough that, also, might be just my perspective (and, well, objectivelly the PQI resets when you relog and all that, but I hope it stays Naga City).

Anyway, this is what I did today, from my perspective:

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The first run today turned out to be intersting, but I won't spoil why:



On it's own it looks like a routine little thing, and it kinda was, but from my perspective (literally, no sarcasm) I'm aware of something which does make it interesting.

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Then I kinda ran through this eager to get everything nice and golden and maybe get some Vicious PQI going:



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Then a quick Goat that seemed to still be on the loose:



No ledger, but I've been playing around with the Rat, just before this, and they're simmilar enough that I kinda ran through this on autopilot, too.

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Then this little guy ended up regen-fighting the bossess with all the Tokoloshe Charms and Lemisi:



Was a fun silly romp.

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Then I was proposed to do this in Venture Cave:



And I wasn't really chasing badges, but Wonnafyt spawned and it was Venture Cave, what can I say.

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Then this one was actually interesting because I've been half-assing my way around Gorgons and I kinda enjoyed playing one which wasn't solved on the prep screen:



Against a Magic damage boss, too, was quite a nice experience.

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And then I golded Shifty Brickwork!



Which turned out to have been an excellent preparation for:

--- Dun Dun DUUUUUN! ---

Everything turned gold! So the PQI decided I was going to do:



Which I totally did!

So, I decided to take the Fire Heart to try to make up for the missing refills - and it worked out great. Several full health activations for key moves in there. It wasn't a PoS run, I mostly used it to position the Deamons and slap them into each other - even got sideways hits on ones due to health overflow. I did use plenty of Pissorff, but it wasn't a cheatmode run, it was a legit, honest to god run with proper leveling and everything.

I'm not sure I would've made it without the Jadetooth potion, even - I mean, I suppose the Dragon doesn't really struggle with this place, knockback rules here even more than anywhere else, but Avatar does have a lot of magic resistance, and I didn't want to go in with a res stacking one and I quite enjoyed doing it this way.

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Then the PQI wanted me to do a Purist Gorgon in Namtar's Lair, and I didn't really feel like trying to puzzle that one out, so I decided to unwind on a nice and breezy flaming Labyrith run:



I even brought a magazine. But that was a clever ruse intended to make the PQI maybe change that Purist Gorgon to something less tricky, and this is when the first run of the day becomes interesting, at least in a symbolic way:

--- Dun Dun DUUUUUUN! ---



Ha-hah! Props to Tinker for the idea of where to take these guys. Still, from my perspective it made sense to bring a RBS in. Which turned out totally sweet, because of the great interaction it had with Body Pact as well as all the debuff guys who get you GG piety when they debuff you. No enlightment, no humility, no consensus but Body Pact + Plate Mail on a Berserker WILL get you through Namtars. 5 Absolutions, a 2-3 Protections, several cleansings. Patches wasn't a good idea.

The first guy was sorta easy, took a bunch of hits, but I dinged through it and took a cleansing to get rid of poison. The second guy was quite tricky and left me with one curse too many - that is, I couldn't kill the guy I meant to kill to get rid of it, so I ended up getting dangerously close to getting punished by GG even before I descended. I thought I kept enough stuff to get rid of curse, and I kinda did, but in the end it turned out I could've left a smaller guy.

I had to drink a potion during the first form (I think), so I got rid of the RBS, one health potion (had 2) and a Spoon, which got me to the needed 10 piety, and it was all smooth sailing after that.

Wheee, was quite a ride! Body Pact was a complete luckout, mind you, but at least it got it done ^^

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Next up, if the RNG permits - Naga City. If not, something else vicious for sure!

[Lujo]

Right so now it's Vicious PQI all the time, and I occasionally do flaming stuff to spin the wheel when I really don't like the combo or feel like taking something out of the runing, or just get something ranibowed (I'm 1 or two classess away from rainbow on all the sub vicious stuff). And I suppose I'll do a few hard GT's because it never comes up on it's own.

--- VICIOUS! ---

PQI said Miser Demonic Library with my least played sorcerer - I said, sure:



And I kinda prepped PoS and ran through it. Actually I did try a fireball into-melee guy first, and I got the Avatar down to rather low, but it ran out of steam. The PoS guy, obv, just breezed through it. Any point really going through this, it's basically the strongest sorcerer besides the gnome and I had preps and the dungeon is also very weak to PoS and quite resillient vs Fireball.

--- FAIL! ---

Then the PQI said Parched Goblin Transmuter in Naga City, and I attempted it twice and failed but then my comp crashed, and the next thing that came up was:

--- VICIOUS! ---

Goblin Bloodmage Purist on DL. I said fine.



He wrecked it even harder than the Sorcerer

The luckout was kinda huge, though : Pissorff, El Potion Loc, Alch Scroll and Dracul.

The missplays were also strong with this one: I left the exactly wrongest Lords for the end and I wasted too much blackspace so I ran out B2P fuel and was just a melee healthmonster for those two (with the ocasinal ding).

The whole thing played like a halfling would - big health, some reists, big pile of restores. 10 mana all in all, the mage plate didn't last that long as it interefered with my popcorn munching (and I needed a ding) I did have something like 50% Sanguine by the end, but by that point I was cleaning avatar clones and it was complete overkill. I would've been perfectly fine with 30% just from the 5 guanateed mana potions. Bloodmages make awesome Healthmonsters, and Drac loves those, and a particularly nice thing about healthmonster spellcasters, particularly Goblin ones, is that they sort of play much like an assassin would. If you can't melee the boss anyway (or don't want to because of PoS), you just use your health to fight up while you use spells against the boss, and also munch on popcorn (which produced more hits on something if you have lifesteal, too).

--- VICIOUS! ---

And then it streaked on DL again for some reason, Elf Crusader Hoarder. I considered it, Hoarder doesn't have much entertainment value, but the Crusader has a silly god game and that meant I could run it out of the place in a fun way:



And I did just that - Patches for the extra mana point to have 16, explore the whole map and pick everything up, get rid of Patches with transmutation seal, and then did basically the same thing as last time except with CB and stuff. Not much to say, tbh, pretty routine PoS, the dungeon could've been anything, but at least it was somewhat entertaining. I prepped PoS just because I wanted to get Hoarder out quickly and was even getting paird good gold for it.

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Then the PQI wanted me to do a warmonger Dwarf Warlord in DI, and I really didn't want to waste a vicious-level Dwarf Warlord on Warmonger, so I decided to do this quickly:



And I gave the guy a magazine to read while it's on, but it suddenly turned out difficult! No joke - it took forever to find the boss, which was Aequitas, who's actually a bit nasty even at this difficulty (the core non-locked monster pool is pretty brutal in general tbh) - and I had no way to kill him. Which then resulted in some desperate last minute Binlor piety farming to get my resists up as I intended not to bother with feature at all. Did it in the end, but it gave me a nasty jump

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By this point I was kinda afraid if the DL keeps on straking this would turn into a PoS list rather than what it's supposed to be, or that I'll be stuck with just beating every vicious place with the same two things every time whatever I play, but then this happened:

--- MEGA EPIC VICIOUS! ---

The PQI wanted me to do a Parched Goblin Rogue in Namtar's Lair. And it turned out to be anything but striaghtforward or orthodox



This run... It took everything I had and I feal sooooo good after all that PoS, I felt like I was playing an actually challenging game! I felt like an actual DD Vet, with capitals and stuff.

What happened here? Wasn't this just an enlightment into binlor dmg into drac resotres Rogue cheeze? No, no it wasn't. It was supposed to be something like that, five absolutions, popcorn bowling, stuff going on, but then I figured I'd run out of blackspace if I don't open up the secret sub, things will not work out. The Gnome Berserker did it easily, but he had RBS, regular health, dragonshield and body pact on top of his 50% magic resistance, this guy had mediocre to sub-par health and his damage wasn't getting him places agaist this roster.

So I decided to jump into Binlor - but I did it at a stupid moment (or possibly couldn't engineed a better one as it was really grasping at straws in a semi-failed scouting run). I took stone heart to open up the secret sub, but that landed me short of Stone Soup and unable to get any Binlor Piety! But then I picked up the Cydstep and kept regen-hitting a really fat troll (the only thing that I could), wasting a lot of exploration but slowly building up my piety towards the free Endiswal.

Now, why not just take the free endiswall? Well, the thing was that I couldn't get mana for that endiswall, so if I got it I wouldn't be able to use it, and I had no mana and it was a parched run. Opening up the secret sup opend up a ton of exploration because off all the topside wall that got destroyd, and it also opened the way to the regular sub which I couldn't get to because something big was in the way! The secret sub was the one with gold - which I also needed badly! Anywho, I managed to get that Endiswall, kill the Dark Knight vampire, kill that troll who lost all his resists, and get into Drac, somehow.

Binlor desecration, Drac boons, including lifesteal. Then I dealt with the first two forms. Got nice and prepped up, but then I decided to get back into GG for the very, very, VERY important cleansing to take down against the 3rd form. I carefully left only undead which I couldn't kill in Drac to be killed in GG, which also got me rid of curses. So I was in GG with Lifesteal and 2 indulgences (I think), but no Sanguine as it would certainly make me lose all my stuff down below while lifesteal wouldn't necessarily as all the forms were undead and I could kill the imps with fireballs if I wanted. I also finally picked up 2 swords which were stuck in my shops all game (on a Rogue, no less, but it had to be that way).

3rd form went down to one big cleansing hit, 2 fireballs and a first strike hit (I might've dodged a hit, too, but I could take one more), the 4th form was actually regen fought to bait a dodge, the third form had me killing all the imps to trigger burining (one lifesteal hit away from punishment after that), and the final form just crumpled.

The little bugger went out of there and gave the PQI the finger

--- FAIL! ---

The the PQI got mad and wanted me to do a Purist NL Gorgon, which I tried, but failed twice and decided I'd do her with some other badge.

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Did this instead:



Quick and easy PoS job to spin the PQI and get closer to rainbows. Then one more for today:

--- VICIOUS! ---

Well, no writeup really needed, it literally pays to avoid playing Orcs:



Laughably easy if you overprep this much, but I just wanted it out of the way. All the stuff I killed was either slapped into Namtar or munched as popcorn (or mopped up between topside and below). Even took a jaunt into Taurog for some physical resists just because I had over 16 mana, would've taken the Sword, too, if I'd found a mana point I was missing earlier.

After seeing how great the Berserker and the Rogue felt both in their own way, and how brutal this place is to the Gorgon, this felt shamefuly stupid, but, hey, got a badge out of the way and it's just one of those things you gotta get over with.

Just a note - always keep the wheytwut for the fireball retaliating form so you can slap it into a wall once, move it back than slap it into the wall just above that spot and just PoS it through the entire lenght. I suppose it's not necessary if you just hit it into the Imp, but this way you're sure to evade the form that's supposed to challenge spellcasters, and nicely render just about everything there is in the dungeon wholly meaningless (with this combo and preps anyway).

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And there we go - a bunch of PoS, some rather fun PoS, a great Rogue, a nice Crusader, PQI Goblin Sorcerer and PQI Orc Wizard lols/facepalms, and an Orc Paladin who almost got pwned by Venture Cave, not a bad day.

[Lujo]

No too many runs this time, I got stuck on one and it got me in a foul mood

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So first run in this batch was Hoarder Gorgon on Naga City:



And I decided to use the opportunity to take both Hoarder and Gorgon out of Naga City, as the Gorgon has an unfortunate fact to her that she lends herself really well to things that are so universally cheezy that she's either really underclassed or really overloaded. At least from my perspective.

So I took the Dragonshield and Binlor in, Binlored down the entire map taking everything from Binlor until I had max magic resists and went down. Big damage, full magic protection, poison strike and a lot of pissorff did the place in. Pissorff / Knockback SMM and Frank into less tough stuff, get a bunch of poison on stuff here and there, use an occasional firebal etc, etc. I haven't been Yendoring my way through Gorgons all playthrough long because I forgot how to play her, but because I remembered how crazy strong the ideal one is and didn't feel like binloring sub-vicious maps every time because it would just take forever.

Got my money, got hoarder out of there in the least painful way there is, felt fine.

---

Then I went over to Ick Swamp to rainbow it because it was flaming, and also to get the goblin transmuter out of the way. Wasn't too happy about my 2 Naga City fails with him, and I felt like I'd preffer to use a different transmuter until I get it out of that place:



TT Gobbo with a damage bonus on Ick Swamp, lots of dodging, lots of shennanigans, easy poison removal, charms, the works. Not much to say really, except that I'm growing very fond of Byceps in general. That thing's actually worth keeping around on a lot of guys.

Felt really good about my first Rainbow and I through I got Ick out of the way because it always kinda takes a bit longer to play out than other places and I really didin't want to have to use IT to spin the PQI (otherwise it's NOT a hard dungeon, it's really, really easy provided you remember to clean the plants up before every level up - which I don't either, way too often, but at least I'm not dreading it for some vague reason but for the exact reason why it can ass you up.).

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BUT! The damned flame STREAKED on it. So not only would I have to do another Ick Swamp run, but I'd have to it on the only dungeon I'd allready rainbowed. D'oh!

So I just facepalmed, and went to see what the PQI spun to (because it was Purist Gorgon somewhere which is why I went over to clean Ick Out), and facepalmed again. It was DL again, with the twist that...

---



...the goblin mafia heard I was peddilng codexes lately and they wanted in on it -.-

Now, this actually cheered me up, because the badge was Warmonger, so if I was to put up another Vicious Win it wouldn't involve PoS. The reason that felt right was because I gathered that for some obscure reason the average person playing DD, when wondering about how to beat a certain dungeon wonders about the race or the class to use rather than wondering about how to, you know, beat the actual dungeon. With, like, anything. So you can put up 10 000 posts of PoS demolishing a dungeon regardless of race or class, and it'd still mean nothing. And it's getting on my nerves a bit because the PQI chooses the race and class for you, and even saddles you with a badge on top of it, and you can hardly bring in an Orc Whatever everywhere that way. And the race / class part of it is NEVER a problem, only the badge and the dungeon. What cheered me up is that while PoS is the answer to just about any question, and destroys DL quite hard, this little goblin thief bastard wasn't gonna proffit from it and was going to have to do it the stupid way.

However, turns out that goblins are quite a silly little race, and that scoring two kegs and the other thing which is sorta amblematic of my DL runs, a late game Drac, can actually pwn the place warmonger. Well, there was an Orb of Zot there, too. If this guy could cast spells, though, he wouldn't have needed half of it, and thruth be told he didn't really need at least some of it anyway, but it was there and I was having fun.

Also Bear Mace - it moves the Avatar to the entrance, gotta remember that for the future. I'm highly likely to always try to have Pissorff in here, but it's still good to know.

8 classess and 7 badges on DL, something close on Namtar's Lair, way less on everything else...

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Then this came up, and while I wondered for a while whether I wanted do this Hoarder (because I'd like to play these guys with a racial bonus), I decided to do it because it's very easy to do and it would get me a class and a badge out of NL and it was getting about as streaky as DL:



Well, there you have it. PoS, PoS, Fireball the phys guy, PoS, PoS, kill the last guy. Took nothing from Binlor, Took nothing from Mystera (maybe 2 mana points), took Alch Pact from Pactmaker. First guy spawned in a tricky place, and I had to move the second guy mid fight, too. Had B2P, Dragonsoul and Mage Plate, so I guess that was nice, otherwise it was just fast forwarding through it.

Used endiswall for the cowardly guys, eat the lowest bit of the wall, slap them into the next one in front of it, position yourself and PoS them forward along the lenght of the wall. Come to think of it, PoS wrecks this place harder than it does DL.

---

And now the thing that really soured my mood and got me quite depressed, but it's a long story:



So why did it get me depressed?

See, the PQI had been sorta streaking DL and NL and occasionally giving me stuff I didn't really feel like in DI and NC (Purist Gorgon, Hoarder Dwarf Warlord), but it was avoiding this place, so when it hit it I really felt like I wanted to do it. The problem, though, is that this place, more than any other regular dungeon, is exactly the kind of place where you kinda have to go in with a plan and is more like a puzzle than a dungeon when you get down to it. At least with a Parched Monk.

Now I did it with 4 things allready, including a Goblin Bloodmage who did it all with Fireballs (like all of it). And there's the whole "Indomitable doesn't do anything to you if you have some -damage on you". Now, I really didn't want to use an obvious solution to it, and I tried and I tried to do all sorts of things, because I was trying to VT it, and nothing I tried worked (not saying I tried everything there is, just lots of stuff, and plenty if it got quite far). The build up there is something that cristalized itself after what seemed to me like a lot of tries.

The deal was that the dungeon is retardedly stacked against Monks. And I was allready in a bad mood from all the "Pick Class X with Race X" bullshit solutions or perspectives, and none of that narrow minded crap helps with a thing like this, and the solution I found to it involved really ditching all that and looking at the cards I was dealt. Keep in mind that I was still trying to VT it so we're talking VT Vicious Steel:

- The monk can't fight anything in that dungeon.
- The monk can't use spellcasting because he can't even munch on popcorn in that dungeon
- A parched non-Orc Monk can't really go PoS, because it takes too many spells to kill the AA guy when you can't munch on popcorn and besides you need levels and you can't fight anything
- Can't go GG because it doesn't really do anything to you because even if you level a bit you still can't fight anything
- Can't go JJ... etc.
- If I go Taurog with Dragonshield and hope for Drac - it's a mazy map and I can't fight anything. And if I wanted to be able to fight anything I'd need to pop my glyphs early which wasn't necessarily the best idea.

So after trying all these out (still, I suppose I could've tried for a spellcasting approach of some sort, EM, Codex, whathave you, some things of that sort), what I decided was that there was just no way around it but going Platemail to make sure I have DR and famring as full MR as possible using Binlor. Both bossess do Magic damage, and if I was gonna fight them I was gonna have to slug it out with no potions.

But that works on ANY map. Here it just seemed like I had to! And I took nothing but blank farming Stoneskins from Binlor (using sundungeon walls to fuel some of it), which is sadly the most reductive way to use that guy. I was annoyed because the proper way to handle something was "ignore what this god does for most people, just farm resists".

And, well, it worked like a charm, I milked the map very carefully untill I was at the right spot with my MR (well, and all the walls were gone), found a bunch of stuff including the dagger, whurgarble (quite important for both bossess), took both, swapped over to GG and just goblined my way to victory. In fact, being a goblin helped a ton, it only looks like a problem from a, quote: "When you're talking Monks, you're almost always talking Orc Monk" perspecitve because the bloody PQI is not very likely to let you have one, and only the Orc Monk plays like an Orc Monk and even he'd probably have his work cut out for him in that place with no potions. Because I feel like I only really won it because I did the patentedly ridiculous Binlor-the-dipshipt-max-magic-res-vending-machine and then dinging a GG goblin around a fully explored map for hits, pissorffs and fireballs with the Goblin god, Goblin enlightment and the Goblin easy popcorn munching and parched refills, while also making use of the -dmg vs. the corrosive AA glitch-of-epic-retarditude thing. Anyone would've done the first and the last, but only the Goblin could've done all the stuff in the middle while parched.

Boy did the whole thing sour my mood, because if the other god wasn't GG god knows how I would've done it (well, I would've somehow I suppose) and if the whole thing didn't take both the Platemail and so much MR, I would've prepped him instead of Binlor, who's sole purpose was to get me max mr in a way which makes the run long an tedious, and make sure I start doing things on a fully explored map. Which isn't a problem for a Goblin anyway, which would make him excellent for a Vicious Steel monk, but it's a really chorey hurdle I felt like I really have to do after failing with so many other things, and I was getting tired of doing it over and over.

And the whole point of the whole broken Binlor magic res farming taken to extremes existing is that it wasn't complained too much (by me) during testing solely on the idea that you'd never actually have to really do it anywhere and that there was always probably a less time consuming or at least less bloody boring solution, and that noone's making you do it. Problem here was - I felt like I HAD to do it before I could get on with my regular and completely different gameplan, which then I couldn't prep for because I had to prep for that and THAT made the run feel really, really scummy even though I didn't techincally scum for anything at all. It also didn't help that preppign for binlor cheeze mining also meant I had to prep platemail if I didn't want to scum for an adequate source of -damage, on a Monk in a dungeon loaded with weakening, curse and mana burn, which then also meant getting anything in particular which would've helped me in any way in the hands of RNGsus. No wonder the regular place has the Orb of Lusory. If you have MR, you can fight the AA's and the Warlocks and actually level, and if you have it maxed you can take on the bossess, if not you're really up a creek.

By this point the PQI had moved on, I actually kept playing that because I wanted to do it. And then when I did it and went to post the screenshot above - it crashed wihout registering it. That got me depressed. I felt like I was incredibly lucky on that run, that all my stuff aligned for me to win after so many failed tries, but I said, screw it I'll do it again.

So I just loaded it up and did it again, doing the exact same things. Pactmaker was just a Body Pact, taking Consensus would've screwed me out of Enlightment. Which you can still get even if you start fighting stuff at lvl 1 on a fully explored map while Body Pact is going on, apparently:



Sorry for all the text, and the foul mood. Wiki REALLY needs info on all the race-class combos. And you gotta learn stuff which solves any dungeon, and also to disassociate races from classess. You learn how to just play an Orc something, you learned nothing, it's just 1/7 of the class.

---

If anyone's offended by the tone of this post - terribly sorry, I am, but I can't bring myself to censor my feelings right now, there's flaming rainbow Ick Swamp I really don't feel like doing and I've been through a bit of an ordeal. And I'm dreading the idea that it might've all been for nothing because people will just see a Goblin Monk post and think that it was hard because it's a goblin or ignore it because "they'd never be able to play the goblin anyway" or think I made my life difficult by choosing to play "an unplayable PQI" or something. Or think I'm extra pro when I know I just used a bunch of stuff that works anywhere and with anyone and am annoyed at the dungeon for really pressuring me towards that sort of thing instead of the many interesting things you can do with a Goblin Monk. And it was the Goblin GG monk that did it, no mistake, it worked like a charm, but all Binlor bussiness kinda killed my will to live. Didn't feel bad about it with the Gorgon in Naga City - that's a Gorgon thing, she'd worship Binlor anyway, but boy did feel very sour about it here. I would've loved prepping that GG Gobbo Monk instead of maybe, possibly running into it after I've done the whole Binlor thing

And I'm dreading the possibility of all the Vicious Steel runs turning into this kind of grind - PoS is brainless grind, but it's quick, uninvolving and you use it to get thourgh things quickly and effortlessly. This is a complete pain in the ass because it's very time consuming grind which doesn't even actually win the map. I hope it's just Monk, though, I really do.

---

[Lujo]

Right, so let's just say that I just had to get all that off my chest and that in a much better mood since the next run was this:



And the same exact Rogue took the place apart with no resists at all. I even let myself fail the PQI because it was so close to done and I've blundered quite a few things (even at the prep screen XD). GG Gobbos are great in there because Absolution declogs, cleansing does work if you're not a monk - I fought the Indomitable with no hacky DR or anything and it was all good. Strong combo for it, tbh.

But eh, it's one of those places where you can lose your mind with one thing, and completely pwn it with something else. So lets say that the Gobbo Monk crying was there for anyone who ever got frustrated to hell with the supposedly "easiest Vicious dungeon", and how the anti-regen fight in there might have went a tad too far. And also about us testers being content with the dodgy solutions like Binlor res farming and -dr interactions when it comes to that place and never really bringing the place up for a bit of discussion it could've maybe used.

---

I'll do that Ick Swamp and I'll fill in further runs in this post in bulk when I do more

---

So with almost a whole day between that Ick Swamp rainbowing and this run, I felt good about it. I used the random run feature, and then took that race and class and rolled with it, it was:



And I had plenty of fun with the 100% Refreshment restore you get from a Cauldron sporting Gnome Transmuer (well, in Ick at least). I did go around exploring and killing Warlocks and Wraiths before touching Mystera, though, and I fought both bossess at the same time to get anything out of the Spirit Sword (because I could land hits on Itsssamna but couldn't on frank who I'd been fireballing). Didn't even explore the whole map

---

Then immagine this dreadfull scenario that the PQI sprang on me: Namtar's Lair with your least played Bloodmage... PURIST!

This is my least played Bloodmage:





To make things even crazier, there was Fireball and a JJ Altar right next to the entrance with a Byceps layed out for my perusal two steps away, and also a Pissorff on the map in case all this wasn't ludicrous enough. All of which makes the "Purist" quality of this highly suspicious, as you can't even prep all that stuff ^^

Needless to say I ran the place into the ground. Pos -> Pos + Fireball -> Fireball -> Pos -> Firebal + Melee. I had 175 health! On a halfling! With a B2P! On a map with a ton of exploration you can't possibly squander and sublevels which give you more! And also one of those subdungeons where you get a booster (health, because ofc it was) which have a lot of blackspace to the sides which you never really find out about unless you use Lemisi or B2P.

Incredibly silly run, I only really meant to poke my head in, but, hey, Halfling Bloodmage, it's a silly old combination XD I killed popcorn for no reason but to repeatedly use my Byceps for more JJ piety, and even took Scolars pact before I descended because Dwarfling Bloodmage

---

Funny Story w Naga City: PQI wanted me to take a Purist Elf Monk through Naga City. I loled and gave it a shot. Dude eneded up barely losing to Kinsssch! Tried a few more times (purist runs are cheap), got nowhere close. Remembered what I had on that run - Wonnafyt, Ballanced Dagger, Tower Shield, Blacksmith Subdungeon and the subdungeon with 5 cursed plants that give you the +5% Wisp Charm, and somehow 18 mana. Wow. I had no gold for a god when I went down so I took body pact, which ended up locking me in Drac (actually I could've swapped out it was a complete missplay) and if I did swap out I could've even won. Straaaaaaange.

---

Then I decided to call it a day, but later I turned the game on and the PQI had shifted back to Vicious Steel and wanted me to do "Hoarder Vampire". "Oh, no you don't!" I said, because I saw it coming after all the Monk bussiness. But I decided that if there's one run to take out of the PQI manually it was that one - the Monk and the Vamp had been nerfed significantly since Vicious Steel was made and it hoses them waaaaaaay too hard now, not sure if any matchup in the whole game comes close, and that place needed the Faithless badge so I went and puzzled it out:



Shame this is all I have, and not the prep/victory screen, because later I dug up a thread where Wald0 (and everyone else) basically agreed that that's the hardest run in the game and also that Vicious Steel could've used a nerf which it never got (or tweaks or whatever - it's too easy with favourable stuff and brutal with unfavorable stuff). I wouldn't really mind anything, but it shows up in the PQI and some of the stuff is harder than VGT and that just dirupts the flow and causes discomfort.

Anywho, I didn't get upset one bit while I was playing it - Orb of Zot and Magnet: Fireball, Quest items in the shop, Translocation seal for whatever key item is the most expensive, Bear mace for the secret sub and to make the Indomitable go down easier, soften stuff up with fireballs while you look for the two clowns, level up using wraiths as they have the least health, repeat until the right combination of stuff comes up be it glyphs (B2P basically esential), subdungeons (I had Pans labyrinth on the winning run, Zombie Money also works obv, and I also had the monster den) and shop items (was Elven Boots and Yendor and a schadenfraude after the armor went down on this run - would've also taken the dagger probably had I not found Yendor first). Things that are also good are Platemail (obv.) and Whurgarble, Crystal Ball maybe, Mage Plate possibly, whatever.

Just get the armor down to half health, line them up and then either PoS the armor into the vampire, or fireball the armor and kill popcorn (or both, I did both) and try to whittle the vampire as much as possble before using dodge and whoopaz. I started at lvl 7 on most tries. Took about, oh... 10, 15 tries? Can't really tell. Probably less but felt like more.

Still, didn't get upset because as opposed to the gobbo this guy REALLY didn't have any other plan going, and also that I just took it out of the PQI and basically ran a "Faithless Vicious Steel" PQI of my own. The Gobbo was totally legit - once I did the whole Binlor thing to get a monk to have 65ish resists, because the dungeon was probably made with a resist both monk in mind and never adjusted afterwards, so there was a moronic chore which basically had nothing to do with what actually won it just to get to the point of playing out the Gobbo Monk, which can really make you break down if it crashes on you once just as you're about to win, and then again after you've won. The Vamp was just a scumfest from square one, didn't get me worked up.

However - Vicious Steel really could be tweaked. I feel sorry for anyone attempting it with either Monks or Vampires or naively taking the PQI, they're in for a lot of frustration, while anything else wrecks the place too hard if you know about the free boss kill. The Monk makes you have to take a break from whtever you are doing and doesn't really teach you anything, and the Vamp thing is a lot more like a really, really tough puzzle instead of a dungeon run and it has no label. Wouldn't hurt anyone if it got tweaked, there's even an old thread where just about everybody agreed on this being an anomaly, and people were expecting it after the Monk and the Vampire nerfs (losing magic resistance and losing Pactmaker).

Personally, I'd say both bossess doing Magic damage just makes it incredibly one dimensional. Blah Blah blinking with those stats is bad enough on it's own, and the indomitable's strangely PoS resistant anyway. Monk can't fight anything at all in there, too (allthough he could go full spellcaster, but can't munch popcorn, really). Anywho, way too tough, people clear out VGT and VT's everywhere before they manage those two in Vicious Steel.

[Lujo]

Just 4 successful runs today, two regular and two viciuos:

---

The failed ones were a barely-lost Halfling Transmuter in Vicious Steel, I would've won if I hadn't gone in Purist just to see how it goes, I was missing 2 hits on Blah Blah, but I really didn't feel like doing it after all the Goblin and the Vampire bussiness. Too soon.

I also tried a parced Elven Monk in Naga City, and I was doing rather fine but ultimately ran out of refills at a critical point. Otherwise the loot was fantastic - 2 sets of Elven Boots, even, and an Absolution and both Viper Ward and Soul Orb, and, well, the second wave spawned them in a way I couldn't handle, shame.

However, I did do:



Because it was flaming and I wanted to roll the dice and get it one class away from completion. Turned out to be a bit tricky because the boss was Aequitas and I couldn't tank that even though I had heaps of health and platemail. Luckily I had a B2P too, so that did the trick.

---

Then the goblin mafia was back on my case, and, well, I decided to get Hoarder out of Dragon Isles because this is the millionth Goblin Thief I've played so far and I confort myself by making them do nasty vicious stuff:



Tikki Tooki into Dracul, lots of fun stuff on board, plenty of options at every opportunity. Burned up all the phys resistant guards (didn't use slayer wand), then moved over to Drac for one magic guy and pissorfed the other one forward so I can pissorf the matron into him. Had topside blackspace, downstairs blackspace and subdungeon blackspace (ChaDylan), and B2P and Apheelsick. And also a lot of bloodpools. Really, it was quite easy - but also fun, pleasant on the eye and enjoyable. Used whoopaz and dodge on the Dragonborn and spiked him with popcorn (Hoarder, otherwise woulda converted a glyph or two)

Dragon Isles is great - we kept playing it and complaining about it and it got tweaked and adjusted to a point where it's still a tough ole map but perfectly doable wihout shennanigans or cheats and it allways kinda feels like an achievement when you do it. I used to be very annoyed at it when it had AA's in, but now it's great.

---

Then it was Faithless Vampire on Namtar's Lair - and that was also the last remaining badge there, so I said ok.



Managed to do it on the first try

I liked how the Elven Boots worked for me in Vicious Steel, so I decided to go with them, took RBS because of the Goos, Ice Trolls and Shades, used Pissorff on the first form untill stuff I was slaping him into dropped, then I used overheal hits, and did much the same for the second form (with more fireballs). Had a lot of potions due to the keg but I descended with only a single health potion and a single mana potion. They both came in handy as it was a bit tighter than with other guys for some reason, but it felt like an actual run as opposed to Vicious Steel. I could've been even stronger depending on the shops, possibly, although Glenrick came in right handy and I was glad I draged out the pre-boss phase until I found him.

---

Then the PQI wanted a parched Elf Monk on Naga City, which I did try once, but failed, decided I'd just do something quickly before I go do other things and did this:



To make sure halfling stays my least played transmuter because I liked how the little bastard was doing purist on Vicious Steel, and this place now only needs the Goat to go rainbow.

---

But now Ick is flaming again! And it's still the only rainbow, and I'd much rather play anything else. The PQI was Orc Paladin Miser on Namtar's Lair - I think I'll skip that, but make my own "Orc Paladin Vicious Token" PQI to get that out of Namtars Lair as that's the last badge I'm missing and it's not gonna come up on it's own. I'm also only missing VT on DL so I'll check to see what I haven't done there yet which makes for a good VT clearing. I suppose that's what's gonna be coming up, and it's also my first attempts at VT Vicious on the playthrough, gonna be interesting.

[Lujo]

Not too many runs today, you'll see why, but first thing that happened is that I failed the Orc Paladin VT attempt at Namtar's Lair because, and I only noticed this after getting all the badges but VT and 10 out of 19 classess in there - one of the forms removes all your resists. The reason I hadn't noticed before was because everybody else just PoSed (and sometimes fireballed, and occasionally was just fat enough) the living crap out of the place and I completely missplayed the next-to-last form thinking I had resists and then only noticed I don't in fact have them when it was too late. Shame, I would've got that badge, but nope. Oh, well, takeaway is - screw dragonshields, and paladins, and binlor and 3rd-tier stuff like max resist stacking - go Pissorff spam everywhere with everything ever and never even notice dungeons have features. XD Kidding, don't do it, even though you totally can

---

Anyway, the PQI wanted this done, so I went and did it:



Well, since this dungeon isn't so much a dungeon as a big d**k move when you try to score any difficult badge on it, I just prepped the plan and got it done quickly and easily:

- Expore entire map carefully farming magic resistance and not killing anything if possible. I even got myself Weakened down to doing no damage at lvl1 so nothing dies.
- Had 50% magic reisist, swapped to GG, popped yendor
- Moved Blah Blah and the Indomitable next to each other (Dodge + Whoopazed Blah Blah)
- Knockbacked the indomitable into blah blah, killed undead untill there weren't too many left
- Moved over to drac, kept konckbacking the indomitable into Blah Blah and taking Blood Shield, some sanguine and I might've taken a bloodswell
- Kept doing that untill the armor dropped, then took a bloodswell and first strike killed Blah Blah

That's that. Anyone wonder how pre-release vicious dungeons worked/felt - mostly like that. Do I miss them? Not one bit. All this place does is make it seem like there's a good reason for stuff like Yendor, Zot and Swift Hands, etc, and that's about it. I don't think I've ever done a VT Vicious with a Gobbo Assassin, there's overkill, and there's complete overkill.

---

Then the PQI streaked on Vicious Steel, even though it had just been done and had as many badges and more completion as Naga City or Dragon Isles, and it wanted Vicious Steel - Dragon - Miser, but I went and did:



I did try to do it miser, but failed it about 2 hits away from killing Blah Blah. No binlor here because I had the knockback built in and I had the needed damage reduction from Taurog and VT really doesn't change all that much here (well, if you have built in cleansing anyway). The finish was a bit tight because I was trying my best not to fail miser, if I hadn't been it would've been even easier. Still, Glenrick and all that. But then again I wasted 2 healing potions and a double strike potion right at the start for no reason at all, so yeah...

I failed the PQI, so it was still there, but I reeeeealy didn't feel like doing a milionth Ick run, so I just reloged to spin the PQI that way, but...

---

...now I really had way more stuff done in Vicious Steel, but noooo, rainbowed Ick Flaming and the PQI decides to streak Vicious Steel, because screw variety right? Gotta choose between the only dungeon you're supposed to be done with, and the only Vicious dungeon with nothing close to real gameplay in it, with the race/class combo you were tired of after your fifth run with it which was, oh, 10 runs with it ago:



Also Hoarder, because why should you have an interesting conversion bonus which specifically helps with the dungeon you're supposed to do, right? Or inventory space or all that?

1) Zotted map
2) Farmed 56% magic resists with just Binlor (also knockback), revealed 90% of the map at lvl 1 (didn't reveal anything in subdungeons except the Smuggler's Den which I used to farm walls)
3) Swapped into TT for a shot of Tikki's Edge, just that and it was needed
4) Swapped to GG, moved the clowns next to each other, started Posing
5) Leveled as I possed, helped by Tikki's Edge
6) Explored the unexplored subdungeons and bits which survived the binloring because of Zot
7) Got Blahblah down to Zot health, The indomitable was well into his DP's.
8) Did dodge + whoopaz on Blah Blah, kept slapping the Indomitable into him
9) Didn't take enlightment just used protections
10) Indomitable died, drank burn salve, hit Blah Blah once to finish him off.
11) Have been spaming potions liberally, had 5 indulgences.

I think there's 2-3 Thieves left undone on the map, and I bet you the PQI is gonna make them all Goblin Thieves.

Still - Vicious Steel's a great place for Gobbos (non Hoarder ones). Most folks who don't prep Binlor have only 1 or two things thy really want to fight in there and can't really fight the other things, and depending on how the tiers fill out with monsters some can be clogged up with Illusions, or high lvl AA's or Curse Golems or whatever is giving your class trouble. Goblin really sovles that for you by letting you kill other stuff in that tier and easily dinging you mid fight with something from the next tier. And they kinda make for a way more fun and dynamic solution to it than Binlor is especially if you're good with their stronger strats.

---

And then I actually felt good about getting 3 badges out of that place, and also doing both the VT and the Goblin Thief thing, but it streaked on Vicious Steel AGAIN, this time with Gnome Priest Miser. I've actually tried several miser runs there allready and most of them ended a few hits short of doing it with Miser, and the winning and breaking miser. And I was really tired of it again. But since the PQI wanted a Gnome Priest I decided to try to move the flame away from Ick Swamp:



And it turned out to be rather easy, but then, as I alt-tabbed to save my screenie, the game crashed. So I went and made a separate thread about the flamey thingy, because now it's still in Ick Swamp, and can and knowing my luck probably will be all the time. I wouldv'e done more runs and got all this very near to done (just the VT missing on DL and NL, Misre on Vicious steel, 1-2 runs on each of the sub vicious and some serios work on NC, DI and the two GT's, actually rather manageable in good time), but I just can't bring myself to spam a fully completed dungeon just because the game sayes so, and I don't feel like stopping alternating PQI and Flaming runs after a month just because the game decided to glitch, streak and crash. I tanked 20 or so Goblin Thieves even though I wanted to try out Dwarves, I tanked no Humans whatsoever, I tanked a million Halfling Warlords, I guess I can't deal with more than one pointless Ick Swamp chore per day. Not that I mind Ick in particular, at all, but I gave the game a lot of control on this playthrough and let the PQI dictate a nice chunk of every of my days for a month it seems, this is just going even further than too far. I've got a lot of patience with Desktop Dungeons, but sometimes it just goes too far.

One Ick Swamp Flaming run per day, no more.

---

I'll try again tommorrow, hope I'll have more stuff to show and explore. There'll probably be another Goblin Thief in there, but I'll try to Goat or VT something vicious, and if all else fails I'll just manually go do a Dwarf Warlord in places just to see how it rolls.

---

Oh, and I got the Masochist achevement. Woot. Just missing the poison one it seems.

[Lujo]

I managed to get rid of the depressing Ick Flame streak, and the PQI was really apopgetic about the whole inconvenience and set me up for some nice ole cheeze to get me some missing badges and hopefully entertain y'all.

--- Dwarf Warlord - Namtar's Lair - Ding! Max ---

First run of the day cheered me up immediately - I really wanted a chance to run one of these guys on Vicious Difficulty and it worked splendidly:



The Soul Orb was a bit of a luckout, but dwarf health is very handy down below Went Mystera for Mystic Balance and mana, so I descended with 2 Cydsteps per pool, but I've converted all the glpyhs before refreshment which was kinda of an mistake. Still, EM helped out with the first two guys to make the mana burn imunity less of a luck-out, and dwarves seem to have quite a good time down below.

---

Then I did the daily Ick Swamp praying to RNGsus to let me off the hook:



Chose the combo to kinda trim down the number of Gobbos infesting my PQI. I don't mind them, and they're right handy at Vicious difficulty, but anyone who's been reading this can see how much I underplayed them and how swamped with them I am, so picking a gobbo with whatever was a good bet for a setup to maybe get something else to show up in the PQI for a change.

Fun thing about GG Gobbo Transmuters is that CP pops ding you, power you up and get you GG piety. Then all you're missing is Scholars pact for awesome looking results. Also, you either always get your enlightment or a huge pile of protections, or both - not the best PQI class as you juggle a lot of stuff, but can be hella strong when he's not tied down by badges.

--- Orc Paladin - Demonic Library - Specialist - VT ---

And RNGsus came through! The flame finally moved away from Ick Swamp, and the PQI also set me up with just the thing to clear the Vicious Token out of DL:



See - stay away from Orcs, get payed big money to handle silly badges. That was also the final badge on DL!

It's actually understandable why Orc is my least played Paladin, though. Paladins are sorta front-loaded, and Binlor paladins aren't something I roll out for regular difficulty dungeons even if I use VT on them, so I much prefer the lvl dependant bonus of Humans. Halflings make really good Drac ones, etc, but I seem to just have always kinda chosen Humans over Orcs when damage was what I was going for, so now I have loads of Orc Paladins lined up.

Orc Paladins do have one thing they're much better than humans for, and that's PoS. Which is not only busted mechanically, but also beats this map in particular handily and gives you something to do while you level. I PoSed down all the red djinns and only got one point of weakening on me, got the Fire Heart and after some careful mid fight dings and some regen fighting and firehearting and using avatar clones to alow me to slap the Avatar trough a lot of walls, this got itself done.

Then what happened was that PQI decided it loves me today and it gave me:

--- Orc Wizard - Vicious Steel - Miser ---

And I was wondering who was it going to be to finally get that Miser out of there, as it was the last thing missing:



Eh, if there's a really broken class in the game right now (besides the Assassin obv) it's the Wizard. When I say that Orc Wizard isn't that much stronger than the average Pissoff spammer what I mean by that is that the average PoS guy (or even a mediocre one) is allready way stronger and more reliable than you ever really need to be, and while the Orc Wizard is significantly stronger the difference between them is happening so far above the curve that it's kinda irrelevant.

Well, in most other places, Vicious Steel is probably the only place where you actually get to see it. Not how powerful it is, but just how far up above "obvious cheat code" this guy takes the whole thing. All he needed from Binlor was the glyph, although I did get and use the knockback with platemail just to do it faster. And all he took from Mystera was a mana point (missplayed myself out of any benefit of refreshment). Every non-popcorn monster killed was killed while doing damage on a boss, and I even regenrated the Indomtable to full and Blah Blah quite a bit by accident, and I still won with resources left over.

Oh, well, can't complain, got all the badges on Vicious Steel. Reason the Orc is my least played wizard is because there's just no point bringing him in on regular runs, much like the Gobbo assassin. He's best saved for this kinda thing.

And then the PQI went even further, and made this happen:

--- Orc Paladin - Dragon Isles - Warmonger ---



Which I leapt at because the PQI had been ignoring Dragon isles like the plague and I like that map

Took 2 tries actually, first one was with Agnostic collar but I missplayed it badly. Or rather, I didn't so much missplay it but Warmongers can use Wonnafyt to render the layout of the map completelly and utterly meaningless (or Wheytwut, ofc), which then made the whole thing play a lot better and I actually got to experience the place the way it was supposed to work - which was great. When they're not rendered completelly and utterly meaningless, Dragon Isles are even better, because they're, you know, a difficult map and stuff.

So I failed and then brought in the Namtars Ward and did it and had fun. Even got rid of all the curse with Enlightment.

---

Then it was some PQI I didn't feel like playing and I did the now flaming Cursed Oasis - it was a very, very pleasant and exotic experience, not playing Ick Swamp or a Vicious Dungeon for the first time in what seemed like a while:



And it even took too tries because on the first try I ended up one hit short of making it because of lousy curse management. This got CO rainbowed, my second rainbow on this profile

Then the PQI decided that since i've cleared all the badges on DL and Vicious Steel it made sense to incentivize me to do all the badges on Namtars Lair (no matter that it had 2X completion over Naga City and Dragon Isles):

--- Dwarf Assassn - Namtar's Lair - Vicious Token - Failed Hoarder ---



Prepped for pissorf spam and miser because I thought for some reason I was supposed to be a miser, rather than Hoarder. Failed it right away, obv, but kept going with it and won rather handily. Pissorff destroyed the first two forms (even got hits in on the second guy), as it always does, and being in TT after Binlor let me just sail smoothly to lvl 10 with dodge and a lot of health.

Down below I actually used the blackspace to farm CB charges which is what in fact won it for me, and I got better at PoSing down the cowardly guys with only the Pissorff. What you do is you Pissorf them into the second section of the wall from the bottom, then hit them from below that so that they slither out of the hole. Then just knock them into the wall above the niche, move into the niche, and PoS-knockback them forward until they're dead (explre beforehand obv.).

I fireballed and dinged through the physical resistand guy, Possed down and hit the fireball retaliatey guy, and regen fought and PoSed the DP guy. Big Dwarven Health came in very handy down there again, because you get opportunites to refresh it and health potions do wonders. I did also have Scholars Pact, which is obv. great on Dwarves, even though I only really got to benefit from it maybe twice.ž

Used the Imps to far CB charges by killing them wit fireballs and moving them around with PoS when I didn't need the blackspace. Was also really important.

Dwarf Assassin = Good Assassin. Actual sinergy there and stuff. Dwarf Assassin with Scholars pact = scary s**t.

---

And then I was happy with having got all the badges on 3/5 Vicious dungeons, but tired from having done so many runs, so I just quickly did this to get another rainbow and tempt fate:



Not sure I want to chase Gobbo Rogues out of the PQI, really, they're kinda nuts, but I felt like it. Straight up TT level farming with the dagger and stuff, got to lvl 10, murdered Blah Blah with 2 sets of potions and mopped up. Was nice and quick, and that's my third rainbow. And AFAIK the flame didn't move to Ick, so I'll probably be playing more soon enough.

[Lujo]

The first run of today was a Flaming Labyrinth thing for the rainbow:



I prepped the Battlemage Ring thinking it did something else (haven't actually read what it does exactly in ages) - I thought it gave you a flat extra level (+4) on your fireballs like Blood Curse does. Was dissapointed by it, because it's stronger in theory as at lvl 4 it does just that and at lvl 8 it does twice that, but that makes it a lousy prep and a nice buy (which is actually rare for an item in general). Would probably be highly OP if it worked the other way, but the problem with fireball strats is that if you're lvl 4 - you probably won allready, and that, well, they're fireball strats and that means you have to know how to read and write or at least have eyesight or a functioning brain to get wins because the boss might have an ability designed to counter your plan (you can even absent mindedly die to retaliate:fireball) while that just doesn't happen with Pissorff.

Otherwise, not much to say, if you have an exploration glyph on a sub-vicious map and any sort of plan you most often can't really lose unless you're chasing badges or mess up.

--- Vicious PQI: Ding! Max in Demonic Library with the Goblin Monk ---



The badge was a given with this combo, so I decided to try to do the place with the one guy who has a bit of a hard time with PoS, but I scored all sorts of powerful stuff and instead of farming the resists as I meant to I ended up using TT for most of the map to ding my way through a surprisinly easy PoSdown of 4 of the Deamon Lords, and later swapping into Drac for a very easy Martyr Wraps endgame helped by stripping the 25% resistances using Piercing Wand.

--- Two Quick Hobblers for a Rainbow Hobbler's ---

Also used them to possibly bump some guys on the PQI counter, hoping it counts Hobblers (remembered them as coming up in the PQI for the missing classes):





^ Stocholm syndrome right there. I'mma make him do Hard Gaan'Telet, too

---

Then I decided to take a break from the PQI dredging madness and prepped up something I actually wanted to play, which also happened to be a Drac combination and those are obviously very good on Gaan'Telet (the not Vicious one).



Was a remarkably easy run. You get levels on Dwarves they turn into monsters, and the place also spawned Wonnafyt. The fireball spawned in the last place I looked, though. This is a really good combo/setup in general, I would've enjoyed playing them more, but the PQI keeps spamming me with Orcs and Elf fighters, so I have to bump those first.

--- Vicious PQI: Purist Naga City with Goblin Monk ---



I was watching dota and running these guys one after the other just to see if any of them wins. Inspired by a comment by the Scatcher in a very old thread that a random Human Tinker or something got him that badge. It took a great number of tries. I didn't scum for anything in particular, I gave each a fair shot because I was watching something meanwhile anyway and wasn't really expecting any of them to win, just trying to see how far they go.

The guy who won it had Crystal Ball. That's kinda basically it. I used plenty of other stuff and leveling a Purist Monk up in Naga City aboveground is a bit of a science and an art, and B2P and Apheelsick did plenty of work down there, but there is just nothing in this game remotely close in power to Crystal Ball especially in a map which gives you plenty of money. Even if you have to kill bossess for the money and if you have to spend 115 of it on at least one altar, Yendor and 2 Kegs. I just withnesed it today - I had way better looking stuff on other runs, heck, I had way more money on some of them, descended with more levels, had Viper Wards, Soul Orbs, anything you can name - the CB guy won.

So 2 tips about purist Naga City:

- You are very unlikely to win without Endiswall, at least to open up the subdungeon. There was a big discrepancy between guys who had it and guys who didn't. The winning guy went for B2P and it was the right call

- The winning guy proffited imensly from going with Mystera - because Mystera worked exactly the same as if I prepped her. She simply gave me a 100 piety, and didn't punish me for using potions and made my Spellcasting better. I tried many other guys on losing runs, and they were cool and all, but Mystera saved me money, and let me focus on spells which meant I took Alchemist Pact for help with leveling which was also kinda crucial. And have me 0 problems as opposed to any other god.

Right, so - Purist Naga City out of the way, not being able to do it / devote enough time to it these days is kinda why I'm sorta behind on my Naga City completion because the PQI tended to want me to do Purist there all the time and kept moving away from Naga City instead of just changing the race/class/badge.

---

Then I did a redundant flaming Eastern Tundra to bump this guy and spin a PQI involving him and Parched or Warmonger or something:



He managed to turn into a complete monster by the end and it was very easy.

--- Vicious PQI: Cheety Namtars Lair with Elven Priest ---



Which then landed me this, and, well, I explored everything getting my Pissorf and 40% magic resists (didn't try too hard, was actually spamming Stone Hearts), also the Elven Boots and a Soul Orb and later a Keg of Health for below ground. Oh, and knockback and Stone Form. JJ + Byceps turned it into 18 mana, million health, and Chaos Avatar meant that once I PoSed/melled down the first two forms I descended at lvl 9. Killed the phys res guy with fireballs, schadenfraude and my last mana potion, and then it was smooth sailing after that as I was a huge stat blob with +100% dmg vs the bosses and a Pissorff.

Very easy compared to a bunch of other stuff all in all, even the generally fine and strong and functional stuff, without being truly busted.

By this point I can confidently say that JJ could easily handle a nerf, most of the stuff that Darvin thinks are keeping him down just don't occur for me. I've easily farmed boatloads of piety with him on fully explored maps with no peekaboo and I don't remember the last time I regretted picking him up at any stage. And I often desecrate all other altars and just stick in him even when that just gets me the last chance or Chaos Avatar, becaus by that point he's made me a monster with health and/or mana, wrecked the primary challlenge of any map layout with the glyph etc. 100 piety is a megading + 20 piety, and if you then desecrate something you can easily move into whatever the 3rd guy is. And swapping into him off a piety farm means you start with petitin, while his rewards for Byceps and Getindare use and killing popcorn easily rack you up the avatar and both bonuses every time. Oh, and he also gives piety for using Wonnafyt and Wheytwut, which you'd be mad not to use anyway, so yeah... Also, the health bonus is obviously too large for the investment. The mana bonus is just easy 18 mana on anything with extra mana. Anyway, I'm not gonna make a thread about it, but he's too good. He's not single-mindedly good the way Mystera is, he's not "max res vs. most end-game bosses on top of magnet: pissorff and a legit spike" good the way Binlor is and he's not "Drac endgame" kinda good, but he'd still be the best general-purposes god even if he was even significantly less powerful.

---

Then I got creeplight one class away from Rainbow as it was flaming, using something Tinker mentioned relatively recently:



Again, found JJ, spammed Bycepps and explore the many and inconsistent or at least labirinthyne interactions between cultists and gods. Some give you piety for killing them, some don't, they trigger some stuff, they don't trigger other stuff, but what happens is when you boost your health early on a map with them and have Bycepps (and Getindare) is that it ends up just raining JJ piety and you turn into a complete monster AND get CA and LC. If you're a gnome you also get to regen a huge mana pool.

--- Vicious PQI: Dwarf Warlord - Cheeky - Vicious Steel ---

And then I got the chance to play what I wanted to play AND get payed big money and get stuff done:



Was so awesome that I accidentally walled up Drac and missplayed my way out of opening the secret subdungeon, but I really haven't been playing EM enough on this playthrough (I kinda cheezed out on it and the Codex last time around, and that time I was avoiding the CB because I cheezed out on it before that, and that time I was avoiding Goblins and Bloodmages because I cheezed out on those with Martyr Wraps before that, and that time I... XD).

Anyway - Dwarf Warlords! Vine Form up, use Imawal and Entanglement to get your levels huge, and with levels you also get huge health, and you're a really fat dude with some resistances, probably most of your health potions intact, Cydstep and quite possibly Clearance spam opportunities or an easy swap into, say, Drac (on a really fat dwarf), or plenty od Scholar's Pact fodder or GG for a load of Protections/Cleansings etc. It's a great ole well rounded combo with an interesting and dynamic plan and if the badges aren't cramping your style you can probably handle anything and everything with them.

--- Vicious PQI: Halfling Crusader - Purist - Dragon Isles ---

Then this little maniac took out the mother in law purist with relative ease:



Well, Wonnafyt only really doesn't wreck s**t on Namtars Lair and Naga City layouts, everywhere else it's brutal, and it's particularly brutal on this kind of map because of the open space in front and declogging an otherwise very cramped map easily. I did keep wonnafyt around to skip two Dragons, and I killed the other ones. All that Wonnafyt coupled with Getindare spam (and dodges from it) got me a boatload of JJ piety while I explored and just killed stuff one level above me - I had plenty of extra health and mana and popcorn to pop (which also got me CA) for the Firstborn and then I desecrated Binlor to get into Drac, get sanguine and eventually some lifesteal and resists and ended up desecrating EM for even more indulgences in order to health potion and sanguine down the matron.

I kinda saw it coming, allthough I didn't think I'd run into JJ, Wonnafyt and Getindare to make it this easy, the Crusader is immune to all the debuffs belowground which makes his life much simpler. Unfortunately I couldn't Wonnafyt the Matron to the entrance because I wasn't lvl 10, but on the other hand I had 18 mana and a huge health (and bloodpools) so the guards were basically XP fodder.

---

And then I just did a redundant flaming CO with this little bugger instead of takign up a PQI which wanted me to play him somewhere in Vicious:



Which also got me my final bank upgrade so now I can take 30 into any run, and I might just give the last tripple quest a shot now. Not that it makes much difference, but wth, I kinda set that as a checkpoint. But the Flame streaked on the allready done CO again, and the PQI was a Miser Dwarf Warlord in DI and I decided to call it a day.

---

Fun day all in all even if some of my comments are critical of stuff. Am enjoying Dwarf Warlords and Elf Priests, and the Gobbo Monk was kinda cool to actually get done (don't attempt that folks, seriously, it was a lot of failed runs before I ran into that CB and the beneficial glyphs). It was a nice day for DD, and this whole thing is getting closer and closer to done, and I discovered a ton of great stuff on this playthrough and got comfotable with a lot of stuff I dig way more things than I did before - and also confirmed my suspicions about some things I suspected for a while.