Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[Lynzkar]

I did have a really close run as goat on vicious steel, I had pact maker, JJ, and earthmother. I got really close to defeat blahblah, but i were two hits away from it in the end, and JJ rejected my last chance at 67 piety. Would've been able to make it if it werent for that tough luck. Should've prepped Apothecary.
By "the Ball" you refer to?

[Lujo]

I mean Crystal Ball.

For Vicious Steel, it's more about Binlor than about Pissorff, although that helps. If you have platemail + Binlor there (or rather about 5 Damage Reduction and Knockback + Magic Resists) you can really get both killed quite easily. Oh, and yes, deffinitely prep Apothecary.

[Lynzkar]

Ah yes of course. I'm still learning the meta-terms. Even thought I've got 140 posts (with this one).
I have mostly just been around on my "Class-suggestions, with sprites" thread.
On the topic of pissorf (sort of). How does "plant-cannons" with half-dragons work? Do you just push plants near the boss, then launch them on the boss one by one?
Also, some advice for the dragon isles? I've still only compleated it with the obvious berzerker. I've had some close runs with wizard, sorcerer and warlord, but I've allways been 1 or 2 hits away
Edit:
I decided to try out something a bit different, which turned out to work out pretty amazingly.
Orc Priest Run (first try victory)

I've found the firstborn to be the biggest problem of the dungeon really.

Edit : decided to go safe with orc sorcerer

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

Right, so, more rats and chemists (well, mostly rats) than ussual, had a bit of a discrepancy with the number of them left somehow:

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Right, so, I went and fireballed this place down for a change. Fireballed Bleaty, fireballed Stheno, was quick and fun.

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Took the rat to DL. Felt fiddly and specific, other guys would just perp Crytal Ball if they were going Binlor, have 16 mana and when they level they wouldn't need to buy stuff or get extra hits in on stuff before they can pissorff it, so topside was fiddlier than usual (Blovski, if you're reading - YES this is extra fiddly, other PoS guys just roll it with much less hassle and kill more stuff just because they can). He did mow down the Avatar rather easily, though, so that's his tradeoff. He's nowhere bad with the strat, just worse than anyone else because for other people there's no actual strat to it, they just knock a Djin down and mindlessly snowball thorugh the topside.

he felt like Yendor was a needed thing, other guys just laugh at the PQI for sending them here.

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Funnily enough I'm beggining to appreciate Drac dwarves in Gaan'Telet more and more, simply because you're kinda always guaranteed %based refills and they get more out of them and dings. Damage's not the same as a human or Orc would get, but they got thier perks. And, well, Crusaders have always been brutal res stackers, the ammount of stuff this guy had left over was vast.

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Here's a prime example of why the Rat, as great of a pissorff guy he is simply doesn't measure up to other guys - this fellow couldn't even cross the bridge as there was a lvl9 berserker he couldn't move on it. And his potions didn't refill him, he didn't find the secret sub, or the regular sub, or most of the gold or shops or boosters. Both bossess were on his side of the map, and he did it easily. That's pissorff.

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Then, inspired by Blovski's purist rats I also went and did one. It was fun for a change

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Then this was wierd:



This guy rolled it in one try, but then the game didn't register my win, and I had to do it again, but I was so annyoed with that that I kept playing like an idiot and failed the next 3 tries. Left it alone, did some other stuff IRL, came back and did it in one try.

Dwarf Warlord, he's really good

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Then I went to try another Drac Rat for a bit of practice for VGT and I did get it done in one (or possibly even 2) tries, but it was a bit of a pain in the ass. No really easy dodgy solutions to getting the Firstborn corroded, and carrying around stuff to hack my way through the basement is a pain on a Vicious-difficulty Rat.

It also involved a lol moment when I swapped over into EM and realized that I had a lifesteal which she decidedly doesn't like, so I just plantationed away all that potential sanguine, cleanied up some undead, and went back to drac after maybe a mana refill or two.

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Incredibly adorable portrait, but I'm getting kinda dissapointed with Elf Chemists - since the "form falls of at lvl up" thing, I tend to run out of mana potions and just play a potinless dinger. It's not bad, you can farm a lot of piety and stuff, but it doesn't really have that much advantage over any other chemist when it comes to being a spellcaster. I suppose it'll take folks a while to really catch onto that, it just looks so sinergistic that I'm not even gonna stir the hornet nest.

Also, I could've really done well here if I didn't pick up all the tokoloshe charms and then desecrated binlor / spammed weakening. Cold've easily health-formed Zin Kibaru (facepalm).

Also - this took two tries. On the second one I paid the Troll off, and easily rolled it. On the first one I didn't and got a reminder of his fast-regen trait, and how nasty it can be if your potions don't work like regular potions and you're not a gobbo.

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Then I did the Hex rat. Meh, the bossess spawned in a way which made sure you can't pissorff them (seems to be happening an awful lot on Hex, lately). I just switched to fireballs and played it the regular way, with a mob of zombies chasing me around. I like that, adds drama.

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[Lujo]

I tried to rush it, and ended up not making it, but here's some of the run-up (I think there's 8 more runs for full rainbow without VGT and the 3rd tripple quest):



A quick Slime Pits PoSdown, usual stuff, at this point RL stuff has sort of piled up and I'm kind of just rushing it completely. Rainbowed it!

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Same deal, except EM was on board. And you know if I'm packing Yendor I'm really just cleaning up.
Rainbowed this too!
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He, he, he, just because I'm in a hurry doesn't mean I can't have some fun I do enjoy DD, there's just too much of it to enjoy every run. And I haven't rushed all that much on this playthough at all, always found time for these

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This one wasn't an actual pissorf thing, I just prepped binlor to open up the map and farm piety. Was quite manageable. Rainbow!

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This, on the other hand was a "I wanna just win this, and win it quick!" thing. Rainbowed!

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Then this took 2 tries, was expecting a better performance, but I suppose that's what happens when you're in a hurry.

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Then I did a Human Wizard on Gaan'Telet, with pretty much the same preps as the Naga City Half Dragon, Dragonshield + Drac, was supposed to be a resist stacker with some nice glyph utility and big damage when he levels up. Worked really well, shame I clicked on continue before taking the screenie

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Then I did this by mistake, because of the hurry - I thought I was missing a chemist here, but was in fact missing the rat Was over quickly though:



and then I Ratcitified that mistake right away:



With a lightning-fast-cheeze-Rat. Binlor is actually quite strong on Ick, despite what it looks like. Pissorf's not a regen fighting strat and since it evades everythign Itsssamna just drops as collatera. You do have to move the other guy to him (or him to the other guy), but Pissorf kills plants cheaply and once you score the Endiswal you can farm plenty of Binlor Piety. I know it should be like that, but I've not really done it too many times so I was pleasantly surprised it worked (simply because it makes rushing through Ick a thing if you need to, otherwise blech, the damned thing works on Ick, too ).

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And then I topped it off with a full-contact Chemist:



I was avoiding this place because it's not really too friendly towards either regen fighting or pissorffs, and I didn't get much out of my potions, but I did make great use of Byceps and Getindare to level up and then big health, resists, sanguine and byceps on a dwarf to kick the druids ass.

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Right, so, after all my miscalculations, 8 more runs to go - 2 rats, 2 chemists, and one thing in each of these - Dragon Isles, Demonic Library, Naga City and Gaan'Telet. Then I just do wiki work and slowly peel off VGT whenever I have some time and take out the last tripple quest. But as far as research and this particular playthrough goes, full non-VGT rainbows is what I'm satisfied with, RL stuff caught up with me.

It's funny because what happened on every other playthrough (quite a few of them) was that I made the mistake of "doing just one VGT run", and then got caught up with it, it took too much RL time and I both burned out before rainbowing all the vicious things and also caught myself spending too much time on DD (and the ocasinal bug storm crashing VGT runs also wasn't good for my mental health). This time around I said - right, VGT's my trademark dungeon, but I'm not gonna fall into that trap again, and I went and did do everything else with all sorts of stuff (and copious ammounts of pissorf spam this time around but I did do a ton of wacky PQI and got quite a bit of research done and my backlog of things to try out in DD has shrunk considerably ^^ And I did avoid Binlor like the plague on the previous 2 playthroughs, and the crystal ball on the previous one, so this time the PQI and conscious decision had me avoid Gnomes and Mystera respectively as I overdid them last time around more than Tinker has ).

I also avoided Orcs like the plague, and tried to only do PQI ones and spellcasters (if it overlapped), and I also avoided TT potions like the plague to not fall into a habit of just lvl1 bosskilling stuff (also avoided the Fabulous Treasure), just about didn't touch the guitar, did my best to play mazy maps with no wall removal help...

This must've been the strangest and most atypical playthrough I've ever done, now that I think about it. Most of it was the dregs of my PQI - including most of the Orc spellcasters, which also helps explain why I'm so hugely annoyed when Tinker tries to read my personality or playstyle preferrences from it. Even the stuff I spammed like mad was stuff I avoided for years and years, maybe one or two monks were Human or Orc, every thief was a Goblin when it wasn't a Dwarf, I played more elves than ever (and not a single one with Codex), I played a bajoilion PQI halflings, I actually prepped Elite Items (both as a prep and as in actually prepped elite stuff out of a locker, which I always avoided doing for various reasons), played huge swaths of runs purist, took out the VT's in most places first thing, played more dwarves than in all the playthoroughs combined, probably didn't play a single Gnome Bloodmage, used JJ a lot, struggled with Vampires... If someone told me a few years ago I'd ever put in such a playthought I'd have a hard time believing it, but there you have it, a Bizzaro Lujo playthrough. It was like as if Darvin did an all-potions spiker playthourgh, or if Tinker modded fireball out of the game I played Halfling Warlords to great sucess! And took the Dwarf Warlord through all the Vicious Dungeons! And did mad stuff with Goblin Rogues! And pissorffed Slime Pits with Elf Berserkers! And used Cauldron with Gnome Transmuters ^^ Wheee!

Not over just yet, but it was quite a ride, and I'm rather pleased with how all the stuff I haven't been playing that much works nicely when you find reasons to give it a shot. A few things I'm really miserable about not spotting during beta as they're just begging to be tweaked/modded/whatevered, but way less frustration than on any other playthrough before (well, there's a few reasons for that I'm keeping to myself, though).

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

Ye, tru, tru, I post stuff in difficult ways.

Anway, here's completion, the last of the 600-ish runs it takes to do it (that's not countin puzzles, failed runs and sidetracks):

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My PQI was acting weird ever since the update. Namely it wouldn't give me a vicious PQI and it wasn't giving me classess I haven't yet done in other places and was heading for rainbows and stuff. This guy looked like a fun quick little sidetrack so I thought it might be one of those "do a run of it, it fixes it'self things":



Stacked a ton of Vineforms. Dunno why I did this, it's probably the least potent way to play EM and the scaling cost most likely makes it a terrible deal pretty quickly but somehow whenever I see EM these days I do it. Can't tell for sure but five hits is like a better 5 Absolutions + a taurog shield and I always take either of those and like them, so 5 stacks of these can't be bad, right? Worked fine, got my money, enjoyed a pleasant DD run.

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And that seemed to have fixed my PQI, which promptly set me up with the last remaining non-VGT rat.



And it was also an enjoyable experience, as it was different from what I usually do with Rats and that's jusr run through the dungeon just to get it over with.

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The PQI kept working so I got to play another streaky Human chemist, also the last one:



Well, warmonger PQI, Body Pact and Taurog on the table and I prepped Dragonshield anyway. I ended up regen fighting the Goo melee with no gimmicks. Very nice for a change, really, didn't get too much out of the double health regen on most chemists so far.

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Then this took several attempts:



Eh, I should've payed more heed to all the "Bloodmage in Naga City is actually tough", and I left him for the last thing there. And it also took me a few failed runs to just switch over to a Binlor Orc, who then did it in one try. Tough run, actually, no joke.

Ranibowed Naga City.

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Then I decided that the remaining Transmuter in Dragon Isles was gonna be a Dwarf. Played a bunch of them on this playhtrough and decided I really liked them.



It was an utter stomp. Transmuters can level like nobody's bussiness, and when that produces a leveled up dwarf with resists and lifesteal things get ugly. Also, this must be the first time ever that I took 4 levels of sanguine. I remember someone telling me months ago in the "do dwarfs need a buff" thread or somewhere about how Sanguine is even better on Dwarves than it usually is, and yes, it totally is. Made me wonder if Dwarves were a bit underused as VGT guys, what with the customary bloodpool bonanza in there...

Rainbowed that.

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And with the end so close in sight and the chances of me playing DL again any time soon I decided I was gonna enjoy it so for the rainbow I went with:



Just that - a Drac Dwarf. Heck, before I started this playthrough there were a lot of talks about both Drac and Dwarves, and I kind of knew combining them was really awesome, but on this playthrough I learned just how totally playable Drac is when prepped. Not just with Dwarves necessarily but tackign on some resists onto his resists and taking a bit of lifesteal for both tanking and popcorn munchery really is a good mid-way strat between "no resists" and "full resists". Also, you know you're gonna win if you find him, and if you're playing something that can use him it's pretty fun and satisfying to just be honest, prep him and worship him and not just show up only for the refills at the end.

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And then I was enjoying that so much that I just couldn't resist and had this as my last run:



It cuts a bit into the Priest - Dwarf sinergy as you might be hesitant to power level using Undead, and the you've got no damage bonus vs the boss, but hey... You got 5 cheap bloodswells on a lvl 10 dwarf with resists, what's not to like?

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And that's that as far as completion goes. I poked my head into VGT for a few purist Dwarf Rogue runs, one got to the last floor and would've won it... if Drac showed up at any point but when he did, at the last floor, as that would've saved me a ton of resources. Taurog only showed up on the floor before that. So it was a doomed run, really, but I only got that far because GG was on the second floor. Anywho, that place got over buffed in the last incarnation, and I'm not gonna even try to rush that, as far as I'm concerned I've done so much VGT in my life that it doesn't matter. I'll just give it an attempt or two when I have the time and post a bunch when they pile up. Same for the last tripple quest.

Playthrough done, RL stuff calling, I'll do stuff all over the wiki more than I'll play, probably do the daily and a VGT thing when I have some time. I might farm up the last two veto slots before I do the VGT stuff and post some the runs here too and it'll certainly feature less cheeze because I'll be doing it just for fun and with no time constraints.

Very dwarfy Playthrough, and very odd and unusual in my experience, but more enjoyable than any I've done before. I'd do a proper writeup, but I don't expect the devs would read it or take it seriously enough, so I don't really see the point. If I do ever do a full playthrough again, I think I'll just do it for my own hobby purposes and not post about it either here or on the steam boards but on a Tumblr or whatever (provided that doesn't violate any legal stuf, tems of use or whatever).

Thanks for reading folks!

[Sidestepper]

Wow! I've been checking in on this once in a while, but I had no idea about the scope of the project. There's a lot of great stuff in here. My DTD game is a little rusty, and I think I could benefit from reading this through carefully.

[Lujo]

Ty, and yeah, several hundreds of runs in a rather small window of time, all rainbows and stuff. I suppose I did some fine research, I got cool ideas for the wiki I'm just brewing it till it condenses, the damned thing is too long winded as it is, and I'm trying to think of ways to ease and nudge folks in the right directions so they don't screw the PQI up the way I did.

A got a whole load of cool new PQI stuff, been playing for money and variety and chasing samey stuff out of the PQI in vicious dungeons. It's all rainbows, but I'm kinda still shooting for all veto slots and then VGT.

Shame that I'm banned so I can't post it, there's educational stuff in there.

Right, err, since I'm here anyway and somehow:

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Here's some dailies, been getting some props for some felt a bit and a bit proud so here's what I did:









This one actually merits an eplaination - I went in to face my fear of losing a streak to a silly monster clas Magma Mines thing after last time, and also to see if I got my Vampire mojo going again. Walked into Fire Heart - that's VERY good on a Vamp. Spam while you look for targets, refill after or during the kill. Then Endiswal, so something to spam, then Draco Heart, something to spam Endiswal towards... Then some burning stacking high level kills for straight dingage, platemail, bloodcow snakes, etc etc.



Found it funny how it sorta turned out that I, the guy who feels Warrior's pact's a ripoff, went Warrior's pact on this one for completely smooth sailing. It killed my taurog piety though, and this map is sorta notorious for not having enogh magic damage enemies. But the really funny thing about this is that the only other run I did today was a PQI Halfling Rogue specialist on Namtar's Lair, right before the daily came up XD



This one, to be precise, and it's a Namtar's Lair specialist with no Pissorff! And, well, I'm not sure how it works on NL, but I decided specialist meant no fireballs at any of the Namtars. VERY fun run. Pactmaker was scholar's pact, and the physical resist form was dispactched with Martyr Wraps, and the fact that they can be used for this purpose is well woth knowing (picked up on it with some dwarf or another).

Otherwise my PQI has been a run of same old stuff Tinker data mined out of this thread - most classess just rotate the two least played races until I manage to get them both to reach the third last played I supposed. Except -



That guy. Either he's my most underplayed Thief by miles and leagues and kilometers or he's just bugged, turns out the same for all practical purposes:



He just keeps haunting me and won't let up. I've seen him at least 4 or so more times dring log on and log off, and by this point I've done so much stuff with him we could call him a power build.

Wait a second, IS he actually a really strong build? Let's see - he's a thief, 16 mana with just extra mana, that's the pissorff number, he can always do that. He's got a popcorn munching tool, extra potions and extra potent potions, get high enough and it's like a free refill. And you can get high as all hell with the gobbo CP and some resource investment, and since he's a gobbo he can always play JJ and GG like a boss. But he also has an additional health and dmg booster, both are quite good at high levels, and also extra gold which is great with a goblin for more silly dingage.

I think this guy is a stupid looking ball of sinergy, like, the generalists generalist with a multitude of options be it items, gods, strats, or just using whatever there is. Thieves like their levels, gobbos get thier levels, and it works very well after you get a hang of it.

I just whish I could see the back of him and have my PQI set me up with a different thief before I die, though.

Also this guy:



See, this is why I spammed this creep. Go home PQI, you're drunk.

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Right, got a big bunch more, but gtg, hope I can still log in when I get back...