How do you get better at DesktopDungeons?

[MTaur]

[Tinker]

[Daedin]

Hehe, thanks all for the tips

I had looked at the Wiki (at least the general pages, not the dungeon-specific ones), and had found some advice, but it clearly didn't compare to what I learned thanks to your reviews.

[Darvin]

[Nurator]

I remember that every time someone posted (including me^^) proudly that they had completed their first vicious dungeons someone said "Congrats, you are a vet now"

Thats a big step and needs a lot of time to complete. After doing it once, the other vicious dungeons will follow shortly after (VTOGT excluded)

[Lujo]

If you want to go pro there's 3 things I can say are the backbone of it (for me).

1) Figure the gods out, figure out how they work, and figure out how to squeeze them, juggle them and desecrate altars. Once you got a firm grasp of gods (and especially all the god juggling and desecration shennanigans), you have the most impactful resource under your control. If you can allready use all the glyphs and explore/popcorn bowl, you know the moves, gods let you cash in on it.

2) Know your cheats. Once you understand what gods do and have experience with it, you can sorta gauge the relative power level of other features. If something has a resource/opportunity cost, you know whic god lets you get around that, so you know what can be broken in what way. Cydstep - earthmother, Goblin Bonus - GG or JJ, good resist stacking potential - you know which guys give what you need, class/race/item good with Pissorf - you know how to magnet it with Binlor and what to swap into. If you know the gods, you can beat stuff with a guard, but since you're never a guard you can always lean on your class features or shore them up with the right god, or simply break an item or race or class or whatever (goblins in particular are mediocre by default and no ammount of looking at them on their own will point you in the right direction, but start them off in a god who hands out stat boosts and watch them blob, for example). If you know that an item + a god just beats dungeons, it's much easier to experiment and play around as you feel much safer.

3) Sequencing your race and class. Play a lot of pqi to figure out races and classess. Don't stick to "optimal" or other such greedy streamlined stuff, take your PQI race / class combo and play it in the flaming dungeon (which will also reset the PQI). You won't be restricted by the badge requirement which then opens up all possible ways to try to find the strenghts of that combination. If you know the gods you'll know how to capitalize on an obvious advantage or shore up an obvious deficiency. The default limited lockers puts a big cramp into player development since properly deep understanding of races and classess takes a lot of experimenting with different starting items (halflings love certain items you wouldn't otherwise keep in a locker, so do goblins, dwarves etc), not to find what works, but to figure out what sort of thing works in general. Dwarf Warlord - makes 0 sense if you premeditate it, but if you're stuck with it a few times and figure out that the warlord is great early while the dwarf is great late (if you know how to boost/cash in on it via gods and possibly an item or two). Then before you know it you're rolling vicious dungeons with it + Earthmother and and wondering what happens if you use the Sorcerer as the early jump start instead of the warlord for some hybrid goodness (retarded things happen, believe you me). And then you just keep going and gaining sequencing experience and get to the point where you just roll everything with anything (pretty much).

HINT: You get a late game race and class (Ex. Dwarf Thief) - pick up some early boosts like fine sword, JJ, health pendant, whatever, don't force early level ups just have a way to get to where you're strong. You get a race + class thats good early (Orc Berserker), capitalize on it by picking up greedy stuff that shores you up later (like GG) or overload on early stuff and snowball (with Taurog) (or just figure out how to end the run early), you get a combination (Elf Priest) - use one to level up the other, then use the other to murder everything. You get stuff that's good thorughout (Halfling Whatever) - time your big moves right to get stuff done you otherwise wouldn't.

[Tinker]

[Darvin]

[MTaur]

I'm also very unlocked-content-oriented. I still haven't unlocked Namtar's Ward, not that I want to change around my locker slots anyway. Maybe when I farm up a ridiculous quantity of gold and finally get my 9th slot I can think about it.

[Tinker]