QCF Design Community

Having a look -

preps:

As a Goblin Assassin, I wouldn't recommend balanced dagger. You start with Apheelsik, situational first strike and so on, which should give you an edge on higher level enemies. You shouldn't really need to be fighting same-level monsters and, as a Goblin, you really want something like Dwarven Gauntlets or Elven Boots or whatever that gives you long-term power.

Binlor's a sound choice. The other preps are fine, with Binlor I like taking Smuggler's Den because it gives you extra blackspace to regenerate mana and walls to break for piety.

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Early game: not a huge deal but blasting an enemy into the map edge is not ideal if you want to piety farm up to 35 with Binlor. In general you're killing a lot of level 1s you don't really need to, playing a bit more carefully with pisorf would let you circumvent a bit of that. You also repeatedly blast a vampire into blackspace. Bad idea because lifesteal activates every time you reveal them.

See that Snake at 1.20ish. You could've just pushed him back along the row of walls for a load of piety and to give you a lot of room to work with up there for pisorfing other enemies. With a Binlor early game you generally want as much piety as possible so you can work towards to 65% magic resistance. At 4.50-5.00, you waste some blackspace with how you move around that vampire, use that 4 tiles of mana to, say, get some piety by pisorfing that level 9 snake. That kill on the level 7 is just the sort of thing you should be aiming for, though.

Dwarven Gauntlets a really good purchase here. Good job using Imawal throughout.

When you get yourself into that sticky situation fighting the acid blob, I think it would've been more efficient to kill some lower level enemies for the level up than blowing most of your remaining blackspace while poisoned for the 2 XP from it.

Secret subdungeon - you could've blown those four enemies around you into the corner walls for 20 piety, spend some mana getting 5 piety out of that snake topside and then used all of the rest of the dungeon's blackspace just to generate Binlor piety with Endiswal. More efficient pisorfing, grabbing the endiswal boon and more focus on gaining piety with Binlor would've helped you a lot here - I can't see exactly how much magic resistance you're going down with but I'm guessing it's well under 50, most of the walls topside are still up, and you've only got 10 piety saved up, which makes it really hard for you to use any of the other gods or stoneskins on the bottom.

Smart decision to head down just before a level-up. Helps a lot with the first wave.

First wave of bosses - two magic resistance bosses. Getting three stacks of curse from Tomithy is going to make it harder to efficiently regen fight the others - especially Aequitas, whom you could otherwise easily poison and regen-fight to death without using up that Death Protection. You can't regen-fight that wraith with fireballs - the blackspace you spent there would've been better used killing Aequitas straight off, I think.

Second wave of bosses - probably two of the three toughest opponents in one for your class. I think you'd probably have ended your run on Frank regardless. Not having piety really limits your options for dealing with them.

Mistake at 13.09. You would've saved a lot more resources by using a mana potion to cure the burn, regenerate all your stuff and then level up while you're fighting the bosses. Having two levels worth of health/mana in the fight is invaluable against these bosses.

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Anyway, not a bad run all in all and I don't mean to be discouraging. Key things are:

A) Balanced Dagger on Assassin not ideal imho.
B) Binlor piety generation and general use of pisorf could be a lot more efficient. There are tons of walls topside, so you can generally hit 40-50% magic resistance and at least 50 piety to spare before you head down without too much trouble.
C) Level-ups and blackspace are resources much the same as potions. When you see a wave, work out which bosses you should regen fight, which you'll need to spend potions or a level-up on etc.

Hope that helps, sorry if too much textwall gotta cook dinner because heading out soon but I'll answer the rest later, hopefully.

If you want an exp prep then Yendor is a better option as you'll get more exp and you can avoid a 40 piety loss from Binlor if you use it before worshipping him. Damage or resist items are good too as they'll help with higher level kills and benefit your regen fighting in the arena.

Hey watched it! I couldn't get the audio to work, so if there was commentary, I totally missed that...

So, couple of things - and I may say different things than those who wrote before me, hope you'll appreciate the diversity of opinions...

First of all, Goblin would not be my race choice for an Assassin when you're trying to beat Naga City. The concept of GobAss is totally sound for most maps - Naga City is one of the few that are not among them... The reason for this is that because Naga City is the second most abundant dungeon in terms of XP, you are practically guaranteed to reach L10 and have several prestige level-ups after that. I would most likely rather pick Human for this map. (When I was badge-hunting, I did a combo Purist + Faithless run on Naga City with a Human Assassin.) Furthermore, the topside of the map - as annoying as it may seem - is there to let you gather resources; the bottom side is where the real challenge lies. You are practically guaranteed to be L10 throughout most of your gauntlet time; and, you must learn to squeeze every bit of resource from the topside. A Goblin can give you maybe 2 extra level-up refills (no bonus to stats as of L10); this will not compare to what any other race can give you. Consider that you could get at least +60% damage bonus with the human; or extra 7-10 mana potions with a Gnome (280%-400% mana refill at your leisure, not tied to level-ups).

Now, on to preparations. I totally agree with the Compression Seal, the Black Market, and the Attack Boosters! seriously:
1. Binlor would not be my top deity choice for the Assassin. I can imagine Jehora Jeheyu, Tikki Tooki, or honestly even Mystera working better. Depends on what you envision doing. Of course, Knockback is awesome to access the secret sub (and also downstairs), but you have the Bear Mace preparation which pretty much almost gives you what you prepared Binlor for. (Aside of the PISORF that is very useful against The Iron Man at least.)
2. Balanced Dagger is totally overrated. I mean it. Not just for this build, but in general. It's an awesome item to chance upon, and pick up in store; it's probably the worst possible prep ever. If you want XP bonus, take Yendor; or pick an item that lets you *earn* XP bonus by being able to go for higher-level kills (actually, this is recommended approach for longer levels like Naga City, where your Yendor XP will seem like nothing once you're starting to face the real fights). Now, for this build, it's also a bit off. Goblin can get a lot of XP, so she doesn't crave more bonus XP; she craves something tangible like an attack bonus or health bonus or mana bonus. Assassin does not ever want to fight same-level opponents, because outleveling them makes the kill cost zero resources. If you want to avoid having to go for L+2+ higher level kills, go with the Tikki Tooki assassin, who never has to kill anything higher-level...
3. Elite Items is awesome if you have a lot of gold, or a translocation seal; though it's probably my least commonly used bazaar preparation. I'd pick Apothecary (for extra Schadenfreude + potion(s) of your choice) or Quest Items (Dragon Soul; Soul Orb; Crystal Ball; etc.).
4. It is easy to underrate the basic Health and Mana potions. I think the potions you picked were good, don't get me wrong; I'm just commenting because very rarely do I actually remove the basic restorative potions from my potion kit, given their general utility. Maybe one of them for a build that is very much focused on exploiting one bar.

I felt that sometimes you engaged a monster (Tormented One downstairs being a prime example) without knowing in advance how the fight will turn out. DD is totally math! You should never have to wonder how the fight will go. Furthermore, you don't even need to do all mathsy calculations and stuff, you look at the enemy health bar, and you get a visual indication of what your current attack will do to it (and what the retaliation, if any, will do to you). Well, most of the time, bugs aside... If you can cast 2 fireballs, and that's not enough to kill it, think thru how you'll activate more damage - mid-fight level-up; potions; shennanigans; boons; whatnot. You could've, for example, moved Tomithy diagonally up-left to form a triangle with the 3 bosses; then PISORF Aequitas into the Tormented one (and melee Tomithy in a way that applies the KB% damage onto Tormented One); level-up by killing a mob instead of killing a mini-boss; and unload a second volley into the bosses; this would've damaged Tormented One considerably, and made it easier to take down. Of course, some mana potions could've still been needed (or a yendor/conversion level-up). Or you could've just done what you did, and then drink a couple of mana potions to blast Tormented One via fireballs. Or maybe use the level-up for that, and just deal with the other two bosses afterwards, since you still had glyphs to convert (not to forget the Yendor in store).

Then the level-up to cure your mana burn... as mentioned before, a potion would've been much better idea. That way you get an extra full double-bar restore that is totally useful against the mini bosses. I kind of felt that even when you went up against the second wave, you were a bit unsure how to do things; poison TIM who has like 75% MR; etc.

So to recap... I think you need to have a good idea of what your strategy will be. And then align all your build elements - race, class, preparations - to support that strategy. If you throw a bunch of individually good-looking elements into the pot, you'll probably get something at least decent; though if you throw the right stuff, with everything supporting your basic idea, you'll get a bulldozer that makes you wonder whether you accidentally loaded Southern Swamp instead of a vicious dungeon.

Btw... nice profile pic!