Vicious Gaan'Telet Revisited

[Sidestepper]

[Lujo]

You're giving me ideas, as usual

[Lujo]

Eh, I just taped a run that would end in victory, but the memory leak or whatever it is got the best of me. The run was a bit sloppy, but I had to go up for bloodpools, and as soon as I descended and smacked Horatio again, it crashed.

My guess is it's not just the floor-hopping but also the glyph related visual effects. The game started visually glitching when I started using Bycepps, not just on the Horatio floor. I'm guessing too many visual cues in one run overloads it? Too many consecutive ones? Too many in too short a time?

It could also account for the crashes which happened on non-Horatio floors, they generaly seem to follow 2 things - going up and down floors (it ussually crashes on the first interaction with a monster just after, and sometimes slows down, or gets the "loading" mouse icon at weird times), and using stuff with visual cues (unfortunately fireball's one of them). "Might" one literally glitched my game every time I used it.

I whish there was a "disable visual effects" button which would turn them of, or at least some of them, so I could test it out. I'm capable of taping and uploading a run, a decent one, but I'd love one which doesn't end in the bug. Or if there IS such a button, to be more obvious



Also, on an unrelated note, I found drac and mysterea on the last two floors and it still looked like I could do Horatio in. No mage plate, either, and only 15 mana (two fireballs and gettindare worth of MP). I only used Martyr Wraps and Witchalok Pendant out of items for most of the run, made some use of Cydstepp for the first floor goats, dipped into both GG and Binlor for minor perks and piety farming and combined TT with cleaning popcorn up to get rid of curse. No Illusion floor breather, either, and it still looked good.

The only really stand out difficult floors were the sand troll and the wraith ones, goos are best gotten late, and snakes are annoying as they require resource allocation / lelvel up timing if you mean to remove poison, which you have to because it shuts down BLOODTOPOWA.

I'm getting good at this

[Lujo]

I tried fullscreen this time, no luck. I got a Whoopaz hit on him, went up to drink a bloodpool, used byceps and hit him - crash. Shame. Was an interesting run.

I started out without a first strike glyph (doomed to fail!), and found EM of all things downstairs. Said, lets use this failure to experiment, took her up as my god, and found the 8 lvl1 monsters subdungeon. Many lols ensued, as I tiptoed around wasting resources to avoid pissing her off by drinking blood, and managing a plant infestation down below. Got nice use out of entanglement, and even managed to wall up 2 plants, go me. Oh and 2 vine forms which ended up being my only source of damage reduction. And the shops were pretty useless except for a mage plate. Doomed run.

Then I found Binlor (the "i have no walls on my floor" variety) and took HIM up. Regen fireballed the goblins and used the ENDISWALL I "forgot" to convert once I found the subdungeon to bust "exploration holes" in the top level at every possible (and optimal) angle. Took Stone Soup for future refreshment fodder, regen fireballed the gobbos, went down praying for an usefull god and found - GG. Yay, optimal god for a Bloodmage, lol I say.

Took HIM up, got humility, got a level up (I think), converted back to Binlor not to anger GG with my bloodsucking ways. Next floor - JJ!

Took HIM up, what the hell, the next 2 floors could've been Taurog the way things were going... Managed to avoid all of his punishments except corrosion and a single weakening, and scored a Mana Boost boon. I contemplated going for Chaos Avatar, but I have no clue if you can take it if you're allready level 10.

Ended up switching to mysterea next floor. Somwhere along the way I desecrated EM and drank a burn salve to get rid of her punishment and the bigass stack of corrosion I had from the Martyr Wraps. Stuck with MA for a while through sand Trolls and Bandits (not sure which way around), got a point of mana, Refreshment and Mystic balance (pure upside, no GETINDARE, lol).

I think it was Trolls, then bandits, because I swapped to TT at Bandits to get rid of curse by eating popcorn, and also got Tiki's Edge for XP and GOLD. I had a big stack, but I was going to need it for potions (I prepped an alchemist). Found Goats and devastated with Mage Plate which I bought to deal with the Trolls who are way to fat. I had about 35 mana, 10+ MW stacks on everything and Mystic Balace. No mana potions though, but I managed to save 2 Schadenfraude potions all the way through.

Last floor was Goo's, had to strike them twice with no first strike AND unload a barrage, although I did level up at some point through it all. Converted a bunch of glyphs, and used up all of my exploration by this point, so both BLOOTOPOWA and LEMISI went to CP (not optimal in retrospect). I was converting glyhs for 4 fireballs, yay. I even managed to get all the curse off exactly. Big damned stack it was too.

Then came Horatio and I had a decent enough shot at it. The plan was to hit with Whoopaz and take away all his resists with Bycepps + Bloodpool hits, while stacking more corrosion for the awesomesauce fireball barrage later. I had enough TT piety over 50 to afford all the -piety hits, at which point all my bloodpools would be gone and I'd swap to GG for all the restorations I coud squeeze. I'd be getting about 2.X 80ish damage fireballs out of each + health, horatio would've had no resists and I had HALPMEH and BYSEPPS to convert for GG piety and 600 more damage, two more schadenfraude for about 1400 fireball damage, Money for a healing potions, and altars to burn.

I would've probably be enough, but I'll never ever know

[Lujo]

Notes on gods apart from the usefull ones:

Binlor is actually pretty good if you have an endiswall and find him early. He'd be even better if there were enough walls on his level for the "might on wall destruction" boon. Then he'd be a must have, and the bombs would be a lot more usefull (not that they aren't usefull now).

EM is horrible for too many reasns to list. She can only maybe work out if you find the "monster zoo" subdungeon, and even then is pretty iffy because she screws you over for later bloodpools and TT and Drac piety. Also, nothing apart from vine form works on any other level. She's the only reliable desecrate fodder though.

GG - if you get binolr before him, grabbing a Humility is actuallly ok. I'm not too sure, though, since the rest of his stuff is rather useless in Gaan'Telet, except, hmmm. I have no clue how exactly his piety-on-level up works, or whether an enlightment would be worth the inventory space, or if is indeed possible to survive as a GG worshiping Bloodmage (without being able to use Bloodtopowa and Suck Blood) while you acummulate 215 piety (175 comming off a fully charged binlor). Youd need it for Enlightment (100), Humility (15) and at least 5 Clensing (50) and converting out (50), and you'd be taking humility primarily for the mana and CP boost (for more mana). Converting glyphs would rob you of refreshment mana (which is awesome and much needed), and I'd have to see what JJ does when you desecrate him, and the EM desecration would HAVE to go towards this huge piety sink.

I wonder if it would be doable?

However, joining GG at the latest moment, mid fight with the boss after you've used up all the offending potions and bloodpools is practicaly a must if you're running thight. His heal boon + a ass mana pool rocks socks. Also, Since I habitually prune the popcorn pool from undead, doing it while dipping in for humility might be worth it.

JJ - isn't too bad, except everyone's better, I have no clue whether Chaos Avatar is attainable at lvl10, and petition is not worth it. Health is plentifull, as are ways to regen it, so no need for the health boon, the +3 mana one is nice enough. I need to find out what exactly his punishment is.

Taurog - Taurog wastes inventory space and mana. On the other hand he gives DR and more DR and damage, and is easy to farm piety with. I think I might start taking him up on that, since I generally prune the popcorn pool of undead and magic users anyway, and simply being in Taurog while I do that would probably give some nice early piety. However, being STUCK with Taurog on an Elven Bloodmage would not be fun at all, except if I have GETINDARE to cut down on regen fireballing.

I could also do what I used to do on the old Gaan'Telet runs, which is take Taurogs boons but leave the stuff lying around for when I convert stuff at the boss fight. This itme around that technique gives dmg boosts. Costs MP though, but if I have a mage plate in the shops it might even be worth it.


Also, I should realy unlock the agnostics collar. I suspect it might make my life a tiny bit easier.

[Lujo]

There might be a strat involving an Elven Bloodmage, Taurog, GG and Drac (and possibly TT) in here somewhere. Of the crazy enough to be obscenely broken variety. Would involve floor hopping, though.

[Darvin]

Taurog for +15% both resists (and some attack bonus while you're at it), Dracul for +15% both resists and maybe a boost to sanguine, TT for dodge and poison, and Elf to compensate for Taurog's MP drain? Sounds like a winner to me, if you can pull it off.

[Lujo]

Ok, I tried it, but it's a bit weird. I tried with an Elf, and I tried with a Dwarf (more HP = more exploity sanguine goodness).

A few observations:

Don't join EM second. You'll get stuck.

Any resists strat has major issues with the curse floors. You absolutely NEED to be a kick-ass spellcaster to get through those without getting bogged down viciously. GETINDARE is a must.

Taurog and TT both get their piety of kills. And if you run into the curse floors before you run into TT you're screwed. You're also screwed if you you have TT and are not a kickass spellcaster with Getindare. And you can't really kill anything without glyphs as a Bloodmage, so Taurog piety is harder to acquire than it looks, unless you run into a curse floor (cleaning popcorn gives you piety).

Out of all of Taurog's junk, you probably only need the Armor. There are only to Magic damage Floors, the Goos and the Druids. There are only 4 druids and they are a below average nuisance - I tend to think of that floor as a breather. The goos you don't want hitting you, period. Getting rid of curse is a lot harder than it looks. So if dipping into Taurog, grab the armor and run, and only pick it up once you really need it.

Prepping Dragonshield looks like a good idea in practice (18% + 15% (Taurog) + 15% (Drac) + Platemail (maybe) + Patches (maybe)) has too many maybe's, and god knows when and if you are getting Drac at all. Without Dragonshield its only 30% tops, there are 2 curse floors which scream for Martyr Wraps, and it works a lot worse without HALPMEH which isn't guaranteed to spawn.

Also, Witchalok Pendant sort of gives you max resists for all practical purposes if you're an elven bloodmage.

All things accounted for, grabbing the armor off Taurog just in case and just for the boss fight is probably a good idea in general.

Very, very important note to self: Stop trying to clear out the Illusion floor by fighting them. Magic resistance is not necessary at all, and you only managed to do it once anyway.

[Lujo]

Dwarven Bloodmage with Martyr Wraps went pretty sweet. It crashed right before Horatio, but I had around 200 HP and 30% resists, BYCEPPS, 40% sanguine I think (80 HP per bloodpool) and a lot of bloodpools, Mage Plate Ready to be bought when I swap from phys to big damage Fireballs. I didn't manage to get poison, but I did have a bunch of exploration left over. If there was a platemail in the pool, I would have been taking around 50 damage per hit, and I'd regen two hits per blood pool.

He'd have no resists after, lets say, 17 hits, and I'd be doing around a 100 per mele hit, and around 70 per burndayraz.

I don't think a resist strat would really work without dragonshield, though, and I also don't think any strat would work without Martyr Wraps. But it's deffinitely doable, and this run was far from optimal. I got my 30 resists togather way to late. If it had been earlier, I would've lost a lot less resources along the way.

This was what I did god-wise - Piety farm binlor JJ, got Petition right away, got Chaos avatar in time to go from lvl9 to lvl 10. Then swapped to GG for Humility, then to Drac for resists and 2 hits of sanguine. Then Taurog just for the armor, then TT - got Tiki's Edge and Dodge and fell 2 piety short of converting. Used Tribute and settled into Mysterea, and crashed on the last snake. I would've got a bunch of piety fighting Horatio, and spent it on Refreshment most likely, then converted to either GG or Drac.

There's not enough room to worship everyone, and deffinitely not enough piety to go around smoothly. I skipped out on TT's gold, which I felt, and I skipped out on Mysterea which I probably would've felt. The only plus to this strat that was obvious was being able to kill bandits in 2 hits + getindare, and barely tank very, very low level goats (hit, fireball, getindare).

However, on my next "regular" elf spellcaster run, I'll probably give picking up the Taurog armor for the boss fight a shot come what may. Last couple of those I ended up with 2-5 mana too many, and some of those came from getting them from Mysterea for loads of Piety. Spending that on a dip Taurog is probably a better call, as long as it doesn't interfer with my TT gold farming.



About the video - I'm sort of ready, but I'm also sort of waiting to see if Dislekcia manages to track down the memory leak. Being able to do a run without it ending in an abrupt crash would be awesome.

[Lujo]

This crashed 3 hits away from killing him. I ran out of HALPMEH mana three hits from the win, went topside to get it, came down with it, crashed. I feel sad.

And I didn't cast a single fireball this time... I watched out for the FPS drops, and saw that fireball takes things down to 2 FPS per second, and my previous run crashed on a fireball. So I just converted it for refreshment. And the BLOODTOPOWA, trying to avoid the bug. And the LEMISI, even thugh I had almost 2 full floors worth of exploration...

Well, at least I know the "optimal" strat now. BLOODTOPOWA, Martyr Wraps (shrunk), GETINDARE, BURNDAYRAZ and Platemail, one utility slot (midas gloves for as long as you can keep them) to be used for stuff like ENDISWAL and needs to be free as long as there is a chance the Illusion Floor will turn up so you can pick up the orb thingy.

Leave HALPMEH on the floor, dip into Taurog for the Platemail, leave it on the floor, take Resists from Drac (you probably need nothign else), and so on and so forth. 30% Resists, bloodpools, refreshment, Bycepss and Halpmeh can probably take the boss out with ease.

I ought to really take a break untill this bug thing's fixed. I'm dismatling the level so hard I could probably sit down an code it, but the fact that it's crashing is leaving me with a sense that I somehow failed. I've beaten Gaan'Telet at least a dozen times in this last week, and my gold fell below a 1000, and I haven't seen the victory screen once.

Oh well, resist fighter elven battlemage with a huge mana pool beats Gaan'Telet pretty easily once you get a hang of things. Will make a cool video, I'm sure. I should'v taped all my crashing Horatio fights, that would've gone viral - the depressed russian mob enforcer never seems to get the cake...