Tikki Tooki

[Sidestepper]

Agreeing that TT really needs the 'dirty fighting' bonus to be viable at low levels. The times I've tried TT at lower levels, I usually tried to get Poison ASAP. At 60 piety, this is not very easy, and requires substantial sacrifice of popcorn and gold to get. Even then, I can only reliably pull it off if I also happen to find a WONAFYT or WEYTWUT. Getting Dodge on top of that requires even more sacrifice of critical long term resources.

What I've found is that having Dodge and GETINDERE and Poison all at once lets you more or less hold your piety even while leveling up, but doesn't actually let you gain useful amounts of piety. I can't imagine gaining all of those boons, let alone being able to use them, without popcorn piety.

[Lujo]

You could in theory with metagaming (Pactmaker, desecrations, sinking a lot of gold into Tribute) and wasting half the map for both WHEYTWUT and GETINDARE stacked dodge predictions, but yeah... Having the 5% dodge allowing flaming pants implemented could make it a tiny little bit more viable, but still...

Keeping the piety loss to an acceptable minimum while you whittle down the boss / abunch of guys is rather doable with Poison and Dodge online, but getting to them without popcorn piety would be a pain. Doable, certanly, but a pain.

However, since GETINDARE is TT's Glyph, getting rid of the WHEYTWUT +1 piety in excange for a bonus for killing stuff without getting touched of, say, I don't know, either 1 or 2, would make thematic sense.

I still like the takes away your gold and makes you unlock suspicious treasure chests for him if you wan't to prep him really in spirit of thievs. You wan't me to do you a favour? "Sure, I do you a favour, you do ME a favour! See I got these chests here that, erm, fell off a truck, and I was thinking..."

[Lujo]

Oh, and one more point of interest - I just remembered how and why I figured poison out in the first place. Super Meat Man! That thing is so fat that you need a crazy good boon and a crash course in regen fighting to be able to deal with him reliably, at least early on.

Having him as a possible choice of an early boss mandated becoming profficent with poison, and also ment that any early run without TT was in danger of being undoable simply if it contained the fatass creep. If I'd discovered ow good the potions were for Bleaty, that would've been 2 solid reasons to need TT on every run on top of the gold.

Is there any other solution to the SMM before unlocking APHEELSICK?

[TigerKnee]

Find the guy and start regen fighting him relatively early while you still have lots of squares. Poison is super helpful, but you don't NEED it to beat SMM.

[Lujo]

It would probably work, but it didn't look like that to me when I was a newb. He may have a bit too much health in the current version (can't tell, haven't seen him outside of Slime Pits in ages).

[gjaustin]

[Lujo]

[gjaustin]

[Sidestepper]

SMM requires you to devote your resources to him early. You either want two level ups or a lot of blackspace, or both. I ran into him in this thread and managed to take him down with a Hoarder Fighter. I you look at the last screen shot, you'll see that I'm fighting him without having taken down all of the high level monsters (there is a 9 and 2 8s still on the board). This is absolutely not SOP for non-VICIOUS dungeons, where you want to dig out all of the hard-to-get xp first, and then deal with the boss. I wanted all of my higher level ups to be spent on the boss.

I barely pulled this one out, but it was a purist hoarder run with no gods and a mana potion sacrificed to the gnome.

[Lujo]

Ok, I slept on it and a have a few more things regarding TT, and an idea for a new thread that might just merit being stickied

So the TT stuff (constructive, informative and important):

Tribute - the nerf to tribute had unforseen concequences. It came about at the time I was abusing TT as the engine for the Monk minimalist CP monster roflcopter. But without the ability to "Tribute up" a boon (Tkiki's edge), joining him early seems really lacking. The damned thing was only really broken because "tributing up" Poison would let you gain ungodly ammonuts of piety and by itself shut down the -2 per getting hit penalty that even a Monk could use TT as if he had no penalty at all. With poison only giving one per monster, Tribute should probably go back to 10 per 10. This would enable stuff, but what exactly takes an elaboration on different ways of worshiping TT. So, without further ado:

The ways of worshiping the 2 in 1 God:

1) "Glitterfinger" macro, or the "The Economist":

You join TT for post-boss no-investment goldmongering.

Begginer:

Simply wait untill you kill the boss and can't cock up, join TT (off a piety farm or blank) and pick up as many boons for cash as you can squeeze. Noobs should love this one, I certanly did. It helps with the "max level" and the "kill everything" badges too.

Pro:

The pros would want TT on every easy run for this as well - if you squeeze TT for 30-50 gold, thats a free Slayer Wand for your next 6-10 runs. Or whatever distribution for whatever prep. And they can take him earlier because they wouldn't cock up and get punished.

Ways to get piety after you've done fighting and don't care for your stats include desecrating any other altars (except Glowing Guardian, ofc), saving first strikers for cleanup when you have dodge for the random +3 hits, and after you've taken Tiki's Edge and Dodge, the potions are a fine deal.


2) "Glitterfinger" micro, or "The Piety Farm":

You join TT for in-dungeon on-the-run goldmongering and minor perks. Whatever gold you don't spend, you still take out. Very powerfull in the hands of pro's, can also overlap with more dedicated approaches.

Begginer:

Get a bunch of levels via Slayer Wand or whatever, pick up TT, clean up some popcorn for 25 piety, grab Tiki's Edge, clean up some more popcorn, Grab dodge, clean even more popcorn (use the level-up to kill somehting tough as an "extra"), get to 50 piety and convert out with 20 gold, +1 XP per kill, Dodge, possibly GETINDARE and 25 piety on your new god.

This is why I used to think of him as a piety farm - he's no good for farming up a 100, but he's the king of farming up 50.

It also works wonders with Gloves of Midas, and is a dandy way to get rid of curse/cursed monsters on the map.

Pro:

Same deal, except pro's can either squeeze off one more boon (a set of powrefull potions or even Poison), and can get wacky with the gold.

This, rather than any dedicated TT worship was the "motor" behind runaway CP strats, and is still the only reliable way of buying up everything there is in the shops as long as it's cheap. Or simply buying a really expensive item you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Or any set of Potion Shop potions. It's invaluable in Gaan'Telet runs, even more than posion.

It also works wonders for dedicated popcorn munchers like fighters and bloodmages, especially if you've made a popcorn bowl via WONNAFYT.


3) Tiki Tooki poison, or "The out-of-place balance buster":

Begginer & pro:

Regen fight like a boss! Consensus your way out first, though, and try to join TT after you've farmed some piety with someone else. Can be a continuation of the Glitterfinger Micro, although skipping Dodge for Poison is probably a good idea. It's completely worthless if you don't plan for it as regen fighting takes exploration. It almost completely obsoletes any other form of poison in the game, and makes any decent regen fighter seem like a "god mode hack" - if you manage to convert out in time, pay for your piety or kill whatever you need befor TT get's pissed.


4) Tiki Tooki potions, or "The dodgestep damage spiker"

Pro:

Use any "Glitterfinger" or the "Integrative approach" and then spend all you piety (and healing potions) to grab as many reflex and Quicksilver potions as you can. Start fighting the boss and use any first strikers to help set up confirmed dodges with Quicksilver potion, when you have one, drink the Reflex and smack the boss for 2 hits. Use the piety you get from popcorn killing to buy more potions, using the gold for tribute to buy more potions.

Alternatively convert out at some point to use other means of death protection for a stupefying ammount of "free" hits on the boss which let you ignore your own health and mana for the most part. Once you master it, against bosses without first strike or huge resists, it's just as powerfull as poison, and turns any big phys damage character into the old cydstepp rogue with comparatively less hassle.

If you manage to kill the boss/es without resorting to Tributing for more potions, it has all the benefits of any "Glitterfinger" approaches, except you stick with TT for the whole time, and possibly miss out on some gold.


5) The integrative early joining approach - "The dedicated Glitterfinger worship"

The nerf to Tribute really only killed this one which is a shame, because there was nothing wrong with it. The problem was the abundance of cheap CP fodder (fixed) and Poison providing piety on every hit (fixed). Arguably, poison itself being unbelievably broken by default makes TT the ideal god for glass cannon damage spikers and regen fighters, coupled with the gold and popcorn munching utility makes him sort of "ideal for too many people". But the bigger problem there is the ease of grabbing poison and dodge on a regen fighter and converting out, or the fact that there even IS a "poison on strike" ability in the game at all.

If all of TT's boons except tribute were 25 piety buttons with possible scaling which gave 10 gold on the first take, this would be the standard TT play, and he would be joinable at early levels. The poison would have to work exactly like the assasins dagger works now, so TT wouldn't have the best imaginable regen fighting boon in the game. I've been using the dagger in Gaan'Telet and it's great, and much closer to what playing TT should be like. Monks should under no circumstances have TT flagged as the insta-worship, or rather insta post-Binlor worship guy. Or the poison could cost more, just not be the monstrous thing it is now.

Here's how it works:

You join him at lvl 1, pay 30 gold to "Tribute up" Tiki's Edge, then you either level up off popcorn or a higher level monster using the "extra" 5 piety (and sparkle piety) as a "penalty buffer". Or Slayer wand, or whatever. Clean up some popcorn, get piety, get either dodge or poison, proceed.

At some point you can decide wether you want to get heavily invested in TT for the potions and poison (if it still costs 50) or more gold (since the initial investment payed off), or use TT as a popcorn cleaning piety farm. This would work even if subsequent purchases diminished the gold return.

Poison could even have a "piety doubling" increese where it gives poison to an additional strike.

CONCLUSION:

All in all, Tribute should allow for a cheap early boon, with 2 more boons paying the initial investment off. And the current poison is worth 110 piety to the wrong sort of class, who can get it at 50 and use desecrations, tribute, popcorn munchig, consensus and piety farms to grab it way too easily. Heck, a monk farming off taurog could probably grab some of his junk, and THEN swap to TT for the poison and be a complete monster. And TT paladins are probably still as stupid as ever, even after the obvious exploits were fixed.

How come the one guy who screams "don't come near me if you get hit a lot" is so attractive to guys who's entire gameplay REVOLVES around getting hit a lot? Except the warlord, but the only other way to lose piety with TT currently is using cydstepp and he punishes you 5X harder for that than for getting hit.