Playthrough notes

[Lujo]

3rd Dragon Isles win: - I went as a Triling Assasin, and it was a weird, awkward and strange run. Assassin feels weird, weird, weeeird. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be playing him. B2P, a lot of PISSORFF, swift hands and the Triling won it, except I ended up not even reaching lvl 10. Being stuck with Binlor and avoiding leveling probably didn't do me too much good.

[Darvin]

EM + Burn Salve and quest items for the ward. JJ into TT into JJ.

*Drools*

Especially if you found JJ early (which I suspect you did) that's a fricken awesome deity setup for a Trilling. All you'd need is Dracul as your 4th and I'd say "stop, that's perfect".

PQI/Flaming note - I have a flaming slime pits and a PQI Cursed Oasis. Yay.

Oh, pssh, I just did a warmonger PQI on Slime Pits. It's not that bad at all. Where it gets annoying is when you get a PQI like Warmonger Elf Transmuter. Essentially no class features, race bonus, or glyphs for you.

Assassin feels weird, weird, weeeird. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be playing him

Agreed, he's no longer got a strong opener (since poison is very weak till you're in the mid-levels, and the Assassin isn't very well-suited to poison to begin with). I'm finding increasingly that he works best with spellcasting spikes, BLUDTUPOWA being his best glyph find. Seeing you gravitating towards the same kind of gameplay seems to confirm that.

[Lujo]

EM + Burn Salve and quest items for the ward. JJ into TT into JJ.

*Drools*

Dat setup Smoothest run I've had all playhtrough, if I didn't know it was a vicious dungeon i would've never guessed.

Especially if you found JJ early (which I suspect you did) that's a fricken awesome deity setup for a Trilling. All you'd need is Dracul as your 4th and I'd say "stop, that's perfect".

Yeah, except I went IN with EM + salve prepped. On a Triling. Yes, they didn't in fact remove the +25 starting piety and the free indulgences prep, it just costs you an altar now

Oh, pssh, I just did a warmonger PQI on Slime Pits. It's not that bad at all. Where it gets annoying is when you get a PQI like Warmonger Elf Transmuter. Essentially no class features, race bonus, or glyphs for you.

:gasp: Dear god, that last one. I mean, I remember managing some really odd Slime Pits PQI's on my last playthrough, and they seemed a lot easier than I remembered Slime Pits up to that point. Maybe I've just done too many purist monk runs in there and have PTSD from the old MW quest.

The point of that mention was actually the "Slime Pits and CO don't have questlines which makes them PQI magnets" thing.

Assassin feels weird, weird, weeeird. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be playing him

Agreed, he's no longer got a strong opener (since poison is very weak till you're in the mid-levels, and the Assassin isn't very well-suited to poison to begin with). I'm finding increasingly that he works best with spellcasting spikes, BLUDTUPOWA being his best glyph find. Seeing you gravitating towards the same kind of gameplay seems to confirm that.

Well, as far as I can tell, and it's basicaly what I've been doing amost every run for a while now, everything works with B2P. PISSORFF even better than BRUNDAYRAZ, but literaly any character can do a spellcasing spike off of it because you can use both your healing and your mana potions as fuel. So assasin might be having problems if that's his best bet.

On the plus side, the Transmuter is an outright beast with B2P - it stacks his CP just like any other glyph, except it has a silly activation cost and kickass effect that you can use to fuel more GLYPH spam. Healthmonster Fire Heart transmuter might be a hilarious thing to try out sometimes.

[Darvin]

I mean, I remember managing some really odd Slime Pits PQI's on my last playthrough, and they seemed a lot easier than I remembered Slime Pits up to that point

SMM no longer goes poisonous, gelatinous blobs no longer have any debuffs, there is now a subdungeon in play, resist-down has been replaced with curse, and the bosses are somewhat weaker than they used to be. It's still a nasty dungeon, but it's nowhere near its former terror.

everything works with B2P

Yup, and with swift hands and light foot, Assassins are particularly well suited to it. Hint for those who haven't realized it: BLUDTUPOWA is the perfect glyph for revealing that one tile that's blocking your first strike.

PISSORFF even better than BRUNDAYRAZ

With a Trilling, yeah the PISORF glyph is going to really dominate. I personally find the fireball to be the better of the two in general, but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. It's not entirely uncommon for me to use both.

[Lujo]

Yup, and with swift hands and light foot, Assassins are particularly well suited to it. Hint for those who haven't realized it: BLUDTUPOWA is the perfect glyph for revealing that one tile that's blocking your first strike.

This can't be stated enough, it's a lot like how you keep from stepping on bloodpools after you kill something in a chokepoint with the Bloodmage.

With a Trilling, yeah the PISORF glyph is going to really dominate. I personally find the fireball to be the better of the two in general, but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. It's not entirely uncommon for me to use both.

I'm getting really low PISORFF damage lately though, and I don't have a clue what the deal is.

[The Avatar]

Hmm... I tend to lean towards BURNDAYRAZ for spellcasters. Of course on dungeons or bosses with magic res I make an exception, but I find the -1 regen pet tile burning gives is great with B2P.

[Lujo]

Hmm... I tend to lean towards BURNDAYRAZ for spellcasters. Of course on dungeons or bosses with magic res I make an exception, but I find the -1 regen pet tile burning gives is great with B2P.

I also remember seeing someone who knows what he's talking about but rarely posts (name was unfamiliar, but he talks the talk) say he prepped Bloody Sigil for some of these shennanigans. While I can say 100% that prepping anything but Crystall Ball is suboptimal in most cases, grabbing a Bloody Sigil for a Flames enhanced straight BURNDAYRAZ B2P run would also probably be a good idea.

Also, nice thing about flames is that it doesn't actually lower your PISSORF damage. You still probably need to be carefull when you pick it up, but as a recent discovery for me it's been swell.

[Lujo]

VICIOUS HoS Win I: A wizard did it! And it was really, really difficult. Which is odd, because the wizard was my main man for this dungeon before he got buffed and before the dungeon got nerfed (I remember there used to be somethign really wrong with it). Anyway, the preps were Binlor, extra money, crystal ball, compression, extra mana, alchemist (would've been imposible otherwise), burn salve etc... Nothing special, pissorf and knocback and Binlor into GG into JJ into Binlor, and it should've been a lot smoother except...

PISSORFF is *probbably* bugged: Scratch this, figured out what was wrong, I'm a dumbass...

VHoS Win II: Gnome bloodmage rolled it! Same preps as Wizard mostly, gods were Binlor into JJ, and a very easy win all togather. 2 important differences: 1) I had B2P (and I used manapotions to spike really high lvl monsters for lvling - I got unstoppable on a very non cleared map.) 2) I had WHEYTWUT so I could use whoopaz + dodge on Blah Blah, line him up against the Indomitable, and take away most of his health by knocking the Indomitable into him. Oh, and Mage Plate was really nice. End result was - wizard struggled and barely scraped by, Bloodmage had a leftover keg of mana and went unstoppable.

Like - The new 200 gold per VICIOUS win is really nice.

Power concern - B2P is effectively 2 extra fireballs per level or 3 extra PISSORF per level. It's too damned good with everything in every circumstance and should be nerfed, there is no doubt about it. And Crystall Ball is up there with the Mas09 ledger if not way above it and should also be nerfed - 5 gold for that effect is too low. It looks threatening, the game is doable without it, but that effect is really, really too good.

LIKE - Binlor rewards BYCEPSS use "Show them your strenght!" Wow! It's not big, it's not much, but I just low seeing something I had no clue about after all this time ^^

VHoS win no. 3 - Transmuter: A dvarf transmuter to be precise. I decided to do an old "finish something tough with something awkward" gig, because the recently discovered cheeze doesn't really need any more testing. Anyway, it was really difficult because I didn't run into anythign usefull - no Fire Heart, no B2P not WHEYTWUT, no bear mace. I actually lucked out completely. See, gods were Binlor, EM and Pactmaker, and I barely had any exploration left at lvl 5 so I decided to give it a shot and managed to kill the indomitable (after whoopazing Blah Blah and lining them up) on a very weird interaction. Apparently, it doesn't matter how corroded you are if the monster does no damage to you, so I got indomitable down to 3 damage and took 3 vine forms and just kept slapping him into Blah Blah untill he died. This leveled me up and got me gold to buy out the rest of the potions and finish off a severely weakened Blah Blah. Incredibly tough run, and incredibly gimmicky win, but there you have it.

Transmuter note - I think he needs a buff. I like him, he's the blank slate which you can take anywhere, but jsut a little bit too blank. MAybe it's just all the dwarvn transmuters I've been playing, but they're so good with B2P it's incredible.

[Lujo]

VICIOUS Gaan'Telet Win - I, err, did a money run in VICIOUS Gaan'Telet. What? (Straight face). Courtesy of q3's expert tip I went with a Vampire. Lets just say the RNG decided I've been a good little Balkaneeze troll and leave it at that Gruesome details in the impromptu "ask for advice thread", I bagged me a locker slot - yaaaaay! Now to see about this Namtar person...

Like: Vampire I liked him a lot, and this was my first expirience with him in ages. I didn't even unlock him on my last playthrough, and among all those countless Gaan'Telet runs from back then not one was with him. Oh, well, he really is different and lots of fun.

Impression: VICIOUS Gaan'Telet: - could really be toned down a few notches. You guys had your fun, and short of ridiculous (and I mean truly ridiculous) combinations of luck, res stacking, luck, exploits, scumming and luck can that place be beaten as it is. Being an order of magnitude easier would still have it sitting comfortably in the ridiculous territory. Just toning down the numbers on the later floors might be enough.

Namtars Lair Win no. I - Rogue Ech... I hate this place. I tried two times as berserker, figured out there isn't too many magic damage monsters in there at all, so I picked the triling rogue and won handily (although it took a while and careful play). Binlor into JJ, not enough piety or good reasons to go drac (plus I don't thing I've picked up chaos avatar at all, for lack of piety - just a bunch of health boosts).

Namtar's Lair impressions - I hate this place, and I don't feel happy about winning - I used Binlor to remove an intended obstacle (map layout) by cheeze magic, and I used a "quite a bit above the curve" class (a JJ backed up rogue) with the noob-tube-sword and it still felt hard and awkward and if I wasn't being proffessional I wouldn't go in there again, just as I never did on any other playthrough after I got the ward. It's always months between two Namtars Lair runs for me, I always forget why I hate it, I always give it an open minded chance, and I always end up hating it again. I'll do 2 more runs, but yeeesh.

Namtars Lair suspicion I also suspect it suffers from the Slime Pits / Cursed Oasis syndrome - no quest, not enough people attemting it on a regular basis, not enough whining about how difficult/tedious/annying it is for whatever demographics I fall into, not enough nerfs and adjustment thoughout the development. Dragon Isles, Naga City and VHoS feel more in tune with the rest of the game, and have changed significantly through input (whining and reasoning), Namtars Lair still feels like it expects 33% Dragonshields and 50% res all monks, and no piety loss paladins and full restore both thieves coming at it... I think I only really beat it because of the:

Zombie Gold Subdungeon - I've noticed, for the first time, that the damned thing has a huge ammount of LEMISI fodder blackspace all around the explorable area. Really, folks? 1/3 of the regular map of exploration on top of a huge ammount of XP and gold? I never thought to fire up LEMISI in it before because every time I found it I beat whatever I found it in on the XP, gold and non-LEMISI exploration allready... The difference between finding it and not finding it was being able to beat Namtar and not being able to beat Namtar... If I were a paranoid man I'd suspect it fires up automaticaly if you fail at something enough times just to let you win whatever...

[paplaukes]

I have a few Cursed Oasis impressions now that I cleared it after several attempts.
Had a lot of preparations, more than usual for anything but Vicious dungeons, including both reflexes and quicksilver potions. In retrospect can of whupaz would've been slightly better. Went as human warlord.

I made mistakes, converted a wrong glyph here, used up an extra potion there, only took up a god at lvl8. Hard bit of the dungeon was the curse management, especially the curses from the dragonkin boss. It was increasingly difficult to clear curses, since even reflected fireballs curse you. Ended up killing the wraith boss DURING the dragonkin fight to just gain one last shot at the dragonkin. Was out of potions, glyphs, etc, bought a death protection item to win. All in all the difficulty, to me, seems vicious, not hard. The curses do add up. Having to leave enough popcorn for the final boss means one has to kill higher level mobs only, and those either curse you, or mana burn/poison, or just have a silly amount of death protection.

I still have to learn the dungeon better, but in order to be hard and not vicious, I think the dungeon could use some curse reduction, either less curses on levelups, or slightly higher percentage of mobs to clear it on. As is, it remains the only hard dungeon where I don't even consider attempting a PQI. Or - the dungeon could be named vicious, with perhaps extra rewards. Don't mind either way