by Sidestepper on Tue Jan 29, 2013 7:41 am
Blovski: That's hilarious! I wouldn't have even thought of backpacking that thing.
I just tried a new strat. Maybe it's just a novelty, or maybe it's the break that Earthmother needed. We'll see. I was able to beat Slime Pits using only fireballs, except for a bit of popcorn cleaning. Here's what I did:
Locker: Battlemage Ring
Thief: Blackmarket
Church: Earthmother
Mage: Extra Mana
Blacksmith: Sword
Alchemist: Transmutation
Potions: Burn Salve, Mana, Schadenfreude, two junk potions
The idea is to get as many levels of Greenblood as quickly as possible, while converting as hard so possible. Your fireballs will be incredibly strong, and you will be able to actually fireball Super Meat Man to death. I think you actually get more damage potential from this than you do with the Crystal Ball. It's cool to see all of the janky preps and boons put together and actually working.
Opening: Venerate Earthmother and start hitting Greenblood right away. Beeline for your glyphs. Get them all at first level. As a Wizard, you will almost certainly find either ENDISWAL, WEYTWUT, or PISORF, so this should be doable. Piety is more important than plants, so brick every plant that you see that isn't horribly in the way, even if you already have the xp bonus. You may need to brick a few popcorn to get started if you have unlucky plant spawns. Aim for Acid Blobs and Meat Men, since Acid Blobs don't leave bloodpools for Plantation and after a while, neither will Meat Men. I try to get 3-4 Greenbloods by 1st level.
Once you have all of your glyphs, use your Transmutation seal on the sword and convert your least favorite glyph. This will give you about 1 1/2 conversions and give you tons of gold. Then convert all of your potions except for Mana, Burn Salve, and Schadenfreude. Aggressively buy and convert shop junk. We are trying to drain the conversion potential out of our glyphs. We want ~20 mana at 1st level and 25-30 by the end. The only shop items you actually want to keep are the Mana Pendant and the Elven Boots.
Your fireballs should be doing about 8-10 damage, which is pretty good for a 1st level character. Find a nice level 3 monster, or maybe a level 4, and nuke it. Make sure you have the learning bonus from ENDISWAL when you do this!
Midgame: Keep bricking plants and keep spamming Greenblood. Don't be afraid to brick a few popcorn monsters, but remember to drop an Entanglement before doing so. Remember that you can desecrate Binlor, Dracul, Taurog and Tikki Tooki with almost no consequences.
Fight from at least 2 levels below every time. You need a "string of ding" to maintain your mana pool. Never waste mana. Brick a plant if you have spare magic, or rearrange the board with your utility glyphs. If you have PISORF, remember that it benefits from Corrosion, is cheaper than Fireball, and can be used to kill Gelatinous Blobs (the green ones with the Retaliate: Fireball trait).
Use your utility glyphs to manage plant spam. WEYTWUT is great for transplanting plants to the edges of the screen for later petrification, PISORF can push plants around in a pinch(but remember that they can die if they crash into something), and ENDISWAL basically makes all navigation problems go away. If you see something on the ground that you want, grab it right away, because there might be a plant growing on that square later.
If a specific plant is blocking a critical resource and you can't get around it, spend down all of your piety and then chop it down. While you're on Earthmothers hit list, go ahead and chop down any other potentially irritating plants. You can cure the resulting corrosion with Burn Salve, or just decide that you don't care. It's probably worth curing because Schadenfreude requires that you make a physical attack.
Endgame: Attack Tower of Goo near the end of 6th level and finish him with a ding. You won't even need Clearance or your potions. Now to set things up for Super Meat Man.
Explore the entire map. You aren't a Monk, you aren't going to regen fight. There are two ways to execute your attack.
The Professional: Knock out the remaining high level monsters as you explore and get yourself a hair below 10th level. Try to spend down all of your piety if you can. If possible, use your utility glyphs to position SMM near the altar. Empty your mana into SMM and then ding. Kill popcorn until there are 20 bloodpools on the screen, and then pop Plantation. Take as many hits of Greenblood as you dare, but leave some piety behind for Clearance. Nuke SMM again and then level up yet again (yes, you should have enough xp on the board to reach level 11). You can win this way without needing any of your potions or Clearance.
The Fun Way: Explore the dungeon and get to level 10. Don't even bother with midlevel tricks. Kill enough additional monsters to make Plantation worthwhile. Try to get your Greenblood total up to 10 or higher while still having enough piety for a few Clearances. Now blast SMM with one super spike, using potions and Clearance to create a single unbroken chain. What's awesome about this is that you never lose the burning effect because you never attack any popcorn. Your fireballs will be doing over 80 damage apiece and you should have enough firepower that you could kill him twice.