How to play the Transmuter?

[Kuranes]

Firstly let me apolegize if a similar topic is already around, but the forum wont let me search for the word Transmuter since its to common...

But the meat and potatoes of this topic is how do you play him/her?
The transmuter starts with Lemmise, gets conversion points for glyph usage and gains Spirit Sword (?) on conversion thresholds.

Two things can obviously be deducted here, using glyphs a lot is a good idea, and playing a race with a low conversion threshold lets you benefit from spirit sword more often. I figured I'd play him akin to the thief as a glyph aided fighter. But I am still uncertain as to "how to transmuter".

Any and all advice would be apprechiated!

[Lujo]

I was stumped as well, but a sucesfull trip to VGT (or several) turned him into a favourite class of mine ^^

Here's what you do, and what you capitalize on:

a) You start with LEMISI

1) If you hit it a bunch of times you scout out pretty much all the glyphs, a few powerups, all the subdungeons, all the altars and possibly the boss. The boss scouting has a low priority on LEMISI so it's not guaranteed, the rest pretty much are. The "scout X" preps were deemed to strong and disruptive to intended gameplay (and were overshadowing other preps by a wide margin I bet), and starting with LEMISI lets you play like you prepped a bunch of them at once. It costs some blackspace, but since you know where most important things are - you end up saving a bunch more. This is huge on it's own. Don't overdo - once you have enough scouting to make a plan refer to step 2

2) Every time you hit a CP threshold you get the effect of a STR potion. You can ussually only prep one, and it gives you an advantage while spiking a monster. Having a bunch available through glyph conversion is awesome and lets you level like a complete boss - especially since you know where all the fuel is (and if you go around picking glyphs up, you can also find targets).

Paradigm is - use up all you mana (fireballing, poisoning, endiswalling, slowing...) then convert a glyph, then hit whatever you're fighting for a big punch.

The initial LEMISI? It's your first CP threshold pop, your "scout everything" and your first free STR potion.

b) You have free STR on CP threshold, and you can pad out your CP with glyph use?

This means that the optimal way of leveling also lets you hit conversion thresholds, even if you prepped extra glyph. You use glyphs a bit to empty your mana, and then when you convert just about any conversion fodder item (like rock heart or viper ward) to spike something - you're guaranteed to hit a threshold even if you're a human Don't force a CP pop through glyphs use, combine the two things!

Since your free STR potion bumps your base damage for one hit and humans give a bonus to % dmg, they make the best transmuters in my expirience. Dwarves are also a good bet - especially since using B2P also gives you CP (and you can go really silly with a Drac worshiping dwarven transmuter if you find B2P)

You can usually convert a glyph for an instant STR boost, otherwise pad out the bar, and convert... anything, really. If fighting somethign would take two hits - pad out, convert conversion fodder, hit, convert a glyph, hit again. If you're human that will probably leave you with a +20% dmg after the spike ^^


And that's pretty much it. Taurog and GG reward glyph conversions (and so does Drac to a degree), so you can combine that with your usual routine. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes obvious that some of T's advantages are in fact stupefying ^^

[dislekcia]

Why do people say you should use up your mana? Spirit Sword gives you bonus base damage according to the amount of mana it takes from you...

[Lujo]

Hmmm. I thought it temporarily filled up your mana pool for the purpose of calculating the damage? (Wasn't it reworked into working like that at some point?)

EDIT: And mostly to avoid unintentinaly screwing up by losing all your mana yet counting on a glyph.

[Bloggorus]

[Kuranes]

Okay, intresting. Thanks everyone. So one of the tricks of playing the transmuter is managing your mana reserves, since you want to use glyphs often to get extra CP, but you want it to be high at the threshold. Alright cheers!

[sitnaltax]

Previous statements redacted for wrongness.

[Lujo]

Making good use of the inital scouting, being carefull when to pop the threshold (and how - padd it with glyph use + conversion fodder, or brute force with glyph conversion) and not wasting too much exploration trying to force a glyph use based threshold pop is good.

Getindare's your best friend, and for B2P is really good ^^.

[dislekcia]

Checked code, Spirit Strength does indeed take your current mana into account for its bonus (so it matters how much mana you have when you quaff a Strength Potion, for instance). But Transmuters get a mana refill when they hit a conversion threshold, which is why it didn't appear to matter what your mana was at...

[Lujo]

Didn't appear to matter or doesn't matter?

I think the change was introduced precisely so Transmuter could get the full benefits of Spirit Sword regardless of their current mana. You hit a threshold, your mana fills up, Spirit Strenght takes it all away, you get benefits?

(Because if it doesn't work that way, then why do they get a refill )

Also, since it works differently from STR potions, could it get a different tooltip or would that be too much hassle? Because if it works the way I think it works, Transmuter basicaly gets the bonus based on his max mana, and the ability and the portrait tooltip could (and should?) show this. Also, having so many dmg bonuses represented by the yellow sword icon near the portrait is one of the confusing "richnes of info" things you guys must be working on ATM with the artists ^^