Strategy Thread for talking about Strategies

[dislekcia]

[Blovski]

[Sidestepper]

I like the Cauldron angle. That's an artifact that I don't play with very often, which is weird because I like Priests and the Cauldron was practically made for Priests.

How did your leveling go? Since you weren't burning your potions like in the original strategy, I'm guessing that you picked fights with Thralls when you could avoid poison/mana burn and Bandits when you could not.

[Blovski]

Cauldron is just one of those items that hangs around in my locker so any excuse to bust it out...

Uh, Shades, Thralls, AAs (they hit hard but with health boost you can sort them) and Bandits pretty much depending on circumstances, manaburn/poison risk and whether I wanted to get back topside to pick up the stuff I'd explored in the interim. Occasionally dragons as well. Beauty of the strat is, as you said, that pretty much everything's a target. I wasn't hitting more than 1 or 2 levels ahead most of the time and I had to kill a level one to get back topside after the initial curse. That said, because Shade is kind of wussy, weak to priests and JJ gives you the bonus level.

I picked up Unstoppable as well for giggles. I think there's room for playing it more like the original with the higher-level kills but since I was just trying to see if it was viable I went for a safer doomspike.

[Astral]

Ick Swamp is a very easy place thanks to it's awesome drops so I'm not sure if any strategy is needed for that dungeon, but I'd like to share it cause it's so fun to try:



Is that a strong vampire? How about now?



Stack damages and lifesteal like crazy and everything becomes a bloodcow!



The idea came from PQI sending me there for a warmoonger run, and I spiced it up. With the usual tranmsutaion scroll + Namtar's ward + less glyphs CP frenzy prep it was set up for greatness. I also took the perseverance badge to boost my damage, the weakening/corrosion cure potions so I can kill whatever I want, and Patches for anything but more mana.
Funny thing is I could have made my character even stronger if I had better shops: I only found a single good CP fodder and 0 useful items. One of my shops had the spoon
When you try it out don't forget to cut all the mana burn/poison plants as soon as possible, they give spoons and cannot hurt you. When you discovered most of the map kill all the corrosion plants you see for more spoons, if you do it during a fight it heals you too, then drink your burn salve before taking a hit.

Another fun thing to try in Ick is playing it with an Orc Warlord with prepped Patches and Soul Orb + your preferred stuff.
That always results in something hilarious:

[Astral]

Here comes yet another application of the CP frenzy prepset: the fireball avalanche!

So take an elf wizard with Namtar's Ward + transmutation scroll + less glyphs, prep JJ, bearmace, shops scroll and more gold. For potions Schadenfraude, mana pot, and the anti debuff ones.

Before even doing your 1st kill, you just farm piety to increase your max mana, and also take a health boost. You can wait with converting stuff untill finding your altars, if you see GG, convert under him, otherwise stay with JJ.
When you transmute NW and convert your least useful glyph, you immediately gain 340 CP, and a handy 50 gold! With looting the shops, from 25 mana you can easily skyrocket all the way up to 40-45, and can also afford spell casting items.

Btw you won't even run out of blackspace. You can save about 20-25%, and be done with piety farming and popcorn bowling too.

Time to kill your 1st monster. On hard it's a lvl 4 (even if you could kill a 5, don't do it to avoid double dinging), on VT it's 3. Then just keep keep killing the highest stuff that dings you, but doesn't make you double ding. So you play like a mana based version of a health monster.
The great thing about it is that you save all your blackspace left, and remain with a massive popcorn bowl.

In hard you will never have a problem, and by lvl 5 you can spike weaker bosses without any sort of refills. The tougher ones go down to a single level catapult. If you wanted to do something super silly, you could play the entire dungeon pure caster style - with no refills and catapults.
Just to mention a lvl 10 wiz with 50 mana (common to reach with this strat), and a battlemage ring spikes for 610 damage, then for 700 if burning is kept.

For VT runs some planning and strategy is needed too. Even if you pile up that massive popcorn, that doesn't mean you will be able to consume it. Also pulling off the insta-ding kills will need some creativity: mixing in well timed hits (this is where the health boost pays out, and when activating Schadenfrauds), pisorfs or combining melee items with your caster set ( witchalok pendant, FH, whurgarbl etc.). Sometimes you will overkill the target by a few fireballs, in cases like this plan ahead and choose your next target, and gift him with your excess mana before doing the kill. Tricks like this can enable wonderful kills.
At times no matter what you do the ideal kill is unreachable. You could switch to a god who helps by a refill or boon, or kill something lower and eat popcorn, or use blackspace and kill something similar again.
During your harder bossfight it's recommended to chew on fatter popcorns between dings, this way you ultimately can squeeze out more levelups. For the same reason sometimes a portion of your mana is better spent on fireballing popcorn if you're just a few xp short of yet another ding.

This strat comes with a lot of counting since even burning plays a big role in kills, and you constantly have to keep an eye on bonus xp to save resources. To ease the latter I made an xp-table.

http://s1.postimg.org/ul7f0xw5r/XP_table.png

A very good kill pattern is 3 - 5 - 7 - 9, then if possible the weaker boss, and now you're lvl 6, 1 xp short of a ding.
Even if you can't instakill your first boss, at level 5 you only need 3 xp for a level catapult.

Want to see some pics how effective this strat is?
From the 1st time I tried it, and was still experimental:
http://s11.postimg.org/hcyq5e29v/spellslinger2.png
http://s27.postimg.org/jcbc1iflv/spellslinger6.png

After some refinement:
http://s16.postimg.org/qzj4lwu1h/pyromaniac3.png
http://s12.postimg.org/ctwle74sd/pyromaniac5.png

And finally some VT tests:
http://s2.postimg.org/6z6bnbz6h/practice7.png
http://s15.postimg.org/7iybo4ugb/VT_warmup2.png
http://s23.postimg.org/rkpckfwnv/slimy_wiz3.png

What I really like about this strat is that how reliable it is. On that VT Slime Pit run my lvl 9 monsters were awful - meatmen and gelatinous thing, many of my popcorns were meatmen too, my only real spellcasting item was blue orb,
I wasted a lot of piety by taking spirit pact and staying with JJ too long, and then I haven't even mentioned my big mistakes. Like autoconverting soul orb when my sub was the spider temple
In the end I still blasted SMM to crisps easily.

[Blovski]

OK. New thing, or new old thing. Not really a tough hard-nosed vicious level strategy or anything though I'll give it a shot at that sort of thing sometime.

Glowing Goblin

Premise: take a goblin transmuter of GG into a dungeon.
Optional extras: Whurgarbl, transmutation seal + sword, your pick of boosts, maps like Labyrinth, Havendale, Ick Swamp and Shifting Passages where declogging is desirable, strength potion like the good old days, tiny statue of Napoleon in a fish tank.
Desired result: entertainment, novelty synergy, victory in pretty much any sub-vicious scenario.

Anyway, basically the premise is not too far from the old Havendale Bridge-Troll Absolution strategy. Goblin transmuters seem to be one of the very few classes who can reliably get a few beads, get enlightenment and get out. The increased health/damage/mana makes up for the basic goblin weakness in the late game, while the Transmuter's spiking skills make up for the early game softness, while the goblin's cascade of level-ups offer a ton of GG piety and the late-game levelling spikes that Glowing Guardian devotees often have trouble getting (because of absolution clearing the popcorn).

It's not a super-build or anything but it's good if you want to fiddle around with Transmuters a bit and play GG a bit more like I think he's meant to work.

Also, Astral, you are a scientist of this game. I doff my hat in your direction.

[Astral]

Wow, thank you Blovski

That sounds fun, I'll definitely give it a try. Speaking of goblin transmuters, they are another bunch who can go silly with increased mana.
Once I played a sorta 'pacifist' run with them - tried to reach level 10 and win without killing any monsters besides the bosses.
http://s27.postimg.org/v5y9sp66b/xp_muter_2.png

[Nurator]

This game is hardcore science You dont want to know on how many notepad sheets I scribbled while thinking about strategies

But Astral, you surely are even more devoted than me^^ You should study math if you didnt already do that

[Astral]

Haha I know that feeling. I used to write DD stuff into a small maths exercise book, but it got filled back when I was calculating infinimuter builds. Had to move to notepad and excel to save paper

Unfortunately it's to late to change my career for maths, but I can still treat it as a hobby