by The Avatar on Sun Nov 24, 2013 11:47 pm
Time to totally catch back up.
Episode 14: I support more challenge runs. Looking at what you've done, there aren't that many (non-special-class) bronzes left. Yes, that is all of the level 1s. There are 10 level 1s and 5 level 2s. Good job going for the two level higher targets. This is pretty great so far. The only point I have against you is you haven't used IMAWAL yet. You might as well convert it. Actually, elven sorcerers can totally crush the tormented one. Excluding Medusa an Tomithy that is the best possible find. Why are you leaving PISORF on the ground? You need 1 more mana to do this. Just convert the glyphs you are leaving on the ground. Seriously, what the heck is up with you can conversion? Did I miss you saying you were going Hoarder? This is where you regret wasting your subdungeon exploration. If you are not going hoarder (which I really hope you are) this is ridiculously bad. There are two glyphs literally sitting on the ground. Also, you picked up IMAWAL, so USE IT! If you just picked up PISORF you could have accessed the rest of the dungeon a LONG time ago. WHAT? YOU AREN'T GOING HOARDER! That means you have literally made the worst possible glyph decisions. You hauled around an unused IMAWAL when converting it would have saved you a potion, you literally ignored the PISORF glyph on the ground. Now you convert it? WHY NOT EARLIER? You would have such an easier time leveling if you actually converted glyphs. It looks like you have separation issues. Dang, another cop-out monk. Seriously, you are relying far too heavily on Taurog for your monks. Monk of Taurog is one of the few cases where I can condone that GETINDARE conversion. But why not convert WEYTWUT? You should be fighting a level 4. Converting that redundant WEYTWUT would get you 5 more damage reduction 4 more base damage. That would mean the level 5 meat man is killable. Seriously, why are you bothering to Haul WEYTWUT around? It is totally useless. Convert WEYTWUT and BURNDAYRAZ and you will be able to kill the meat men. WHAT? THE GOAT YOU COULD LITERALLY CLICK TO DEATH! WHY NOT KILL IT? You should have killed the meat men FIRST. They are the best possible target for your character. Convert your WEYTWUT. You have over 25 piety. That means you ALWAYS IMMEDIATELY take one of Taurog's boons, unless you really need the 1 mana or piety for a spell you must cast. Bleaty? That's rather unfortunate luck. Convert BURNDAYRAZ. It is unnecessary for you. WEYTWUT costs to much, but you can just regen fight him. WHAT? TWO POTIONS? You could have explored 4 TILES INSTEAD! 4 FREAKING TILES! You can regen fight bleary once you are a higher level. Seriously, you aren't even playing like a monk. This is sad. You are barely utilizing regen fighting. WHAT ON EARTH WAS THAT? You just needed to convert WEYTWUT and BURNDAYRAZ! He literally only does 77 to your monk (220*0.35=77)! That is EASILY regen fightable! You can literally regen fight him very easily. This is sad. You are so against regen fighting this is painful to watch. You are at 99 piety. Stop wasting popcorn. Good, you won. That was a seriously wasteful and not great run, but it was a win. First third tier unlocks should be Bloodmage and Warlord. Actually, there aren't many unlocks in central regen dungeons. Literally, swift hands by itself is enough to make the assassin a good class. I would almost prefer him without his other abilities actually. Human assassins are good or the fighting time, but god-tier assassins should be goblin. Gnome and Elf work for a middle-tier assassin. You should still GETINDARE for the kill even if you don't have to. It stacks more dodge. Good choice. You can kill that bandit with poison and GETINDARE. Good, you saw that. This has been nice assassin play so far. Actually, MA assassins are pretty great, but Faithless is Faithless. That pendant of health is enough to net you the goat kill. Also, the pendant of health isn't a GREAT item, but it certainly isn't bad. Honestly, I'd take the bloody sigil over it most of the time. You should have pre-poisoned that goat .That was a mistake. All it took was your GETINDARE. COME ON! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! YOU HAVE THE FIRST STRIKE GLYPH AND AUTOMATIC FIRST STRIKE FROM YOUR ASSASSIN ABILITY! INSTEAD OF WINNING FOR FREE WITH THAT YOU WASTED A POTION AND YOUR DEATH PROTECTION! That is the WORST thing you would have done (realistically). Great. You totally forgot GETINDARE. This may be normal, but until you can prove that you don't make these mistakes in other dungeons (which you do frequently) you cannot use the fact that this is normal to excuse sloppy play. ALWAYS PRE-POISON! You are totally misusing APHEELSIK. Remember you can 1. Use it twice in a row to stack extra poison on a boss and 2. Use it MID-FIGHT to keep a poisoned monster poison. Also, if you do a little basic math, you can see that you can regen fight ANYTHING UP TO DOUBLE YOUR LEVEL that doesn't have magic res (or obviously undead). Also, for the purposes of regen fighting, poison is ALWAYS more of a priority than burning. If you have 6 mana and the boss has one-tiles worth of poison, you APHEELSIK unless the fireball enables your kill. WHAT ON EARTH COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE THINKING? YOU CONSTANTLY BURNDAYRAZ INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY POISONING THE BOSS! YES! YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT NOW! GOOD! KEEP POISONING! That is EXACTLY what you should do! That is how you play the assassin vs the boss! You REGEN FIGHT THE BOSS (as tough as that seems to be for you...). Well, that was a good start and a tough last two runs, but you did it so congrats and all that.
KEY POINTS: CONVERT GLYPHS THAT YOU AREN'T GOING TO USE AND NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE FORGET A GLYPH (you do that waaaaay to much). You tend to either over or underestimate the monk. Seriously, just learn the regen fighting formula (see below). Always make sure that you are picking the best target (as in what your class is best suited to). Always pre-poison as an assassin, and when regen fighting a target (which you can do to guys twice your level), keeping the poison stacks on is top priority.
REGN FIGHTING FORMULA
You can regen fight the monster if Player Regen*Damage taken by Monster > Monster Regen*Damage taken by Player. For the sake of having terms we'll call each of the two sides Power Numbers. So in short, if Player Power > Monster Power, you can regen fight it.
Also, you can see how many tiles it takes by (monster health-damage dealt without regenerating)/Player Power-Monster Power.
Part 15: Let's hope this goes better than the ending of last time. Personally, the quickest warlord runs for me are orc, but that could be because I play them more than gnomes. Honestly, I don't even like the magnet: fireball prep for my warlords. I tend to go fewer glyphs (for more base on an orc), more glyphs (for MA refreshment elves or a higher chance of GETINDARE showing), or more attack boosters (also for orc). You can't kill those level 3s. You can just attack him. You only lose the DP if it says 'BARELY WIN' on the predictor. That's how you know whether you lose the DP when you are left with 1 hp. You can kill the 4 level higher bandit. Good, you looked at him. All you need is precasted ENDISWAL actually. Well, Elven Boots work too. Why are you killing with BURNDAYRAZ when you could GETINDARE? You do more damage, so you didn't even need to regenerate for the second CYDSTEPP. You had 10 mana and no DP right before a level up. That means you cast CYDSTEPP. It saves 10 tiles. This has been rather well done so far. Warlords just have too easy leveling. Just never forget to use all of your mana before leveling. You could have fought that wraith without mana burn using a neat little trick that I love: Precasted GETINDARE. If you precast GETINDARE, you can get in two fireballs (or more depending on mana, ofc) and then a hit without ever being touched. And since you are precasting GETINDARE, you don't even need 15 mana to pull this off. Well, that was rather bad luck on your boss, but at least you are a gnome. That means it won't be too hard. You are trying to approach a level up, so kill your goblins and 2 hit monsters, not your real popcorn. Well, that wasn't too hard. I wonder when you'll realize that this run probably won't net you enough gold for the bloodmage unlock. Human, Gnome, Orc, and Dwarf (HEALTHMONSTERS!) Paladins are the best. Honestly, GG is the only god where converting BURNDAYRAZ on sight is totally acceptable. If you are going to convert your potions, you should use that piety for absolution. Also, you are exploring with ENDISWAL and full mana, which is NEVER a good choice. No bloody sigil? Well, I can't say I'm surprised. You have ENDISWAL! YOU ARE NEVER BLOCKED OFF. The screen actually says pacemaker, so you can't really spoil it. This is really poor divine play. You could have killed that level 3 meat man with absolutions VERY easily. Unfortunately, it seems your GG play is limited to late game only (excluding humility). That is not smart. Absolution costing literally HALF PRICE is incredibly powerful, especially at low levels. It means you can basically have 35 or so hp at LEVEL 1. Oh no. Please don't protection for a 3 level higher kill. TWICE?! Oh dear, this is very wasteful. Well, at least you remembered to ENDISWAL. How on earth do you expect to kill that goo? TORMENTED ONE! The Tormented One is literally the best possible option for GG. Cleansing means magic attack and protection gives you more mana and hp for magic attacks, which is ridiculously good vs his very low hp. More protection? Between the amount of protections you waste and the fact that you converted all potions, you could practically lose this. (not really without totally terrible play, but this could be a bit closer than comfort). Your best course of action is approaching a level up, fireballing the boss, cleansing him, and then level up and repeat. That is a mistake. It is going to be rather difficult to get a mid-fight level up from here. You should never ever forget GGs cleansing, but in this case you don't need it. Yeah, you are short of it. This is what puzzles are for. Hard run! This ought to be interesting! Wow, this is a rather great start. PISORF for movement, IMAWAL for exp, GETINDARE and BURNDAYRAZ for tons of damage. Wow, MA! Also, Poison as a level 1 sorcerer is totally irrelevant as casting one glyph will fully heal you. You can literally kill the snake right now with 2 fireballs and a GETINDARE shot. Pendant of Health enables the level 3 kill. All you have to do to beat that goblin is buy the pendant of health. Ah, Tomithy. That basically guarantees a win. He is the easiest random boss. You could kill the level 7 bandit. Precasted GETINDARE would also allow the level 6 sorcerer kill. Good job finding the band, although you should have IMAWALed first. Nicely done. In hard, targeting is more important than ever. Picking the weaker enemy type can often net you 2 level higher kills while picking the wrong type can lock you out of even low level kills. Sorry, that kill won't work. All it takes is revealing 2 tiles for the hit and then GETINDARE. And you totally screwed it up. Yeah, your regen fighting needs a LOT of work. Honestly, if you really wanted to you could just win now by killing the boss. Mystic balance is actually pretty bad with GETINDARE. Well, you lost 6 bonus exp through that, but you'll live. You are over leveling. That is a classic mistake that will hurt you a lot as you get into harder dungeons. You level up, but in doing so lock yourself out of a mid-fight level up and lose all of your tiles. See, with that level up you lost your ability to fully regenerate. In this case it is going to be fine, but overall you shouldn't be afraid to tackle a boss early. You are totally not able to unstoppable this. Good win anyways. That was fairly well played.
KEY POINTS: Always use all of your health and mana before leveling. GETINDARE is always over BURNDAYRAZ for the kill. You REALLY need to work on your GG play. You should absolve and humble early for MASSIVE exp boosts instead of saving it all for protections. Also, NEVER FORGET CLEANSING GIVES MAGIC STRIKE. Precasted GETINDARE is a great trick for taking out higher level wraiths/snakes without leveling or being poisoned/manaburned, and it also works on monsters that would one-shot you normally. If you have ENDISWAL, you should NEVER be blocked off (excluding dungeons with indestructible terrain like Dragon Isles).
Episode 16: Bloodmages? These certainly aren't your specialty. Gold Challenges? Have fun! They are actually quite interesting and require heavy strategizing, but they are super cool. Honestly, I cannot recommend more that you scout them, as most are totally unwinnable without knowing how they work/the bosses stats. For example, in Priest Gold, you have to do a certain thing at level 1 and not convert a certain glyph or it is literally impossible. The fact that a bloodmage is ridiculous with -3 mana just shows how OP sanguine is. Bloodmages get 3% extra hp on sanguine (I'm pretty sure it is pronounced sang-win, not sang-ween, but whatever). You can APHEELSIK him. Actually, that was very good APHEELSIK use. You should have gone elf bloodmage. NO! APHEELSIK IS ALWAYS BETTER FOR REGEN FIGHTING! Be careful! You stepped on a bloodpool. Just remember that you can walk on bloodpools if your hp is already full. Seriously, does it not occur to use ENDISWAL around guys? Good, you realized it. I retract the previous comment. Well, this would be very good assassin play. And you wasted your next bloodpool. Actually, your APHEELSIKing here is probably the most efficient way for you to level right now. Well, there goes any hope of learning B2Ping. This Taurog play gets repetitive. You should convert ENDISWAL as it would net you another piece of equipment. As long as you are going Taurog, you might as well go full Taurog. A three level higher kill is not worth buying a badge of honor for, especially considering a badge of honor is MORE VALUABLE than a potion. Of either kind. Well, that worked out rather perfectly. You should have converted ENDISWAL there for the kill. Actually, it is okay to use mana potions early for bloodmages, as long as you won't need them for the boss. You should convert all of your glyphs before the boss fight. ENDISWAL is useless against the boss. Good choice. Well, that was easy. Good job! The crystal ball is probably the best mage item in the game (although for total all out casters mage plate can be better). You are a bloodmage with less mana. Shouldn't you go extra mana if not magnet fireball? Well, you got an easy boss to fight. Wow, the world really doesn't want you to reach EM. ENDISWAL+IMAWAL=INFINITE GOLD!!! Now if you just vine form and find BURNDAYRAZ you will be virtually invincible. You should always take a hit of Entanglement ASAP (for an extra hit on your first kill) when of EM. This is shaping up to be a win! Just don't keep wasting your bloodpools. Now that is a mistake that you are going to make a bunch. You should always ENDISWAL plants without magic res (normal plants, curse plants, and kill plants) before monsters (unless you need the piety). That way you get Bloodpools and still get exp boost. That was ridiculously dumb. That would have been an easy win from there. You should literally never Misclick die. It is always your fault if that happens. Pendant of mana is a great buy. If only you had taken the extra mana prep. Binlor is probably the most powerful god in the game (or at least he is present in all of the most powerful strats. He is versatile, powerful, and has a nearly ignorable punishment. You should be PISORFing the level 7 meat man on the long run of walls. Binlor can instantly give you 65% resist. Alternatively you could use Stone Heart to get rid of bleat's magic res and fireball him to death. The key way to use Binlor is using Stone Soup ASAP! It gives you ENDISWAL. No, you just don't play bloodmages like bloodmages... Why are you attacking a wraith that won't level you? That just isn't smart. This is terrible Binlor use. TAKE STONE SOUP! If you get over 111 hp you can kill Bleaty with physical attacks, but otherwise you really should use Stone Heart. You are taking all of the wrong boons... You should get Stone Soup and Stone Heart. Why on earth are you hitting a level 7 to knock it back? You are totally misusing knock back too, and have managed to waste most of your bloodpools. USE PISORF TO GET PIETY, NOT PHYSICAL KNOCKBACK! YOU ARE BEING RIDICULOUSLY WASTEFUL! With GETINDARE and CYDSTEPP you could kill that level 7... And you wasted another one of your bloodpools. This play is TERRIBLE! You are screwing around, wasting exploration, totally wasting your Binlor Abilities. Finally, that was a smarter choice, except you've totally wasted your subdungeon exploration. You can kill Bleaty fairly easily using CYDSTEPP and GETINDARE actually, so if you go conversion crazy this could work. You are forgetting your Knockback. You need your health potions to CYDSTEPP more. That was a very poor choice. YOU DON'T HAVE TO FREAKING LEVEL, AND YOU ARE MAKING A HUGE MISTKE BY TRYING! YOU CAN KILL HIM RIGHT NOW! Stone heart would nets you some extra resistances. Now you are just killing yourself in a massive downward spiral. Now just potion and kill the two level 4s. You need to win. Just accept the foolishness of your move and level up. You should have Knocked him back diagonally down so you can shove him down the row of walls. See, that is why you shouldn't have tried to level. All that did was waste 2/3 of your end game resources vs Bleaty. You already screwed up your knockback. You could have just GETINDAREd. Ugh, well that was painful. I'll catch up on the rest sooner.
KEY POINTS: Seriously, you have to remember not to immediately drink your bloodpools. Your binlor play is TERRIBLE. The first thing you should to with him is take STONE SOUP. Seriously, every time you worship a god, look through and read every boon. Otherwise you play terribly like this. Being level 7 is not a prerequisite to start boss fights! You can start boss fights at level 4 sometimes, or earlier.
We made an expansion and it is awesome. Really, you should check it out, especially if you're looking for some extra challenge.
Download over at ddmod.weebly.com!