Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[Lujo]

RUN - Elf Fighter of JJ into Mystera - Labyrinth (pekaboo, Firstborn) - Nose Ring!

So I had a much better time pekabooing this time around, allthough being a gnome would've obviously been better, and having mystera on board I couldn't really go nuts with Glyph conversion and it was still kinda awkward, but in the end it all worked out. Chaos avatar into consensus into Mystera into refreshment into loads of mana, 2 schaudenfraude, all the killer potions, knockback, way too much peekaboo piety due to lvl 1 meatmen + wheytwut in a Titan Guitar map... Anywho, was fun and different, will do a more proper elf and a more proer pekaboo, but now I have all the thropies and need to quickly go GT

RUN - Gaan'Telet - Dwarf Paladin of Earthmother (yes, really ) - Oh, Horatio!

Err, I went in with a dwarf paladin, ran into TT, was rolling but then I missclicked myself to death on the retaliate fireball floor. Then I went in with a dwarf paladin, found Mystera, but then my cat (not the same as my old cat) made the decision for me by jumping on my laptop. Then I went in with a dwarf paladin and found EM on the first floor and thought - "Hey, this makes no sense, but it'll make one helluva report XD" and rolled with it

The run itself was really strange and actually plagued with bad luck and bizzare decisions. I had no way to get first strike (must've converted all relevant glyphs or something), and only found Fireball really late. I did score a Soul Orb which must've counted for something somewhere, I suppose, but I'm not even sure any Wraiths spawned in the sublevels.

First floor - EM and the Troll, which was great. Took a bunch of Vine Forms, and converted both stones, which made me a fat ole dwarf. For some reason I left a B2P and a Bycepss lying on the ground (not being sure if the hard Horatio has resists or not), would'a been even fatter. I also bought a fine sword really late, because I had Imawal, Halpmeh, Mana Pendant and an empty slot in case I need to pick something up.

Second floor - this is when it turned from plucky-fat-girl-religious-fanatic-treehuger-comic-relief run into facepalm city. The floor was Drac with, get this, NO XP, and the Statue. This meant I reached the 3rd floor at level 8, corroded, weakened, and with barely any exploration Also little to no piety because it took all sorts of shennanigans to clearance my way to kills, and plants you could IMAWAL also weren't spawning so I plantationed on the EM sublevel too, I tell you it was a hilarious mess! Felt like a pleasant fat dwarven treehuging religious fanatic absolutely delusionaly convinced my beloved Earthmoter would somehow get me through all this and I didn't even get upset at any point ^^

Had to choose between being stuck with 7 weakenings of 7 corrosion, got rid of corrosion, because ~~Burn Salve~~ (and also it being the wiser choice, possibly, but mostly because I can't look at that thing anymore and not hear trumpets and a booming voice pronouncing it)

Third floor - was, now get THIS - curse floor with 2 magic damage dragons on top of the curse guy, and I was lvl 8. My dorky little church nut was so endearingly convinced that EM has got this (and em was doing squat about any of it), so I Imawaled, and popcorned, and potionspiked, and cleared curses after every hit, and regenfought, and plantationed, and clearanced my way through all that... somehow. With no exploration and only one health potion.

Went down, went back up, finally converted the two glyphs I haven't yet for some reason, went back down, went back up, converted some more stuff I didn't need from the inventory, bought TOWER SHIELD (yes, really), went back down, hit the goat a bunch, went back up, ate a bunch of popcorn (Imawal = always leftover popcorn + I was anal about only stoning plants), dinged, went back down, hit the goat some more, drank my last health potion, killed the goat, picked up the spoon, went back up and killed two level 6 guys and a level 5 guy who were left over for whatever reason.

So fun, so goofy and so endearing ^^

[Lujo]

PQI - Goblin Rogue! - Unstoppable! - Doubledoom! (Prepped TT)

Because you guys made Rogues finally fun for me, I decided that this little guy was gonna do his best Michael Bay impression, and ended up sorry I didn't just bring the VT along. I stuck a Mage Plate on him to make him more like his idol, prepped Slayer Wand because Michael Bay is too cool for ~~Bear Mace~~, prepped the Blue Seal because that's what Michael Bay would do, and then... I ran into Wonnafy on the very first tile. And then the secret subdungeon was Monster Zoo. I desecrated EM and didn't even drink the ~~Burn Salve~~, converted a glyph, and that's how my run started. You can imagine the rest, I ended up lvl 13. The last boss and 3 remaining monsters didn't even ding me. I could've been 14, though, if I spent some more of my huge piles of money, I even brought in an extra shop scroll.

This guy isn't as boss as Michael Bay, but he's really fun to play ^^

PQI - Goblin Sorcerer! - Parched! - Hobblers Hold!

Well, this is kinda obvious, but there's a challenge I like to do with Hobblers. I don't do it until the PQI shows up so that the PQI will send me there often (because free money, yay), and when I do it the challenge is to fail every badge except the one I'm being asked for. The trick is to not get carried away and fail the one you're not supposed to fail (which is why it took me two tries XD). Used the usual way of avoiding that really difficult to avoid one, and played the entire level by using Endiswal and scholar's Pact fueled only by Consensus, because Hobblers. Threw a Fireball or two at the end to make sure I fail specialist.

PQI - Halfling Bloodmage! - Hoarder! - Hobblers Hold! (Was tricky! )

Was tricky to only get the correct badge - I picked up a lot of stuff from the floor, so I needed to find the potion shop. I also went for Dracul as he was the first guy I ran into, but since I couldn't convert potions and had undead around in a cloggy map - and nothing to manouver around it in my inventory - things actually got hairy Luckily I found EM, desecrated her, found the potion shop and bought a, you guessed it, ~~Burn Salve!~~, so that was the end of that. Also, avoiding that one badge can be a tricky bit of bussiness and it actually cut me off from a good part of the level, and there were lifesteal shennanigans, and, hey, turned it into a highly enjoyable Hobblers Run, not a phrase you hear often

- And then -> Best classic DD experience since as far as I remember (reminded me of Alpha a lot):

PQI - Elf Monk! - Doubledoom! - Purist!

I went in expecting trouble - it's not a combo I'd play Purist, and as you may have noticed I enjoy preps, so I rarely go at stuff purist, and this reminded me to do so more often, as it keeps sub-vicious interesting. What happened was that I ran into Endiswal and realized that the subdungeon was right at the entrance. The subdungeon was the blacksmith subdungeon, so instead of being purist I was armed to the teeth! Even had ~~Bear Mace~~! Made very good use of it, too!

There was a Pactmaker altar three tiles into the fog, picked up a straight Consensus into +Res pact, and just when I though my conversion bonus is gonna be useless I ran into - Halpmeh! Put it all togather, and I was an arse kicking machine! Reminded me of the old days of 3 MP Halpmeh's and silly monk escapades.

The problem, though, was I had no Fireball or base damage, and my gods were TT and Drac. I could've gone Drac, but I'd have to abandon my Halpmeh, which I didn't want because I was totaly enjoying the fact that I was playing a rather useful 20ish mana Elf, so I just kept farming resists and leveling. Turned out to have been a great move - because one of the bosses was Iron Man. Go Elf Monks!

And then - I ran into both Fireball and Crystal Ball! On an Halpmeh Spamming Elf! I slammed the Iron Man into Lord Gobb, then at the right moment joined up Drac, ditched Halpmeh, bumped my level, fireballed, dinged, fireballed, crystal ball, fireballed, and when the bossess were dead, I went to work on 3 high level bandits I was saving up. Got cursed, picked up sanguine, picked up lifesteal, knockbacked & fireballed their assess into walls and each other and got Unstoppable.

Ahhh, screwy purist PQI's, you are the bestest.

And that's it for today Sorry about all the exclamation points, the goofy Dwarf GT followed by that goblin, and two hobblers runs made me light headed, and that last run just had so many twists and turns that I got a bit manic.

[Lujo]

I did Sorcerer Bronze - Goblin, and Sorcerer Silver and Gold with a Gnome.

Silver wasn't too difficult, I managed it even tough I flat out messed up two or three times during the run (missclicked into a ding which wasted a full health and mana pool), mistimed chaos avatar etc.) I'm enjoying JJ, but I do in fact lack experience with him, and I seem to kinda founder somewhat in the mid game. It's always kinda too early for Chaos Avatar, too late for that 3rd hit of whatever I'm boosting and a waste to swap into someone else. Feel like having a beer with Darvin...

Gold I went TT just to get some gold and piety and not be in Mystera while I kill magic users. I also kinda ran into him first, and it didn't turn out bad at all. -He's got a kick ass starting glyph, too. Altar preps have made folks kinda discount him as a jump-off deity. Swapped to Mystera when I got to melleing the first form, got up to Refreshment, and pulled it off.

I'm onto something about TT, in a simmilar vein to JJ. I'm severely underusing Tribute, so I flounder with him in the midgame too. Might be nothing wrong with them, but me being rusty or something I'm doing wrong.

Also did:

RUN - [b]Dwarf Assassin w Dracul prepped - Rock Garder - Unlikely Heroes: Desert[/b]

Was a nice methodical affair with a prepped Vampiric Blade, 3 level so Bloodsteal by the end, and a little bit of everything you can imagine. I got sick of them back in the day, but all that grind seems to have thaught me how to handle them and they do make cool hybrids, with Blood Curse and Bloody Sigil sinergizing with both race and class, the occasional fireball burning helping further and the poison damage buff helping out with the dwarfs lack of damage. No Bear Mace, either, decided it's just cheezy, went with the Badge.

Then I went and did this:



I kinda wanted to go human because I've been underplaying them, and I kinda wanted to play a Tinker because I haven't played a single one yet, and I kinda wanted to do ND because it was flaming, and I kinda wanted to boost gold so I went VT + Bet on Boss, and I kinda only have spellcasting items in the pool which doesn't sinergize with humans, and I kinda didn't want to cheeze it with the Bear mace... and it kinda worked, somehow. That Yendor wasn't translocated, it was bought, lol.

They nerfed the Vicious token! Back when I went around Gobbosorcing them off the map it was tougher! Now you can actually melle stuff, and it was a nice "fight two bossess at the same time" kinda deal. Fireball one guy, get cleansing, hit the other guy because of Witchalok Pendant, etc.

Also, most of the run was #brainAWOL. If the prep/map screen thought process didn't allready clue you in on that. Since all this playing is due to hard-core insomnia, I totally forgot about the sweet plan to desecrate the other two altars and get enlightment to go with my trans. Mage Plate. After starting out by filling my inventory with absolution beads. I "gave up" a bunch of stuff because of a clogged inventory and made difficult choices to get one particuler ding - all the while keeping the Slayer Wand all the way to the end. (~~Facepalm!~~). Woulda made a hell of a video if every other move/decision was cut with OMG/Facepalm giffs.

[Lujo]

Ok, making them shorter

RUN - Orc Wizard of Binlor - Shifting Passages - Confusion!

Not very memorable.

RUN - Goblin Sorcerer of Mystera - Western Jungle - Flaming/Vicious Token

My second Vicious Token run, this time with my traditional Gobbosorcerer. Found B2P and Pissorff which clogged my inventory because I prepped a translocation seal instead of the traditional compression seal. This actually made it fiddly, allthough it otherwise went without a hitch. Made good use od B2P despite the allergies. Made a mistake at one point and angered Mystera, but two weakinings eventually got rid of that. Prepped Soul orb, translocated Orb of Zot and even bought a Mana Pendant, so I had 25 mana + Mystic Balance by the end, refreshment and 2 hits of Magic. Scored Learning from the Tree of Knowledge (isn't documented on the wiki, so I don't know what it does for which ammount of money).

Was ok, all in all.

Puzzle - Binlor Pack - Second and third one took me 2 tries each.

PQI - Parched! - Halfling Assassin - Creeplight Ruins

Went pekaboo with JJ, and did it without swapping into Drac or desecrating Binlor (even though swapping into either would've been highly proffitable by the end). 3 hits of Boost health 1 of boost mana and Chaos Avatar, but I did a much better job of peekabooing. Also made nice use of the Blue Bead, which is an item I adore (Used to be borderline broken on Bloodmages when B2P gave you 4 mana, because it turned you into a 1 fireball per popcorn machinegun).

[Astral]

Lot of interesting runs
Will comment on them when I get more time.
The grove of knowledge gives:
1 time Imawal effect for 5 gold?
1 learning for 15 gold? - incredible for TT fighters
+50 xp instantly for 35 gold (alias inventoryspaceless cheap Yendor).

[Lujo]

^ I thought 35 gold gave you an Imawal Glyph, and 50 gave you +50 XP?

Anywho, went and did this:

PQI - Goblin Bloodmage - DING! Max - Slime Pits - Vicious Token



It's kinda brutally difficult, and while goblins don't make the most obviously sinergistic bloodmages (there are tricks to it like being able to get that mage plate up quick and level up w no popcorn, mind you), goblins have an easy time worshipping TT and both goblins and TT are good for your max dingage. Which on VT Slime Pits simply isn't easy for a spellcaster.

I've underplayed Zot historically, so I went with it because it solved my mana issues and had more going for it in Slime Pits than the boots or Mage Plate (killing popcorn is a pain in SP). I found the bossess early and zotted them, but I also found Saint Solitude (Contemplate the Waters), which let me get places with it as I had a lot of B2P blackspace. Whish I found the sigil earlier, though.

Got the Goo down to Zot health while exploring and used up most of contemplate the waters, spiked it by dinging a bunch with glyphs (also fueled Troll Hear), tributed for a learning, munched on popcorn, went drac just before (or after) the end, killed the goo at lvl 5, having skipped a level almost entirely. Went drac, picked up the free level for more fireball damage, the sigil, some sanguine and lifesteal, went to work on the SMM. Ran out of blackspace and then dodge + whoopazed him, this got him to about 850.

Then picked up Blood Shield, and finished up my remaining glyphs and popcorn to ding, lifesteal and sanguine him down and finished with TT's free Getindare at lvl 10. I could've been lvl 11 but I just ended right there.

VT Slime Pits is the kind of level that's hard on a spellcaster even with Zot + Solitude + B2P, but when you think about it, there wasn't much cheeze otherwise, or even what you'd consider regular spellcasting shennanigans. I'm quite pleased with myself for pulling it off.

[Lujo]

PQI - Elf Fighter - Havendale Bridge - Miser



Reason I'm posting this is that I went no Whoopaz, and I was an elf miser which isn't exactly what you want to be with an elf, and I also brought Patches the Bad News Bear along. Reason for that was that I was prepping Soul Orb anyway for JJ Peekaboo (apparently good w Elves because you overexplore and pick random stuff up before you actually do anything). Then I found B2P, went barking mad and fireballed one guy over the course of levels 3-4 and the other guys right afterwards (after CA magic removal).

Had so many resources left over (apart from blackspace, didn't have any of that, subdungeon was Yin-Yang), that I felt sorry I didn't bring VT on this run too. Put up a picture to show just how little of anything it took. No hits from he CB either. 2 hits of boost health, 2 hits of boost mana.

Note to self: Unlock Fire Heart, stupid!

Also did:

PQI - Halfling Rogue! - Unstoppable! - Hobbler's Hold! ( Single badge challenge )

Took 2 tries, because on the first try I went in purist and imediately failed my challenge So I went in with the False Beard and did it right!

[Astral]

I'm happy to read I'm not the only one who considers Monk Gold easy. The boss is the exact type of thing a Monk would want to face and no kind of monster is tough with that altar scheme for a Monk.

Beamace is amazing item, but it's hard nerfing it in way that doen't cause more problems. Warmongers need it to use Binlor so the wall breaking has to stay, and removing/decreasing damage would benefit peakabooing - you don't even bother with getting weakened to avoid oneshotting monsters anymore. Thankfully the craziest potential abusers (JJ Bloodmages) are held back by inventory space restrictions. I personally don't think it needs any change, it's obscurity/unreliability keeps it from getting cheezed by new players, and vets have plenty of other tools to abuse.

Whether a Gnome or an Elf is better on JJ is an interesting question. The more you ding, the more Schadenfreude/Mana potions you buy being an Elf gets better and better. The more CP valauble glyphs you save (like for Refeshment) the more Gnomes take back the lead.

LOL, that Gaan Telet run was hilarious
Gives me memories of my first GT run where I went in with an Elf Sorcerer. "I haven't played Elves of Sorcerers in ages let's combine the 2".

Oh and it's fun to have cats, they can serve as PQI v2 at times

You have no idea how many (GGless) Dwarf Rouge purist VGT runs bleeded out due to some similar curse combos you described.

I bet you didn't find those 2 glyphs thanks to plants sitting on them before Clearences. It always amuses me how little plant is required to cover key tiles, then how many Clearences are needed to free the 'hostages'. That why EM Palas are awesome, they can do the more reasonable plant chopping instead.

Hehe I also like to play the fail all PQI game in HH. On my 1st profile I did the "mistake" of grabbing 9 badges on the first PQI, learned too late how wasteful that was.

Other time I had the silly idea of playing a purist VT Goat run in there, was an unpleasant surprise to see that the easiness of the dungeon is overwritten by the Token Thank god I only had to kill 1 boss.

Really nice Elf Monk run! Purist whacky PQIs really make the game fun.

[Lujo]

[Astral]

Even before discovering peakaboing I was able to achieve great things with JJ so it's not a weak god in itself, but yeah, peakaboo makes him a monster.

I kinda wish JJ supported a high risk high reward play if he got reworked. Like getting successfully punished by him awarded 4-5 piety, other actions no more than 3. On top of that each time you get punished, EVERY JJ boon gets cheaper by 1-2. So enduring his 'jokes' would net you boons sooner on top of maybe allowing you to take a 5th helping of the repeatable boons.
Now he gives you nothing on punishments and Petition turns him into no downside. Boring for the god of randomness.

Btw can I ask you to check the Thief Gold challenge in the wiki? We updated it with Tinker not long ago so I'm curious to hear any thought on how useful it became. Any critique is welcome!
Same goes for Thief Silver if you're interested.

Rogue Silver is one of my fave challenges. That's the place where I discovered lifesteal based regenfighter rouges. But tons of other stuff work out there.

Rogue Gold is fun too. It's nice to see something support the extreme Orc version as well.