I'm sure that a lot of you have figured out what makes it work, but here's the general idea: Be an Orc Transmuter and prepare the Titan Guitar, the Bear Mace, and Earthmother (Burn Salve also highly useful). Other preps are either obvious or situational. You get a fantastic Transmuter start: LEMMISI spam until you know exactly what you're up against and what your tools are (other altars, glyphs, bosses, subdungeons), which are now guaranteed to be accessible then start worshiping Earthmother to grab IMAWAL. Start creating walls as you explore in the direction of the glyphs/shops you want to pick up; it's a very reliable and cheap way (3 mana, castable on any emtpy tile) to build up CP via the Transmuter's ability, and you should be trying to set up walls next to potential targets so you can use the Bear Mace to amplify your Transmuter/Orc boosted base damage, and use Vine form and Greenblood to boost your lvl 1 so you can take on higher level enemies early (corrosion's interaction with knockback is especially nice here).
Basically, this is a start that takes powerful but sometimes unreliable elements and makes them just about as efficient and reliable as I can imagine. Titan Guitar obviously makes Earthmother almost risk-free, but it also ensures that whatever LEMISI discovers will be accessible with minimal wasted blackspace. Meanwhile, you start off IMAWAL and space to cast it as often as you can, so you're guaranteed a way to efficiently build CP, AND quite possibly the most reliable way to make use of knockback damage; every target, with few exceptions, can have walls set up behind it to benefit from knockback, which itself is especially effective thanks to both the Transmuter's frequent spirit swords and the Orc's extra base damage with transmuter-worthy CP levels. IMAWAL ensures that you get the most EXP out of your Spirit Sword conversions, and Entanglement is the guaranteed first strike and bonus XP on popcorn we all know and love.
I was happy to find that this enabled me to take on VT Labyrinth (Rex + Goo) on my first try, ending at level 9 (no balanced dagger). Though it's a very strong and reliable start, I don't think it has in-built answers for everything; Vine form can get you to tank the basic VT boss damage of 120, and Earthmother obviously has great mana-spike capabilities, but you may need to find solutions to more extreme situations in-dungeon. Thankfully, that's one of the Transmuter's strongest point, thanks to starting with LEMISSI, and if EM outlives her usefulness, you can easily convert then desecrate her.
This is probably harder to do in a dungeon like Double Doom, that has a more restrictive non-wall layout, but so far I've found this to be a very satisfying Transmuter strategy, that plays to the class' strengths and makes its "figure out a strategy on the fly" aspect work well even on the VT.
So, yeah, none of this by itself is groundbreaking, but I thought I'd share and collect thoughts! Had anyone else combined those elements together before? Am I actually the 10th person to come up with it? Any ideas for improving it?
I may make a video of it later
