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[Stooge]

Wow, just did a test run with the Rat Monarch, I have NO IDEA how to play this class. It's ridiculously unique, definitely challenging, that +15 conversion threshold really stacks up quickly, I've already stayed up too late doing the daily though, I'll have to give it a real go tomorrow.

[TheSchachter]

Okay, I couldn't resist trying out the Rat Monarch class and I have to say, I'm amazed at how different the concept manages to be from the rest of the game. I actually swore out loud when I read the description!

I had a quick successful run in the Venture Cave, but I struggled quite a lot as I was trying to gauge when to level, when to use the ratlings, etc. (though I killed myself on my first attempt because I didn't quite undestand how the extra rats worked). Anyway, I don't know if I can stay awake to try it out much more, but I've got plenty of potential strat ideas...

[Lujo]

Love the changelog, didn't want to post so people see it. Tried the Rat and while it looked like something peope will find loopholes with soon enough, it felt very fun and very open-ended. I killed the gobbo in venture cave with it easily, but I' looking forward to playing it more and seeing what direction he evolves in

[Darvin]

Okay, so I've played through with the Rat Monarch for a while and have some thoughts.

First of all, acquiring minions is really easy. I was doing some tests with him in Vicious Demonic Library and I was reliably gathering 6-7 followers without leveling up at all. Since your ability to use minions is bottlenecked by CP, there's diminishing returns after this point anyways and they literally become worthless after the 9th. This means that the Rat Monarch simply has no further use for additional XP at a very early point in the dungeon run even in the game's most difficult dungeons. All you need to do is stay at level 1 and use front-loaded bonuses (or a slow effect) to kill monsters and you'll fill that little 5-XP bar over and over again. If you have WEYTWUT or WONAFYT, the 1st level monsters alone are worth 30 XP and will give you 6 minions. Good Glenrick on his own is worth 28 XP. This is too easy.

Second of all, the Rat Monarch lacks opportunity costs. There is almost no reason to keep popcorn alive so naively cleaning monsters as soon as you are able is always the right course of action. Since acquiring 9 minions is fairly straightforward, there's little consideration towards who to kill and when, and once you hit the magic number of 9 (or really just 6; there's a diminishing return anyways) you can just maximize your level. Because he bottlenecks on CP and has inventory issues, very few items are worth buying for anything other than immediate conversion. Overall this class is interesting only because he's so different; I don't actually see much variability in how to play him.

The third, and most glaring problem, is how this class bottlenecks on CP. It costs 900 CP to reach 10th level, meaning most of the time that's not happening. Reclaiming 10th level after sacrificing a minion is just plain unrealistic. Oh, sure, hitting 1075 CP is possible but it's not very likely. And before anyone brings up Chaos Avatar, remember that this guy can't ding, so you're losing the main benefit of this boon. Since minions cannot protect you when you're at the 1st level, that means the most minions you can realistically sacrifice is 9, dropping from 10th to 1st level in the process.

The kamikaze attack, while it brings impressive numbers, isn't actually that great. Even using Taurog for very high front-loaded damage you're looking at up to 700 damage for a 9-minion sacrifice. Impressive... until you consider that the Rat Monarch can't Ding. This means that the ability is game-breaking on normal and hard-difficulty dungeons (often both bosses combined don't even have this many HP) but is nearly inconsequential on vicious difficulty dungeons. The most extreme example is vicious Gaan-Telet, where this amounts of 7% of Horatio's life bar after resists.

Now, that doesn't mean he's useless in his current state. Quite the contrary, just converting stuff to promote to 10th level (or even just 9th) without having to actually fight anything is pretty darned powerful on some dungeons. However, it's also pretty useless on others. It's also very luck-based. Since you can't ding you're highly dependent on blackspace for recovery, but so long as one of the glyphs is hidden under the shroud you must explore to find it or you're missing out on a big power boost for the boss fight. That creates a big luck swing as to how early you find your glyphs (and shops with good CP fodder).

More comments to follow, but I'm going to sleep on them.

[Tinker]

BUG: You can pick a normal race to go with Rat Monarch. In fact, PQI treats it as a normal class:



If you accept, the upper part of the sidebar interface will be gone and nothing will be accessible in dungeon:



I did manage to press "Retire", though wasn't able to progress anywhere from the score screen:

[Tinker]

[Nurator]

I thought: Hey GG is awesome for Rat King, because everything is a big item... but no, the piety gain from potions is still 5...

[Kami]

[Darvin]

[Lujo]

Right, I read through what Darvin said and I need to play the guy a bit more, but he doesn't seem that single minded. I think that while his items game is all about converting stuff, his god game very likely isn't. However, getting to an overly high level probably isn't what you're looking for, as the rats look really lacklustre if you play him like that. I think he's supposed to kill bossess by using potions, boons and refilling by repeatedly losing a rat and popping a CP cap in order to stay at a level constantly. Should be good for some really low level boss kills, I gotta play around with him a bit more.