Rat Monarch

[secondserpentarius]

I disagree with Rat Warmonger not working well with Taurog, at least, with Platemail. You buy Shield first, then use to bully low level enemies for easy initial blackspace. After than, get Armor and Helmet for resists. Sword should only be gotten so you can gain DPs to kill the bosses.

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

Hard Gaan-Telet Ratted using the SpellRat (tm):



It was hard for me, much harder than anything else on HGT. Nevertheless, it was really fun, and if it is well played (i.e. sweet spots, banked refills, etc.) the Rat should be able to clear HGT with a Mystera build. I even had resources in the end to completely mop up, which is saying something. Getting to H. was tough, but once I was there, it was working like a charm. Now, I wouldn't try something like this on VGT...

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

Nice story! Spamming JJ around had me notice how tricky it can get when you have an early trickshot to pull because of poison (and CO also adds random lol curse to the mix). And Cheeky is a badge everyone always kind of assumes is easy, except it isn't and I've noticed that over the course of my playthrough I've often got several bagdes before I got cheeky - I generally don't chase it and the situations where you have to get it and it turns out difficult thought me to not bother with it too much. If it's there, it's there, if I can kill a lvl 2 - great, but it's not as easy as it seems

Also, not rat related, but anyone strugling to get into JJ - one of the perks of being a JJ worshiping Goblin is that you can pop that first level off a conversion. With boost health you'll probably make up by killing a lvl 4, and you get to get rid of poison/mana burn. Because that poison messess with early health boosts and if you get hit with weakening or corrosion enough times it can quickly become tough to kill a lvl 2 at lvl 1 anyway (especially on VT difficulty).

Err, srry if it's off topic, I just enjoyed the story, reminded me of all the screwy moments with Cheeky and early JJ mishaps that I kinda gloss over ^^

[Tinker]

So I took a shot at Dragon Isles and it was pretty smooth win. The RNG was making a bit fun of me, because my Transmutation Seal was spirited away to literally the last tile I explored, so I had to blast away the first two Dragon Guards the old fashioned way (though I did get access to the secret sub this way, which gave me a bit of extra CP and blackspace, as it was the Blacksmith). I was quite happy when I found the CYDSTEPP, but I found the Firstborn extremely late, so I had to fight him straight on, without much corrosion pre-stacking shennanigans. Anyway, JJ did his thing here, bars were pretty enviabe at 3x Boost Health and 2x Boost Mana, I could take Chaos Avatar after all this and only took the Last Chance gamble for the mop-up (it didn't come in, but the only difference was getting or not getting Unstoppable).

Limited number of opponents, ability to choose targets selectively, Rat shines (EDIT: That's a prepped Crumbling Ward, not a Stone Sigil, before anyone asks. I did buy Stone Sigil later on, just because I bought all cheaper items from the stores beforehand, and I wanted one last refill.)

[Astral]

Nice win and really entertaining stories

CO can be really tricky if you curse yourself early on top of getting mana burned and poisoned. Reminds me the first time I went in cluelessly with a Draining Blade Monk

[Tinker]

So, today it was Demonic Library. I went PoS but given the massive amount of gold on the level, I don't think any other approach would have been problematic... I corroded a L8 armor and one of the Demon Lords, and slammed these two into the other four Demon Lords until everyone died. Avatar looks tough until you get to 100+ Corrosion stacks, then goes down rather easily.



And here's the last in-game screen: http://i.imgur.com/pe79Ule.png
Before you scoff at the bars (health just below 200, mana only 17), do consider that this is only an L8 character, and I didn't do any meaningful mop-up.

By the way, look at the regens: I wasted almost no tiles, continuously regenerating both bars.

[Tinker]

Few more (pretty random) tidbits...
- Earthmother is unsurprisingly brutal with the Rat. +health/DR, bonus XP for the snipes, extra global corrosion to boot - nuff said. (Just noting it because finally I tested it.)
- The single most critical resource for the Rat seems to be Health. So much that I can see an argument to prep Health Boosters on some maps even with the Mystera build. Obviously, items that boost that resource, like Amulet of Health, Hero's Helm, Alchemist's Scroll, Troll Heart, and the boons (Vine Form, Humility, Boost Health) all work well here.
- Alternative is Resists. Though I wouldn't lock an inventory slot up with the Dragon Shield unless it was a VGT attempt for example.
- Knockback - PISORF or not - works wonders. A single prepped (or found) Bear Mace can often mean that you can i) hit a high-health monster a few times to rack up corrosion stacks and move it next to another, higher level, lower health monster; and ii) slap the corroded monster into the uncorroded one (as base damage is negligible, you'll do probably exactly same amount of damage to both). To be honest, this part makes me wonder whether it should be re-thought how Corrosion interacts with Knockback, maybe each monster could get their own damage based their own stacks... Dunno. Coincidentally, this bit also allows you to do things like an L1 bosskill with only a bit of health boosts / resists.
- If I'd have to pick the best deities for the Rat I'd probably pick JJ (bar boosts) and Binlor (knockback), but TEM, Mystera and Dracul are also awesome.
- I'm having a blast prepping fun little one-shot items that don't take up inventory space during the game. Like Crumbling Ward (just pop it for the one-time piety boost on Tile 1 - actually used this prep for my DI, DL and HGT wins), Cracked Soul Orb (get the layer of DP and then convert it), Titan Guitar (demolish walls, scare monsters).

[Lujo]

Anyone figure out how to unlock either him or the chemist? I had the zeppelin allready there and I tried scumming for a supposed subdungen in all directions but couldn't find it anywere...

EDIT: Right, so I unlocked him, you need to earn some gold (I did a flaming run), even if you have the zepplin, then you have to do the DL with 3 classess (that is unless you've done it with 3 classess allready, in which case only with one).

The rat seems to be the same as he was.