General-Purpose bragging topic!

[Lujo]

Well, I'm kind of proud of this one:



Put in a few hours into it, failed attempts and all. I kind of knew what had to come togather (not much, tbh, PoS has rather casual buildup) after the first attempt, but since I didn't veto anything it took me a while, and I wasn't abandoning runs just because I didn't land whatever so that I can learn and maybe win it in an unexpected fashion. I thought I screwed up mightily, though, but it had a very odd finish. Writeup in the playthrough thread, when I do a few more things so that I don't just post two posts for no good reason.

Also, it was, in retrospect, a luckout. I suppose there's less scummy ways to approach it, but I wasn't really scumming, I wanted to know what it took to beat it like this. Got to the boss plenty of times, even with less luck, and it wasn't a complete luckout in many ways.

Is this picture viewable/enlargeable?

[Tinker]

[The Tapir]

FINALLY:

Had been struggling for a while to defeat DL with the 3 classes necessary for the Rat Monarch. First two weren't too hard - Gnome Bloodmage and Orc Warlord both destroyed that dungeon in a few tries. However, the rest of my attempts hadn't gone so well. Rogues never had enough health to tank a hit and had horrible luck with getting CYDSTEPP to spawn, thieves seemed to lack enough oomph to get the job done, and fighters were plagued with horrible play and generally bad luck with getting melee items as spellcasters and spell items as brawlers. However, I switched over to a Human Transmuter recently just to see how the dungeon would pan out.

Ended up beating it on my first try with that class.

It was definitely a tight run, and I could've done some things better (like, not allow the first strike demon lord to get 3 DPs as a GETINDARE abuser), but the WHUPAZ -> Reflex Potion on a SS boosted attack chunked the Avatar's health like no other. Also ended up with 110 normal attack - I'm pretty confident that's a new record for me.

[Lujo]

Congrats! There you go - when going gets tough, human transmuter. It can get pretty silly!

My brag - All the goats herded on the playthrough, except the one in VGT Only tricky stuff left before pure mopup is a few remaining vicious Rats if they actually turn out to be difficult.

[Blovski]

OK, first successful Vicious run with the new class gizmoids (I made it one boss away from Naga City with the Chemist).



Interesting information for the sophisticated VHOS player -

Blahblah doesn't blink away when hit as the secondary target of knockback. I wasn't sure about this. Now I am.
Immortal/whatever his name is doesn't deal any damage if his base damage is below your DR.
With maxed out MR, you can hit Immortal at level 3.
Corrosion stacks affect both targets of Knockback.

I believe if you can handle a fairly horrible array of early game enemies (maybe take Platemail for guaranteed DR), the Rat would have less trouble than most classes beating VVHOS, since it's just a battle of getting adequate resistances, positioning Blahblah next to Mr I-Cannot-Die and then cackling evilly.

[Astral]

Very nice!

The corrosion damage on 2nd target is due to the fact that when you knock a monster into another they both take the same damage. This allows you to bypass the 2nd monster's physical resistance (or immunity) and benefit from the 1st one's corrosion, after all that's part of the damage too.

It's cool Rat thingy that since your damage is already abysmal you can totally ignore the weakening of illusions, and corrosion takes care of their PR as well.

[Lujo]

Allthough, Knockback damage ignores everything even without the corrosion, so the difference beween the Rat and everyon else except the Monk is that he has to actually hit one of them to do his thing, and that if he hits a lot he can just pissorf for more damage. It's the same in Namtar's Lair, knockback (namely Pissorff) evades everything in that place (blink, all the resists) except the physical resistance on the first undead form, making those two dungeons incredibly easy to just run through with almost anything with Binlor prepped. I've rainbowed both by practically doing the exact same thing with every class (let the PQI choose the race) in the game (except for Warmonger and when I really wanted to try somethign else for variety).

So it's not actually a feature of the Rat, he just needs more fiddling than anyone else does. He can actually struggle in Namtar's lair because he has to land a few physical hits on the first two namtar forms, while noone else does and can just start pissorffing at lvl 1. Hasn't failed me yet, and I've rainbowed both on the latest profile. He will ussually end up doing more damage to the corroded guy, but the point of it for the others is to completely ignore the damage stat on the monster and he can't really do that (which can be a bit of a pain in case of Namtar). Ofc, he stil runs through both places like a knife through butter, it's just that anyone else does it with even less hassle, with essentially the same plan.

[Blovski]

OK, Lujo, I'm throwing down the appropriately small-sized gauntlet. Parched VVHOS with absolutely zero shop or god luck involved. Maybe the only possible problem would be abysmally placed bosses but I think you could just fireball Blahblah out into the open in that case, you'd really need Indomitable parked between two blank tiles on the edge or in a corner to ruin your day.





Admittedly, I got Zombie Gold as a sub but I had plenty of blackspace underground so I'm not sure I'd have needed it to pick up parched.

Has my nomination for easiest, cheesiest VVHOS run.

[Tinker]

[Blovski]