Tinker's Guide to Power-Leveling

[Tinker]

I played around a bit with Zayyeh's Desktop Dungeons XP Calculator to research IMAWAL a bit. I might add more cases if they come up.

Case 1: IMAWAL + Glenrick (no other modifiers like plants/slow/Guitar/Learning; 2 bosses)
== Leveling ==
L1: 6* (-> L4 @12/30]; L4: 7* [-> L5 @14/25]; L5: 9* [-> L6 @ 23/30]; 10* [-> L7 @ 29/35]; 10* [-> L8 @ 21/40]; L9* [37/40]
== Mop-up ==
Stone remaining 4 L1s and 3 L2s to boost the XP from the remaining 7 L6+ kills. The rest of the L2-L5 monsters go down straight.
This gets you 310 XP.

[choongmyoung]

Wait, in that case, starting with a non-IMAWAL L2 kill will bring you more XP I guess. It's a little bit better to squeeze 4 XP from a L2 mob rather than IMAWAL it to get 50% bonus with L6~7 kill.

[Tinker]

[AvovA17]

Interesting. I thought doing a L4 kill as L1 would be unrealistic (I never tried),
but even on Grimm's grotto it is totally doable:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 1B942C599/

In fact, I wasted all blackspace around L4 or L5, but I still won easily in the end. I even did not use B2P, I converted it off the ground.

Obviously, this chain of kills cannot be done every time you play, but under the right circumstances it is doable even on 140-150% difficulty maps.

[shade_of_ox]

Yeah, with Warlord it's easy. There are plenty of classes that can do it, though.

[AvovA17]

Oh, I did it with several classes today, like Berserker and Wizard, for example, without using CYDSTEPP. It is just the screenshot happen to have a warlord. Gods are more important than DP in achieving this.

You need something like EM, JJ, or Binlor(MA)->GG to get a lot of piety and boost your HP and attack at L1.
Otherwise, if gods are something like PM, TT, MA, Dracul, Taurog, I doubt you can realistically get a L4 kill without some retarded technique like Martyr Wraps + tons of CYDSTEPPs. It can be done by abusing magic resources, but I don't see it happening on every hard run.

This can be done in general runs. I do not see myself using this technique in DERPs, though. It feels risky.
You over-explore to get heaps of piety and boost your stats as L1, but you risk not having enough blackspace later on to win the map. Old and tired L+1 or L+2 kills (whatever you see first) are easier and safer.

[zayyeh]

The real question is: given number of enemies, their levels , formula for gaining XP, and player HP thresholds, how to calculate "ideal" scenario in terms of XP gained.

Anyone?

[shade_of_ox]

Didn't actually do the math, but since level 1 boss kills have been proven to be possible, I would say the best options are to kill the enemies starting with the bosses in descending order, with both GG for Humility and TT for Learning (probably prepping Fabulous Treasure).

[AvovA17]

The "real" question that zayyeh is asking is not very real, it is more theoretical,
because the answer very possibly is gonna be something like "get 4-5-6 levels of learning, do a double boss kill at L1, take humility, double kill L9s", so not really realistic in a typical run even if you do have TT.

What is more interesting to me is this:
given the game state, and given reasonable restrictions on the strategy (only allowed +N level kills, have/dont have slow/IMAWAL/etc, disallow double kills, etc), find the optimal kill chain to max XP.
This (and the original zayyeh's question) should be doable with an exhaustive computer search, it is not that hard. It is just a pain to implement all the possibilities. Goblins (and goblin transmuters), beads, slow/wicked guitar, etc.

But even this question is not that interesting, because killing bosses is typically way easier via dings. It is only interesting to ppl who compete on top XP in the dailies or as a theoretical exercise. Personally I do not see myself doing a double boss kill on the Labyrinth any time soon

[srid]