Extreme East Spoiler and Discussion Thread

[General_Milky]

Welcome to the fandom, Tower! EE is awesome and criminally underplayed for just how high quality a fan project it is. Loving to see you enjoy it just like I did.

Your blind guesses are really cute in how far off they are from the brutal truth. I recommend you go run Naga City Curious asap and get down to the arena, scope out an idea of what you're up against.

There's a few lame curious's but not many. On the whole, it's my favorite part of the mod. Easily the most spicy, exciting, replayable bit of the whole package that aren't the new dungeons themselves.

I've only beat one Vicious Curious to date, and that's Demonic Library. (and VGT,but it's since been altered and it no longer counts...) I also haven't yet beat Heretic Gold, and I've also not finished off Gilded Goat (though I have seen the final boss and therefore filled the codex.)The top end content for EE is BRUTAL.

[Unidentified Tower]

I actually just did a run of Naga City Curious... oh my god, amazing. I got really far as a Gnome Sorcerer of Mystera with Avatar's Codex, but I ran out of gas halfway through the very last boss of the third (and, if I've correctly understood the pattern, final) wave. That is definitely the coolest dungeon I've ever seen by far. I think if I'd found slightly better items upstairs, or had played around Death Gaze and Serpentine Shield a bit better, I'd have had it.

I learned a new interaction in the process, too: if you get Manaburned from a retaliate, Dragon Soul will refund you the mana after the manaburn is applied, so you'll still be left with mana for another fireball. That saved me several mana potions.

Did all the remaining base game Normal/Hard Curiouses too, except Gaan-Telet. Labyrinth Curious is probably my favorite. It took me several attempts, and I was scared when after the first try it didn't put an ENDISWAL next to the start again, which I had thought was scripted (it does seem to always give that, PISORF, or WEYTWUT early at least). I died a couple times to getting cornered (once with PISORF and mana to cast it but still no way to break free), and once to picking up the Titan Guitar from the subdungeon without considering the consequences. Slime Pit was another favorite, I had good finds like Viper Ward and IMAWAL to win on my first try, but those Zotted monsters in particular were nasty, but generalizing the decay rule was exactly the twist I was hoping to see. I also learned that Riposte doesn't apply to Can of Whupaz damage, which I was kind of worried would just straight up kill me.

Still haven't found anyone "crazy enough" to unlock what I assume is the new dungeon associated with Namtar's Lair, but that doesn't surprise me since I haven't yet beaten any of the EE Vicious dungeons, let alone completed quests in them. Having poked my head into them, though, I wouldn't be surprised if the crazy one were Dr. Trollenstein.

[shade_of_ox]

Naga City Curious with a caster build is probably the hardest way to try to win it, I would say. Think about all the blackspace you're getting, and how all of it is worthless to a caster.

Don't be TOO intimidated by the EE Vicious. They're hard to be sure, but not that much harder than the normal Vicious. The main thing is to just learn the mechanics of each dungeon (the same way as normal Vicious, basically) and you should be able to clear them fairly easily. Flooded Foundry and Troll Lab are a good place to start, since they're much more straightforward than the others. I would say Phantom Citadel as well, but it's so hard that it might be better to save that one for when you get more used to some of the mod's mechanics.

Did you notice some of the details in Slime Pit Curious? For example, Mystery Meat doesn't go bad, and the names of enemies change as the decay continues (Gelatinous Thing -> Gelatinous Hive, for instance). Little details like that are some of my favorites.

[Unidentified Tower]

Ooh, I didn't notice those little details! That's so cool.

I never felt like blackspace was worthless to me as a caster. It let me get my huge mana bar refilled between bosses. If I'd had more darkness accessible, I think it would have saved me -- by the end I was out of darkness and relying on potions to refill between bosses. (Depending on how hard the Prince is, of course.) Idk, I didn't feel like I rolled particularly lucky on RNG, and I'm not as good a player as most of the people who download the mod, and I still got really close on my first attempt with a caster build going in blind? So I don't think caster build can be TOO weak.

[shade_of_ox]

You definitely CAN beat it with a caster. It's just harder than, say, Monk. But I wouldn't say the Prince is particularly badly suited to a caster build.

[Unidentified Tower]

I wasn't expecting the impassible ring to disappear near the end of Magician Bronze -- I assumed you would need to use the glyphs to circumvent it, i.e. WONAFYT to bring the last monster to you.

Magician Silver crushed me hard. I'm guessing this is like the spider totems from The Monster Machine, where killing a boss makes all the smaller monsters lose the associated keyword, but I got nowhere near close to doing it. I think I've gotten overreliant on Avatar's Codex to supercharge my caster builds, I feel so weak without it.

EDIT: Got Magician Silver on my second try! Went for a super early boss kill, and while it didn't do quite what I expected, it gave me the momentum I needed to get through the others. This was a neat one!

[shade_of_ox]

I would say Magician Gold is on the easier end of gold challenges, so let's see how you can handle it.

[srid]

I'm glad to see a player here whose favorite gameplay is Heavy Spellcasting.

You're playstyle seems at the opposite of shade's, I can't wait to see how you fare in Vicious dungeons.

I think what he meant about blackspace is that a pure spellcaster will often waste most of his blackspace
on the health side, and that the most efficient strat usually is regen-fighting.

If I remember correctly he did beat Curious Vicious Naga City with an Orc Monk or something.

Anyway, maybe you should try prepping JJ and the switching to MA in the arena, JJ really is the best
to boost the mana pool to it's limit, and then you'll cast plenty enough spells downstairs to get all interesting
boons from MA too. That's how I beat NC with a GoatPerson.
The main issue with MA for me is that once you bought everything interesting, there is nothing left to do with the piety
you get aside from converting out (spending 65 piety for +1 mana isn't great). At least it can fuel the PM.

[shade_of_ox]

I wish PM had a spellcasting pact, to be honest. Something like "each melee strike restores 1 mana" would be far more interesting than Alchemist's Pact is.

[Unidentified Tower]

Second try!!!



Look at all those unused shops. Sixth item was a Platemail I converted very near the end to make room for the one Yendor I used.

Okay, I'll admit, I was absurdly lucky to find both of the rechargeable items -- only way my shops could have been better would be if I'd found a Soul Orb. But vulnerability to mana burn was fine because I was quite lucky with the boss order, letting me cleanly go Mystera for several magic resisters, Earthmother for several manaburners, and then back to Mystera for several resisters again.