EE:All is Dust
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This feature is part of the Extreme Edition fan-made expansion. |
All is Dust is the 
Heretic gold challenge. In this grueling run, you must take down the champions of the pantheon.
Preparations
No preparations.
Resources Available
This dungeon has the standard assortment of resources, but the only altar on the main floor is 
The Pactmaker. There are eight subdungeons, which hold the other altars as well as the first eight bosses.
Special Rules
The map starts partially explored. You have to defeat the eight subdungeon bosses to reveal the final boss.
Monsters
All common enemies except 
Bandit are guaranteed to appear.
Monster difficulty is 100%.
Bosses
Champion Ascendant: 
Golem icon, 999 attack, 159 health, 
Magic Immune, 
First Strike
Archmage Ascendant: 
Dragon Spawn icon, 75 attack, 477 health, 
Physical Immune, 
Magical Attack
Trickster Ascendant: Bandit icon, 999 attack, 318 health, 
Blinks, 
Retaliate: Fireball
Deathmage Ascendant: 
Zombie icon, 37 attack, 954 health, 
Undead, Magical Attack
Foreman Ascendant: 
Goblin icon, 225 attack, 318 health, Magic Immune
Naturalist Ascendant: 
Warlock icon, 75 attack, 159 health, Physical Immune, Retaliate: Fireball
Heirophant Ascendant: 
Serpent icon, 75 attack, 636 health, 
Poisonous, 
Mana Burn, 
Curse Bearer
Madman Ascendant: 
Goat icon, 75 attack, 477 health, 20% resists, 
Corrosive: 1, 
Weakening
Faithful Ascendant: 
Gnome Crusader icon, 77 attack, 7777 health, 50% resists, 
Berserks at 50%.
Strategy
This run is LONG and you will spend most of it at level 10, so 
Human is the best choice here. You'll need careful planning to take down the first eight ascendants with enough resources left for the Faithful Ascendant.
Fortunately, you have access to all the gods essentially right off the bat, and the monsters in this dungeon are quite weak, so the only threat here is the Ascendants.
You can start by making a plan to take on all the ascendants. The Deathmage is easy - he has such low damage that a Human Heretic should be able to regen fight him with no problem.
Try to leave all piety sparkles on the floor until you need them.
You'll want to make sure that both 
The Earthmother and 
Binlor Ironshield are easily available. Start in The Earthmother - you don't want much from her besides 
IMAWAL, but you can take 
Entanglement and 
Vine Form on the first floor to get a bit of health, DR, and XP. As you work towards reaching level 2, if you end up with extra piety you can get more vine form.
Once you reach level 2, worship Binlor Ironshield. Use 
PISORF to farm up tons of piety, which you can use to get 
Stone Form, 
Stone Fist, and optionally 
Stone Soup. It's good to prioritize Stone Fist, since then you can use health to farm piety faster. Then, you can start using IMAWAL to convert excess piety to bonus damage. It's up to you how much you want to do this - it's a tradeoff of blackspace for damage.
After this, a good god for level 3 is 
Taurog. You can convert glyphs you don't want (probably everything worth CP except 
BURNDAYRAZ and maybe 
CYDSTEPP if it spawned, you can probably ditch IMAWAL too if needed) and kill low level magic damage enemies to get 45 piety for the sword and the armor.
Then you can start levelling and fighting the Deathmage Ascendant. At some point, probably around level 7, you can worship 
Jehora Jeheyu and grab a health boost and mana boost.
