Difference between revisions of "Alpha:Half-dragon"

Half-dragon
Suggested Races	Special race
Tier	Special class
Unlocked By	Beat Library with a Warlord
Rewards for completion	???
Skills	Multiple: 200% Max Health at start Magical Attack Increased Sight Radius (same effect as Scouting Orb, all tiles touching an explored tile will be partially uncovered, allowing you to see what type of object lies there) BURNDAYRAZ glyph costs 99 Mana, preventing its use 20% Knockback, gains an additional 20% for every glyph converted

The Half-dragon is one of the special races in Desktop Dungeons. It is unlocked by clearing the Library with a warlord. Half-dragons are immensely powerful individuals who fight with magical breath and a brutal knockback attack that sends enemies flying, and are also blessed with supernatural sight.

Skills

• 200% Max Health at start
• Magical Attack
• Increased Sight Radius (same effect as Scouting Orb, all tiles touching an explored tile will be partially uncovered, allowing you to see what type of object lies there)
• BURNDAYRAZ glyph costs 99 Mana, preventing its use
• 20% Knockback, gains an additional 20% for every glyph converted

General Strategy

Knockback causes enemies to go flying one square in the direction you hit them when you use a melee attack, unless another enemy is in the way. If they land on a wall, they will destroy it. If they move onto a tile you have not yet explored, but will have seen due to your increased sight radius, the monster icon will have a lifebar until it reaches its maximum health. Knockback is calculated from your Base Damage and applies damage when an enemy destroys a wall or hits another enemy, ignoring resistances. When knocked back into another enemy, Knockback damage is halved and applied to both enemies. Finally, the enemy you knocked your target into will never die from the Knockback: they will be left at 1 HP minimum and lose a level of Death Protection if they have one.

Since Half-dragons can't use BURNDAYRAZ, it's best converted as soon as you see it. Knockback is a good way of breaking walls past high-level enemies or even dealing early damage to them by knocking enemies into them. Knockback damage is also left unaffected by Mystera Annur's restriction and is not affected by damage resists. Be wary of enemies with Magical Resist, as Knockback is the only solid way you have of dealing damage to them. And note that you deal more damage to a particular enemy if you knock them into a wall instead of another enemy. Finally, although they have high max health, remember that they still have the same health regeneration as standard classes.

Easiest and quickiest way to win is poison - either Venom Blade or APHEELSIK. High health will let you smack big enemies.

Deity Choice

Half-dragons work well with Binlor Ironshield, as they collect piety easily by knocking monsters into walls. For the same reason, he also can work well with Jehora Jeheyu. The Glowing Guardian can be used for refilling a Half-dragon's large maximum hp, and Dracul's maximum hp reduction isn't as bad due to the large maximum hp as well. As usual, The Pactmaker is a solid choice. Due to a lack of ability to use BURNDAYRAZ, Taurog is often also a good choice. The Earthmother and Mysteria Annur should almost certainly be avoided as a Half-dragon, and Tikki Tooki's dislike of those who get hit too much doesn't work well with the Half Dragon's high maximum health.

Challenge Modes

Factory

This dungeon is quite difficult for the Half-Dragon, so it requires a good combination of Glyphs and/or items. The two best Glyphs you can get are CYDSTEPP and ENDISWAL. CYDSTEPP is pretty straightforward: It extends your ability to fight, and you'll be doing a lot of exploration and mana regeneration anyway, and are unlikely to use any other Glyphs, so it's a great choice.

ENDISWAL, however, is surprisingly useful here for defeating high level monsters - especially Golems. What you need is to break a strategically-chosen wall, stand in the new empty space and push the opponent into another wall, then run them down a whole length of walls. With a high-enough Knockback you can take out monsters 2-3 levels above your own this way. Sometimes you'll run into monsters that are already placed in a way that ENDISWAL is not needed to perform the trick, but this doesn't occur often enough, which is why you need ENDISWAL to engineer this repeatedly. The same tactic should be used against both bosses.

Knockback can also be taken advantage of against high-level Animated Armour. If the Animated Armour is adjacent to a lower-level monster, it can be helpful to Knockback the monster into the Animated Armour, possibly even letting that monster heal, instead of killing it outright, to get extra hits in on the Animated Armour for a low health cost.

Finding HALPMEH is also pretty fortunate. It's a good way to spend all that mana you'll undoubtedly be accumulating. Unfortunately it is not as useful as it sounds, given that its healing rate is fixed and does not correspond to your ridiculously high Maximum Health.

Naturally, the best item you can get in this dungeon is the Venom Blade. This will enable you to smack your enemies into unexplored sections. The greatest thing about this item is that it ALWAYS affects Golems regardless of their Magic Resistance (this includes the Iron Man).

Finally, try to get either Jehora or Pactmaker early enough to make good on their bonuses. But the bottom line is that if you don't get a good glyph/item/god combo, you won't finish this dungeon.

You can't BURNDAYRAYZ living armors, but you can still peel off layers of death protection by knocking other enemies into them. Position a low level enemy by a high level armor and use it as ammunition. Explore as needed to restore the health of both you and the monster you are using.