Alpha:Monk
Skills
- Hand to Hand - atack damage reduced by 50%
- Diamond Body - 50% physical and magical resistance
- Discipline - health regeneration rate doubled
General Strategy
In general, your initial strategy should be to kill low level monsters, seeking out anything which can mitigate your initial attack penalty; level 1 meat men will do 0 damage to you. Any shop items which reduce damage are of special interest to monks. A platemail or mage plate will bring armor up to an insane 70%.
After the first few levels, monks should seek out higher level enemies with low damage and high health. Because of monks' faster healing and high armor, they can often refill health via exploring without the monsters having enough time to do the same.
Glyphs of special interest to Monks are:
- Bysseps - Mitigates damage penalty
- Halpmeh - High armor makes health more valuable
- Lemmisi - Useful to avoid exploring accessible areas of the dungeon prematurely, and to heal between attacks against some bosses. Fast regeneration makes this especially effective.
Race and Deity Choices
Playing as a human to compensate for the hand to hand penalty is typically the best choice. Attack damage bonuses have a higher proportional effect for monks due to the lower initial damage.
Monks are incredibly effective fighters once their attack penalty is canceled out, but the value of their health can make sacrificing Halpmeh and Lemmisi too painful to make Taurog a strong choice. The Pactmaker is an excellent choice for any class, Monks included. A free potion from Tikki Tooki is helpful despite Monk's poor ability at achieving one shot kills.
Challenge Modes
The Factory:
Once you have reached level 3-4, the combination of high armor and fast regeneration should make it fairly easy to kill higher level animated armors. Attack the highest level animated armor you can that cannot kill you in one hit. The assistance of Burndayraz will make this more efficient, though Halpmeh or Lemmisi are a reasonable substitutes.
Super Meat man is rather easy to defeat with monk, especially if you have bought the tower shield or platemail. Try to be at level 8 or higher before fighting the bosses. It should be possible to heal (via some mixture of Halpmeh, Limmisi, and exploring) faster than Super Meat man can damage you.
The Iron Man doesn't have much health, so killing him should be fairly easy. You should still have most or all of your potions at this point, but you may want to time this fight to enable you to level up in the middle of it to assist further.
