Fighter
| Fighter | |
|---|---|
| Tier 1 Class | |
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| Class traits | |
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| Suggested Races | |
 Elf Fighter,  Goblin Fighter,  Human Fighter,  Orc Fighter
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| Class Challenges | |
| No challenges | |
| Unlocking | |
 Adventure Clubhouse
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Fighters are heroes who go about hitting evil things for a living. They're generally good at surviving long enough to brag about it afterwards.
Contents
How much of an "introductory" clas is the Fighter?
This part is mostly for those interested in trying to figure out why his abilities are so weird, and get their "intro class" aspects out of the way. It's optional reading for folks who're really confused abou the game and folks who're really confused about the fighter in particular - otherwise scroll right down.
| For the very new and the very old | ||||||
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 INSTINCTS: This means you always know where your popcorn is. So that you can make sure it's revealed for when you fight something tough, like a boss. Start a fight, then when you've spent all your health and mana, kill a bunch of small dudes effortlessly and "ding" for a full refill of your health and mana. In the middle of the fight!
Despite how it looks, this is not there so you go fight monsters that are the same level as you. You will try that and see it does you no good, and then you'll either decide the game sucks and leave or come here and ask wth is with this Fighter person. Since you're here - hey, congrats, you get to know what that thing is there for. It's there for that. Most likely.
What it can do for you is 2 things - you can play the run out to the bitter end and use it for one last huge blow on the boss. The problem with this approach is that it often goes wasted while using it in a different way helps solve a basic problem. The more often correct way to use it is to help yourself kill something bigger than you for an XP boost as soon as possible. This then lets you utilize your other two abilities with ease.
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So, what's he about?
INSTINCTS: You know where monsters are. They are the same level as you are and not really worth fighting. But if you get one level ahead of them, you get first strike against them. This makes most of them into just XP powerups sitting there for you to pick them up. So this reads as: You know where the XP powerups are.
VETERAN: This makes the "XP powerups" worth more. Also, it makes getting a level ahead of them easier. First you have to fight something above your level for bonus experience to outlevel a bunch of popcorn. Then fighting the next thing above your level becomes easier, because you can use all the low level monsters to refill your health and mana by leveling up mid-fight.
PIT DOG: And this is what you may use for that first tough fight. This is an extra hit on something bigger than you early on, guaranteed on every run. If you start off by killing something bigger than you with a glyph, maybe a potion and this, you can then munch on popocorn and keep killing other big stuff with ease. Alternatively, since you're likely to reach a really high level, this can mean one big hit on a boss at the end.
Strategy
Fighters are all about finding "popcorn", and getting into a position to beat tougher monsters by using weaker monsters. Since so much about them revolves around leveling up in order to refill health and mana instantly, they do well if they build up large pools of either health, mana or both to spend and restore.
This is another thing that confuses newbies - the playstyle lends itself much better to using glyphs, while the average gamer would expect the Fighter to be a melee character. In another game, the DD Fighter would probably be some sort of Priest, as he utilizes experience and a mix of martial and magical power to do his thing.
Besides the lone Death Protection, the Fighter has no innate fighting ability. So some combination of preparations, glyphs, items, potions, and later, gods has to be used at the very beggining of a run, before he develops a large suppy of easily disposable low lever monsters (a "popcorn bowl") and really starts leveraging experience as a weapon.
It is also possible, and often favorable, to use your health to fight regular monsters for experience and dings while simultaneously pelting the boss with glyph damage. This lets the "humble" fighter start the boss fight (or a tough fight) much earlier than one would think and still use both his bars and all his resources to the maximum.
Races
What the Fighter is looking for in a race is either a bit of help with the initial leveling, to get the ball rolling, or the complete oposite - something to cash in on with all the leveling. What the fighter himself "does" is the basic footwork that just about every DD character does in every run. He's just really good at the footwork, at the cost of not having inherent ways to capitalize on it. A guide to all the different fighters is, in a way, a guide how to play a generic, but highly XP efficient member of each race.
Remember - fighters like to level-up mid fight against something huge. If your health isn't good enough to tank hits from the boss - pelt the boss with magic, and figt the other guys with health to level up. This takes practice, but it is worth the practice as most fighters get scary once you wrap your head around that concept.
Human Fighter
| The human racial bonus kicks in at mid-late levels, so he's not in a rush to convert glyphs. The fighter appreciates this because he needs the glyphs to level up early. Use the glyphs to level up a bit, explore and round up the "popcorn", then dump the ones you don't need to enable the human big damage bonus. Then just throw everything at the boss, much popcorn to level up, repeat.
Since the human allows plenty of glyph use, you can just grab a cheap leveling tool to back it up and save your If your health isn't up to tanking hits from a boss yet, use it to fight other guys, while you pelt the boss with glyph damage. Why let all the health and damage go to waste? Practice makes perfect. |
Dwarf Fighter
| Any dwarf, once leveled up and once you convert enough stuff, will be a big blob of health. They're not in a rush to convert glyphs, as the bonus requires levels to become significant. The fighter can get the dwarf leveled up, using all the glpyhs the dwarf isn't in a hurry to convert. Then, once the Dwarf Fighter is a big blob of health who got there by becoming a good glyph user first, the fighter abilities let you ding a lot to refill both pools and blob all over the place.
What you will want is a leveling tool and good glyph use for exploration, leveling up and rounding up the popcorn. Feel free to spend the ~ Some God Tips ~ Two gods make The other god that plays rather fine in a more melee oriented fashion is Dracul, who is the deity all dwarves love to worship. Fighters in particular appreciate the lifesteal, and the refil boons. Those scale with your level, and fighters are the kings of getting high level. Remember to use your glyphs, though - any Drac Dwarf is a scary healthmonster later on, but it's your glyphs that get you there. |
Elf Fighter
The Fighter's frequent level-ups come together beautifully with the Elf's easily increased mana pool, making the Elf Fighter one of the best fireball spikers in the game. Indeed, this kind of fighter is so effortlessly good at spellcasting that it's easily a good idea to build his health side a bit, simply to have something to do.
Picking up, or starting off with a Fine Sword, or a Health Penddant provides popcorn munching ability that's easy to appreciate and helps the very early leveling. And with the ease of dinging off popcorn, it is possible to play the Elf Fighter as a Dracul spellcaster - using the boons, melee and health to fight regular monsters, while throwing spells at the bossess. Alternatively, the same can be done with Glowing Guardian who also rewards all the leveling up that's bound to be going on - with the caveat that he takes a bit of popcorn in exchange for his health boost.
Or you can go for a really enormous mana pool, a straight-forward spellcasting god and ding away. Works with either damage glyph.
Halfling Fighter
The Halfling Fighter is best served using his potions to extend his health spike, drinking them once he runs out of level-ups. Building health, resists and damage is obviously very good here.
The alternative way to play the little guy is to use all the health potions to fight popocorn while throwing spells at the boss. This is pretty handy if you see that you can easily build him into a spellcaster with what you have available on the board, but you simply don't have enough melee power to kill tougher popcorn mid-fight with the boss.
The god of choice would be Jehora Jeheyu, the patron god od mid-fight-dings.
Gnome Fighter
The Gnome Fighter can save all his potions until after he has exhausted all his level-ups, similar to the Halfling, but he is also well-served using them strategically to score very high-level kills.
The gnome, with his CP refills along the fighters leveling refills, makes for a terrific Pisorff user. Since a Pisorff spamer build is generally easy to build (16-ish mana, the glyph itself and refills which you have covered), this allows you to use the huge amout of total refills on both leveling and hitting the boss at the same time.
Orc Fighter
The Orc brings much-needed damage to the Fighter at a very early level, allowing the Orc Fighter a much easier leveling phase than most Fighters. His end-game payoff can be lacklustre if he can't get many melee hits in, but his Pisorff game is obscene.
The preffered starting god is Binlor for the glyph, but the combination is so strong that there isn't a real need to swap out most often. End game Stoneskin spam in Binlor is actually sinergistic with being an Orc Fighter, as are his damage boons.
Goblin Fighter
While the Goblin Fighter lacks the spontaneous mana of the Elf, it makes up for it with even more frequent and easy level-ups. With 
WONAFYT and 
BLUDTUPOWA, the goblin fighter can practically ignore the map past the early levels, and focus solely on dumping every resource on the map into killing the boss.
With such ease in leveling up, a Goblin Fighter with a sinergistic deity (which you will notice is a recurring theme with Goblins) is truly "The king of ding". Sinergistic deities include Jehora Jeheyu for big bar blobs, Glowing Guardian, also for big bar blobs, Dracul for a healthmonster (get some health from somewhere else), and Tikki Tooki for all sorts of madness.
Items
The 
Balanced Dagger is a very good early find due to INSTINCTS. This approach reduces the amount of popcorn on the map, but allows for extreme blackspace conservation.
Gods
Tikki Tooki is an incredible choice for worship. The fighter will be able to rack up a ton of piety, as he will reach a high level quickly and leave a bunch of popcorn untouched. The massive piety gain allows him to invest heavily into into Reflexes and Tikki's Edge, which combine to massively increase the fighter's already formidable level-up spiking potential. 
Glowing Guardian also works well: the Fighter's XP bonuses synergise very well with the Humility boon, and the Fighter also has enough spare XP to make liberal use of Absolution.
