Beating the lich in melee

So hey, I just lost a melee character to Dredmor himself, because I refused to do damage outside of melee. My build was Swords / Dual Wielding / Berserker / Dodger / Vampirism / Assassin / Alchemy, and I'd actually maxed every single one out by the time I made it to dungeon level 10. Yeah, I took my time. Final kit was Serpentine Plate, Albrecht's Helm (with artifact bonuses), Rocket Boots, Doul's Possible Sword, a Katana / artifact Royal Beatdown (depending on presence of corruption slimes), and some rather nice rings and amulet. All in all, about as good of gear as you could expect to have -- I would have liked another top-tier sword, but oh well. I was routinely hitting for over 80 damage and didn't take too much damage in return except from archdiggles, because admittedly my piercing resist was only about 15 or so. All on GR/PD of course.

So Dredmor. Nasty guy. He's fallen trivially to my last several characters. The first one (in 1.0.3) shot him to death with bolts. The second one (1.0.5) used Recursive Curse. The third, tentacle wands (3 hits from a mage -> dead). The fourth stunned him with holy hand grenades and then kept him stunlocked with Sneaky Shiv; he never woke up. So this time, no more cheese. I was going to do all of my damage in melee only; no missiles, no spells, no wands. Then I discovered that he could hit me for 60 damage with his melee attack. And of course in 1.0.6 he can't be stunned any more.

But hey, I have alchemy, right? What's alchemy for if not absurd quantities of healing and invisibility potions? So I entered the dance of "hit him, get whacked in the face, go invisible, chug healing potions". Sometimes I'd get three or maybe four turns in before having to disappear, sometimes I'd only get one. I had him almost dead -- there was no more red in his health bar -- when he countered my attack and followed it up with his own, the dreaded double-attack from a named monster. From over 100HP to dead in one turn.

So, two questions:

1) Has anyone managed to take out Dredmor with only melee damage?
2) How are warriors who don't have alchemy supposed to kill him?

Fungal Arts, maybe, though I suspect that fairy wodgers would run out (I burned through over 50 healing potions; you'd need about 200 wodgers to match that, and this is after dealing with the other stuff on level 10, remember). I don't think any of the other healing abilities really match up. Crystal Healing only works if you also have Ninja Vanish and a door to close in his face (and then you need gobs of booze because as a warrior you'll suck at mana efficiency).

Granted that I'm still reeling from losing a promising character, but I think Dredmor's melee attack could stand to be nerfed just a bit. Down to 40-50 damage per hit, maybe.

 

Haven't tried taking him out with melee-only, but...

• Dredmor deals 39 crushing damage, 10 necromantic and 10 transmutative. This totals:
  • 59 (39 + 20) on a normal hit
  • 98 (78 + 20) on a critical hit
• With Serpentine Armour, Sir Albrecht's Helem and Rocket Boots you've got a total of 11 + 6 + 4 = 21armour which reduces his damage down to:
  • 38 (18 + 20) on a normal hit
  • 77 (57 + 20) on a critical hit
• Worst case scenario involves a critical counter followed by a critical hit: 154 damage if you factor in armour.
• Your skills give you 6 + 4 + 3 = 13 Warrior, 3 + 3 = 6 Rogue and 3 + 5 = 8 Wizard levels. This equals 40 Burliness and 38 Caddishness which gives you a total of 5 + 40 + 38 = 83 HP. Barely enough to survive one crit, let alone a double crit.

So basically: get more armour. With Dual Wielding you're just too squishy to be able to survive the worst case scenario. I'm not sure if it's even possible to survive a double crit from Dredmor without going double shield and enchanting the hell out of everything you have. Alternatively:

• Does he get distracted by summons? (This is cheap and should probably be fixed if he does)
• Knockback attacks give you breathing room (Maces)
• Critical hits can't be countered (Axes)

 

Your stats seem inaccurate, since I had over 100HP after the Syzygy bonus. Also I'm pretty sure that I didn't get nailed by a double-crit; those were, to the best of my memory, ordinary melee attacks from him. I'll grant I could have had more HP, but enough to survive a double hit? Anyway, your followup sentence ("I'm not sure if it's even possible to survive a double crit from Dredmor without going double shield and enchanting the hell out of everything you have.") implies that meleeing Dredmor is...not intended? Perhaps?

I wouldn't be surprised if Dredmor gets distracted by summons, since he's basically just a named unique of a unique monster class -- he doesn't have any special AI routines as far as I'm aware. But a) pets would die really quickly, and b) they'd violate the rules I was trying to run the fight by. Which basically boiled down to "Dredmor may only take damage from melee and melee tree active skills".

My build was dual-swords for massive counter chance, Dodger because teleport skills are handy and I'm sick of taking burglary all the time, alchemy for healing and invisibility, berserker and assassin for massive melee improvement, and then vampirism because why not? Of those, the only two skills that could be swapped out to a warrior skill (for the extra HP) are vampirism and assassin...are you going to tell me that any warrior who wants to kill Dredmor in melee must have Master of Arms and Shield Bearer. Stacking warrior skills is not easy.

...though I suppose since smithing is now a warrior skill it's easier than it used to be. That still feels weird. Anyway.

 

The stats are straight from the wiki / XML. The formula for HP is apparently 5 + Burliness + Caddishness and from a few screenshots I've looked at it seems to check out. Remember that Syzygy gives you +12 hp and every point of Burliness/Caddishness you get from enchantments / berserker rage / items adds onto that.

The fight with Dredmor is in the same state as the rest of the game - Magic steamrolls while Melee is very dependent on items. I agree that it needs looking at, particularly the ridiculous 'double crit' scenario.

 

I agree. Heck, he hits harder than the Lich in Fort Firemoth in Morrowind.
Seriously, that lich is doable in melee. With Agility.

But yeah, since people tended to get angry over my complaint about him doing any major damage in melee before, because Liches are totally able to kick-box... I just think he should be nerfed a bit in melee.

 

This goes back to the basic problem that Melee faces currently: when facing a tougher-than-normal opponent (named melee mobs, monster brigades, Dredmor himself, etc), the correct way to deal with them is to get range and fire your best Spells/Bolts/Flasks at it until it dies.

Melee is broken from the standpoint that you cannot use it to kill the strongest monsters in the game. On the other hand, the staples of the other 2 archetypes can be used on these same monsters, and to great effect: ranged attacks (Rogue) and spells (Mage) will dominate any single problem you encounter and are only limited by ammo or mana, which you can easily save enough of for emergencies.

When was the last time a Rogue with a Clockwork Crossbow and Bolts of Squid got counter-fucked for over 1oo damage in a single turn? Never. When was the last time a Mage with one of the Staple Spells (recursive, arctic wind, pyrokinesis, etc) got counter-fucked for over 100 damage in a single turn? Never. But melee? Happens all the time, and you're dead and out however many hours of work.

I'm still hoping this is something they can work on for the Female Hero Patch. This game is a blast but playing any melee build and actually trying to be faithful to it - that is, not resorting to Bolts/Flasks every time you're a little nervous about what you're facing - is suicide. Makes being anything other than a Mage feels like you're playing on Extra Hard mode because you are literally punished in the harshest ways for actually engaging in melee combat.

 

I have been trying to do exactly the same thing for the past few days: take Dredmor out with a no spells melee character. I still contend that beating the game with a melee character relies more on luck than skill in the final battle. Most of the time I get beat down in record time, but I did have a game where I whacked him once, took a hit that dropped my HP down to 3 (panic time) and I hit the ninja vanish and started to run away. The next turn, Dredmor or one of his guardians triggered a couple of nasty traps and he died well out of my sight! It was a win but not what I was trying to accomplish. I have yet to go toe-to-toe with Dredmor and come out the winner since TTIAW has been fixed. When I could stack massive resistances on already great gear I was able to take Dredmor out (once) without using spells, but that was some time ago.

Right now I am trying one more time with a new build for me: Swords / Dual / MoA / Assassin / Smithing / Alchemy / Burglary. I have a feeling this character will meet the same fate as the rest but we shall see. If this once fails perhaps it is time for me to roll a pure caster and see what all of the fuss is about. I have yet to manage a caster past the fifth dungeon level.

 

Marak: while my character had bolts and area attack items and so on, I by no means relied on them. In fact they only generally came out for zoos, and then only because I wanted to speed the process up. I killed just about everything that game with melee, and while I did occasionally need to vanish and chug healing potions, it was otherwise doable up until I hit Dredmor.

Now, it would certainly have been easier to take out a bunch of those targets with ranged attacks. Nothing does even a third your max HP in one round in ranged combat, unless you count getting nerve stapled + multiple attack spells from several Djinn Fizzes. Well, and Dredmor himself has some pretty nasty attack spells, but they're nothing in comparison to his melee.

J-Factor: okay, I probably had a bunch of boosts to HP-granting stats on my equipment. Sorry for doubting you.

 

Well here's the thing, even if you survive a hit and use an escape mechanism to heal, you can still be nuked to death during that time. Unless you save up all the elemental potions for the whole game and pump them all b4 fighting him.

Otherwise to even let yourself be at melee range means you have a fair chance of dying.

 

I did save up all the elemental potions and pump them before fighting him. It doesn't help with the damage he deals all that much.

The only escape you can really rely on on level 10 is invisibility. Nothing can attack you when you're invisible, so the only damage you'll take is from DOTs you had before vanishing. Take your healing while invisible and then get back to the fight; that's the idea anyway.

 

I've died to DoT spells from a Brigade of Djinn Fizz on Level 10 before, and yes, I was invisible at the time, trying to get some range so I could chain-chug some healing potions.

But once again, the point is that everything in the game is (easily) defeatable with the proper Bolts or Spells; wading into melee is intentionally gimping yourself, regardless of your equipment and escape methods.

 

Speaking as someone who's beaten the game on GR/PD with a melee character, any game where the same exact strategy works for every fight is going to be a bore. Can you kill Dredmor with melee with optimal build/equipment? Maybe if you get very lucky. If you want to place that restriction on yourself, go ahead. But don't complain because it hardly ever works. That said, meleers certainly could use alternate ways of building up damage resistances.

Imho, the main problem isn't simply how hard he is to kill with melee, but how easy he is to kill in other ways. Archery and thrown skills need work, as does magic. I really think that in most cases, when you reach the final fight (at least on GR), the outcome should be uncertain, and too often, it isn't.

 

I wonder if it's a bug of some sort? Because I had this happen with one of my Mage-y types: I hit him with a Fire spell that had him burning, vanished, used Move in a Mysterious way, starting chugging Resistance Potions while he was off screen and he died after about 3 turns. There is NO way that the 1 damage/turn from the residual fire could have killed him normally; he had at least 85% of his health remaining when I left him behind. There were no traps in between the two of us. It was just him and an Arch Diggle and suddenly Eyebrows is flexing like a mad man.

 

Yes, he does need a buff for ranged/magic, and he needs a massive nerf in melee. Most spellcasters aren't known for hitting harder than the strongest melee characters.
At the moment, Lord Dredmor hits harder than a Balor with his D-16 Vorpal Sword in NWN. Vorpal being of course instant killing on failing the save, unless you have death magic immunity or something like that.

Seriously, he needs a nerfing, at least on the easier difficulities. Going Rogue needs to be hard, but the easier difficulties need him to be weaker.
I can't see how a melee class is viable even on Elvish Easy now.
I really hope they do work on making melee more viable without having to resort to "cheating" by spamming ranged attacks.

 

Sniktch made a lot of good points in this response to my "melee still sucks" thread:

http://www.gaslampgames.com/communi...view-melee-still-sucks.960/page-10#post-10157

His idea was to give the Melee skill trees better healing and/or regeneration effects. Mages can get up to 4 mana per kill; why can't there a X Health per Kill skill in the Berserking or Master of Arms tree? Why not make Walk It Off grant +5 or +7 Health regen so it, you know, actually does something?

I think with a few tweaks like that - ones that give you healing without having to resort to Vampirism, Fungal Arts, etc. would be a huge step in the right direction.

Another good point he made was that the Crafting Skills for Rogues (tinkering) and Mages (alchemy) provide much, much, much stronger benefits to those play styles than Smithing does for Warriors. Serpentine Plate + 2 Iron Thorns does not equal infinite Booze, near-infinite Health and Mana Potions, Pan-galactic Buff Blasters, 2 Starry Orbs or (in the case of Tinkering) 20+ Damage Crossbows, near-infinite Bolts, and more XP (and Zorkmids) through Trap Affinity.

 

I don't know man, Tinker don't get me near infinite bolt in any shape or form.

Pure Rogue still feels WAY harder to play than a melee that occasionally shoot the named monsters.

 

Tinkering doesn't give you that huge an increase in your bolt supply. Any schmuck can make bolts with a tinkering set; you get 6 per ingot, unskilled, or 9 if you can find some tinkering goggles. A max-skill tinkerer gets 13, so about twice as many. They also are better-quality, sure, but most of your ranged damage comes from your crossbow, not from the bolts. The best steel bolt is 2 slashing / 6 piercing, while the worst is 3 slashing; that's not very significant.

Tinkering is mostly useful, IMO, for letting you disarm damned near every trap you encounter. You can also make some fun throwing weapons, but I don't know how useful they'll be without a high magic power (assuming that thrown explosives scale with magic power, just like everything else in the game...). There's also the issue of staying out of your own blast radius.

 

Fine, fine, Tinkering isn't all that great either. But all you're doing is nitpicking at the weak link and the least important part of Sniktch's argument.