The Quest to Max Critical: Report 1. As I said in a previous topic, I'm attempting to achieve a 100% critical score on a character, just for fun. I seem to have finally achieved a "stable" character for this build, having reached the 4th floor safely, so I've decided to report what has happened so far. First, the build I decided on: Axes: Self-explanatory, the critical bonus is simply unmatched, even WITHOUT dual-wielding. Dual Wielding: see above. Assassination: Boosts critical by the second highest amount of any of the skill trees I picked. Also has a few nice procs. Archery: Turns out this boosts critical a fair bit. Since there aren't separate stats for ranged and melee critical, I think I'm safe in assuming the bonus applies to my melee attacks. Thrown Weapons: It may seem crazy to take both this AND ARCHERY on a single character, but it too boosts critical, by 5, and every little bit helps. Plus, monster toss could come in handy in sticky situations. Burglary: The use of even a single rogue skill pretty much necessitates this awesome skill tree. I maxed it out immediately, because I knew I WOULD need that perfect teleport skill fairly soon, if I were to live. Plus, the sooner I get five-finger discount, the more stores I can shoplift, for what it's worth. This is the only skill tree I picked that doesn't particularly raise my critical hit rate, but there weren't any more skill trees left that boosted it without conflicting with my other skills, and hey, it's useful! Big Game Hunter: I ultimately decided on this over Killer Vegan, for survivability. Killer Vegan is a great skill tree if you're already warrior based, but I already had 4 rogue skills, and restricting my diet to fruit, tofu and candy would pretty much spell my inevitable demise, despite the bonuses it grants. Big Game Hunter, on the other hand, is survivability in a can. Reliable supply of food? Check. Multi-Mook summon? Check. Sight bonus to enhance my teleportation options with "Move in Mysterious Ways"? Check. Well, now that I've gone over that, let's get to the report! I've been doing this challenge on going rogue with permadeath, of course, with RotDG and without "no time to grind." By far the biggest issue I had was actually achieving stability when starting out. When you're a mostly-rogue build with dual-wield, you NEED to find that second weapon, pronto, or you're dead. I faced the latter outcome quite a few times before this run, which has been comparatively quite successful. My first order of business was to max out burglary, because I NEEDED "Move in Mysterious Ways", as I said above. Plus, the trap sight bonus and ability to generate lockpicks were quite handy as well. I maxed that out by the time I reached the second floor, then started work on Big Game Hunter, which paid off quite nicely The hunting diggles are pretty pathetic in terms of attack power before I've even gone a third of the way through the dungeon, but their priority seems to be such that enemies will completely ignore me and attack them if they're in range. Combine this with the fact that there's four of them, and you've got a great survival skill for monster zoos. Plus I can sic them on the more fragile but dangerous sniper monsters. Until just recently, when I started work on the axes skill tree, I had been using some random artifact non-axe weapons I had found. I've switched away from them, and apparently because that reduces the number of damage types I inflict, I noticed a sizeable drop in my damage output. Hopefully that will remedy itself, because I don't intend on using a non-axe ever again. Current Critical Rating: 32.
Ugh. Soon after posting this, I got myself killed, sandwiched between a named toxic golem and a phegmatic animation, and having just used "move in mysterious ways". Back to the drawing board...
Alright, take two is going significantly better. I'm having shit luck finding decent axes, and the ones I do find happen to get really bad corruptions, sometimes even ARMOR ABSORB, but fortunately, this is mitigated by the fact that I found an imperial boilerplate on floor 5. Currently I've maxed out burglary, big game hunter, and axes, and I have 50 critical. I'm gonna need to get some good artifacts or enchantments to cap it unless I've miscalculated, but it's not as bad as I had feared.
Since the number basically represents the % chance of getting a critical, I think anything over 100 is meaningless. Unless, of course, you can score TWO criticals at once.
I decided to try this challenge, GR, PD, RotDG, no NTtG, no mods. Final stats without any buffs on (excluding the semi-permanent Diggle God of War Blessing): ... and with all the -increasing buffs I managed to get active at once: If only critical hits affected special damage types... Skills used: Axemanship 6/6 Archery 5/5 Dual Wielding 5/5 Berserker Rage 5/5 Assassination 5/5 Tinkering 5/5 Big Game Hunter 3/5
Oh, I know. But it's the peak value that counts. Because having any combat stat at the level of 150+, even if just for one turn, is very amusing.
