This is a challenge run. Not because I am accepting a challenge or challenging you to do something similar. Rather, I am challenging conventional wisdom. Namely, that little bit of conventional wisdom that says, "Thrown Weaponry is useless." The argument usually goes something like this: Since Crossbows take Crossbow Damage and Bolt Damage and add them together, and the best Crossbow does 20 damage and the best bolts do ~12-15 damage without spell effects, while Thrown weapons do weapon damage (~10 for the best thrown weapons, without spell effects) plus , and increases incredibly slowly, it is impossible for Throwing to ever rival Crossbows in terms of damage. Let's not even start on evil chests. My counter argument goes something like this: Champions Belt Kilt Overclockworked Powerlimb Times Two Clockwork Gauntlets Total bonus to : +22 Without stats. Clockwork Bolt Thrower, eat your heart out. A quick analysis of monster resistances on Dredmorpedia suggests that thrown weapons are a better choice for the late game, as well. While there are a number of monsters with in the deeps, there are even more fearsome foes with incredibly high down there. Consider: Muscle Diggle: 8 Sea Crusader: 15 Mustache League Champion: 8 Stone Guardian: 10 Iron Man: 20 Aether Oddity: 20 Lutefisk Avatar: 20 Versus: Preserved Witch: 5 Nether Cube: 15 Stone Guardian: 10 Witch Head: 3 Cosbian Horror: 18 Iron Man: 10 Aether Oddity: 9 Red Lichess: 8 Pectinous Tesseract: 18 Screaming Skull: 3 Now I ask you, which of these lists has things on it that you would rather kill at long range, as opposed to in melee? Did I mention that Thrown Weaponry benefits from the effects of a critical hit, while v 1.0.10 Crossbows get no benefit from them what so ever? (EDIT: Apparently untrue, see Null's post below.) The only thing crossbows have going for them in the lower levels is the fact that they can come from Evil Chests, a possibility that is completely up to the RNG. I prefer to take a more proactive stance when building my characters (unless, of course, I'm playing random on purpose.) While crossbows probably do more as a secondary attack option for mages or melee fighters, if I'm building a dedicated ranged character I'd rather have throwing. Even if Evil Chest crossbows are way more badass than gobs of at range, they don't do me jack if the enemy gets close. At this point you're probably thinking, "But Lorr, how are you going to get all that melee enhancing gear and stay alive in the process?" I thought you'd never ask. I booted up the ol' clockwork soldier program and generated an adventurer to undertake this very project. Just as Hercules had his Stygian Stables, so will Ahnold have his Dungeon of Dredmor. I set loaded him up with the following skill modules: Unarmed Combat - This skill adds its bonus damage to both melee and ranged attacks so long as you're not wielding a weapon. Some say its a bug, but its been an issue for a long time. It could also be a reflection of the pinpoint accuracy wuxia fighters often show with thrown weaponry and, on rarer occasions, other ranged weapons. It could be meant as a balancing factor against the weapon skills. Whatever it is, it applies to both thrown and crossbows, so having it doesn't give me an advantage, beyond whatever bugginess it might represent. I really want to carry two tomes, so a weapon skill doesn't make much sense. And as I've already covered in another log, this skill has major defensive bonuses too. Thrown Weaponry - The reasons for this skill should be obvious. As a side note, Monster Toss, when combined with Unarmed Combat, gives me a lot of options for getting overly friendly mobs to take a few steps back into optimal thrown weaponry range. Piracy - Cannonballs in the face for everyone! Also gives me gems that I can sell and use to buy thrown weapons and crafting supplies from Brax and vending machines. Tinkering and Blacksmithing - Alchemy gives some decent thrown weaponry but the supplies for the thrown weapons from these skills are much more plentiful. Plus, with the exception of the Kilt, these two skills let me make my awesome melee boosting equipment. Tinkering also lets me get the awesome Bolas + Thermite Bombs combo. Blacksmithing makes me less of a girly man. Big Game Hunter - Conceivably, this could be Perception. The gear I'm wanting to make has tones of penalties attached to it, and I need something to ease that up a bit. Sure I get bonuses from those first two skills, but I want them to actually increase , rather than just bump it back towards 0. Big Game Hunter balances the penalties nicely and gives me tons of food and chump summons to help me escape a crowd. Clockwork Knights - It's like Butcher, except for crafting supplies. Also lets me build the Overclockworked Powerlimbs without having to drag around a pair of goggles. As an added bonus, I loaded up Interior Dredmorating. While this is an all-around excellent mod, for us it's particularly useful because the Skeet Shoot room seems to spawn almost every level and always has a Thrown Weaponry dispenser in it. I haven't played much with this build yet. Like the original, Ahnold spawned in the dungeon with no pants to wear. Worse, there was no-one to mug for clothes! At least I had armor and a Hakamichi. So far, not much has happened beyond extreme mini-maxing from the RNG. I got two of the mini-Brax stores from Dredmorating, side by side no less, which kind of hurt but at least each one had Dredmor's Little Black Book to help my damage numbers. Then I turn around and find a Cybercone, which I then give my First Kronging: Gonna be wearing that sucker for a long, long time. Cleared DL 1 without major incident and an inventory overflowing with crap. Managed to empty the softballs, improvised bombs and mosilov cocktails out of every dispenser I found. I have 334 softballs and no Bola recipe. I did find the Clockwork Powerlimb recipe, and I even have the supplies to make one! As soon as I get the skill... On DL 2 I immediately established a place to pile all the crafting stuff I don't have the skill to use yet, and started poking around. I poked into a fountain and what do I find? This doesn't bode well for the rest of the floor. More to follow! EDIT: All "~" are actually tildes (the approximate sign.) I forgot that the forums change them to look like long dashes.
Crossbows do actually benefit from crit sorry to say it. They don't benefit heavily but they do benefit. A crit on a crossbow simply doubles all mundane damage; it's different from melee power respecting crits which only double the melee power portion. One could say that a crossbow benefits *more* than other weapons were mundane damage not so uncommon on crossbows and their bolts (while many have slashing damage it is very small in comparison to the piercing).
Hn... can't say I've ever really noticed that. Still, the interaction of crossbows and crits is a small portion of the argument, and I'll stand by the rest.
There is no way you are going to much further with a drop that lucky. Always remember the inverse law of "game will screw you over." The rarer and more powerful a item is, and the earlier you find it, is directually equal the percentage chance that the game will utterly screw you over.
nyttyn hits the nail on the head. I was certain, absolutely certain, I was a dead man once I found that scarf. To my surprise, the only thing it seems to have indicated in the long run was that DL2's monster zoo was near at hand. In fact, DL2 seemed to consist entirely of trying to get enough money to buy out all the vending machines on the floor. There were a lot of them. By the time I hit the stairs I had something like 500 softballs, to say nothing of my huge stacks of reagents and food. DL3 was a little more interesting. As soon as I hit the ground I looked around for a place to store my bursting inventory. I wound up with something like this: Crafting stuff on the right, stuff to sell in the middle and traps to sell on the left. I learned my lesson about stacking traps with other stuff a long time ago. This guy apparently never got the message. I think he triggered a good twenty traps at once there. DL3 also gave me the recipe for Overclockworked Powerlimbs and enough XP to get myself up to 4 . With the help of dual powerlimbs I was able to clear the floor and its zoo with little problem. Incidentally, as you can see in the above picture, I had an insane number of softballs at this point. In fact, I think I peaked at about 740. I've since used some of them. No bolas recipe yet. DL4 was more challenging, and I wound up using all of my flask type weaponry to clear the zoo. On the bright side, the many constructs here have yielded large amounts of valuable craftables. With the ability to make aluminum and iron ingots from dead enemies I've been able to manufacture a large number of thermite bombs. This can only mean good things. Also, I found this: That, combined with maxed out tinkering and the first level of clockwork knights, and I now have upgraded powerlimbs. Just need a kilt and the gauntlets. At the beginning of DL5, I look something like this: Not bad, if I do say so myself. +21 to ranged damage is one more than a Clockwork Bolt Thrower provides and I'm still missing a total of +9 in equipment and I have a lot of warrior skills to put levels in still. Dredmor's not gonna know what hit him.
I just want to say that I'm pretty sure you mistook right and left there. Other than that, good work.
You are 100% correct. I get lost with maps and directions and a GPS system on hand- this is a major part of the reason why.
I hereby declare Lorrelian the James May of the forums. Also, this is fascinating to watch. I might have to try this myself, only with Ninjitsu.
I'd put my Ryoga sense up against the best of them any time. I was really, seriously tempted to try this using Runecrafting, just to drive myself totally insane, and I considered Ninjitsu vs. Piracy but in the end I don't think it will make a difference. I haven't even crafted any thrown weapons with the hoard of ingots I'm carrying and I'm not anywhere near running short. In addition to all my softballs (soon to be bolas, as I finally found the recipe) I also have close to two hundred bombs of various types and about thirty mosilov cocktails and acid flasks, plus some bonsai bombs and... well, a load of other crap. And no Zerkmoids.
Made a fair bit of progress since the last post, considering Saturday was completely shot between work and the bi-monthly Pathfinder game. DL 5 was extremely productive, yielding the Bolas recipe, a Malleus Maleficarium from the Monster Zoo, and quite possibly the greatest Dwarven Express Post ever. For the record, those contained one sword for silly, sword using people, which I sold, and three large ambulatory piles of experience points, which I collected with great glee. DL 6 started off on a good note. This is the fourth run where this has happened to me. A part of me keeps expecting the things to reel up into a Robo or something whenever I try to pick up gauntlets that have been left lying on the floor. I think that would be a cool monster. Gauntlet shooting constructs. My shiny new tome makes getting around the dungeon rather challenging. While I hit like a load of bricks both at range and in melee, I'm not immune to my new pillar of fire power. Still, when combined with three crushing knockback attacks, it can be very handy. I think some people would find this to be an uncomfortable place to be, but I think it's quite comforting. Most monsters that got within melee range died in one hit. This may be less of a perk on DL9. By DL 7 I was high enough in level to have maxed out blacksmithing, and I finally turned all my ingots into throwing weaponry. My character currently looks something like this. Oddly enough, I'm still wielding two items from the first two floors. My AA is a little lower than I'd like it to be, and fish hit like a mother, but otherwise I'd say I'm doing OK. Some Universal Principles should even things out nicely. I'm not sure if I'll ever stop using that shield. It's pretty handy. Maybe if I find some Caketown. Part of me wonders how its possible for me to sneak up on monsters, something that does happen from time to time, with over a full fisk's worth of various thrown cutlery clanking in my belt. Fortunately, it's not my job to parse game logic, just exploit it. Note the 31. I currently fling random crap from my toolbelt with the force of a little more than 1.5 Clockwork Bolt Throwers. Even if I dropped into the Realm of the Diggle Gods right now, if I got the Diggle God of War's blessing I'd be up to 2.15 Bolt Throwers. And I'd still hit like a load of bricks in melee. That's without a Kilt. I think my point about the potential of throwing weaponry is pretty well made, but if anything fun happens as I continue my run I'll be sure to share it. Maybe even include a blow by blow of my epic ranged duel with Dredmor. Until then, may you find your own opportunities to do absurd things with your skill sets!
Say what? I'm pretty sure that's not conventional wisdom... I personally consider it powerful. I've beaten dredmor twice with throwing based characters. PS: Clockwork Actuators > Kilt. Powerlimbs/gauntlets are pretty bad because of their penalties, and there are better rings/gloves to be had with damage bonuses and/or procs. (Like oh say the pyromancer's gauntlets, or mittens of the hyperborean heirophant, both have throwing procs).
I also want to point out that clockwork bolt thrower is not the strongest crossbow. There is the clockwork rail shooter which is 24 artifact quality 6, 100% of dealing (2+(2*))+ (2+(2*))+(2+(2*)), and 15% of knockback+stunned. Also also Imperial Clockwork Plate adds 4. With the pants add in another 5 to your calculations . Add in diggle god of war for another +10 (although this means crossbow get the +16 damage from diggle god of digging) Also also also Clockwork Regulator Belt add the same as champion belt but give you and Also also also also Mittens of the Hyperborean Heirophant adds 16 damage to thrown plus a 1+(.1*) damage over time AOE . You can encrust rocket power to the gloves to add . Just try not to abuse it like I did in that one game.
Sigh.... tasteless thread necromancy. Lorrelian's post is from March. Back then thrown was a very different animal than it is today. Most of the items you're referring to did not exist. You'd be amazed at how different DoD was a year ago. Therefor all commentary contradicting Lorr here is pretty much irrelevant. If you want to discuss the current merits of crossbows vs. thrown I humbly suggest a new thread is opened so that we can start from a fresh perspective. Daynab could you lock this one to prevent further confusion?
Before this is closed: This was done during the test period for patch 1.0.10, so yeah, it's pretty old. And what happend was, I installed a new patch RC and broke my save on DL7, and I kinda lacked the heart to start over. But yeah, I had totally different equipment to work with than we have now, and there was no polearms.
Huzzah, I know the truth! Well, your point was proven at the time, so shine on you crazy star. And sorry to the other two dudes, I was just curious if Lorre ever meant to finish this or if it just ended in horrible failure. I KNEW THAT TIME LORD SCARF WAS CURSED!
