Skills you can't seem to do without

Does anyone here have a skill they find absolutely indispensable? I personally can't seem to separate Tinkering from any of my builds, likely due to my obsession with avoiding annihilation by traps. The craftables are nifty too, but the trap affinity/sight is indispensable to me.

 

Burglary for me. I need my lockpicks, darnit!

 

Archaeology for me. It Belongs In A Museum gets me a lot of my exp towards the end of the game & Ancient Kronian Ritual makes Anvils a lot more useful.

 

Burglary. Every character gets it no matter what. The bonus XP from the massive number of Doors and Chests you unlock (hundreds, easily) in any given playthrough equates to tons of risk-free early XP and extra loot - both of which are more valuable the earlier you can get them, and you can get both awfully early if you put your first Skill Point in Burglary to open up Free Lockpicks Forever™.

Having a mana-free Teleport at the end of the tree is just icing on the cake. I'm pretty sure that every character I've ever made that didn't have a teleport died an untimely death, while the ones that did had a pretty good shot at Dredmor himself.

 

TINKERING

Always.

 

Tinkering, always, because traps are always around and a good source of experience...I never make my own, and frankly, I rarely use them - although, if you've got nothing else, a fat stack of traps will help you out a lot when placed carefully around a Monster Zoo.

I usually have Burglary and Archaeology at the same time too, because invariably (Murphy's Law, dagnabit) if I take Burglary alone, I wind up finding a thousand lockpicks and never have to make my own, but I also wind up with a thousand artifacts that do me no good, but if I take Archaeology alone, I get no lockpicks and the kind of artifacts that net me 60 exp. when I send them to the museum.

The random number goddess is a fickle wench.

 

Demonology is pretty much a must-have for any of my melee builds. Celestial Circle is way too good.

 

I have been trying to find places for Demonology in my builds as of late. Celestial Circle is extremely nice. The ability to remove Corruption (the only reliable way to do so in the game?) interests me as well, even with the nerf to Corruption. Would irk me to rustle up the rare items needed for a crafted artifact or to have a nice loot-reward artifact/have a good Kronging streak, and have it all ruined by Corruption.

 

The trick is to not get corrupted in the first place. Celestial Circle lets you:

• Easily reach 100 which makes you immune to corruption, DOTs, paralysis and halves all spell damage.
• Easily reach 100 which halves melee damage.
• Gives you massive resistance to the most common late game damage types ( ) and the most common AOE damage type ( ).
• A solid chance of reaching 12 on Going Rogue (to get 1/turn healing).

This thing is all kinds of ridiculous and should probably be a capstone.

 

I'm starting to use Alchemy in most of my builds; even melee.

I prefer playing melee and keeping a few wands and bolts for zoos. Where I find Alchemy to be useful more then ever is on a pure melee figther (other then Alchemy) that naturally has low Mana/Mana Regeneration. Craft enough Mana potions and down one when your Mana is low from Celestial Circle and you'll have a otherwise endless amount of HP potions given how easy and low level their recipe is. It has been giving me great results in non-permadeath and I think it's time I put it to the permadeath test. I think my current melee build with Alchemy died once or twice in regular mode; but this was due to those teleport traps and getting stuck in the middle of a zoo with many magic casters.

 

I have a really solid tendency to end up burg/archy, both for the exp boosts and for the various useful utilities in both.

 

I use mods. So in reality I rarely ever have a DoD/RotDG skill other than Pyromancy.

Other skills I absolutely must have usually include Wind Magic for teleportation and the gust spell, and Barrier maiden for awesome defense at the expense of mana. That is really it. The rest are picked for the build I am running at the time. I often make my character more magical than melee oriented, so those skills are frequent. But Wind Magic, Pyromancy, and Barrier Maiden are my most required skills in any build I do.

 

Psionics is such a crutch for me that I recently started creating themed builds just to force myself into builds that it didn't fit with, because given free reign, i'll *always* have psionics, its a really handy spread of utility spells that are useful even on an otherwise straight-melee build.

 

Burglary for me, Moving in Mysterious Ways is something I can't play without, and the third skill (the one that locks the opponent in one place) I also use very often.
And Clockwork Knight, if you count mod skills, even though like a third of my deaths is caused by me blowing myself up with Rocket Jump.

 

I used to always have Psionics too. But it is just not very useful except against singular mobs. And later in the game it is all but worthless except against a singular monster that would otherwise kill you. And even then those monsters are usually casters, so Emomancy works better since it has an AoE antimagic skill that disables them from casting for a much better duration than Nerve Staple.

Dampening Field of Angst is great for casters. It is like declawing the dragon. The cloud lasts 24 turns and the effect once something enters the cloud lasts 15 turns. That is enough to manage to kill most every mob with impunity.

All my more squishy mage characters take Emomancy just for this defensive spell. My Chemical Explosion is just icing on the already nice cake. It alone can kill most mobs with ease since few things resist acid well. Casting DFoA first to disable, then MCE to kill things works very well. If you use mods, you can use Gust from Wind Magic to push them back into the cloud for more damage too.

You know, it is odd. I thought Emomancy would be awful when RotDG was first released. Now it is my second favorite basic game skill. (Second to Pyromancy. Pyro is essential for plain, ordinary damage.)

 

I find that psionics is less useful the more other spell trees you have, its just that I tend more toward gish types than pure mages, since my first win was a straight mathemagic mage that was so powerful that all I had to do to clear a zoo was stack zeni and then right click recursive curse untill they were all dead. I find Emomancy and psionics are kinda inverted in a way, emo needs the spell power of a straight mage to perform at its best, but for a gish, psionics provides healing, a three turn stun, a very spammable area of effect push, a minor DoT, and a conversion spell, all for very little mana, it works really well for a build with no other spell lines, but is less relevent for magic builds.

 

I think Psionics is just ridiculously good for the AOE 1-2mp knockback. Plus the very cheap healing crystals that you can stack multiples of onto tiles.

I'm surprised that so many people like Tinkering. Once you start to get resistances from items (especially in GR where drops are better), a lot of the stationery bolt traps can just be tanked while you repeatedly attempt to disarm them. Or, if you have a skill that gets you a minion (Killer Vegan, Moldsmithing, etc), you can just get your friend to stand in front of it for you. The other traps that just go off once don't really do that much damage.

 

Not everyone likes Tinkering for the trap affinity it gives you. I, for example, simply like crafting stuff, and the bonus to disarming is merely a nice addition.

 

That's true. The bolts and throwing items are pretty nice too.

 

The Cure = Invaluable against all those crazy debuffs later casters can give you. Mark of Black Eyeliner = reasonable resistances for reasonable cost. These two reasons make Emomancy a powerful gish skill, the antimagic effect is just gravy.

That said, the only skill I seem to find myself taking almost every time is Dual Wielding. I like hitting things really, really hard. Mod-wise, I rarely play a non-mage without Kung Fu. That skill gives abilities for every situation. I'd hate being without it. But really, I enjoy experimentation too much to ever take one skill in every build. I'm not that dedicated to a particular play style.