I haven't seen much discussion of the skilltree on here, except one mention in a Emomancy discussion. What does everyone think of this tree? I haven't played it much until lately, in combination with veganism for the debuff skills and health bonuses to counteract the health penalties. I used to really hate Necro for the damage it does to you early game, but then I learned that if you can grab even just 1 early (a tome does it), along with some to reduce the cost, Deathly Hex becomes one of the best and most reliable early game nukes ever. Pact of Fleeting Life has been an incredible asset for my unarmed build. The passive mana-draining buff and the other curse, not so useful. Also, I finally got Tenebrous Rift today and I used it on a Monster Zoo....holy cow O_O
I love the Necronomiconomics tree. It helps in almost every build. Fun fact you can change equipment without wasting a turn, so if you want to put that tome at any time. The last skill can clear zoo on later floors in a few turns.
ooooo. i may keep a tome in my inventory as backup then. i totally forgot that it doesn't take a turn.
Rift is the strongest spell in the game that can be spammed so easily. Even Pyro cannot cause as much damage over so large an area. The fact that it has no travel time/path and can be placed anywhere makes it invaluable. In the mid to late game you can put a rift on a doorway to kill off whatever is on the other side. But I advise extreme cation since Brax may be standing nearby too. Getting enough is easy by mid game. You can usually get enough to wade through your rift without any serious damage too. (Watch for bleeding if you do not have uber though.)
Nightmare Curse is also pretty good for when you get it, as it effectively pacifies named and out-of-depth monsters long enough for you to get away and find other means of dealing with them. Eldritch Inhabitation works well for the same purpose, though it, too, doesn't scale all that well at higher levels in my experience. Word of warning RE Tenebrous Rift: it's probably killed more of my own characters than any other skill. Any character that relies on the Rift for more than just zoos would be well advised to have some kind of controlled teleport option for if you accidentally drop a Rift on your own head ("Hmm, need more lockpicks. [right-click] Wait, I had WHAT still selected?!").
That's why I like it in combo with Killer Vegan. The extra saved me the first time I tried it....by casting it one spot away on a nearby monster. I thought it was a spell that would affect only one tile, not 3000, haha. I had 150 hp, and got away with 44. In other situations, i've lost anywhere from 20-60 hp from it hahaha
The first spell from Astrology is a buff that gives +1 and a later spell buff in the tree gives an additional +2. Almost died a couple times early on from necropain because I didnt realize a baddie had knocked my astrology buff off.
I've done myself in the exact same way, only with My Chemical Explosion. Damn Glass Cannon Mages. Also, I never even thought about using Astrology (and Little Black Books) to make the wracking pain-thingies from Deathly Hex actually manageable. >.<
That's actually the only real use I've found for Astrology. I've found it to be a terribly underpowered tree unless tied to necro, and even then, there are better ways to get than burning a whole skill tree on it, though having it right at the get go is pretty nice.
Don't see the Astro and Necro combo as burning a skill tree. Half of Astro's spells are buffs so it might be easy to cast and forget about them, but they are pretty good buffs (my mage-thief can melee with little danger). Solar Inscription is one of my favorite spells for the chance to paralyze and either break up the crowd coming for me or just wail on a baddie that cant fight back. Not to mention that I havent seen a better area of effect spell for near baddies than Stars Aligned
I guess I can see how that would work really well in a gish build and the aethereal resistance starts looking really nice for some the deeper floors. I've just had a tendency to keep my magic and melee separate. I still have trouble working that whole armor vs. magic power equation and in a pure magic build I've found keeping distance with ports (mathemagic) or pets (Promethean/Golemancy) to be generally superior to defensive buffs.
Y'know, I think Astrology would be a much better skill if there weren't Pangalactic Gargleblasters in the game... A good way to reduce the amount of extra damage you take from Rifts is to take Fungal Arts. The Toxic resist helps you shrug off some of the Zalgo after effects that monsters that have been Rifted throw off. I know I've almost died a few times just because a monster at the very edge of a rift suddenly erupted for 10-15 Toxic due to the Zalgo DoT.
Rift is meant to be more dangerous to the player than it currently is. The debuffs it gives you should have a penalty of -3 but the devs used the wrong syntax for it.
