Skills you can't seem to do without

Definitely burglary and archaeology due to the mass exp gain. Also Berserker on melee just because it's almost impossible not to get it when fighting a large amount of monsters such as in a zoo. And obviously laylines/bloodmage on magic builds to keep the attacks going ​

 

I'm actually hitting the point where I can consider not going with Archy (I don't -need- the max skills in DL9, plzthkyou), but burglary is basically the only way to get into locked chests for their delicious, delicious contents.

 

Burglary, its just an all round useful tree and after a few levels I end up missing it just too much.

 

I'm going to be weird here and say I cannot do without Alchemy. Potions of Purity, Radiance, Healing, Mana, and Restoration are always always always useful. And Spatial Instability Infusions are a good panic button, especially with teleporting traps that can strand you.

 

Burglary for the lock picks and early trap disarm. Blood magic and Killer Vegan for mages. The Killer Vegan buffs just gives so much hp, extra xp, and a free cure debuff with no downside for mages. Demonology for melee builds, I can't imagine going melee against a monster zoo without celestial circle.​

 

Burglary for me. I can't do without it. Just having doors I can close is vital; invisibility and controlled teleport on demand are wonderful bennies. Combined, they probably save my character's life twice or more per game, and I always play permadeath, so that's critical. I just wish I could still teleport into doors, pop invisibility, wait for the right time, and cast/shoot/throw an AoE spell/item. Oh well. [Edit: Also 5 points of trap disarm. Crucial.]

Promethean for spellcasters. Being able to shoot an AoE DoT through closed doors or 1-wide walls for 3 mana per cast? Priceless.

I used to take Archeology for the experience gain, but I have been experimenting with leaving it out. I only miss it a little bit; Krong is too fickle to trust with my best equipment, and the second-tier stuff will be replaced soon enough.

Fungal Arts used to be mandatory, before the recent nerfs. I had the patience to infect every corpse; I learned patience from Angband. Nowadays I've simply rejected FA. Turns out that kills made by DoT's, or kills made by pets, don't spawn mushrooms. And FA is a pet-using class that has automatic DoT procs on melee. Does Not Compute.

Q: Will Demonology's remove Corruption ability work on Krong-granted debuffs?

(Q: Does this forum have a way to force the BBCode markup display, while using the normal editor?)

 

Nope. Only the Corruption caused by Magic Golems and Blobs of Corruption and Magic Dragons etc.

 

I used to have archeology as a mandatory skill for all characters and promethean/Bloodmagic for casters (which was almost exclusively what I played) but I have gone away from those in favour of trying a melee build instead.

Now its more like Dodger due to the super low cooldown teleport at early levels. I am experimenting with Demonology and smithing as well atm but with my unarmed dual shield wielding character, I just cant seem to get my damage high enough - might be because im currently at dungeon level 5 and still only have a single ring and no necklace though

 

Burglary +1

Free picks = free xp! I almost always take that skill set, it's so good it almost feels like cheating.

 

Forgive the off topic post. @Shadowplay You are on level five and have only one ring? Stop playing NTTG and you will do much better. NTTG means no items too.

 

Perception. It gives dodge without having to use the gimped Artful Dodger skill tree. With a teleport ability I can move quite far, and then shoot the distant baddies.

Mostly I need it so I can cruise around the dungeon with WASD and not trip traps. The lazer eyes is just icing on the cake.

 

If I use a caster build, Psyonics it's the must have for me. Healing, early useful defensive spell (shove), and that funny mindcontrol, that I found using more often on later level high resistence biggies to get some breath.

With melee builds, Burglary. Extra xp, dodge and all that nice stuff. Plus lockpicks. You can't never have too much lockpicks.

 

The more I play the more i realize skills that I thought would suck are actually quite useful.
Example: Transdimensional Dodge.

On paper i thought this would be terrible.
My mistake. Man it is fun and the random teleport is almost always useful. The one exception is Zoos, and I simply turn it off for that..
My current Random build:

Staffs
Shield Bearer
Throwing
Artful Dodger
Flesh Smithing
Ley Lines
Fungal Arts

Is working surprisingly well. The Fungal Arts give me tons of things to throw. With the Transdimensional dodge, I rarely am in combat, and with dodging and shields, I don't risk to much being in combat temporarily. The Flesh smithing makes clearing most zoos a piece of cake and fleshbore pwns most single targets, whatever is mostly immune just goes down to throws.

 

After playing a random build run just now (died to an arch diggle with 40hp left - I thought would die but it resisted the spell even though I had loads of mana to just teleport - as Dredmor had only a sliver of health back )

Anyway, I had almost all caster skills and actually a very solid build in Archaeology, Fleshsmithing, Mathemagic, Golemancy, Psionics, Alchemy and Clockwork Knight. A fantastic combo under normal circumstances. Except that I had no mana regeneration skill at all. Alchemy is reliant on you having aluminium to make any mana potions and it was apparantly an ultra rare drop for me this game. Also, I didnt meet a single lutefisk shrine so I had over 1000 lutefisk in my cube in the end

Anyway, my point is that when playing caster intense builds, reliable mana regeneration is an absolute must for me. Blood Magic is preferred because of how much better it is in zoos but Ley Walking will also do it when I roll my next random.

 

I suspect that some of the mods alter the chances of things like lutefisk shrines appearing.

 

Since traps kill me more than anything else in the early game I find a trap sense skill to be pretty essential. Archaeology, Perception, or Tinkering are all good choices. For magi I typically get Perception for extra for casting range. For more melee centric builds I tend towards tinkering for fun clockwork equips and lots of bolts. Archaeology is a solid choice too, but me and Krong have a love hate relationship.... he loves to curse my stuff and I hate him for it. So I tend to avoid Archaeology since I get so little use out of the capstone.

 

Blood Magic. I never put more than one point into it, and I power different things with it all the time, but it seems like every one of my last dozen characters has had Blood Magic. Ninjitsu? Blood Magic! Runecaster? Blood Magic! Psionics? Blood Magic! Barrier Maiden? Blood Magic! It's the all-purpose utility-spell-refiller of DOOM!

 

Recently I've been toying with gishes, and I love the combination:
Necronomonics, Necrolyzing Aspirant, Clockwork Knight, Viking Wizardry, Burglary, Fungal Arts and Blood Magic. Shrooms to power you up throughout the game, NA + CK synergise to give you 4 crafting levels in everything but alchemy, which is a 3, blood magic keeps your buffs up, and necro + NA => damage and resistances in one awesome package. Burglary is there because, you know, lockpicks + teleport.

 

I love Arch and Burglary, as many other do, but I also find that if I don't have at least 1 crafting skill, I enjoy the game MUCH less. I think it's my insane need to collect and have a purpose for everything I find. I also really love Perception...LAZER EYES! My next character is gana go for max sight range and blow up EVERYTHINGS!

 

I'm LOVING Clockwork Knights so far, but i'd say it's Smithing (now that it's gotten buffs I can finally craft more stuff!) and Burglary.

I just hope that in YHTNTEP or whatever it's called there are new endgame items. I'm sick of Flashy Staves and want to actually use that 8.