It ain't easy being melee

Really, it isn't. It's a mild shock after having carved through NetHack as a barbarian, samurai or valkyrie. So, what is the difference between being a melee specialist in DoD and in another roguelike? What is it that increases the difficulty factor for dedicated hack-and-slashers?

 

You need to learn to use tools other than just what you specialise in. That is the difficulty there.

 

What I discovered is that even when you play melee, you rely heavily on crossbows and wands on certain occasions. You can also grab Blood Mage + another skill to get a little help, for example Necronomiconomics which helps clearing zoos.

 

Or just tinkering, if you know what ingots you'll use for bolts (a third of ingredients, or even less) - that's one skill instead of two, but you'll be able to get more of the higher-grade bolts (which deal damage types that Dredmor resists less than necromantic).

 

Or replace Necro by Promethean magic. This way you can have a heavy fighter who can land a fireball from time to time, or summon a dragon. Your mana will keep up with Blood mage. I guess a weapon skill + shield + armor training + berzerk rage + blood mage + promethean mage is quite a good all-offensive build, and it let you one free skill, either tinkering or smithing.

 

Necro and Promethean are absolutely awesome, but using any of the nice heavy armors to boost one's survivability as a melee or melee hybrid makes your plummet. Also (still using NetHack as an example) as a Valkyrie I always had a large stack of daggers for throwing and later on Mjollnir for throwing as well, even if I was loaded for bear as a melee specialist. Heck, even my Barbarian carried a large dagger stack, though he couldn't reach mastery in daggers at all. I realize that one must keep a ranged tool of some sort for the occasions where one really does not want to deal with an enemy in melee (cockatrices and chickatrices e.g.) and I am definitely not shy about keeping a crossbow and a few nasty bolts around, or brimstone flasks/bombs/wands all of which I have a tendency to hoard between zoos. But choosing to ever engage in melee combat seems to be extraordinarily perilous, more so than the "reach out and crush someone" approach of the wizard or ranged specialist, and as a melee specialist I should be wanting to put enemies at the tip of my "Vorpal Blade" (or Anti-Hero Sword rather) as often as possible because that is how I dispatch things the quickest.

I also realize that DoD is NOT NetHack, but there are many fundamental similarities between most roguelikes.

 

It plummets, but you can still make some quick cleaning. Just cast a Tenebreous Rift in a room, and melee cleaning will become insanely easy. Plus, Promethean's Drake isn't linked to your , so it still is very helpful.

I like golemancy too ; building walls is very useful to handle numerous enemies at once.

 

Good way to play melee is to dual wield, carry a crossbow.

First few levels you can one hit everything, it's great.

Later on you'll have to shoot all your enemies once before you melee them, but you still one hit them as long as you shoot them first.

On the lowest levels you try to go for enough damage to two-shot your enemies.

 

Yes, I shall add that while in Nethack melee is easier to play than mage, DoD is quite the opposite : I find a heavy mage much easier to play than a melee fighter.

 

To be fair, while Wizards are rather difficult to start in NetHack they get to be obscenely overpowered by midgame/their artifact quest. The athame dagger you receive as a sacrifice gift, Magicbane, is absurdly good.

Things like chokepoints/bottlenecks/corridors to minimize exposure are absolutely critical though, even if you have absolutely stellar defenses, right? Wizardly types aren't as dependent on such things, as they can easily put out lots of AoE damage constantly at range or up close, effectively limited only by their mana pool. They can easily dictate where the "field of battle" is with Unliving Walls, Psionics shove spells, and pet bodyguards. An armored melee hybrid CAN make use of pets, shoves and walls without the penalties to being as worrisome, but he'll still have to pick at his enemies one-at-a-time with the occasional multi-target ability like Thibault's to supplement, maybe. His actual best hope for keeping up with the wizard's multi-target offense is large amounts of , the only way he can inflict damage on multiple targets in melee range without bothersome cooldowns, and dependent entirely on whether he is being attacked in melee as opposed to from range.

 

Tycho, what version are you on?

1.0.9 and earlier were a bit more dangerous for melee fighters than the current 1.0.10. In the older versions, criticals were a bit overpowered. Crits were checked for before dodge or block, and completely prevented dodging and blocking from mattering. In particular, if a monster countered your attack, scored a crit on the counter-attack, and then scored a crit on their own attack, you could take a ton of damage in a single round. If you haven't installed the latest version yet, doing so will definitely help your melee character.


General Melee Advice:

• Always let the monsters come to you, so you get the first strike as they move adjacent and not the other way around. If a particular monster takes 2 attacks to kill it on average, making it come to you reduces it's damage to you by 50%. Over the course of the game, that's a lot of damage you can avoid.
• In general, named monsters are always nasty, especially on Going Rogue. Any monster with it's own name and/or the little yellow marks radiating from it's forehead is going to have improved stats including a BIG damage boost. Soften them up with ranged attacks or debuffs whenever possible.
• The named monsters spawned by Evil Chests are usually from 3 floors deeper than your current floor, and then have the stat boosts on top of it, so make sure you stand diagonally away from the chest when it opens. Again, this is to make them move to you, rather than attack on the same action as when they spawn.
• Don't use high-value food (deep omelettes, etc) in response to taking a lot of damage, use them _before_ taking the big hits. When dealing with zoos and hordes, assume you're going to take a pounding, and get the healing process started before things get dire.
• Some floors are harder or easier for certain character builds. If your current floor is giving you a pounding, go down the first set of stairs you find. While in theory the monsters are tougher on the next floor down, sometimes it's just a matter of the exact stats (damage or resist, usually) of a certain monster being a poor match for your skills or equipment. Playing the floors out of sequence can get you away from the monsters that are tougher for your specific build at the moment, and you can choose to come back for them (if you like) when you're a couple levels stronger and have better equipment from the deeper floors.

Damage and Resistance Advice:

• It's usually better to do a variety of different damages than a lot of points in a single type.
• There are plenty of monsters that take bonus damage from certain damage types, so having the right weapon for the job is very important. Undead don't like righteous or conflagratory, robots get zapped extra hard by voltaic, etc.
• Same with resists, as there's a lot of monster attacks that do just a couple points of some exotic type, so when choosing between two equipment options it's often better to take a lot of little resists than one huge one.
• Negative resistances inflicted by Krong or corrupting monsters (or some skills) can be devastating. Negative resistance = bonus damage when the monster (or trap or spell) hits you.

 

Personally, I like to take forging and concentrate largely on using it to make armor. And I found alchemy mainly for healing potions is a huge must (until you can get decent armor).

An ability to retreat is pretty vital for when you get surrounded. And then don't be afraid to save up wands/bolts. There are a few boss-types that you need to just run from and nuke from afar.

I love playing melee, it feels like a real challenge. I found magic to be incredibly OPed so I mostly stay clear of it now. I want to start trying out a rogue/archer class, though I find I run out of bolts or don't really do enough damage to survive the first floor or two.

 

The "attrition" aspect hits archers/throwers harder, without the boon of effectively infinite ammunition. DoD isn't an incredibly lengthy dungeon dive, but the "act now, supplies are limited" aspect that ammo-users have looming over their heads if they wait around too long can't be ignored.

 

Combine Ruigi and Bergstrom's posts and you pretty much have it. Melee is a bit more forgiving in 1.10, but in general, what seems to work best is...

• Be a dual-wielder of some sort, as this actually reduces the damage you take due to being able to kill monsters in 1-3 hits for pretty much the entire game. Berserker Rage is a solid choice to help your damage output and provide all kinds of passive and "I just took a hit" proc bonuses to various stats.
• Stack as much Armor Absorb, Block Chance, and Resistances as you can. Forget about having a Magic or Sneakiness stat; they're going to be 0 for most of the game. Taking Master of Arms gives you more Absorb/Resists and some nice procs when you do get hit.
• Never melee a named monster ever. They can deal 30, 40, 50 damage of a single type (read: your resistances aren't going to do much) and can easily "out-melee" you. Use bolts or thrown to take them down instead. Having a way to get range on them (see next bullet point) is a must.
• Have a Skill Tree that allows access to a Teleport Skill. Recommended: Burglary. Requires no Mana. Move in a Mysterious Way will save your life at some point plus you can get all those "stranded on an island" items. Lastly, Lockup gives you yet another way to get away from Named Mobs.
• Have a Skill Tree that allows you heal faster than 1 Health/Round. Recommended: Fungal Arts. Requires no Mana. Lets you stockpile Fairywodgers and Greedy Blungecaps as your primary means of not-eating-food healing. The other mushrooms provide great benefits that you can "pop" whenever you open a door and see more than 1-2 monsters. The Prince, Lobstermanes, and Fell Truffles have no set duration so you can keep those up almost at all times (they do wear off in combat).

 

Personally, I've found the trickiest thing with melee characters is resistances, and dealing with casters. Make sure to prepare the proper resistance for themed floors. Even if you can't find proper equipment a stockpile of resistance potions (ie hyperborean/infernal etc.) can go a long way. And beware casters always. I've been killed by djinns and squiddies more than any other monster type in the game. Magic resistance or reflect can help with this but in a pinch abuse their low sight range. As a general rule, if you can't see them, they can't see you. So in situations where there are a bunch of casters, (especially after killing all the melee monster in a zoo, 25 squiddies anyone?) just back off for a bit, heal, and then try to kill them at range when only a few are in sight. This has saved me on more than one occasion.

 

A wild lewter has appeared

Hello, alien friends. I am an homo sapiens, from the planet earth. We come in peace.

Awkward long-time lurker introductions are done. So I finished the game as a pure melee character. On GR, with Permadeath on. However, I only managed it with an older version of Compleat (that involved bushido prior to final nerf), Faxpax, and Essential Core Rebalance. However, because this thread seems to assume vanilla, i will add my two cents based on how i would have finished the game in vanilla as a pure melee dude.

One thing i will tell you is this - generally speaking Vanilla DoD isn't balanced with pure warrior archetypes in mind. The items you need to be effective in melee greatly limit your chances to hit/dodge/cast spells. So even if you have the sheer damage, you won't have a good enough chance to hit to guarantee a "one hit, one kill" late game. So you do need to mix it up, and there are very good reasons to.

Generally, if you REALLY want to melee in vanilla, you will need to have Master of Arms/Dual Wield/Sword. MoA is there for the sheer durability, the buffs, and the starting plate, and generally taking away some of pain of getting hit all the time. Why sword? Because it has a counterattack synergy with dual wield, and will add up to obscene counterattack rates, which is pretty much the only way for a pure melee dude to plow his way through later game monster zoos.
You also need to get 1-2 rogue abilities. Why? Because you need levels in rogue archetype to offset the penalties to nimbleness that come with heavy armor. Which ability you choose is up to you, but Assassination is important, because you will need crit to keep you going through the later stages of the game.Also, blackjack will probably save your bacon time and time again, assuming it was finally fixed (for real). Archeology or Dodge work as you second rogue ability, depending on whether or not you swear by "it belongs in a museum". If you do the maths, you are now at 5 abilities.
One of those last two has to be a Mage-y one, preferably one that synergizes with being in melee range. If you are a melee purist, that means viking wizardry (hail ODIN). Otherwise, you can roll necro or promethean. Why do you NEED one mage ability? Because otherwise, there's this resource called mana that you will get ridiculous amounts of via booze and what not, and that you will never use.
For your last ability, you can either get a crafting ability to take randomness out of the game, or if you don't believe in crafting (evil chests are a good reason not to, btw), or you can go something like Bezerker (GWAAAAAAAAAAAA etc) if you are a melee purist.
An alternative is blood mage, pop one level into it and forget about it until you have points to spare. Essentially, it will feed you mana, which will allow to draw full potential of your one magic tree. Add one level, and you will start getting stupid results from the sheer amount of counters you will be putting out. Add another level, and you have a way to offset the spellcasting penalty of heavy armor (if you really want to muck around with spells). Try not to go beyond that, or a mob of lutefisks could bring your winning run to an untimely end.

Now if you want to play around with mods, then grab all the major packs, add essential core rebalance, roll out with something like Blood Knight, MoA, Bushido, Dual Wield, Sword (+ two skills of your choice) My "it only makes you stronger" build involves getting bezerker and archeology (to make sure you get all dem levels). Essentially, everything you do makes you stronger. The on-getting hit procs from bushido, MOA and Bez mean that you will typically regen more damage than you take, the on hit buffs from dualwield/bushido/bez/blood knight means that you never have to worry about missing/not hurting the average monster, and blood knight will allow you to vamp back the little bit of damage that actually manages to get past your epic counter/resist/armor/regen stats. Being able to simply shrug off most damage means that you will be able to save all your epicly overpowered bolts for Dredmor, then finish him off in one hit when he finally manages to get close (it's hard to walk when you've taken a few WMD bolts to the knee).
Remember to laugh like a maniac while you murder them, butcher their wives, eat their children and dismember the little diggles in the garden too. DO IT! DO IT FOR KRONG!!!

 

This is good, but what is best in life ?

 

I just beat GRPD with Master of Arms, Smithing, Tinkering, Shield Mastery, Unarmed, Burglary, and Assassination. My thought going into it was to have enough armor to melee even named muscle diggles. Which I could. And dual mirror shields allowed me to ignore casters in the late game. This is with no mods on the 1.0.10 patch. So there is definitely some wiggle room on what to do with your melee build. You don't HAVE to have dual wield or a healing skill, though they are very nice to have.

and as a side note. Never take both shield mastery and shield bearer. I found that my armor scores were so high that the benefits of a second tree of armor were generally without merit. Where as some healing or extra resists in my build would have been very welcome.

 

Just a note on the whole "using your mana" thing: You don't need a magic skill to do it. Just buy a Pangalactic Gargleblaster from a vending machine for 417 Zorkmoids (assuming GR) and burn it at a rate of 1 mana every 4 turns. For the Rest. Of. The. Game.

You may need one or two backup PGGBs due to Gnomish Interference on certain floors bottoming out your mana in the middle of a zoo. There will be plenty on the later floors, too. But seriously, Syzergy is one of the best persistent buffs in the game. You can spare 417 Z for that. If melee is your goal and you must have magic healing I recommend Psionics, as Crystal Healing doesn't scale to magic power and it has a bajilion other useful things it can do, too. But otherwise Fungal Arts or Big Game Hunter provide you with enough between fight healing to stay topped up between fights and you can usually find or make enough panic button healing for zoos.

 

I recently found out that unarmed helps with throwing weapons and archery. It makes the bolts do more damage so you don't need to use as many to kill an enemy.