It ain't easy being melee

Question - in order to have a skillset more dedicated to melee and melee survivability I am considering dropping Tinkerer altogether from my tentative build of DualWield-Swords-Fungal-Burglary-Berserker-MoArms-Tinkering in favor of another skill, and I am wondering just how consequential traps are really going to be for me, and how much I need to get by.

 

To be honest you don't need any to get by. You just need. This of course requires that you avoid traps instead of disarming them which requires a great deal more caution but if you are looking for alternatives to tinkering there are plenty of options. Burglary is already providing you with enough to get through the game, just make sure to drop one point for lucky pick fairly early. It's a good first skill anyway. Perception is another option, with plenty of dodge, accuracy, and sight bonuses on top of decent trap sense.

 

Plus, if you make it to Eye Lasers, you gain an additional option for softening up tough targets before they close to melee range.

 

Yeah, the XP you get for disarming traps becomes irrelevant past say, Floor 3 or so. If you have 1 or 2 early on and you can get some bonus XP for disarming traps on the first couple of Floors, then great. After that, don't worry about them (other than to not step on a bunch). Think about it: Traps give you 6 XP + 3 per trap "level" (if memory serves). Disarming dozens of +6 XP traps when you need 300 or 500 XP is amazing. Disarming dozens of +24 XP traps when you need 25,000 XP on Floor 7? Not so amazing. And it just gets worse the further down you go, to the point that your average trap is worth about 1/4 the XP of your average monster: not really worth trying to pump your up into the teens for, if you ask me.

Also, if you enable click-to-move and actually use it, you will never step on a trap ever, end of story. The click-to-move pathfinding somehow knows where every trap is - even if you haven't detected it with your yet - and will absolutely refuse to auto-walk you over a trap. In fact, it will refuse to move you at all if there is no clear path, which ends up being a huge hint if you click to go down some narrow passage and nothing happens.

All this is yet another reason to take Burglary and pump levels into it: got a trap in a spot that you can't avoid? Move in a Mysterious Way right over it. Or use the Shove from Psioncs, or Turn Demon from Demonology, or Knightly Leap from Artful Dodger, etc.

Lastly, the Gargle Blaster thing is spot on. Forget about trying to work a Spell Tree with 0 and -5 Regen, just use the Gargle Blaster to give yourself that amazing Syzygy buff and keep it "running" with all the booze you've been picking up (or walking past). You only need a handful of booze bottles to fuel an entire Floor's worth of Syzygy (mana-sapping gnomes notwithstanding).

 

I am not sure if it was an oversight, or an intentional pun, but melee is pronounced like "May Lay". (In English at least.)
meɪleɪ/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melee

I rather suspect it was a pun, and if so, please fully ignore this post. I just am surprised no grammar Nazis have yet hounded this thread for this. Please carry on nonetheless.

 

Hmm, since I am French myself, I highly suspect the English word is coming from the French one, mêlée, which means... Pretty much the same thing.

 

You are right, the word melee does come from French (and no, I am not French, before anyone asks).
Not that it's of any relevance (other than the word in question being part of thread's title), but I reckon some people will find it nice to know.

Edit:
The pronunciation is similar, OmniNegro, but not the same. I'd say that the French pronunciation is (weirdly) harder than the English one.

 

<pointless trivia>
Well, the English and French are close to each other and they even had some....uh, interactions. (read: wars) That way they could take a word or two from each other. It is the same like Slovak and Hungarian language, we have some words from them and vice versa.
</pointless trivia>

 

Ah, but you did dual wield SHIELDS good sir. Essentially, Unarmed + *dualwield*shield is the flip side way of doing Dual Wield+Weapon skill.Now that I think about it, I did finish non-expansion DoD with a build like that. I also remember burning 2-3 WMD bolts (i tinkered myself a few more, so it wasn't a problem), in the last two zoos or so, because i could not be bothered kicking the level 10 monsters to death, even though they did little to no damage to me to begin with.

But yeah, I do agree you generally don't benefit all that much from doubling up on Master of Arms and Shield Bearer. However, the alternate way of looking at is that, as a result, you can get away with using gear that gives damage instead of armor. E.g. A steel crown instead of a boiler plate helm, or magic sandals instead of serpentine sabatons.

Generally speaking, there's more than one way to skin a lich (well, whatever little skin he has left) on GRPD, but we are more concerned with finding out the "optimal" way of doing it. Since warriors tend to not have effective means of AOE in vanilla, there is a strong case for going for something that lets you avoid damage while doing it (I.e. counter).

That item needs to be removed from the game, and you know it. Zyzergy is almost a capstone buff. Getting it for 417z is just outright silly. Let us fight like gentlemen, and not make use of stupidly overpowered things.

 

Especially since Vending Machines have a tendency to contain Gargle Blasters many moons before you start finding them lying about on the ground, allowing you get this too-good buff many Floors before you would normally have access to it.

 

I tend to rock very heavy melee characters with the only spell casting capability being something very melee supportish (like viking wizardry/astrology). The trick is where you want to put your money as you clear, I highly advise spending your money on AOE throwing weapons and AOE bolts as these will help you whittle down zoo's. You aren't penalized with ranged weapons for not having specializations.

Also as a general rule buy bola's/blink dust every time as these will let you safely tackle unique monsters (they hit for absurd amounts of elemental damage that noone sane can be expected to tank) so it's best to just whittle them down with direct damage ranged weapons and bola (roots them/skatha's roots can be of use as well).

A lot of people don't like smithing but the last build I did was smithing and it saved me some zorkmids/RNG on armor to get me through the midgame and freed it up for those throwing weapons. It also gets you early to get you to the tinkering items that drop with those mods on them.

Build I used was > Axe ( ), Dual Wield ( ), Mastery of Arms ( ) , Berserker Rage (insane mitigation), Viking Wizardry, Smithing ( ), Assassination ( ) (Stun helps attrition war especially stacked with the rest of your mitigation)

Could definitely make your own spin on that, if you love shields per se could drop dual wield and either take shields or Piracy for some bursty defense skills. Combat Momentum and Berzerker rage together is pretty ridiculous.

Very tanky build (lots of counter, block, high armor absorb). Watch out for aoe spells lategame and try to wear resist jewelry! Pick up a mirror shield on lower floors for charging spell casters / shoot them from a range. It's also a very good idea to hold onto some trap affinity equipment to clear traps out or move them around for your own use, put them on your item belt to make swapping to them really easy ( beware they can be stolen from here )

Got to floor 12 with this before I overextended into some gas I couldn't get out of (should have been more careful) and felt I could have definitely went all the way.

Best of luck!

 

To be honest, it sounds the same. Maybe the English one has a more important accent on the beginning : like MElee, while the French is a very "flat" word, much mlee.

 

I like how we "stole" the word from the French and then, in typical English fashion, hacked all the accents off the vowels and left everyone to memorize the pronunciation because, being a French word shoved into the English language, it follows absolutely no pronunciation rules whatsoever. Not that half the words in English follow any rules to begin with.

Anyway. I wonder if we'll ever see a day where Gish builds - or even your stereotypical Rogue/Swashbuckler build (light to medium armor with an emphasis on Dodge, Counter, and Dual-wielding) will ever be truly viable as opposed to "something to struggle with/challenge yourself with/make a mod Skill Tree to force it to be viable when you're bored".

 

Gish mods actually are viable, even if not optimal. Because if you have a character that can survive and melee due to warrior/rogue skills (Ruigi's Tactical Combat was a great skill tree for that, since it was just offensive skill tree to take, and that gave you a spare point or two to put into defensive skills, like Shield Bearer or Artful Dodger), and has practically unlimited ranged attacks (and buffs, too, if you are crazy and get Psionics too) to soften sturdier mobs with because of the magical skills. It can be quite challenging to play on GRPD since your magic power won't get into triple numbers that easily and most heavier armours will be at least slightly detrimental to your performance, but hey, there's no fun without the challenge, and if you first learned how to play with a rouge character, then it's not much more than just a mix between rogue/warrior (ranged combat with melee support) and rogue/wizard (multi-ranged combat with buffs, that one is actually rather effective).

 

But that's kind of my point... I wish we could get to a point where Gish/Swashbuckler builds were viable in the "standard game" without having to "resort" to mods. I completely understand why the mods get made (and used!), but they're really not my thing.

 

Even my magic only characters never got to triple digit . The reason is simple: Even a glass cannon needs armor and dodge buffs to survive. The only character that got really close for me was a Radiant Wizard. That character was the literal Paper Bazooka. He had ~90 just before he died in a single turn.

I think the most effective characters are a full mix. They have reasonable , , and even a bit of .

I usually pick one good magic attack skill, one spamable teleport skill, and the rest a mix of warrior and rogue skills. That works out nicely. I recently stopped making crafters altogether. I cannot justify that many skill points to make items I may just find. I also cannot justify the inventory space required for crafters, but that is for another thread.

 

You don't really need to resort to mods, I just used "Tactical Combat" (or "Tactics Mod", whatever) as an example because it is a combat skill that everyone can take; if you really needed to stick to the base game, there's nothing forbidding you from taking a normal weapon skill, or just getting through it and taking Assasination as your offensive skill of choice.

And a swashbuckler build? Yeah, that is totally not viable, because if you want to kill things while dodging everything, this game tells you to create a ranged rogue, and you want to substitute it with a melee warrior/rogue, which is kind of, well...

It depends on your lack luck*. I always liked ranged characters more, so I learned how to survive with 12 AA on floor 15 (yes, you can now officially call me a masochist). If you go with light armour instead of the heavier one and get lucky with the artefact bonuses, while focusing on wizard skills, it is possible to end with something like 110 magic power even if you don't use radiant wizard. It is difficult and slightly luck-reliant, but still possible.

*I officially hate auto-correction.

 

I know it. I've said it. But while it's there, I use it. You can fight like a gentleman, I have to stick this dagger in a lich's back...

 

It just disappoints me that a build that prioritizes Resistances and Dodge/Counter instead of Resistances and Absorb/Block isn't viable - at least, not in GR. You can squeak by with a really good build (and some luck) on on DM, but that's about it.

 

I've found my best melee characters are wizards focusing on buff/debuff magic. Viking/Astro/Leylines/Burglary/Demonology/Alchemy/Berserker, for instance.