Worst Possible Skill Combination - let's all play it on GRPD!

Well the Shield Bearer is a nice skill tree but it is completely redundant with Master of Arms. With imperial armor and helmet, pants of serpentine, serpentine boots, girdles of shiny steel plates, and filigreed silver shield plus max Master of Arms is 37 armor which is enough to reduce all non exotic damage from all monster in the game except dreadmor to 0. Thus the proc from master of arms are also redundant and everything in the Shield Bearer tree expect Duck and Cover! is useless. Vampirism sucks but if you get it off the ground you can heal yourself and with Ley Walker and Magic Training you could have some magic power to make it useful and with master of Arms you could reduce the damage to most non-exotic damage can't hurt you. Also AOE damage with stun and 20 turns of + 50% dodge could be very helpful.

 

Vamp still sucks because no healing from food, or turn based healing - which will kill you from level 1-15 instead of only being useless with good gear.

 

I have to agree. I don't have Psionics in my build, but the other three. I have most of DL3 complete, and I'm level 10. I found an Ankh Amulet, so Necro is really good for me. However, that isn't what really got me here. It's Emomancy. All you need is one level and you have a great heal. And then you're almost guaranteed to make it to level 3 where you get My Chemical Explosion, which is a fantastic AOE spell.

I am playing on EE, though. At this point, I think I could beat the game, so I'm going to try a harder build. I'll give your recommendation a try.

I think Archery is too helpful because it makes you start with a crossbow and plenty of bolts. I think the free armor from Master of Arms is also good. Assassination gives you Black Jack as level 1. Of the four, I think Blood Mage is the worst considering your other skills. The Phylactery will be useful eventually, but you have to live that long.

 

I'll do it, except gonna take out wand lore due to that exploit. I'm not above using exploits or bugs and once you get the exploit for wand lore going it's pretty damned powerful, so I'd rather go with this:

• Perception
• Thrown Weaponry
• Magic Training
• Vampirism
• Big Game Hunter
• Master of Arms
• Blood Mage

Master of Arms isn't actually that terrible but vampirism mostly negates any advantages it might have.

Now to put some positive spin on this build:

Perception allows our vampire to avoid trap damage and dodge a bit more. Thrown Weaponry gives him a ranged attack. Big Game Hunter lets him summon diggles to drain. Magic Training increases his drain amount. Blood Mage gives him extra damage and improved healing. Master of arms makes him a bit tankier.

Now to play it GRPD. I'll tell you how it goes.

PS: To my eye this actually doesn't seem like such a terrible build.

 

I don't know if this is worst build quality.​

• Level 2 Drinker of the Dead
• Level 3 Highly Aware
• Level 4 Trap Sense
• Level 5 Second Sight

At this point you got healing from corpses, 15%dodge, 5% counter, 3% block.

• Level 6 Sparkly Glarmour
• Level 7 Psychic Vampire
• Level 8 Batty Form

At this point you got AOE paralyze, healing from corpses, at least 65% dodge, at least 5% counter. Rush to "the most dangerous game" and you got a 50% chance of dealing at least 12 piercing damage while in batty form. I'm not saying it is a good build but with some lucky item drops on the first floor and second floor you could get it to level 8 and from there its pretty easy to get 100% dodge. Work on magic power with magic training (which also trains sneakiness for bonus damage) for dual wielding tomes and avoid floors with gnomes and you might be able to get to a diggle god which all are very powerful (maybe death or fertility would be best). If you could get 2 universal principles and decent resist you might be able to beat the game.

 

Ok I think I figured it out. This is my vote for the worst build ever

• Master of Arms
• Shield Bearer
• Artful Dodger
• Perception
• Vamipirism
• Magic Training
• Big Game Hunter

All defense and no offense. You start out with no weapon or extra damage. You are extremely unlikely to kill anything even one on one but a sick diggle or gnome (which can remove your dodge). If you don't get a weapon or wand in the first room you might as well restart. The hp regen of Shield Bearer and Master of Arms is useless with Vampirism. You only hope at anything is to go the 100% dodge route but you don't need the both artful dodger tree, batty form, and perception to make that happen so pick 2. Big game hunter is near useless without Batty form so I would pick that as one of the two. And you pretty much need trap affinity to get levels quick because this character has almost no hope on floor 4 or 5 without near 100% dodge. You likely to never level up Master of Arms or Shield Bearer so those trees are worth a total of 6% block and 5 max hp.

 

My vote is almost the same but swaps Artful Dodger for Ley Lines (TP w/ useful stuff for TP w/ useless stuff) and BGH for blood magic, which is way worse.

 

Not saying I'll play it but...

Dual Wield
Shield Bearer
Vampirism
Astrology
Assassination
Magic Training
Berserker Rage

Dual Wield is normally an awesome skill! ...but it's pretty lame when you suck with all melee weapons.
Shield Bearer is neat and all, but it doesn't get any bonuses from Dual Wielding and you don't need it to use shields.
Vampirism is alright if you dual wield 2 good Staffs and have lots of healing but here it just hurts you.
I've never really used Astrology very much but I've read that many think it's in need of a buff.
Assassination and Berserker Rage are meant to be coupled with a melee weapon skill.
Magic Training gives mana, but you only have one skill tree that uses it.


You aren't good at melee, and you aren't great at magic either.
You can't craft anything, can't break walls, can't move objects and can't teleport.
You also can't eat.

On the bright side adding up Dual Wield + Assassination + Berserker Rage still has to amount to some damage even with the penalties.
The first Astrology spell gives you 1 as well.
Might help you enough to get Vampirism to lv2.

 

Dang it you are right about Ley Lines but I don't agree with Blood Magic. Why? Well because you start with a weapon. Having no offensive abilities and no weapon is what makes this build so pathetic. You are doomed to die until you get a extremely good roll of getting a weapon in the first room and get a stream of rooms with only 1 or 2 diggles. Also you can heal with Blood Magic.

 

Well for what it is worth, what I actually did was:

1. Butchery
2. Hunter's Lure
3. The Most Dangerous Game
4. Release the Hounds!
5. Liscense to Cast
6. Drinker of the Dead
7. Sparkly Glamor
8. Monster Toss
9. Peltast
10. Australian Technique

Make of that what you will. It's working pretty well so far, on floor 4. Definitely more difficult than even some of the worst of the random builds I get, though. Want a save file to play from and test a little bit?

Incidentally, this is my second try with this. The first time it died really quickly on floor 1, unable to do enough damage to anything without a weapon and unable to heal.

Skill number 11 was Regent of Throwing Stuff at people. After that:

Lossp the Adventurer
"He Crunched like a Wind"
Killed by Brax, on Level 4. Your score: 116020

Culprit was a tome "Landscapes: A Pretentious Pictorial" aggressing brax with its AoE.

Back to playing random builds now, anyone else going to give this build a try? It did work pretty well and the death was more a stupid accident than something unavoidable.

 

I'm trying your build right now, without swapping Ley Lines for Dodge. It's not as hard as you make out. There's no need to start with a weapon. Bats, Diggles, and Gnomes do no damage to you because of the armor and piercing resistance you start with. These monsters are actually an asset because you heal off of them.

I found a weapon early on in a shop and I would remove it when fighting these monsters so that I wouldn't kill them so quickly. This is because you heal from the bonus damage of vampirism, not from how much you do overall. So to maximize your healing you want to make as many attacks as possible.

I think this build would be more difficult if you took out Master of Arms. Even possibly swapping it for Blood Magic. BGH is also too strong. After taking Corpse Drinker it's the first skill I max because the diggles are so good. Having no pets would be best.

I'm currently trying this combo, and I already died twice:

1. Shield Bearer
2. Artful Dodger
3. Vampirism
4. Magic Training
5. Blood Magic
6. Ley Lines
7. Perception

For some reason with this build you don't start with a Shield. You start with an orb instead from Magic Training. It doesn't even appear in your inventory, which I figured it would.

 

Awww that is a bummer... I thought for sure that would be a winning skill set (well losing). I think I kept dying on the potatoes cause their missile by passes your armor.

 

I'd go straight for Thaumoentropic Missile with that build, Glazed. Not sure it would help, just sayin' try that.

 

I got it pretty early, and it definitely helps in fights against quite a few monsters.

My build so far, in order:

1. Drinker of the Dead (Absolutely required to be first.)
2. Duck and Cover (The armor buff is very useful when it procs.)
3. Defensive Bash (extremely useful skill)
4. License to Cast
5. Vital Siphon (crap)
6. Spirit Stealer (junk)
7. Haemetic Phylactery (OH MY GOD YES!)
8. Akido for Adventurers
9. Knightly Leap (Yay! I stole a 1.2 million zorkmid Crownstar Addendum from DL3 thanks to this spell.)

As you can probably deduce, I'm currently level 10 and I'm on DL4, playing on GRPD. I'm doing pretty OK. I should mention that I'm playing "Worstrum V". All my progenitors died.

I very nearly died last night when I took 28(!) damage from a single attack from a boss Mushy. It put me at 3 HP. I have 45 max, but I was down a bit. That was very scary.

My techniques include getting a lone monster against a (thick) wall and shield bashing him into it for the stun, then pounding on him three times. He might attack back the third time, but more often he's dead.If it were a thin wall he'd get knocked through it.

I found a nice 11 damage staff. 4 of it is Righteous damage, 6 Pyro, and 1 Slashing. I have a Shield of Caketown I use sometimes, but more often I use one of my tomes. I have a Tobin's Spirit Guide for one more Righteous damage and a righteous proc. My Crownstar came with 5 damage and a boatload of other stats, including 4 Wand Affinity (sigh...)

I buy every Softball I see, so I'm up to 168, and every Bolo. Also pretty much every metallic bolt I find for sale (iron, steel, copper, etc, of any variety.) I spend a lot of time swapping out my weapon and shield for double-tomes in order to throw things at monsters. (Dragging and dropping items to your character sheet doesn't cost turns.) Any advantage I can get!

I'm hoarding various rings and other tomes for the resistances they give. I'm a lot more comfortable than I used to be because I have Phylactery now, but before that I would fight each monster wearing whatever items gave me the most resistances to their attacks. I have two Putrefying resistance rings, some Toxic things, Necro, too. I'm not shy about swapping them constantly.

Phylactery tech: Cast it as soon as you get the spell, then hang onto the Phylactery. When you need to eat it, and cast it again as soon as possible because it has such a long cooldown. I lose 9 max and 2 from the debuff, so I'm afraid of casting it more than once in a row. But at least with this technique, I can eat the one I have, make another the next turn, then immediately eat that one if I really need to. I can teleport away before doing these things to not give monsters free attacks. I've luckily never had to eat two in a row. But I can imagine it might happen if I ever have to face more than one spell caster as soon as I open a door.

Speaking of doors, there's a fun little exploit that still exists in the game. You can teleport onto doors with any teleport spell. This lets you see what you're about to face and even just walk away if you don't like what you see. I don't feel bad doing this because I reported this bug well before 1.10 came out and it wasn't fixed. Therefore, I assume it's "by design".

I actually created a spreadsheet to calculate the points at which additional gives you one more HP from Drinker of the Dead. You get 3 as a minimum, then it goes up by 1 at 7, 14, 20, 27, 34, 40, etc. This is important because I'm stuck doing melee and I wear as much armor as possible. It's good to know when it's worth the tedium of taking off armor before drinking a pile of corpses. The haven't hit 27 Magic Power yet, so the most I can get is 6 per corpse. This isn't as important now that I have Phylactery. If I'm below half my life after a fight I don't hesitate to eat one and then immediately recast it. I can do that every 100 turns. But early on I actually carried around a random +1 that I would swap in every time I wanted to drink a corpse to put me exactly at 14 after taking my armor off.

I'm only on DL4, and I have a feeling that it's just going to get harder and harder. None of the rest of the spells I can get are going to help as much as the ones I already have. I'll get some more dodge, block and armor if I take defensive skills, but I think I might level up Perception next. I'd like the Trap Affinity and radius, and the ability to see invisible monsters even after I teleport away from them. Getting Invisible Geometries will give me a much better teleport, but that's four levels away with only junk skills on the way. I don't have anything that uses mana! I think I'm better off getting incrementally useful Dodge, EDR, Vision, and Trap Sight. And then Eye Lasers! Pew pew!

Then again, I may as well take Sparkly from the Vampire skill. It's another spell to cast that may save me at some point. However, the heal scales off of , which I don't have any of in a fight, and I can't rely on stuns not being resisted when my life is on the line. I made that mistake with that Mushy. He resisted both the knockback and the stun from Defensive Bash! Then bit my face off for 28 damage.

 

Actually, this one isn't as bad as it sounds, on DL5 on GRPD with this build at the moment. Vegan Vampire isn't as hard as people make it out to be, all you need is a pet (or animal friend) and some patience, this build is only hard because it lacks any healing that doesn't require a pile of dead bodies.

 

All you have to do is throw veganism and vampirism on the same build with no spell damage, no wands (wand lore is enough to carry you), and a bunch of rogue skills that give terribad stats.

I'd say...

Magic training
Ley walker
Perception
Vampirism
Veganism
Archeology
Blood Magic

Even if you make it past floor 1 with some lucky item drops, you'll never survive floor 3.

 

...and then you list a build that's pretty much made of spell damage?

 

Well, spell power of course not spell damage. Since you have no actual spells nor anyway to stun or stack dodge/block/counter with that build you'll be running the heaviest armor you can.

 

Lol, I keep trying to play that build in all seriousness (and failing) over and over again.

 

I actually beat the game with a build similar to that, although I had Golemancy instead of Blood magic for survivability. Mathemagic has excellent single target damage spells, as does Necro. You get great healing from Alchemy and Emomancy and between Ley Walker, Mathemagic, Emomancy, and Alchemical potions you have plenty of panic buttons. The hardest thing about this build is the first floor, once you get past that it's very viable.