Salutations Gaslamp forums and DoD fans alike. This marks my first post on the forums and it is of the simple request nature. I've just recently completed the game on the Dwarven difficulty level (man, Dredmor hits SO much harder than anything else in the game!) with a primarily melee archetype and, while I most certainly enjoyed myself, it was. . .well. . .rather difficult in some spots. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm sure that could have been remedied on my end with a little more tactical application and better gear, but I think I'm going to take the approach on the other end of the spectrum. For my second venture down into the dungeons, I'm looking to run a mage archetype. However. . .as I stated in the topic title, I'm not looking for any old sparks and barriers type of caster. I want something that can bend this dungeon over and blast its behind apart! So, not being the most ingenious or creative fellow, I decided to turn to the forums. What do you guys (and gals) think would be the most powerful, synergetic, and generally easy-to-run combination of mage classes? Mods are accepted as well! Thank you in advance for time spent reading and possibly your help as well. (Note: I will most likely have a spot reserved for burglary, because of lockpicks, and possibly archaeology as well.)
Your best mages use mathemagic, psionics, promethian, blood magic, necronomiconomics. though not necessarily all those together. two skills you'll definately want to take are archaeology and blood magic
Radiant Wizard if you want to feel overpowered, but it's somewhat dangerous because you'll die in one or two hits in melee.
Mathemagics is a must for teleports, and necronomiconomics is stupidly powerful once you have tenebrous rift. Psionics while an excellent skill for a gish is less so for a pure mage, especially since all of its damaging abilities are single target, which mathemagic generally does better. You may want a skill for healing though, and for that I'd go with either alchemy for potion absurdity and sagacity , or Emomancy for the cure. I like Magic training for haywire chance too.
Personally I say Mathemagics, because you do need a teleport skill of some sort (though you might want to get Burglary or Artful Dodger instead, depending on how "pure" do you want your build to be). Necronomiconomics is good as a source of massive damage, and Radiant Wizard (from a mod) is a pretty good supplement for that, since they both rely on "MASSIVE POWER", and Radiant Wizard deals a type of damage that is good for supporting Necronomiconomics (and is rather good for taking down Dredmor, though the frailness of your character will make that slightly more difficult than it would be if you didn't take Radiant Wizard). PS. I know it's kind of bad to say that from the very beginning, but it would be good if you didn't abuse the font for all of your posts. It's useful for emphasis and the font does look nice, but if every post of yours differs from the other posts, then it's going to bother people.
Mathemagics is great. But Wind Magic is better in every last way. (It is a mod.) My current Radiant Wizard has the following skills: Radiant Wizardry (From Roguish Renovations) Wind Magic Emomancy Promethean Magic Magic Training Necronomiconomics Golemancy Of these, Golemancy sucks the most by far. But I simply require the Digging Ray at the very end of the skill tree. And the Unliving walls are great when your health and mana is low and you cannot escape due to the high cost of a controlled teleport via Wind Magic. Necronomiconomics is great for this build since Tenacious Rift is the ultimate zoo killer and even the Squid Bolts have to travel a direct line that can be blocked by obstacles, whereas Tenacious Rift spawns wherever you put it. But aside from that, Necro really sucks for this build. You will not melee anything at all as a Radiant Wizard unless you can be entirely certain you will instagib it in melee. And that is doubtful since this is a pure mage build. Promethean Magic is the bread and butter of the build. Obvious fireball and the Wrymling summon will be your main damage types for 9/10ths of the game. Once you get high enough, it literally costs nothing to cast. And it does not fire a bolt that may hit something on the way, it simply makes the Wyrmling spawn where you click with a tiny fireball effect that sets things on fire instantly too. That one spell is half the appeal of Promethean Magic, despite having Golemancy. The best Golemancy summons suck by comparison since they do not set things aflame as they spawn, the cost a boatload of precious mana, and they still die in a single hit to anything past around level six or seven. And the Wyrmling flies too. (Icing on the cake.) I take Magic Training purely because I like having boatloads of and a reliable timed way to recuperate mana. Emomancy provides two very useful clouds, one is and the other is Antimagic. Use them whenever you need to kill something resistant to . The Cure is a good heal that removes bad debuffs too. But applies a pathetic debuff itself. And it stacks. No problem unless you need to spam that to survive. But if you do, you are already dead. If you are fighting things that are heavily resistant to both and , consider using the Radiant Wizard capstone to wipe the deck with them. DO NOT MELEE though, even while transformed in that uber form. You will still suffer the awful debuffs in the transformed state. And before I entirely forget it, the Wind Magic Eye of the Storm spell is awesome for area defense. It will beat the crap out of anything trying to get close to you. If it would normally take several Obvious Fireballs and/or My Chemical Explosions to kill something, EotS may be cheaper and will certainly work in most cases. I hope this helps you enjoy yourself. Here are some links to help out in case you cannot find the mods. Other mods I suggest are Interior Dredmorating, FaxPax, Compeat Essentials Pack, Clockwork Knights, A Debacle of Diggles and Black Stat Extender. I am running every last one of these, not to mention a few more. Wind Magic by Null FAXPAX by FaxCelestis Compleat Essentials Pack by Essence Interior Dredmorating by r_b_bergstrom Roguish Renovation by lccorp2 A Debacle of Diggles by FaxCelestis Black Stat Extender by Glazed Clockwork Knights by Ruigi Note that Clockwork Knights is a warrior and crafting skill. But it adds items too. Use it and love it. *Edit* By the way, be warned that teleporting past Brax with Wind magic *WILL* damage him and he will then call the Dread Collectors on you for it. You can usually get past him in other ways in any situation you encounter.
there is alot going on with this build in terms of skills and you cant really use all of them so its pointless. Golemancy could be dropped for blood magic or leywalker as could wind magic cause wind magic offers nothing to this build already full of usable abilities. You run out of mana far too fast and have no way to gain it back.
Are you insane? Wind Magic is the teleport skills this build desperately needs. Golemancy is for Unliving Walls to keep things bottled up while you run for your life, and Digging Ray too. Of all the skills, trading Necro for Ley Line Walker would help the most. Blood Magic could work too, but the edge wears off in the late game when it costs far more than you gain to get anything from Blood Magic.
Hmm, the most overpowered mage character? The problem with all mages is that not only do you gain more ways to generate mana but your spells get cheaper as you level. So the first few levels can be a bit rough. Ideally you want a caster that's strong at level 1, strong at level 5, strong at level 10, and overpowered at the end. By the time you hit a high level every any mage is going to be overpowered. Probably the straightest path to overpowered would be promethian/mathemagics/blood magic/leywalker Level promethian until you get summon wrymling (so you should be level 3). Rune of exploding is fantastic and the dragon can carry you for a long while. Then put one point in leywalker to get thaumaturgic tap, now you can spam rune of exploding as needed without too much concern to mana (you're only level 4 now). Then max out mathemagics, by level 8 you have Xeuclid's translation and 9 you have recursive curse. From then on the only thing separating you from god mode is gear. You can pretty much take whatever else you want. I'd recomend taking fleshsmithing as the pet will make the first level of the dungeon easy until you get wyrmling. And after Xeuclid's it might be nice to max fleshsmithing for miasma and the heal. You can hit that by level 14 which is when rune of exploding will start becoming less effective at clearing zoos. Veganism is pretty solid too. It's a great line to help casters get warrior level hit points and it has no drawbacks for you and it makes all animals non-agressive a huge boon. So here's my suggestion: Mathemagics, Promethian Blood Magic Leywalker Fleshsmithing Veganism (free slot) Perception or burglary works for a free slot. You just want an extra point of trap sight at least from there. But uh, this strategy will take all challenge out of the game.
Re: jhffmn's build, I've found that a better heal for mages is to take fungal. Procs on kills all the same, and those shrooms will help you out so much, as far as mana regen, healing, invisibility, etc. etc.
The big point of fleshsmithing is to take miasma. Miasma is... awesome! My only beef with taking fungal is that the inky hog lanterns are redundant as is the pet. You also won't need the mana shrooms either. And come on, yeah the heal in flesh smithing is over kill but it's kind of fun to heal 100 hp in a single cast.
The problem I have with your build jhffmn is what when you hit anti-magic enemies you will have serious trouble because both dredmor and creeps on levels where you meet mana stealing stuff will one or twohit your dragon friend. I strongly suggest adding in Staves and Dual Wielding because it boosts your spells (both the Staves skill and almost every staff in the game boosts spells in one way or another) while at the same time allowing you to beat the crap out of enemies in hand to hand - as long as you dont expect to count fully on it naturally Add in a level of Armorer and you are good to go with a ton of hp, armor and hp regeneration as well
OP mage build using core skills only: Necronomiconomics Emomancy Psionics Staves Dual Wield Burglary Alchemy In short, survive off of staves and go striaght upEmo to Black Eyeliner (maybe get lockpicks first) , then up Necromancy to Pact, then Burglary to MiMW. Psionics for Shove, then Necromancy to Tenebrous Rift, and you have amazing melee skills for solo mobs and Shove+Rift for zoos. It'seasy mode. I suppose if you don't have RotDG, you could replace Emomancy with Astrology, but you're better off spending the $3 and getting it.
Until Chests of Evil get nerfed to not be so uber, I would avoid a weapon skill. If sticking to core skills, Essence has the right idea except for that. You want Dual Wield picked, but do not bother putting points in it until you have extras to spare. I would switch staves for Mathemagics so you have a reliable teleport. The cooldown on Move In Mysterious Ways is too long to keep you alive at times. Your call on Alchemy though. I rather like Fungus. You can do almost everything Alchemy will do except the higher level recipes that you would likely make only once or twice per run anyway. And you can keep the fungus buffs up forever. (Well almost forever.) Emomancy is perfect for controlling enemies. Necro however only gets really uber if making a melee character or when you get Tenacious Rift. I would probably swap it for Promethean Magic.
OmniNegro is right on the weapon skills -- I'm playing the Beta, which means Staves gives you a few extra points of Magic Power, and dual-wielding them gives you several extra points of Magic Power. That, and the stun-proc synergizes very nicely with the vampiric regen from Pact of Fleeting Life even if you're not wielding a staff. As to Alchemy vs. Fungus, I choose Alchemy on this build for one simple reason: it's a Wizard skill, which means more Sagacity, which means more Magic Power, and you can craft a few Spatial potions for those rare occasions when MiMW fails you. That said, the build does benefit from Roguey stats since you will be in melee quite a bit, and Blungecap Vampirism stacks with Pact of Fleeting Life, so it is your call. Definitely if you want to be OP, don't swap Necro for Promethean. Black Eyeliner+Mark of Chthon+Pact of Fleeting Life means you look forward to solo mobs because you usually walk away with more HP than you started with, and Tenebrous Rift is the answer to hordes and zoos. Pyromancy will let you kill stuff, sure, but you don't get the side benefits that Necro gives you. If you want AoEs, you'll find that Emomancy's My Chemical Explosion will pick up the slack until you get around to Tenebrous Rift regardless.
