Project: Community Skills Guide

Alchemy is my favorite skill. I feel naked without it these days. It has healing (in instant and regeneration flavors), mana restoration, escape mechanisms in the form of spatial instability infusions, bonus damage and resists, armor (potions of steeling), some pretty class items (window of elements), and AoE damage (brimstone flasks). The best thing about alchemy is that 90% of its recipes are Aqua Vitae + something or Empty Flask + something. If you really want to cut back your inventory space, you can hold on to acidum salis, aqua vitae, brimstone, saltpetre, salt, rust, aluminum dust, and empty flasks and be able to make pretty much anything you want as you come across the rest of the ingredients.

Alchemists are best served by emptying drink vendors of all the booze that can be turned into aqua vitae and immediately making aqua vitae out of it. Really, I find that most often, the ingredient I'm missing is aqua vitae, which means when I find a booze vendor, I immediately have a stack of new potions.

Rogue Scientist works amazingly well with alchemy: salvage ooze powers a lot of the cooler alchemical recipes, acidical projector and gas canister are scaled on your alchemy level, and the tinkering levels that rogue scientist give let you do the 1 hematite -> 2 iron ingots -> 4 rust -> 8 healing potions chain.

 

In my opinion Alchemy is the best crafting skill. It works for every single build in the game. Healing potion are the second best reliable healing in the game. With only 2 you make 2 healing/mana potion with rust/powered aluminum and aqua vitae. I normally have about 100+ healing potion by floor 4-5 with the invest of only one skill point. By sides having healing/mana healing potion alchemy does a wide range of other useful potions. Having a supply of Invisible, Purtiy, Replenishment, and instability potions is amazing. Having a horde of Invisible+replenishment potions is enough of a push to make some builds able to defeat dreadmor. Alchemy combos very well with Perception.

 

Let's not forget offense, either. While Alchemy's throwing weapons are largely sub-par (Y U NO SCALE?), the one exception is the Noxious Brimstone Flask, which scales (.2) with Magic Power. That's not a hell of a lot, but considering that if you're willing to give up Cheesy Omlettes (hel-lo Vegan!), you can pump out several dozen of these babies (Empty Flask + 2xBrimstone; 5 Alchemy nets you 3 per craft), you can put a few of the nastier zoos on 'easy mode' by chucking one of these things out every 14 turns or so.

Alchemy also produces the Jingly Jangly Staff of Crystals, which is one of the highest-base-damage staves in the game, and the Fruitful Staff (hel-lo Vegan!) which can singlehandedly keep you stocked on Aqua Vitae for the rest of the game as long as you have enough Alchemy to...oh, right.

Finally, every Alchemist should be familar with the following mana engine:
Empty Flask + Aqua Regia --> Acid Flask
Acid Flask + Mud Wen --> Grog
That might not look like much, but at 5 , you get seven Grogs (112 Mana) out of that little exchange. It's a good thing you can't purify Grog into Aqua Fortis.


Alchemy synergizes with Veganism, (hel-lo, Vegan!), and oddly also with Fungal Arts (turning the dreaded Mud Wens into Grog -- and also, Night Caps are the only thing in the game that crafts into not one but two Aqua Fortis with enough Alchemy skill. Also, Puffballs confuse enemies, which means they'll wander around in your Brimstone clouds longer, making them extra effective.

 

Smithing
Type: Warrior
Role: Turbocharger or Payload
Smithing makes most weapon skill trees better and keeps the tanky builds in better armor than the RNG provides for the first half of the game, and in the deep levels its an engine for massive stacks of throwing weaponry, which will offer huge versatility for warriors in dealing with pretty much anything that corrupts.
Theme: Catch 'em between the hammer and the anvil.
Strategy:
A smith makes gear. He makes pretty good gear, but he doesn't make crazy great gear. What he does do is squeeze melee-centric value out of every iron ingot you find.
Pros:
With a little luck you can craft a steel breastplate, maybe even full plate, by the end of DL2. This and Iron weapons will make everything down to DL 6 fairly easy, and upgrading to serpentine plate makes it even better. Once you've spent the bulk of your early steel on good armor you can think about getting some decent weapons. But armor is really where the skill shines. Two trap skill is nice if you've got a primary source, such as Burglarly, and you want to keep harvesting traps a little bit later. But the biggest static bonus the tree gives you is its 3 fire resist. That's haus. There's 15 unique enemies in the game that deal fire damage, and they average around 7 points per hit. Resisting three of that will really add up over the course of the game. And that doesn't take into account the traps and spells that deal fire damage which you'll be facing.
Cons:
All the best stuff in the game can't be crafted by smithing. Kronghammer? Nope. Dual's Possible? Nope. Savvarius? Nope. The closest you can get is the Royal Beatdown and the Hexaxe (which is admittedly the best axe, but what if you don't want axes on this run?) All the best armor and many of the better weapons are Tinkering crafts, although admittedly Tinkering crafts that are based on Smithing crafts. This is annoying, but not fatal to the skill.
Synergies:
A lot of the Tinkering crafts depend on Fine Steel gear easily gotten from Smithing. Alchemy likes the ability to double ingots, and hands you lots of emeralds for various crafts. Perception keeps you in ingots and provides some of the harder to find base items, like leather boots for steel shod boots. Weapon skills love the fact you can craft excellent weapons to use.
Takeaway:
One important thing to keep in mind about crafting skills is that they are almost always getting better, with each patch adding new craftables, hidden and basic, to every skill and just about every skill level. They're only going to get better as time goes on. That said, they're not for everyone. Smithing is for the warrior who wants to use specific gear, and wants to be sure he can find it. It's the least bookshelf-dependent crafting skill outside of Wandcrafting, making it a good choice for starting crafters who want to see real results from their crafting skill. But it doesn't do you much but give you throwables and static bonuses on later levels, which is nice but not exciting.

 

As a pretty new player, this thread has been awesome. Thanks everybody!

On a selfish note, I've been looking at the Werediggle skill and wondering. Is it coming up in the queue anytime soon?

 

Werediggle is an expansion skill, and as such I wasn't planning to cover it 'til we've covered all 34 skills from the core game. That said, it is at the top of the list to cover when RotDG comes up, becaues yeah, it's weird.

 

I feel that smithing is a bit of medicore skill myself. When I design a build I'm worried about the first 4 floors and last 4 floors. Smithing is the kind of skill that is useful for first 8 floors, but after that you don't need it for anything. You will find better equipment, weapons, and throwing items after floor 8. The extra aren't that useful compared to a whole another skill tree that is useful the whole game. The main draw of smithing is to get early . I would rather have shield bearer or berseker rage for that purpose. I would consider this the second worst crafting skill being just a bit better than wand lore.

 

Lorrelian's write-up on Smithing is excellent - totally nails that the biggest consistent benefit is good in the early game - which is huge. I personally find Smithing very usefull - it gives solid benefits to and , which I always appreciate, and many of the hidden things you can craft are actually useful.

The downside of Smithing is that there are a WHOLE LOT of intermediary weapons / armor which nobody would ever make, period. I'd say a good 40% of the Smithing craftables are junk - or at least they are by the time you have the materials to make them. Golden Axe, anyone? These useless craftables don't bother experts - who just ignore them - but they make smithing less accessible for new players, who can't see exactly what they will be getting for their time & effort, and are likely to be disappointed.

Actually - has anyone thought about putting weapon stats on the crafting menu?

 

Exceptions to the above: an Axes run and/or a Throwing run. Hexaxes are fly, and pelting enemies to death is significantly easier when you have 100+ Nzappa Zaps and Javelins.

Smithing is also good for Unarmed runs as many of the best shields can be Smithed, especially the anti-magic ones.

 

Exceptions to the above: an Axes run and/or a Throwing run. Hexaxes are fly, and pelting enemies to death is significantly easier when you have 100+ Nzappa Zaps and Javelins.

Smithing is also good for Unarmed runs as many of the best shields can be Smithed, especially the anti-magic ones.

 

An echo!

I think I remember Daynab saying that's on a to-do list, somewhere, and it would definitely make crafting more accessible to new players.

 

If I were the paranoid sort I would say that Essence double posts to gain post count. But who am I to say anything about that? And besides, I think he posts from a phone. It is purely a technical matter. And does not bother me any.

Your memory is correct Lorrelian. It is slated for eventual addition. (Probably another ten expansions down the road. But the current one may make it to Desura and Gamefly by then. )

 

Yeah, due to the way my Kindle processes the on-page scripts, I cant use the Delete, Edit, or Report buttons from the hospital (where my son is getting an EEG.)

 

Well, according to the new expansion announcement pictures, the encrusting window does have armor/weapon stats and the window seems to be an extension of the crafting window; so I'm confident in assuming that the should have the stats in the upcoming expansion.

 

Smithing can also make Asgardian Stormhammer which is up there with everything and has a pretty simple recipe.

 

The Stormhammer requires Smith 7 though, doesn't it? Smithing alone won't get you there.

 

Let me be the first here to say that we hope your son is well, Essence. If I believed in a deity, I would pray for him. But as it is, I will just channel some good will towards him in the aether.

 

It's so easy to think of you as a full-time cynic, Omni, and then you go and say something nice like that and completely ruin my image of you.

Thanks.

 

I *AM* a full-time cynic. But I can be optimistic about all the doom and gloom from time to time.

 

Omni is a saint. He generates all that negative energy so the doom and gloom will focus on him. Like some kind of bad mojo magnet or a human karma shield. He's an inspiration to us all.

Hope your son gets well soon Essence.

and, oh yeah... smithing. Awesome for early game armor, nice for late game throwing items, best used by blitzing up the tree for crazy armors as your reagents allow. Great synergies with any melee build and is best friends with tinkering. Even better for clockwork knights, and a sweet burl progression on top for extra face beating fun.

Smithing is one of my favorite skills for warrior builds but if you aren't going to gun it early you should probably pass on it entirely.