Project: Community Skills Guide

Anyone done Clockwork Knight, Battle Geology, or Demonologist?

I'd be happy to do writeups on any of those.

 

We're working our way up to those skills. Right now, we're doing RotDG, then YHTNTEP. Although I was actually planning on kicking off Demonology tomorrow, if you wanna plunge in, be my guest.

 

Demonology
Type: Rogue
Role: Payload
Strategy: Demonology is a tree with quite a few things, but which you take for 1 skill, and one skill alone: Celestial Circle. Only take it past three points if you're going for some weird theme build, and never buy the capstone.

Pros: Celestial Circle is useful for a number of things, but the number one thing is tanking zoos. With Demonology you can stand there for your average zoo and simply kill every monster in the zoo. One. By. One. This begins to break down on later floors, but even there Celestial Circle lets you turn and fight for far longer than you should be able to. Also the first level skill has amazing utility.

Cons: Taking this past level 3 is a questionable decision at best. That leads it to being an entire tree taken for one skill. That one skill turns off whenever you move, including whenever you teleport (including due to encrust instability!), and it drains mana at a fair clip. In short, it is a warrior skill in the rogue tree that favors very tanky gameplay and doesn't offer much in the way of damage increase.

Takeaway: Demonology is the sort of skill you take for one purpose, Monster Zoos. Fortunately that purpose is incredibly useful. If a warrior is not taking Demonology, they have to invest significant time and points to allow them to handle monster zoos, and nothing will replace that 75% boost to magic resist (75%!) that lets you ignore the casters in the back of the zoo.

In terms of theme builds, early it is the struggle against the darkness, while later in the tree you give in to the darkness for 'powerful' effects.

Skill by Skill Breakdown

The Light


Turn Demon: Oh sure, this does good damage to demons, and stuns them. That's solid. But what it really does for you is move stuff. Warriors hate item islands. Warriors hate those rooms you can't quite get through. Warriors hate destructible walls. Turn Demon gets those items, blows up those walls, and rearranges the room.
+1 Radiant Resist

Fervor of the Flagellant: +2 damage (1 a hard-to-resist type) +1 to two common resists, -2 health. Stacks 3 times. Overall this is a solid damage boost early game that also comes with a sometimes-scary drawback of sapping your health. Late game this is amazingly irrelevant.
+1 Radiant Resist (+2 Radiant total)

Celestial Circle: Shall we go over what this does?

Resists: 9 Aetherial, Fire, Necromantic, Transmutive resist.
Block: 46.6 Block Chance.
Magic Resist: 75 Magic Resist

3 Armor, 5 health regen (Nice) and -10 Nimbleness (meh, dodge)

This makes you basically immune to magic, bumps your block up to 100% if you have anywhere near decent block, and adds in resists for a number of archtypes, and you can regain health quite quickly. Hello.
+1 Radiant Resist (and the last time this happens, for a total of +3 overall now)

The Dark
As you push farther into this tree you start to pick up a nasty debuff called Forbidden Knowledge. It has a chance to proc every time you use a dark demonology skill, and stacks at least 5 times (possibly more). The debuff gives +2 Sagacity... and -10 Radiant Resist. This is bad. Very, very bad. Ever had -60 Radiant Resist? I have. Fish paladins can 2 shot you. Since the point of demonology is to tank zoos, fish paladins like zoos (and are all over various levels) and you don't want to start accumulating stacks of this next to fish... le sigh. So bad. Have not worked out the conditions that procs it, but it is clearly from the demonology tree (and likes to proc off Infernal Contracts)

Note: Killer Vegan makes the fish paladins neutral towards you. This negates the entire drawback of this side of the tree, and is highly recommended if you want to go further in this tree.

Abyssal Fire: Adds flame damage to 7 attacks, and a chance to cast either a powerful firebolt or a firefield. The effect doesn't necessarily scale well, but overall it's not terrible. The fact it only lasts 7 attacks makes it the sort of effect that doesn't really do anything. It's nice when its up, but it's not terrible when it's down, and you won't be spacebarring to get it back.
- 3 Radiant Resist (total of +/- 0 right now. This is the beginning of the 'dark' demonology tree)

Infernal Contract: This summons 4 reasonably strong demons. What's the downside? Really irritating debuffs. Including necropain and others. Fortunately all of the damage can be turned off by standing in a Celestial Circle. Do this. Also very good at proccing Forbidden Knowledge (again, panic alert time if the fish come for you).

After level 11 these start to fall off in usage dramatically, and by levels 14 and 15 you're lucky if they last more than 1 hit (at least there's 4 of them)
- 2 Radiant Resist (-2 total)

Flames of the Heckforge: Cleanses corruption from items. Useful, I guess, but comes with a 99 turn debuff to all primary skills (granted, not an amazingly terrible one, but it's still bad). It generally feels worse than 'this translation is all wrong!' in pretty much every way. As usual (and unlike translation) does not cleanse Krong's Displeasure.
-3 Radiant Resist, +6 Fire resist (-5 Radiant, +6 Fire total)

No You Are the Demons: Worst skillpoint EVER. What does this do? Well, it first gives you some weak damage buffs and tanks your radiant resist for some more fire resist. Woo. Oh and it gives you a 1% chance of proccing demon form from hitting or taking hits in melee. Demon form gives you some mediocre buffs and REMOVES ALL BUFFS FROM ALL OTHER SKILL TREES. And all other skills. Yeah, werediggle form part 2, only with none of the stat buffs that make werediggle form worthwhile.

So basically your survivability falls off amazingly, your damage drops off, you're locked out of all trees, and you spent an actual point on this. You fool. Take it for the achievement only, possibly right before you kill Dredmor (unless you plan to melee him, because then this thing will kill you).

+4 Fire Damage, +4 Fire Resist, +1 Transmutive Resist, -4 Radiant Resist (+10 Fire, -9 Radiant, +1 Transmutive Resist, and 4 Fire damage overall)

 

Sounds about right. I've never seen anything whatsoever compelling me to go past 3 points in demonology, and I didn't even know about the knowledge debuff.

 

I found Infernal Contract and Abyssal Fire to be pretty useful and the hit to your radiant resist isn't that big a deal at that stage but the one run I maxed this tree out on was before the introduction of the Forbidden Knowledge debuff, which sounds pretty horrific.

Flames of the Heckforge is pretty worthless as it stands. It negates corruption, which is easily avoided, but not Krong curses, which are inevitable if you bother to use the anvils at all. Considering the price you pay for this skill it should get rid of Krong curses too, but I believe I've seen a discussion of the issue somewhere before and this would take some hard coding work. Don't quote me on it though.

You are the Demons is a pretty suicidal skill that takes everything and gives nothing back. The one character I played who maxed out this skill tree was ultimately killed by this skill proccing during a monster zoo. I'm not the only was who has experienced this disappointment you can be sure.

 

Clockwork Knight: A Warrior's Mage

Type: Warrior
Role: Engine
Theme: Take a warrior. He swings, he blocks, he dodges, he swings, etc. What does Clockwork Knight do for this warrior? He swings. He teleports across the map to take out a caster. He sends a rocket punch at a caster whose fleeing. He dives into a group of monsters and burns them all to death. Oh, and then he swings 4 times in all 4 cardinal directions, blasting the hell out of them.

Warrior. Two point oh.

Pros: This tree basically exists to solve a number of holes in the pure warrior build - and do so with style. Moreover it relies on basic warrior stats instead of magic power, and relies on cooldowns and self-damage rather than mana. It adds an entire new dimension to playing warrior, one that you barely thought of before, and certainly one you never considered as 'this will be what my warrior is doing with his life.'

The capstone skill is an strong AOE with an insane self-buff that lets you tear through crowds of enemies like they don't exist.

Cons: Clockwork knight doesn't add much damage. It doesn't make you more likely to hit. It doesn't add critical chance. It does very little to boost your damage to the one single guy in front of you (except for the insanely good capstone, which is six (yes, SIX) skillpoints in). It also doesn't add to basic survivability much - you have a few good survival aspects, but mostly you don't gain anything. Tinkering is practically mandatory with Clockwork Knight.

This means that it consumes two trees (Tinkering and Clockwork Knight) and doesn't directly boost what makes a warrior a warrior. Did your preferred build have Burglary and Psionics for utility? It's going to be awfully hard to slide them in around the Clockwork Knight package (on the plus side Tinkering is the best trap removal skill tree bar none (offering +2 trap sight and +10(!) trap affinity).

You have cooldown management, you have mana management, you have health management (beyond things hitting you), you have all the things you normally avoid by swinging axes at people. This makes it change the entire dynamic of a warrior, and if you don't like that this skill will suck for you

Takeaway: Clockwork knight becomes the theme of your build when you take it - but what rewards you reap when you go this route. Teleports, stuns, AOEs, Ranged attacks, and even a healthy (if mana hungry) buff to survivability in melee. Attached to one of the best crafting skills in the entire game, and one that is custom-designed for the exotic-damage hell that is level 15.

The downside is the one damage buff to a single target is a 5% chance to proc a double attack (Daggers has a MUCH better skill - which also has synergies with the CK tree). The only survivability buff is a 1 mana/3 turn buff that does less than the Master of Arms passive capstone.

You must take this skill to capstone if you're going to take it - if you don't, you've wasted a lot of time and effort to avoid what might be the best capstone in the entire game.

Skill Breakdown


Tech Scavenge - When you kill a construct, it automatically spawns scrap iron/steel/brass/copper. Two pieces of scrap make a bar. Additionally you have two sets of 50% chances to spawn crafting items for Tinkering. I'm not quite sure how it all stacks, but you'll be rolling in bars by the end game, guaranteed. You can absolutely farm constructs to get amazing amounts of materials, and you will never run short.

As a side note, the archery tree is quite weak, outside of the arrow recovery. With Tech Scavenge, the incredible levels of tinkering you can achieve, and bolt crafting, you can basically build an archer, while utterly skipping the (reasonably terrible) archery tree.


Rocket-Powered Punch: 24 turn cooldown. Does 1+melee crushing damage, twice (So 2+2xMelee damage, but double reduction from enemy armor/crushing resist), knocks the target back two squares, and stuns them.

Basically this skill can kill people running away, knock away enemies who are right on your tail if you're low on health, or just kill irritating casters outright (casters rarely have any armor, meaning 2+2xmelee can outright kill them).
+1 Smithing Skill

Rocket Jump: 5 turn cooldown. How to explain Rocket jump? First, it's a teleport for as long as you can see, in any cardinal direction. And it will consume a turn if you misclick and misaim, so be careful. It also does a LARGE amount of damage to you when you first get it, so be careful. That being said, later on this skill will become a staple.

The damage scales off tinkering (12x Tinkering at the highest point!) so high tinkering makes this amazing. It does 20 damage to you, 15 blasting and 5 fire, and the blasting is not mitigated by armor. That being said, a later skill gives you 8 blasting resist, which (together with 5 fire resist which is trivially easy to get) can make this skill cost anywhere from 0-7 HP... on a 5 turn cooldown, and doing over a hundred damage to nearby monsters. Yeah. It's a beast.
+1 Tinkering Skill (+1 Smithing, +1 Tinkering overall)

Augmented Limbs: Passive. Each hit has a 5% chance to proc Clockwork Threshing, an attack that does an attack in all 4 cardinal directions - including to the monster that you just attacked. Each attack does have the same 5% chance to proc clockwork threshing.

If you're going 1v1, it's 5% boost in damage, but if you're surrounded it's massive. I mean too bad a warrior would have to be an idiot to let themselves get surrounded without some sort of teleport to bail them out... (synergy, oh god does this tree have it)

Parabolic Mecha-Stomp: 50 turn cooldown, 2 square teleport, knocks everything near you back. It's basically a way to get out of tight spots. Between the knockback and the short-range teleport, this can usually get you out of most situations. Also blows up destructible walls.

Apparently it does minimal self-damage, but it's mitigated by armor, and my armor always absorbed 100% of it. Something to watch out for if you have terrible armor, I guess.

Thaumecha-Kinetic Damper: Mana-draining buff. Gives you 4 Slashing/4 Crushing/4 Piercing/8 Blasting resist. Note this is resist - Rocket Jump suddenly becomes much safer!

The mana drain on this is EXTREME though. Not only is it 1 per 3 turns, you lose 2 mana every time you get hit. Even if the damage is fully resisted. Extremely infrequent use, since even drinks often won't be enough to keep this up in a crowd - but while its up, rocket jump away!
+1 Smithing (+2 Smithing, +1 Tinkering overall)

Charge of the Steam Brigade: 120 turn cooldown. Oh god this skill. This capstone is nuts. Even on floor 15 you'll find yourself charging into the middle of a zoo and killing 8-10 monsters. It does massive fire damage (Scaling off your tinkering) with the damage much higher closer to the center of the radius. It also creates a flame field that burns for even more fun and painful damage.

That all? Nah. It gives you a buff for 8 blasting resist, 8 fire resist, 8 armor, and 8 melee power. In addition, you gain 20% chance for Clockwork Threshing, and a 25% chance for Clockwork Reflexes (same thing as threshing, but procs when you get hit). Oh and still multi-procs. The buff lasts 20 turns, and for those 20 turns you are a whirlwind of living death, completely invincible.

I suggest rocket jumping out before it's over - the 8 blasting resistance will cut it down same as the Damper, and if you combine them the damage is completely mitigated.
+1 Tinkering (+2 Smithing, +2 Tinkering overall)

(Note: I could go into the exact mechanics of damage for rocket jump and CotSB, but they're INCREDIBLY wonky, and j-factor exists for a reason.)

Synergies
Clockwork Knight Synergizes incredibly well with every warrior skill and many rogue skills, enabling anything from archer builds to dual wielding on down. This list focuses on skills that work with Clockwork Knight skills specifically.

Daggers: Both of the 'two attacks, one dagger' attacks can proc Clockwork Threshing. That means this is a fine weapon skill to take with Clockwork Knight, if you must take a weapon skill. Daggers also has some really good stuff, so basically if you must take a weapon skill, take that one.

Berserker Rage: Berserker Rage triggers off getting hit. Clockwork Knight can survive being surrounded very easily. There's some synergy here... even if I'm not a big fan of the Beserker Rage tree.

Demonology: Teleport in. Celestial Circle. Lay waste to the surrounding area. Use bolts on things that aren't near you. Teleport out when you get in trouble. Trololol. Frankly this is almost cruel in what it will do to many zoos.

Rogue Scientist: Clockwork Reflexes is Clockwork Threshing that triggers off being hit. Rogue Scientist has more of a ranged feel to it than Clockwork Knight, so I'm not highly recommending this, but if you want some sort of multi-attack mayhem build, this is it. Apparently there's a build that starts Clockwork Knight/Rogue Scientist/Tinkering/Wandcrafting/Alchemy, which seems utterly nuts to me, but could be insanely fun.

Tinkering: Practically mandatory if you want to get much out of this tree.

Killer Vegan: Bolts provide a practical way to kill animals for their juicy experience, while the huge health benefits and blinding flash is nice for a class that wants to live in the middle of the mess.

 

No You are the Demons:

LOL.Pretty much! The capstone feels like a giant "I told you so" from the tree. The intro information, all the text descriptions from the Dark portion of the skill set- all warnings about the bad thing down the line.

I would also note that the Celestial Circle is great for trivializing corruption monsters later on, once you can hit 100% resist with it up. And often named monsters- I always pop the skill before opening a Chest of Evil.

 

Hmm...

I know it doesn't count for much, but I can't remember how long was it since I hadn't played a build with Clockwork Knight. Because you can never have enough teleports, and because all the scrap metal makes it possible to abuse ranged weaponry - that alone is enough of a reason to think about choosing this skill tree for one's build.

 

The best synergy comes from the tinkering tree, not even neccessarily the bonus to the skills itself:
Clockwork Ravagers.
More chance for extra attacks.
Which brings me to the next part:
A Clockwork Knight, Demonology, Tinkering, Vampirism build is damn strong.
Especially if you also pack Rogue Scientist.
And Daggers.
3 attacks per round (With these skills quite easy to reach), that are also mostly AoE, healing you like a beast.
Really, vampirism is brought to new heights by multiple attacks/turn.

 

Someone remind me to come back here for the CK writeup once we get to YHTNTEP skills. Also, I'm about half way done updating the PDF. I've decided to make seperate PDFs for each expansion, so people can just pull the PDF for CotW if they only want to know about the skills from that expansion. It's also easier to manage upkeep on smaller files...

Demonology
Type: Rogue
Role: Turbocharger or Payload
Demonology either makes you a better melee combatant or serves as a rather bizzare late game victory option that may not actually lead to victory.
Theme: Because Knowing Is Half The Battle
Strategy:
Demonologists either want to crowd control enemies and fight them on the ground of their choosing or turn into hulking monsters that beat everyone senseless. KInd of a Jeckle and Hyde thing, but that was already done in Werediggle, wasn't it?
Pros:
A knockback AoE is great for crowd control, the Flagellent proc is kinda nice and Celestial Circle has real power with its block and resist bonuses. Abyssal Fire is more useful for the resists it grants than the fire damage, it particularly helps when advancing on enemies in the DL 9 monster zoo. Remember that fire is one of the most damaging types in the game! Flames of the Heckforge does remove corruption, but only slowly and with debuffs. The Contract is like a more powerful Diggle Hunt Pack, except with a potential downside.
Cons:
Where to start? The Forbidden Knowledge debuff isn't as bad as it seems since only fish can hit you with Radiance damage, but they appear on 4 floors, with the potential to spawn on 4 more floors as out of depth monsters. You'll have to be real careful if you get it on the foor out of depth floors, and you may want to avoid the skills that proc it entirely on their home floors. Flames of the Heckforge just stinks, and with Encrusting around building a good weapon or override corruption is easier than ever, making this skill almost pointless. All polymorph effects are pretty bad, but one you have no control over is more like a suicide waiting to happen.
Synergies:
Killer Vegan is a must for people wanting higher levels of this skill, as it pretty much hoses fish. If you plan to abuse Celestial Circle you might want a mana regen skill like Ley Walker or Tourist.
Takeaway:
I'll confess, I don't like Demonology and have only taken it a few times. Celestial Circle is powerful, but if that's all I take it for then I essentially have a skill tree that's only three levels long and requires that I sit around like a bump on the log, drinking booze, to be most effective. I prefer a more proactive approach. Besides, both block and possibly magic resist become much less useful as the game goes on and enemies grow better at criticals and haywires. I like skills with better late game scaling, something this skill doesn't have if you go two and done. The later stuff is all done better elsewhere. Unless the skill gets buffed in the future I give it a solid avoid.

 

GreyICE and the wiki both claim it is Rogue.

 

The data files for DoD claim the same.

 

Yeah, it's nearly worthless for a 'pure' rogue because it does nothing for a hit-and-run playstyle and encourages standing there and tanking stuff like a champ... but Rogue tree it most certainly is.

 

Then again, if you are playing a rogue and have to stay there and take hits, then it's a perfect thing for rogues, and it's not like warriors do need it all that much (for them, it is merely helpful). If anything, other than the last skill (which I guess could be made useful if the polymorphed form got a rewrite), it is a tree that can be likened to Clockwork Knight - it seems to be weird something, but it really can supplement the archetype it belongs to well.

 

I even knew that. This is yet another argument for not posting 10-15 minutes after waking up...

Post edited.

 

Which I find kind of weird, really. If anything, I think that in games like that everything should have alternatives, and thus there should be something accessible for everyone that would also remove corruption.
Perhaps an encrust that requires no skill to make and removes one instance of corruption but increases instability would do (for bonus points, you could make it use something that would drop from Vlad Digula, because even if the drop was almost guaranteed, seldom a player would want to get through the whole Diggle Hell and fight him just for a chance of decreasing their items' corruption)? With instability surely awaiting a rewrite, I'm certain that it would be a "bad enough" trade-off for something like that.

This taunting attempt has failed, Sir Nicholas. Because every character should have the means to attack problematic creatures from distance, and it's not that hard to notice corrupting monsters; ergo, when someone engages corrupting monsters in melee and subsequently gets corrupted, it's PEBKAC.

But props for trying to be evil and petty.

 

Diggle Archmages don't need melee :/

(los/silence/mirrors etc work, but you need more than just "attack from distance" unless you have a large Sight bonus)

 

Just to go OT for a moment:

Nicholas, have you ever considered invisible corrupting monsters? With monster blink?

Players will go nuts! Kekekek.

In a more on-topic fashion:

Sure, Heckforge is the only skill that removes corruption, but you can just layer over the nast bits with encrusts. Of course, the encrust system is probably due for a nerf in the near future....

 

We might as well rename the skill tree celestial circle and remove all other skills (I'm kidding)

Anyways the Celestial Circle skill tree is a pretty great tree. Whenever I take it I rush to celestial circle and then forgot about the tree forever. Celestial circle is great for that floor 2 monster zoo which generally is the 2nd hurdle of the game (the first hurdle being getting to level 2). Then it makes floor 5 a cake walk. It is still strong by the last floor, which is why getting on the first floor is so great. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER get you are the demon (unless to get the achievement) it is the worst skill in the game by a HUGE margin.