This seemed like a 'general' type thread, it's really a suggestion to players who (like me) had a lot of frustration continually having semi-good runs, thinking 'this might be the one', and then, yet again, dying - either to an oversight, running into a trap, taking on one too many enemies at a time, etc. I've only gotten to Dredmor 4 times now. The first time I got destroyed. The other 3 I defeated him, but the first 2 times I used exploits: The first time was back when you could reroll stats on weapons (Archaeology) that would stack infinitely. The second time was when I would force quit the game on the "Congratulations! You have died!" screen and load the autosave (I... don't know if this has been fixed... has it?) So, back to the point. The way I finally beat Dredmor. I thought to myself, "I generally know how this game is played. I know what to do, how to do it, and I have a set of skills that feels right." So, I rolled up 5 different characters, all with the same skillset (in case anyone is interested, Arbalism, Fleshsmithing, Bloodmage, Tinkering, Smithing, Killer Vegan, Clockwork Knights). Then I played each character through one level (exp. level, not floor) and saved, moved on to the next character. I got all the characters up to about level 13 with this method (all them were on floor 4 or 5 by this point). A couple died, and I had to get them back up to speed. But this insured that, whatever happened, I had 5 characters ready to go. Once my chosen character hit level 13, he already had decent artifacts and was doing good enough damage that I was confident to continue deeper into the dungeon. I continued to play carefully, and this character ended up going all the way down and winning (this was also the character I proceeded to take to Diggle Hell just for grins, where I ended up fighting Vlad Digula twice - so this one character defeated Dredmor and 2 Digulas.) I think it was a psychological thing. Knowing that I could keep all these characters up to speed, and at the same point in the game, I got really good and 'not screwing up.' So, whether this helps anyone or not, this was a good method for me. If this is the wrong board, or if this is deemed a useless topic, apologies, but I thought it might be helpful/of interest to 'at least someone', and thought 'general' was the right place for it.
The first time that I killed Dred was on 1.0.4 I think. My build was Maces, Dual, Berzerk, Armor, Vampirism, Burgaly and Smithing. Was nice when vampirism sucked life rom anything. I hammered my head on this build (some times with assassination or Archeology on the mix) until I got to Dredmor. I don't remember how I killed him, but I recall that he died by himself on a trap.
Arbalism...? Either way, my first kill was kind of exploity (he spawned behind some lava and didn't try to come after me), but the second was a better kill. Essentially, I found him and threw everything at him including the kitchen sink.
He means Archery; it is kind of weird that a skill named "Archery" pertains to using crossbows, so since trebuchets (giant crossbows, basically) are also called arbalists, he proposed changing that skill tree's name in some other thread.
Erm... An arbalest is a crossbow. This is a trebuchet: I'm finding almost no reference to a trebuchet crossbow - I think we mean ballista. And it's not the I expect the change to be made on my account, necessarily, I just enjoy using the word.
The 'giant crossbow' is known as a ballista. In searching I actually am not finding reference to a "trebuchet crossbow" - I found a single custom model, I don't know how common it was. Trebuchet is a type of catapult. And neither trebuchet or ballista are weildable, we are talking about artillery.
Yes, we mean a ballista. I blame all that on my sleep deprivation, as usually... Though why the hell had I made that mistake is something I know not of, because one pretty much has to be trying to make it.