How do YOU deal with corruption as a melee?

So, I tend to prefer playing melee builds more than mages and ranged (and that also explains why I've only managed to beat Dredmor once I guess..) but I've never figured out a good way to deal with corrupting monsters. Lately, I've been running with Paranormal Investigator a lot to polymorph them into something else (yay for that getting fixed and not making zoos unbeatable!).

I'm not a big fan of skipping floors (5, 7, 10, 13, 14, 15..) and I rarely have enough bolts to deal with them.. Playing an heavy armored / block character doesn't seem to work if I don't completely stop all the damage they do. Being a crafter usually helps counter it somewhat since I can just upgrade the item that got corrupted (or craft it again if it's a top tier) but it doesn't really seem optimal. Also, I don't want to turn it off in the options.. Seems kinda cheaty to do that.

So how do you guys deal with them?

 

Crafting and ranged attacks, magic resist also helps.

 

Don't Krong your weapons and avoid artifact weapons until DL 14+. You should have enough magic resist at that point to avoid more than a handful of corruptions before Big D, and by that point a few points of negatives aren't crippling.

 

http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/dredmor-confessions.5106/page-3#post-60161

 

Heh, I don't want to do that. For the exact reason you posted. It feels like cheating to me.

So, I shouldn't use CoE weapons either? And I rarely Krong my weapons. 99% of the time, I put all of my kronging on a single item. The +'s usually surpasses the -'s.

Yeah.. I usually play a full crafter so that part I usually do (like I said in the OP tho, it doesn't seem optimal if my item is max tier. Having to re-craft all the lower levels too). Ranged Attacks are ok against the melee corrupters but against the Arch Diggles, they don't really help since their corruption comes from a spell. As for MR, I must be unlucky, I rarely find items with the stat until the very high levels

 

It depends on what crafting skills you have, and what other skills you have. But if I know there's going to be a lot of archdiggles and similar hobos, I just use crafted equipment instead of the normally-used one. If anything goes wrong I can just go invisible and kill them that way, but the point is, if you have perception and a crafting skill you are able to make this "spare" equipment good enough..

 

The exact opposite of what others do: I try to spread out my krongings. Around mid game when I start to find equipment to keep permanently, I'll start to collect stuff to encrust with and gradually work on one piece of equipment at a time. If, in that time, an item gets corrupted to a point where I need to discard it, I just use a spare (or hope for something better) and do it again.

Since higher quality (*********) artifacts get more enchants when they are kronged, I try to save up anvils until I find one.

 

Magical Law can polymorph monsters into other monsters, reduding the number of Corrupting monsters you have to deal with. Celestial Circle can get your Magic Resist up high enough that Corruption becomes largely ignorable. Flames of the Heckforge can eliminate corruption with relatively minor downside.

Really, though, the best way to deal with Corruption monsters is simply to make sure they never hit you in the first place. Practical Geology has Seismic Uppercut (stun) and Petrification, Warlockery has Chronomantic Twist plus a few tricks to deal mad damage quickly so you can eliminate them during the timestop portion of CT. Unarmed provides a pair of at-will Knock effects that can keep them out of your face, and then you can run a few steps until one of them recharges, let them close with you, and do it again, kiting them until they're dead. Psionics has Shove. Swashbuckling is the ultimate answer as long as they're few and far between. Astrology has Blinding Flash. Vampirism has Sparkles. The number of ways to incapacitate an enemy for a few turns while you eliminate them is profound -- and you'd be wise to learn how to incorporate several of them into a melee build.



If you're willing to go with mods, of course, there's the pleasantly game-changing Ninjitsu.

 

I'll have to bear the magical law thing in mind. I'm on my first run with that, in my current game.

Part of my problem is I lose track of what monsters actually cause it.

It's worth mentioning though, that floor 5 is not a really serious source of it. I don't tend to see it off the Magic Golems more than once on the floor, typically.

 

Dredmor (not that you care in this case), Vlad Digula (Digulaaaaaa!), Blob of Corruption, Magic Golem, Magic Dragon, Entropic Elemental, Acidic Slick, Eldritch Slick.

 

I remembered the first two and the two "magic" ones, for sure, and vaguely that some of the slicks did it. Much appreciated.

 

And Diggle Archmages, who do so with a ranged spell.

 

That's from Fax' mod of DOOM, not from the core game.

 

No, they do on the main game too Kazeto;

 

People never think about pets.
Those are the perfect equipment-safers, since they do the most powerful thing in the game: they derail mobs attention from you. So basically you cannot be harmed, as soon as there are pets near your enemies. And wizards aren't the only that get those.
Big Game Hunt - warrior skill, while giving you an amazing thing called "sight" and some minor stat bonuses, have one of the most amazing summons ever: 4 diggles, at once, all around you, for a cooldown. This is the best pet+class combo for a melee warrior, since levels in BGH gives you also warrior stat points.
Fungal Arts - rogue skill, gives you fungi, and most notably invisible fungis that lets you win games, and 2 (TWO) cooldown summons, each spawning into a cloud of spores that confuse your enemies (so they can not directly attack you also if there are no pets around). This is how I managed to fight non-animal (i had also vegan) corruption mobs in my only succesful run. Rogue stats are cool, too.
Demonology - rogue skill, gives lot of ways to fight corruption: +magic resistance, ranged attack, corruption removal (the only one in the game) and a 4 pet summon, too, like BGH. Demonology demonic skills come with a price, though, and so they are less effective than a combo of other skills, but give very cool abilities. Also, the demons are pretty tough.

 

Oh, you are right. My mistake, I guess it pays not to play with mods all the time.

 

I don't think about pets because generally, by the time large bodies of corrupting monsters are a thing, pets are a one-turn distraction at most. I generally get better use out of my resources by using that resources on other things.

 

Are you playing in GR?
Because in DM I've never seen "hordes of corrupting monsters", you should manage to never get surrended by them.

 

There's a difficulty setting other than GR? >_> Joking aside, only reason I ever play on a lower setting is to test out new skill combos, see if they work, usually only doing DL1. Then I do the same skills in GR.. In my current game, on DL7, the zoo had about 30 Magic Dragons out of 90ish mobs :/

 

Hit a monster zoo on one of the deeper levels, and if you are unlucky (a large zoo, not even talking about double ones) and get unlucky with monster type lottery for the zoo and voilà, you are standing in front of about 20~30 corrupting monsters. That can be a lot, depending on the character.