Last night I "concluded" my first Dungeons of Dredmor game. Permadeath was on, but I only played on normal difficulty and without the extra 5 expansion levels. My character was a straight warrior who within five floors or so could 2hitKO pretty much any standard enemy and dodge/counter to a ridiculous degree. Clearing monster zoos was trivial with a few buffs and non-idiotic positioning. Evil chest enemies died without a second thought. Magic using enemies in groups could chink away my health if I wasn't careful, but even that grew rare with some late-game attention to stealth and magic resistant skills/equips. Honestly, this run was pretty boring by the end of it. At which point I opened a door and was instantly reduced from 130-something health to 8-with-heavy-damage-over-time. Needless to say, I died only slightly after articulating the inevitable "what". I guess my question is: was Lord Dredmor actually supposed to be that powerful or did I somehow get lumped with an ultimate hardcore final final level version of him? Is this an intentional masochistic spoil-yourself-silly plan-from-the-first-step game-mechanic-abusal-orgasm challenge? Because it seemed out of place and kinda disappointing compared to how balanced and fair the rest of the dungeon was.
130 to 8? I suspect you must have hit some kind of trap. If not, Dredmor also has two dangerous attack modes: Viking Arctic vortex which does heavy DoT and Thor's Fulminaric bolt, which hurts a lot. You must have gotten hit by both of these over two turns. Acidic trail traps can do a large amount of damage for the unprepared as well. Don't forget other stuff like Fiery surprise traps, or similar. Also, welcome to Roguelikes. Dredmor isn't really that hard, but it's those two attack modes which are very dangerous.
The trap was that I opened a door and Lord Dredmor was standing behind it, I think. I might have been hit by multiple spells if one of them stunned/paralysed/whatever my character for a turn or two. I didn't catch the message log, I was a little distracted by my sudden lack of HP.
Thor's fulminaric bolt has a stun component built into it along with high damage. You have to bulk up as far as possible on to avoid the stun and lower damage. This is Dredmor's single most dangerous spell; you can laugh at the rest (other than vortex) by wearing two mirror shields, but really, other than stacking resistance, you can't tank that spell more than once. Getting stunned is almost a guaranteed kill.
That. And try to raise your voltaic resistance somewhat; it's just a drop in the sea because the spell deals a few dozen points at once, but if you can raise it to 20~25 it will still be a significant reduction.
