What should a 'great build' be able to do?

• Kill generic bad guys (up close)
• Kill generic bad guys (far away)
• Handle traps (somehow, not necessarily with trap affinity)
• Get Away (invis, teleport, etc.)
• Get 'island items' and other 'inaccessible things'
• Open secret walls
• Incapacitate or Distract Enemies (stun, pets, etc.)
• Heal
• Restore Mana
• Handle Zoos
• Uncurse yourself
• Handle high-power Named Mobs
• Mitigate Spell Effects (magic resist, 100% Block, magic reflect, high resists)
• Kill Dredmor
• Accelerate XP?
• Steal from Brax?

...anything else? I'm trying to make a list of 'what makes the compleat adventurer' so I can try to make some truly all-purpose builds, and I thought it would be a good resource for people.

 

Uh.. Able to benefit from the gear and items found, somehow (IBIAM, some degree of crafting for potions and such, Sample the Local Cuisine)

 

• Kill Dredmor.
• Steal from Brax.

 

• AoE destroy traps

About 85% of the time, even if I see the trap, I still wind up walking into it like a boss. Results usually vary. But seriously:

• craft, so the RNG doesn't shaft me

 

Are there even any abilities that let you AoE destroy traps?

 

• Mitigate spell effects, particularly AOE (whether by quick-healing, teleporting out, resists, high HP, etc.)
• Get you through the beginning two floor hump (wands, bolts, throwing come to mind)

 

I don't think so, I'm hopeless!

 

Yess...give us type="trap" and take doors out of type="lockable". The preciousessss.. Then we can use <effect type="destroyobject"> with impunity.


The next step here is to list those skills which do 3 or more of these things at the same time for the purposes of compleation. Interestingly, almost none of them are Warrior skills.

 

Warrior's don't need individual activated skills to remove traps or recover mana etc. because warriors can just shrug off most traps and don't need the mana on demand. A sufficiently high dodge or counter will render the high special damage of random named mobs irrelevant. And REAL warriors don't escape from battle, they simply walk away and laugh as the pitiful blows on their armour give them a comfortable back massage.

Tanks builds are awesome guys.

Warriors don't need to open secret walls, warriors ARE secret walls.

 

As a massive gish fan, gishes are the only thing in the game worth anything. And all your opinions are wrong misinformed wrong.

Why?

As a gish, you can:

• Slap Dredmor across the face if you damn well please.
• Walk into a zoo, and walk out of a zoo, having killed all of the monsters within 5 turns
• Melee named monsters
• Nuke named monsters out of orbit
• Laugh at puny traps, because of all your spell protections.
• Use skills like Astrology and Viking Magic which are balanced going all melee or all mage twice as effectively
• Fully use both your HP bar and your mana bar
• Do you even need more reasons?
• Use full armor while casting spells and laugh, because if it takes twice as many casts you don't care because they don't hurt you.
• Use robes while meleeing and laugh, because your spell buffs mean you probably obliterate them in one hit, and if you don't your spell buffs will keep you alive.
• Generally be the most awesome you can possibly be? I mean, what, you're a dodge-build? Bet you can't kill a zoo in 3 turns. What, you're a nuker? Bet you can't survive when you get silenced/run out of mana very well. You're another gish? brofist.
• After all this you still haven't rolled up a gish? Ok, three words: Magic Missile, Hammertime.

In terms of list of things I think you need to have:

->Can beat stuff thats in your face.
->Can beat stuff thats not in your face.
->Can clear a zoo in less than 10 turns.
->Can control a named monster or one hit it.

 

I forgot:

• Uncursing

Obvious ones:

Burglary - Get Away, Accelerate XP, Traps
Tinkering - Ranged combat, Traps, Open Secret Walls
Alchemy - Healing, Mana Regen, Get Away
Psionics - Healing, Ranged combat, Island Items, Open Secret Walls
Promethean - Ranged combat, Open Secret Walls, Distract Opponents (pet)
Fungal Arts - Distract Opponents (pet/confuse), Get Away, Healing, Mana Regen
Big Game Hunter - Distract Opponents, Healing (food), Accelerate XP
Emomancy - Heal, Uncurse, Ranged Combat
Communism - Heal, Uncurse, Nearby Combat
Egyptian Magic - Heal, Ranged Combat, Nearby Combat

 

Tinkering also lets you also grab island artifacts with concussion bombs, and provided with components also lets you craft all the high end stuff.

Also, depending on whether youre going 10 or 15 levels (or even then), a great build also needs one or two one point wonders, because you can't max out without IBIAM, and if youre not using the Farrundheight shrines, it's one of the staple two point wonders. I wouldn't go around advizing people to take it though

 

So this is silly but I think a great build only needs to fit one criteria:

• you have fun playing it

I have made lots of builds where i was invincible, but I would eventually get bored with the lack of a challenge. (I know most people have not played this game and beat it as much as I have though, so it always feels like a challenge for some.)

 

No, that's not silly. Silly would be suggesting that any build could be a great one because all characters have access to both cheese and ingot grinders.

 

Quite so, because everyone knows its cheeze, diggle eggs and ingot presses. This is also what makes Vegan builds unable to complete the game and weak.

 

No, no, you may have missed the bad joke. Try reading my last post aloud. Maybe give the fifteenth word a good emphasis.

 

Ahahhaha, jolly good! For deadpan stupidity, if you're familiar with the forth season of Black Adder, try reading mine the way General Melchett would, with perfect conviction you're saying something that makes sense because you have huge moustache.

As for the topic:

Necronomiconomics is sort of a catch-all magic tree as far as all the dealing with threats goes, Essence.

And one of the things that might be missing is:

"Dealing with threats you can see but not reach". Once the "softballs hit through walls" thing is sorted out, I don't think Warriors and Rogues actually have a way to do it.

(I'm talking about various jail cells, because of the early "enraged diggles or artifact lever room" and the fact that, for example, the 600 XP Baron can blink behind bars or that a warrior has to tank the entire "zombie apocalypse" room practicaly in one go, while a wizard or rogue scientist can just snipe or aoe the guys safely)

 

Trompenant, Ragnar"s Meteor, Count Tilly's Long Range Pike Bombardment, and Cogito Ergo Splat would like to have a word with you.

 

Ahh, good point. I leaned somehting! Aren't two of those in polearms and the other 2 in axes?

What about rogues? I suppose they can always shoot an AoE arrow into the bars, or be rogue scientists, I guess...