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Kazuhiro, if you are so hesitant to take ponymancy because of one skill, you could always just nerf it yourself. Any advice/recommendations you make about the skill and its synergies would still be applicable to others, just more so.

 

Well it turns out I'm dumb and didn't need to be complaining any more.

 

Then you should go and determine a new build for me to play.

Incidentally, I recently found out that "Wub wub wub" redirects to dubstep in wikipedia.

 

Also, War Weaver nerfs Warlockery a lot in the early game, because Puissant Touch/Veil damage scales based on Max Mana. Just sayin'.

 

Hyuu want ponymancy build? I geev ponymancy, you try, you try, see what hyu theenk.

Okay, Ponymancy. Missile spell that scales okay and becomes all-through-the-game-pretty-much-usable if you delve into Ponymancy early. Sweet. Low-moderate heal that leaves a not very useful buff and (now) cleanses off one debuff, but costs a bunch of mana. Sweet. Then a free point of Alchemy (to make rust potions and cider without taking up a skill slot with Alchemy) and the Applejack Kick in case you don't have one otherwise. Sweet. Two dead levels (well, one of them gives a bunch of wizard stats) and then the GODLY Sonic Rainboom. Then the Wub Cannon.

So it's a utility wonderskill, giving you a spammable missile (which is rare) a cleanse (now a pretty weak cleanse, but maybe it'll help), a kick, and a point in alchemy in two levels. The stat bonuses are a real mixed bag and none of them are very big--mostly, it's a deep Wizard tree that stays pretty good all the way to the end. Sonic Rainboom is so deep into the tree that you probably shouldn't rely on it, but if we can get away with pushing deep into Ponymancy it will be amazing. If we stop at level 2 though we have at least a little bit of nonsense that almost any character ever would be happy for.

So, let's talk about a character that can get a death-dealing foundation up pretty quickly, and then delve into Ponymancy so as to pump up Twilight's Spark and get the Sonic Rainboom. This probably means warrior.

There is no reason to use this build, really. It's just a build that would be happy about pushing deep into Ponymancy since you want to use it. In reality, almost any build would be happy for Ponymancy.

Ponymancy.
Astrology. Sicknasty level 0 skill that is helped quite a bit by the little bit of magic power we have.
Berserk. The free armor is good and it, effectively, gives you awesome stats.
Polearms. Unlike most other skills, we don't have a problem with this one scaling with things we don't have. With all these wizard levels, we could use the really powerful defensive stance.
Archaeology. Admittedly, lately I've been dying so soon that I don't get to abuse IBIAM, but if you get to, this will help you push up to Sonic Rainboom.
Wild Magic. This. Skill. Is. Horrifying. Yeah it can blow away your mana, but it can also give you Hand of Belimwrar, Hoglanterns and Fairywodgers, and throwing weapons. Theoretically you might see Handy Wands but I haven't seen one, maybe it's not on the list. Worst of all, it can give you Wizard's Sleeves, which normally is merely amusing and gets you tons of gold, but with Archaeology this is so broken I'm hesitant to use this combo. You only need one level in it to make this skill ridiculous.

It wouldn't do to have only Ponymancy as the skill we want to dive deep into, so decide for yourself what else you want you want this build to have in the late game. Maybe drop Astrology for Blood Magic and go with something nasty and gishy like Barrier Maiden or Warlock. Maybe keep Astrology and go for Electromancy, which is a cool gish skill sort of but I'm not confident in its nuking power, try it for yourself. Maybe take Dual Wield to supplement your not so impressive killing power if the Random Number Goddess hands you a crazily powerful early weapon.

Unfortunately, you will very likely be wearing heavy armor. I don't know if this will hamstring Twilight's Spark. It probably won't.

Maybe take War Weaver because it's just so cool. You don't have a LOT of use for War Weaver's huge wizardy power, but maybe you could get away with an occasional wub cannon blast. Twilight's Spark probably costs too much mana for you to abuse War Weaver on it. Also, I'm pretty sure Wild Magic's hilarious throw-DoTs-at-everything trick scales, which would be scary as hell AND it would make it okay that your mana pool is gone and you can't use many Twilight Sparks.

Fairy Princess is a very high-quality and amusing mod that I recommend highly. It has a big nuke early on, then two tragically dead levels, then not one but two really, really badass capstones that a gish would love.

A couple of these would be amusing with Wild Magic's level 2 Haywire buff, plus the fact that making Wild Magic proc more is going to make you very, very happy.

 

So let's theorize. You're starting with Barrier Maiden, which you know gives you Armor, Block and some resists at level 1. Level 2 gives you a missile attack for some damage that scales ridiculously with Magic Power.

Let's base your character around the idea of survivability first and offense second. You want a Wizard skill that offers a solid heal, preferably at 1st level. There's one really obvious choice: Runecaster.

A Runecaster/Barrier Maiden is set up from the get-go as a good gish with the healing rune, the agility rune, and the knockback rune all at level one. You could probably just start by pushing to Runecaster 3 to get Mass 1st Circle Runes (and happen to pick up the always-useful Stone Wall and Icy area-DoTting runes along the way) and then dive straight down Barrier Maiden if you chose other other 5 skills carefully.

Blood Magic 1 will let you keep up your barriers by refreshing your mana as you fight.

Axes level 1 gives you Rend, which basically means that the longer you fight a given creature, the more damage you do. Since this build is meant to outlive everything with huge armor and resists, it's by far the best weapon at level 1. If you take an extra level, you can get the Lumberjack Stance, which can in theory be overcome with Barrier Maiden's stacking armor power to just leave you with huge attacking ability.

Warlockery 2 gives you Mana Maille, which synergises perfectly with Barrier Maiden to make you hugely survivable -- and just as importantly, for the later game, Puissant Veil works with Axes' Axenado and Ergo Splat to make you a demon who wants to be surrounded because that's when you kill people.

Communism 1 gives the amazing single-mob killer Guerilla Attack, which is genius. It can wait until later to level up, but in the later game, because General Winter scales to Crit Chance and Axes enhances Crit Chance greatly, making General Winter a pretty badass AoE. (Might want to use the ESCRII version of Communism that gives +8 Hyperborean Resist as part of Iron Curtain. ) If you do dump a single point into it early on, you get the mighty heal that can save your butt (or, if you'd like to view it this way, save your healing runes for a more vital spot.) Also, it's a Warrior skill, which means less squishiness.

Finally, Battle Geology 1 gives you the only thing you need to walk through the first floor like it's an empty hallway: Plutonic Fist. Sure, you'll want to take it away forever once you get to Axes level 2, but that probably won't be until you've proven the almighty power of Barrier Maiden and are sitting pretty on the 4th floor. At that point, a quick levelup to Seismic Uppercut is in order to get the all-powerful Dazed status that will keep enemies from defending against your devastating crits.


Suggested leveling: Warlockery 2 --> Runecaster 3 --> Barrier Maiden 8 --> Axes 6 --> Battle Geology 6 --> Warlockery 6 -->???


Thoughts?

 

holy goddamn, Runecaster has the knockback rune at level 1? Why haven't I been using this? Oh right, now I remember: Because I hate the idea of having an inventory full of crap that I have to tinker with in order to cast spells.

Yes, I'm a fool for not using Mana Maille. I'll get right on that.

I was thinking about Axes but kept trying Staff because flavor wise that seemed to be the thing. Oh well.

>General Winter scales to crit chance.
Say WHAT? Suddenly I want to do Communism again. I'm irritated by the fact that Drunken Boxing anti-synergizes hard with Kanadian Goalie so I guess it'll be Boxing this time. Last time I did this I used Cooliomancy, Kanadian Goalie, and Uttercold Aspirant for no good reason except flavor. Cooliomancy was useless to that character let me tell you. Most of the power was near-total invincibility due to being mostly Warrior and having 100 block starting from very early. I would stand in the middle of enemies, let off proc after proc after proc of Kanadian Goalie and General Winter, then use Uttercold's AoEs to kill stuff. I can't remember what killed this character, he was crazy tough. For my next Communist thing I'm seeing Communism, Drunken, Uttercold, and Axe...

The reason I haven't done Communism yet is because really I would be using it just for the fact that the first skill basically makes you invincible. I'm going for all themed, all the time. Still... it's a very solid thing for this character.

>Battle Geology as a way to laugh your way through the early game
This sounds similar to why I kept doing Archaeology--the idea being to level up rapidly and get over the rough early game. Okay: This sounds pretty sweet.

So my basic idea is Barrier Maiden, Axe, Blood, Warlock, and Geology. I seriously did not realize that the holy crap awesome FUS RO DAH rune is readily available to Runecaster, and I've never played Runecaster before because it's not my style. I'll re-install it and give it a shot.

 

Runecaster is much easier to deal with now that the Pocket Dimension exists.

Also, I'm taking Wizard Sleeve off of the Wild Magic list as of right now.

 

Kazu, any comments on War Weaver's balance?

 

It's one of those amazing level zero spells.

Like I said, when I realized that I could keep on abusing that skill as I go into mid-late game it was a big "whoa" moment. Like I said--by the numbers, every time you get a bigger mana pool, you can put more Empowered Weave stacks on. Magic Power is a pretty rare stat and one that you tend to build up very slowly as you go, so this is just a big fat turbocharge that just gets scarier and scarier.

The design of making it give insane bonus in exchange for a very prohibitive drawback is begging for ways to circumvent it. Ways to abuse totally unreasonably boosted Magic Power that don't involve casting more than one spell do exist. Astrology tricks have good scaling IIRC. Spirit Conduit. I think wands scale with magic power. Thaumites become ridiculous, and in fact Thaumite Mary has a thaumite trick that's a cooldown. Maybe I'll try that! I don't know how Runecaster runes do with scaling, but if they scale, we have our winner right there.

Emperor's New Clothes is sadly not Mana Maille no matter how badly it wants to be. The fact that a lot of monsters on level 2 get through it is highly annoying and often makes it unimpressive... not to mention that lately there are a ton of things around that slap you with its existential resist drawback.

I love the design of Skinweaver. I don't have much of an opinion on its balance because so far I'm constantly walking around doing the exact thing that--by your design--keeps Skinweaver from being insane. Don't worry, I'll find a way to abuse it mercilessly once I try out a dedicated War Weaver build.

I haven't tried War Weaver further than that.

This is a correct thing for you to do. It's a funny idea, and it totally fits, and it's even fun to have a gigantic freaking outlier on what Wild Matter procs generally are, but unfortunately it represents very real power in that you can buy stuff with the gold. What I did is just one devious trick, but considering it's with a core skill, yeah, maybe best to make it so I can't.

Pondering what else you could use as a hilarious outlier thing. Maybe a custom potion with spectacular-to-watch effects.

I have a feeling Runecaster is going to give me what I need for utility, like, it'll make me feel better about not having Unarmed or Psionics or Pony or Alchemy. Just the knockback rune alone is almost enough to make me feel that way. Let's just see.


EDIT: Reporting in.

Essence, you're making me feel stupid for never playing a Runecaster. The power level of Runecaster is unbelievable. Investing no levels in it gives me the health and knockback runes, and investing one level in it gives me the attack runes, all of which are holy cow deadly. Runecaster alone is a build in itself. Wow.

I've deviated from your idea for leveling up somewhat. This setup can't sustain Mana Maille--actually, very few characters can--so I took Vital Siphon which is highly underrated. I don't think I need level 3 of Runecasting. I have Berserk instead of Communism because I'm a jerk who refuses to do what he's told, so I might want level 2 or 3 of Berserk or heck I might as well max it.

See, the level 1 plain old ward for Barrier Maiden already makes a big enough difference that I don't feel like I'm missing out by not pushing up to the butt-tattoos that automatically cast them for me. It gives 2 armor and 2 piercing resistance, and piercing damage is all over the place, and Vital Siphon makes it so that I can sustain a whole bunch of them...

About Warlockery. It has been a long time since I made a character whose Puissant Touch hit this hard. I'm destroying faces like crazy. Yow.

 

All this gish talk has got me interested. Here is my idea for a build

• Staff
• Barrier Maiden
• Druid
• War Weaver
• Lay Lines
• Alchemy
• Tinkering

 

My attempt at a counter/block build, ended up meleeing dredmor without much problem

Dagger - The stance that gives 25 and is pretty helpful.
Artful Dodger
Piracy
Mathemagic - Teleport
Burglary - Lockpicks and just stats
Dual Wield
Big Game Hunter - I leveled first and early for bonus experience plus the diggle pets were helpful for Chests of Evil or just tanking. Lots of steaks too

The start is pretty slow, but once I was able to get counter chance up high enough nothing really hit me, and if it did I had enough AA and resistances to not take much, and it also would proc my rings healing rain to sustain me back up.

I had stockpiled some gear throughout the later levels so that I would change while fighting dredmor. But with the switch I was able to get exactly 100 no more corruption, close to 90 . The only thing that really hurt was the thunderbolt which he only casted once. I didn't dual wield against him instead used a dark mirror shield + dagger I used on every anvil.

 

Something I want to try:

Swords
Dual Wield
Daggers
Rogue Scientist
Tinkering
Magical Law
?

Thematically it's a horrible mess, but it covers a lot of bases. First priority is to get to 100 counter with skills and items, which looks doable if I don't have dreadful luck finding items, and then Magical Law gives a great deal of protection against spells and other nastiness. Not sure what to do about the 7th skill: the main things I'm missing are a teleport/invis, a zoo clearer (especially in the early game, before the counterattack machine really gears up and thaumite shenanigans come into play) and a healing spell (although potions from Rogue Scientist will cover for that in a pinch).

Suggestions?

 

Best completionist build is probably;

- Shields
- Unarmed
- Archeologist
- Steampunk Knight
- ? (tinkerer)
- ? (rage)
- ? (assassin)

Shields + Unarmed is best defense and if you just krong a tome or shield once or twice you have extra random elemental damage.

Steampunk Knight and Unarmed both have abilities very early in the tree which are able to move objects. This is useful when you want to get artifacts out of your reach, or to get traps out of your way. Also to kick away bars.

Archeologist can It Belongs In A Museum every artifact weapon you find, since you don't want to lose your shields or tomes. Also, because of the extra artifacts from otherwise unreachable locations, you get plenty of extra experience.

I chose tinkerer, because else it's way too boring. Crafting is fun, and if you get some Bolts Of Mass Destructions out of it will help defeating Dredmor. Smithing is more focussed on weapons and heavy armour, which you both don't want.

I chose rage because it has the Ancestral Marks thing, giving you another load of resistances.

Assassin is just a random thing I always choose, because I forget about perception and burglary once in a while. Perception is not really needed in this build, because you'll blast everything away before it's near you anyways. Burglary might be nice, but since you can sell all pointless weapons, you won't have to steal stuff anyways. You're a rich man.

 

Steampunk = Clockwork

 

Preez to be helping with "crash on descend a floor" glitch. It's gotten to my Barrier Maiden run which has Barrier Maiden maxed out, and this is bumming me out big time. Surely there's a way to delete the generated floor, making the game generate it again when I descend?

Here's how this worked out:

Barrier Maiden
Warlock
Blood Magic
Mace
Geology
Berserk
Runecrafting


First of all: Who can I blame for the Earbuds TF2-reference item? The reference is cute and I understand the idea of a powerful item that also sells for an unreasonable amount, but this is absurd. Also, whose are the pants with 7 armor and no drawback? I've only seen them a couple of times, but each time I blinked and said "Really? Who did this?"

On to why this build rocks hardcore.

The most important reason for this build's success is that Runecrafting gives things that no skill should ever give with no investment. The health rune needs a serious drawback IMO, as I'll get to later. With Runecrafting and no level investment, I have basically all the utility I need, forever. The level dip power of Runecrafting is comparable to Mycology 2 which is really saying something.

Thus with only Vital Siphon I have all the utility of a level dip or more. Essence was right about Plutonic Fist letting me pound through the early game and--importantly--the basic ward that Barrier Maiden gives you is already a good reason to take the skill. Yikes. Vital Siphon is enough to power a whole bunch of wards, which means I'm tankier than any early game character has any right to be. Mana Maille is tricky--if you aren't able to smash enemies like crazy you need to take it off--the enemies are going to keep plinking at it and you will lose all your stuff. Now I *am* able to smash enemies like crazy, I am starting to wonder if I can also power the rest of Warlockery. *shudder*

Now that I'm sitting pretty with the ability to end up with a net gain from murdering things, I have plenty of mana to spam runes. Eeyup.

Let's discuss my melee power. Essence was wrong about Axes; Maces are being very good to me. Because of how easy the early game was, I had the confidence to dip into dumb levels that I didn't really need, specifically Ancestral Tattoos and Facesmashing Stance.Ward Insertion and Beach Volleyball demand a gish, and these offhand early decisions made me into a badass gish.

I was talking about the Health Rune earlier. Dodge isn't what I need--what I need is to tank through the plinks of damage that get through my mitigation and hit my pitiful health pool. Toxic damage is freakin' everywhere it seems, and Acid once in a while too. My EDR sucks, so (embarrassingly enough) Ravens sometimes pose a threat. Health rune plus a choke point is enough to solve all of these problems. A Hoglantern means I get to stand on the rune and practically heal to full. Also, the fact that the Health Rune can top you off when you have a quiet moment may seem minor, but it's not. I mean, really, that's a rather rare effect in this game especially for almost no resources.

I'm rocking a Blessing of Caelestia. Dear Faust wtf am I looking at. The stun proc of Vegan 4 and Astro 1 is IMO one of the best effects in the game and I've got it from a diggle god blessing. It even mitigates a little bit of Necromantic damage which is one of the resists I lack. Part of the power is that whenever something hits me that I shrug right off (say, something with lightning or fire damage), I have a chance to proc the flash and a chance to renew the buff. The synergy I have with this blessing is just unreal.

One concern: I've gotten unlucky enough to have no trap sight. If this remains the case for much longer, I'm going to step on an Acid Trail Trap or a Grogthulu or something and it's just going to be the worst thing ever. Remember what I said about frequently running the edge of disaster? Well I'm right screwed if I hit an Acid Trail. Health Rune would require me to stand around and get pounded by acid and I don't have any cleanse effects (Fluttershy, where are you when I need you) or save-me-from-my-own-stupidity heal effects (Seriously, Fluttershy, stop hiding behind that tree and SAVE ME)

From here on out I intend to take level 2 of Runecrafting because the fire rune is cool for big nasty groups and maybe someday I'll need to create my own choke point with an earth rune. I will then look at level 3 of Runecrafting and ponder whether it's worth two levels because Runecrafting 3 is a dead level. Geology 2 and 3 are dead levels to me but I need the tankiness. If all else fails I'll go balls deep into Warlock too and see how long I survive with a "squishy gish" setup. I lucked out on a Book of Shadows so hopefully I can rustle up enough booze to make that work.

please PLEASE help me with the glitch. This is almost definitely going to be my second ever Dredmor kill.

 

Runecasting 3 is hardly a dead level -- it's Fisk food!

 

No seriously. Workaround to the stairs glitch? ):

If there isn't one I guess I'll start over and twink around with different stuff.

Last run taught me that I need a solid foundation before I plunge into Barrier and overcome its awful level 2, its merely-okay level 3, and similarly not so hot level 4.

The theory here is to see how much work I can make Barrier and Blood do--I don't care about anything that has damage mitigation as a major attraction.

Does this mean... uh... Bushido? I pretty much never take Bushido because it's not one of those brutally straightforward trees full of obvious synergies. Bushido's level 1 is barely more advantage than downside half the time, its level 2 is poorly documented and doesn't appear to do very much... I dunno. Perhaps I'll just go and find out.

War Weaver is theoretically great but in practice it's a shitty level dip for anyone who doesn't scale with it hardcore--if that 2 magic power isn't mad broken on you then the tree is kind of all or nothing. I'll give this another chance I think. I'll pair it with Astro.

Barrier, Blood, Mace, Bushido, Weaver, and Astro leave me with one skill left and a hard decision as to what my early game will be like. I could take Geology again but now I have no utility. I could take Degree in Dungeoneering but now I have no early game. I could take Burglary but it demands a bunch of levels.

Of the lot, I'm gonna go with Degree in Dungeoneering. This is similar to the builds I used before Essence slapped sense into me, so I look forward to dying horribly.

I think I'll play some kind of Rogue/Warrior who does Bushido a lot, first.

 

There's a new level 1 on the latest Bushido. It's a big knockback + minor Righteous damage cone. Vorpality was just...not working out. I think you'll find this is much better, and does a better job of playing up Bushido's strength as a defensive Warrior tree. Bushido 2 isn't poorly documented, it's just a pile of skills that Warriors don't usually get (the big draw is 2 trapsight so you don't have to use click to move.)

In fact, NONE of the CES skills are poorly documented -- they're all documented in explicit detail, and linked in the first post of the CES thread.

I'd go with Degree in Dungeoneering. Crushalot + Radiant Aura + Barrier is an early game, and if you can manage to make it to Bushido 3/Degree 3 (for the extra conjurations), you can heal a lot out of Mt. Self and eating a single piece of ground meat every 5 turns.

 

I tend to lean towards something tricky for a one-level wonder, but I suppose it's true that if I have all that cool stuff and then start slapping things around with Crushalot it'll qualify as ready to push through dead levels for the cool stuff at the end.

Hokay.

I wish I knew what caused that last crash. I have ASCII Invasion, FaxPax, and Interior Dredmorating on... I should think that those are airtight. I'm not changing anything... in the hopes that I can recover that save ):

Quick build that'll be fun if it finds a way to heal and that will teach me about Bushido.,

Sword
Dagger
Dual
Bushido
Kung Fu
Burglary
Assassination

A sane person would take a utility skill, but MUST BE THEMED NO MATTER WHAT RAWR.