For a lot of people, Dungeons of Dredmor is still new and exciting; for many people it has become old and almost routine. Either way, if you're on these forums either you love the game or just really like complaining about it. Chances are you still play the game a fair bit. Maybe only when the mood suits you, maybe you enjoy new builds, maybe you enjoy thematics and challenges, maybe you're running tests for someone or another, or maybe you're still learning the game and trying to soak all you can from this gem... Well, whatever it is, look no further because I propose a challenge, another reason to play. The way this will work is simple, I will propose caveats, addendums, and otherwise change the rules just a little bit. Sometimes these may be impositions, like restrictions on gear and equipment, other times it may be that you need to kill Vlad, or Dreadmor a certain way, and so much more. However, I aim to leave these challenges as open as possible; and creative interpretation of the rules is the name of the game. Every two weeks I will be updating this thread with a new Challenge for as long as interest keeps around. I will be awarding points based on a few factors, and I will keep a running "Leader Board" I don't forsee this thread dying out, but when and if it does then the man/woman with the most points will be declared the winner and receive...well internet points and our respect. Maybe just the points...heck maybe not even that. The idea is you'll feel good about yourself, ok? Anyway, the meat and the potatoes of this; challenges award points as follows: 1 Point for Death in the attempt 2 Points for a Death on Dreadmor in the attempt 3 Points for Success on Elvish 4 Points for Success on Dwarvish 5 Points for Success on Going Rogue Permadeath is a 2x multiplier to your score Misc Points are earned for creativity/style/pure blind luck and are given out at random by me In order for me to score you, I'll need to see a screenshot of your character. I know you might not be able to take one of you ex-ing Dreadmor but as long as I see you on the 15th floor and then a "you won" screen or a "you have died" screen you're good. I know you boys won't cheat, so you can just tell me difficulty and whether permadeath is toggled. Now, a few last points. Challenges never time out, you may always attempt a past challenge. So even if you show up late to the party, or are gone for a week, just tell me which challenge you have completed and I'll add the respective points to your score. I'd like a list of any mods you have installed, including Essence's rebalance. You don't have to use the same mods for each playthrough, but please mention any additions or subtractions in your post. Oh, and most importantly; have fun and please suggest any challenges you have to me in this thread. I would love to hear them. Anyway, here is an easy one: CHALLENGE NUMBER 1: Why I say good sir, I challenge you to a duel! Explanation: Lord Dreadmor is a coward and ruffian, as a creature of class and elegance his existence offends you. You intend to slap this foul lich with a white glove and challenge him to a gentlemanly duel of fisticuffs...to the undeath. Rules: Land the killing blow on Lord Dreadmor with your bare hands, which might be holding a shield, orb, or book at the time. Hey, don't look at me like that, they count! CHALLENGE NUMBER 2: The Legendary Mace of Lobster Explanation: Ancient Legends have told of a blunt artifact of unprecedented power and shellfish, it is said only by acquiring this "Mace of Lobster" can the evil Lich Lord finally be defeated. Rules: Once you acquire the Mace of Lobster you must equip it somewhere, and you may not unequip it for any reason except to replace it with another Mace of Lobster. CHALLENGE NUMBER 3: The Blessings (Or Curses) of Krong! Explanation: Krong has spoken to you, you hear him in your dreams. "Only by using each of my anvils may you defeat the Ancient Lich Dredmor, because otherwise I'm smiting your buttox." Maybe he is telling the truth, or maybe he is screwing with you. Rules: You must use every anvil of Krong before the end of the game, and you must be wearing or using every piece of gear you Krong when you defeat Dredmor. There we go, game on, have fun, and if you have any questions do feel free to ask. Happy Dungeoneering! LEADER BOARD: Essence: 10 Wyrmcraft: 3 TheKirkUnited: 2
This will be fun. And now that I'm done messing with the core code for a while (ESCRII "done"), I might actually see the lich once or twice. MODS: ESCRII, Compleat Essential, Runecaster, Sweet Sweet Swag, Elemental Warrior DETAILS: GRPD NTTG BUILD: Sweet Tooth, Runecaster, Elemental Warrior, Kung Fu, Throwing, Unarmed, Degree in Dungeoneering. NAME: 'Shaolin Sucker' I HOPE: To take advantage of the synergy between Degree and Sweet Tooth to keep up on HP and MP; use Runecaster to provide fun throwing "weapons", deal mad throwing damage with the damage bonuses from Elemental Warrior and Throwing. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: So far: DL10. Skills acquired: Degree 4 (Saved By The Bell) Unarmed 2 (Lone Ninja Law) Throwing MAX (Regent of Throwing Stuff at People) Kung Fu 3 (Tuber Stance) Elemental Warrior MAX (Gaia's Chosen) Runecaster 1 (2nd-Circle Runes) Sweet Tooth 4 (Harvest Sweets) Spoiler: -Old Story Fighting mostly in melee at this point, though I did throw down 3 Cottages across the course of the DL2 zoo. Standing on an Agility Rune with Batty Stance on gives obscene Dodge; I haven't come near to dying. The fact that it takes forever to kill enemies (with Batty's melee power penalty and no weapons) just means I build up stacks of Harvest Sweets like no one's business. Conjure Extras plus Gummi Diggles is crazy good for zooing. I'm quite liking this. ****************** I took out the DL4 zoo entirely as a caster this time around, just to see if I could do it -- it was too easy. It turns out that A Cottage Made of Chocolate isn't a missile spell, so you can drop it into a zoo after you plug the entrance with a Rune of Stone. Sweet! I made sure I started the zoo with enough stacks of Sweet Harvest that I could recharge my mana pool once right away, so I spammed 6 Cottages in a row before I started my regular glugging of Pilsners (you love Pilsners when you have Degree of Dungeoneering!) When the Stone Rune finally broke, there were only a dozen or so monsters left, all of which died nicely to my Runes of Fire and Runes of Ice. Between Heart, Bully Stance, and Gnome Stance I have a health regen of 8, which is quite nice and easily supplemented as I walk about by eating one of my 100+ Ground Meats every 5 turns, so I basically never start a fight with less than full health -- which means Sweet Harvest is basically my version of Thaumaturgic Tap, and I always have a healthy supply of Gummy Diggles that I can turn into Candied Vodka at a moment's notice and drink (yay, Conjure Beer!) if I need some extra mana regen on top of that. Degree 2 gives me 1 point each in Alchemy, Wandcrafting, and Tinkering, and I've used all three. Even playing NTTG, I've made 10 healing potions, 3 mana potions, 3 invis potions, 2 coral wands (Thanks, Hat of Bergstrom!), and a small pile of bolts which I promptly fisked because Throwing and I just wanted something interesting to do with the Copper. So, yeah...I'm still feeling real good about this one. ------------------------ Just made it to DL6. I hit the DL5 zoo first thing on the floor, and decided to gish it. Got my Fire Resist up by hitting the Elemental Warrior Fire button and eating a White Gummi Diggle, then dropped an Agility Rune right in the middle of a Fire Rune cross, and just stood in the middle of the Fire Rune and tanked it up. Was fun, and when it was done, I dropped a couple of Cottages to block off the entrance, took a step back, re-setup, and did it all again. At this point, I have 5 Health Regen from Heart, 5 Health Regen from Tuber Stance, 4 Health Regen from equipment, and am regaining 1 HP per step in addition to my still-unused Coral Wands, Health Pots, and of course 50+ Gummi Diggles (and I use them on a regular basis.) My regular process is to fight until I've maxxed out Harvest Sweets at 50 stacks, then cast my mana pool dry summoning runes and start meandering around. If I get into trouble, I refresh with Harvest Sweets and drop some Cottages or refresh Hard Candy Shell. If not, when my mana gets high enough, more runes! This character is just obscene; I haven't come close to 1/2 health in three floors and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I will punch Dredmor's face in this time. I WILL. ---------------------------------------------------- Now on DL8. I've maxxed out Throwing which means obscene return rates on my ammo, but nonetheless I've taken to mass-crafting Runes of Blasting to throw at bad guys, because I like the fact that as they advance, it builds a line of knockback runes so every time they fail a resist check, they get blown backwards and give me more time to throw at them. I think I have 58 Runes of Blasting right now. That's my man tactic for named mobs, and it works like a dream. I haven't invested anything into Unarmed, so I'm actually dealing more damage with throwing than I am with kicks, but I still like to kick most foes to death for Harvest Sweets purposes. Zoos I pretty much take out in caster-mode as above for as many mobs as I can see, then I walk in and switch to full gish mode to take out the rest. My Armor is low enough that I can't afford to get swarmed much, but Runes of Fire+Storm and my natural kicking talent make sure that swarms die pretty quickly on my "active defenses". I've stockpiled a few Squid Bolts just in case there's a DL10 zoo, and I have at least a dozen Clockwork Drill Bombs set aside to knock Dredmor into kicking-to-death range. I haven't found any Mirror Shields yet, which is starting to worry me...we'll see. Beat Dredmor -- for the first time in more than a year -- with this build. The final battle was almost anticlimatic. I walked right up to him, tossed a Runeword of Light on the floor (which I had found in a chest on DL9), and kicked him a bunch. I had to use one of my 11 invisibility potions and about a dozen of my 65 healing potions, but I didn't even have to resort to a Rune of Agility or anything -- my naturally 50+ Dodge and the 135 Magic Resist I had with the Runeword of Light's blessing on me basically just made Dredmor laughable. I did have to do it twice -- I beat him once, but it was the Runeword that dealt the final damage. I went back a second time and made damn sure it counted by kicking his face in legit. Spoiler: Moar Discussion Funny Notes: Runes are Krongable, and any rune you add to an existing stack gains the attributes of the stack, so by the time I hit Dredmor I had a stack of many Runes of Blasting that had a huge pile of stats on them, most of which were useless, but they did include a random extra point of, IIRC, crushing damage. That was fun. Also, I kept all of my Bronze Ingots through the entire game and when a Brax shop on DL9 had a Kronghammer in it, I picked it up long enough to craft them into 84 Darts, then put it back and walked away. I got a kick out of that. Also, I encourage anyone to play with Runecrafter on even if they don't take the skill. Just in the course of the normal game I found something like a half-dozen Runes of Health (mostly from boxes of Runecrunch Cereal), a couple of Runes of Light (ultimate anti-Dredmor weapon), a Rune of Restoration, a Rune of Destruction, and more -- and those aren't counting the ones I didn't buy from Throwing vending machines. If you're interested in having some fascinating new tools at your disposal but don't want to necessarily give up half your inventory to runewords, just turn on the mod and play -- it's fun! Spoiler: Screenshots So, that's what...10 points for me?
For those wondering, I am participating in this myself. Name: Zizeezozoona Skills: Unarmed: Max Qi-gong: Max Demonology: 2 Points in Smithing: 1 to go Bushido: Max Burglary: Three to go Berserk Rage: Three to go And I did it, sitting down to finish the game, I absolutely stomped...it's hard to even really say how much of a stomp that was from the moment I encrusted. Two Words, Offensive Shielding, like 8 stacks per shield, close to 100 melee power and...400 clockwork saw blades...I slaughtered everything. I could face tank a lot of stuff, but I even took on hell...like 3 clockwork sawblades per vlad. It was utterly nuts. However, I am proud to say, success! I even managed to reach You Are the Demons and had my fun with that. Demon form is nuts with like 100 melee power. Also, since I feel the need to extrapolate. Dear god, you have no idea how much all my skills really synced to one another. Celestial Circle, Last Stand, Berserk Rage, and Unarmed...there were so many defensive procs it was wonderful. Smithing gave me offensive shielding that gave me 100% crit rate and a huge boost in melee power, Qigong gave me AoE, sweet sweet righteous damage, and Spirit Bomb. Burglary gave me lockpicks and some trap detection which I needed so desperately. Combined I had like 220 block and something like 107 armor absorb. Welp that sets me at: 3 points, whoo! ]
Hey i would love to participate, would you like me to record my challenge runs and upload them so you could come along with me for the ride ;D let me know please and i'll follow up happily (thanks Essence! )
I think I might give this a go. What little Dredmor I've done in the past couple months has been random runs and an impossible build run that takes every ounce of caution that I have. Doing a more conventional run will be nice. Just running the Essential Rebalance. GRPD NTTG Name: Hien Build: Unarmed, Berserk, Burglary, Warlockery, Fleshshaping, Mastery of Arms, Geology
You can always try the run again Kirk otherwise that is two points to you, and Essence has the lead at 10. As for Shan, if you want to record the runs do feel free to and link them.
OK, new challenge time. This is going to kind of suck, because entire runs will be lost trying to find a Mace of Lobster. I'm going to give up after the first floor if I don't find the mythical Lobster Room in it. MODS: ESCRII, CES, FaxPax, Paladinner, Dire Gourmand DETAILS: GRPD NTTG BUILD: Brofistery, Self-Righteous Aspirant, QiGong, Dire Gourmand, Paladinner, Killer Vegan, Dual Wield, Degree in Dungeoneering. (Turned out that Dire Gourmand didn't do what I thought it did -- it's mostly about booze, not food -- so I replaced it with DiD.) NAME: "Bro Motion" I HOPE: To stack Righteous Damage from Brofistery, Aspirant, QiGong, and Killer Vegan and make taking down Lord D a cakewalk, all while staying alive via the food-related powers of Dire GourmandDegree in Dungeoneering, Paladinner, and Killer Vegan. Dual Wield is there so that I can put a proper Chest of Evil weapon alongside my Mace of Lobster. SO FAR: After 17 clearings of the first floor with no luck, I opened up my game to see THIS: Huzzah! Now I can actually get on with this challenge.
I am sorry for the element of luck involved with this particular challenge. DoD is luck based enough without me adding in additional elements to the game, however I hope you understand the situation I'm trying to create here. Limiting your weapon choice means that you can't equip "trapskill" weapons, nor can you do as much effective damage. Either you must build around the Mace of Lobster or build some other form of damage and sacrifice your melee. Creativity is key with limiting factors involved. In the future, I will try to keep elements of beginning the challenge to a guarantee and I could have worded the challenge differently in order to make it non-luck based. However, part of the fun of writing these is adding a flair to them and nothing says fun like facing a deadly lich with a lobster's arm clutched tight to your breast.
No need to apologize for setting the rules that define your challenge. You're continuing a tradition of what the Diablo community calls 'variants' in all sense of the word. A good source for variant ideas that can be adapted to DoD is here, HTML: <p> <a href="http://realmsbeyond.net/diablo/variants.html">Realms Beyond Diablo - Variants</a> </p> Now to find that Mace of Lobster! Be seeing you... ---> TBC
How do I savea screenshot for the challenges? I am right before dredmor with an unarmed build I was playing even before I saw this thread, but I don't know how to exchange it for points. Pro-tip: DoD GRPD without NTTG is a long looong game.
Press CTRL+SHIFT+PRTSC, then open up Paint, then CTRL+V or Paste it, save it, and then upload it to the forums ^_^
No doubt. I play NTTG and without floors 11-15 and I complete like one floor every night if I'm lucky. This past 10 days I've been mostly working FaxPax, so this challenge is on the back burner for now, too.
Finally... only took three weeks. My build used no mods beyond Electric Bungalow. I chose some of the skills classic to me to try to find a difference from before: Tinkering Unarmed Beserker Rage Man at Arms Fungal Arts Alchemy Battle Geology I'm not going to lie: It was an exhausting run after floor 9. I was cruising on forward with my plethora of mushrooms (over 700 fairywodgers and 500 health potions). My luck was incredible in finding an artifact ring fairly early which gave me a single blasting damage. With the way the new Unarmed works, instead of typed damage you get a very high bonus damage number. What I discovered is that this +1 blasting damage ring would change all my bonus damage to blasting damage, which overall I found was rather unresisted. I also had a +1 slashing and +1 putrefying damage rings n back up.
