Any Good ideas for Clockwork builds to beat dredmor?

Im looking for any awesome successful clockwork builds for beating the game anyone have advice?

 

Umm - the one i used:

CW+Tinkering+Smithing+Crossbow (or throwing)+Master of Arms+Fleshsmithing+(ability of your choice)

Master of Arms combined with zombie will let you power through the early stages without too much pain, and crossbow will let you deal with unexpected surprises while you build up your core abilities.
You should at least get knit tissue in fleshsmithing to cut down your dependence on food, and a point or two in tinkering for traps and bolts, and a point in suit up for the bonus regen. A point or two in smithing for one item you really want would not hurt, but ideally, you want to max CW as early as you can. Once you have the capstone, charge of the steam brigade ought to kill everything from level 4 to 10 without too much of a hassle. Towards the end game, maxed smithing + tinkering will allow you to mass produce bolts, and you can transition into fighting purely at range, with the occasional charge of the steam brigade mixed in. Master of Arms + Fleshsmithing (esp. meat shield), will help fuel those moments where you want to go ballistic with CK at a minimal cost.

 

Speaking of Clockwork builds, I kinda want a build that is Pure Warrior, but will let me defeat Lord Dredmor in Melee. My last build had CK, Battle Geology, Dual Wield, Swords, Smithing, Master of Arms and Berserker Rage. I'm wondering what skills I should switch out if I am to defeat Lord Dredmor in melee. Last time I made it to a Floor 15 Monster Zoo and died to a mistake, as seen in
http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/grpd-pure-warrior-run-fail.6572/

 

The early game (floors 1-3) rewards mixed builds in general (e.g. even if you are built as a pure tank, a named monster too early can still ruin your day as far in as character level 5). Charge of the steam brigade dominates the mid-game (Floor 4-10). (Period. It kills EVERYTHING). Late game though (Floor 11-15), you're quite literally siting on a mountain of high tier bolts and/or thrown weapons (and the means to make them) that all but one shot everything that moves, and everything that moves tends to murder you in melee unless you've really lucked out with resist items. Even that is not a given because of corruption. Not transitioning to pure ranged at this point implies you're just being melee for the sake of being melee. Honestly, i'd be weirded out if any rogue-like actually rewarded "doing something for the sake of doing something" throughout the game.

 

Yeah I've always noticed the trend of Early game being made for melee and Late game being made for ranged. This is what makes playing a Pure Build hard. When I succeeded in my GRPD Pure Rogue run, I was having quite a bit of trouble on the first few floors. I almost always pwn DoD on GRPD if I have the right set of Rogue/Warrior skills. Especially if it's not a random build.

 

The issue with late game melee comes from the lack of non-corruption dependent exotic damage resist, and how taxing it is to rely only on food and procs for sustain.
The best solution if you want to go pure melee, i found, is to mix in a bit of melee friendly casting trees with your build. Suit Up on it's own helps, but it takes you that much further when paired with meatshield. Even with spellcasting penalties from heavy armor, gold for gold, it's still better to buy mana, then turn cast a healing spell, rather than buying food with said money.

Overall though, it all depends on what you want to do - if you want to build PURE MELEE, then you should pick a combination of trees that help you
1. Do damage in melee
2. Take less damage in melee
3. Regenerate the damage you take in melee

While warrior trees let you do 1 and 2 to a significant extent, they tend to fall flat when it comes to 3.

One of the builds i'm toying around with right now is a combination of Fleshsmithing, Master of Arms, Unarmed, Shields, Warlockery + Vampire + Egyptian magic(or veganism, haven't decided yet). The general idea being to abuse knit tissue early game, on hit exotic damage/damage resistance mid game, and boosted vampirism late game.

 

The I guess Master of Arms is a total must for Pure Warrior Pure Melee builds. And it seems that getting Walk it off Asap is essential, as well as using the Diggle God of Fertility to get from Floor 11 to Floor 15, then finishing Dredmor with Diggle God of Death.

 

I personally dislike just how essential Master of Arms is to ANY melee build, be it predominantly rogue, wizard or warrior. However, only master of arms gives substantial "durability upon taking damage". Shields can "sort of" fill the slot, but the holy trinity of suit up, walk it off, and it only makes you stronger, is very hard to beat for what is essentially a three-point investment.
I suppose it's in keeping with the "dying is fun" spirit of DoD not too have too many trees focused on NOT DYING but it puts undue power on those few trees that do give you easy durability.

 

My latest run(The A-Rod Lemke run is on hold because ID and Android Rogue are so much fun) doesn't have Master of Arms, is focused on a Melee Rogue early on that transitions to Thrown later on, and I almost died to a Thermoblobby. After it shot me with a Fire spell, I was down to 2 hp after the attack hit. The Thermoblobby was almost dead too, but if I attack it I would die to the fire i'm standing in. My only 2 options to survive were to either walk out of the fire or use a spacial instability potion, and I decided to walk, praying that the thermoblobby wouldn't shoot me with another fire spell. The thermoblobby instead decided to follow me and got killed by it's own fire.

Current build: Name: "Android Rogue", because Arron Syaoran and Arronsyaoran were already taken(Victorious Save games that Defeated Dredmor on GRPD, one Mix Warrior Rogue and one Pure Rogue.)
Skills: Android Rogue, Thrown, Dual Wield, Daggers, Assassination, Smithing, Burglary.(I purposely decided not to level smithing or burglary early)

 

You can stack resists if it's the sort that can be gotten from encrusts. Making you immune to melee enemies. Magical Law is helpful because of the gag and transform abilities (transform corrupting mobs into something else).

For dredmor, I think maxing out on dodge (you can abuse encrusts for this) as well as having something like Magical Law's gag (so he can't cast spells on you) would help. If he can hit you corruption is pretty painful so it would be preferably either dodge or 100 counter.

 

The Problem with a Counter or Dodge build is it usually can't work with a Pure Warrior(though I'ma try regardless). Should I go for Counter or Dodge if I'm pure warrior?

 

I've tried simply being invulnerable. You might have to juggle some equipment or abuse resist giving encrusts a bit, though. The issue is if you're not going to use things like tinkering, etc then you will be swapping resist equipment that you have to find dropped somewhere, since you can't craft or use encrusts.

For example, meleeing a mob with high dodge and high existential damage will wreck you (eg: Ravens in level 14/15)

 

Yeah, the Ravens do quite a bit of damage. They don't go anywhere near even 3 shotting me as a Pure Warrior though. Last time I got all the way to floor 15. The reason why I died to a raven is because I hit the digest button while completely blind. I just wanna know if there's any tips to meleeing Dredmor.

As for Encrusts, do you actually need them to range/mage Vlad Digula? Another one of the reasons why I avoid encrusts is because it's highly abusable. I've seen many peeps max out encrusts and end up shrugging off the instability effects.

 

Strictly speaking, you should be using "melee" nukes for enemies with high dodge. I mean, you hardly take any damage from everything else (especially if you've managed to squeeze in an early knit tissue) that you can't walk off, so you can just mecha stomp, charge of the steam and so on and so forth as generic damage dealing abilities instead of auto attacking dodgers.

I mean, sure, you're committed to being pure melee, and, well, i can respect that. But there is fine line between being committed to an ideal, and being ned stark, and for me...
Autoattacking something that SPECIALISES IN COUNTERING AUTOATTACKS, just because you're commited to autoattacking your way through the game... that sorta crosses that line.

 

I've never thought of burning my aoe warrior cooldowns on single dodger enemies. I'd have to know which enemies are the tricky ones that counter autoattacks. There's probably quite a decent sized list of them.

Edit: I have to admit, in most monster zoos there's always the casters that try to run away and shoot you from afar. I always end up ranging those, even as a pure warrior, simply out of necessity. Also, on Floor 15, I was burning Food and Nuke Ammo(Bolts/thrown) like crazy because I opened a zoo early on and it was a double zoo. I almost cleared it too, but I made the mistake of digesting while completely blind. That caused the Raven to score free hits on me for 50 or so turns.(Ie, couldn't fight back cause I was busy digesting). The only thing I'm concerned about meleeing/ranging as a Pure Warrior is Lord Dredmor himself. I actually want to melee him to death as a pure warrior. Everything else can be ranged if needed. If it's impossible to melee Floor 15 Lord Dredmor without encrusts, then I guess I'll have to range him. All I need to know is whether he is meleeable without encrusts or not. If not, then please tell me to range him instead as a Pure Warrior on my next run.

 

Here's the most vicious clockwork build I've done so far:
Clockwork knight
Smithing
Tinkering
Dual-wield
Magical Law
Blood magic

Dual wield clockwork ravagers for most clockwork treshing, use Magical law capstone to recharge your abilities, spread mayhem.

 

I honestly don't know how to make a Pure Warrior build. CK and Battle Geology are probably the best for Warriors, but Tinkering is a Rogue Skill that greatly helps CK. If I were to make a Pure Warrior build, I'd have a small gap in prowess due to the lack of tinkering. There needs to be more warrior skills that aren't just weapon skills.

Edit: Charge of the Steam Brigade and Rocket Punch are Essential to me. Abilities like these are what make warriors shine.

 

How about integrating Polearms and Communism into your build? This would do some extra survivability I believe.

 

Does Communism Synergize well with Clockwork Knight? If so, then I know just the build to make for Pure Warrior. It won't have very high counter/crit, but it'd probably be block capped.

 

CK/MoA/Smithing/Fleshsmithing are core to any melee centric play imo. That leaves 3 slot over for everything else.
Dredmor is meleable without encrusts (i've done it myself), as long as you have Either Diggle God of War or death blessings, but remains somewhat dicey. There are two opposing melee centric schools -
one being dual wield axes + battle geology (the idea is to kill everything with either nukes or crit once CK scales off)
other being Polearms + Shields + Tinkering (the idea is to maximise your ability to miminize melee damage, while being able to disengage at will with knockbacks from fights you don't want. Tinkering has a three fold use - it feeds you arrows late game for when you have no choice, but most importantly, it keeps CK's nukes relevant longer, and gives a TON of free exp/damage from being able to clear/recycle most traps in the game most of which are MAJOR advantages of CK+Tinkering that are often overlooked.)