The 'Builds That Won' Thread

Just got my first win, admittedly only on Dwarfish Moderation no permadeath because I am a wimp.

Themes: Melee power, crafting, heavy tank, lots of options for hitting monsters at a distance, but no spells (mana was only used for Thauma-Kinetic Damper).

Polearms
Clockwork Knight
Tinkering
Smithing
Battle Geology
Fungal Arts
Berserker Rage

Plutonic Fist got me through the level 1 blues. Early on I focused on Tinkering, Smithing and Clockwork Knight, so I could clear traps and to get the fancy Clockwork gear (and because the CK abilities are really useful). Got Polearms up to Wallenstein's - as I was playing a Melee Power build, the proc was extremely powerful and by the end it was slaying monsters all by itself in a couple of hits (my EDR was atrocious, so I often had a hard time hitting them myself). Occasional investment in Fungal Arts gave me far more mushrooms than I could ever use, so in every difficult fight I was munching liberally on Fairywodgers, Grunge Ears and Greedy Blungecaps. I filled in the Battle Geology tree late on, in preparation for fighting Digula and Dredmor. Worshipped the Diggle God of War for yet more melee power.

At some point on level 13, I realised that most monsters were incapable of seriously hurting me (apart from Corruption, which I was a bit sloppy about), so I stocked up on Sawblades and visited Hell until I found Vlad Digula (who spawned twice in the same instance - the second one threw me off guard a bit and I had a scare but survived thanks to a Zodiac Wand). Then I rushed to Dredmor and killed him mostly with Sawblades. I could probably have taken him on in melee though - I think I let him hit me once and the damage was pretty minor.

By the end I had about 180HP, +5 regen (very useful on Dwarfish Moderation), 45 armour, 55 melee power (+more with Rage buffs), 30 critical, 20 piercing resist, 5-10 of most exotic resists, 50 magic reflect (from a mirror shield), 35 magic resist, 75 block and an axe that did 80 damage. Not the perfect tank but it certainly did the job. The real powerhouse combat abilities for me were Rocket Jump and Wallenstein's, though most abilities saw a reasonable amount of use.

If I did it again, I might switch out Berserker Rage - it did give a nice boost, but ultimately it was overkill. Rogue Scientist would have been a decent choice for its Tinkering-based attacks and for the alchemy crafting. A Wizard tree such as Viking Wizardry, Emomancy or Magical Law might have been a good idea to make more use of mana, although most attack spells would be quite weak as I had zero for most of the game. Either way would have involved a lot of hot-desking on the skill bar, but that's a minor inconvenience.

 

Hi...I'm new to the forums, having just bought the game during the recent Steam sale.

However, being that I'm unemployed currently with a lot of free time on my hands while I wait for my next seasonal job (and I'm an insomniac), I've already managed to defeat Dredmor on Rogue (as in I JUST finished him a little bit ago today). After a few false starts I did some wiki reading and came up with something that I thought would work.
The build I used just so happens to meet ALL of your criteria in your other thread (to the point of brokeness in my opinion, though I will admit my basis of comparison is somewhat limited) and I thought I would like to share it. Though given how late I am to this game I'm sure someone has already thought of this.
Alchemy, Blood Magic, Tinkering, Magic Law, Rogue Scientist, Clockwork Knight, and Archeology. Out of those I would say only that Alchemy, Tinkering, Magic Law, Rogue Scientist, and blood magic were required, but CK and Archeology helped tick off the last few on the list you made that I otherwise might not have had (or needed). All things considered Alchemy might not have been necessary either...but that would have nerfed the rogue scientists excellent acid skills.

Now...let's go through the list....

Kill bad guys up close? Baromatic Vortex Upgrade, acid (both versions), and rocket boots (with the added bonus of not being "up close" anymore) with magic law.
Far away? Baromatic Vortex Upgrade with magic law and acid (big one, thing has four different kinds of damage...wow...hard to completely resist that one). Oh yeah, I had a really sweet crossbow too and that exploded on shot thanks to Krong. Though this made melee forever out of bounds since the explosion liked to proc when I would melee as well, which is kinda weird. The crossbow was also less necessary as the game progressed since I could just spam BVU/canister with magic law with no real regards to mana.
Traps? Archeology and Tinkering. Helmet HUD x2 encrust just made it easier.
Getting Away? Alchemy invisibility potions and rocket jump
Islands and such? Magic Law at first then later the almighty all-purpose rocket jump (damn that's a versatile skill).
Secret walls? Acid and later rocket jump (dur). RJ has a smaller (non-existent) cool down
Healing and Mana? Early on Alchemy and level one blood magic, later I abused Magic law plus blood potions. Good lord it's so awesome to turn 100 round abilities into near instants.
Zoos? Barmatic Vortex, acid canister, and brimstone bottles (oozes ROCK..near infinte brimstone and plastic) early on. Once I acquired Magic Law's capstone I dropped the bottles. I don't think any zoos gave me problems.
Uncurse? Magic Law....next....
Bosses? Generally BV Upgrade was enough since I could just spam it.
Resists? Had a Mirror shield in one hand...couldn't find another but Archeology gave me so much resists from krong anvils that it more or less made up for it. It didn't matter much because most enemies wouldn't get a chance to do anything to me. On the other hand having only one shield allowed me to keep hold of my Caduceus (thanks Brax!) that had 6 lights strapped to it so I could see the whole screen. This of course allowed me to take huge jumps with Rocket Jump and shoot BVU's and canisters from silly ranges.
Dredmor? He had problems dealing with a BV Upgrade at 11 tinkering every other round. He didn't last long.
XP? Archeology. I maxed out WAY before the final level.
Stealing from Brax? Rocket jump baby!!

It was also rather nice to have at least two points in all crafting which allows some pretty good stuff to be made in smithing and wand crafting (though the death ray SUCKED). The Golden emerald rings served me very well and sonic wands were great against certain spell casters (and other items of course). Plus I had no shortage of alchemy and engineering crafting due to ooze drops and construct drops. Except for steel. The game was VERY stubborn about dropping steel. I didn't get any till the 5th floor....though the game was kind enough to have brax sell a rail shooter crossbow on the 3rd floor which I had just enough money to buy....so all was forgiven (though I was left broke as a joke for a while). Also the ability to convert gems was REALLY useful.

Honestly the earliest part of the game was the hardest. After the first few tries I finally breached level 2 and things started to pick up. Especially since the game that ultimately succeeded started with a 6 damage club in the first room I entered.

I'm thinking for my next build I'll focus on CW Knight and Geologist...I have a cool idea of rushing in with the capstone, using earthquake, and then rocket jumping out of there. Wait for the rocket jump to cool down then use ML capstone twice and repeat.

And with that I think I'll go to sleep now.....good night everyone. I hope my post was at least interesting.

SMALL EDIT. While I beat it on Rogue, I want mentioned that it wasn't PD. The game randomly deleted two PD characters for reasons I'm not sure (maybe Steam cloud?) and I didn't want to take the chance. I did however treat the game like PD with the exception of one death that I acquired because I was drunk. I decided that one didn't count

 

GR/PD
Egyptian Magic
Leywalker
Blood magic
Psionics
Golemancy
Burglary
Archeology

DM/PD/random
Golemancy
Psionics
Necro
Leywalker
Werediggle
Piracy
Egyptian Magic

I won 4 more times (and failed terribly countless times), but at least 3 of those wins were in 2011, I don't remember the builds, and some characters are missing.

 

Just got my first kill on Going Rogue/Perma Death using

• Unarmed Combat
• Master of Arms
• Blood Mage
• Warlockery
• Battle Geology
• Archaeology
• Big Game Hunter

The focus of this build was to almost be a melee/tank/caster.

The reason i took Unarmed Combat over polearm for tanking was because i was able to reach 100% block chance without the need for the polearm stats or skills. This let me use items such as shields, tomes, and orbs without losing the massive stat bonus i get for being unarmed because they do not count as weapons. (max this)

I took Master of Arms because of its defensive capabilities obviously, this just helped keep me at 100% block chance. Also, you get some burliness and lots of health regen from proc's when hit.

Blood Mage was one of the more important parts of my build. Even though it gives me negative stats per skill point i put into it, the first ability in the tree is essential, the second is optional but i liked it. The first allows you to regain mana when you kill an enemy, helping you sustain the Warlockery skill tree without having to build mana or magic power. The second just has a chance to steal some life when you hit an enemy; however, it didnt seem like a huge different having it. I dont recommend getting more than the second ability in this skill tree because of the negative resistance you get for the other abilities which are meant for more heavy caster builds.

Warlockery is essential to this build. You start off with an ability that allows you to attack with extra damage each hit at the cost of 1 mana, this is easily sustainable with the blood magic skill tree, therefore its free damage at the start. The second skill is very important, mana shield, it will block lots of early damage for you and give you bonus resistances, i recommend getting this relatively early. After that, i would hold off on getting any more abilities in this skill tree until unarmed and master of arms are maxed. The abilitiy Essence of Battle is extremely nice for later on in the game, but isnt needed early. After that ability, i dont recommend using anything else in the skill tree, however, you may end up with extra skills points to spend so you might as well max it eventually.

Battle Geology was hoenstly just a skill tree i took on the fly when i made this build and it ended up taking me all the way to defeating dredmor. The reason this skill tree is so nice is for three different abilities. The first is your starting ability, it allows you to debuff a target reducing their block and counter attack chance, very useful against elite/glowy mob guys that have high block and counter attack chance. The second is the seismic uppercut. This ability will stun a single target near or far away for 1 turn, i recommend using this when they are next to you because your character will also auto attack while using the uppercut, essentially hitting them twice. Then because they are stunned, free hit next turn on them or time to heal. The last ability is quake, its just a massive AoE that stuns everyone around you for a turn, very useful for large packs of monsters and does some damage. BE WARNED on floor 15 i used this and accidentally hit brax who was somewhat close which caused me to freak out, luckily i was strong enough to kill everything on floor 15 + all of brax's minions until i found all three brax's on the floor and killed them all to stop them from spawning more dread collectors.

Archaeology is for the experience, randomizing stats (can make all your negative stats into positives if they are random stats if lucky), and the free krongs. Get a skill in the free experience ability early will help with levels, but dont max it until after unarmed, master of arms, battle geology, and after getting essence of battle in warlockery.

Big Game Hunter, you honestly dont need to put anything into this until youve maxed out just about everything else. The first ability you get passively gives you extra exp from animals, which gives you nice easy levels on the first few floors, after that it becomes pretty useless except for some extra passive stats later in the game. This is the one skill tree you could change depending on your preference. The easy exp is nice, but not needed

Lastly there are a few things i recommend to help make this build become unstoppable later on in the game. First are 2 items, one is the mirror shield (not darkly mirror shield unless you have high rightousness resistance, otherwise the negative stats will crush you later on and its not worth it because melee people become a joke anyways), the second is the Universal Principles tome, this gives your auto attacks (not conflicting with unarmed bonuses) like a 50% chance to stun your target for 4 turns, works on counter attacks, sometimes you are able to perma stun enemies mixing that with battle geology, very helpful against strong guys. Finally, the last thing that will make life 100x easier is the buff you get from praying to the diggle god statue of fertility that is found in dungeon levels 11-15, hope you get lucky and get that early, makes those dungeon levels a joke, i was able to walk into 100+ monster zoos no trouble if i saw some of the nastier casters wernt in there. This buff from the statue is probably a little overpowered, the minor regen buff you can get when struck is able to stack. While surrounded, i was getting up to 10+ health regen a turn(on going rogue) without food, i think making this ability unstackable, just refreshable, would balance it a bit. Anyways, GL have fun! hope this helped!
Final Score: 3,731,016

 

I'm quite new to the game but I just defeated Lord Dredmor for the first time on Dwarven Moderation difficulty with permadeath on.

I was really nervous when I finally found him on floor 15.

I spent a lot of time running away at first but quickly found out just how effective it was to use my Unholy Warcry and to summon my Wyrmling to distract Dredmor while I went all out melee style on him!

Huzzah!

Proof - my final score table

As said above, this was on Dwarvish Moderation with permadeath on. Now I need to step up my game to tackle the hardest difficulty!

My build was as follows:
- Maces
- Shield Bearer
- Berserker Rage
- Master of Arms
- Viking Wizardry
- Promethean Magic
- Fleshsmithing

I took all perks in everything except for Fleshsmithing where I just wanted the 'Knit Tissue' spell.

I like this 'heavy hitter' style build. The perks for Maces and Berserker Rage made me really powerful as I took each higher perk. Shield Bearer and Master of Arms combined to give great defensive buffs as I progressed through the tree, especially Master of Arms.

Both Viking Wizardry and Promethean magic proved key for me. The Unholy Warcry and Thor's Bolt proved great for crowd management (monster zoos) and also for use on Dredmor. I liked the first few perks of Promethean Magic but didn't use many of the latter perks. The Rune of Exploding was pretty good to chuck down upon encountering a monster zoo and I found the Wyrmling to be good for distracting enemies and getting me out of trouble. The weakest tree was Fleshsmithing as I only used the Knit Tissue healing spell. It got me out of trouble a few times, I guess, but by the later levels the regen perks of Master of Arms meant that I really didn't need it very often.

This seemed like a pretty good build for a new player like me. It has good survivability in the early levels where fighting alongside the Wyrmling can keep you out of trouble. In the latter levels, I became really strong and only really had to worry about casters.

I was really worried about fighting Dredmor as I had heard most people say that you should not do any melee against him. I started off trying to take him out at range but I didn't really make a dent. Once I started using my Wyrmling summon to distract him and using the Unholy Warcry and a bit of Thor's Bolt, I was able to get close and really do major damage with melee.

I wonder how this build would work out on Going Rogue. I'll have to step up to the hardest difficulty soon but first I want to experiment with other builds and maybe some random builds on the normal difficulty so that I can continue learning the game.

 

Hello. I'm new to the forum. I've recently had my first win on GR/PD/NTTG and got quite surprised how easily Dredmor went down with this build. The basic idea was to build a Lightsabre wielding Clockwork Knight. I found the Lightsabre recipe a bit too late but he ended up scoring 2,728,360 and got ranked #924. Here are the skill choices I made.

• - Clockwork Knight
• - Smithing
• - Tinkering
• - Mace
• - Berserker Rage
• - Dual Wielding
• - Master of Arms

Skill order

1. CK 3 - 2 extremely useful actives on top of the crafting skill boosts

2. Smithing 3 - to craft tier 4 equipments

3. CK 4 - awesome passive and the Power-limb recipe

4. Tinkering 3 - trap duty and more importantly to craft the Power-limb rings (ended up with only 1 but it was enough)

5. CK 7 - get all the tools needed to clear out zoos like a walk in the park. Also, cool recipes and tier 5 Smithing/Tinkering.

6. Tinkering 5 - craft all the end-game gears starting with the super awesome Imperial Clockwork Plate. The only hard reagent to find was the 7 steal ingots needed for the full plate. Lots of construct monsters showed up after level 3 so the CK passive helped finding those materials needed. All the CK skills scale with melee power and armor so no high level weapon was needed to clear out everything up until this point.

7. Began looking for weapon recipes. Was hoping for the lightsabres (Mace of Windu) but could find Clockwork Thunderer instead which turned out to be even more devastating. It was surprisingly easy to craft as well (2 iron + hefy stick for the warhammer ----> + 1 steal for great warhammer ----> + some tinkering reagents) and it wasn't too long till I was dual wielding this beast.

After that, it was basically a slaughter. The dual Thunderer's sheer destructive force (even put the 3 frag grenade encrust for fun ) coupled with high-end clockwork armor carried all the way through level 7~13 at which point Atom Smasher replaced them. Rocket charging toward the middle of monster zoo, wearing thick clockwork armor and wielding exploding hammers definitely proved to be effective . Exotic resistances were the only problem but I could always rocket jump out of trouble and take out dangerous targets from afar using rocket punch and Clockwork Sawblades. In fact even those mobs with exotic damage couldn't stand the sheer force of clockwork goodies and mace knock-backs.


I had tons of fun playing this build and the toon lived up to his name Destructoid. In fact after around level 10 It was starting to get boring even. Lord Dredmor took around 20% per hit by the 90 melee power boosted sawblades and could stand only a few hits from dual nuclear smashers after that. Thanks for reading and hope you guys enjoyed it.

 

Gotcha Dredmor ! Going Rogue & Permadeath of course.

Rogue Scientist
Clockwork Knight
Smithing
Tinkering
Alchemy
Perception
Magical Law

I had far too much stuff on me. Nearly 4000 Kronged out bolts, and another 6000ish. Also had a Clockwork Rail Launcher that was encrusted four times with Gaudy Baubling and only had one instability. Oh and 1.77 million cash (because I didn't empty the vending machines enough...)

Mostly the pain is getting that first level, then you can rely on Rogue Scientist to get you the rest of the way. The first two skills you get very good attacks. Make use of the flasks and wands you start off with in order to get going.

It's not too hard to become invulnerable to most enemies, and the ones who can scratch you, shoot them with the crossbow. Had a few problems near the end with the more Dodge-tastic enemies. I only made that Rail Launcher and encrusted it just before shooting Dredmor with it.

Fire resist is fairly easy, but here I had the clockwork armor and stuff in order to get blasting resistance so that I could Rocket Jump without any pain. Very useful. Alternatively, you could use the second-last skill, which is a buff that (among other things) increases blasting resistance. With enough space, you can shoot, jump away and resume shooting then have your cooldown on the jump ready to use by the time enemy has cleared.

The Rogue Scientist's two area attack skills are great for Monster Zoos, in particular the Upgrade Barometric one. Pair that with the cooldown refresh skill from Magical Law and on the last Zoo I fought, it began with three attacks that pretty much went all the way through the zoo.

Also, you can craft Fiery Wands (needs +1 wandcrafting from elsewhere, I had a hat and two rings) which then lets you craft Bolts of Mass Destruction. Which then lets you craft The Bomb(s). I didn't because I knew I wouldn't use them, but there was enough to make quite a few BoMD.

Tons of food, too. With the Blood Groove (lifesteal) on your weapon and crossbow (this still procs on melee hits), I used a ring of Sapphire Skies just for fun and because the Digglish Torment rings cut my piercing resist just a little but too much.

 

Just finished my first successful Permadeath run. Going rogue difficulty, no mods.

Swords
Daggers
Dual wield
Blood Magic
Emomancy
Smithing
Archeology

With over 100 counter-attack and the wonderful anti-magic cloud from the Emomancy the character is pretty much invincible. I just had to be REALLY SURE. The traps were the worst problem throughout the late-game since the character started dressing like a mage, but one lucky "This Translation is All Wrong!" on a Time Lord scarf solved it in one go producing +6 Trap Affinity artifact wonder. "Love Will Teleport Us Apart" and "Liechtenauer's Switcheroo" covered the early game survivability. "The Cure" also helped, especially the curse-removal part. I guess i could replace smithing with tinkering in this build and the traps would be way easier, but the resistances and extra burliness went nice, especially for the Liechtenauer's Overhau damage.

 

I've clocked up around 350 hours so far (always DMPD, and with all expansions but no mods), but have only killed Dredmor the once. I don't have a screenshot, but my skills were:

Promethean Magic
Golemancy
Blood Magic
Ley Walker
Magic Theory
Burglary
Archaeology

Basically my strategy was to burn everything and never run out of mana, with burglary and archaeology there as anti-trap protection. I badly abused the fact that Living Walls don't block line of site into Zoos to pile up the Tactical Pyres without exposing myself to danger. In fact that's how I killed Dredmor. I tunnelled into the room he was in and popped up a Living Wall before he spotted me and woke up. Then I simply did Pyre after Pyre on him until he died. He never took a single action, just standing there in the flames.

It felt a bit cheesy to be honest, as if I were exploiting a loophole rather than playing fair.

 

"Arronsyaoran" and "Arron Syaoran":

One's a Pure rogue and the other is a Warrior/Rogue mix. They have almost the same name. I don't have the exact tombstone that shows the victory(because I deleted the images before this thread was posted), so I used the high scores Tombstone instead. Please note that these 2 saves were without any mods, even though I had to go back into the game and screenshot. The "Android Rogue" deaths are with mods installed.

Arronsyaoran is the Warrior/Rogue build. He had Daggers, Archery, Thrown, Dual Wield, Master of Arms, Burglary and Smithing.
Arron Syaoran is the Pure Rogue build(as seen in my thread GRPD Pure Rogue Run Success). He had Archery, Thrown, Artful Dodger, Perception, Burglary, Tinkering and Piracy. Piracy's Swashbuckling really helped out at least until floor 5. Ended up skipping Floor 13 with this build, otherwise the Diggle Rocketeer would rape me. By Floor 11 I was Dodge capped and could hit anything in melee with no trouble. Here's the thread of the Run:
http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/grpd-pure-rogue-run-success.5779/

Both of these saves were on Going Rogue: Permadeath, with RotDG Floors(Goes up to floor 15). None of these had NTTG, because I usually have plenty of time to play Dredmor.

 

I wish I knew about this thread last year. I unfortunately don't have proof.
But I remember winning with a build akin to...
1. Staves
2. Bloodmagic
3. Burglary
4. Alchemy
5. Promethean Magic
6. Psionics
7. Magic training

Yeah this was, I will note, right after realm of the diggle gods came out I think. So I had all the levels on Dwarven moderation.

It's a very bread-and-butter magic build with some utility.
The first thing I did for this build was to get the second level for burglary so you don't hurt yourself kicking doors or break valuable loot from chest... and you could technically get a few ten zorkmids from having the lockpicks but who even does that?

Then I maxed out alchemy and got lucky, I had the fruity and gem staves both before the fourth floor.
Before maxing out alchemy I made sure to have a few points in promethean to have the ability not to tank hits myself. As well as the second point in blood magic so you can slap people with your hurty stick.

After that you'd go for all your stave points and then work on whatever you think is nice. For instance psionic up until whatever the level gives you the pushback and then max out the amazing aoe spam you can achieve with fire.
Build slightly requires you to hit stuff with staff for mana and health while your regens towards mid-late game though so if you're not careful...

Edit: My bad, I may have been using viking magic instead of psionics, but i can't remember

 

Finally beat Lord Dredmor on Going Rogue & Permadeath with this same character build. Woohoo!

It nearly all ended on floor 13 where I had to use all of the health potions I had been saving to get myself out of trouble in a monster zoo. I managed to scrape by somehow and get down to floor 15.



*Proud*

Now to play around with some random skills characters!

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=151689162
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=151688654

I finally defeated my first ever lord Dredmor (and on permadeath, on Going Rogue, 15 floors!). For that I used "glass cannon"--like, pure mage build that I will describe below. It's relatively easy to play (just 100 (exactly!) hours of play time in steam + god knows how many hours with desura version --- easy), but it often dies because of sudden reasons. Such as traps. Never ever disarm a trap if there's a chance you will fail with this build.
There's how it goes:

Skills

• Fleshsmithing
• Mathemagic
• Promethean Magic
• Blood Mage
• Ley Walker
• Egyptian Magic
• Magical Law

Progression:
0. Equipment to look out for.
Although we're taking Lay Walker we won't progress in it past second level, but we will need 1 mana per round restoration, so equip everything with mana regen until you reach that goal.
After that simply aim to increase your magical power and resistances.
You should also keep somewhere one mirror shield and all Holy Hand Grenades you can find.
1. Taking care of basic needs (floor 1).
Dragon's Breath easily kills any first monster you will face and then Zombyfycation will help you through first levels before you get Knit Tissue from Fleshsmithing and Thaumaturgic Tap from Ley Walker. Former will completely cover your needs for health restoring for the rest of the game and latter will prevent you from running out of mana --- use them liberally.
This eliminates any need for keeping food. Some booze may be helpful when fighting Dredmor, but don't bother collecting stuff from earlier floors. You only really need to collect mana and replenishment potions (and don't use them --- you'll need them for Dredmor). Oh, and invisibility potions --- they will also be important for the last boss fight.

2. Promethean stage (floors 1 - 2).
After that drop zombies and just spam Dragon's Breath at everything. Next four levels put your skill points into Promethean Magic. You should be able to get Rune of Exploding and Summon Wyrmling at the first dungeon level. Each one of these should be able to take care of any monster that you will meet there. Rune of Exploding will also help you clear your first Monster Zoo, but then Obvious Fireball will be more efficient for taking care of large groups of enemies (including other Monster Zoos). Gog's Tactical Pyre will serve you for the rest of the game as a main spell for taking care of single enemies. Don't bother taking Infernal Torus.

3. Mathematical stage (floors 2 - 4).
Promethean Magic will be able to carry you for a long time. So you can take your time learning everything from the Mathemagic tree. Although you should only care about last two skills. Xeuclid's Translation is invaluable --- this teleporing ability is necessary for keeping distance from monsters. The Recursive Curse will be our spell against single enemies with high fire resistance (they start appearing approximately on floor 7).

4. Egyptian stage (floors 4 - 6).
Next max Egyptian Magic tree out. Hopefully at this point you reached 1 mana per turn regen or, at least, near it. Because you will need to keep all Egyptian Glyphs active at all time. This will make Call the Sandstorm your main and most powerful attack spell. Rare enemies survive one full-glyphs storm and almost nothing survives two. It makes Monster Zoos a joke. And with full mana regen you should be easily able to keep your mana full.
Now strategy is like this: when you encounter a large group of enemies --- teleport away with Xeuclid's Translation and use Call the Sandstorm on them. If there's only one enemy (and you don't want to bother teleporting away) just kill it with Gog's Tactical Pyre/The Recursive Curse, depending on what's more effective.
Keeping your distance when using Call the Sandstorm is necessary because it affects a very large area. Would be good idea to learn it's pattern to know how to cast it without affecting yourself.

5. Lawful, fleshy stage (floors I-don't-remember).
To finish this build you need Gag Order and Writ of Counterspelling from Magical Law tree. Gag Order is pretty much useless against regular mobs, but invaluable against Dredmor. It's also the last skill that's completely necessary for this build. Writ of Counterspelling is just another handy thing to keep always on (but probably not that necessary) to defend against spell attacks. Meatshield from Fleshsmithing can also be useful for health bonus (bonus is small, but can save your ass).
With that core build is complete and you can use your skill points for whatever you want --- it would be useless anyway. But improving as a Blood Mage may be harmful, because of decreased resistance.

6. Dredmor fight.
If you made it to the Dredmor --- just keep him shut with Gag Order and spam whatever attack (don't forget Holy Hand Grenades!) seems more effective on him (they all did so little I couldn't see a difference) while keeping your distance with Xeuclid's Translation. I myself abandoned Call the Sandstorm and deactivated all the glyphs because mana actually became a problem (even with mana/replenishment potions).
Occasionally he will break out of Gag Order effect and will mute you with Antimagical Field. In that case drink invisibility potion and wait it out.
I was trying to counter his spells with mirror shield and Writ of Counterspelling, but it wasn't as effective as I thought it would.
With this fight will be long, but easy.

 

Ha! I got my second win!

Again, I was DMPD with all expansions and no mods; and this time it was with a 4/3 mage/rogue split.

This time I had:

Necronomiconomics
Astrology
Blood Magic
Magical Law
Burglary
Tinkering
Archaeology

I started off using Radiant Aura to give me the necro-resist I needed to be able to cast Deathly Hex without killing myself, and spent my first two points on Lucky Pick and It Belongs In A Museum for the XP increases.

Then I concentrated on the Necronomiconomics until I could simply obliterate everything with Tenebrous Rift - and that lasted me all the way down to Dredmor.

Dredmor himself was all but immune to my magic, so I ended up keeping him suppressed with a combination of Gag Order and a mirror shield/Writ of Counterspelling combo while I threw things at him and used Ninja Vanish and Move In Mysterious Way to keep my distance (with Wright's Irrefutable Argument being invaluable for keeping those skills charged).

Unfortunately, being a wimpy mage, it took me over half an hour of throwing things at Dredmor and running away before I eventually managed to kill him, and I had a couple of very hairy moments of him managing to anti-magic me (despite the Gag Order and Writ of Counterspelling) and then getting too close while I desperately run away and wait for my Burglary skills to recharge!

This was a much more exciting fight than my rather disappointing previous win where Dredmor never saw me and never took an action.

 

Once again going rogue, permadeath, this time a vampire:

Vampire
Master of arms
Shield Bearer
Demonologist
Warlockery
Archeology
Unarmed

Block-capped, 108% magic reflection, lots of health regeneration, decent magic power (mostly for the items with procs).
Main reason for character survivability is absolutely awesome Celestial Circle + Warlock Challenge combo. Enemies instantly delivered to your feet to feast on their blood. Also I discovered that Archeology is one of the most useful skills for a Vampire since the easiest way to get a lot of is to abuse This Translation is all wrong! on artifacts. Got no high score proof because I rarely visited wizarlands maps and ditched some levels to go straight to Dredmor. Although, I guess the final battle pic is convincing enough.

 

I just won with the following build in spite of a streak of bad luck and numerous close calls (no mods, GR/PD/NTTG):
Egyptian Magic
Blood Mage
Ley Walker
Alchemy
Perception
Staves
Dual Wield

The 'bad luck' that I want to mention is:
1. repeated instances of having items kronged with -2 magic regen or worse (no joke, at least 3 or 4 times)
2. My forgetting that the Diggle God of Death gives you -25 magic (and health) regen and no luck finding any god to replace that (found a second Diggle God of Death lol).
3. Walking around with no gloves as a consequence of 1, and mediocre gear for most of the game with inferior gear because of NTTG

In the end, I actually meleed Dredmor after getting sick of that stupid non-removable anti-magic field being put on me. Granted, he was softened up with my bolts (again nttg meant that I didn't have very much in the way of 'good' missiles to use).

After several close calls on levels 11-12, I decided to simply rush to 15. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be against Dredmor. I had stocked up on potions of healing, regen, invisibility, mana, purity, etc. (I had not NEARLY enough mana potions because of my severe negative mana regen). Those potions of invisibility are primarily what allowed me to survive the combat (when you don't have burglary, Alchemy is a good enough substitute if you stock up on the right stuff). I went down to the teens in health several times during the final battle, but would always pop an invis potion, and take the necessary remedies (purity, heals, mana, etc.).

Anyway, it's my first victory since returning to dredmor a few weeks ago. I got my mojo back lol .

Just don't ask me to do it again with NTTG lol. There really ought to be an achievement for that.

 

BTW, I can't find any screenshots I took during the game, including STeam screenshots (F12). I really wanted to post something but I can't find them anywhere.

Had one in my paste buffer.

 

Just finished my third successful rogue/permadeath run.

Battle Geology
Magical law
Mathemagic
Blood Magic
Polearms
Tinkering
Smithing

Very effective build that mostly relies on Archeology being routinely recharged with Wright's, with a lot of melee power gained from ecrusting, Polearms and power armour. 99% Magic reflection also helps a lot. Mathemagic is handy for getting into perfect position to destroy zoos with earthquake. Here's a pic with the last stand, no high-scores once again since I'm ignoring wizardlands lately.

 

I see you're still wearing your top hat.... a gentleman to the last eh?

 

Do you still have the save-file?
I'm interested to see where all your comes from. My full melee build only had about 70.

EDIT: I don't know how to word this without sounding like I'm implying you cheated. Which I'm not