The Tale of Crafty McCraft.

Here is a tale of heroism, a tale of cowardice. Of luck and providence.
Here is a tale of---

Ah, forget it. Onward!

Anyway, I've been meaning to try a build using all three crafting skills, and 'lo, twas immensely successful.

Dwarven Moderation. (Do all my premeditated builds there, I save GR for random)

Skills chosen:

Swords - For counter
Dual Wield - ^
Mathemagic - No point filler movement assist
Burglary - Late game lifesaver, lockpicks.
Alchemy
Tinkering
Smithing


Order of skill point allocation:
Smithing to max.
Alchemy to max. (might've gone to 4, then put one in tinkering for a bit of trap affinity, don't remember)
Tinkering to max.
1 point into Dual Wield for proc.
Swords to max.
Remaining points into Burglary. (Finished before I managed to get any higher than invis)

I did most of this without a crossbow, though I started using one very heavily in floor 8. The monster zoo there had three floor 10 boss monsters, one that hit me for 43 damage and had me running for my life. I prudently shot the rest from a distance. One very useful thing to using so many points in crafting skills is you are literally swimming in possibilities. Every recipe can be used, if needed/wanted. I didn't find all the recipes, a goodly portion of the bookcases were 'empty'. But I found enough.

Somehow, I managed to get a high enough trap affinity as I progressed that I disarmed every trap successfully until I fought Dredmor, except one, for there was very high tier trap that I had about a 10% chance of disarm up on floor three. (Or there abouts, I remember remarking "One of those this soon? ?!"

Oddities and other happenstances:

This game has a giant sense of humor. I swear, it was laughing up it's sleeve at me until bursting into full guffaws halfway through floor 9. I seriously found 2 or more lutefisk shrines on -every- floor. I did not find a lutefisk cube until floor 9. Hilarious. At that point I just pointedly ignored it.

Doul's Possible Sword cropped up in a shop on floor 2, and I feverishly made aqua vitae until I could buy it. Foolishly I enchanted it, and it got about 15 corruptions down the road, thankfully nothing too serious. Held onto it until I found another one in a shop on floor 9. I would have still been able to survive going down without finding that, I would have just needed to be alot more careful, especially on floors 5-7.

Found a BMoD recipe somewhere, but I didn't realize high tinkering skill automatically made cruelly barbed steel bolts, so I didn't make any until floor 8. At that point I had so many various ingots/materials to make it's requirements I made about 30 or so, sold around 8 to buy a replacement Doul's Sword.

Found the Ring of Thorns recipe and made two, which greatly aided my counter and block.

Endgame Stats:

Most notable was around a 23 armor absorption, 30 block rate, 50 counter rate, and mid 60s sneakiness with an embossed serpentine mail and heavy helmet. And even then I had to jump up and down yelling "Kill me, I'm here!" as the monsters wandered around oblivious to my presence. (Footy mobs seemed to see me very quickly. If it's the big eyeball and a subsequent higher awareness, kudos to the devs!)

I had well over 100 health potions, and could've made hundreds of cruelly barbed bolts of varying metals. Steel was running a bit low since I didn't find much chalk and made quite a few steel bolts the last few floors.

Cowardice:

Chickened out on meleeing Dredmor to death, and instead shot half a dozen BMoDs at him until he melted. I will feel the shame for awhile, but oh well!

Regrets:

I wish I had switched out Mathemagic for Berserk. I had found enough inky foglanterns and pots of invis during my descension that I didn't need Ninja vanish or mathemagic teleport to survive, and the damage output from berserk would have been helpful in one-hitting more frequently.

tl;dr

Crafting is extremely useful, bordering on OP, and I highly suggest you take 2 at any one time. Smithing is a must as an assist to the other two, then tinkering or alchemy as you fancy.

Any expect-to-fail, yet succeed stories out there? I honestly expected to crash and burn in mid-late game, and while floor 7 was dangerous, I was yawning all the way through the floors after that.

 

Crafting is actually useless. It's amazingly hard to get ingredients (ingots) for the weapons. Only really late you start getting good stuff (like chalk) and by then, anything you craft is about 3x times worst then what you already have (from chests, etc.) All the craftable gear is really crappy. You pick an artifact that you can further enchant with Archaeology (anvils) and it gets even more deadlier. Even extra rare recipes are not worth for what they cost.
Again, and I hate to point that out, you're playing on Dwarven difficulty. You can't imagine the difference between GR and Dwarven. Believe me. Try that build and you'll see. I took Smithing once and it proven to be crap to what I could find on the ground.

Alchemy could be more useful but I never found the need for any potions in my days of GR. With mage I'm just too OP, with warrior I don't even bother.
Tinkering is probably a must if you want to use Xbows and sneaky trap placing rogue, otherwise, meh.

I don't see how they go well together with each other? I'm probably just blacking out atm tho. Sure you could (y?) mix few stuff together, but it was never meant to require another for it to function. I know you're proving the exact opposite, but you're just having a build with three crafting skills.

Believe me, you would be obliterated on Going Rogue!
Then again, your saying this for Dwarven difficulty. But then again, any build works there.

 

Duly noted. I guess I could try some actual builds in Going Rogue instead of clicking random, but I can't help but feel like I'm being cheated out of the 'being crushed mercilessly in 3 minutes' experience.

 

Regrading the "being crushed mercilessly in 3 minutes" experience, I implore you to find arrow traps to farm citters on until you get a solid levelup or two. Then, you hit a stage in the game that challenges your build's playability; if you are still relying largely on techniques that have little to do with your skill choices at this stage, it's a good cue to return to the drawing board. That said, I would really enjoy hearing about your crafting build in GR difficulty. Hopefully, you might find some luck where others haven't yet.

 

Going Rogue depends somewhat on luck. I tried my first-ever "Random-Going Rogue" character after finally beating Lord Dredmor on Dwarvish Moderation - and I got pretty damn lucky: Swords, Unarmed, Dual-wield, Vampirism, Necronomiconomics, Assassination, Tinkering.

He's currently on Floor 3 and going strong. Sword/Vamp/Dual-wield for melee, Tinking for Bolts when I those pesky melee mini-bosses or Piercing monsters. I miss not having Burglary and Archaeology, but it's been nowhere near as terrible as I feared it was going to be... so far, at least.

 

@Marak
Oh, oh, I have bad news fellow explorer. I yet have to meet a person that beat Going Rogue with a melee (warrior) build. It's just too underpowered atm.
And GR is extremely hard early levels, you have to be sneaky and inventive. What works mostly is drag monsters through traps and use anything at your disposal. If you'r using a mage build (mainly Prome) it will be a lot easier. Warriors suck. A lot. A LOT!

 

Yeah, but when you decide to roll Random, you gotta take what you get. I don't expect the character to make it much past Floor 6 or so (if that). But as far as what I COULD have ended up with, I at least got something workable.

re: rederick

I liked the story, and the sense of humor (I did not find a lutefisk cube until floor 9. Hilarious. At that point I just pointedly ignored it.)

You should write some more for us.

 

Oh. You want a GR/PD build with all three crafting skills? Here's mine.

Maces
Dual Wielding
Berserker Fury
Burglary
Alchemy
Smithing
Tinkering

The order I go: Smithing straight to 5, press whatever I get then, then tinker to five, then alchemy to 4, then maces, then berserker fury, and whatever else you can get by the end of things.

Not beaten yet. Only reason I haven't so far is due to bugs forcing left clicks. It's not fun to get one rounded because of the game forcing the wrong click. >_>

 

@Yippers Ah, the happy dance. I've read of this technique. Yes. I'm currently doing the one of the most awful randoms I could possibly get on GR. Oddly enough it's also the furthest I been in Going Rogue so far. Dual wield, Shield Bearer, Deadshot, Astrology, Burglary, Assassination, and Tinkering. Just saved post-zoo on level 2, completely bereft of all resources. I don't expect to live much longer.

Once that's dead and buried, I'll try out a crafting build, I'm rather curious too see how it scales on GR for difficulty past where I've currently been.

@Marak I'm glad you enoyed it. :]

@Thidran
How would you weigh choosing between weapons? I haven't seen any higher tier maces yet, but that AoE knockback seems immensely useful. I shall ponder anon.

@DerpTyrant
I've noticed the same thing about warrior builds, hopefully when stat allocation gets fixed those warrior points will be more useful, but this was my first successful melee-centric build disregarding difficulty, even if I did cop out and shoot alot of bolts. If a pure melee build is possible without some immense health drain on hit, then I'll eat my fedora. Piercing resistance in the update will be a godsend.

 

@anon: I picked maces simply for knockback purposes. The other option really was unarmed, but you can't bust out the damage like you can with maces. Also, there are some potentially nice maces you can craft.

 

@rederick
Smithing is hardly useless. Don't listen to DerpTyrant on that alone. Play the game how you choose, don't just decide not to use it because one person says don't.
I have plenty of fun with a Warrior using Crafting. He apparently has never run into good luck ever with it. MY recent game had chalk on the first dungeon floor.

The fact that the gear you can get through crafting is not perfect isn't that bad. I rarely find weapons that good on the first several floors.
@DertTyrant Please, stop posting your bad luck and thinking that's the way it is supposed to be, and no questions asked, no one can question you, etc. etc.
Just because you had bad luck with Smithing doesn't mean it's not useful.

Also, No one needs to play on Going Rogue.
Key word, Needs.

 

@DavudB1111 Indeed! I've had much better luck with smithing whenever you use it for its' intended purpose(More raw materials and low to midgrade equipment crafting). It's great to give you ample time to search for artifacts and better stuff without having to rely on luck for it.

 

See I don't know about the armors, I never liked them myself. But smith can make Rings of Iron Thorn, Mana Torus, and Jingly Jangly Staff of Crystals. None of which requires Steel.

When I want my melee character to have guarantee max mana regen, or stack counter rate, smithing is a must.

 

@DerpTyrant I've done it once on GR+P. The winning build was Maces/Dual Wield/Berserk/Assassination/Deadshot/Archaeology/Smithing with a heavy emphasis on Critical Strikes and Procs.

I've also beaten GR+P with Archery/Tinkering/Artful Dodger/Burglar/Perception/Assassination/Archaeology. This was a pure rogue build so it may not count as warrior, but it definitely is victory without spellcasting.

All my other victories are spellcasters of some type. I seem to love making Single and Double Tree mages.

 

@Incendax

Man I honestly don't know how you survive dungeon 1 with that second build. Sure don't look easy.

 

@123stw Not going to lie, I died about 6 times before I found a good gargoyle trap and managed to happy dance my way to victory. It was a struggle to survive, but once I got to the mid game it was smooth sailing with perfect trap disarming, invisibility, and more stealth than you can shake a stick at.

Only thing that seemed to notice me was Footies and Dredmore himself. I actually got hit with a combo of arctic wind + fireball by Dredmor in the first two rounds. I seriously thought I was going to die, but chugging every potion I had I managed to survive with 5 HP and go hide to eat some SAMMICHES. The lich didn't survive round two.

 

@Incendax Those builds look difficult, especially that second one, I sense much tricksy involved in a victory there.

With the current game balance, is it possible to beat GR with melee only? In an extreme sense, no traps (picked up and placed), no bolts, no throwables. Might be done on easy, not sure. Pure builds are probably the next thing I'll take a shot at, seems fun.

I agree with the magic builds. I usually enjoy playing mages, but with Dredmor it feels like a chore until you hit lategame. There's just no momentum sustained. But my first clear was a mage and it still felt rather nice.

___

Just cleared floor 2 with Crafty McDie, almost didn't last past three rooms on floor 1, but I perservered with a heavy amount of jogging for health until I got enough zorks for Fud. Same build as Crafty McCraft, only I switched out astrology for berserk and got ninja vanish as 1st priority for entire-game survival.

Only time will tell, now.

 

I think it is very possible to defeat Dungeons of Dredmor with melee in this game, but the margin for error is much smaller than when playing a spellcaster. The closer you have to be to enemies the more likely you are to eat unexpected crits, get surrounded, be further from your escape routes, generally more susceptible to messing up and dying.

 

Update on Crafty McDie I.

I should have called him Crafty McLive!

First try, first Going Rogue clear.
Highest scoring character with 892604 points.

Needless to say, having 30 BoMDs to deal with zoos is most welcome. Archery won the day, I'd have never done it without archery.

Infact, I used so much archery, especially against those big blues, monster masks, and arch diggles I wish I had taken Deadshot instead of Berserk.

Now I just need to beat it on easy.

 

Well Deadshot would have done nothing.

Looking at the bug list currently it only triggers on melee attacks, not ranged attacks.