A brief study on encrusting. (Also, the bomb)

So, a friend and I have been putzing around with the new expansion. It's a blast. In many cases, literally.

We got to dungeon level four before anything terribly bad happened-- we'd encrusted a nice polearm (our only good weapon at the time) with a 35-instability crust that cast some form of midas on hitting an enemy (If anyone has an actual name for that, it would be great). Anyway, deciding that that was pretty awesome and we needed more, we tried adding another, 6-instability crust for frost damage. This made our weapon, according to the description text, "slightly unstable."

Naturally, we had to try this out, because instability can only be a good thing, right?

Well, we did, and we found out that our weapon was casting the same effect as bolt of squid. Centered on us. Evey hit.

We were less than pleased by this development. And so we did the only possible thing.

We put every crust we possibly could craft on this weapon, giving it an instability total of 110 (assuming our addition is right-- it usually is), taking our polearm all the way through to "DANGEROUSLY unstable." We found a monster zoo on dungeon levels four and five during this time, as we ran about collecting things. Eventually, we returned to the level five monster zoo and opened the door we had so cunningly slammed shut. And we swung our "DANGEROUSLY unstable" polearm.



Our polearm triggered a 3x3 fire blast, then a bolt of squid effect (both centered on us), then teleported us a short distance. Which was kind of a party. Here's where we landed.



We proceeded like this for a moment longer, and cleared the rest of the zoo (and gained a level) within five swings. Then our game crashed because we took our pictures the stupid way, with printscreen, which involved alt-tabbing out of the game which it apparently doesn't like.

In summation, instability is your friend.



Now, the astute among you might have noticed that we didn't say what happened to the monster zoo we mentioned on level four. Well, you see, we... may or may not have maxed the Communism tree. And then we had to test the item it grants. Because, well... you know. It's The Bomb.

Trying to get an angle was tricky, because we didn't want to nuke ourselves, but we have pictures of it being used on the few remaining enemies!

First, the immediate detonation effect:


Immediately after the detonation:

All the monsters in there are at low health at this point, and we're in a mostly-invisible field of transmutative damage-- radiation I presume? This field killed the monsters within a few more turns.

We wandered around in there for a bit, taking damage (because that's how science works) and got a picture for you where you can see the radiation field more symbols more clearly.

The field wasn't showing closer to us, but you can see it clearly up near the door to the north.

Anyway, as near as I can tell, The Bomb has three parts. The main blast (similar to a Bolt of Mass Destruction I believe), the central pyre (as shown in the screenshots), and the damaging radiation field. The final skill of Communism grants some transmutative resistance, but we were still taking a fair chunk of damage per turn (five or six points, I believe). The field was wide enough that it was damaging us despite being centered across the room from us, and lingered for twenty turns (or twenty-two, we sort of lost precise count).

Anyway. That's all the science we have for you. Cheers!

 

Yes, certain. At least 10 repeated times of the same effect.

 

Gotten teleport instability on 20 instability weapons. Seems to proc most of the time which blinks me about almost every strike I make. Being teleported away when you attack seems to convince the first commie skill you are too far away to use it and cancels the activation of the buff and it does not need to cooldown. You still attack though. Slight chance to not get the negative effect if the monster survives the strike. I cannot recall one shotting a monster without getting the blink effect triggered.

 

I love this recipe:

Worst Idea Ever?
Nay, BEST IDEA EVER!
Edit:
Crafted with 3 hand grenades and 1 copper cable