After further review: Melee still sucks

Only problem I'm consistently running into with a maces/dual/burglar/smith/arch/zerker/assassin build is keeping my health up beating zoos to death (on lvl 5, haven't found any squid bolts). I think Fungal, Vamp or Alchemy instead of Arch would make this build much more survivable.

 

I think it's pretty hard to play a melee'er without a heal source. I think someone already mentioned it earlier in this thread.

 

Yeah but there are a few viable ways of healing yourself. The heal in psionics isn't affected by spell power, and that's a great all around tree anyway. Fungal and vampirism are both great as well, and they work together. Other than that, alchemy?

 

alchemy works fine, i dropped 2 points into it so i could distill booze to maintain syzygy, and it already yields the maximum 2 potions per brew

wand lore is also available. i was not a fan, but there are undoubtedly some very powerful wands.

 

I used Alchemy in my previous GR run, and it served me well in many ways -- not just heals but resists as well. I only died (to Dredmore himself) because of a mistake. At the end of the game, I still had about 50+ healing potions to spare, not to mention all the potions of replenishment, regeneration, etc. The disadvantage to Alchemy is the number of times I had to look up recipes on the wiki, and the number of times I had to transmute gems to get the ones I needed for the potions I wanted. As a melee, towards the end of the game, it could take several healing potions to get up to near-full health, but for in-combat, it beats the fungal heals.

 

There's also Wand Lore and coral wands, though that's pretty clunky and only gets you 23HP every 80 turns (assuming you don't want to risk burn-out).

Alchemy-wise, all you really need to know is:

* High booze --distil--> Aqua Vitae
* Iron ingot --grind--> Rust x2
* Aqua Vitae + Rust --alchemy--> Healing Potion x2 (once you have 2 alchemy ranks)

Rust is absurdly plentiful, as is high booze (early on, sewer brew; later, rank-3 alchemy means every bottle of wine is 2 high boozes), so pretty quickly healing potions are coming out of your ears if you don't have any other use for the iron.

 

Oh yeah. Alchemy also synergizes with melee smiths since you can transmute gems into black pearls.

You can also brew tons of hyperboreans and infernal potions and the like. I never did, but I'm sure there's something clever you can do with that.

 

Don't forget that fungal can double the effect of vampirism. A few greedy bungcaps can carry you through an entire zoo and by DL 10 you can easily have a stack of 400 fairywodgers.

Edit: WOOT just beat GRPD with a dual sword build.

Um yeah, that was hard. I'd say that that's what difficulty SHOULD be for the entire game. But that was FAR more difficult than any other build I've played so far. It didn't help that I found 1 potion of steeling all game and had one stinking barbed ring. Oh well, I still won. But I felt very naked and fragile compared to the tank I played last game.

 

Once you got 1 or 2 spare corals, you can easily take the risk of using one 2 to 3 times per recharge. The healing from coral also stacks, So healing is fine throughout the game.

The advantage of Wand Lore is that it takes far less maintenance/inventory space and does not eat up levels, so long as you ignore the useless wands. Using the recharge once every 80 turn is far less tedious than brewing vitae/grinding rust/brewing health potion since 1.05, but at least healing potion is instant health. As for fungal yeah I never like that much on a melee. If I want to burn 2 points for healing then surely I pick instant heal over slow regen and 19 turns of leech.

And I am surprise you didn't mention invisible potion for alchemy, that thing is literally a godsend.

 

I tried Fungal Arts, then remembered why I hated it. I tried Alchemy, but was reminded early on that I would be having to split my scant resources between alchemy and smithing (including my precious bag space!). Went back to Vampirism, and have been steaming right along.

 

After trying various takes on the straight melee theme, I arrived at this build:
The Essentials:
-Vampirism: I..just NEED IT OKAY?! >.>
-Staves: As Vamp damage (and therefore leech) scales off of magic power instead of being a coefficient of total melee damage done, I'm gonna need to keep my spellpower from being completely tanked by wearing lots of heavy armor. 2 Jangly staves should serve this purpose well, if I can find any gently caressing zinc!!! Jeez.
-Alchemy: Replaced Smithing, which I dropped when I decided to go staves. Healy pots-a-plenty, and if the Zinc gods decide to favor me, staves-a-plenty too.
-Archaeology: With no Smithing, I hope I'll be able to reroll my gear to suit my purposes, and hopefully get lucky on the last few floors with armor/iron thorn rings. 2 Trap Affinity points don't hurt.
-Dual Wielding: Self-explanatory.
Auxiliary Skills: I considered Assassination, Burglary & Berzerker Rage.
-Burglary: The benefits of this skill far outweigh those gleaned from Assassination, for my purposes. The 3 Trap Affinity increases alone make it worth a slot, and the Invis whenever I want/teleport/thieving is just icing.
-Berserker Rage: I feel like the Zerk brings more damage to the table than Assassin. The buffs stack, and activate both when I attack and defend.

Skill Progression: Burglary lvl 2->Archaeology lvl 3->Alchemy lvl 3->Berserker Rage Max->(if you have a lot of gems and the mats to make staves)Alchemy Max, else start filling out Spirit Conduit (eh, it's a free damage proc), Dual Wielding, Burglary & Archaeology. None of the Staves ranks 3-6 will get you anything but a teeny bit of spellpower and a crappy aoe attack (spellpower based), and the Vampirism ranks 2 & 3 are useless. Also, take note of Brax's inventory on the first few floors- sometimes he has really good items like Iron Thorn rings and Albrecht's Helm- if so, it would behoove you to rush Burglary and purloin them early on.

 

What difficulty are you on? Cause vampirism rank 2 is like a must have everytime I've ran it on Going Rogue.

 

The tier-2 skill from Vampirism doesn't scale at all. It can be a lifesaver on dungeon level 1, but by dungeon level 5 you might find yourself wishing you'd stuck it out and picked something different.

I generally consider Assassin to be superior to Berserker. Sneaky Shiv paralyzes enemies, which is much more valuable than the buffs that Berserker gives. Especially since the Assassin procs themselves deal extra piercing damage. Berserker does have the advantage of giving warrior levels instead of rogue levels, though.

 

I didn't rank vamp past one the last two games I beat GRPD with a melee because I also had fungal and I never needed it. I put that point into fungal instead for the pet. If I absolutely needed more hp, I could just attack my pet early on. And later on I had enough fairy wodgers it didn't mater. By floor 9 or so, I put a third point into fungal because I started to run out of fairywodgers. Then I turned all my shrooms that weren't hoglanterns or bungcaps into fairywodgers. I had like 400 or so. Each one gives an instant 6 hp and then 5 additional hp over time. Against dredmor, I'd hoglantern and then eat a fairywodger each turn to heal up fast.

The second point in vamp was better spent elsewhere in my build. I could see alch making the same decision, since the second point in vamp only heals 4 hp. But I'd worry the dual staves/vamp build above would have a hard time keeping up with alch alone.

 

Yeah I never use fungal, usually use necro to heal w/ Vamp plus eating corpses is why, I figured as much, but I checked his build and there's no Fungal.. so was curious.

The cooldown on vamp 2 is so short that even in late game it can provide quite a bit of sustenance. Was important for my build, but I had no other way to heal and would prefer to hold onto potions/fairywodger for emergency uses only.

 

I don't think of Vampirism as a way to heal, but rather a way to extend your combat endurance by effectively having you take less damage each turn you attack. Since Vampirism also means giving up on food, you need some alternate healing source, of which there are several.

Or you need to be such a massive tank that you never take enough damage that Vampirism can't keep up, I guess. In which case, why do you need Vampirism in the first place?

 

That's the trick, and the catch 22: In order for Vampirism to be effective, you have to have high magic power. In order to leech for more than you're getting hit for, you have to have high damage mitigation. The two are more or less mutually exclusive, and although you can hybridize to an extent, you shouldn't have to. Vampirism should NOT be connected in any way to spellpower. I'd even go so far as to say that removing the leech effect and making the corpse drain heal more effective would be an improvement.

On my Unarmed/Artful/Assassin/Necro/Vamp/Smith/Blood Mage GR completion, I never drained at all- my armor + my leech with Cthon and Pact up was more than keeping me alive. Plus, it's FOUR hp. I think my guy had around 90 health when he killed Dredmor.

Really, bottom line is that stopping to suck 4 life out of corpses after killing them is only one click away from planting spores and harvesting fungi. Sure, you can do it, but that really depends on your level of tolerance for mindless tedium. I've seen with my own eyes people standing in a pen like cattle, waiting for someone to hire them to work on their Farmville farm on Facebook, in exchange for pretend money. Some people like to do Archaeology in WoW, a task more mind-numbingly dull than watching golf on TV. Like watching flies f**k, as the late great Carlin would say.

My ADHD starts poking me in the backs of my eyeballs when my short boredom threshold is reached. More action! Less clicking! ~Fake

 

Vamp hardly scale with magic power nowadays. It's the necro that's scaling.

For a pure melee just assume vamp leech 3 a hit and put as much armor of it as you can. Add another source such as wand lore or alchemy and you are good to go. Though comparing drink blood with spore is an exaggeration. One click for 4 hp =/= summon spore, put on corpses, wait, pick up, reroll, manage inventory, conservation.

Rely purely on leech is a bad idea cuz stuff happens, and then you can't heal in between.

 

I just always stacked the two, pact and vampirism, I agree that vampirism scaling off of magic power is probably not the best.

 

Thing is, if you're going to go pact, why bother with vampirism? Is the passive +3 leech worth devoting an entire skillslot to it? Not to mention losing the use of food.