After further review: Melee still sucks

If you think about Vampirism as a +3, it doesn't sound like much. But remember it's +3 PER HIT. During combat, I'd rather have that then +3 to regen, and most of us would kill for +3 regen ring, a bonus that hardly means squat during combat.

I'm not saying that Vampirism is the bomb, as the kids say. It definitely makes it harder to heal between battles, which is why it only compliments certain types of builds. Early to mid game it's great, but later on, you really need another source of heals.

 

If I am going pact, that means I am pumping my magic power, which means vamp is probably leeching somewhere around 5.

Another hidden bonus is the "last hit don't leech", but vamp still heals 1 (and drink blood).

 

Maces, Axes and Necro have been revamped: http://www.gaslampgames.com/blog/2011/09/29/patch-1-0-6-changelist/

Hope it's not too late in the week for a beta update...

 

Fair enough- I have had quite a few close calls, but I have a pretty big stack of health pots. I'll concede that when 'stuff happens', Vamp isn't enough by itself to see you through.

So, in regards to the topic at hand, melee and its suck status:
-We've established that going straight melee with no healing source other than food and what pots you can scrounge is not viable. Eventually stuff happens.
-We've established that Vampirism alone isn't enough to keep you alive (the dubious worth of Corpse Drain nonwithstanding). Vamp and Necro works fine (especially if you clank when you walk), but if you're aiming to make a character that never consumes a single mana point, that's out, along with Psionics and (hur hur) Fleshsmithing.
-This leaves us with Fungal Arts and Wand Lore. Assume for the sake of argument that in order to make a viable melee build, you need six points allocated to weapon/smithing/zerking/assassin/dual wield/survival skill (burglary/artful dodger/awareness/master of arms). You have one skill point left. Can one of those two aforementioned skills carry you through the game with a reasonable chance of success?
-If not, and you must allot two skill points to health regeneration, is there any reason not to take Vampirism+ Fung/Wand? I put it that way because Vampirism doesn't eat up bag space.
-A side issue, is Alchemy as viable a health regeneration skill as Fungal Arts and Wand Lore?

 

I don't think you need half of those. Smithing isn't required, heck the last two games I played I was unable to craft more than one ring all game because one game I found only 1 pyrite sun and the other only one potion of steeling. Zerking certainly isn't required. Assassin isn't needed either. And burglary/artful dodger can be replaced by alchemy/fungal both of which add a lot more.

 

I personally am a big fan of Alchemy for more reasons than just the heals; but yes, it is definitely viable.
You are going to end up with healing potions up the wazoo -- one of my recent GR runs, I still had 50 to 60 healing potions when facing Dredmor. Plus, even better, you can get potions of replenishment and regeneration (not to mention steeling, hyperborean, displacement, invisibility, etc.). Plus, even as a pure melee, if you like to use the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters, the extra alcohol can't hurt. And it pairs well with smithing, for the black pearls/chalk.

 

Alchemy is the most versatile of the crafting skills, no question. Everyone can use more potions, and the most useful ones tend to be easy to make too. After that, Tinkering gives you excellent trap handling and as many bolts as you could ever want, plus some fun throwing weapons (thermite's always good for a larf). Smithing comes in third IMO; it requires a huge investment of skillpoints to get the better items from it, and ultimately most of the stuff you can make you can also find -- there are a few exceptions, but not enough to be worth the investment.

 

Alchemy is fine if you can deal with the maintenance, just don't try to rush it to 5 before you actually find 1 blue potion or 1 zinc. Otherwise you will find yourself in big trouble when you don't. An interesting note is that you still can fruit staff/permabooze with it. Maintaining 1 kill per 20 steps on average is fairly possible and can be exploited if you wait on pumping those booze til end of level 3. Way too tedious for me though.

Smith give solid early/mid game. End game you may have 2 ring of iron thorns, but the ingredients are hard to come by. As do all things that rely on RNG, you may still be stuck without 2. Mace users are even more at risk. To beat the odds consider using alchemy level 3 for the healing.

Tinker is, well I don't really use bolts (except squid/mass destruction). So I never really see the use for it. It does provide 2 overclocked gloves though.

I don't think neither Alchemy nor Fungal is a replacement for Dodger/Burglary. The first 2 are usually reserved for emergency escapes only. While invisible keeps you safe, they are not the greatest of positioning tool to be used for convenience. The latter are low maintenance reusable positioning skills that can be spammed casually to get to chokepoints. It's sorta like how fungal can replace vamp in theory, but to put that into practice requires far more work.

 

Actually, Smithing + Alchemy works really well together (most successful GR game I've played was an Alchemy+Smithing+Tinkering, actually). You get endless steel, as many rings of iron thorns, serpentine armor, etc. as you could possibly need, assuming krong goes on a curse rampage, as he did in my game. Only reason why I died (fighting Dredmor) was due to carelessness.

If beating Dredmor was a race, then yes, it's not a good build. That said, survivability was never an issue.

 

Tinkering also has the best Axe in the game.

How do you get endless steel? Did they implement a chalk recipe?

 

EDIT re: Competentfake

Yes, you can now use a Black Pearl in an Ingot Grinder to get Chalk.

This brings up a good point:

Casters do not - repeat - not need 2 forms of healing. Because they don't take damage, like, ever, once they hit Level 3 or so and can start casting more than 2 spells in a row before running out of mana and booze. My last caster had a stack of 20-ish healing potions and 10 regen potions that I made just to get the other materials out of my inventory - I never used them. I 'fisked ALL my food from Floor 2 onwards BECAUSE I NEVER NEEDED TO EAT EVER. I had a stockpile of 100+ high-end (read: 25+ mana restoring) bottles of Booze, because my regen and Magic Power were so high I could chain-cast an entire Floor to death and only "needed" to drink 2-3 times during that whole rampage - when I dropped below half my maximum mana and I felt I should probably use up some of those 37 Apple Brandies in my #1 Belt slot. Did I mention that I had over 60 Mana Potions, as well?

This is a huge discrepancy compared to melee, who have little incentive to take Alchemy for any reason other than "for healing items" (barring a dual-staff build) and are pretty much forced into combining Alchemy, Wand Lore or Fungal Arts with either Food or Vampirism. If you don't, you get a character like mine, that died on Floor 10 to a Caster Brigade because he didn't have enough AoE consumables left to kill them with, and didn't have good enough RNG to have acquired enough Healing consumables to out-pace the 4 spells/round he was getting bombarded with.

Either way, Consumables and indeed, entire Skill Tress that you can completely ignore as a caster with no repercussion will kill you on the lower Floors if you try to ignore them as Melee. That seems broken to me. And that's on top of the whole "The correct answer to all problems is AoE bolts/flasks/spells" issue.

 

I guess part of the reason I pick Vampirism in my build is more for the gameplay change, it's just a fun skill and completely changes how you play (For most builds anyway). I don't particularly mind how it is now, but if a late game buff is needed then I'm sure we'll see it eventually. How about removing spellpower scaling and making the leech 3+(Level -1 / 3).

1: 3
4:4
7:5
10:6
13:7
16:8

Does that sound fair?

 

I don't want to see anything in the game scale by character level. Also, I think vampirism is fine the way it is.

 

To be fair, when was the last time you saw melee taking mage training or blood magic? But yeah, melee is weaker in this game. There is one simple way to balance the game between mages and nonmages. Throw in some archer mobs on every 1/3rd floor that do pure melee damage from range every turn. The other thing about mages is the can finish their build by level 12-14 and just dive down to dredmor at that point and end the game.

I don't think melee are too bad. And next balance patch maces and axes are getting love.

 

You're looking at the ultimate gear that each skillset can provide. I'm looking at generic utility items, which I think are more valuable since the game gives you gear for free at a decent rate. Alchemy doesn't need to be pushed past level 3 (to transmute gems / turn wine into brandy) if you're mostly in it for potions. Sure you could go further for the top-tier staves and orbs, but they aren't that great; I get better returns from investing skillpoints elsewhere.

Tinker bolts are mostly useful if you also have a good crossbow. Conveniently you can make crossbows with tinkering, though again it requires a lot of skillpoints to get the top-tier crossbows. But if you're going to rely heavily on archery (and I think any melee-oriented class would be well-served by whittling enemies down with archery before entering melee range), then tinkering is a valuable support skill. And at least the per-levelup bonuses are more useful than the ones in the other crafting skilltrees.

 

What's wrong with melee requiring a healing or 2? I mean of course melee requires healing...... It would just be kinna stupid otherwise.

Fruit Staff on floor 2 is awesome. 2 points elsewhere isn't going to get you the kinna booze/vitae/money for a hybrid. That 2 points also comes with magic sandals and staff of crystals. Wait for a fruit staff to drop and you miss out on like 1000 booze, plus you might not get a staff of crystals at all.

Obviously if you are not dual staves you have no reason to push it past 3. And yes it is tedious to make health potions, 2 to 3 transmutation to get a vitae, iron ground, potion transmute, inventory management. Gem transmutation is also pretty grindy. After about 5 runs with alchemy I just can't see it as any less maintenance as fungal.

I never use normal bolts to whittle down anything.... It's too passive a playing style for me. Normal monsters are no problem, and if I want to kill a boss long range I do it with tentacle wand.

 

It's just frustrating that playing GR/PD Melee is like setting the game to Extra Hard Mode. Also not fun: Mages are most likely to die on Floor 1, when they are Levels 1 and 2; by Level 3 on Floor 1 they typically have That One Spell™ that will carry them for the next hour. From there, they ramp up in power - like you said, their builds are typically good to go by Levels 12-14 - and have an easy time with Floors 9 and 10.

Melee, on the other hand, have some problems, but do alright on the lower floors - but then, they see a huge decline in effectiveness and survivability on Floors 9 and 10 as the monsters' damage (which Mages do not have to worry about, ever) ramps up by roughly double what it was on Floor 8.

So in closing, I ask you: which build is inherently more fun to play and less frustrating - the one that typically gets unlucky and dies on Floor 1 after 20 minutes, or the one that typically gets unlucky and dies on Floor 10 after 5 hours?

 

lol is that a trick question?

I mean the whole point of picking going rogue permadeath is for the challenge right? If it's not for the thrill of risk you could have just "not" pick permadeath.....

 

@Marak: Man, you'd have hated 1.0.3, where any melee class that didn't have enough ranks in warrior to start with the leather cuirass was basically rolling the dice that they'd find some useful equipment before encountering their second enemy. I can't count how many characters I had enter the dungeon, get into a fight with one monster that used up their starting food, get into another fight, and die, because I'd picked too many rogue skills instead of warrior skills.

I've won with two warriors and two mages now, and while the mages certainly had an easier time of it (thanks to not really ever getting hit), the warriors were definitely capable of surviving in the deeps.

 

Haha, what you're mentioning is pretty much exactly why all my Melee characters ended up being Vampires (and, in 1.0.3, Archaeologists - that Fedora is a huge boon at Level 1) after a while. At least that way, I couldn't run out of "food" right away on Floor 1.

@123stw The point was, with one build you normally only risk dying right away - assuming a mistake or bad luck or whatever - and losing 20 minutes of time. With the other build you normally only risk dying on Floor 9 or 10 - after 4-7 hours of gameplay. Which is less frustrating?

I guess my point of view is that the idea of "losing is fun" starts to lose its lustre once you've more or less mastered the game and its number crunching, when you know the gear and recipes and little tricks of the game, and aren't learning anything when you die other than "oh, I made a stupid mistake because I was in too much of a hurry to meet up with Dredmor" or "well, that situation would have killed this build every time barring some lucky RNG". This is especially true on the lower Floors where it matters the most and you have much more of your time invested into the character/game if you die. When you're not discovering new things on each playthrough, it's preferable that well-thought-out and executed builds of the 3 Archetypes (Warrior, Rogue, Mage) have reasonably equal footing.

Currently, that's not really the case.