Hey, I've been playing DoD for about a few days and I want to know, what are good builds for a new player? Note: I do have all of the expansions.
For a new player, start by avoiding magic and crafting until you master the basics of moving, dealing with traps, and combat. I'd suggest a power build like this: Axes Swords Dual Wield Master of Arms Berserker Rage Burglary Communism Dual wielding axes and swords gives you high damage output, decent boosts to Counter and Crit Chance (which make combat much easier), and some useful activated attacks that give you range and multi-hit ability. Master of Arms and Berserker Rage add a lot to your survivability. Burglary and Communism are your 'utility' abilities -- Burglary gives you invisibility and teleport for getaways; Communism gives you a solid healing ability, more short-term invisibility, and an AoE auto-nuke that gets stronger as your Critical chance improves (read: you get more Axe skill). Burglary will give you enough trap skill if you level it up that you can pick up Anti-Magic Traps, which all by themselves can make Dredmor much less dangerous if you stockpile them all the way through the game. Suggested leveling order: Burglary 2 for the auto-lockpick, Communism 2 for the heal, Axes 4 for the Axenado, Communism 3 for General Winter, Swords 4 for the Trompenant, and then all the way up Burglary for the teleport. From there, you can largely do whatever you want, but this build has a Secret Trick: max out Berserker Rage for +100 Crit Chance, and then let enemies run up and attack you. Their attacks will activate General Winter, which does damage scaling off of Crit Chance, so that General Winter will mutilate things. Just be sure you keep your Ushenka on and build up your Hyperborean resistance from other sources (Maple Shield if you must, though you'll lose your Swords bonuses) -- General Winter can be nasty if you abuse it this way.
Master of arms, smithing, communism, and fleshsmithing are all good abilities to start with, as they give you a lot of bonus HP, which should make it easier as you get used to things. Just pick one and it should be enough. You may want a skill that gives you some trap sight , such as perception, burglary, egyptian magic, tourism, etc, as you learn about traps and how they work. In general, I also think it is good to start with permadeath off and just play through the game fully one time (regardless of the dozens of deaths you will have), so you can get a sense of how early, mid, and late game work, and to a lesser degree, resistances and damage types. also, welcome to the forums!
...press the randomize button, like a boss? Otherwise there's always the 10 golden rules: 1: You pretty much always want Archaeology for the huge XP-boost, item manipulation and . 2: You pretty much mostly want Burglary for the rediculous amounts of utility it provides. 3: Picking more than one melee weapon skill at a time isn't exactly recommended. Also despite what you'd think Staves isn't a pure wizard skill, it's for warrior/wizard hybrids. 4: Throwing is for warrior characters and archery is for rogues/mages 5: You always, always, always want a crafting skill. Encrusting and the added consistency is too good to pass up on, bisides you'd find a LOT of useless junk without a crafting skill. 6: Smithing for melee warriors, Wandcrafting for Necronomiconomics characters, Tinkering for rogues/characters who for some reason haven't picked Archaeology/Burglary and Alchemy is just fantastic no matter what build really. 7: When rolling a wizard you should pick 2-3 skilltrees with spells (Promethean Magic/Fleshsmithing for instance) and 1-2 mana regeneration skills (Leywalker, Blood Mage and Magic Training). 8: Blood Mage is for the wizard/warrior hybrid and/or the pure wizard who relies on AOE spells, Leywalker is for all other wizards and Magic Training is for when your wizard build lacks one more skilltree. 9: You want to be able to gain 5-6 from your skills so that you won't have to rely on luck in order to deal with traps. 10: Werediggle, Warlockery, Vampyrism, Killer Vegan and Necronomiconomics aren't exactly newcommer friendly skills. Also keep in mind that the stats you gain per level depends on the skill you just progressed in; warrior skills gives extra , and , rogue skills gives extra , and and wizard skills gives extra , and . Also you won't get your stats untill you progress in a stat meaning that there is absolutely no point at all in saving your points if you for some reason thought that was a good idea.
Magic is a lot of fun, and so is dying, so my only real advice to you is that you need an early game solution for traps, because dying to traps SUCKS! Even if you can't disarm them you still need to see them. Hence every build MUST have a skill that gives some So play with perma-death on and don't look back. You learn alot and you can always come here for advice, as the community is excellent. I also enjoy trying one skill excessively with different builds so I can really appreciate it. So for example, one time i had about 10 builds in a row with tourism. I am screwing around with a crafting/gem build Piracy (for gems) Wands for damage! Alchemy for... the insane encrusts/potions rogue scientist does so much for this build Tinkering for traps solutions and crossbows/arrows Paranormal Investigator (skepticism, alien autopsy for 3 crafts, Xeno Chemistry for endless pots) Magical Law - my current 'experimental skill' as I have not used it much.
My first really successful build, well the one that took me fairly deep until I wasted 18 iron like a boss making fine iron axes instead of normal ones and not being able to craft my Hex-axe (I kind of lost the will to live and then got corrupted to death) but assuming you take a little more care than I do I used the following. Axes Duelwielding Clockwork Knight Master of Arms Smithing Tinkering Crossbows You want to take two levels of Master of Arms right Quick, and then max out Tinkering, Clockwork Knight, and Smithing in no particular order. Honestly the real trick to this build is that with Walk it Off and whatever the defensive buff that lasts for 12 hits is, on easy you will not be taking damage in melee combat. Now is this build perfect? No, it's not, but it works. Honestly, you could sub out crossbows for Perception and it might be intelligent to do so as I only had it in there for thematics...but to get the most out of perception you need to pump it relatively early and the points you waste on Perception could be points you were putting into becoming ludicrously overpowered early. However, extra steel is really nice. Like really really nice, like, I'm duel wielding Clockwork Ravagers and in full Imperial Gear by like floor eight-ten and I have a rail-launcher and everything is encrusted like you wouldn't believe. Only pain is managing all your resources and not making stupid crafting mistakes. Honestly, use the Wizardland keys to save pretty much everything on your first run with this, then manage as you go...really don't sell anything unless you need the Zorkmids for something or it's a useless artifact (named item). Oh, and a friendly tip, don't waste Anvils of Krong until you have good gear and make use of those bolt machines! You never know when they might be selling something really valuable, plus bolts you buy are less bolts you need to waste resources on
Well...a good place to start would be a few threads made by Essence. They are: 1. What should a "great build" be able to do 2. Tactics that work for everyone 3. The 'Builds that Won' Thread. Also there are 2 wikis floating around that are pretty good references. I prefer dredmorwiki.com but I'm sure others will tell you otherwise...decide for yourself (j-factor doesn't load well on my computer). Finally, I'm going to have to disagree on avoiding crafting. While those things Essence listed ARE important, I find that the sooner you dive into crafting the sooner you learn it. True power in this game requires you to be able to say f-you to the Random Number God, and crafting goes a long way in doing that (in my opinion anyways) whether it's for supplies, gear, or resistances/other things encrusts can provide. Besides, if you plan on focusing on a particular weapon type it's really useful to take certain crafting skills. Also tinkering provides amazing anti-trap stats (it's practically the best anti-trap skill set....go figure). Also there are recipes that are useful no matter what your alchemy/smithing/tinkering level are (some are mentioned in the tactics thread).
