Greetings forumers, New here, decided to make a post because I enjoy discussing these sorts of games. Wanted to share my latest build I've been having lots of fun with, many deaths early but can be very powerful later on. It is intended to be a well rounded character, with a focus on maximizing magic power but with a strong melee backup. Feedback is certainly welcome, or feel free to try out my build if you think you might like it. Note that I always play on going rogue / permadeath (in case that effects build viability), I have all official expansions and use no mods. Skill Choices Staves Psionics Viking Wizardry Magic Training Assassination Wand Lore Tourist Before your first level, your biggest problems are going to come from Traps. You start with no bonuses to trap sight or affinity, but you can rectify that by spending your first point into Tourist (+1 trap affinity) and using 'See the Sights' for an additional +1 trap affinity and +2 trap sight radius (+3 sight radius is very nice too). This of course brings any sneak points to zero, but that's okay, no need to sneak with this build. Make use of your starting wands and camera(s) to defeat enemies until you start to level up. A bone wand is a great starter item (for zomby friends) but a couple good offensive wands will do just fine. With a little luck, you'll eventually find some equipment to start getting into melee combat. Spells are very limited at the start, but you do get the sleep spell and more importantly the 'Magic Steel' spell. This spell makes you reasonably powerful in a melee, especially with a decent weapon (preferably a staff) and some damage resistance armor. Where to spend subsequent skill points and in what order I am still trying to figure out. In testing, I seemed to fare better going for Staff skill first, using my mana to keep up 'Magic Steel' at all times. Staff skill is a warrior skill, so gives you +2 Burliness each point, but it also gives you +4 magic power (and many other bonuses) when maxed out. This sets you up as a good melee fighter, who is then able to transition into spellcaster and be good at it due to the bonus magic power. After that, you can either spend points in Psionics and Viking Wizardry right away, or go for Magic Training first. Maxing that out nets you extreme amounts of magic power, and more importantly, gives you a mana regeneration ability. Wand Lore was also chosen because of the high number of magic power it gives, plus the handy starting wands and bonus damage when using them. I'm not much for crafting (feels tedious), but I do save items to make Tentacular Wands for help during boss fights. Assassination is in there because of the two on hit procs which scale damage with magic power, but also to round out your melee abilities with some additional nimbleness and caddishness. Playing this build, alot of the early time is spent doing melee, so it doesn't feel much like a spellcaster build. Once staves and magic training are maxed though and you're getting spells, it starts to feel really powerful as you get to finally put your high magic power to use. Or, you can get spells first and stop using 'Magic Steel' if you prefer. If you do, I suggest spending two points into Psionics and Viking Wizardry to get healing crystals and arctic vortex, then moving on to the other skills.
First of all, welcome aboard. New blood is always nice. I'll start by saying your setup is VERY different than what I usually use, but that's not meant as an insult at all. There's plenty of ways to play this game. General thoughts: Staves is great for a gish (melee/spell hybrid. I'd never heard of it before coming here, but that's what the locals call it so... the more you know!) apart from a bit in the middle of the game where they're very low on raw damage, and also low on magic properties. That's what spells are for, though. Viking/Psionics: Pyromancer scales well, and thor's bolt is one of the best nukes in the game. Both great for casters. However, sleep, roots, arctic wind all get resisted too much later on to make them that useful, in my opinion. You're left with a melee stun proc, minor , a wall breaking shout, and a nuke with viking, and a wall-breaking shove, out of combat heal, brief stun and a nuke with psionics. That's a lot of overlap. Assassin/Tourist are nice, but one of the assassination procs scales to so you're anti-synergizing it a little. Everything past rank 2 of tourist seems like dead levels to me (for this build). Magic Training: I think this is the worst of the three magic support skills. You get some but the silence bolt is useless (you have your own spells, just nuke em) and the mana regen ability costs more points than the one in ley lines, with a longer cooldown, and crippling debuffs, for about the same yield. Plus ley lines gives you a random boost on cast automatically, and the capstone is a teleport. Blood magic doesn't even require 1 point spent to get tons of mana back over the course of a game. Wandcrafting: I'll be honest, I can't stand this one. The only advantage it has over alchemy is the gear encrusts, but sinking points or a whole skill pick into a few stats on your gear isn't worth it. The crafting ingredients are obtuse and random, and everything else the wands do, alchemy does better and more reliably. Also, alchemy provides useful exotic resists while the from wandcrafting doesn't apply to spells, so it's wasted while you're casting. If you're judging all crafting from this skill, give alchemy a run or three. Once you know what you need and can ignore/lutefisk/sell the rest, crafting is quite simple and satisfying. I was working out something similar last week. My preliminary post is linked here: What's a great gish build? And the result of that build is attached to this post. All that is pre-consumable stats immediately before I hacked Dredmor to pieces.
Thanks Darkmere for the welcome and feedback. I had recently seen your post about 'gish' builds (also a term I was unfamiliar with) and indeed our builds are somewhat different. Part of that reason would have to do with my wanting to avoid crafting, since I find I waste a lot of time doing so that I'd rather spend playing. Even with a non-crafting build, I can't help but save for cheesy omelettes and grilled cheese sandwiches and such, even if I never end up needing them. When I make a crafting-focused build, I end up having no skills early (taking crafting skills instead) and always end up not finding the recipes I want, then reroll. Anyway... The Psionics/Viking Wizardry combo may have some overlap in skills, but I found it was a combo that gave me healing, a 'push' ability, and good damage from a few different elements. The skills that get resisted often can be a pain, but early game they are helpful (I find arctic winds in particular serves me well early for damage). Psionics is a skill I choose for most of my builds, it just has some great utility and Pyromancer seems to have the highest damage scale with magic power (which is this builds focus). Viking Wizardry I chose because it allows you to do damage with 3 (kinda 4) different elements, to avoid having problems with a monster who resisted my damage. Also, the magic steel spell is very useful early. Wand Lore I also chose partly because of its early utility (free wands can get you a couple levels at least without having to do any real battle). I also chose it because of it's Sagacity bonus over Alchemy, increasing my magic power further. Since I don't plan on crafting, and thus wouldn't be making wands or potions anyway, it's not a big problem that I'd miss out on the utility of having potions. As mentioned, I do like tentacular wands though, and save the few crafting components they require to use when I eventually level up Wand Lore (usually one of the lowest priorities). I chose Magic Training over Leylines because of the large bonus to magic power it provides. Higher skill requirement for mana recovery is a pain, but it puts you one point away from the fantastic capstone skill which increases magic power considerably. Leylines may have better utility, and certainly Blood Mage would be better of I didn't want to spend any points in it, but again, I'm going for the highest possible magic power for this build in order to maximize spell damage. Assassination has no skills which rely on sneak, as far as I know. It does, rather oddly, have two which scale with magic power though, hence it's inclusion in this build. I'm going off the information on the wiki here. Let me know if this information is inaccurate, but I think you might be confusing assassination for daggers (which does rely on sneak). Lastly, Tourist is indeed just a one point drop (plus the initial one) done right away to get some trap sight radius. Extra sight radius in general I love to have in any build, but I find especially useful for casters since it effectively increases their range. Perception could do this for me too, and that's what I use on most other builds, but I wanted to keep wizard levels at maximum (Tourist is a wizard skill, for some reason) and Perception requires 2 additional points spent for anti-trap utility. Phew! Thanks for the feedback, I always enjoy a good discussion about builds and such for games like these. I love the way this game lets you mix and match any skills, makes replay value very high for me.
Ahhh, the wiki. That explains it. Try http://dredmor.stosic.org which is takes info straight from the data files. I was referring to Sneaky Shiv, which does 1 x (0.33 x ) in the current version. Also, I was mainly trying to play devil's advocate on your setup. If it works and you enjoy it, you're playing the game right, no need to justify it to me. What do you mean by crafting-centric builds? The phrasing makes me think of tinker/smith/clockwork knight or alch/smith/tinker/wandcraft setup. I agree with you on the rare recipe and clutter aspects; I did the same thing when I was first starting out. I used to ignore everything except fungal arts (despite the... I can't think of a word that describes having to make a spore every X turns and manually plant a spore on every corpse. Tedium isn't a strong enough word). When I take a crafting skill now it's because I know what I'm guaranteed to get (tinkering = lots o bolts + + the HUD/rocket boot/powered chain encrusts, for example), and the rest is a bonus. Again, this is one of those devil's advocate things, but you really do sound just like I did before I started chucking all the junk I didn't actually need into the lutefisk cube. It makes things so much easier.
For highest magic power, stick to Wizard archetype skills for maximum Sagacity. Assassination is a Rogue skill, which does nothing for your Sagacity stat. I would probably replace it with something that has AoE like Promethean or Necro so you can easily deal with those pesky zoos. Or even Egyptian if you had a second mana fuel skill. Alchemy and Wandlore both have the same Sagacity progression and if you really hate crafting you're probably better off without either of them. Any magic power you lose could easily be made up for by greater skill diversity or traded for more mana regen with Leylines or Blood Magic. I would also usually suggest some kind of teleport skill but the Tourist capstone 'Get Away From It All' can serve as a panic button in the worst of situations. Lastly the wiki is a good place to go for the raw stats on things. Another good place to go is the Dredmorpedia. It takes it's info straight from the game files so it's always accurate. Though it does take some time to load. If you want an idea on how some of the skills actually PLAY. Check out the Community Skills Guide. Stickied at the top of the forum.
Do you think that the wiki would mind if I went through and linked all of the wiki skill entries to the appropriate pages of the CSG thread?
