Few questions please

Hello everyone.

Just bought DoD off Steam and am confused about a few things.

I've done the tutorials but have the following questions:

1. I have 3 of the machines that you use to make stuff, eg ingots, weapons etc. How do I separate them so I can sell 2 of them to Brax? I've tried shift/control clicking but nothing.

2. In threads I've read, particularly the one on item management, the author refers to artefacts. What exactly are they? The named items I collect? The ones that just say 'item'?

3. Looking at the character sheet I can identify what some of the symbols mean. I understand that the round symbols are for resistances but some of the square ones I haven't a clue what they mean.

That's it for now. Thanks in advance.

 

1: Alt-click?

3: Hover the symbols with the mouse pointer. The pop ups should give a good starting explanation...

 

1. Alt left-click (you can also alt-left-drag the item to another space)
2. An artifact is any item that has random attributes. Usually (but not always) the item will have a randomized name. But there are a few artifacts that have fixed names, such as "The Crownstar Addendum", "The Timelord's Scarf", "The Emerald Amulet" and so on. Note that a normal item can be converted to an artifact by using a Krong Anvil, which you can find randomly in the dungeon.
3. You can also check them out here, along with an explanation: http://www.dredmorwiki.com/wiki/Stats

 

Hey Captain Kronos.

Artifacts are items that have weird names to them, each name being unique. There are a few exceptions to this with some of late game neck pieces and rings that retain their name.
Any item that is dragged and dropped an anvil of krong will pick up stats (positive if blessed, negative if cursed) and become an artifact.
When a monster with corruption ability strikes you, your artifacts will pick up negative stats, while normal items not be affected.
The archaeology skill 'that belongs in a museum' also only works on artifacts.

Round are resistances.

Square ones with a corresponding round one are bonuses to attack.

Other square Are your primary stats.
and
The rest are other stats on your sheet

Finally there are a few that aren't there
is spell projectile reflection
is health
is mana

 

Thanks for all the replies.

Yes, alt & click works, thanks, and I understand artefacts better.

As for the symbols, I did mouse over them in the character sheet but some symbols don't appear on the character sheet. However, thanks to Wootah in particular for the symbol descriptions in his post, just wish there was some way of somehow hovering over the symbols when looking at the various weapons and armour.

I've now found the Wiki which has some useful info on it particularly the various builds. Also Mr Strange's site on various aspects of DoD..

I'm now on level 2 of my second game (I realise that I made too many mistakes on my first build) and have other questions:

1. What's the deal with food? I understand that it helps with health but it only adds 1 point to my health when eaten. The figures for different food range from single figures to 64 health for a triple decker sandwich. I naively assumed that it meant 64 health would be restored when eaten but only 1 point is restored as I said. Is the food only to be used for recipes using one of the machines?

2. I'm unsure what to sell and what to keep. As I said, I've read Haldurson's Item Management thread which is extremely useful but am still confused. The objects marked as 'items' are those needed for the goddess's quests, right?

3. Finally, still haven't got a grasp of which skills complement each other. For example, I like archery and cleric type characters and know that you need smithing to go with archery so you can make crossbows and bolts but as for the rest....

Thanks again.

 

1. In general, eating food creates a buff that lasts for X number of turns, where X is the food value of the item. That buff adds 1 point of health every turn. It's not meant to be used as an 'omg I'm about to die' thing. It's more of something that you use BEFORE you get into bad trouble, either to have a steady increase in health while you are engaged in combat or between fights. Keep in mind that if you are very close to leveling, that you may find that your food is wasted, as the leveling process will naturally bring your health to full. There's also natural health regen, so just because you are not at full health, doesn't necessarily mean that you need to eat. When I decide that I need food or don't need food is something that is difficult for me to put into words, but I can give you really vague recommendations:
a. Eat when you are about to engage in combat, and you are down by a quarter or more of health (or sooner if you are about to engage a large number of enemies). Preferably eat before the enemies close in on you
b. Eat between battles when you are missing a large amount of health (like if you are down by a third or more health).

These are not hard and fast rules, it's something that you have to get a feel for with each particular character and situation.

2. The quest items are named in the quest itself and have randomized names like artifacts, only they have no stats. In my current game, for example, I am quested to recover "Mutwapo, the Sonnet of Loins". Yes, they are labeled as 'items', but that doesn't always mean that they are for a quest.


3. What you are talking about is commonly known as a Synergy -- when one skill makes another skill better for some reason or another. There is no real trick to finding a synergy, other than being familiar with the skills themselves, and how they work. That mostly takes experience. But there is a pretty good, but very long discussion about this that you should read: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/project-community-skills-guide.3033/

Note that the attached guide does not cover the expansion skills in detail, but the thread does contain posts specifically regarding those skills, as well as some mod skills. You may have to do some searching to find what you need.

 

BTW, here's some examples of synergies to give you an idea of what to look for.
1. Anything that contains an ability that increases health regen will synergize with Vampirism, because the life drain of vampirism is proportional to health regen.
2. Most mage skills will synergize to a small extent with most other mage skills, because every time you increase a mage skill, it also increases Sagacity () and Savvy () by 2. Sagacity affects Mana points () and Magic Power (). And Savvy affects Haywire chance (), which is kind of like Magic's version of a critical hit. Note that this is a relatively weak synergy, because there are skills that have a more direct, and thus dramatic impact on those stats.
3. Dual Wield synergizes strongly with all specific melee weapon skills (egs. Axe, Staff, Sword, etc.) because the weapons skills give you stat bonuses for wielding the particular weapon. If you wield two of that weapon, then the stat bonuses are doubled.

Anyway, there are lots and lots of synergies, some strong, some weak. Watch for the strong ones, because the weak ones don't generally help so much. These are just a few notable ones.

 

Just to add to what Daynab said.

1. Food adds 1 per tick. Which is much more appealing the harder the difficulty because you heal less often (naturally) on harder difficulties.

2. I wouldn't be too stressed about this. Unless you find something in a shop you really really want, I think it is just best to not sell things. Zorkmids aren't too important except for the occasional item. Personally I would teach my friends by first having them ignore most items that aren't weapons/armor/consumables. If you aren't playing a crafting build, you can safely ignore all the metals and ingots, Gems, and reagents. Then you can work on just using/learning wands/potions/mushrooms/throwing items. I believe getting down those things and how to best use them in a pinch will increase your survivability and indirectly make the game feel more fun.

3. There is so much diversity that what compliments what is REALLY vast and somewhat difficult. For my first 2 years of playing the game I would focus on 1 skill for weeks. Each time i would die, I would re-select the same skill and then get different skills to compliment it each time. Once I was very comfortable with that skill, I would switch to a different focal skill and play that skill with many builds. Years later, I still haven't done them all, but you will find so many combinations, that you really don't need to worry too much about maximizing your build as long as you have most of your skills come from the same families (warrior, rogue, wizard).

 

I actually disagree with this. Certain items can be invaluable, especially as you approach the end-game. In particular, you want all iron, steel, bronze (which can be made from copper and tin), coal, chalk (which can be made from black pearl), rust, and sometimes aluminum and aluminum dust.
With zero tinkering skill, you can still craft bolts. But in any case, there's tinkerer's goggles, which will give you a +1 to tinkering.
With zero alchemy skill plus a potion of alchemical inspiration, you can craft healing potions, mana potions, and potions of invisibility. If you do some research, you'll see that there are other things that you can craft as well with zero skill (+1), such as poison gas flasks, but they are of secondary concern after heals and invisibility, which are invaluable.

Also, you can occasionally get bonuses to crafting from artifacts, from modded items, and even from skills (egs. Rogue Scientist, and Clockwork Knight). So you may be able, for example, to increase your crafting skill rating in other indirect ways, sometimes by more than just a single point.

 

Well if you want to get technical, if you are playing with alternate skills or items that give crafting, sure you can craft and it is a crafting build.

And I think he could safely ignore a majority of those things and be fine. On the off chance that he A) does spend time looking through the crafting skills, B) sees something he wants, C) has the items/skills that give the requirements, he can take the time to look for the items which would be far less daunting then playing the item scrounging/saving game through N levels on the off chance that those conditions might be met.

 

I'm primarily talking about crafting staples, the same way you collect diggle eggs, bread and cheese to make food. It's the same principle -- crafting things that you always will need anyway. Bolts, healing potions, and potions of invisibility. And if you decide you need them, just add aluminum to the list to get your mana potions. It's not like I'm telling you anything that's incredibly challenging to do, or takes that much extra time. I'm not saying that you need to carry all that stuff around with you all the time (I always keep a big pile of assorted arrows and throwing weapons in my pocket dimension anyway, because I know if I survive to Dredmor, I'm going to need them -- I don't need to have them all on me all the time.
I don't know why my suggestion is so controversial.

You can play the way you want to. And I'm not saying you have to have a crafting session every time you pick up an ore or ingot. I'm saying to drop it on the huge pile, and when you need it, just pick it up and hit the craft button a couple of dozen times. It's a one-time thing, none of the recipes I've mentioned are hidden, and the items I'm suggesting you craft are among the easiest recipes to remember. If you were a crafter, then maybe you'd want to collect almost every kind of ingredient. I'm not suggesting that here. Just the few items I mentioned.

 

Thank you so much to everyone. Lots of good stuff here. I should have realised that food generates 1 click per turn, doh! I've foolishly been selling food items to Brax but now know I shouldn't. I didn't realise that Tinkering is used for manufacturing bolts.

My second character has the Killer Vegan skill, as I am a vegetarian and thought I'd try it out, but it's so frustrating. Lots of good skills in Killer Vegan but when I accidentally kill an animal.... For example, yesterday I used Animal Friend on a digger (not the normal kind which I can befriend) but it didn't befriend me, I didn't kill it, and it cost me 200 turns of course. I'm assuming I need to be more experienced to use this skill.

I use the portal dimension to store my stuff in piles as Haldurson's guide suggests but is there a way I can look into a stack, for example of ingots, to see what's in there rather than laboriously put them into a different stack until I find the ingot(s) I want?

As I said, I'm on level 2 of my 2nd character. Are there monoliths/eyeball thingies on each floor? I had three quests, all needing the monolith, so went back to the 1st level to complete them (I realise each of the quests had level 1 in brackets).

Thanks again, what a friendly board.

 

The secret to Vegan is to kill animals using ranged attacks (it's only killing them in melee that give you the nasty vegan debuffs). They aren't hostile at any range, though, as long as the monster tooltip says "animal" on it.

Unfortunately, there's no way to check a stack to see what's in it, but for reference, they use a "last in, first out" stack system, so you'll pick up items in reverse order that you dropped them. Dropping something on a pile that already has a few stackable items (baseballs, bolts, alchemy ingredients, ingots, etc. etc.) will combine the dropped items with the other stack, wherever they are in the pile.

If it helps, I make several smaller stacks to help keep things sorted. Un-smelted ore all goes into one pile, while each ingot goes into its own pile. Brewable fruits and booze go into a pile, top-level booze goes into a separate pile. All resistance gear goes in one pile, and there's a big pile of stuff I just want to sell at the next shop...

I believe there is always 1 "quest location" item like the monoloths, eye shrines, hippie pedestals on each floor, whether you get a quest that needs one or not. I don't think you could, for example, use a monolith on floor 1 to complete a quest for the monolith on floor 5.

 

Thank you Darkmere for the Killer Vegan tip, I didn't know that. As for the stacking problem I'll give it a go.

 

What I am storing is dependent on what skills I am running. If I am a tinker/smith, I will spread the ingots out. If not then I don't usually pick them up. If I am an alchemist (and not the other two), all the potions and potion ingredients get spread out, and I will pick up Iron/aluminum to grind it down for potions.

Also, If you haven't experimented with the auto-pickup yet I suggest it. It changes the game quite a bit to be able to walk over items without picking them up. I changes it with builds. I always have lockpicks on auto pickup, but from there it varies with like food, bolts, thrown.

 

I usually divide my crafting items thusly:

Powders + Coal
Ingots (and the regents that turn into ingots)
Gems
Liquids (Aqua Vitae, Acidum Salis, etc)
Fruits and Spirits
Widgets (brass mechanisms, coils, etc)

I've found that this distinction makes my crafting much smoother, since I can easily find what I need by walking over a pile with autoloot.

also:
Meats for the meat encrust that gives 5 hp
Cheeses and Diggle Eggs

then I have smaller piles in other areas for specific items, like armor and throwables. These piles are always in the same area south of the Wizardland customizer.

 

I use autoloot thanks and have all options checked. Only noticed it the other day.

Incidentally, I'm keeping mushrooms in one pile but haven't come across any recipes for them, same with gems..Are they just for selling?

Finally, my 2nd character died on level 2. Opened a room which was full of monsters. Tried to run but it was like running in treacle and I died before I could reach a natural choke point. I was playing on normal/permadeath so until I get more experienced I'll use the easiest difficulty with permadeath turned off. Kudos to those who play on the hardest difficulty.

Edit: Just seen SkyMuffin's post.

 

If the room was blue and the music changed, you found a monster zoo. There is one on every level (unless playing no time to grind, at which point a level can spawn without one), and they are what make dungeons of dredmor really great. Sometimes you lookforward to the zoo just because it is so rewarding with experience.

It is also what helps add diversity to builds as you need to plan ahead to deal with them
Just so you know. If you open a zoo, A counter will appear on the right of the screen under the map with the Number of monsters remaining. If you kill them all without changing floors or going into the pocket dimension, you will be rewarded with a artifact item (sometimes they suck).

If you are playing on permadeath, it is always better to ditch the floor and heal up than to die trying to win the prize.
If you are melee fighter, you gotta find a pinch point.
If you have AOE, you can gut a zoo.

You may need a way to deal with the ranged.
Also each floor has monsters who do different damage types. Sometimes, it is worth figuring out what types of damage types can be hurting you to stack resistances to those types, although the second floor is a bit hard to plan that far ahead.

Finally, since the first zoo is often the one where you don't have the skills set up to deal with it yet, i suggest going down every set of down stairs and exploring as much as you can without opening any doors. Then if you are feeling risky, ride all the satanic glyphs around the level you can without opening any doors. Finally when it is time to open doors, open ones near choke points and open ones near glyphs. If you find the zoo, but want a level or two more, you can ride the glyph to another part of the map, and safely clear out the rest of the map till you are ready to face the zoo (even approaching from the back side).

Edit: Oh, and like skymuffin points out that by having most of your autoloot turned off, you can spread out the loot much better in the pocket dimension and just walk over it. I highly recommend this.

 

All of them except mud wens are beneficial. Try eating them to see what they do.