I have been lurking on the forums for some time now, but I finally decided to sign up. So....um...hi! Anyhoo, I have a few questions. 1) Is the Heckforge skill in Demonology borked? I tried searching the forums for an answer and I cannot find one. I was tooling around with the cheezy Demonology + Archaeology Krong abuse, and it wasnt removing the curses. Unless this skill doesnt work like I think it does, my only thought is that it is bugged (I am playing the Diggle Gods expansion). 2) I have been playing the game for 71 hours and the furthest I have made it is floor 7 with a sword/board. When you play rogues/mages, how do you guys not get squished? Apologies for the noob questions, but I am very curious. Thanks for reading, hope to talk with you all at some point!
Welcome Squirtle! 1 - This is a common misunderstanding. Heckforge does not remove Krong curses - it removes item curses inflicted by Magic Golems and other creatures in melee combat. 2 - Don't get hit! Lots of healing potions (which heal instantly) help to cover accidents - if you take alchemy you'll be pretty flush with those. Several magic skills have a heal effect at some point, but perhaps most important of all is to have a teleport or invisibility or other "get the heck outta dodge" skill to use when you realize that you are not in control of the situation.
Congratulations! You are the straw that broke the camel's back - I've written a mini-guide for you guys who have trouble with mages. I think the #1 concern is to keep your blue bar full of mana. (that's a link to ze guide) As long as you don't run out of mana, and you have a teleport, or a big heal, or invisibility, or stuns, rifts, etc etc, you should be fine. I've even found Pyromancy to be fine as long as I kept my blue bar full - I didn't have any "get out of dodge" or "save my bacon" spells, but everything I saw exploded and burned to death. Death is the best form of CC!
My take on it (and it's a very similar take to the two posters above me) is that, in order for pretty much any build to survive all the way down to Dredmor, it requires two (2) things: 1) A way to heal faster than the 1 Health/turn you get from food. For melee, some of your best options are Fleshsmithing (Knit Flesh is effective even with little to no Magic Power), Psionics (you can lay healing crystals over your retreat), Alchemy (Healing Potions are good for everybody), and Fungal Arts (Fairywodgers and Blungecaps are both amazing and you can stockpile them). For a castery type, you can still use any of the above, but Emomancy (The Cure heals instantly AND cleanses, just mind the Emo Debuff it gives you) also becomes a solid option. Possibly even more important than healing, though, is... 2) A way to get the rock outta dodge. No matter your build, no matter how careful you are, you're always going to find yourself - at some point - in a situation where you're cornered or low on health with a Named Monster in melee range or one of the Random Teleport Traps pops you dead into the center of the nearest Monster Zoo. At this point, you need a way to escape, and there are several: My personal favorite is Burglary, since it gives you a mana-free Teleport to anywhere you can see, on top of Free Lockpicks (read: tons of extra XP) and the ability to Ninja Vanish. Mathemagic gives you not one, but two Teleport spells (one random, one controlled). Ley Walker gives you a limited Teleport that really sucks away the mana, but at the same times gives you a mana-over-time ability to get some of it back. Plus there's always Booze. Artful Dodger nets you the mana-free Knightly Leap, allowing you to move like a Knight piece in Chess. Probably the weakest escape method, but the option is there. Once you can heal incoming damage at a rate better than 1 Health/turn and have at least one "oh shit!" button to get away from those situations that might otherwise kill you, you'll have a much better chance of getting down to the bottom of the dungeon.
That makes me sad one cannot abuse the anvils, but I suppose its for the best. The point about potions is well taken, but is having +20HP pots gonna be that helpful in later game when mobs are hitting like a truck? I guess I should invest in some dodge/teleport skills; makes sense.
There's a few ways to go in regards to mitigating damage, at least that I've found: 1) The Rogue Method - stack Dodge and Counter and Resistances. Given the way the game determines combat, being able to Dodge and/or Counter a high % of attacks that are coming at you is a great way to avoid taking any damage at all. Of course, eventually RNG catches up with you, but that's why your build has a Healing skill and a Teleport... right? Also, stacking Resistances makes it harder for Named Monsters to two-shot you and decreases the pain you take from groups of casters lurking in the corners of rooms/Monster Zoos. 2) The Tank Method - stack Armor Absorb, Block, and Resistances. Given the way the game determines combat, being able to Block a high % of attacks that are coming at you is a great way to reduce most attacks to a few points of damage. You still want some form of Healing and a Teleport just in case you get surrounded or unlucky or the unexpected happens. Also, stacking Resistances makes it harder for Named Monsters to take huge chunks out of your Health pool and decreases the pain you take from groups of casters lurking in the corners of rooms/Monster Zoos. 3) The Mage Method - don't get hit. Blast everything from afar with spells and bolts before they can attack you or, even better, before they notice you. Use a combination of Mana Regen and Sneakiness gear. Make sure your build has a reliable way of getting Mana back faster than the 1 Mana/turn you get from drinking Booze - the Mana Tap from Ley Walker and Blood Magic are my two personal favorites. Stacking Books and Rings with as many Resistances as possible will help to keep you alive if a Named Mob sneaks up on you or you find yourself out of Mana so you can't quite finish off those corner-lurking casters. A Healing skill is less important for this kind of build - I still recommend you have one for extreme emergencies - but your Teleport Skill is even more vital - you simply cannot afford to take hits, ever. Taking a Magic Skill Tree with an early Pet is almost, but not quite, essential so you can hide behind it while you build up your repertoire of spells and your means of Mana Regen.
I don't see it discussed much, but Mist of Corsair (Pirate skill) has worked great for me as an escape button. It also gives +20 dodge for a short while, which is pretty awesome. Let me just throw out some good numbers for what Marak described above: For the rogue method, you really want your dodge + counter to get to 50 or so each. For the Tank Method, you really want block of 100%. Both of those require some dedication, and certain gear helps. But those are the numbers to shoot for.
I guess I should've mentioned that certain Skill Trees help with these. For Dodge/Counter, I usually rely on lots of Rogue levels and Dual-wielding, although if you have room to sneak in Master of Arms it's not a terrible idea. As Mr. Strange said, Piracy is great for Rogues and not just for Mists of the Corsair - Swashbuckling makes you nigh-on immune to melee attacks (and all that counterattack damage, mmm) for 4 rounds and has a very reasonable cooldown. Getting both Dodge and Counter to 50+ will take some dedication and luck, but even if you can get both into the 30s (not nearly as hard as it sounds), you have a sound basis for not taking much damage, and any incoming damage you're really worried about can usually also be avoided with clever use of Swashbuckling and Mists of the Corsair (or Ninja Vanish if you took Burglary). For Tanky McTankerson, I again suggest Master of Arms, and if you're going Sword and Board, Shield Bearer as well. The stacking Burliness (and other defensive stats) from Berserker Rage procs can be helpful here as well. With Master of Arms, Shield Bearer, and Berserker Rage all beefed up to their 2nd and 3rd tiers, you can wade into almost any melee-heavy fight and come out nearly unscathed - just watch out for casters lurking at the edges of the screen. Getting Block up to (or over) 100 is, again, not as hard as it sounds, as long as you prioritize Armor Absorb and Block on your armor to the literal exclusion of all else. At that point, melee monsters stop dealing significant damage to you. I had a character with this build that was taking roughly 3 points of damage from Muscle Diggles on Floor 11 - that's what you're shooting for, ideally.
^^^ What Marak is saying is good stuff. I'll just point out that taking Shield Bearer works 100% as well even if you're not using a shield. (In other threads, many of us are actually saying this is a huge problem, but don't let that stop you from taking advantage of it.)
Hello there. We have insane people and people who don't make mods. You can decide which category you belong to (hint it's one of the two). There are some hiccups in the way DoD keeps track of the corruption curses, so it doesn't always work perfectly, but generally speaking it does work. But it doesn't remove Krong's curses, those are a whole different thing and the only way to get rid of them is to either get lucky on your next kronging, or to get a new item. I can't say for mages (since I play rogues most of the time), but if I were to keep it simple, it's "projectile spam for stronger targets, melee 1-2 hit kills for other stuff, and switching normally-used gear for high-resistance one when it becomes necessary". Though having any method of healing (and mana regeneration, if you are playing a mage) is a must unless you know your way around and are looking for a challenge. That, and well, in most cases it's better to either go unarmed, or dual-wielding, since sword-boardy characters are the forgotten middle ground as of now.
I am not creative in the slightest, so I will go with the "doesn't make mods category"; that being said, the people who do make mods seem reasonably stable! Is this just the case of using a shield sufficiently lowers your damage and the shield bonuses don't make up for it enough? Cause I love playing as a character that can take hits and keep on truckin'.
It only appears so, my friend. All mod-makers are insane, they wouldn't want to create mods in the first place if they weren't. Not that being insane is a bad thing, mind you. It's because with two weapons, your damage is at its peak, and with two non-weapons (shields, most probably), your defensive ability is at its peak, while sword-boardy builds are the middle ones that are neither well-protected, nor strong-hitting. It might have something to do with warrior skills (other than dual wielding, and a "full set" of defensive skills if you are capable of playing defensively) being underpowered compared to magic, but that's just an excuse - it is possible to win the game with every build (excluding the ones that deliberately cripple you, but even then it's possible if you get lucky enough) if you know how to play it, and since rogues aren't the most vigorous characters, you have to learn how to do some things (generally speaking, you want to be able to deal a lot of damage, since your defence lies not in being heavily armoured, but in being able to kill most things with 1 or 2 hits, and thus having enough projectiles to spam problematic enemies to death; dodging or countering attacks instead of soaking them up also helps, since it's easier for rogues to just raise that due to naturally high dodge). If you really want to play a tanky charater that is a rogue, a warrior-rogue hybrid with Unarmed as one of its skill trees is a very good start; adding either Shield Bearer or Master of Arms (or perhaps both, if you really like being a tank) also helps.
