How long did it take you to beat the game the first time?

Got my second Dredmor kill on DM skill at 66 hours of playtime. I was using Essence's bushido mod, so that may have attributed to my victory. It was a dual-wielding sword berserker burglar with master of arms and did studies in archaeology.

 

Still haven't done it. 156.9 hours.

But then, I'm not one of those people who wants to look everything up on the Wiki and know the best combo from the start. I like to play with zero-knowledge (used to love the way Nethack would rename all the potions each time you played it so you had no idea which was what without risking a sip). I also don't have the time for long sessions so I do a floor per session which means that by the time I'm on level 6 or 7, I need either a long session or I rush it.

Almost all my non-stupid deaths have been through charging into a fight without thinking first, or not noticing my health. Even something as simple as working out how far away a monster is can be a great help if you can be bothered to do it. I'm also more of a melee fighter. Picking things off from afar isn't the way Conan would have done it...

I've been to level 6 a lot, level 7 a bit, level 8 a couple of times - but I have always played medium difficulty, Permadeath, RotDG (since it came out) - so there's a long way to go. I still haven't tried all the possible skills out, I haven't played as any other type of character, and I haven't tried - seriously - to walk around on tiptoes expecting a fight at any moment and keep all monsters at arm's length. Pile on, unless you know you're outnumbered / outgunned, and retreat if necessary. Haven't yet died from a considered-opinion of whether something is too powerful for me, only when I stop caring and just pile in regardless.

That said, I've had great fun with it anyway. Getting to Dredmor might well just make me stop playing.

I never completed (or even got close to completing) NetHack either, and I played that for years.

 

I got him at exactly 86.1 hours into the game, according to Steam. Getting to Dredmor is half the fun. Trying to kill him with your skillset is the other half.

 

I find it to be an interesting fight. In order to fight him you have to go through the entire dungeon, so the times you actually encounter him are small. My DM fight was fun as I didn't know what types of attacks he had. I was trying to keep my distance using the teleport from burglary. It was quite tense in a "Will he use a nuke spell that will kill me instantly ending hours of dungeoning?".

 

That was pretty much how my fight went. I was using Move In Mysterious Ways to teleport myself to an open door, close it, munch down on corpses to regain life, open door, continue fighting. Rinse and repeat. Then magic happened.

 

I killed Dredmor on DM after a very long, grueling 10 floors using a mage build, pre-RotDG. Then they released the expansion and the next time I fought him it was with a crazy high leveled warrior after exploiting archaeology to the max (I think I was level 34). Finally, I scored a GRPD kill using a gish type necro-mage. Each of my first three fights with the big man was very different. Haven't killed him with a rogue yet, I think I'll leave that until after the patch.

Just to make the fight as unpredictable as possible.

 

Steam says I've played 53 hours and the closest I've ever gotten was floor 8. Keep getting cocky around named quest mobs or evil chests. I just cant say no to a chest on the ground, evil or not

 

The key to victory is to get the hell away from any Named Mob and pelt it to death with whatever Thrown Weapons/Bombs/Wands/Crossbow Bolts/Spells you have handy.

So basically, two of the most important things you can do are:

1) Always have a crossbow - no matter how shitty - with some decent Bolts (Ingeniously Scythed anything, Clockwork Drill, Acid Ampule, and the like) OR keep at least 1-2 direct damage wands (Hyperborean, Deciduous, Flame, Rock, Laser, and so on) in your bags. Even if you're a caster. Even if you're a melee powerhouse. The game loves to throw named mobs at you that have a million billion damage of whatever damage type(s) you have 0 zero resistance to.

2) Always take a skill that lets you move more than one square per turn. You basically need one of the following: Knightly Leap, Invisible Geometries, Move in a Mysterious Way (it's all right), Froda's Jump Discontinuity, Xeuclid's Translation, or a small stack of Spatial Instability Potions (a last resort, really).

At least, I've never managed to beat Dredmor without these two things. I imagine it's possible, but not having ranged damage options and a movement skill would make any attempt about eight times harder, no matter what build you're using.