Level 10 w/ Melee & Struggling

Awesome Bergstrom, thanks! Hadn't thought about that.

I'll wait for the next patch to arrive 'fore I go back, though. Need a short break from games plus hopefully the combat changes will help me out a bit more.

 

So, I went back into it this evening (I was bored and fed up), and... Ahem.

Right, Bergstrom was correct - going down helped a lot. I practically cleared Floor 12 or 13, and I went back up to 9 to sell stuff as I hadn't discovered any more stores. At that point, I realised I hadn't cleared some of Floor 9 (including a monster zoo) and by checking my quest log I found out I'd forgotten a quest on Floor 7, which explains why I was struggling a bit.

I cleared the Zoo on 9, and the game crashed as I levelled up after it. Argh! At least I have a set of Imp. Boilerplate now, though!

Thanks guys!

 

So, I seem to be doing okay now with that build - not been playing much, I must admit, waiting for the next patch to go live.

I (finally) found the Dredmor Wiki site (not Dredmorpedia, the other one) and I've been looking at certain skills. Emomancy seems like one I'd be interested in, as does Demonologist, but I'm not sure if they're actually any good. I guess they're useful for certain abilities/playstyles but are otherwise not to be taken? Vegan seems powerful but easy to mess up, Archaeology I'm not too sure about (good?). Basically, just wondering what other good builds are out there.

It'd be nice to take a sort of magic-nullifying warrior of sorts. Good defence, good attack, magic-killing abilities (hence why I was thinking about Demonologist). Hmm...

I thought I'd keep all my gameplay stuff together - easier for me and you lot.

 

Demonologist is definitely a skill where you sit down and ask yourself, "how do I break this skill?"

If you find the answer, please let me know. I've been working on it almost since RotDG came out, and I've gotten nowhere. It might work as part of a proc heavy build, or perhaps some sort of crazy polymorph master (actually, those two sound like they'd be pretty much the same thing.) I think Vegan would be involved, too, just to keep that evil, evil radiance damage from hurting too badly. Just some random thoughts.

Emomancy is probably pretty cool, but playing with magic makes me feel like such a sissy (waaah! I stepped on trap and now am dead!) so I tend to avoid it most of the time, unless I'm a gish type.

Also, you could play either one of these skills with Runecrafting and I'm sure they'd become about 173% more entertaining. If you're ever tempted to mod the game, that is.

 

I haven't read the thread in detail, so this may not be that helpful.

On a quick skim of you skills and stats, I really don't see a problem, except for a few things:

1. Gear. Not sure what it is, so I can't tell if you can do better at this point.
2. Magic Resistance and elemental resistances are very low. Getting MR up will help immensely.
3. I'd have maxed out Artful Dodge

Perception shouldn't be hurting you. I don't know about Tinkering, as I haven't used it. But the other skills are melee skills that I have used and knocked the sh*t out of Dredmor and his critters with.

I've had success with Duel Wield skill. From what I understand, the Shield skill is bugged. You don't have to use shields to benefit from the skill tree and the game considers orbs, tomes and shields the same.

Hope this helps.

 

I haven't bought Realm of the Diggle Gods yet, so maybe things change in there that I haven't noticed yet. But I just reached 9th floor with my melee fighter (and crashed shortly thereafter; I'm glad I save every 30 minutes or so.) I'm playing on Going Rogue with Permadeath. I also have the "don't have time to grind," thing on.

I've taken Maces, Shield Bearer, Berserker Rage, Artful Dodger, Master of Arms, Fungal Arts, and a mod-added skill tree called Practical Geology. I've also Essence's skill rebalance thing, which I guess results in a few extra points of resistances here and there, but I mostly got it because it makes using Fungal Arts less of a pain in the ass.

I'm not sure what level I'm at, but I know I'm above 20 - like 22 or maybe 23, I think, and precious few enemies can even cause damage to me, let alone hurt me. I found a monster zoo on the 8th floor and waded right in and took maybe 20 damage the entire time - and I didn't even try to funnel them, I was completely surrounded the entire time.

But I also have a lot of gear I'm carrying around, especially things with resistances on them. Rings, a Wand of Tesla (gives you Voltaic Empowerment on cast, so you can get that voltaic resistance), a couple of potions of the fire resistance thing, and some rings with different resistances than what I have. I'm pretty sure I have at least 1 resistance to literally everything except existential without wearing the special resistance pieces, and without counting buffs. I know I have more than 20 armor absorption, but I think it's higher than that - like 23 or 24 without buffs active and I've seen it reach 40 or more when I've got all my buffs rolling. Maces, Berserker Rage, Master of Arms, and Practical Geology are all maxed. I took Fungal Arts only for the mushrooms so it's staying at 1 point. I've got two points into Shields and I took Artful Dodger up to Knightly Leap (primarily so I could snag those items that you sometimes see sitting on a tiny island.)

At this point my MO is really just to charge right and swing until they die. Monsters usually take three or four hits if I don't crit somewhere in there, so I guess my damage could be low. But between the random knockbacks and stuns from Maces and the on-demand stuns and knockbacks from Practical Geology, I rarely feel threatened.

It's worth noting that Killing Blow seems to apply the effect to all attacks made when it's consumed. Practical Geology adds an end-tree skill called Earthquake that does some damage and stuns all monsters within a moderate distance of your target tile - I think it's like 4x4. Killing Blow makes all of those hits criticals, so it's really easy to wade into a monster zoo, load up on damage buffs (Fell Truffle, etc), pop Killing Blow, and then cause an obscene amount of chaos with your Earthquake. I'm actually beginning to run out of inventory space because I have so much food I never get to use, but refuse to simply throw it away (because nothing is more frustrating than being out of food and needing to heal.)

I've been selling my Inky Hoglantern, Mudwen, and Azure Mob-bonnet mushrooms since they aren't useful to a fighter. I've been keeping my Nightcap mushrooms because I found a drink (Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster?) that gives you a fantastic buff that requires mana for upkeep, but I've got enough drinks on hand that I could probably sell them and be alright. Fungal Arts is really important for surviving in the early game; the miscellaneous buffs you get from the various mushrooms regularly saves you butt and can help you get by if Brax and the monsters aren't giving you anything useful.

The Odius Puffball mushrooms are extremely useful for handling monster zoos early on. Lately I just keep a few on hand and turn the rest into Lutefisk.

EDIT: Yup, killed Dredmor. Dude wasn't even a challenge, I opened the door and he was right there, ate all my buff mushrooms, ate a sandwich, drank one of the regeneration potions I'd found and then basically killed in three turns. Kind of a letdown. This was Hard?

Level 23, had about 40,000 gold on hand. The game definitely felt like it was getting easier and easier as I went deeper and deeper. Make sure you're clearing the entire floor, there's no reason you should be heading down if the floor isn't cleared. You're gonna miss a lot of good loot and you're gonna be under-leveled.