I've been on a casual playthrough as a mage, and now I'd like to actually try to finish the game with permadeath, either as a warrior or rogue. Ideally, as a warrior, I was wanting to go with maces as my weapon of choice this time, perhaps dual-wielding as well. Battle Geology and Clockwork Knight were also looking interesting. I'm not too keen on any of the crafting skills, however. I can find plenty of everything I need laying around in the dungeon. Crafting materials are only vendor trash and lutefisk to me. Finally, I was also wanting to try out Big Game Hunter, because I'm getting tired of relying on Archaeology for the XP bonus. As for a rogue build, I'm less sure of what would be good. I was thinking that the typical rogue traits like daggers, burglary, assassination, and artful dodger would work, but what else?
I'd been wondering about a melee build as well, though I was thinking more about the warrior type than a rogue. I'm guessing Clockwork Knight, Dual Wield, and Tinkering are more or less mandatory for a newbie friendly melee build? Note that I, too, am very definitely new to crafting. I've not played with anything but a very little bit of alchemy in my mage builds. Which weapon skill is solid right now, and why? I know Polearms offer a lot of melee power (sorry, don't know how to do the cute little stat tags) and that axes have a good bit of AOE. I'm also guessing I'll want something like Magical Law or Battle Geology to shut Dredmor up, assuming I get to him. Not very sure on what the advantages are in each of those. Also, do I need to take the Throwing skill, or is it enough to carry a bagful of softballs, bowling balls, hand grenades and saw blades or anything else I can toss around? Is Alchemy the default 'heal with this' skill for melee, or would something like Communism or...I don't know what else...suffice? Sorry for all the stupid questions, but I would love to try a melee build that doesn't fall flat on its face as soon as I find a good clump of monsters. I freely admit to being a fairly new player that is far too fond of magic and experimenting for my own good. If it matters, I tend to play on DM/PD.
Archaeology's Xp isn't that important anymore thanks to wizardlands. The new miniboss give a lot of xp. Wizardlands give xp. Even without those I never felt unleveled for dreadmor. Anyways try this out: Maces Dual Wield Clockwork Knight Magical Law Rogue Scientist Communism Big Game Hunter/ Paranormal Investigator You got your maces, dual wield, and clockwork knight you wanted. That gives you a lot of damage, knockback, and teleport. Magical Law gives you some great skills. It can change corrupt monsters into something less annoying. Prevent spell casting. 50 and 25 buff. Last but not least take a skill off cooldown. Rogue Scientist is mostly for the 2to make healing potions and Alchemical Toxin Canister, though the rest of the tree still has many uses.Communism for invisibility, healing, cure debuff, and great passive stats. The last is whatever else you want. Edit: To do the little cutie stat images (which I love to do) click on the near the font size options. It has the whole list right there for you.
1. Alot of Clockwork Knight abilities scale with Smithing/Tinkering. Same with Rogue Scientist and Tinkering/Alchemy. 2. Good Skills for Rogues would be: Archery and Tinkering(Rogues love to range, tinkering for bolts), perhaps pair thrown with piracy(infinite thrown weapons from broadside), or if you're into melee rogues, daggers + assassination and perhaps dual wield also. If you want a pure rogue, skip dual wield and wield a tome in your off hand, cause rogues method of defense is similar to mages. Be sure to actually use traps, flasks and bombs as well. Traps are done by shift-clicking a trap from your inventory to drop it under you. Perception helps with tinkering mats, both burglary and dodger help with teleports. 3. To save lockpicks for chests, drop the lockpicks on the ground when you come across a locked door and kick it. 4. I don't know of any builds that don't use clockwork knight or battle geology that actually work on Dredmor himself. 5. Never melee Vlad Digula. Diggle hell shows up everytime you enter an invalid code in wizardlands. Diggle Hell is Red portals. Wizardlands are Black portals. Never enter Diggle hell without near-endgame stats/levels/gear.
It's not so much Dredmor himself I'm worried about as getting to him in the first place. I was able to make short work of him with clockwork sawblades. Good thing every throwing vending machine on the double-digit floors stocks them, along with holy hand grenades, which are good for softening up monster zoos. I was considering doing a "No Time To Grind" run, and considering that there's less loot there, it would be a waste to take a crafting skill, wouldn't it? Finally, Shwqa's suggested build can only be maxed out at level 38, which is quite a bit higher than you can reach by Floor 10, unless you raid a few dozen wizardlands and/or Diggle Hell on the way down. I was considering taking the ROTDG floors just to take advantage of all those levels, but a longer trip always means more possibilities to be killed...
You mean you don't always play with 15 floors? Pshaw. NTTG doesn't kill crafting, it just gives you less stuff. This means you can craft less, but what you do craft is more precious. I'm on an NTTG run right now on DL 4 and I have yet to see a crossbow on the ground. Thankfully I have Tinkering. The RNG can be a bit more fierce on NTTG, but you also progress at a much faster rate. There are Pros and Cons. As to your build questions, if you want to avoid crafting entirely I wouldn't take Rogue Scientist or Clockwork Knight as many of their skills add crafting and/or scale off of your crafting skills. Here's a warrior with no Craft. Weapon Skill of Choice Berserk Rage Mastery of Arms Communism Burglary Dual-Wield Battle Geology You'll basically just be rage smashing your way through the dungeon with this one, but Burglary will give you all the tools you need to survive when your absurd damage and Armor Absorption don't cut it. Try to get a level into it early for free lock picks and then level your warrior skills a bit for damage, AA, and hitpoints, in whatever order suits your fancy. Then power level Burglary to get your invisibility and teleport once you feel relatively comfortable. It should all be gravy from there.
Here's a zero crafting melee rogue: Daggers Piracy Bankster Fungal Arts Dual Wield Magical Law Assassination Fungal Arts early to get the pets and make the first few floors easy, and start rolling in the mushrooms. Moldsmith your non-heal non-invis shrooms into useful ones. Bankster is mostly for Fiscal Hedge, since taking half damage from things prevents a lot of "whoa, what just happened?" deaths. Be smart with managing debuffs, though. Use Fungal Arts pets to clear dubuffs onto. Get a point in Piracy early-ish for Swashbuckling, and eventually go all the way to Black Spot late game. Assassination is good with no points in it for the sleep proc, but feel free to max it late game. Daggers is for the counter/block stance, which is incredible. Crit stance is good earlier on. Magical Law serves two main roles: 1.) Silencing casters (Dredmor/Digula in particular) 2.) Resetting the cooldown on Swashbuckling to stay counter capped against big hitting melee (again, Dredmor/Digula).
