Hello everyone, I bought Dungeons of Dredmor a few days back and I must say, I'm loving it a lot. Kudos to Gaslamp for making a fun Roguelike. I decided to go in for a rogue-based build primarily built on a foundation of crafting skills. My current skillset includes Alchemy, Perception, Tinkering, Smithing, Archeology, Burglary, and Crossbows. It's been tough sometimes but I haven't had much trouble with this build, so to speak. I've already reached floor 4 and am progressing fairly decently, with a pile of stacked supplies to my name (full clears of every floor.) By the way, this is on Dwarvish Moderation since I'm not too Somewhere along the line I've also ended up with a small collection of fairly deadly traps, including a trio of Thaumite Nests. One of these helped clearing out the 4th floor monster zoo. The only enemies currently giving this build trouble are Pumpkinns if they gang up on me, Fish Paladins for their annoying ranged and melee righteousness attacks, and Eelys if they hit me with acid, mercifully I never encountered more than two at a time so far. Unfriendly AIs hurt a little in melee combat too but an acid bolt often makes quick work of them, or weakens them enough to finish off with one melee swing. I have some decent equipment to my name, including several very nice wands, two Bolts of Squid, a wide assortment of other bolts, and some good items found or traded for at Brax's shops. I'm currently working on maxing out both Perception and Burglary for getaway skills in case of emergencies. The monster zoo on floor 4 was touch and go at one point, it's good that you can make your own healing potions with alchemy. Any advice to help parlay this good start into (at least) a confrontation with Lord Dredmor?
Try to memorize which materials are essential for mass healing potion production (you can grind rusty items into rusty dust). You should also be making a ton of Steel Potions since you can change every gem into the grey one. Survival wise Burglary is a great skill but you should also worry about the time you do take damage. Judging by your skills you're going for a mostly rogue type build and that means you're going to get a lot of dodge and counter attack chance. However Rogue builds don't get very much magic resistance so you might want to favor items with magical resistances. If you plan to always stay away from melee range then you shouldn't worry too much about melee resistances. Lastly, Grate every cheese (except for the one that makes grilled cheese sandwiches) and make cheesy omelets. By level 4 you should have a ton of em. That is unless you're using the diggle eggs to make other things like noxious brimstone flasks. In case you didn't know, each skill has a class: Warrior, Wizard, and Rogue. The way your stats increase depends on the skill you pick on level up. Warriors and Wizards gain more magic resistance than Rogues which is why I suggest getting some of that stat. I don't want to give away too much info as most of the fun is to figure things out on your own and maybe die. You playing on permadeath?
If you don't have much fire and ice res, you may want some Hyperborean and Infernal potions in a few floors. You will generally want some res potions of all kinds before fighting Dredmor (although that's not for awhile). Also, start stocking up ingredients for Replenish and regen pots....replenish pots heal more hp than Health Potions, and you may need the regen later on to outpace the damage you'll take. Fairywodgers should always be saved as well. A small stash of Tesla mines can be very useful. The damage is kind of crappy, but the stun can help a lot against boss monsters. Scalding Steam, Toxic Gas, and Blinding Mist mines are terrible, even by DL 4, so sell them. Brimstone Cloud mines are very strong until late game. Acid Spray and Acidic Rhizome are alright but they also quickly lose their effectiveness around DL 4 or 5. Dwarven Landmines are good. The blade traps and other single target things can be nice, but since you have bolts and crossbow they are usually not worth the turn spent placing, since you can do more damage with the bolts. Around DL 8 or 9, it is safest to make sure that your health is always above 2/3 before any fight. Monsters start getting really strong stats and they can potentially counter you, attacking you twice in one turn and taking out a large chunk of HP.
Burglarly is an amazing skill group that has a little bit of almost everything. It gives you Invisibility and Teleportation which makes it amazing for surviving situations even serious spell casters or melee monsters might have trouble with all because it lets you run away and come back to the fight fresh. without using mana or potions to do so. Which means if you ALSO have potions or spells that do similar things you're even better prepared for when things go horribly wrong. You can even just turn invisible, eat some food, and chug a couple healing potions and go right back to it. Perception also has a bunch of really good skills. It's another of those skill groups with a mishmash of different things in it. Maxing it out gets you EYE LASERS! That set the ground on fire too! So that can be a really nice thing to save on crossbow ammunition and a great ranged attack for almost any character. And the rogue teleportation will take you anywhere you can see, so seeing better improves it's function. It may seem like overkill until you need to teleport out of a fight after you've been blinded a few times. Evil ravens. XD
I'll say what I always say: if you wanna beat Dredmor, you almost always need 2 things: 1) A way of healing faster than the 1 Health/turn you get from food, and 2) A way to teleport. Thus, you generally want to have 2 of the following skills in pretty much any build: Burglary (tele), Fleshsmithing (heal), Alchemy (heal), Artful Dodger (tele), Fungal Arts (heal), Emomancy (heal), Ley Walker (tele), Psionics (heal), Mathemagic (tele).
For some great hints and to learn cool stuff about the game, I suggest that you read the following thread: http://community.gaslampgames.com/t...-many-hours-and-im-still-a-noob-moments.2985/
