Pimp My Random

Not that I've beaten Dredmor with a constructed build of any kind, but I had the mad idea to try a random build. I also thought that this would be a great idea to go along with the "Post Your Builds" thread. When I used to play Magic, I always thought that drafts and sealed deck games were the most fun, and thought it might be fun for others too, hence this thread. Since I really don't know that much about the underlying game, I figured it couldn't hurt to have a place where the most experienced could give their brains a workout giving advice on how to make the best punch out of whatever collection of fruit randomers happen to get in their surprise pack.

I'll start off with what I got just now:

Swords
Berserker Rage
Blood Magic
Big Game Hunter
Demonologist
Warlockery
Tourist

No great way to deal with traps. No teleport other than Get Away From It All, so moving around has got to be extra cautious, but even I can see a decent path as long I as stick to caution.

 

Uh oh...

In this case, I dare say you should begin with one point in Big Game Hunter, to get some sort of renewable healing. Then, you'll likely want to get to the Celestial Circle, and then likely get Berserker Rage and Swords to a decent level. Tourist can be useful for the few points of trap sense it gives, so you might want to get that first too, depending on whether you find armour heavy enough to mitigate damage from traps or not. And later you'll also want to get Big Game Hunter to its last level - if you can't disarm traps, make the diggles trigger them instead.

 

You got this!

There's great, great synergy between Warlockery and Demonology. You want Celestial Circle right away. Then, NEVER put another point in Demonology again....the last half of the tree sucks. After that, tough to say. You eventually want a point in Tourism for the trap detection, but it isn't a must right away. Likewise, you eventually want a point in BGH for free food...and a point in Blood Magic for free mana on hit to sustain your abilities. Before getting those, you prob want to push Warlockery up to the move that pulls into melee range, since it synergizes so well with Circle. Don't worry about Swords/Rage until you've gotten the Warlockery thing that turns blocks into free attacks, it is amazing with Circle.

 

All of that good advice, and took most of it until I got to dlvl 3. Was doing well until I got ambushed by an invisible pumpkin hero which kept raising the Octo Dredmor legion that surrounded me and casting whatever that gas is all over, and just couldn't keep up the mana for Celestial Circle and it wore me down.

Onward and upward.

Next grab bag:

Staves
Shield Bearer
Berserker Rage
Archaeology
Clockwork Knight
Communism
Tourist

Figure It Belongs in a Museum first, then Socialized Medicine, then Staves/Shield Bearer for super blocktasticness, working in Rocket Boots somewhere in there.

 

It Belongs can wait. Just keep the artifacts you find in your pocket dimension for a while.

Get the commie heal early, along with CK's rocket punch, then See the Sights for the trap help, then It Belongs, then either push commie to Iron Curtain or push Shields or CK to max. Commie/CK gives you a couple of nice "free" attacks to use so that you kill things with low risk.

 

You may want to max Berserker early. The bonus HP and damage is really excellent, especially since your items are not so strong yet. It should be good enough to push you through at least the first two floors or so.

 

Well, that was working really well until I accidentally entered a mysterious portal in dlvl6 and was calmly dismantled by a Villainous Dopplegangeress. If you can keep your up high enough, General Winter and Tortoise Manuever are GREAT. Unfortunately I couldn't keep it high enough. Apparently something in the Tortoise Manuever buff buffed General Winter's damage just beyond my ) so Tortoise Manuever kept falling off after just 9 turns, which made it almost useless for me, since General Winter can't be disabled. I was working toward the extra 2 from Iron Curtain when I was casually rendered for parts.

Next is going to be painful:

Promethean Magic
Big Game Hunter
Emomancy
Piracy
Clockwork Knight
Battle Geology
Paranormal Investigator

Lack of synergy for the win. Put my first two points into Promethean for the Wyrmling and I plan to hide behind him for at least the next 3 levels. Emomancy I can't see going beyond The Cure with what my mana picture is going to be like, or any more points in Promethean.

 

WOW. That's pretty harsh. CK with no crafting, magic skills with Paranormal (the "anti-magic" tree, in a sense) and Promethean to go along with none of the mana-recharging skills. That's a beauty, that is.

The only thing I can think of is that Promethean gives you some fire resist to help with some of Clockwork Knight's side effects, but even those are more toward blasting damage than anything else. Good luck with that.

 

It took about 30 minutes to defeat the first room. No weapon. No drinks after a couple. Kite until I got mana enough to blink it away from me and Dragon Breath it. Luckily I found a hefty stick after all the diggles finally died. Never been so happy to find a hefty stick.

 

Yeah, I felt like that too on my first pure wizard run.

 

Starting with no weapon sucks, but once you get going its not awful. A point in Piracy, a point in CK, and 2 in BG and you've got 3 short-ish cooldowns to help you kill with low risk (rocket punch, swashbuckling, seismic uppercut). Eventually a point in BGH for free food, eventually points in Emo for utility (Sigil of Whatever, prob not the buff though due to lack of mana skills). Do NOT vendor or fisk any form of potion, save them and eventually take the transmute in PI and turn them into useful stuff like heal potions etc.

This is a very doable run if you don't die super early, which you didn't (and grats on that).

 

...actually I just noticed, were you not using Plutonic Fist? Because that makes your stickless kicks hit pretty darn hard. With your fist of footness. And rock.

 

yeah, just Plutonic Fist + Swashbuckling should be enough to walk through a low-level mob every fiftysomething turns. Then just hide until you can do it again, and repeat until you get your Dragon pet.

 

I wasn't using Plutonic Fist, because I honestly was unsure what exactly it did. Didn't realize I had to directly cast it on myself until after all that, since every other buff in the game that I can recall at the moment just buffs you when you cast it. Only found out exactly what it did after looking it up in Dredmorpedia yesterday, after which things got significantly easier and I just started pouring points into it.

That said, I probably would not have used it in that situation, there were enough diggles unleashed, my health so piddly, and not a lot of helpful starting gear, that getting into a foot-vs-drill contest would still likely have ended badly, though it wouldn't have taken so long, for sure.

My instinct is to stop relying on it in future, with the massive crit reduction and counter reduction. I'm not sure the extra 5 points of are going to be worth losing all that for much longer, if I actually get any depth.

 

You only cast in on *yourself* early game, when your base damage is terrible and your crit/counter rates are so bad that making them zero is trivial. Mid/late game you cast it on hard hitting enemies (mostly elites) to make sure they can't RNG you out the freaking door with crits/counters.

In other news, this is a fun thread. I like trying to figure out how to make a weird random mish-mash of skills viable.

My current random game is:

Polearms
Axes
Battle Geology
Emo
Fleshsmithing
Burglary
Perception

I pushed polearms early, then noticed that floor 1 Brax had a 40 damage mace..../sigh. Stole it, making half of my skill points useless, but it carried me through the first few floors. It's worth mentioning that the defensive stance still works with a non-polearm, as does the capstone attack. The earlier ranged polearm special attacks technically will fire with non-polearms but they hit for next to nothing with non-polearms making them useless. Currently maxed polearms and nearly maxed Battle Geo, got a point in Fleshy for the heal, working on Burg next....will go Emo later for the silence/sigil.

 

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to dlvl15... On dlvl6, cruising thanks to a lot of lucky gear drops, I died in two hits to what appeared to be a normal respawn. Unfortunately, I can't really be sure what it was, because as I died the game flat crashed before I even got congratulated. To add weird to this, when I restarted to see if there was an autosave, there was instead a save from dlvl2, which wasn't there the last time I loaded the game. Not really being that interested in starting it back from there, I'm putting that incarnation of Random out to pasture and starting with another. Kind of disappointing, since that character likely would have been on my high score list too.

Next up:

Unarmed
Dual Wielding
Burglary
Archaeology
Mathemagic
Smithing
Assassination

Probably going to max Burglary, then Smithing, then...other skills. Assassination probably?

 

I'd highly recommend going Unarmed. Unarmed can carry an early game, nothing else you have there can. At a minimum, put a point in for Throwing Buffalo Technique, which still works even if you decide to use 2x weapons instead of going full Unarmed.

Max (or 1 point, if you want to use 2x weapons) in Unarmed, then either Math or Burg for the teleport (prob Burg, with the Math random tele you get for free as a backup). At some point you take a point in Arch to get It Belongs and start cashing in artifacts for XP. Probably Smithing after that. Maxed Unarmed and throwing weapons (which Smithing makes) go together really, really well (Unarmed damage bonuses apply to ranged, unlike other weapon skills).

Dual Wielding is kind of a dead skill if you go full Unarmed, but late late game if you find ridiculous weapons nothing is stopping you from putting points in. Another cool thing about Unarmed...if you use weapons, you lose all the stat bonuses....but the special attacks still work, which is awesome. Throwing Buffalo Technique is incredible and carries the game, for some reason it counts as a double hit *and* knocks back so it can allow you to kill things with zero risk (kite them, then stop and hit them when it comes off cooldown).

 

Just a counter opinion: Dual Wielding is not at all unworth maxxing in that build, even if you never touch a weapon. Interestingly, it's only the first level of Dual Wield that's 'dead' if you don't dual wield -- all subsequent levels and the huge amounts of and other bonuses (Combat Momentum, Offensive Maneuvering) that come with them work just fine while fighting unarmed.

 

Died again from, I'm going to assume, extreme stupidity and not watching my health to the last (very elite, ranged) monster in the dlvl5 zoo. I ended up going full unarmed, burglary, then was beginning to pump smithing when I got myself killed. However, I'm not so sure that I would have lasted too much longer. Firstly I just wasn't getting any good defensive gear so I was taking way too much damage per hit so I was having to chug down every bit of food I could find to survive in each zoo from dlvl 3 on. I actually bought food from Brax a few times. No good shields or books. My outgoing damage was OK, but groups of ranged were eating me unless I spent precious arrows, throwing weapons, or wands.

On reflection, if I had to do this build again I'd get the utility level 2s (Lucky Pick, etc) but max Smithing first. By the time I got around to it, I had all the mats to make killer gear, but it would have been dlvl 6 or 7 or before I actually got the smithing skill level high enough to make them.

As an aside, is there a way to dump the text log to a file, or to at least allow it to scroll? When there's a lot of things happening, I'd like to be able to get an idea of what they are, and when I die, it would be nice to be able to review exactly what I was being careless about.

Anywho, next grab bag:

Axes
Unarmed
Dual Wielding
Necronomiconomics
Demonology
Warlockery
Clockwork Knight

 

UPDATE: Feel free to ignore the previous. No trap sense, and a dlvl 1 filled with high level traps, trap generators, Gargoyle acid bolts, did it in in 10 minutes. That was probably a merciful end for this incarnation of Random...

Next try:

Dual Wield
Shield-bearer
Golemancy
Archaeology
Assassination
Demonologist
Wand Lore

This looks like it'll at least be amusing. First point in Golemancy to provide a mustache to hide behind.