Project: Community Skills Guide

Communism
Type: Warrior
Role: Fuel Tank or Turbocharger
Communism is a warrior skill tree aimed at those who seek a slow, plodding but productive life in the Worker's Paradise Dungeon.
Theme: Is Hunt For Red Dredmor!
Strategy:
A warrior backed by communism seeks to build his own superior gear (often imitated by Imperial Capitalist Scum) and fortifies himself with the greatly increased strength that comes from honest work in a communist paradise! Side effects may vary.
Pros:
Communism is the warrior's survivability tree par excellence. Sure, other archetypes offer you more and better survivability buffs than pretty much anything else available to warriors, even the quite good Shield Bearer and Master of Arms trees. This is mainly because of the Socialized Healthcare and Vanguard Party abilities, which offer large increases in health as well as smaller increases in healing speed and stats. Plus, the activated heal, which isn't great for fast healing, but will still give you many HP over time as it's basically a healing potion every 80 turns. Also, given some of the really crippling debuffs out there, like ennui, the ability to strip them for potentially less painful Communism debuffs is kind of handy too. Powerful, simple to make head and torso armor is another big plus. But what really makes the tree outstanding is the Vanishing attack from the first level. It's basically a free attack that also gives you three turns to jockey for position, eat or otherwise heal. Pretty spiffy.
Cons:
You will often be hurting yourself with the General Winter proc unless you stick with the Ushenka/Power Ushenka the whole time, which may be a turn off. The random debuffs from some of the skills can sometimes catch you with your pants down, particularly the ones that sap cold resistance. The Bomb is a pretty lackluster capstone and on the whole the skill tree doesn't offer you much in the way of offensive options after the first level.
Synergies:
Vampirims loves Communists because of the all purpose healing and health regen boosts. Anything that needs more AA will love Iron Curtain, and masters of the Necronomiconomics may find the ability to change one curse for another useful.
Takeaway:
Join glorious revolution to beink overthrow lich lord through sheer weight of morally superior worker's army! Or be rottink in gulag. Choice is yours!

 

I still think the Communism tree is misordered. The first two skills are the only ones I ever bother investing in. Granted, they're great, but I could get similar power from another tree.

 

Paranormal Investigator
Type: Rogue
Role: Fuel Tank or Turbocharger
Paranormal Investigators are rogues who want to understand and counteract magic without the headaches of actually using it themselves.
Theme: When In Doubt...
Strategy:
This skill is primarily about exploiting arcane resources such as potions and recipes to better augment your runs. It also gives you options that make you magic resistant and allow you to manipulate obstacles in surprising ways!
Pros:
Paranormal Investigator is the magic resistance option for people who don't plan on casting and are tired of Demonology. Actually, it requires even less investment than Demonology and offers some resists tacked on that powerful first activated ability (which also lets you, you know, move around, so you can kill all the Octos in that zoo.) Close Encounter is handy for people who use Squid Bolts to clear zoos or just like to open Chests of Evil. Skepticism rapidly becomes just silly, giving free kills at random and supplying you with items. Xenochemistry lets you stockpile decent potions if you need them and Alien Autopsy makes finding those crafting recipes a breeze.
Cons:
Alien Weapon is kind of clunky, if fun and flavorful. There's no offensive omph in the tree other than Alien Weapon, and the casting penalty from Rational Explanation makes the tree a poor choice for casters.
Synergies:
Any crafting skill loves Alien Autopsy, and Skepticism sometimes helps you find that rare whatsit you need.
Takeaway:
The magic survival skill for rogues. While not an outstanding, run defining skill, once you get used to its quirks you may find Paranormal Investigator showing up in a surprising number of your builds. I know I had to ween myself off of the skill in the days shortly after CotW came out...

 

Skepticism provides enough of a bonus that the Brain Worms from Xenochemistry can't hurt you. Alien Weapon gives you a small buff if you have the Glyph or Ra active. That's all.

 

Bdw are there zombie limits you are able to summon in Fleshsmithing? I ask because sometimes they all disappear on me to summon only 1 or 2

 

I believe the spell removes existing zombies and raises everything in a 3 x 3 grid, so you can only have 9 at once. Not 100% positive, it's been a while since I've used the skill.

 

Skepticism is so good it is hard to overstate. Having a rough time? Go up one floor and turn stray monsters into things. It is a crafter's dream come true. I have even gotten a couple of named artifacts (weapon and ring). I think you can even nuke a named monster. It has no range limits and doesn't matter if other things are blocking the target. In terms of raw item output, nothing really compares. You might get slightly more from perception, but no where near the variety.
Only con: you don't also get the experience for the transformed monster, which is understandable.... but it does count as a kill for things like the zoo and perception/fungal/piracy drops

Then there is Xenochemistry. Transmuting potions is handy. If you don't have alchemy as a skill you should be doing this every turn it is on cooldown. Turn the otherwise worthless acids into useful potions. When you get the potion that raises alchemy skill level, if you have been saving your ingredients you can craft double the healing/mana pots plus do the really good encrusts that give 222

 

Have we actually done all the skills now? Can we do the most popular mod skills next?

 

I vote for Radiant Wizard if it's about mod skills. It's a cool skill tree that requires knowing what one wants to achieve, so it would benefit from Lorrelian's showcase more than your (great, by the way) pack, Essence.

 

Oh, hells yes. I'm not looking for more attention on my stuff -- I want more information and opinions on all the other cool mods. I know my own stuff; I want to learn!. By all means, Radiant Wizard would be an awesome starting place.

 

Actually, we still need to do Magical Law and Banksterism. Let's not even get started on the whole PDF idea (now mostly abandoned). Yeah, I've been slacking of late. You may all point and scorn me now. *hangs head in shame*

Further, while doing careful looks at mod skills is probably a worthy cause, looking at my mods folder I discover that, outside the Compleat Essentials and YHTNTEP stuff I've only played extensively with Swift Striker, Dire Gourmand, Runecrafting, Dance Magic and Barrier Maiden. I was on a big mod kick a while back, but I scaled back when I started doing the CSG because I wanted to keep my recommendations to core skills while covering core skills. I just haven't had much time to play the last few months, either.

I do want to finish all of GLGs released skills (see below), and there might even be a Vampirism/Weapon Skills Revisited series of posts to come later, but I'm not really sure I have the time outside my other projects to do most mods justice. Of course, this was always meant as a kind of open ended, community project and if someone else wanted to start highlighting mods once those last two pesky skills are covered, I'm cool with that. In the mean time,

Magical Law
Type: Wizard
Role: Fuel Tank or Turbocharger
Magical Law litigates you out of resource sapping obligations and puts you in a position to use your abilities more often.
Theme: According to Dredmor vs. Lamplighter, and adventurer as the right to appeal to the secondary superior court system in the event of an injudicious use of thematically inappropriate magics that...
Strategy:
Magical Law is a grab bag of bizarre spells that mostly defy classification, but are still very useful.
Pros:
Everything. See equipment over yon that could be useful against this monster two paces away? Grab it. Use it. Facing a corruption monster with powerful artifact armor and chest of evil weapons? Turn it into something else. Smothered in food poisoning? Give it back to the rutabagas. Squid heads sniping you to death? Mute 'em, or give yourself a 50% chance of bouncing that spell back at them. Oh, and instant cooldown ability refreshment? Just. Plain. Silly.
Cons:
There's no direct attack magic in this tree other than the polymorphic injunction, and even that doesn't hit hard. Also, in order to abuse the capstone you have to invest in one or two non-Mage skills.
Synergies:
Battle Geology is really funny with the capstone, so are Axes, Rogue Scientist and Clockwork Knight. All are chock full of powerful cooldown skills. Rune of Objection can do fun things with Necronomiceconomics or Banksterism. Polymorphic Injunction is useful to both Vegans and Big Game Hunters, who care about the types of creatures they kill.
Takeaway:
This spell tree kind of makes rogues out of wizards. Take it with Psionics if you really want a spell for just about every conceivable situation. Take it as a rogue to keep your Burglary skills active. Take it as a Warrior to keep pelting people with Quakes. The law can help you in many ways, so long as you can pay for lawyers...

 

Don't forget Communism! Those annoying - debuffs that Communism sometimes throws at you make great fodder for Rune of Objection, because then the enemy takes even more damage from General Winter. Resetting cooldown on Socialized Healthcare can save your butt, too.

 

Magical Law is the most powerful skill in the base game. It's not a one-button win, but it provides a selection of buttons that allow you to break the game in half.

Confiscate Evidence does a third of the job of a Teleport effect with a none of the teleport risk and you don't have to spend any points to get to it.

Polymorphic Injunction is the best survival skill in the game. Used wisely it eliminates all risk of equipment corruption aside from traps and Dredmor. If a particular monster is a bane to your existence, it is no longer. Snowed in by Snow Baals? Not anymore. Run down by Rutabegas? These are no longer the vegetables you were looking for. Accidentally kill a local shopkeeper on dlvl 1? Wave your han into a flood of Diggles.

Gag Order will neuter anything with ranged abilities up to and including Dredmor and Digula (as long as you remember to keep recasting it and keep up your mana, and Digula hits like a truck in melee, so it's not a panacea against him). For pure Wizard monsters, it will often kill them all on its own. The one time I killed Dredmor my entire plan of attack was keeping Gag Order up, keeping healed, and throwing things at him.

Rune of Objection is the crazy cherry on top of the crazy cake. Turns Killer Vegan's massive downsides into mere annoyances, or even weapons. There's a build in one of the build threads that's leveraging all the extra meat from Big Game Hunter as an engine to build up massive debuff stacks on monsters, not to mention using the summoned diggles as sources for vegan debuffs or targets for Objection when nothing else is around. On top of that, you will not gain aggro by placing debuffs on mobs that are passive, so you can kill, say, Brax or even Dredmor, without ever angering him. "Buff" debuffs, like Blink trap, won't be cleared, but there are vanishingly few of them.

Writ of Counterspelling kind of extraneous. Powerful, in theory, but why not just Gag whatever could cast? Useful as an OSB for areas with too many casters to gag fast enough, but if playing carefully it's gilding the lily.

Wright's Irrefutable Argument is both hilariously broken and basically unecessary. Its existence requires anyone designing cool new skills to make sure that they're either not cool enough to be a big deal if they can be used over and over, or have a workaround that avoids Argument abuse. However, once you get down to the deep levels, all the crazy things it lets you do are just not that cool anymore beyond some specific, but important areas. Keeping Swashbuckling up for an indefinite period is crazy good, but the cost is too high to actually make it permanent without heavy skill support and item luck (and a LOT of micromanagment). It's also a random cooldown, so any build that uses a lot of cooldowns is going to need to micromanage things even more. Aside from playing with cool broken uses of it, it's barely worth it. Getting to Rune of Objection gives any character enough tools to mitigate, if not totally eliminate, any threat in the game except traps.

 

Writ of Counterspelling is amazing for dealing with Gargoyle traps. Just sayin'.

 

Wright's Irrefutable Argument should be a cooldown ability that resets ALL other cooldowns, not a spell. As a spell it favors the repeated use of the most powerful cooldown abilities.

Baromatic Vortex Upgrade was never intended to be spammed every other turn.

 

Bankster
Type: Rogue
Role: Fuel Tank or Engine
Banksters specialize in collecting cash, but their abilities have the potential to carry an entire run if properly supported.
Theme: They see me bank-in, they hate-in...
Strategy:
Aquire a large supply of cash, then spend it liberally to win the friendship of the monsters in the dungeon while poisoning their environment.
Pros:
This tree actually gives you something to do with your huge piles of late game cash, which is nice. It takes an underused resource and actually gives you an outlet for it that will always be fairly relevent except, possibly, against Dredmor. Also, its second ability is a decurse, an attack and a debuff. On top of that, it gives you a charm effect and a damage mitigation effect. All very nice.
Cons:
As is typical for Rogue skills, there's not a whole lot offense oriented here. On the other hand, if you rush it then you will probably have enough money by midway through the second floor to buy off a large chunk of your problems. Also, if you don't like handling inventory or money, this is not your tree. If you don't like crafting, Bankster may not be the skill for you.
Synergies:
Tourist helps you get cash. Anything with a decurse, like Emomancy or (shock!) Communism, is handy. On the flip side of the coin, is something debuffs you, like Necronom, you can get rid of them this way. Vegans can double up on the charming of monsters.
Takeaway:
If you ever wanted to leverage your cash to overcome the hazards of the dungeon then this is your skill tree! It's also great if you just enjoy having absurd quantities of cash. Play around with it, it will probably be worth your time.

 

Please to correct: is this a wizard skill or a Rogue skill? Post says both in different places.

 

Cut and paste strikes again! Serves me right for wimping out and not retyping the section headings every time. It's definitely a rogue skill.

 

I did some extensive testing of how this works - summoning zombies just makes more zombies - but if you summon beyond 9, then all your existing zombies dissapear. So if you have 6 and raise 3... you end up with 9. If you have 6 and raise 4... you end up with 4.

Also, this limit of 9 is a limit for all pets. So if you have a Moustache Spirit, that's taking up one of your zombie slots. Since the limit for all other summons is just 1 - summoning anything OTHER than a zombie destroys all your zombies.

So to make the most of it have 1 other pet, then summon zombies and keep your total number of pets below 9!

 

POKE

Spoiler

'er face!