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Some mods have good daggers too. Roguish Renovations has some (Sixteen) newly added daggers that make it much more potent too. (Thank you Lccorp for helping those who want to play with sharp things not quite big enough to be called swords. )

 

Interesting, I may check that mod out, ty.

 

Reporting in with Mrs Jones, the Lazer Attorney.

I especially like this build because it kind of has the flavor of an ordinary civilian dumped into the dungeon and forced to rely on knowledge and resorucefulness.

Star Lawyer
Lasers
Wild Magic
Tourist
Archaeology
Alchemy
Burglary

This build doesn't have a teleport or a push--it has other things instead. It has Objection, See the Sights, two lockups, Ninja Vanish, and Move in Mysterious Ways. So that's interesting--it has these tricks, but not the ones I'm used to. Of course what this build really is about is a STUPID amount of non-projectile death dealing. With two points of level investment I have three non-projectiles with moderate cooldowns. One of them is a lockup.

Wild Magic is so underrated. The worst thing it can do to you (except piss off Brax) is blow all your mana away. Usually it just gives you goodies, puts Killing Blow/Zenzenezic/Midas Touch on you, and unleashes massive waves of DoT nastiness. And that's at level 1. Whaaaat?

This character actually died by taking a teleporter that dumped her straight into a room full of dragon hatchlings and one unique poorly-cloned hero, so I'm giving her another try. This build is really and truly GRPD-worthy even for a dumb scrub like me. If I don't derp it all up this time... this build truly has it all.

Mr Fish the QiGong master died in a mysterious portal. Screw mysterious portals. Even on DM they're bullshit.

 

I love the Lasers mod. It is a pure Wizard skill with timers on every skill. Mana runs out? No problem. You can max Lasers and have one for every turn and never run out.

 

Daggers
Dual Wield
Smithing
Archaeology
Paranormal Investigator
and then probably:
Rogue Scientist
Swords

This is an attempt at the 100 counterattack build made viable by Wall of Blades stance. Dual Wield gives 15 plus two pretty good procs that give even more (Offensive Maneuvering stays up consistently once you're getting three or four hits to an enemy's one, and combat momentum is pretty fun as well). Daggers is purely for the +25 , +25 stance, which is just nuts. Smithing gives +6 from Bronze Rings, or potentially +16 if you find the recipe for the Ring of Iron Thorns. And Archaeology is for the +3 hat, level 0 Trap Sense and Trap Sight Radius so you can rush Wall of Blades by the end of DL1, and free XP.
That's the core of the build - the rest is to your discretion. Paranormal Investigator is just there because I love Rational Explanation for dealing with obnoxious Aetherial Missile spewers, and Xenochemistry lets you make Haematic Phylacteries and piles of Potions of Purity out of Alchemical Ooze and Acidium Salis. Rogue Science is basically filler, giving you a few knockback skills, some nice AOEs, and two levels of Alchemy for enough skill (with Xenochemistry and Xenochemistry-produced Potions of Alchemical Inspiration) to make Brimstone Flasks. Also a "hit everything around you when you counter" skill, which seems good in this build.
I'm on the fence with Swords. On the one hand, if you ditch daggers and just use a pair of swords, you can get an extra +12 with relatively minimal skill investment, and a full +20 at the end of the tree. On the other hand, forcing yourself to use two of a specific weapon leaves you in a bind when you find a totally awesome polearm in a chest of Evil. On the other other hand, encrusting now gives you the ability to keep up with COE weapons through smithing, assuming you get to level 4, so... I don't know. Any thoughts?

 

From a practical viewpoint, Swords gives you something to help you through the first few levels of the Dungeon - None of your other skills are going to help much there. And you probably want to push warrior skills over rogue skills - because the worst thing this build can do is max out - and thus miss its chance to counter-attack!

Also, max smithing will be really important, to get mirror shields up. 100 plus 100 sounds AWESOME.

If anything, I'd be tempted to lose Archaeology. I think Shield Bearer might be a better fit...

 

This is getting spoiled, mostly because it goes a bit long and over-analytical, and this might not even be the right place for it?. Sorry about that.

Spoiler

I've been rushing Very Sharp Wall of Blades so I can get something in the range of 50 counterattack before leaving DL1, which, in my experience, pretty much covers the first few floors (plus dual wield). At 75 CA, which is feasible early DL4, you're untouchable enough that you can bash through most mobs without breaking a sweat. A good dual-wielder is going to be two-shotting most enemies, or three-shotting at worst, and as long as you let an enemy walk up to you so you get the first hit, they probably won't get more than a single hit in. And when, 3/4ths of the time, you're stealing the enemy's attack? And then the rest of the time you have a pretty good shot at blocking or dodging? Very few foes will ever touch you. (I do, at some point, want to kill my dodge, but that's after I'm 100% guaranteed to counter every hit, and usually that's pretty deep in the dungeon and I can put on some Magnetronic Plate. As long as I have a 5% chance of getting hit, I'd rather take off 33% of those few hits that get through than get a few extra attacks, I think.)

... Man, I'd forgotten that not actually dual wielding weapons doesn't actually lose you your dual wield skill bonuses. So you can use double mirror shields and still keep the +15 counterattack. Which makes me wonder if switching swords for unarmed would be a good move - you dual wield weapons (dagger and something sweet from a CoE) until you get Very Sharp Wall of Blades and Not Drizzt, then you go for level 4 Smithing for a pair of Runed Iron Skoldjrs, and then switch over to double-shield unarmed. You lose a lot of the benefits of the lower-level dagger stuff, but that happens anyways if you switch to dual-swords and frankly most of it is worthless compared to the stance.

Personally, I can't play a build that doesn't give at least +1 Trap Sight Radius early on, so I need either Archaeology, Burglary, Tinkering, or Perception, and of the four, Archaeology gives you TSR at level 0 and a sweet CA hat. And shield bearer? I mean, what does more block even do for a 100 CA build?

 

Shield Bearer gives you, essentially, a free counter-attack whenever you block. Plus it gives HUGE survivability early on in both and . It's awesome.

 

What skill in the tree does that? Dredmorpedia doesn't mention free counters via blocking...the only thing I can remember doing that is the Warlockery skill.

Not saying its a bad skill tree though. I have it atm, but don't have points in it yet. It's still a free 8 block rating with zero investment, and you don't even need to equip a shield to get the benefit (which is odd).

On a side note, if you are talking about avoiding rogue levels when trying to max counter chance it is a bit of a double-edged sword. Rogue levels give more +counter, but they add + dodge. +Dodge is kind of a good thing for getting melee immune, until you have 100+ counter in which case +dodge just costs you free damage since dodges override counters for some reason. So it's helpful early, and a slight hindrance later to have +dodge.

It's kind of like going Piracy for Swashbuckling. Early on, it's amazing. Later, once you have maxed counter anyways, it is a dead skill....but is it still worth taking for the early game in a counter-focused build? Maybe (esp. if you pair it with Magical Law).

I kind of feel like Smithing is overrated for that type of build too. You can find +counter rings (there's actually a +10 counter one) and mirror shields. I'm not saying it isn't helpful to have a 100% chance of getting them instead of relying on RNG, though...just saying there might be better skills to take, IMHO.

 

Also, that idea about going Unarmed with Daggers isn't awful. The daggers stance is just THAT good that even ignoring all the other bonuses in the tree, it becomes worth it. The only thing is, that's a LOT of skill investment. There's also many spells that can't reflected, so getting 100 reflect/100 counter (while awesome) doesn't make you 100% unkillable.

 

Going to try to fill out the other team member with:

X-Files: Mulder build

"The Truth is Out There", or "I believe"

Originally was going to go for a pure mage build, but seeing some of the new classes, and wanting to try them, I settled on:

- Magical Law (as opposed to Paranormal Investigator)
- Warlockery
- Demonologist
- Berserker
- Dual Wield
- Assassination
- Alchemy
.

 

Well it's really for the counter rings, not the mirror shield. I really can't remember finding bronze rings in the dungeon - they seem to show up significantly less than a similar level 3 item - and Rings of Iron Thorns don't show up in the dungeon at all, unless Brax happens to be selling one. The Diggle Ring of Digglish Torment and Shrike's Ring are both pretty sweet, but you can't get them until DL 10 or so, and I tend not to think of things you can't get until the last third of the game as "available". Maybe that's just an artifact of when I was trying to beat the game with Dredmor on DL10, where there was a not insignificant chance you'd run into Dredmor before finding, say, a single Staff of Godejwin or Imperial Clockwork Plate, though. So who knows.

 

Lasers aren't actually that good. Sure the lasers themselves are massively OP, but your ability to nuke faces off with non-projectiles comes at the cost of... um, everything else.

Think about it. Your main method of murderizing things is Magic Power-based. However, using this murderizing trick blows away your mana pool no matter how big it is. This means you get no Hula Ward, no Puissant Touch, no Love Will Teleport Us Apart, and worst of all, you get no Psychokinetic Shove. Ninja Vanish has saved that character's ass a ridiculous number of times.

 

Lots of good points - the capstone skill in Shield Bearer lets you get a free Shield Bash on block. It's awesome.

You are absolutely correct about the Rogue/Warrior Dodge/Counter interactions.

I adore Piracy - Swashbuckling is great by itself, but you are correct that Swashbuckling can become un-needed by the end of the game. However! The rest of the Piracy tree is still pretty awesome, so I don't feel badly about it.

Smithing really works for me - I know other people swear by Tinkering, or Alchemy, but for me Smithing is always the best crafting option. Smithing is all about finding steel - every other ingot can pretty much be thrown away on whatever. Craft a few spears, or thrown weapons - make an Aluminum Helmet - just save your steel for maximum armor / weapon power. Simple, effective, grants and ... I'l stand by it.

 

I think you misunderstand me. I am saying that this is great to use when your mana using skills cannot be used due to lack of mana.

 

We can share modded builds here, correct?

 

I have. And no-one objected to me doing so. Others have. So I think you are safe to post your modded builds.

 

Mrs Jones the Laser Lawyer is on dungeon level 7 with maxed out Lasers... and things are not looking good. The Laser capstone fires a shotgun blast of lasers, which is usually a respectable amount of damage but hardly capstone worthy. All the other lasers deal pretty unimpressive damage too--seems the massive early-game pwnage of the second skill was misleading. I guess that's just the cost of not using mana.

Fortunately, Move in Mysterious Ways lets me escape from bad situations while I kill things for exp, agonizingly slowly. Clearing out monster zoos SUCKS. I might start running from monster zoos because it's such a big risk and it just takes painfully long. Hopefully Turnabout Mode will offer me the extra damage I'm yearning for. I'm tempted to level Wild Magic up because Wild Surges just murderize everything like crazy, but I can't use the Wild Magic capstone... it costs mana...

Does anyone know if wands or thrown weapons scale off magic power? There must be SOME way for me to make use of the insane amount of free magic power I'm getting from all these lasers.

Also, here's an unfortunate glitch: Going to the Pocket Dimension invalidates Monster Zoos, I assume because going to the Pocket Dimension is the same mechanically as going to another floor.

 

Not a glitch, but a feature. During the Wizardlands testing, the Devs were very concerned that the PD not be used for restocking during zoos. Hence, entering your PD counts as running away and forfeiting the prize.

 

I wanted to give Electromancy a shot so I'm playing it on perhaps the worst build ever.

Fire
Wind
Electro
Coolio
Druid
Blood
Warlock

His name: ELEMENSTOR the Elementalist. GRPD NTTG.

Will report back in with how completely fail this build is.

EDIT: Character died on level 1 due to getting countered by an enraged diggle. Have started over, only this time making it even harder for myself because the Warlockery made it too easy to not follow the theme of the build. Now the last two skills are Leywalking and WizSchool.