So, both for my own benefit and the benefit of any other newbies, I thought I'd ask: What are some skill synergies you've noticed? Synergy, in this case, means when two different skill sets combine to be more than the sum of their parts. So far, I've noticed 3 different types. The first is the direct synergy. This is when one skill flat out gets a benefit from another. This is quite rare in Dungeons of Dredmor, but exist in forms such as Glyph of Imhotep from Egyptian Magic adding additional effects to the debuffs from Bankster. The second is where the stats from one skillset, either directly or via buffs, provide great benefit to another skillset. Some are obvious enough that they scarcely need mentioning: Magic Training and Leywalker are basically all about boosting your core stats for magic use for example, but there are rarer examples out there. Things such as how Clockwork Knight and Rogue Scientist both benefit from Tinkering (mostly gained from the skillset of the same name), and the latter also benefits from alchemy, and to an extent wandlore. Or taking Artful Dodger and Piracy to boost the damage of dagger skills. Finally, there's a faux-synergy where one skill works very nicely, UNLESS you take some other skill. Werediggle builds tend to center around this due to being unable to use any active skills in werediggle form, and there are other examples scattered here and there such as Paranormal Investigator's first skill being more useful in a build that doesn't rely on spells.
Necronomiconomics + anything that gives necro resistance - Astrology lvl 1, Emomancy "Mark of the black eyelliner", even Paranormal investigators lvl 1 Archaeology + crafting skills - you can craft artifacts and send to a museum, or you can craft high lvl items, krong them and use IBIAM (not sure if works anymore) Unarmed / Vegan / Wand lore (i think) + throwing / archery (not neccessary skills but skill builds) - all of the former give strong damage types that get tacked onto thrown weapons, with Vegan also giving a lot of and (if I remember correctly) which benefit throwing.
Tinkering+ Rogue Scientist- Make both baromatic skill do major damage with maxed Unarmed+ Artful Dodger+ Perception- Enough to avoid about 70-80% of all melee attacks. Combine with the combo above for a game winning character Shield Bearer+Battle Geology+Warlock- This character can easily get 100, which means complete immunity to corruption, each melee hit's damage is reduced by around 80-90% and you get extra resist applied before the hit(battle geology), then hit them back with with a melee hit that deals extra , 20% for a very nice buff, and 10% for another melee hit and knockback. Astrology+any magic character- The first astrology spell gives extra which is amazing for spellcasters. The last spell is the best spell against dreadmor Paranormal Investigator+Smithing+ melee build- Paranormal gives you extra magic resist, a skill that can turn enemies into items, the ability to make healing potions, and the ability to get free recipes. Just don't get that last skill unless you want the achievement, it is terrible. Smithing gives you great equipment early on, extra , and get resist. Clockwork Knight+Unarmed/Axe- Lots of melee attacks in a single round. Augmented Limbs gives you a 5% of threshing. Threshing is another melee attack that has another 5% of threshing (this is no limit to the amount of attack is can do). The last skill gives a temporary extra 20% of threshing. Unarmed's capstone skill gives a 25% of nice combo! which is the same thing as threshing. Though I don't believe they stack you just have 2 rolls of a 25% chance of another attack. There is an axe called the Clockwork Ravager which gives a 15% of threshing, which two of those you could have a 55% of threshing. Tourist/Alchemy/Fleshsmithing/Fungal Arts/Communist/ Psionics+ Vampirism- Vampirism is strong but can't heal naturally or by eating. Each of those skill has another for vampire to heal. Many of them give extra to make Vampirism even better.
Throwing and: Viking Wizardy (non-persistant but upkeepable +3 thrown damage on 1st level, and another +6 at 5th) Battle Geology (+5 damage at 1st level) Wandcrafting (+1 damage at 3rd, +1 damage at 4th, and +3 damage at 5th level) Smithing (+1 damage at 3rd, 4th, and 5th levels, plus a couple more points from the added Burliness.) Killer Vegan (+5 damage at 4th level) Demonology (+4 damage at 7th level, as well as added non-persistant damage from Fervor at level 2 and from Abyss at level 5) Egyptian Magic (1st, 3rd, and 5th level Glyphs all add non-persistant but upkeepable damage)
In general, Dredmor players agree that if you're doing melee, get Throwing, and if you're doing magic, get Archery. It's mostly because Throwing scales off of , while some of the bolt effects scale off of magic power. Killer Vegan + Astrology + Unarmed = tons of AOE effects around you when you melee enemies, and quite a bit of . Unarmed and Smithing is nice. The shield encrust is fantastic, and because you are not using your steel on weapons, you can get some heavy armor pretty early and just charge through enemies with your high . Daggers + Communism. The stealth attack from communism is invaluable, and General Winter helps compensate for your lack of melee power, especially against robots and slimes.
As mentioned above, Warlockery combines naturally with Shield Bearer for automatic Puissant Touch hits every time you block (which, with good items and skills will be basically every time you're attacked and it isn't a dodge or a crit.) This also exists with Warlockery and Polearms, particularly with The Sensible Swiss Defensive Stance, which grants a large bonus to block and also very frequently shoves attacking and attacked monsters back a tile; it leads to a playstyle that is extremely good at staying alive and surviving swarms of enemies. When your gear and skills are good enough, you can swap to Wallenstein's Inevitable Victory Stance and basically begin wading into monster zoos and watching the monsters literally kill themselves just by trying to hit you.
I'mma try that on my next run. That sounds like mad fun. Maybe combine with Adventurer Aikido and the new Swords just for MAX COUNTER POWA.
Dodge and Block are mutually exclusive so I wouldn't do that... if you dodge an attack it can't be blocked, which would make your warlockery skills useless Died to Dredmor on the 15th floor. Aside from the lightning spell he uses nothing else did much of anything to me. Spears feel a little underpowered compared to other weapons. I had to sell a lot of 40 damage maces and 50 damage swords to keep using a combined 28 damage spear.
I've been having fun recently with a build centred around Melee Power. Aside from the well-known boosts to melee and throwing, there are also a number of abilities that deal damage based on instead of the usual . This includes some abilities in the Clockwork Knight and Battle Geology trees, as well as certain melee weapon skills (Polearms in particular gets huge leverage out of ). Tinkering indirectly feeds into this, in that high-end 'Clockwork' gear is a great source of if you can produce it.
If you want to max your counterattack, make sure to take daggers, swords, and dual wielding. Also take smithing, because you're probably not going to find two rings of iron thorns.
A single level of Smithing or Tinkering will assist your Alchemy, because it lets you press more ingots out of the same amount of ore. More ingots = more rust and powdered aluminium = more potions.
Actually, I just went and looked into the code -- apparently they never got BlockBuff to work, so they switched Puissant Veil to a straight-up playerHitEffectBuff. I'm giving them the corrected HTML to make the BlockBuff work now.
Wright's Irrefutable Counterargument (Magical Law skill) resets a timer. It costs mana (min cost 15, achieved with 50 , which you will reach pretty quickly if you max Magic Training and don't have too many Warrior skills). Extra-planar Concentration (Magic Training skill) generates mana (3 per turn for 9 turns, +massive so you will be regenerating every turn as well). It boosts your max mana a bit as well. The limiting factor is a fairly harsh debuff and a 63-turn timer. Combine the two and you can have EPC running all the time. You have to deal with the big penalty to :sight, , and , so get some bonuses and don't try to tank while doing this (in fact, it works best out of combat to refill a huge mana pool), but you will be replenishing on balance 21 mana every 9 turns and can completely neglect from equipment. Not too shabby!
This works just as well if not better if you use Thaumaturgic Tap (Leylines 2) rather than Extra-Planar Concentration. The mana gain isn't quite as fast, but there's no debuff.
It works, but the gain is much less: Thaumaturgic Tap gives 2 on casting +2 mana per turn for 12 turns, so the net payoff is only 11 mana over 12 turns. (Should be 23 over 9 turns for EPC as that also gives 2 on casting, unless I've misunderstood something.) Another approach is the following cycle: make a Haematic Phylactery, drink it, cast WIC, repeat. The cycle nets you 10 mana (I think, depends on how the Haematic drain hits, but at any rate this is sustainable mana-wise), but a whopping 50 + 0.25 x hitpoints, so you can use it to fix yourself up in no time at all.
Rogue scientist’s level 0 skill produces alchemical ooze from OTHER type monsters Fungal arts level 1 skill summons a slime to then farm alchemical ooze infinitely And produces Night caps reliably Alchemy gives enough to brew Brimstone flask bombs Werediggle helps efficiency with egg-brimstone conversion.
