so you thought you were all that?

I was playing the other day, I wanted to get to the end to see what the other levels were like and see other monsters so I had it set for no time to grind and elves just want to have fun. (dont judge me.) on permadeath. (thats right, im not a complete sissy.) right off the bat I scored one of those huge fancy rare-as-hell necklaces from a fountain. you know the one I mean, the blue one that looks like some kind of blinged out arcane headpiece. by level 15 Im decked out. heavily enchanted emerald sword, a likewise enchanted bolt erupter, (I love the bolt erupter) shrikes ring, dark mirror shield, im maxed out in all but one skill set, and Ive got a blessing from the diggle god of war. then I saw him, Dredmor. I thought, "oh yeah, your goin down buddy."

nope.

Dredmor beat me silly. sweet jegus he bent me over and spanked the crap out of me. is it just me? am I some kind of panzy? or is dredmor really that tough? I couldent touch him. I spent most of the fight teleporting away from him and shooting at him with my crossbow. I even threw a bolt of squid and a bolt of mass destruction at him. nothing. definetly mowed down the common rabble though, thats for sure.

also, im pretty sure your not supposed to get 7 godewijns and 4 bolt erupters on level 13, but I could be wrong.

 

Ahh bolt erupters... I found it once, on level one. Well not exactly. On level one I misclicked and enter this funny looking portal. I was sure that I'm dead (it happened before), but there it was. Just few steps from me. I survived only thanks to it, but died on level 2 I believe

 

The level 15 version of Big D is pretty hardcore. He has high resists, and he cranks out spells nearly non-stop.
Wizard-ish characters can handle him easily by silencing (Sonic wand, or the Magic Training/Magical Law abilities) him and kiting him around. He has no resistance to the damages done by the Astrology school, either...so even the weak-ish solar inscription mines work well (if slowly) at wearing him down.

For melee classes, Battle Geology is great. You can debuff him so he won't counter you, and keep him silenced a good chunk of the time.

In general, it is a long fight since he has tons of HP so you NEED to have some reset buttons (invisibility + healing). Alchemy, Rogue Scientist, Paranormal Investigator, or Fungal Arts are all viable ways of having a decent stockpile of healing/invisibility items on hand for the final battle (PI can turn all those semi-useless potions you find into something good).

 

You can womp him really quickly with the correct build

My last melee character killed him in about 10 hits, give or take. (dwarvish moderation)

I can post build details if you are interested ^^

 

yeah, alright, what have you got for a build? the fact is, I was also using the character I was using to get the achievements as well. he was more proficiant in maces than he was swords, but the emerald sword was so much better than any mace I got in that playthrough.

 

Did you have any of the clockwork throwing saws?

 

These are awesome. I had Dredmor blink behind a gate which made him unreachable last night. Thought I was boned, but went back a floor and found a throwing weapons vending machine that was chalk full of saws. Spent hundreds of thousands on saws, came back, dead Dredmor. Good times.

 

Silencing is really good, if you can get your hands on something that can do that.

Rogue Scientist is pretty good for that since you get two skills (Barometric Pulse Blaster and it's upgrade) that can inflict it. Then, just add Clockwork Rail Launcher and those 12 -2 10 diggle rings and blast him to death. (Teleports are handy for that.)

If you don't have Rogue Scientist, Sonic Wands (they look like trumpets) do the same thing except it deals low damage.

 

Well I came up with the build after going through various iterations revolving around a simple central theme of

"Hit hard, don't get hit, soak up damage"

The damage dealing is taken care of by dual wielding. Krong + Encrust for damage. Fractal Knife and Krong Hammer will have you hitting criticals of 250.

Armour should be heavy, with as much block and damage res as possible, you will loose nimbleness but that wont matter because...

100%+ counter chance

Spec yourself up for counter, with skills and equipment you can hit an insane counter rate, mine was 104%.
Two diggle rings will give you 20 counter alone, plus another 25 from Wall of Blades, some extra from Master of arms etc etc, it all adds up.

Dodge procs before counter but with Aikido some of those will become counters so loosing dodge to armour doesn't matter a hoot.

Most of the time enemies will kill themselfves without you even having to attack them so groups are not a problem at all, wade right in!

I had Crit ~70, Block ~80 and Counter ~100+

The only problems you will have is magical damage, however your hp and regen will be very high and your resistances should take the edge off, there is some really nice mid level equipment that gives some nice magic resistance (the Ulmer Dagger gives 20) but I never had to worry about it enough to go out of my way to find magic resistance equipment. I had hundreds of potions and mountains of food by the endgame. There is a diggle god to pray to if you want to boost your defence, but I went for the exra damage, god of war.

You will tank your way through to lvl 15 without much issue until you meed Dredmore... then just equip Occams Razor and stab him until he dies.

Great Success!

Skills:

Daggers - The high proc of an extra hit is insanlely useful, and when getting those fist few levels on Going Rogue, the first skill gives you an extra free hit which hels enormously when conserving health. The Two combat stances you aquire later on are really what you need this skill set for though. The two other "active skills are almost useless, but not to worry, you wont need them

Maces/Swords - I matched maces with daggers because the passive mace skall has a knockback effect which is useful for sneaking traps into melee which really helps in a bind. Not needed on dwarven moderation though. The other option is swords which gives a better counter chance but as you will see, thats not too important. I tend to switch between the two just for a bit of variety.

Dual Wield - You need this, obviously The whole set is awesome.

Artful Dodger - Aikido turns some dodges into counters, this is important. Knightly leap is awesome, it will get you out of scrapes and into inaccessible areas, its a must.

Master of Arms - The first skill is very powerful, the regen buff is fantastic and it lasts a loooong time. The whole skill tree is great.

Tinkering - With this you will never need to worry about traps, and you will always have plenty of them from disarming throughout the dungeon. Tinkering also allows you to take full advantage of encrusting,

Wildcard - I haven't settled on the last skill yet, I found that choosing Crossbow was a waste as I rareley used it so this last one will give you a little wiggle room to play things your way, I'm currently running it through with communism but I'm only on lvl 4 (Going Rogue) so far.

 

As far as the wildcard, what about perception (both for the bonuses, but also for the extra loot) or burglary for the free loot from machines, the trap bonuses, the lockpick (I always seem to have troubles with lockpicks if I don't have burglary, but always have an abundance even if I don't use the skill when I do) and the lockdown.

 

I would also say to get either Perception or Clockwork Knight.
The teleports plus Dodger's one will keep you out of danger, and the level 0 skill gives you free metal.
Also, extra attacks and free clockwork recipes (Oh yummy Clockwork Ravagers...)

 

Oh good lord, genius! I think switching the sword/mace for clockwork would possibly even be a good idea. What do you think?

 

Weapon skills other than daggers or polearms seem pretty bleh to me. Also, I'll second that Clockwork Knight is an amazing tree. The free metal you get adds up over time, the rocket punch is amazing early game, CotSB is amazing late game, and rocket jump is a good escape button.

 

Right now I am doing a no time to grind dwarven run with burglary, as the wildcard and clockwork instead of the mace. I've had a few issues, such as the fact that I have to invest in some tinkering to get AoE for the monster zoos, and without the higher tier daggers in game yet, running just daggers (instead of having a mace or sword to back it up) is causing some issues against high-armor opponents. However, for the most part, it is proving very successful and every time I level up the less I find myself struggling as between the various stances and abilities, I can avoid most damage while dealing a lot through crits and counters.

Unfortunately some of the best stuff for clockwork (such as the gear) will interfere with the nimble stat IIRC as well as the sneak (again, IIRC, it is late here). This means that you will have to find the items and artifacts to augment your character with, rather than being able to attempt to get it through crafting since tinkering mostly seems to focus around heavy armor and not the nimble armor.

Perhaps if there was a "light armor" tree, that could be used. Now if only I knew how to mod, I could add a light/leather/heavy (heavy being the current master of arms), light being robes and similar, and leather being the nimble rouge type armor that provides more protection than robes, benefits to rogue stats, and of course, the master of arms doing its thing.

At any rate, it has certainly been an educational discussion.

 

As weird as it may sound, you don't need to use daggers to benefit from the dagger tree.

I used the daggers tree during my last game, and I *always* used whatever two weapons I had on hand that were the highest damage. Most of the time neither was a dagger (until I found a 40+ damage one late game). Most of the abilities in the dagger tree work with non-daggers too, you just don't gain the passive stat bonuses (which are minor anyways). Most importantly, the stances work regardless of weapons and those are the best things about the tree. The crit stance is nice, and the counter/block stance is AMAZING.

So yeah, stop restricting yourself to daggers. Once upon a time you got penalties for using weapons you didn't have the skill in, but they removed that. Use the best stuff available, always.

 

At the moment dagger skills work with all weapons, its a bug though. Don't worry too much about loosing nimbleness, focus on building your counter chance instead. That's what makes the build such a tank. Just remember to keep your eyes peeled for occam's razor and the fractal knife

 

Is that 100% confirmed to be a bug and unintended?

 

That is from the bug list on the bug form. I believe it is also listed in the incoming patch changelog.

Besides, it doesn't feel right otherwise, lol.

 

After it is patched, I would think 1 Dagger/1 Ravager would be the best option for the build.
Free Extra Attacks for everyone!
Also:
If you would take CK and Rogue Scientist, you could get 4 Tinkering from there, 2 Alchemy for potions, and very nice early zoo killers.
Although RS vs Perception is quit a hard choice there...

 

Interesting thread. I just finished my first game on Dwarven moderation with similar results to the original poster--I mowed through everyone and every thing right up until Dredmor... and I couldn't touch him. I hit him with seven bolts of mass destruction and two holy hand grenades, and then I used up two pearlescent wands on him. He never got past "lightly injured," and I swear the HP bar didn't even move after that single pixel for whatever measly amount of damage I did to him.

Despite using potions of invisibility to heal up when my health was low, by the time I ran out of ranged weapons and decided to close to melee, I was at 1/3 HP. I had two heavily enchanted flails of pleiades and got in three hits before I went down--and again did no discernible damage. I might as well have tickled him with a feather for ten minutes.

So I'm a bit stunned at the moment. I think you could have thrown every single monster in the previous ten levels at me at the same time and I would have stood a better chance of winning. Dredmor just seems like an insane jump in difficulty.

I'll try to digest some of the information in this thread and see if I can come up with a solution, but honestly I am not too keen to dive back in at the moment seeing how hopeless it is.