Hello dredmor fans. Recently i started to play the game again, with the expansion this time. For the last week, i tried countless builds. different combinations. i tried almost every skill. all of them had some distinct pros and cons naturally. every time i played 1-3 levels and restarted with different set of skills. but recently i made a great build, i think this was the best i have done. skills; As an intended meele fighter, this build gives me everything needed. with swords, dual wielding, berserking and assassination i have crazy meele synergies. i have criticals, damage boosts high and low. with dual wielding (Ambidextrous Defense) and dodge, i have decent amount of defance/dodge and also knightly leap! Promethean Magic is excellent source of damage, and gives me the ability to make heavy AOE damage, which is deperately needed on certain occasions. and the blood magic gives me mediocre mana/life replenish. question is, what are you pros thinking about this? what is the pros/cons about it? how will it be in the mid and late game? what changes do you purpose? p.s: i thought about last skill, i choose blood magic over fleshsmithing, mathematics and psionics because of the reasons i stated. it seemed like a right choice. i am on level 2, and so far it makes wonders, but still, i would appriciate any opinions. regards. .
It's a reasonable build, but not a great one. The biggest problem is that you have very few magic skills - and so your Magic Power stat will never be very high. If you wear armor (like a melee fighter would) you'll have even less Magic Power. Magic skills still do some damage early on, but eventally it will be useless compared to your regular attacks. If you want to be a fighter with a bit of magic - you need to take spells which don't rely on high MP. Viking Wizardry's first spell is an excellent example - you'll kick huge ass with it regardless of your MP. With that in mind, try switching Promethian for Viking Wizardry, or Psionics, or Demonology (if you have the expansion). Then lose Blood Magic, and try Smithing, or Master of Arms instead. Fungal could be a good utility skill as well.
My experience suggests that Promethian rocks even with low magic power. It's therefore a good magic skill for fighters. Rune of explosion helps clearing out monster zoos down to DL7 even if you never put any other points in magic skills. If you don't need to kill monsters with your spells, area effect rocks because you wear them down enough to kill in one hit.
Agree w/alamar. Promethean is always good. Wrymling is a decent distraction even on DL9, absorbing 4-5 hits before it dies (more than enough for a melee artist to kill a small horde), and Gog's Tactical Pyre makes a great "dot" for big enemies when placed adjacent to your badass sword-wielding self. All told, it's a gish, so it won't stand out on the magic front that much, but the melee part is solid, and you can't go wrong with Obvious Fireball under any circumstance. I like it. Stack some Rings of Ash and other fire resist gear, and you're solid.
thanx for the info. prom. is really powerful and i am glad i chose that. but as i understand, maybe i could've chosen a better alternative for blood magic. i tried mushrooms but i did not like it, a decent skill yet it slows the gameplay as hell. maybe i switch that with psionics, or master of arms. that can be better. right?
Personally I think blood magic is way underrated. Even if Haematic Phylactery is nerfed/fixed to a 1 to 1 debuff / stone ratio, it is still an EXCELLENT heal. If it was nerfed, once I had enough health, I would run constantly with one debuff up, let it come off cooldown and then when i needed a heal, just pop the ability again, and immediately eat the stone. If needed a second could follow right away, or you could simply wait for it to come off of cooldown again leaving one stone in tact to use immediately. In addition, the further levels of blood magic really make mana something a mage or melee character doesn't have to worry about. It also helps to supplement your magic power a tiny bit. Dodge I used for my first 4-5 characters, and in the end I decided it was a pretty underpowered skill tree. I would much rather spend the slot on any of the trees that give you a sustainable buff which provides resistances / armor. Among those my personal favorite is Astrology for a melee character. It provides a nice starting buff (1 necro resist, 1 sagacity (not really that useful, but hey), 5 enemy dodge reduction, 5 magic resist, 2 sight radius, and 1 holy damage - which is great when you're just starting out); but most importantly it has a chance to proc an aoe damage attack which hits for quite a bit of damage with a chance to stun. It has a few spells it can cast right around your character which basically all have a chance to stun enemies and also has a few sustainables which give additional damage / resists later on. Alternatively you could go for a more traditional heal instead of a melee buff skill, such as fleshsmithing (knit tissue's 'negative side effect' is actually effectively a time delayed heal when used decently below max health - but the rest of the tree is kinda lackluster imo) or psionics for crystal heal and a nice amount of other goodies (personally, i don't really care for psionics heal, but lots of people swear by it).
i have an additional question, is there a way to switch skills without corrupting the save game? hack, cheat, editor, mod.. you name it just dont want to lose my progress again. in level 5 now=)
In my honest opinion, I think Dodge should be switched out for Killer Vegan. It does make the game more challenging in terms of what you can eat (danishes, bread, fruit, tofu) and melee kills (non-animals), but the stats you gain are definitely worth it, especially once you max it and get the passive +5 unresistable Righteous damage. Since you are also going Promethian, killing animals is no problem since Fallen Vegan only happens with melee attacks (spells, thrown, and bolts are unaffected). Just be sure to pick up your Wyrmling early on so you can finish off an animal-rich Monster Zoo without being starved for mana. Unless you are playing with mods, you wont need Righteous resistance except for the rare case when a named mob has that damage, since the fish paladins wont ever attack you.
For people who is considering to use a similar build, let me give a progress report; I am in the level 6 dungeon. So far nothing challenged me, infact, i suffered very few deaths. I am a completionist. I break every box, kill every monster and do every quest to advance to the next dungeon so now i am level 14(which i am guessing that slightly above average). Using two 7-star swords, i have +18 meele damage, around 75hp and 55 mana. I think so far the record critical is about 60 damage. The most missed thing is sure an active healing. infact, i only died against groups of 1-4 unique monsters. Blood magic is my only regret, i could've selected something better. but still, the skill is level-4, so i guess it will get stronger. promethean magic was the biggest suprise of all, i never expected something so powerful. even it is just level 3, it descents like wrath of god.Wyrmling acts like an amazing tank, and rune of exploding is monster zoo destroyer. You just need to open door, see the zoo, summon wyrm, place 2-3 runes, and cut the survivors who gets past the blazing inferno to pieces with your swords. and still, half of the tree is unlocked! i never go out of mana, blood magic helps this stage, but as i mentioned, i don't know if it will suffice in late game. another thing i need is more fire resistance, in every zoo, i probably burn myself around 10-15 damage. shortly, progress is better than i expected, but if we consider the half of the content which is yet to be unlocked, we are gonna see about that.
Save all your meat for the end of a level. Eat it all in a small room with a door and wait it out or use Level Five Vegan. It is a nice buff for the next level to have hundreds of turns of well fed.
