The 'Builds That Won' Thread

If you want to melee, Just take battle geology. Cast Petrification, hit him 8 times or so, close the door. wait for petrification to come back up, open door recast... Rinse repeat til dead. Easymode.

 

There's no need for much mana in this build, so Blood Magic is kinda pointless. Vampire goes great with Celestial Circle's extra and Archeology is mostly needed for even more and some decent to survive traps.

If you swap Vampire for Blood Magic you should probable take some caster skill instead of Archeology. Fleshsmithing seems to be the best idea since it will replace vampiric healing with magical healing. It's a viable and mighty build but you will miss those a lot.

 

Finally beat the game and had to post here to celebrate!

I play almost entirely with random builds. I enjoy the challenge of making weird things work together and I like exploring different trees each game. Most of the random builds I get fail within the first four floors. But hey, dying is fun!

The random build that won for me on Going Rogue, permadeath (You badass!)
-Swords
-Perception
-Werediggle
-Banker
-Viking Magic
-Tinkering
-Alchemy

I used the first two levels of the banker tree to buy a golden crossbow and emerald sword early in the game, which made the first 5-6 floors easy. After level 6, most of my dungeon crawling involved open doors, shoot the creatures inside with the golden crossbow, closing door and waiting. I did keep a bolt thrower handy and would switch between the two when I didn't feel like waiting. (Swapping weapons doesn't cost a move.) I focused on high dodge armor and high resistances and avoided the heavy stuff that would affect my nimbleness. I ended the game with under 200 hit points and kept my distance from the creatures at the bottom levels, many of which could squash me with just two hits.

I maxed out Perception immediately and Tinkering, relying on my sweet crossbow and rougish dodge skills to keep me alive. Alchemy was useful for creating health potions, but combined with Perception, which would occasionally proc potions on a lucky find, it was a bit redundant and easily could have been replaced with a more useful skill. Werediggle ended up being entirely useless. But hey, that's how random builds work.

In retrospect, the tinkering tree didn't really provide me any really useful recipes until around floor 7 or 8 when I found the steambolt recipe. I'd never played tinkering before, so I leveled it up fast just to see if it'd give me anything really overpowered in the first few floors. The ability to craft the large bolts and clockwork sawblades at the bottom levels was really useful, though. Also, the ability to grab traps helped a lot, but not until I stumbled upon a really useful post that mentioned that you can shift+click to drop traps without using a move. Sooo useful! I don't know how I'd missed that fact for so long!

The Viking Magic tree turned out to be the most useful game winner. The fear spell is cheap to use and affected every creature I tried it on. When things got too close, a little dose of fear would make them all run away to a safe distance where I could shoot them. Dredmor isn't immune to the fear spell, so I feared him and bombarded him with clockwork sawblades until he died. Killing Dredmor was actually a bit easier than getting through some of the rooms on level 15.

 

Dredmor is down ! Celebratory booze time
Going Rogue, Permadeath


Rogue build.
Maxed maces
Maxed burglary
Maxed fungal
Wand lore just for the Gag skill
Bows - They were my main weapon against Dredmor but I didnt invest points into them.(I prioritised tinkering for the arrows)
Tinkering- I started putting more points in late game to make more arrows as the deeper I got the more dangerous melee combat got (didn't quite max it though)
Rogue scientist - Only skill I used was Barometric pulse(handy knockback) didn't invest points into this tree really.

Playstyle: Soften them up with a couple of arrows. Go for the kill with the mace using knockbacks as much as possible to avoid getting hit. Armour was light so I could dodge, no self heal, only about 150 health so hes not a brawler. Despite being a weakling the fact he hit accurately and hard and the strategic use of fungal pets as shields let me use melee right up to floor 15.

He wasn't great at taking hits or dodging them tbh. Didn't find gear good enough for significant dodge but didn't slap on any heavy armour either(didn't do encrusting his dodge was pathetic in the 30s)

Lack of a self heal was a weakness(relied on food and fairy wodger) though finding the regeneration Diggle god on floor 15 helped alot.

His str was his flexibility: burglarys escape skills, Fungal mastery (multitude of buff shrooms(especially invisibility) and wand lores gag. He could basically escape any situation.

Had one instance when I pulled a level and it teleported me into the middle of a room stuffed to the brim with scumbags - they were blocking the doors and standing on the red portal square blocking me from escaping. I was forced to indulge in several hoglanterns and move around untill they moved off the red square then I teleported onto it to escape. I can't imagine another build that would survive that.

Dredmor fight consisted of shooting him with about 5 holy nades, 70 expencive sawblade things, atleast 150 arrows of various types. Running like a girl, overdosing on every shroom under the sun, teleporting away, hiding in corners and silencing him. Basically every cowardly trick in the book Anyway you can't expect a rogue to fight fair

Not sure the build qualifies as good but it was still a "build that won"

 

I FINALLY GET TO POST HERE.

After 90 hours of playing the game on Dwarvish Moderation with Permadeath (I'm completely new to roguelikes, so Going Rogue would be far too difficult. Looking to try it moving forward now that I've killed Dredmor at least once).

Here's a picture of the skill setup
http://i1055.photobucket.com/albums/s503/Graceclaw2/Build1thatwon_zpsxfeghz12.png

The idea behind this build was that I would hit every time and gain the Pact of Fleeting Life healing, so I picked skills that would maximize dodge reduction and keep me alive.

Axes- The highest dodge reduction skill tree. Added goodies in crit chance and meelee power, and I LOVED Cogito Ergo Splat- spammable AOE damage is useful (especially existential).

Shield Bearer- Not actually all that useful for me. Got duck and Cover and left it there- I had maxed out block chance anyways. I would definitely replace it with a skill that has an escape ability (idk which one- been meaning to try out Piracy for a while now).

Berserker Rage- I like the concet of the skill, and the stacking buffs make you feel really powerful. Ultimately useful for quickly eliminating groups of enemies and amping up the healing from Pact (yes, I know that it scales off of Necro and Magic Power, but I am under the impression that meelee power affects the necro damage done when you hit with a meelee weapon causing the damage? Idk.) either way, I really enjoyed having this ability, and would not trade it in very easily.

Master of Arms- Maxed it out about level 8 or 9 of the dungeon so that I could actually survive being surounded by 2-3 monsters. Bread and butter survivability skill, and it made me very hard to kill when coupled with Pact. I actually had a health regen of 40 once- I took a screenshot of it when it was at 33
http://i1055.photobucket.com/albums/s503/Graceclaw2/demtimers_zpswdlmuusg.png

Necro- Like I said, this build was built around the healing from Pact. I didn't actually level up to Pact until about floor 4 or 5 because I didn't need it. Obviously just left it there.

Perception- Another skill which gives a LOT of enemy dodge reduction. The trap sight came in handy as well, and the "lucky finds" helped fuel my overstocking on Clockwork Sawblades (look at how many I had by the end lol). I was not at all impressed by Eye Lasers though- I don't see (haha that's a pun) why so may people are crazy for it. It would have taken a LONG time to kill Dredmor with just that.

Big Game Hunter- I grabbed it because of enemy dodge reduction, maxed it early, and fell in love with it. The bonus xp on animal kills is highly underrated, and I enjoyed munching on animal parts all the way down to floor 15 (I still had ~120 of each stack by the end haha). Additionally, the hunting diggles are great distractions and were a key part of me making it to the levels that I needed.

Killing Dredmor was terrifying. I equipped the Mirror Darkly and Mirror (so his basic magic attacks wouldn't hit me), and the Imperial Clockwork armor (for the additional meelee power that it added to my Clockwork Sawblade throws), and sat back and threw Holy Hand Grenades at him when he was far enough away and then Blades when he wasn't. I threw in a Bolt of Doubt for good measure. He actually almost killed me twice- he used his lightning strike 3 times in a row and I stupidly (never having seen him before) did not have Voltaic potions up. I just invis'd and regenerated while running away (he tracks you REALLY well). The other time was when he ran me into some of his minions (I got impatient and scared of dying before reaching Dredmor, so I speed ran the last three floors and left some of them behind me- those blobs HURT). Basically just sat in invis and let the clockwork blades finish him off when he had ~300 health left. I was tempted to try to meelee him for style points, but I didn't want to blow my first chance at killing him by getting countered or some crap.

Pictures of the vanquished Dredmor:
http://i1055.photobucket.com/albums/s503/Graceclaw2/DieBastardDie_zpswmeph43q.png
http://i1055.photobucket.com/albums/s503/Graceclaw2/VICTORY_zpscdp5jf8h.png

This was actually a very satisfying fight for me- like I said, I'm new to Roguelikes (and, if DoD is anything to go by, I love them), and I'm not sure how well I'll do on Going Rogue (I hate crafting/am not very good at it). MY final score is low because I didn't do ANY wizardlands or mysterious portals (didn't wantto risk getting stuck), and it was only on Moderation, but I don't care. I'm just happy I beat him.

SO happy I can finally post on this thread!

 

I'm going to share one of the lamest builds around. I call it the Vegan Mage. It feels like cheating.



The core skills are:
* Killer Vegan
* Promethean Magic
* Fleshmithing (this is the least important of the 5)
* Ley Walker
* Blood Magic

And then another two. I chose Alchemy and Magic training.

Get Tactical Fire of Promethean, then 2 points in Killer Vegan and then max out Ley Lines. That's the important part. Killer Vegan is awesome in every build, even as a wizard, gives you loads of life and experience and make animals friendly, but you can still kill them with spells without getting a penalty. Promethean and Fleshmithing provides offensive and defensive -the wyrm, buffs and healing- capabilities. Ley Walker provides mana.

Don't waste your time taking care of items until the deepest floors (10-15). Until that search the zoo, clear it and get down a level. There is little challenge, just remember to use your wyrm and the animals as walls. Dredmor is a pain in the ass, but provides no danger.

I add a pic of the last turn of the lvl 15 zoo. I didn't get damaged or lose mana. Zoos are ridiculously simple.

 

Grats!

I wouldn't think you'd need both blood magic and ley walker for this build. But then again, who can argue with a victory . I do totally agree, though, that Killer Vegan is a really powerful skill to have. Some people hate it, I know. But if you can simply get into the spirit of the skill, and avoid eating cheese, and hitting animals in melee, then it really is incredible.

 

Alchemy and Killer Vegan actually combine into a mana recovery source all on their own (tons of fruit to make wines). I've gotten away with just this combination before for all my mana needs.

 

If I'm playing a mage or any character with decent to hefty mana needs, I'd rather not have to depend on wine and potions alone. They are fine in a pinch, or between combats, or if you only have moderate mana needs. But I wouldn't recommend it for most pure mage builds or even some gish builds.

That said, alchemy really is a great skill anyway, and you don't really need an excuse to include it in most builds. I'm pretty sure that there is no build in which someone would say 'and then I picked Alchemy as my last skill', where I would argue with you that that was a mistake (the same goes with Burglary)/

 

Yay i won! I used picheleiros Vegan Mage build and with with it i killed Dredmor the first time. Difficulty was Dwarfish Moderation Perma Death. Only Skill i changed was Archaeology for Magic Training. It`s by far the easiest build from start to finish i tried so far.


So: Killer Vegan, Promethean Magic, Fleshmithing, Ley Walker, Blood Magic, Alchemy and Archeology. And every Skill was useful.
The only closecall was on level 12? when there were 10 or so Eldritch Slicks right behind a door and they swarmed me, luckily enough they somehow managed not to curse my gear. And when i sometimes stepped in my own aoe spells when everything was already dead.

For leveling what picheleiro wrote i would just get Thaumaturgic Tap first then straight to Fire wyrmling and Gog's Tactical Pyre.

I disagree that fleshsmithing isn`t important:
with Zombyfycation the first two levels are a cakewalk if you somehow manage to kill 1 enemy.
with Knit Tissue all your healing issues are solved for the rest of the game
Fleshbore is a great damaging dot but you have better damage potential espescially Gog's Tactical Pyre
Meatshield is a great buff for squishy mages
Corpus Burst is a very good zookiller much better than Obvious Fireball (which is also good except for the fire level and 10+ )
until you get some sagity and can spam
Miasmatic Putrefaction

The most skills i used were from fleshsmithing except for Gog's Tactical Pyre from Promethean Magic which carries you the first ten levels and with which i killed Dredmor.

Don`t lutefisk away your cracked orbs because with alchemy you can make some pretty good ones but i got lucky and found them.

I think burglary for archeology would be even better in this build because of the better teleport (Invisible Geometries takes 75% of your mana ) and it has trap visibility also.. if you don`t need this Mathemagic would you make even more overpowered on the mage side.

The only other skill i thinking about to change is alchemy because you dont need the mana or health potions (Knit tissue and Thaumaturgic Tap) and than you dont have to think about crafting anymore, just collect those steaks for the health encrusts. Maybe for Astrology?

Time to try this on going rogue.

 

Hell yeah finally beat dredmor. DMPD:

Vegan
Tinkering
Clockwork Knight
Smithing
Fungal Arts
Paranormal
Axes

So the thought process was that I wanted to play a vegan because the stat bonuses and righteous damage is just screwy. Then I got tinkering to shit out tonnes of thrown weapons and bolts to kill all the animals with. Clockwork Knight appreciates the tinkering skill and also gets a couple of skills that can kill animals without incurring penalties. Smithing compliments CW really well, then from there I figured I might as well run Axes to get clockwork ravagers. Fungal Arts was mostly just for Inky Hoglanterns and Fairywodgers, and I also wanted to try out Paranormal - it helps discovering recipes as well.

I went a point into CK, then a point into tinkering for trap sight, then a point back into CK, then maxed vegan and then go hard at the various craft skills and CK until I could make all the gear I'd need for the rest of the midgame/encrust all the endgame gear.

Vegan was obviously the star of the show, but Clockwork Knight was also fantastic - having 3 different teleports that all did damage somehow was a delight, especially with how well they scaled into the late game with my maxed tinkering skill. This was my go-to skill tree for killing animals (and I did, laboriously, murder every animal I came across). Tinkering is great, Smithing is honestly real good because of the extra burliness it also stacks up in addition to the sick armour you can craft to make the early-mid game smooth. Fungal Arts I put literally 0 points into the entire game and it was still worth it for the ~80 invisibility mushrooms I had to fight dredmor (saved my fucking ass so much). Paranormal gave a few really cute things - Alien Autopsy was the way I got most of my recpies and the single point of alchemy you get (along with all the nightcaps I'd been hording plus my spare iron) let me craft like 80 healing potions at once. Skepticisim is really good for dealing with corruption mobs (is that an acidic slick? pretty sure it's actually a collection of clockwork sawblades in a big trenchcoat) but the capstone was just sorta... so what. Axes gave me a bunch of fun melee procs/skills that helped me murder faster and kill animals, but the real help was the insane crit and EDR that the tree gives - I had something like a 60% chance to crit by the end doing nothing but maxing axes, as well as a healthy 30 or so EDR.

Dredmor himself wasn't too much of the problem once I got into the swing of things - his attacks barely scratched me as I pelted him with clockwork sawblades (doing bonus righteous damage, thanks vegan) popping inky hoglanterns like mad whenever he got close or managed to blind me. Apparently he has some sort of devastating lightning spell, but because I was rocking magnetronic plate and a magnetronic shield (needed them to get 100 block) he didn't seem inclined to use it.

Speaking of gear - I also had the serpentine sabatons and leggings, with 2 digglish rings of torment, the aethernaut helmet (those resistances are amazing) and the gloves that give you a bit of melee power (forgot what they were called, they're tinker craftable). I think my necklace was a windows symbol one I found randomly in the dungeon. The digglish rings were honestly the best things I had on - the extra 20 counter they gave pushed me up into the mid 40s, what with all the rogue and warrior skills I had taken. It made fights a lot quicker (plus you got to see how many of the dots you could stack up on an enemy before they died).

I got the digging diggle god buff because it wasn't the death god - only other god I saw all run. Here's the final image:



Want to try some sort of gish vegan build next - maybe one that doesn't rely on block stacking like my last builds have all done. Vegan is so fucking good jesus.

 

Vegan is definitely good, but I think the pain in the ass of having to path around animals (without hitting/killing them unless you want to spend several dozen turns staring at a wall until the debuffs fall off) is the real cost of it. Vegan vampires are fun to play, but I eventually axed that playthrough because I had one too many times where I ended up boxed in by a bunch of animals and really couldn't be arsed to sit and wait for them to move out of my way so I could continue collecting the random stuff strewn about the room. Too bad the game can't be set to just let you path through animals if you select Killer Vegan as a skill tree, but then I feel like they'd also need to figure out some way of changing flags and AI routines to avoid a lot of common abuses vegan builds can get away with (like how charmed animals hate the CRAP out of other animals and ruthlessly slaughter them, for which you get full XP and drops but no penalties.)

 

Won with this build Permadeath, Going Rogue, No Time To Grind:
Promethean Magic, Mathemagics, Flesh-Shaping, Ley Lines, Killer Vegan, Magic Training, Blood Magic
The main advantage is that it is fast because no annoying crafting/encrusting is needed, walk using the mouse because walking on traps will kill you later on. Animals not attacking you is pretty great all game long.

Early on, kill stuff with Dragon's breath and reanimate them as zombies, using Froda's jump to save yourself if needed. Then 3 levels in Promethean Magic to Obvious Fireball. Wyrmling will kill everything for you for a while and Fireballs will support him for harder times such as zoos. Then max out Mathemagics, teleportation will make you impossible to corner and Recursive Curse is a very good spell that you will use all game to kill stuff although at this point you'll have mana only for bosses. Then taking the time to learn Knit Tissue for fast healing and channeller to get mana back (you might be low on booze at this point depending how patient you are with your wyrmling killing stuff. Then max Flesh-Shaping will give you meatshield you should have on at all times and miasmatic putrefaction which is a very good spell that you will probably use most of the times instead of fireball now that your mana is higher. From there, maxing Killer Vegan for extra life. Then it's Licence to cast and Gog's tactical pyre and you are ready from Dredmor. With the extra levels I maxed Magic training then promethean magic and Ley Lines but didn't put point in Blood magic not to uselessly lower rigtheous defense.

Killing Dredmor is not hard, wear mirror shields on level 15 until you find Dredmor and mute him, then you can reequip orbs and kill him simply summoning a wyrmling next to him so that he doesn't move (he can't one shot it, respawn whenever the wyrmling gets killed), and spam Gog's tactical pyre on him. Throwing holy grenades and teleporting away is an okay strategy too or other ranged strategy with rigtheous damage, but ou can kill him with just License to cast, wyrmling and Pyre.

 

I just beat the game for the first time!



After over 250 hours... >_>
Mostly because I wanted to get Left for Dread first, and do it with my own build.



I melodramatically call it the "Bloody Marie" build.

• Swords
• Daggers
• Dual-Wielding
• Blood Magic
• Vampirism
• Fleshsmithing
• Magical Law

Now, unfortunately this build requires a small bit of luck, since you'll need to grab all the Counterattack-boosting gear you can.

1. Get the Flesh Stitching spell
2. Get daggers up to the Wall of Blades stance
3. Max out Swords and Dual Wielding
4. Get Magical Law up to the Writ of Counterspelling
5. Wield two swords, since it's better defense than a sword and a dagger

The rest is gravy, though I favored Vampirism just to give my melee attacks that little bit extra(not to mention that all further increases to magical skills will increase your vampiric attacks anyway). I've tried variants of this build, specifically swapping out blood magic for blacksmithing since I wasn't leveling the former up at all, but I found it hurt my survivability too much to go without it.

Gag Order and 100+ counter makes Lord Dredmor absolutely helpless. The only thing to watch out for with this build is ground effect spells and the unlucky occasions that monsters get a string of hits on you before you can get your Counterattack super high. Transmutation is very helpful against annoying enemies like corruptors.