Why The Odious Puffball Is the Best Item in the Game: "The Puffball of Inordinate Doom"

Puffball of Inordinate Doom:

Hello. I've been a long time roguelike player, playing games like Rogue and Hack in DOS and Windows 3.2 back when I was like, six years old. Suffice it to say, I'm familiar with the genre. This isn't an admission of expertise at the genre. I am, in fact, quite terrible at roguelikes. I've been playing Dredmor on and off for a year and a half, if memory serves, but only just recently have I had any success. (Though I discovered a way to get infinite Zorkmoids Two Christmases ago, which I reported and was then fixed.)

Today, for the first time, I killed both Vlad Digula and Dredmor for the very first time, each within only a few rounds of encountering them. I had never seen either before today, and in a few short rounds in which I took zero damage, I had killed them both--Vlad Digula, notably, only took 3 rounds to kill, and every other monster in the game was instantly killed in only a single hit.

I owe my success in this to the Odious Puffball.

How could such an innocuously soft, squishy ball of spores become the harbinger of death, destruction, and pain, you might ask?

Allow me to offer you up an image to answer this question:

No, you're not seeing things. The numbers at the top row which indicate damage are exactly as you see them:
"97 96 54 65 36 24 42 12 119"-- It is fitting that the highest single kind of damage this puffball deals is Existential. It might cause someone quite a crisis of understanding to see Giant Demonic Diggles fall to a single gentle puff to the face. For those too lazy to math, that's 545 points of damage before equipment, melee damage, and crit multiplication take effect.

Now you're likely beginning to understand. Throwing items... can be enchanted and encrusted like any other item. Because an individual does not equip them, or even swing them, however, none of the side effects apply. The only data the game cares about from a throwing item is what kind it is (and any associated skills that it has, such as the puffballs spore cloud) and the item's damage. (This means that all instabilities and also all abilities granted by encrusting, such as midas, do not apply.) As you can see above, through excessive encrusting (thanks perception, for so many materials) and enchanting, I have transformed the Odious Puffball into a Puffball of Inordinate Doom.

As it happens, if a stack contains enchanted/encrusted throwing weapons, the entire stack, when used, qualifies as possessing those same enchantments and encrustings. Now, when an item is removed from that stack, it returns to be an ordinary member of its family--enhancements nowhere to be seen. In this way, at least, it is not possible to make multiple stacks of P.O.I.D.s (puffballs of inordinate doom.) Only one stack, ever refillable by completely ordinary puffballs.

"Now, WHY puffballs?" you might ask, when I could apply enhancement to any throwing item? The answer is simple--thanks to fungal arts, and the ability to transform some mushrooms into other mushrooms, the puffball is the easiest to acquire throwing item in the game. At various points, I had upwards of 800 P.O.I.D.s.

That is why the Odious Puffball is THE MOST POWERFUL ITEM IN THE GAME.

Proposed course of action for dealing with this obviously too-powerful-item:
1. Don't allow throwing weapons to be encrusted, OR make stats other than just item-id and damage factor into the outcome of a thrown-weapon toss.
2. Commemorate this nonsense with some sort of flavor text in game, or some sort of item that is the Puffball of Inordinate Doom, etc etc.

I will attach two further images in the spoiler-- my first sight of Vlad Digula and the turn after his death, with my stats open.
If you have any additional questions about this file, the process leading up to it, what my favorite color combination is, etc, feel free to ask.
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Spoiler: Hint Text

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Awesome. Thanks, guys, and have yourselves an awesome day!

 

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=56935.0

The spinning live fluffy wambler hits strikes the Bronze Colossus in the head and the severed part flies off in an arc
Akest Nudenotung Tishak Eges: Bronze Colossus has been shot and killed!

 

I now feel like a member of a very exclusive club: "those who kill scary things with fluffy things."

 

The Essence of Ron Paul, and fiat currency... I can see why it's unstable.

 

I have to say it was quite amusing to watch this develop. Sunspot is a friend of mine and he was sharing snapshots of the Puffball of Inordinate Doom along the way.

 

This is outstandingly hilarious, and I for one gladly bow to our puffy overlords.

 

^I'm so glad you bumped this. This is amazing.