Worst Possible Skill Combination - let's all play it on GRPD!

Sometimes it's fun to handicap oneself. What's the worst skill combination? (No intentionally bad mods allowed.)

My thoughts. Crafting skills are bad in quantity. Multiple weapon skills are a waste. Spells are overpowered, especially teleports and heals. Wizard support skills are bad on melee characters. Ideally, a character would end up with no spells and is forced to melee everything.

1. Wand Lore
2. Smithing
3. Tinkering
4. Alchemy
5. Perception
6. Vampirism
7. Blood Mage

Man, I don't like Vampirism. And after it got nerfed in 1.10, it's even worse. It's heals scale off of Magic Power, which we won't have much of. Healing potions from Alchemy will help a lot. Maybe we should drop Alchemy. Ley Walker is tempting because most of the spells would be so useless to us, but it does come with a teleport. Oh, better yet! Magic Training!

1. Wand Lore
2. Smithing
3. Tinkering
4. Magic Training
5. Perception
6. Vampirism
7. Blood Mage

Smithing might even be too good because you can guarantee yourself some OK armor early on. Plus it buffs melee characters. Even with Ley Walker's teleport it might make the build worse to replace Smithing with it. Especially for early game survival. But early game survival isn't everything. We don't want a character who does survive DL2 to end up with a teleport.

Hmmm... maybe that's as bad as it gets then. Any other thoughts? (I didn't consider any mod skills for now, but the mod skills are generally pretty good.)

The goal to this exercise, of course, is to all play the same build and see how far we can get while playing GRPD!

 

My vote's for Wand Lore, Killer Vegan, Vampirism, Big Game Hunter, Magic Training, Leywalker, Blood Mage.

 

you're going about it the wrong way.

the worst build emphasizes on melee but doesn't take dual wield. has no mobility options, ranged options, or crafting options. oh yeah, and vampirism because it sucks hard

My suggestion:
Vampirism
Unarmed
Magic Training
Swords
Maces
Staves
Axes

 

I did consider weapon skills, and I mentioned it in my first post. However they do have benefits. Knockback, extra damage, etc. it probably would be good to not have tinkering or smithing because then you couldnt make easy ranged weapons. however, with all the vending machines around, itms really not hard to buy bolts and such that are better than what you can craft, anyway. You'd have to weight the benefits of the weapon trees versus those of crafting and the passive benefits you get. If you take *every* weapon skill, you're guaranteed to have the one you need when you get a melee weapon from a Chest of Evil. Assuming you put points in each of them. However, the more I think about the more I agree with you.

Killer Vegan is right out. It's actually a good skill. Is has a pet (charm), and many of the monsters in the game don't aggro you. Especially some of the tough ones like Eels and high level diggles. Yet you can still freely kill them with ranged weapons. It certainly limits you food choices, but that's not enough of a downside to make up for its good things.

 

Unarmed gives you option to dual-shield, though. Granted, in a build that awful it's not much. Maybe something like...

Vampirism
Veganism
Magic Training
Swords
Maces
Staves
Axes

That way, if you dual-shield, there's no Unarmed Tree for knockbacks and extra damage, plus you get to deal with needing to kill Animals to regain HP (Vampirism) and then being penalized to hell and back for doing so (Vegan).

Edit to avoid double-post!

Another build would be a glass cannon with no actual damage spells. Say...

Ley Walker
Magic Training
Blood Magic
Alchemy
Emomancy
Mathemagic
Necronomecinomics

Try to survive Floor 1 with that build. You cannot melee, you have 0 to start, you get like, a Sacrificial Dagger and a Robe (no hat!) as starting gear, and your only means of damaging monsters deals more damage to you than it does to them. Plus you start with about 22 Health since you have nothing but Wizard levels. I've tried builds like this and I can't get to Floor 2 on DM, much less GR.

 

Ugh, you're right. I hadn't considered how horribly bad a Vegan Vampire is. It ruins any benefits of Veganism.

That sounds pretty bad as well, but why not mix in the horrible Vegan Vampire skills as well? At least Vampire, so that walking in circles while teleporting monsters away with Emomancy doesn't heal you.

1. Vampirism
2. Veganism
3. Magic Training
4. Blood Magic
5. Emomancy
6. Mathemagic
7. Necronomiconomics

If GR or even DM is just impossibly hard, then there's no point in trying it. Might as well play EE then. And if that's the case, we have to think about how good the skills are past DL1. I think this glass cannon skill set would be better than the melee ones if you can survive DL1. If you find a Necro Tome early, you can do pretty well.

 

All good points. I forgot the goal was "let's try playing it", I got caught up in the "make the worst build you can think of" part of it. And yeah, the Terrible Glass Cannon might be somewhat viable if you get really, really, really, really, really lucky and find a Little Black Book in the first room or something and can survive for a few levels; my point was that the build is nigh-impossible to kill more than 4-5 monsters with and thus, you will never level and reach the build's limited potential.

Hard to say if the "3 hits and you're dead, oh and your only spell kills you" build or the "melee with no healing/teleport and the vegan/vamp combo" is worse. I doubt you can get very far with either build, barring (again) some incredible strings of Luck/RNG in your favor right from the get-go.

 

this looks like a roundabout way of saying "dear Gaslamp: Vampirism really really really sucks. It sucks so much that it is in nearly every worst-possible-build we can think of."

 

Yeah, it's unfortunate that the worst possible build might actually be completely unplayable. I guess I didn't realize how bad it could really be. It sort of defeats the purpose of the idea if you have to choose a "not quite as horrible" build in order to survive the first few rooms, because then you have to decide how "not horrible" you have to make the build, and that's a slippery slope. It's easy to die a few times and just say, "This build is also completely unplayable, so we need a little more power." rather than just try again with the same build.

Still, I'm going to try one of these builds and see how it goes. Rather than see how far I can get, the goal will be to maximize the score. If we measured by how far, then someone could just find the earliest stairs possible and just keep running from monsters to see how deep they could get in the dungeon.

 

Well, let me put it this way: a Glass Cannon build similar to the one I described is what got me my Normandy achievement, if that tells you anything.

It's partly that and partly the fact that Vegan and Vampirism are opposites, so taking both at the same time is an easy way to gimp any build.

A slippery slope indeed. If you really sit down and mash out the absolute least synergistic builds (see suggestions above, among others), you can come up with some pretty much unplayable builds. As was said, the Worst Possible Build(s) are going to fail hard on any difficulty other than EE (and even then I wouldn't bank on most of them).

 

If we decide on an official build, what should the official rules be? EE, PD, NTTG, no RotDG? With no RotDG there's a much better chance of a lucky person actually beating Dredmor. With NTTG, we get the same XP from fighting fewer monsters. EE seems like a must given how bad these builds are looking.

 

344 points playing this! Stupid blobby! Gnomes are really good things to face, they are demons, so they heal you with Vampirism, but they aren't animals.

Was playing on EE, NTTG, PD, No RotDG

This combo might be too good. In my second playthrough I hit level 2 which lets me take The Cure from Emomancy. Not only does it heal me, but it removes Vegan debuffs. I also found a Little Black Book in a shop, and Deadly Hex for 2 MP is my friend. So now I can melee animals for XP, and they don't ever attack back, and I can Cure away the debuffs. I hit level 3 and took Animal Friend, so now I have a pet! Too easy!

Well, not that easy. 5704. Killed by a stupid herd of Zombies on level 2. Despite several catings of Frodo's Jump they just wouldn't let me be far enough away to cast Chemical Explosion at them.

 

Like I said, the build is so bad you can barely kill the low Health, half-damage mobs of EE vs the ones in GR. And you had some "help" (a Black Book and a Level-up). I just suggest Emo and Math because it basically gives you 2 random teleport spells that can hurt you as much as it might help, and a nuke spell that you can barely survive the side-effects of.

Maybe there's a weaker spell load-out... Maybe Emo, Math, Psionics? That still gives you 0 offensive power at all to start with, leaving you with 2 RNG teleports, 1 melee damage, 0 armor, and a Sleep Spell..?

 

Psionics can probably carry a game just with that freaking push.

 

Math? Blood Mage + Necro? Psionics? All you'd need is one streak of luck and you'd be set for the rest of the game. None of those skills belong in a 'worst possible build'. Trying to kill the player off on the first few levels is pointless - they can just kite around arrow traps to kill monsters safely. You have to focus on the end-game - pick skills that have no future in them. My shot at it:

1. Perception
2. Thrown Weaponry
3. Magic Training
4. Vampirism
5. Big Game Hunter
6. Wand Lore
7. Archery / Blood Mage / Master of Arms / Assassination?

Couldn't decide on the last one. Archery isn't too bad but without Tinkering it won't be reliable. Blood Mage is useless except for the Phylactery (which might give you too much survivability). Master of Arms I've always found lackluster, same with Assassination. I left off Veganism because it makes half the monsters in the game ignore you.

 

Psionics Narco ability is actually very powerful on the first floor.

 

J-Factor: Wand Lore alone can carry you through to when you can start loading up on bolts and armor. I'd swap out wand lore for smithing - way less useful.

 

I would say the worst build is
Master of Arms
Shield Bearer
Big Game Hunter
Thrown Weapon
Archery
Magic Training
Ley Walker


Sure it the build is very defensive and can use ranged weapons to great effect but it does not have much else going for it. It probably starts out quite strong but by floor 4 is likely to be suffering badly. No heal, no aoe, and all good skills (Dangerous Game, invisible geometries) are late in skill trees. Almost all capstone skills are simply stat increase. The EDR is just pointless at that insanely high amount. It gives only about 6 extra damage melee, 6 extra damage ranged, and 13% critical hit nothing of which is all that exciting. You'll have a ton of block and armor, but nothing to helping you deal or resist exotic damages. Also I think the percent chance of bolts and thrown weapons return is only an 30% and all the best stuff explodes without a chance of return.

 

Need to throw in Vampirism for shield bearer, I'd say

 

I tend to agree with Ruigi mostly. My worst build would look like this.

Swords
Maces
Staves
Axes
Magic Training
Vampirism
Veganism

This is about as unplayable as it gets, even on EE I think you'd have no future at all. Best of luck with it.