Best r/c combo for ultra ending?

[mjz15]

Pretty self-explanatory title
Been fooling around with a couple r/c combo's for ultra endings... I had a dwarven paladin that had quite some luck: precrowned with Justifier and a GGV in FGJC but he got death rayed by Nuurgy.
Any suggestions? What R/C combo would be most suitable for ultra ending, and why?

[_Ln_]

Pretty self-explanatory title
Been fooling around with a couple r/c combo's for ultra endings... I had a dwarven paladin that had quite some luck: precrowned with Justifier and a GGV in FGJC but he got death rayed by Nuurgy.
Any suggestions? What R/C combo would be most suitable for ultra ending, and why?

The one which finds an AOLS before Khelly.

[auricbond]

Ah, to feel like a beginner again... what does R/C mean?

[grobblewobble]

Yeah, the biggest hurdle is finding the AoLS. And the most likely way to get it is from sipping the Darkforge pools (you have about 50% chance to get at least one wish there).

So what you need is a R/C that can reach the prerequisites for DF poolsipping very fast. If sipping fails, starting a new character and trying again should be as little work as possible.

The prerequisites:
- Be able to kill the steel golems.
- Have high piety to remove doom.
- Be able to restore teleport control in case you lose it (especially when you gain teleportitis).

Dwarves (gold) and hurthlings (cooked corpses) gain piety more easily than other races. Strong classes will be able to deal with the golems more quickly, although casters might be a little worse than archers/barbarians if they don't luck out with a spellbook of lightning ball.

Restoring teleport control is mainly a question of remembering to preserve a spare blink dog corpse in a shop, but having food preservation helps a little with that too.

All in all, dwarf barbarian and hurthling archer sound like good picks.

Auricbond: Race/Class

[ahpla]

i have not attempted an ultra yet but i think it would be easier to decide on a class (preferably "strong") and choose a class that fits best

like if you choose a barbarian, a dwarf or maybe orc would be the optimal choice, if you go for a wizard then maybe consider a gray elf or a gnome, for archer an elf race

each race has a drawback though, orcs have short lifespan so drinking from pools can kill you quite easy, hurthlings start with low strenght etc..

in the end its up to you to choose of course

[blunk]

Now I've not done an ultra yet but I'd rate boars VERY rare, if you on top of that add no food preservation the chance for a skull is somewhat slim. I don't however see early game str as an issue, 18-20 in midgame is rarely a problem.
From what I've seen grey elven wiz is a solid r/c.
Reasons, lifespan, acid ball, alchemy and acid ball.

[mjz15]

Yeah the AOLS is a pretty big hurdle... It can be quite hard to become strong enough to deal with the steel golems without going beyond D:16. That I think is the biggest hurdle. I often find myself doing just about anything that can be done below d:16 except Darkforge, and not quite powerful enough for the golems. Also I tend to not use characters withoug the healing skill, because the Black Torc is excellent ratling fodder and the Druid corpse gives you a potion of cure corruption, so that's less to worry about. So that rules out barbarians, archers, assassins etc. Also I want to have characters that are literate but not TOO literate so I can get the potion of literacy as ratling fodder without actually having to drink it. And, precrowning can be very important.
Guess I'll just have to keep trying until I get lucky and get a character that gets really strong.

[Rick]

The lucky one I think...Last death of a Dark elven wizard (one of many): Finally for the first time in a ring shop in UD found a ring of djinny summoning (and suddenly Khelavaster appears in my mind), so robbed the shop with teleport without control (was even a very funny situation, first try teleport me just outside his door, not so easy to escape the shopkeeper and jellys everywere), emerged in HMV still a bit weak after a very hard travel, just to die for a mimic in the shop. All the Gods were into my imprecations this time.

[_Ln_]

Yeah the AOLS is a pretty big hurdle... It can be quite hard to become strong enough to deal with the steel golems without going beyond D:16. That I think is the biggest hurdle. I often find myself doing just about anything that can be done below d:16 except Darkforge, and not quite powerful enough for the golems. Also I tend to not use characters withoug the healing skill, because the Black Torc is excellent ratling fodder and the Druid corpse gives you a potion of cure corruption, so that's less to worry about. So that rules out barbarians, archers, assassins etc. Also I want to have characters that are literate but not TOO literate so I can get the potion of literacy as ratling fodder without actually having to drink it. And, precrowning can be very important.
Guess I'll just have to keep trying until I get lucky and get a character that gets really strong.

This is all wrong except the last part. If you have an ultra in mind, you only need to remove Trolls from your R/C list because of xp reasons.

Any character can take on steel golems with the Big Punch.
Black torc is not a requirement, you can find plenty of junk even without it (especially if you manage the potion of literacy).

Personally I save Khelly in 90% of the games even going to some grindfests to manage that. However, this is not how I advise other players to play.

Return to your last statement. Play any char you want (except trolls) and as soon as you luck out on an AOLS normally or obtain it through DFG, just go for it. If you are running out of options, just kill off Khelly and claim a normal win.

EDIT:
@blunk
As far as I am aware, boar skull drops have nothing to do with Food Preservation. This is not the first time I'm seeing this particular bit of info. I wonder where it started.

[JellySlayer]

Troll assassins are tolerable for ultras since assassins have lower level requirements. Other trolls require excessive wishes to ultra. I haven't tried a mist elf ultra, but their xp requirements are high and might have similar, though not so severe, problems.

Black torc is not necessary at all, IMHO. There are lots of artifacts available, especially with the larger number of greater vaults in the game. The extra PoCC doesn't matter either because corruption is basically a non-issue in current versions. You'll be swimming in SoCR by the endgame.

Boars can only be found at level 15 or above on forest tiles. IIRC, they drop skulls at a flat 1/3 rate. Of the ultra requirements, the skull is generally not that big of a deal to find, IMHO, compared to the AoLS or the scroll of danger.

A few other considerations:
-Beastfighters and, to a lesser extent, duelists have a more-annoying-than-average fight against Andor Drakon because they can't wield the ToTRR effectively.
-Thieves likewise have problems because their stunning class power makes him teleport randomly and forces you to chase him (unless this was fixed?)
-Ultras require some alignment shifting which may cause problems for chaos knights.
-Drakelings have problems in the Ice Queen area. This isn't a huge deal, but having early access to the greater vault in the frost giant caves is a great place to try to get a wish/AoLS for Khelly.
-While I generally prefer the shorter-lived races for better starting toughness, for an ultra where you may have to mess with a lot of pools and whatnot, having a longer lifespan is not a bad terrible idea just so you don't have to worry about aging. Consider a dwarf, gnome, or elf.