Blasphemous
04-03-2014, 12:07 AM
(This is a fine example of a wall of text. If you don't like this - the short version is, L+ mindcrafter closed the gate and the game was easy.)
I love mindcrafters. Such an amazing list of class-specific powers that just blows minds (literally) in the late-end game.
I picked raven for one reason - trident.
Once I obtained it as soon as I could, I began extensively training thrown spears, which paid off tremendously, from the moment I put it into the missile slot, till Fisty dropped after just 4 hits.
Also, I chose grey elves because they are simply the best, no matter what some funny people say :P
In the end I was unnaturally aged by 113 years, even after drinking ~3 potions of youth randomly found, and still just grown-up.
Started off with a random potion of invis so I went to check out the BM. Seven league boots were found and promptly stolen. 1st level of DD had an altar and I have found a potion of water pretty early too.
Needless to say, wilderness travel time was reduced significantly from the onset. Funny how things work out, I ran around in those boots from the beginning until the very end, never losing them to traps, bolts etc.
Important to mention some lucky early finds - robe with 4 pv and gloves with 3. Both cursed but 7 pv for an MC at this stage of the game was a real life saver.
Not long after, a wooden shield [+3, +4] and metal helmet pushed my PV to 12 and I predicted that mid game has just begun.
Anyway, this was a classic route for me - > DD for gardening, PC, then CoC. I skipped SMC for the time being since I couldn't locate the down staircase quickly enough despite generating the dungeon at level 1.
Some nasties showed up and I decided to wait until I get a scroll of magic mapping and wand of tele.
I went on to complete dwarven quests and in the course of clearing griffyard, found what I needed to safely pass through SMC.
Very few special locations/events were encountered in this game - three random altars in the entire CoC, two random pools, single ring shop on D:2, that's it.
I precrowned eventually and got scorched spear. It served well as training weapon and at that stage in the game, 3d8+1 damage is not bad.
Turned out I have never found a better spear than this, barring the trident which served a slightly different purpose.
Around level 20, I was largely done with mid game - RotHK obtained, thanks to wand of cold from Waldy - dwarven mystic gave me potions, not scrolls, DfG has been raided but produced no useful items, pools were sipped and granted one wish (aols) and two doomings. 10 treasure graves dug out but nothing exciting there.
I went to CoC, saved Kelly, retrieved water orb and explored a bit.
With RotHK and ele gauntlets, I was almost ready for the tower.
Armed with triple digits of spense I entered looking for that single fire giant/dragon/drake corpse to eat and walk around safely.
Instead, a grue drops RDSM which is even better thanks to 13 pv.
At this stage, thrown spears were around level 7-8 and had a range of 6 (or more?). All demons and grues went down in 1-2 hits without the risk of corruption; elementals had to be prodded with a sword of sharpness.
Wyrm wasn't even disabled - I just threw the trident and he was down in 3 hits, without doing absolutely anything to me. Disappointed, I left, without clearing the rest - I was afraid of losing 7LB despite blessed ring of ice.
After the wyrm dropped dead, I jumped from L to L+ and soon after crowned with =fire (the irony, having just completed the tower) and havlor. That +12 dv & pv is a huge defensive and protective boost, from then on I oscillated between 45-50 PV.
With shields and spears trained, as well as some scrolls of defense read, I had 57 dv on berserk and around 100 more on coward. Pretty good.
Rest of the game is history - everything that was a demon or undead was killed by throwing the trident, everything else was confused then stabbed with sword of sharpness.
At some point I got fragile stilts corruption which worked in perfect synergy with 7LB, long stride, raven +10 speed and all speed talents.
I haven't encountered any quickling royalty, otherwise absolutely nothing was capable of catching up with me.
I explored CoC till D:48, getting the cat ring on my way down. Mindcrafters have it easy - confused cats are locked in dead-end rooms and forgotten, beginning with char lvl 1.
Casino had Ironfist, which I bought. Didn't feel like robing and the price was acceptable at ~450k.
There were two red vaults and one GUV. I cleared them all, dragons almost did not destroy any items, as it was difficult for them to just walk around, thanks to confusion wave.
GUV was also relatively easy, if time-consuming. All liches were killed with the trident in max 3 hits. Sadly, some of them summoned green worms which eventually filled the whole vault and I had to literally waddle through an endless green river full of crazed, biting, acid-spitting little fuckers, to reach the artifact rooms. It was the easiest of all GUVs, one emp lich, 12 kings, 4 of which were in mentioned single or double tile rooms.
What did I get for all this effort? Hammerhead and cat's claw... I was, ehm, annoyed as I expected something better to replace my non-artifact, constantly rusting and corroding sword of sharpness.
Scorched spear wasn't cutting it at this point and the only redeeming factor was the trident that I occasionally used in melee (albeit very rarely).
Before D:50, I cleared the bug temple. Mentioned energy cost reducers and speed allowed me to deal with the bugs in an orderly fashion - telekinetic blast for green ones, two telekinetic blasts for black. Smashed the statues and obtained the important scrolls.
I then went to the maze, being 100k exp points away from char level 30. Further enhanced my speed with nature's companion from mino emp. Potions were of great use as well. I loved how the mino mages stumbled against the walls, all confused, it was priceless to witness. Their complete inability to drain stats or simply do anything when confused was a welcome change after many past chars that had it the hard way.
Also, about 8 scrolls from bugwil that supposedly make it so easy in the maze - that is total bullshit. I had to explore so many levels manually, I had level 6 without down staircase 3 times, 3 more levels were dead ends, I had to manually explore about 70% of the entire maze. No, I will never agree that those 8 scrolls make it easy. If you're lucky, the right staircases will be found without those and it's a simple matter then. But if you pick the wrong stairs... even twice as many scrolls might not be enough to comfortably do the maze.
On the other hand, I actually sort of... enjoyed the maze. I mean, it was a bit tedious but compared to the other levels everywhere else, its uniqueness was a welcome change.
Also, playing a mindcrafter and getting teleportitis corruption might not be so bad... but only for mindcrafters and especially for the maze.
Earlier, I had a lucky roll from one of the many wands of wonder and got teleportation. Mino emp also dropped the respective spellbook and I could bookcast it. The cost was prohibitive, however. 240 PP. I wasn't crying when the book got drenched by a water trap.
Back to CoC with AotME, I could finally slay things. Cleared air and earth temples with it, though all demons and grues were 1-hitted with thrown trident. When compared, it does significantly more damage when thrown than when wielded.
I have to once again underline the crucial role this artifact had, from the moment of procuring it.
Went on to kill Ancient Blue Wyrm. BDC is another place where mindcrafters truly shine.
Normally item destruction can be very annoying. When the dragons and wyrms are confused however, they rarely breathe lightning. They rarely do anything at all actually.
I used confusion extensively here and avoided item destruction almost entirely.
With 44 Wi, even Shrax only resisted twice and then went on stumbling. He got AotME'd, same as every other inhabitant of the bottom level.
In mana temple, I extensively used GTB - with necklace of the eye, I was able to take out the chaos wizards before they had the chance to fill the temple with red Cs.
Its most amazing feature is total disregard for any (un)intentional meat shields that have already been summoned or simply stood in the way.
You just target the stuff you want gone and it's gone. 1 blast per wizard was enough. Truly amazing power.
At this point I was at level 39, ready to hit D:50. Single RoDS was found in BDC and I wished for... potion of uselessness. I really didn't need anything else.
It turned into whirlwind on D:49. One last middle finger from the RNG, at least in the artifact department and then the final showdown.
Mindcrafters have another feature that make them so fun to play - their physical contact with corrupting monsters is even more limited than in case of wizards, at least when you rely so heavily on ranged attacks as I did. GTB however works perfectly without it.
This in turn means, the only real issue is with background corruption. I completed the game before day 90 so corruption was virtually no problem. 6 scrolls from kelly +1 from hmv and 3 from bugwil, 4 pocc from mino emp.
In the end (after closing the gate) I still had half the potions left and only one corruption (gills) that I reserved for the unicorn so she could actually have something to do.
Half the scrolls were used on D:50 alone to remove stuff like stiff muscles, maggots, babbling mouth and mana battery.
All balors and ghost lords were killed with the trident. It was exceptionally effective and only twice did not return. Chaos wizards were once again treated with GTB, though this time each required two prods. No matter, they still couldn't summon in time.
This was one of the easiest D:50s I have ever had - I prayed once because I couldn't be bothered with blessing my scrolls of power and drank PoUH once after some summoned GEEs crited me with rocks and stuff. Only once my HP went down to ~30%.
Healed that with PoUH again, spense was almost useless here.
This is an outstanding class to play - such a difficult early game but the end game... that's just pure ecstasy ;)
You literally don't know which amazing power to use against a monster. The powers are so versatile too - you have offense, defense, passive effects of confusion...
With my dv/pv though, I didn't bother with mental shield. I also charged wands of tele with casino booze, so the lvl 40 power was only useful for getting back to the surface.
Mindcrafters really need teleport self at least at lvl 25.
Though the skillset may suck balls, it didn't matter in the end. No alertness and no find weakness, no healing and no candle - all this was forgotten when I could throw the trident 10 tiles away and farm spense when needed thanks to gardening+herbalism.
Near-immunity to confusing attacks by some powerful monsters really helps too.
I will definitely play this class again once pre21 comes out. I can't praise it enough, with the sole issue of early game that is really tough at times and strongly reliant on luck with items. Once you get past this, it's a a walk in the park.
I love mindcrafters. Such an amazing list of class-specific powers that just blows minds (literally) in the late-end game.
I picked raven for one reason - trident.
Once I obtained it as soon as I could, I began extensively training thrown spears, which paid off tremendously, from the moment I put it into the missile slot, till Fisty dropped after just 4 hits.
Also, I chose grey elves because they are simply the best, no matter what some funny people say :P
In the end I was unnaturally aged by 113 years, even after drinking ~3 potions of youth randomly found, and still just grown-up.
Started off with a random potion of invis so I went to check out the BM. Seven league boots were found and promptly stolen. 1st level of DD had an altar and I have found a potion of water pretty early too.
Needless to say, wilderness travel time was reduced significantly from the onset. Funny how things work out, I ran around in those boots from the beginning until the very end, never losing them to traps, bolts etc.
Important to mention some lucky early finds - robe with 4 pv and gloves with 3. Both cursed but 7 pv for an MC at this stage of the game was a real life saver.
Not long after, a wooden shield [+3, +4] and metal helmet pushed my PV to 12 and I predicted that mid game has just begun.
Anyway, this was a classic route for me - > DD for gardening, PC, then CoC. I skipped SMC for the time being since I couldn't locate the down staircase quickly enough despite generating the dungeon at level 1.
Some nasties showed up and I decided to wait until I get a scroll of magic mapping and wand of tele.
I went on to complete dwarven quests and in the course of clearing griffyard, found what I needed to safely pass through SMC.
Very few special locations/events were encountered in this game - three random altars in the entire CoC, two random pools, single ring shop on D:2, that's it.
I precrowned eventually and got scorched spear. It served well as training weapon and at that stage in the game, 3d8+1 damage is not bad.
Turned out I have never found a better spear than this, barring the trident which served a slightly different purpose.
Around level 20, I was largely done with mid game - RotHK obtained, thanks to wand of cold from Waldy - dwarven mystic gave me potions, not scrolls, DfG has been raided but produced no useful items, pools were sipped and granted one wish (aols) and two doomings. 10 treasure graves dug out but nothing exciting there.
I went to CoC, saved Kelly, retrieved water orb and explored a bit.
With RotHK and ele gauntlets, I was almost ready for the tower.
Armed with triple digits of spense I entered looking for that single fire giant/dragon/drake corpse to eat and walk around safely.
Instead, a grue drops RDSM which is even better thanks to 13 pv.
At this stage, thrown spears were around level 7-8 and had a range of 6 (or more?). All demons and grues went down in 1-2 hits without the risk of corruption; elementals had to be prodded with a sword of sharpness.
Wyrm wasn't even disabled - I just threw the trident and he was down in 3 hits, without doing absolutely anything to me. Disappointed, I left, without clearing the rest - I was afraid of losing 7LB despite blessed ring of ice.
After the wyrm dropped dead, I jumped from L to L+ and soon after crowned with =fire (the irony, having just completed the tower) and havlor. That +12 dv & pv is a huge defensive and protective boost, from then on I oscillated between 45-50 PV.
With shields and spears trained, as well as some scrolls of defense read, I had 57 dv on berserk and around 100 more on coward. Pretty good.
Rest of the game is history - everything that was a demon or undead was killed by throwing the trident, everything else was confused then stabbed with sword of sharpness.
At some point I got fragile stilts corruption which worked in perfect synergy with 7LB, long stride, raven +10 speed and all speed talents.
I haven't encountered any quickling royalty, otherwise absolutely nothing was capable of catching up with me.
I explored CoC till D:48, getting the cat ring on my way down. Mindcrafters have it easy - confused cats are locked in dead-end rooms and forgotten, beginning with char lvl 1.
Casino had Ironfist, which I bought. Didn't feel like robing and the price was acceptable at ~450k.
There were two red vaults and one GUV. I cleared them all, dragons almost did not destroy any items, as it was difficult for them to just walk around, thanks to confusion wave.
GUV was also relatively easy, if time-consuming. All liches were killed with the trident in max 3 hits. Sadly, some of them summoned green worms which eventually filled the whole vault and I had to literally waddle through an endless green river full of crazed, biting, acid-spitting little fuckers, to reach the artifact rooms. It was the easiest of all GUVs, one emp lich, 12 kings, 4 of which were in mentioned single or double tile rooms.
What did I get for all this effort? Hammerhead and cat's claw... I was, ehm, annoyed as I expected something better to replace my non-artifact, constantly rusting and corroding sword of sharpness.
Scorched spear wasn't cutting it at this point and the only redeeming factor was the trident that I occasionally used in melee (albeit very rarely).
Before D:50, I cleared the bug temple. Mentioned energy cost reducers and speed allowed me to deal with the bugs in an orderly fashion - telekinetic blast for green ones, two telekinetic blasts for black. Smashed the statues and obtained the important scrolls.
I then went to the maze, being 100k exp points away from char level 30. Further enhanced my speed with nature's companion from mino emp. Potions were of great use as well. I loved how the mino mages stumbled against the walls, all confused, it was priceless to witness. Their complete inability to drain stats or simply do anything when confused was a welcome change after many past chars that had it the hard way.
Also, about 8 scrolls from bugwil that supposedly make it so easy in the maze - that is total bullshit. I had to explore so many levels manually, I had level 6 without down staircase 3 times, 3 more levels were dead ends, I had to manually explore about 70% of the entire maze. No, I will never agree that those 8 scrolls make it easy. If you're lucky, the right staircases will be found without those and it's a simple matter then. But if you pick the wrong stairs... even twice as many scrolls might not be enough to comfortably do the maze.
On the other hand, I actually sort of... enjoyed the maze. I mean, it was a bit tedious but compared to the other levels everywhere else, its uniqueness was a welcome change.
Also, playing a mindcrafter and getting teleportitis corruption might not be so bad... but only for mindcrafters and especially for the maze.
Earlier, I had a lucky roll from one of the many wands of wonder and got teleportation. Mino emp also dropped the respective spellbook and I could bookcast it. The cost was prohibitive, however. 240 PP. I wasn't crying when the book got drenched by a water trap.
Back to CoC with AotME, I could finally slay things. Cleared air and earth temples with it, though all demons and grues were 1-hitted with thrown trident. When compared, it does significantly more damage when thrown than when wielded.
I have to once again underline the crucial role this artifact had, from the moment of procuring it.
Went on to kill Ancient Blue Wyrm. BDC is another place where mindcrafters truly shine.
Normally item destruction can be very annoying. When the dragons and wyrms are confused however, they rarely breathe lightning. They rarely do anything at all actually.
I used confusion extensively here and avoided item destruction almost entirely.
With 44 Wi, even Shrax only resisted twice and then went on stumbling. He got AotME'd, same as every other inhabitant of the bottom level.
In mana temple, I extensively used GTB - with necklace of the eye, I was able to take out the chaos wizards before they had the chance to fill the temple with red Cs.
Its most amazing feature is total disregard for any (un)intentional meat shields that have already been summoned or simply stood in the way.
You just target the stuff you want gone and it's gone. 1 blast per wizard was enough. Truly amazing power.
At this point I was at level 39, ready to hit D:50. Single RoDS was found in BDC and I wished for... potion of uselessness. I really didn't need anything else.
It turned into whirlwind on D:49. One last middle finger from the RNG, at least in the artifact department and then the final showdown.
Mindcrafters have another feature that make them so fun to play - their physical contact with corrupting monsters is even more limited than in case of wizards, at least when you rely so heavily on ranged attacks as I did. GTB however works perfectly without it.
This in turn means, the only real issue is with background corruption. I completed the game before day 90 so corruption was virtually no problem. 6 scrolls from kelly +1 from hmv and 3 from bugwil, 4 pocc from mino emp.
In the end (after closing the gate) I still had half the potions left and only one corruption (gills) that I reserved for the unicorn so she could actually have something to do.
Half the scrolls were used on D:50 alone to remove stuff like stiff muscles, maggots, babbling mouth and mana battery.
All balors and ghost lords were killed with the trident. It was exceptionally effective and only twice did not return. Chaos wizards were once again treated with GTB, though this time each required two prods. No matter, they still couldn't summon in time.
This was one of the easiest D:50s I have ever had - I prayed once because I couldn't be bothered with blessing my scrolls of power and drank PoUH once after some summoned GEEs crited me with rocks and stuff. Only once my HP went down to ~30%.
Healed that with PoUH again, spense was almost useless here.
This is an outstanding class to play - such a difficult early game but the end game... that's just pure ecstasy ;)
You literally don't know which amazing power to use against a monster. The powers are so versatile too - you have offense, defense, passive effects of confusion...
With my dv/pv though, I didn't bother with mental shield. I also charged wands of tele with casino booze, so the lvl 40 power was only useful for getting back to the surface.
Mindcrafters really need teleport self at least at lvl 25.
Though the skillset may suck balls, it didn't matter in the end. No alertness and no find weakness, no healing and no candle - all this was forgotten when I could throw the trident 10 tiles away and farm spense when needed thanks to gardening+herbalism.
Near-immunity to confusing attacks by some powerful monsters really helps too.
I will definitely play this class again once pre21 comes out. I can't praise it enough, with the sole issue of early game that is really tough at times and strongly reliant on luck with items. Once you get past this, it's a a walk in the park.