Chaos Knight Guide

[AlterAsc]

With emphasis on 'cHaOs' part.
Introduction:
Why play Chaos Knight? To break away from typical routine. To embrace chaos and corruptions instead of shying away from them. To deal with problems in a ways that you normally don't use.
Why play non-converted (as in C alignment) CK? Because otherwise you lose everything that makes CK games fairly unique. Might as well play Fighter. Similar skillset, boring class powers, PV focus.
Everything written below is related only for permanently chaotic CKs.

Class limitations:
Most of the normal interactions with non-chaotic NPCs are unavailable. Shops are okay.
List of what i can confirm:

• No Terinyo quests. Blup can teach you swimming.
• No Dwarftown quests and services. Only demented ratling is ready to speak.
• No Arena entry or ratling trader food
• No Ice Queen quests.
• No Sharad-Waador quest.
• EG won't grant the passage if you have the ring.
• Cat lord CAN give you ring.

Other limitations(taken from wiki):

• Skriek will refuse to sell any keys.
• Hawkslayer will actually become hostile if chatted to.
• The mad minstrel won't talk to the PC.
• The old barbarian won't talk to the PC.

What does that mean? List of notable things that you no longer can get or do(aside from staff already not given to chaotic characters):
Skills: Tactics, Herbalism, Courage, Law, Bridge building, Gardening, Smithing.
Artifacts: Golden gladius, Big Punch, Golden Gladius, Needle, Elemental gauntlets, Black torc, Potion of literacy. I assume Rune-covered Trident is unavailable too, but didn't check it.
Items: wand of fireballs, blankets from Thrundarr.

That leads to these gameplay changes:
You have to lure away/kill Thrundarr to pull the lever to grant passage to lower CoC.
You have to lure away/kill EG to pass to lower CoC. Unfortunately in R59 even if kill EG, Darkforge shortcut will not work.
If you didn't start with Literacy and you want it, then it's either dark sage corpse or learning it from ghost librarian.

Class skills and powers:
Skills you get: Athletics, Dodge, Find Weakness, Backstabbing and Two weapon combat.
Nice skillset for melee character. Modifier on Dodge is a bit low, reaching 100 is not likely.

As a normal chaotic character you get (number of corruptions/2) bonus to St, Dx, To and Ma, and same penalty to Wi. First reason to get corrupted more.
You start with 3 corruptions. Notes on corruptions a bit later.
At level 6 you regenerate when you're corrupted. According to wiki, about 1 hp per 10 corruptions points. This power is quite nice. With your addition of your high PV fighting corrupting monsters like orb guardians, balors on D:50 and Andor Drakon becomes much quite easier.
At level 12 you get 1d(character level) speed bonus, randomed anew each turn. Speed is always nice to have, even if it slows leveling a bit.
At level 18 you get 1d8 bonus to weapon skill levels. Very good. If you train your weapon skill to 12, then 75% of the time you'll have grand mastery in that weapon skill.
At level 25 you get 1d(number of corruptions) bonus to St, Dx and To, randomed anew each turn. Second reason to get corrupted more. Mildly irritating because changing To means that you almost never at full health.
At level 32 you get 25% corruptions resistance if have 5+ corruptions and 50% resistance if you have 10+. Nobody else gets as much as this from one power. Especially nice since being C- increases corruption point gain by 30%. I don't know if that means that C- CK get 80% corruptions point or 65%, but i think it's the latter. Anyway this power is great and it comes not too late. If you were gonna eat minotaur emperor corpse you might want to wait till that power.
At level 40 you get 1d(level) bonus to damage when wielding two-handed weapons (those that are under Two-Handed weapon skill). By this time you most likely have over 100 damage on berserk with such weapons, but bonus is nothing to scoff at.
At level 50 you get 4d6 bonus to PV, randomed anew each turn. Not the worst lvl50 power, but practically irrelevant. Even less relevant if you attempt OCG, since final boss ignores PV.
All in all compared to other classes CK powers are in the top10 i'd say. Every time you forego them, another CK kills ten puppies.

Notes on corruptions:

• Stiff muscles. Universally avoid. If started with, then just reroll, unless you actually want to play with them.
• Decay corruption halves ALL HP regeneration and comes with annoying -5 strength and -10 speed, so starting with it is a pain. If gained later when you are already strong and fast and have a lot of regen leave it be.
• Mana battery. If you're going for special ending and old crone is not given wand, then remove it or reroll. Otherwise decide whether it is worth using source of corruption removal.
• Mists of ChAoS. Starting with it heavily limits your vision. Reroll unless you want to amuse yourself with having 2 square vision.
• Tentacle mouth. If you plan to cast things, then reroll. Also -15 Ap increases corruption speed by quite a bit. Mostly relevant for elves, since CKs of other races typically have less then 10 starting Ap.
• Acid blood. Normally very helpful corruption. Helps kill EG immensely. With one big 'but'. 'Near omnipotent elder chaos god' is vulnerable to this too. If 75% your battle with him consists of you running after being that can teleport away and pass through walls and you succumb to chaos plane corruption, then you were warned that it might happen. Some people reported it helped them though.
• Astral attunement. Unless you like to be randomly thrown all over the level, then reroll.
• Unholy aura. Since your first stop is to get healing i'd recommend rerolling.
• If one (or several) of your starting corruptions heavily reduces St and/or To you might wish to reroll. On the other hand since you can't start burdened and CK starting equipment weights a ton, that means your natural St is high, which is somewhat beneficial in the long run.
• Also stockpile thick gauntlets. You can never have too many thick gauntlets. Since elemental gauntlets are no there for you, poison hands are not a big deal.

Remember this: if you're level 32+ CK and you get 10 corruptions you're not halfway to jelly transformation death as are other characters. Amount of corruption required to kill you is almost as high as one required to kill another non-CK character with the same alignment with zero corruptions. With all your powers you don't want to have less corruptions. If corruption is not game-breaking for you, leave it be. You gain power from them.

Rolling a character:
Starsign: whatever. Aside from typical good choices, there's also Tree. +5 Wi helps get Immune to Pain talent and increase in Wi potential somewhat helps with countering -Wi from being corrupted.
Remember that you can't get literacy from Thrundarr? Unless you want to search for dark sage corpse, either roll 10+ Le, or pick elf race.
As always remember about lifespan, since you are melee character.
HE,GE and ME guarantee Literacy at decent value.
DE, Drakeling and ME give you Alertness. Great skill, reaching 100 is easy.
Dwarfs are the only ones that get Smithing. There's noone to fix broken pickaxes. If you want to smith a lot, hope that you get crowned with boots. They are also guranteed to start with proper two-handed class weapon.
Orcs don't get anything. Except mining and metallurgy, but what are you gonna do with them? Enjoy your short life working in a mine.
Gnomes get Ventriloquism and Gemology. Ventriloquism can be used to confuse Thrundarr from the lever. Gemology is as useful as you are ready to grind for gems.
Trolls with their slow leveling don't get most of the class powers and instead are rewarded with high St,To and Mining, Gemology and Bridge building skills. Not really worth it.
Mist elves start with full mithril gear, grant Alertness and Literacy. Solid choice. CK is one of not many classes for them where you don't suffer horribly from your extra low hp.
Other than that there's not much to say. There is no clear best race for CK. Trolls and orcs are bad choices, and HE/GE are mostly outclassed by ME. Outside of these it's up to you which skills/lifespan/shop prices do you prefer to have.

Talents:
If you plan on using heavy (weight >100s) weapons, get basher line on talents.
PV talents increase your already high PV, making you even tougher.
Since several of your crowning gifts are extremely heavy you may consider taking Porter line.
Speed talents are always useful.
Melee/Missile weapon master talents are probably not worth it with amount of perks required a bonus being quite low.
Other than that once again pick whatever suits your fancy.
Crowning gifts:
5 of them are great.
Spiked armor - overall it is the best armor in the game. If shopkeeper gets angry, just kill him. Unless that's Casino, i'd advise removing it there.
Helmet - the best helmet that you can get. And very light compared to your other gifts.
Boots - bonuses are excellent but extremely heavy and unlike armor doesn't provide St bonus. You might want to use seven league boots instead.
Foeslammer and Grod - cool weapons.
Deathblade - RNG hates you. However axe of the minotaur emperor is anyway better than any other weapon so don't be discouraged too much.

Aside from possibly getting unfavorable corruptions i advise getting crowned as early as possible.

Tips on actually playing:
Hit stuff until it dies.
Early game:
First kill is irrelevant. Start by getting healing chaotic way, since there's no reason not to get it.
Do whatever you want.
One of your priorities should be getting teleport control. After you get it and means of teleportation, grab the scroll of corruption removal in HMV. Better do it now and not when you suddenly get mana battery and your wand becomes one way trip.
Mid game(pre-ToEF):
Pyramid should be easy.
Thrundarr can be lured away by wand of stunning or similar. Or if you already sold everything you want and got crowned and such, just wipe dwarftown.
Raid darkforge for weapons(if you got crowned with armor) or hope for dragon scale mail if you got weapon. Anyway tasty exp.
If you decided to not get crowned and there's no decent weapons around(not even basic two-hander like great axe), use Moon Sickle to clear Darkforge. With your lvl6 power it's not hard. You'll get one corruption to clear enemies till weapon stash. Or you can teleport around there and hope that one of teleports will be controlled one.
How to deal with ToEF without blankets or ring of ice: explore first 3 levels, later return with wand of tp and wand of digging and pickaxes. Tp, ascend, repeat,on lvl3 leave your wand of tp,ascend, and hope that your digging means don't burn away while you dig.
Alternate way of getting one fireproof blanket: kill the ice queen. That's tough, but doable. Don't forget required set of intrinsics.
As i said before ACW should not be a problem with your lvl6 power.
Late game(Post-ToeF):
Eternal Guardian. Either kill him, or lure him away from the stairs and tp there and descend. Killing him requires good weapon as he has 60 PV. If you have acid blood then it's easy. If you don't have means of disabling him, there's always simple hit until it dies. With AotME/Vanquisher/Foeslammer, lvl25 and moderately strong(unmodified stats less than 25) expect about 4 wishes to heal in direct confontation. More if your weapon is worse.

If you have at least a decent weapon - any of your crowning gifts or simple eternium 2hander (or maybe you got Executor), then you can go and finish the game. Neither guardians, nor anyone on D:50 will be a real challenge unless you do something stupid.
Other things to do:
Kill the minotaur emperor. Because that's where the best weapon in terms of raw power lies. Minotaur Maze is really annoying to do unless you got scroll of magic mapping. You can get 8 of them from bug temple and it should not provided too much problems if you have means of regeneration.
Attempt OCG if you think you're up for the task.
If you don't have enough artifacts to feed the ratling, remember about Shield and Amulet of raw steel since neither druid not dwarf are of any importance to you.
Journey to SIL - long and boring. I advise doing it after getting lvl32 power. MaLaKaI is strong in melee. If you get unlucky he can kill you in one turn. With AotME you can kill him in one too.
D:50 - one-shot or two-shot (or three-shot if you're reaally unlucky) everything. Tactics are for losers.
Fight with Andor Drakon - hit him until he dies. It took me 4 SoCRs and 5 potions of ultra healing to kill him with AotME. With acid blood it's hard to estimate.
Anyway even if you die, that's definitely the end. Hope you had fun.

Wanted to write a CK guide for a long time, but only recently won OCG with him. Decided to post on the forums.