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James Fung
United States
Berkeley
California
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Fail Whale
I think we've covered most of the basic / common ideas for the game. From here on, I expect it will mostly be situational advice, say for a particular class, boss, god, monster, etc.
For instance, I've mentioned before that our ultimate goal is to defeat the boss, and therefore our build should adapt to suit the boss. I'd like to summarize what happened in this game:
* Find the boss after about a quarter of the map is explored, but still level 1. Gharbad has extremely high damage but has relatively low health. There are 3 ways of dealing with him: 1) wear him down with fireballs (hard with 60% magic resist) and first strike; 2a) acquire sufficient health and/or physical resist to take a blow, then use health potions or first strike; 2b) use death protection (requires an item or glyph) to survive one blow, the finish off with first strike or more death protection.
* Find and buy Pendant of health (+10 max HP, 25 gold). This helps 2a.
* Find BYSSEPS. This helps level up faster.
* Find BURNDAYRAZ. Because I'm a Berserker, I decide option 1 is likely, so I convert it for more damage (to level up faster).
* Find altar of Taurog, which ordinarily is an excellent god for Berserkers: Taurog punishes magic use, but we already have a penalty to use glyphs. In return, he strengthens our melee. The problem is besides increasing our melee damage, Taurog doesn't really help us fight this particular boss.
* Find GETINDARE. Since it will be key defeating the boss, we leave it on the ground.
* Reach level 9 and explore entire map, at which point I realize there's no way left defeat the boss.
What could I have done differently? Well, one less glyph usage might have gotten us to 92 Piety, at which point we could 1a) cast BYSSEPS for -5 Piety; 1b) convert BYSSEPS (converting a glyph doesn't cancel its effect) for +5 Piety; 2) do the same for GETINDARE; 3) ask Taurog for Rage boon, +50% damage, cost 90 Piety; 4) hope that's enough to first strike the boss.
Alternately, instead of converting the fireball glyph, we could have saved it. Okay, the boss has 60% magic resistance, but a level 9 fireball would still inflict 21 damage. With 13 max MP and 4 mana potions, we could fire 4 fireballs, bringing the boss into first strike range. The bottom line is there were ways of improving our chances against the boss, but because I was so intent on leveling up the Berserker rather than preparing for the boss, I missed or eliminated some options.
As a final note, one of the altars was Bindor Ironshield, but we found him fairly late. There might have been a way to get Hardiness (25% physical resist), but I don't think that would be enough to survive one attack from this boss.
False idols
Berserkers are definitely a melee class (bonus melee damage in certain situations, penalty to glyph usage), so Human or Dwarf is the order of the day.
I'd like to cover another way to screw up a Berserker build. As mentioned above, Berserkers are good melee characters. They are especially good at leveling up since they deal extra damage against monsters higher than them in level. And Dracul is a decent god for melee fighters, since he grants bonus damage, damage resistance, and life steal (I think it's our damage gets converted to health, but it could be enemy health that gets converted to our health). The problem is this: the downside to Dracul, besides getting penalized for killing undead (and there happened to be a lot of undead on this map), is that we are leveled up but without increasing HP and damage, though at least fireballs level up. Effectively, we gave up bonus XP from killing high level monsters, which Berserkers are good at, in exchange for Dracul's boons. In retrospect, this was not a good idea.
Here we've found the boss: a gorgon. She is one of the easier ones, I feel, with only 75 damage and 190 HP. The hard part is that she also has first strike and turns us to stone if we're not at full health. Therefore there are at least 4 ways of dealing with her: 1) take one shot, use health potions, and then finish her; 2) soften her up with fireballs then finish her with the first shot; 3) use the level up trick to refill health; 4) poison (which we haven't unlocked). But as you've probably noticed, I usually save potions for the boss fight anyway, so option 1 is probably how this run will go.
Following Dracul really hinders the Berserker: during level 2, we only fight monsters level 2 or below. During level 3, the only bonus XP comes from a level 4 meat man. During level 4, a level 5 meat man. I'm also hesitant to ask Dracul for a boon (like Bloodfury, +20% damage, 20 Piety, -5 max HP) because if we drop below 0 Piety from killing an undead, Dracul will kill us on the spot, and we have to farm a number of undead to level up.
Things look up when we hit level 5: we can take down the level 6 goat, level 6 goblin, and level 7 warlock (Berserkers have 50% magic resistance) seen above. This brings us to level 6, when we can take down the a level 7 meat man. We have enough Piety and non-undead monsters remaining that I think it's safe to get Bloodhunger (+20% life steal, 30 Piety, -5 max HP). The hope is that, fighting the boss with life steal, we would only need 2 health potions to get back up to full health. Just in case, we buy a health potion when we get the chance.
Let's fast forward. The only interesting to happen was we killed a level 8 gorgon when at level 6. By now, we have explored almost all of the map and killed all of the non-undead monsters, except a couple that will take a lot of HP. It so happens we can take the boss down now: with 3 mana potions, we can cast 3 fireballs (remember to convert the glyph after we're sure we'll never use it again). It turns out, even with life steal, at level 7 it takes 3 health potions to recover to full health. However, because of the fireball, we only need to buy one extra melee attack. Understand this: remember that Dracul artificially inflated our level by one, so could have taken down the boss with a level 6 Berserker (the extra damage from level 7 fireballs only accounts for 12 damage, which I don't think we needed), which is why I say this boss is one of the easier ones.
Was there a way to reach level 8? We could check how hard it would be to kill one of the level 9 monsters (both have magical attack, which we have 50% reduction to), and then 4 XP worth of low-level undead to level up. We can kill 3 undead without Dracul terminating us. But with only a handful of unrevealed tiles left, it would be a good idea to calculate exactly how many tiles we would need for a running battle or to heal up to pull the level up trick.
Now that I've written it up, I've felt like I've gypped people out of seeing a good Berserker run, so I may do another one later. Instead, the morale of this session is to pay attention to the boss and adjust our build accordingly.
(Aside: this thread's title is not a Discworld reference, sorry. I attend Berkeley, and amalgams of Berkeley and Berserker are quite appropriate to the student population.)
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Ken H.
United States
Amherst
Ohio
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fusag wrote: Berserkers are definitely a melee class (bonus melee damage in certain situations, penalty to glyph usage), so Human or Dwarf is the order of the day.
I've been playing around with Halfling Berserkers, and it was working pretty well on the normal dungeon.
I was struggling to beat the Crypt level -- must have tried it a dozen times or more, with different race/class combinations. I could make it to the end, but kept coming up short against the bosses. I had beaten it months ago with the Priest, but I wanted to get another win to raise gold limit.
I finally hit on the Berserker as the next best choice after Priest for the Crypt. His magic resistance helps against all the wraiths, but I kept wishing I had a whole lot more healing potions to finish off Frank the Zombie.
Funny thing is, after I decided to use the Halfling, I also read about your level up trick. When I put that to use, I actually won the level with multiple healing potions left over. Then I won it again (on the first try no less) with a Halfling Tinker. The trick essentially amounts to a 100% healing+mana potion, so I guess once you know that tactic, maybe the Halfling is not so useful.
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James Fung
United States
Berkeley
California
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Rubric wrote: Funny thing is, after I decided to use the Halfling, I also read about your level up trick. When I put that to use, I actually won the level with multiple healing potions left over. Then I won it again (on the first try no less) with a Halfling Tinker. The trick essentially amounts to a 100% healing+mana potion, so I guess once you know that tactic, maybe the Halfling is not so useful.
My feeling is that Halfling race will get you a few health potions over the course of the game, and each of those are only a 40% health refill. When fighting higher level monsters to level up, most will take off a larger slice of my health bar than I do them, so one health potion may not buy another full attack. Meanwhile, a Human (and the update Orc race) gives bonus damage, which makes running battles easier, so it my come in handy more often.
Places I would use Halfing: if my class benefits from health potions, or maybe the Snake Pit, since there are poisonous serpents in there.
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