About to enter Dreadfell

[Roguelike Enthusiast]

I've finished up all that I possibly can do on the main Eyal map. The only thing that I've left to do is enter the Dreadfell tower. From various sources I have now reached xp level 37, and can overcome pretty much anything thrown my way. I sided with the grand corruptor to destroy Zigur, and got corruptor unlocked as well as a talent tree out of the deal. The Ziguranth were a surprisingly tough deal. Their boss, however, was a wimp. Linaniil or Tarelion of Angolwen might have been more challenging. My equipment has got some few improvements by means of some artifacts. I even decided to take on the necromancer boss without opening any coffins. Surprisingly I won. The teleport torque in my possession proved very helpful for that, though I had to rebuild my golem twice with supercharge and once from scratch. Judging by some things I read in Zigur, though, the Ziguranth must have been at least partly nuts. I regret nothing.

That said, any advice on what I can expect to face in the dungeon, and any tips forthcoming on how to fight the Master? thanks.

[Grey]

Topic moved to Spoilers subforum. Please be mindful of this.

[noxnoctum]

The first couple of times I fought him I got annihilated, mostly because I used up my mana far too quickly with that Shadow Blade spell that adds magic damage to your attacks (can't remember the name off hand, anyways not relevant to an alchemist).

The next time round though I was prepared and killed him pretty easily

Few things I did:

1) When I got to the level with him on it, first I dug out a few areas around the map and then proceeded to dig an entire passageway ALL the way around the dungeon. Idea being I could phase door into this "safe zone". Think of it as like the line of circumvallation Caesar built around the Gauls' fort at Alesia
2) Also try to clear out as many baddies as you can before you run into him. This is partly lucky obviously though. If you have some way to check out areas before you go into them that would help a lot (arcane eye, or that one item that gives you telepathy to all)
3) Don't hesitate to TP away! Again I was playing Shadow Blade, so basically I would blow all my attacks (stun, flurry, etc) and then TP away. Or, if he spawned in a bunch of undead I would just do so immediately without even waiting.

Basically it's a battle of attrition, don't expect to kill him in one go. DREADFELL SPOILER>>> Borfast actually gave me much more trouble TBH. (unlike the Master, he regenerates HP, and will stun you to death)

[peaceoutside]

You can expect to die.

Super spoiler:


Enter Dreadfell at level 14-16. Do the escort quest if it comes up, otherwise just leave. Come back at as high of a level you can. Kill everything easily. The bosses will still probably be challenging. Just not as hard as they could be. This method will, however, give you less exp. and worse (lower tier) item drops.

Dungeons scale to your level, but the entire thing is generated the first time you visit and doesn't change.

Entering Dreadfell for the first time at a very high level will make it much more difficult.

[Phoenix1]

To be honest, I've never found over-leveling to be an issue in Dreadfell. I tend to go through all the dungeons as a matter of course, and play cornacs, so I'm usually low-30s for Dreadfell. It usually provides a reasonable challenge, and the Master tends to require some degree of tactics, but I think by 30 you've out-leveled its scaling to at least some degree. I haven't really been there with lower-level characters enough to be certain, but my impression has been that the benefits you get for leveling outweigh the benefits the enemies get for scaling.

As a side note, I'd expect any character who can take a full-force Celia gauntlet can handle Dreadfell.

[Frumple]

Eesh, what actually handles a full out celia gauntlet? Can anything actually manage, what, ten randuniques and a boss plus minions at the same time? Though, being fair, I've never actually tried it because it sounds like bald faced suicide

Now, if you're talking taking them coffin by coffin, yeah, that's more doable.

As for master, movement infusion (preferably two) or teleport equivalent (rune, psychoport) tends to trivialize the master fairly effectively. Dude doesn't really heal that much, you can just hit/run/heal/repeat 'im to death, if it comes to that. Bigger issue can be getting there and not having some other nasty unique (/pack of rares) show up to assist th'big fellow. Then things get more complicated, heh.

[Phoenix1]

He mentioned he battled the necromancer boss without opening any coffins, and won. So my point was, if his character handled that, he should be more than capable of handling Dreadfell.

[Frumple]

Ah, yeah. Missed that, I think. Yeah, if th'critter can survive that dreadfell should mostly be a joke.

[Roguelike Enthusiast]

Eesh, what actually handles a full out celia gauntlet? Can anything actually manage, what, ten randuniques and a boss plus minions at the same time? Though, being fair, I've never actually tried it because it sounds like bald faced suicide

Now, if you're talking taking them coffin by coffin, yeah, that's more doable.

As for master, movement infusion (preferably two) or teleport equivalent (rune, psychoport) tends to trivialize the master fairly effectively. Dude doesn't really heal that much, you can just hit/run/heal/repeat 'im to death, if it comes to that. Bigger issue can be getting there and not having some other nasty unique (/pack of rares) show up to assist th'big fellow. Then things get more complicated, heh.

It seemed like suicide to me when I found out you could do it, but then again, better late trying it than never It was HARD. like, Nethack hard. I was running on fumes for mana several times even using a staff for channeling some, one of the times when I really missed having a manasurge rune. I fought some very tough enemy/class combos. This runed bone giant solipsist who I faced off against being one. I focused most of my attention on Celia to start with and took her out in a couple of turns with bombs and setting her on fire, interspersed with channel staff hits. The enemies didn't really wake up until towards the end of the fight, after which I did the smart thing and bottlenecked myself in the boss room along with my golem who held the fort at the entrance.

The fun started after that. Four bosses made a beeline for me soon after, these being an elder vampire alchemist and his golem servant, a runed bone giant bulwark, a barrow wight necromancer, and a skeleton master archer... dunno what he was. Partway through these four, I had to port away with my golem being destroyed and most of my abilities on cooldown, so I fixed him with supercharge. This prompted three more bosses to come to me (a couple of melee skeleton warriors, and a runed bone giant corruptor I think.) I defeated them somehow without too much trouble. Then I snuck back to the original boss fight location only to see that the bone giant had fixed itself, and that sent me mad. I practically threw the goddamn book at it. After that however, due to some unfortunate luck, it was touch and go with the last couple of bosses. It would have probably made a great Yakety Sax montage. I finally beat them, only to be confronted by the aforementioned Runed Bone Giant solipsist. Ouch. I was knocked to nearly dead by this boss, my recently restored golem pounded into the dirt, and I ended up stunned somehow too. If my teleport was put on cooldown, I would have failed. I ported out of sight into the boss chamber, then licked my wounds and refit my golem properly. The boss went down quick after. Thank goodness for that.

I've also entered Dreadfell, and I dunno why people said that Borfast was hard. He died like a chump. I did the dumb thing and opened up a vault on floor 5, the one where you have to dig a path through sealed rooms. Big mistake. I had a great deal of trouble with a radiant horror in one of the vault rooms, was almost killed by a couple of multi hued wyrms, and confronted some sort of storm vampire boss in a room. Yet, I somehow survived this too. I found an anorithil and a sun paladin to escort who furnished me with a couple useful skills along the way.

How far down does Dreadfell go anyway? I'm asking since I'm down 5 floors and still no boss.

[Mewtarthio]

I've also entered Dreadfell, and I dunno why people said that Borfast was hard. He died like a chump. I did the dumb thing and opened up a vault on floor 5, the one where you have to dig a path through sealed rooms. Big mistake.

Yeesh. That vault is such a dirty trick. You're digging along, thinking "Okay, this isn't actually that bad for a vault; sure, the monsters are pretty tough, but you're fighting them one at a time," then suddenly BAM greater multihued wyrms!

[omni]

There's two vaults that come to mind that compare to that one for "dirty trick."

One of them was a 3 wide hallway going horizontally that abruptly ended with three wide opening going north and south. Then it looped back, so you were pretty deep into the vault if you went down the northern or southern path. The floor was lava, and the monsters was a pack of radiant horrors.

The other one was this awesome multi room crypt thing that had a very obvious (if you're familiar with vaults and discerning their edges) large circular room hidden in it. You had to dig walls, pull levers, rooms opened and closed suddenly. It was very adventurous, it's likely my favorite vault now though I've never seen it again. Towards the end you're wondering HOW do I get into that one huge room, and if you start digging at the wall at this non-significant seeming 2x2 room with a drop of water in the corner, you find a lever.

Push the lever, and you're VERY suddenly in the middle of that room you've been wondering about for awhile

Man. Dreadfell vaults are pretty cool if you go at 'em higher level. If I'm not mistaken dreadfell scales from 10-35 I think? Heh. Anyways I tend to do it and get out of there at level 35- yes, the monsters are a lot worse than level 10 generated stuff. However, if you can't handle dreadfell at higher level, you *probably* don't want to go east then anyways

[PurpleXVI]

There was one Dreadfell vault I could never quite figure out. It had a circular set of rooms around a central one. After entering, you could go either clockwise or counter-clockwise around, and each room had a lever that opened the door to the next room, while closing the door you came in through. At the end of each branch, the final lever opened all the doors back. Halfway around either side was a diggable "glass wall" that allowed you to see into the central room, which was a pool of lava(not lava floor, but molten lava, could not be walked on). On either side of the lava pool was a "rune circle" allowing you to teleport to the other side, from north to south(entrance was on the south side).

However. There was a small room behind diggable glass on the east side of the central lava pool that I could never find an entrance to. Being a vault room, it could not be teleported to, and none of its adjoining walls were diggable(the glass was, but that could only have been dug if I was standing on the lava, which wasn't an option...). I saw a couple of items in there, and occasionally a creature in there would hit me with an AoE effect, but I could never figure out how to open it...

Also the "lava floor & dual loopback"-vault is monstrous. Thankfully it'll fizzle phase doors/teleports into throwing you out of there, so usually my strategy was to get in, open one of the loopbacks, phase door out, recover and wait for the enemies to find me. Then fight them in a place where I could pelt them with attacks and then warp to safety. Much the same strategy I used with the Master. I've yet to have a playthrough where I could take him face on, it was always a quick bombardment and then an escape. Doesn't help that the guy can freeze you, too, so if you don't have a good resistance to that or the right infusion to remove it, you can be screwed.

Usually I always arrived there at around level... 20-ish. Sometimes a bit over. Oddly enough, it often hits me harder than a lot of areas scaled higher, like the Elven Ruins.

There's also something to watch out for, if you're going there as a Necromancer, 90% of your damage ability will be Darkness. Some of the vaults contain Dreadmasters, who are 70+% Dark immune, and summon Dreads, which have much the same immunity. They WILL mess you up. If you pop out one of those as a Necro, just run, run like hell. Necros are incredibly powerful, but Dreadmasters will tear them apart.

[Roguelike Enthusiast]

There's also something to watch out for, if you're going there as a Necromancer, 90% of your damage ability will be Darkness. Some of the vaults contain Dreadmasters, who are 70+% Dark immune, and summon Dreads, which have much the same immunity. They WILL mess you up. If you pop out one of those as a Necro, just run, run like hell. Necros are incredibly powerful, but Dreadmasters will tear them apart.

Suddenly, summoned assistance and command staff? Why not at least throw in the shadows? or use up ice spells? Surely a necromancer can have access to those, at least?

[Grey]

Ice spells are pretty useless in Dreadfell as well - many enemies having 80%+ cold resistance. And by that stage your minions won't be doing much damage either.

[Roguelike Enthusiast]

When in doubt, I suppose a usable charged item might be of use; a staff which can project damage for instance.