Shalore Corruptor win, Insane Adventure

[Mankeli]

http://te4.org/characters/121593/tome/b ... 97430e4657

This was a break from all the madness runs. I wanted to play something that has such great passive defences that autoexplore can be used (compare this to madness lol) even on insane. I picked adventure because I didn't want to think much and now that I felt the pain of the final battle, I'm so glad I did.

4 Deaths. One was in Mark of the Spellblaze because of just refusing to give up against an archamage unique. Unlike on madness, where you need to freaking run and hide from every single enemy I wanted to just tank and murder things on this run. 3 deaths happened in the final battle which was insanely (pun intented) tough.

Until the very end, the game was an absolute breeze. After I cleared all of High Peak except the final are, my character had 44,5 stat points, 19 class points, 1 category point and 11 generic points left!! So I basically cleared the whole endgame with a seriously gimped character without that much problems.

However, the final battle was a different animal. I decided to pick fith inscription slot over a new category and picked dex for third stat. That didn't save my elfy from 3 deaths.

Elandar had NINE sustains and both of the wizards had spellsaves high enough that Corrupted Negation at max level didn't stand a chance of actually negating anything. So, I was stuck trying to disperse that essence of speed with 33 % chance of succeeding. Adding insult to injury, I needed to use track from the wand constantly because otherwise I couldn't detect those wizards who liked to be invisible or hide in the darkness that was produced by that one demon. So on many occasions my dispersion was on cooldown too.

My mistake was not to close the portals initially, the demon portal is dangerous for more than one reason. Things started to go my way after the portals were closed, portal monsters killed (so teleport can be used safely) and after I digged one tile from the north and south end small obstacles. Doing that provided better cover, Elandar could now only hit you with ball spells then when he approaces from below or above, I think.

Argoniel was killed first. After that, I FINALLY managed to remove the essence of speed sustain and that really might have been the difference between winning and losing the rest of lives.

Overall, pretty easy run excluding the terrible final battle.

If you have questions, ask away!

[Effigy]

Congrats! I'm curious how often you were able to successfully apply the curses/hexes.

[Mankeli]

Thanks, Effigy!

On insane and even on madness spellcaster too, one can use saves checking abilities the large majority of the time reliably (assuming start scumming on madness which is mandatory anyways). It's hard to give an exact % value but I'd say over 90 % of the monsters on this run. But over 50 % of the monsters are trash anyways and you won't need these abilities against them.

I used the burning hex quite often. Curse of Death wasn't needed that often, vitality seemed rare and it's not as terrible as it is on madness. The other hexes/curses were rarely used. Corrupted negation (not a hex but anyways) was used ALL the time. It can get rid of shadow summoning sustain, for example! So the times when they won't work are clearly in the minority with spellpower similar to my character.

The problem with hexes/curses/corrupted negation is that when you would really need it, like against Elandar, it often times won't reliably work or won't work at all.

I was able to land Burning Hex on Argoniel though, it seems the hexes check mental saves instead of spell saves, this was news to me. Corrupted negation checks spell save but it damages the monster even if the effect is resisted so it's really nice.

Burning Hex is less useful on insane because monsters have so many talents.

[Effigy]

Good to know. Do you think it would be viable to use diseases, or is it just not worth it? I always liked the disease skills, but I was concerned they would be resisted too much with saves/immunities. Epidemic have help against immunity, but not saves.

[Mankeli]

The two other legit insane winners used diseases although the first one is quite old, things may have chances after that, I haven't been around for that long.

Looking at bpat's insane winner thread, it seems that the disease that you get from bloodspray checks physical save instead of spellsave. So I could have used that + catalepsy probably at least against Elandar. Also bpat's character got an insanely high spellpower (97) from spellsurge items (?) I guess. But even with that kind of spellpower, Argoniel's saves (112) would have been really difficult to pass.

I have a normal win on with a Reaver that could hit for 18 K with diseases. But the problem really wasn't killing monsters: Bloodgrasp hit for almost 3 K per shot when bloodspray's bonus was on (which is all the time at 100 % crit chance) and that is perfectly reasonable on insane.

So while a disease based build could kill most of the monsters that don't die from one bloodgrasp in the game more quickly than mine, I think investing in them would make you weaker in the final battle which is just from another world compared to rest of the game with this build. At least without an absurd spellpower.

But bpat's character died only two times in the final battle, mine died thrice so what do I know lol. Although I think that the fact that I didn't close the portals cost me at least one life. Also projectiles work less well if you happen to run into monsters with absurd talent levels in slow motion etc.

Here is the thread for reference: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=40880

[supermini]

I've done a disease reaver on old nightmare a while back and I can confirm that landing diseases is extremely hard in the final battle. I'm not sure if curse of defenselessness would help, I haven't done the math.

[Mankeli]

Curse of defenseless needs to pass saves itself so...

But sure it can help in corner cases where the difference between your spellpower and bosses saves is such that you have a decent chance to land something if this is what you meant by doing the math. Then, if succeeding in using curse of defenseless, that decent chance of landing can change to a good chance of landing diseases. But it's risky. I didn't use CoD like almost at all during the whole game.

If x saves are 20 effective points higher than x powers then using those powers will always fail AFAIK.

[donkatsu]

Also projectiles work less well if you happen to run into monsters with absurd talent levels in slow motion etc.

Does slow projectile still work if you aim past the monster?

[Mankeli]

Also projectiles work less well if you happen to run into monsters with absurd talent levels in slow motion etc.

Does slow projectile still work if you aim past the monster?

To be honest, I don't really know how it works lol (as in exact mechanics).

I just sometimes noticed that my projectiles went super slow but luckily monsters are stupid and they often still run into the murderballs.

It wasn't a big problem on my run anyways (rare enough + monsters are stupid), but I guess it could have been if something with a great damage output and bone shield shattering capabilities, like a shadowblade + rogue boss, would have rolled a high level of that talent.

[Mankeli]

Oh yeah, almost forgot when I talked about hexes: Pacification Hex is both amazing and fun. It's cool when you can make the overpowered multihued wyrms in Vor Armory fight each other by hexing one of them

I didn't use it often because I tried to fight things 1:1 and stuff just died in 1-3 turns anyways. But it's really good.

[St_ranger_er]

Congrats!

It seems like bone shield is best instakill protector (on par with cauterize). Sun pally second life (in my tests) only extend amount of you life, but not prevent death when dmg bigger than hp + second life heal (in case without shields and so on).

[Mankeli]

Thanks!

Bone shield is great but skirmishers (and to a bit lesser degree, archers) and melee attacks from stealth can still take out your shield pretty effectively/even hurt your HP when autoexploring.

I had en encounter on normal where The Silent Death killed my character through second life before a chance to react in between. I thought it was because SD had higher global speed than my Pally so that it got two turns but I don't know.

[Unholydonuts]

Reading that the game was a breeze for you on insane i went and tried it on nightmare.
Kind of got screwed by a few rares along the way it seemed i dont do enough damage to kill them in a few turns.
http://te4.org/characters/131880/tome/9 ... a5f3ff6c80

Can someone give me a few tips if i went with the wrong skils in the beginning or if i maybe missed something important?

[Mankeli]

Your investment in primary stats is fine, your skilling is okayish but your inscriptions are not fine: get rid of that regeneration and replace it with a movement infusion. Also, at this point you should have one and only one point in dark portal too. So currently, you are lacking two escape methods. These changes alone could drastically alter your chances of surviving. Movement infusion gives stun immunity too which is golden.

These are the most important things what I would like to change with you skills (Assuming you have no free skill points currently):

Vimsense -1 point (no need for res pen yet, scouting can bet gotten otherwise)
Blood Spray -1 point
Soul rot/corrupted negation/vimsense -1 point

Drain + 1 point (gives vim)
Leech + 1 point (to unlock dark portal)
Dark portal + 1 point

Add one point in bloodcasting too if you have trouble with vim.

What exactly are you having trouble with?

A few general tips: a Corruptor doesn't want to be in melee range of monsters. Bone shield is garbage in melee but great at distance. As a corruptor you want to avoid taking hp damage. With a shielding rune/reflection shield you can tank shitty damage from, say, poison wihtout your bone shield failing so using a shielding rune at this point is very good. If you can't kill something, movement infusion/dark portal can be used to create distance.

[Unholydonuts]

Ok now on my next try with those changes you suggested its working a lot better.
http://te4.org/characters/131880/tome/4 ... 74ee982753

I was mainly struggling with Moments where some rare enemy kept charging me even after i had gotten my distance or getting swarmed by enemies at the entrance to a level.

How do i deal with Enemies that have high blight resistance as long as i dont have a good amount of penetration? Is that what you have 5 in Bonespear for or should i just push vimsense? Also at witch point do you recommend spending a category point for Celestial / Light? I allready have the tree from an escort just need to unlock it.

I also dies at the boss of the vor armory where you have to get something to return to maj eyal. that boss hat over 5k hp and i couldnt handle his damage. maybe it was to early for me to go there.