Faerie the Krog Adventurer - trying to design a madness roguelike victor

[Bananadine]

I've won this game more than enough on insane roguelike so when I got back into it recently I had to move to madness... but it's too hard unless you play as a wanderer or adventurer. So that's what I've been doing.

I have tried many many builds. I was interested in playing an unusual character - something that wouldn't rely on the most obvious overpowered-ish abilities. The identification of such abilities will vary from player to player, since different things seem obvious to different people; to me, this meant: no chronomancy except the one category available via escort quests; no weird tricky archmage stuff like metamagic or whatever; no Physics, Chemistry, or tinkers.

My strongest magic-using character was this weirdo: https://te4.org/characters/214405/tome/ ... d40e8190cf
For core defense, I went with what I later learned are popular choices (I did not follow any guides or anything): Solipsism, Ooze from oozemancer, Dark Sustenance from doomed, and the surprisingly reliable enemy-marking ability from Cursed/Predator. Also, I added Corruption/Rot, which is kind of the magical version of Ooze (plus a pretty good teleportation power, and there can never be enough of those).

(A side note: I really wanted to someday try to use Dark Sustenance to kill one of the game's final bosses, by combining it with solipsism and Psionic/Dreaming to put the boss to sleep and then just heal myself repeatedly. But it was not to be.)

For external defense, I added to the above the wonderful Ice Wall from wyrmic, which I think might be underappreciated (like many abilites that manipulate walls, it is extremely good), and Wild-gift/Summoning (melee) for some reason. I really like the idea of summoning in games and for this character I wanted something like the summoner's turtle... but I ended up going with the jelly instead, because it restores the summoner's equilibrium and as an ooze-bodied wyrmic corruptor I would need a LOT of that kind of service, to keep my evil corruption spells from blocking my access to nature powers. (This actually worked really well! I'm not certain it was worth a category point, but it did work! Jelly is great!) Also, I thought that maybe the stone golem, with its invincibility, would be able to last even longer than a turtle in the middle of a crowd of overpowered madness-difficulty enemies. I never got to explore that much though. It's a bit dubious since the golem can die before turning itself invincible, but maybe it would have worked sometimes.

For offense, I relied on bump attacks, Beyond the Flesh attacks via Psionic/Finer Energy Manipulation, and miscellaneous boosts of numerous kinds from the amazing Corruption/Demonic Pact category. That category is just the best. It kinda pushes you into a sword-and-shield build and it makes you accept magic and corruption, but if all of that fits with your character then it'll pay for itself ten times over. I imagine that some would consider it to be one of those "obviously overpowered" things I was trying to avoid, but for some reason I do not, so I used it.

Anyway, the character was doing great but I think I went into the Illusory Castle too early and couldn't handle it. I dunno. I think I was kinda wanting to restart then anyway because I was getting tired of some aspect of the character... or, hmm, maybe I picked the wrong prodigy by accident? And also I didn't like how Embers of Rage interacts with an adventurer run: It gives you a lot of steamtech stuff, including the Automated Personal Extractor and endless piles of tinker schematics, and I didn't like having that clutter around in my non-steamtech run. (Well technically I didn't refuse all steamtech - in my wanderer runs I was willing to learn any of the Embers of Rage talents other than the ones that involve tinkers, but you can't actually make use of more than a very few of those if you don't have a renewable source of steam, so steamtech was basically useless to me.)

Enter Faerie the krog. The name, surprisingly, was chosen by the game's random name generator. The motivating concept was to completely reject all the most overpowered stuff right from the start, by using an antimagical race and by disabling the Embers of Rage addon before creating the character. This took away my cool Corruption categories, so I had to find other stuff. I studied all the categories and eventually decided to try being a skirmisher-like buckler user - but maybe with the sling-related categories from the archer class, not from the skirmisher class, since those are also really good. That type of character gets some really amazing damage-blocking powers. But it somehow never worked out.

After that failed, I switched to what has become my favorite weapon type: gloves. I discovered (as, I later learned, many other madness-difficulty players have discovered before me) the great value of mixing passive flat damage reduction abilities with the passive percentage-based damage reduction abilities that I had been focusing on up to this point, and this led me to spend three of my precious category points on brawler categories, plus one on the mindslayer's main psionic shielding category. All that plus an antimagic shield can block quite a lot of small hits, while I would still have an ooze body to help with the big ones.

The brawler categories I chose were the generic one that provides the mastery talent, Technique/Pugilism for Double Strike since that seems to be what provides the essential Striking Stance, and Technique/Unarmed Discipline so that I'd have something useful to spend my combo points on. Of course I wanted Finishing Moves and Grappling, but there just wasn't room. But that's okay, since Open Palm Block by itself serves well enough as a sink for unneeded combo points, when you're often being chased by overpowered monsters. And the other Unarmed Discipline talents are really good, even if their cooldown periods are large. Combination Kick is indispensable, and Touch of Death is surprisingly awesome even though its description makes it difficult to understand. (I would eventually inflict over 4000 damage in a single hit with a single tick of that talent, even though I only ever put one point into it!!)

The second class I borrowed heavily from was mindslayer. I took Psionic/Absorption, as mentioned above, plus Finer Energy Manipulation for enhancement of Beyond the Flesh, and (this might be my most unusual choice) Psionic/Kinetic Mastery for miscellaneous purposes. And that last one ended up being the most powerful of all, I'd say! The Transcendent Telekinesis talent wasn't important to me except occasionally as a way to refresh my kinetic shield, but Deflect Projectiles provided a nice way to step around most of the worst projectiles (maybe invisibly saving me from a death to Soul Rot here and there), and Implode is a nice strong disablement power. But the star is Kinetic Surge. Being able to hurl yourself wherever you want, even four tiles into a wall, is amazing. I defeated so many crowds of extremely powerful monsters with that talent. It let me delve into like ten different blightspawn dungeons without fear. You just bury yourself diagonally into a wall, wait for the enemies to hunt you, and fight them while they're lining up in front of you. And then, when you get the chance, you use the talent again to turn a right-angle corner, so that the enemies in the line can't even see you anymore! It's extremely good. This was my greatest weapon.

It now occurs to me that the same thing could be done with the wyrmic's Burrow. But that only works on rock and sand... Kinetic Surge works on anything diggable. Still, Burrow would be a decent substitute. It'd cost more talent points, but as a bonus you'd get Swallow, which helps with critical hits and is a good attack in its own right, and Quake, which is a decent escape ability that can often give you free escort quest victories in the Old Forest and Daikara. I'm sure there are other wall-digging talents that could also perform this role... but probably none of them is also a teleportation ability, I'd guess? Anyway, I love Kinetic Surge.

For further healing, defense, and miscellaneous aid, I added Technique/Conditioning and Cunning/Artifice. I love Conditioning and never tire of it. One or two points in Vitality, one in Daunting Presence if you've got it to spare, and at least four in Unflinching Resolve. Being able to quickly shed the worst commonly applied negative effects in the game is unbeatable. (I suppose I might prefer a pair of low-cooldown Shatter Afflictions runes, but that's two category points, and you can't have those on a krog anyway.)

From Artifice, I took one thing, mainly: A big buffer of negative health. If you heavily enhance your Rogue's Brew, you can get about 700 negative health out of it, which I thought could stand in for one of those big defensive powers like Solipsism or Ooze. Just take a drink before combat and then go in feeling safe. And then, if you eventually get a strong heroism infusion, you can use that when the brew is still cooling down. I think that this worked out well for me.

Additionally, of course, Artifice provides several other benefits. I started with the grappling hook for travel and enemy manipulation and the smoke bomb for aid in escaping, but eventually I switched out the smoke bomb, which I hadn't been using much for a long while, for hidden blades, since I was needing extra offense at that point. That's what I stuck with for the remainder of the run. I would have liked to try enhancing the poison dart, but I couldn't give up my enhanced brew, so I never messed with the dart at all. Anyway, this category served me very well. It's a great category from a great class. To bad I couldn't find room for Technique/Mobility to go with it - that might have been really nice. I love the rogue class. (Which reminds me - Cunning/Poisons is one of the categories I considered when trying to find strong, percentage-based defensive talents, and I almost went with it. But I decided in the end that having to attack an enemy regularly keep its damage reduced, and having to deal with poison-immune monsters, would weaken it too much as a defensive system.)

The last category I took was another somewhat weird one: Wild-gift/Higher Draconic Abilities. I'd been expecting to go into Solipsism, but after a time it started to seem that I didn't actually need that, and that it could seriously hurt me too, by eating up my psi just before I needed it most to activate an escape power. And at the time I felt that I needed offense more than I needed defense, for once, so I looked for something that could maybe provide some of both. This is what I found. Prismatic Slash is a good attack, but more importantly it gives what mostly amounts to a global speed boost, which is always a precious thing. Venomous Breath is surprisingly awesome as both a weapon and a disabling power. Wyrmic Guile is great to put one or two points into, though I don't actually care too much about knockback defense. And Chromatic Fury gives quite a nice damage bonus to a character who mainly uses the relevant damage types.

As for prodigies: I always want almost all of them, of course, but here I was mainly looking for defensive stuff. My offense, though not super high, was generally good enough; I relied on singling out enemies and then heavily disabling them with slowing and weakening effects from equipment and from my abilities. What I wanted most was a long-range teleportation power... but you can't easily get that from a prodigy, especially as a krog. I figured I'd wait and pick that up from the Far-Hand, if I got lucky enough. Never Stop Running would suffice in place of that, since I could generate lots and lots of stamina easily, but only in situations where enemies are visible and leave a path to run through. I needed something that'd let me cross over/through enemies. So never mind that. I liked Windtouched Speed, but I couldn't quite justify it to myself. In the end I started off with Adept, which I would later learn is a VERY popular choice for players of the adventurer class. And then... during my many attempts at succeeding with this character, I had a really bad experience with some kind of magical effect, maybe Burning Hex or something equally horrible. My character's magical save stat wasn't always very good, and I really really wanted more healing, always, plus if possible an excuse not to waste an inscription slot on a healing infusion... so I chose Fungal Blood. I did not regret this choice. The worst magical effects are very, VERY bad! And the healing was nice too. No more runs ending because of Burning Hex!

I also tried throwing Spell Feedback on the Writhing Ring of the Hunter, thinking I might possibly use it to disable a boss during the final battle. But then I examined the hunter carefully and decided that wouldn't be a good idea after all.

Aside from racial talents (generally awesome for krog!) and antimagic, the last major element of my character design comes from escort quests. This is the worst part of this run for me, since I decided I would not accept my character unless she had two specific escort rewards right at the start of the game: Resonance Field and Dream Walk. I love Resonance Field because it's just free extra health when you need it, more or less, and that seems great to me, even though when I run the numbers in my head I find that it actually seems kind of weak in the late game and should probably never have been required in my runs. (But I required it anyway.) I require Dream Walk because without it this character dies. It was my best hope of escaping from a crowd of enemies until I should get lucky enough to find the Far-Hand. And also, it's likely to be my only way to travel directly through enemies until level 20, since I tended to take Artifice before Kinetic Mastery, and the rogue's grappling hook won't reach through enemies. Dream Walk is imprecise of course, but it's still great. And as often as not, its imprecision is even helpful. After Adept has been learned, it gains enough precision to be properly reliable, for the most part, but it still retains enough imprecision to sometimes send you through a wall, which is usually a good thing. I would not play this character without Dream Walk. It's just too dangerous.

Somehow or other, I managed to reroll my way into a character who would get three escort quests at the earliest possible opportunities, including the very start of the game. So it was pretty easy to guarantee one of my two required talents at the start. But the other was a big hassle to find. I did it, though! Then the third reward would just be something random - in this case, I got lucky and met another defiler, which gave me Conversion. That's not a great talent, but one more way to heal is always welcome, and on top of that, this gave me a decent way to restore a bit of psi on short notice. I would have preferred a sun paladin or thief, but the defiler was quite acceptable.

I went on several long-ish runs with this character. Most of my deaths were not very interesting; I'd just make a little mistake somewhere, get caught in a crowd, and die - or fail to build up enough negative health, take a critical hit from Soul Rot or some Cursed melee attack or whatever, and die. I learned my first prodigy a few times. Eventually, I learned the second one as well, and from there I was pretty safe, most of the time. I cleared out most dungeons pretty easily then, and defeated magical bosses VERY easily, in many cases. The Master might not have inflicted a single point of damage on me, for all I know. As mentioned above, I met a bunch of those weird tentacle things (they were growing in clumps in Reknor, for some reason) and I challenged them all and won. I made it to the Gates of Morning, and back, and back again. I cleared the Vor Armory and the spider cave, with the exception of one spider that was unkillable thanks to its various skirmisher and chronomancer defenses. I met another tentacle in the passage to the Valley of the Moon, awakened it, and took a heavy hit from its tentacle arm weapon that cost me my Blood of Life. After completing the quest and another, I returned at level 50 and carefully faced the tentacle again, this time defeating it. And then I entered Rak'shor Pride's bastion, defeated the boss and minions at the entrance, cleared out a few vaults, and faced Rak'shor. There was a crowd nearby that included one or more enemies who wouldn't stop using Battle Call or some such, pulling me back into the crowd after I'd leapt away. Thus I remained among them for a little too long and lost my second and final life, while my Home, Horrific Home tome was still working to draw me to safety.

Also - somewhere along the way, I finally found the Far-Hand, only to learn that although it is indeed a rare long-distance teleportation item that can be worn by a krog, the teleportation power it provides is still a spell, and thus cannot be used by a krog. What a shame.

I'm confident that I could have reached High Peak with this character. The bosses there might have been a problem, but it's plausible that I could have passed them. In the final fight, I don't know what would have happened. Mages were generally easy to defeat, one at a time... but two extremely strong ones at once, with minions accumulating around the room? Who knows. It would have been interesting to try, anyway.

I'm tired of playing this character, regardless. If I were to do it again, I might wait until Christmas so as to do it with an extra prodigy point, which I might spend on Giant Leap or Psionic/Augmented Mobility (via Worldly Knowledge) to give myself one more chance at leaping to freedom. Or I might break my character design by switching out one of my categories for Technique/Mobility. Or I might go back in time and convince whoever removed torques of psychoportation from the game not to do that. Or I might simply be more careful in my preparation of safe tunnels to hide in and in my timely usage of emergency powers - especially Forcefield and Home, Horrific Home. Now that I think of it, I see that that tome really should have been able to save me, if only I had thought of it a little earlier.

But I think instead I'll try playing as a wyrmic now and messing about with Burrow and Ice Wall. If you'd like to duplicate my adventurer and see whether it can indeed win, refer here, and please do post if you succeed: https://te4.org/characters/214405/tome/ ... 2429e1abca

[ooli]

Since interresting. I tried to beat Madness for year in vain now. So I will give it a try.

I dont have the DLC for Krog, can you suggest another race? I was thinking Dwarf for the 15% chance to get missed in melee.

How did you survive with only 2k HP when some madness mob can hit you for 5k-10k before even the East.

[Bananadine]

If I couldn't be a krog I'd probably choose ogre (unless the more important racial talents are spells? I forget whether they are) or dwarf. Halfling looks okay too. But yeah dwarf seems like a pretty good choice, you get even more health than a krog does, plus that great stoneskin thing, plus Stone Walking which is a precious, precious longterm escape ability, something Faerie badly lacked. If you eventually have major trouble with infusion saturation (krogs shed this easily) then I guess you could either try an ogre (assuming the relevant talent works with antimagic), or rely on the Wild-Gift/Harmony talent that lets you periodically remove saturation, or buy the DLC.

A possible drawback though is that if you want to reroll your character until you get an escort quest right at the start of the game, and then restart with that character until you get just the right reward from that quest, you cannot choose to be a dwarf because dwarves never start with escort quests of that type. Actually, I think krog might be the only race in the game that can start with an immediate escort quest! (But most races can pretty easily trigger one early, if the RNG agrees, by rushing to Kor'Pul's first floor, Trollmire's second section, or Scintillating Cavern's second floor.) It doesn't take super long for a dwarf to get through Reknor though, especially since the game automatically levels you up when you change floors in that dungeon, which means it's mostly unnecessary to fight enemies there (you can let your buddy Norgan do most of the fighting and spend your own energies on surviving and hunting for stairs).

I believe I survived big hits by relying on elemental resistances, ooze, and negative health from heroism infusion and rogue's brew.