[b28] yeak summoner: The tale of ReturnOfSumo [spoilers]

[marvalis]

Hello everyone,

After my summoner died in a dreadfell ambush I made a new one. This time a yeek.
I just 'finished' the game with ReturnOfSumo (character link) my yeek summoner, but not without using cheat mode to bypass some overpowered bosses. In doing this play-trough I learned a few things:

• (1) The big weakness of a summoner is invisibility. Your summons cannot see trough invisibility (and will not attack it). Especially bosses that remain invisible. They simply cannot be killed.
  (2) Summoner damage raises fast, and has relatively low damage at the end:
  • At the start your damage is pitiful (hydra and war hound do ~16 dmg with very short duration). Once you get 5/5 in your hydra you can almost one shot everything. Together with a turtle (5/5) and some resilience you become unstoppable.
    Sadly, the damage stays +/- the same the whole game. Only the hydra and the Minotaur do more than 100 damage. At the end of the game, you will be struggling to put out decent DPS.
  (3) While the HP of your summons scale, resistance does not. Your summons will be dropping like flies. Each turn one of your summons will die, and you will be summoning a new one every turn. This is not a big problem.
  (4) The game has some bosses that cannot be killed and/or can kill you in one hit (despite having resistance capped). Examples are Grushnak's pride and some high peak stair bosses. There is a huge different in how much a normal monster hits (~100-300) and a boss (up to ~2k).
  • I posted screenshots of 1 hit kill here

Like I said, I started the game very weak. I saved up class points and got 5/5 in my hydra and turtle ASAP. I did the starter dungeons, went to the forest and got my fortress, did the maze and the sandworm lair. I tried my first farportal. I did the tower and then went to the east. All pretty basic.

Killed both bosses in the underwater cave, cleared the orc breeding pits, and did the armory. Then I started doing the prides and got killed for the first time in Grushnak's pride. Thanks to the blood of life I resurrected. At this time I was level 37. This was my first encounter with the new pride map layout. I found the ring of the dead in anglowen shop for ~1200 gold and bought it. This saved me the second time I died at level 50 by hands of the same boss.

Between level 37 and level 50 I did the portal quests, the other prides and Limmir quest. I had two golden rings ready to be crafted. 'Hello, do you want some special jewelry?" Why yes indeed here are my rings ... oh you need an AMULET xD. At some point I got a voratun amulet and made a resist all 18% + a free 60% freeze/stun resist. Not bad.

Stun/free is not the killed anymore that it used to be. Stun can be ignored completely. Freeze is still a major pain in the ass. Enter providence! This nice overpowered clean all negative effects (1 each turn for 3 turns) is the swiss knife of status removal! Escaping patrols has never been more fun. Use speed infusion and remove the status effect with providence when you are on the stairs. If I ever let an escort with providence die in the future .. I will be mad, very mad. Remember the old 60% stun resist you could get from a paladin? Providence is that, and much more (please do not remove it xD).

At some point along the lines I had a vision rune (I was running a regeneration infusion, a range 15-20 teleport rune, and a movement infusion). Later I swapped this for a second movement infusion. Never ever will I not have two movement infusions again xD. For a summoner, this is just too powerful. If you run into something, pop the infusion and back of one or a few tiles. Summon something. Two infusion combined lets you explore entire maps without even fighting. It is also great for scouting during fights, or moving to a better position so I can surround something with summons without consuming game turns. Not that I needed it much, since I also had arcane eye xD.

At some point when I was level 50 I did another farportal. I met an unkillable boss and had to use cheat mode to kill it. Since the bosses are unbalanced, no more farportal bosses for me . I posted a screenshot here: Farportal Boss Gallery http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?p=112221#p112221

So after dying twice and finishing all the prides I did the volcano (charred scar). I finished the run with 506 turns left! Boots of speed + two movement infusions + the almost permanent 60% global speed boost from elemental harmony.


Screenshot from the scarred char:


So finally I went to the slime tunnels. Used the movement infusions to avoid most slimes but ended up killing them in a narrow corridor anyway. Then I was set for high peak... only to die several times at the hands of overpowered and unkillable stair bosses. I tried to avoid them as much as I could, but I had to use cheat mode again.

Overpowered boss gallery:
The first one hit for ~2k / turn and had 80-90% resists. In addition he had overpowered abilities dealing shadow damage and leaching life.






So by skipping these bosses using cheat mode I was read for the final fight! The fight started as usual, with two pre-summoned creature and the paladin as a distraction I closed the four portals using my trusted and by now beloved movement infusions. After this I tried to separate the bosses and I killed the melee mage. The last boss was unkillable. I simply did not do enough damage to deal more damage than he could heal while he was one-shotting my summons. A simple cheat command inc_damage.all=100 did the trick. It still took several minutes to kill him but at least his HP where going down. In other words: To kill him, I needed at least a 100% damage boost xD. I suggested some new damage formulas a while ago, and I still think that the summoner damage should scale a bit more towards the end of the game (I'm not saying my formula is perfect, It needs to be tested).

[heavy yeek ending spoiler]

I died for the way (and resurected using cheat mode LMAO). Great ending IMHO, although I'd rather have him be immortal than die. I could not let my summoner die since I want to test some more farportals .

BTW for those that noticed it, the hydra in my party window was bugged ^_^

[darkgod]

Just a note about low damage: your damage increase % carries fully to your summons.
Get yourself a high +damage% kot and things will look much shinier.
Archmages are like that too BTW, a spell never does more than like 200 damage, if that, without a crit. But you are supposed to buff up the damage you di by increasing dam%

[marvalis]

You are right, but the problem is that your summons do too much different kinds of damage:

Fire: drake/imp
nature/poison: spider
physical: minotaur, golem, war hound
and hydra does cold, acid, poison

So you are looking at an increase in all damage. I used inc_damage.all=100 in the above game. Where are you going to get that? .
The best thing you could do is get + physical damage, but then you would need more than 100 %. Two perfect rings and a sling will get you to 60% physical, another perfect amulet from Limmir can add 18% to that so you get 100% but that is not guaranteed).
There is just no way you can get enough overall damage increase. Hydra does most damage and uses 3 different damage types. The physical damage sucks even with high % increase.

The reason why physical damage increase is not enough is because they die too fast. Ranged damage is better because the summon will actually live to do some damage while the golem/minotaur might die in one hit.

[marvalis]

The way I see it, a small boost in raw damage will make + % damage items much more viable.
That means that sling+ shield + physical damage rings and Limmir's amulet would be the ultimate damage set.
That is why the physical damage dealers should get a boost, especially the golem and the war hound (the minotaur seems to be doing better damage).

As suggested here.$



/edit
I forgot to mention the suppress summon and providence combo. It looks good in theory (and I did use it a few times) but it was not worth investing 4 class points in suppress summoning to make it work better.