Death of the Auramancer [Nightmare 1.7.2]
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 12:31 pm
I need to take a little break from the game after this, but I wanted to do a write-up for this character since it was probably the most fun I’ve had in-game so far. This is not a build guide, but I’m writing it up in detail in hope that some person smarter than me can help me tune this build to be a little more efficient for when I come back.
Disclaimer: Just to repeat. This is not a build guide. I freakin’ died in High Peak on Nightmare. I do not endorse you playing this build. It is just a stupid idea I am trying to make work because I am stubborn. This is a build where you literally walk through the game and do not press buttons or engage with enemies. You just auto-explore and when you see an enemy you hold down the “Pass Turn” button until everything on the screen is dead. I’ve been stuck on Nightmare for weeks and I died in High Peak so I’m posting this for cathartic release before I go and cry in the shower for a while.
The Boring Origins of the Auramancer
I made a post last Friday in the Adventurer forum asking for help with a build I’d been trying to put together [Here]. The core concept was that I was trying to put together an Auramancer, a build that could walk through the game passively dealing damage to enemies without really casting spells/skills. The concept I’d been working on was okay, and whitelion gave some great suggestions to improve it. I spent the week unlocking the classes I needed to try it out, but I kept hitting a wall with it really early in the game. It has a really rough start. After dying repeatedly to Gunsnake and other assorted T1 trash I had to switch it up, so I hit reset on the whole concept.
Enter the anti-magic attempt.
While playing through EoR to unlock Raze, I did it with a Psyshot and sort of fell in love with Mechanical Arms, and although it doesn’t quite have the same range as the other auramancer concept, it got me thinking that I could try the same thing as an anti-magic character.
Here was my run: “Dead at Level 7”, the Level 50 Cornac Adventurer [Nightmare 1.7.2]
Died in High Peak to Kshakor the champion of Urh'Rok.
Post-Game Reflection
Since I don’t have a huge knowledge of the game, I was assigning points by “feel” rather than any sense of calculated break-points or ideas about min-maxing. I didn’t even plan what categories or prodigies I was going to take from the start (I took Furnace on a whim with Wyrm Bile and it turned out to be awesome). I winged it. It turned out to work better than I thought it would, and it was insanely fun.
By the time I got to the East I was just walking through zones and everything was passively dying around me. To an extent this starts much earlier, but it was probably by about Dreadfell or so that I really started feeling like I could just go into full-on lazy mode and not even engage with enemies anymore. In the T1s and T2s you can still do this, but you have to be a little more active in skill usage because you're not outputting the same amounts of damage.
Status effects didn’t matter at all. Stunned? Doesn’t matter, everything dies around you anyway. Blinded? Doesn’t matter, by the time you get your sight back, everything is already dead. Frozen? Great! I’ll just hang here in my ice block while everything dies.
The Build
Stats
Strength: Dump stat.
Dexterity: Take only as much as required for Mechanical Arms. Use gear boosts to avoid spending stats here.
Constitution: Third-stringer. Probably the safest choice to max after Willpower and Cunning. Put points here early as needed.
Magic: Useless stat. Do not waste points.
Willpower: High Priority Stat
Cunning: High Priority Stat
Early on split Willpower and Cunning to be able to afford skills. I put some points into Dex just to be able to unlock Mechanical Arms but I tried to use stats on gear as much as possible to be able to do this so as not to waste points on Dex. After getting enough Wil and Cun to get the talents I needed, I took Con to about 20 to take the edge off. I started maxing Wil first, making sure I had Cun to 50 in time for Level 25. Then I maxed Wil -> Cun -> Con in that order and dumped whatever stats I had after that into Str.
Category Points
I took Dread at 10 to get Mechanical Arms going since it was a core concept to my idea. I took an Inscription at 20 because I was suffering with Steam engines. I took Discharge at 32, with Mind Storm becoming one of my primary attacks for the rest of the game. With Wyrm Bile I took Furnace on a whim since it seemed to synergise well with everything else, and it ended up being pretty good. I don’t know if this is the best or right order to do things but that’s what I did and I’m not sure if I’d do it differently if I did it again.
Inscriptions
Steam Engine
Phys. Wild
Regen
[Flex Slot]
Ideally you would run one steam engine that could satisfy the drain cost of all of your skills, but it seems like luck is required for that. I ended up having to use two steam engines throughout the whole game because I never found one that put out enough steam. I took the Wild for convenience, but to be honest status effects just don’t matter with this build and I stopped using it later in the game and just started brute forcing through most status effects. Could probably just load up on Regens and Heals.
Prodigies
I had in mind that I would take Elemental Surge to contribute to the passive damage output. I don’t really know how good this was in the end. It’s not something I think I ever really noticed and it definitely didn’t feel like a big power upgrade when I took it at 25. On the other hand, when I took Meteoric Crash, that was huge. This thing was one-shotting groups of enemies as soon as they appeared on the screen, right up until the end.
A lot of the build was built around trying to trigger Elemental Surge and in my head I feel like it should have been really good, but I don’t know how well that is reflected in the numbers, or if there is something better.
Question: Is it sheer luck whether you see a meteor event to unlock Meteoric Crash?
Gear
Weapons: Two Mindstars (Psiblades)
Psi-Slot: The best Physical Melee weapon you can find.
Armour: I went with Light Body and then Heavy mix in other slots.
I don’t know if there are any specific artifacts that work great with this build. I don’t feel like I particularly found any. Cloud Caller makes the early game easy and synergises okay. It’s probably worth replacing later on, but I ended up wearing it right until the end because I never found anything that made me want to take it off. Spellhunt Remnants are sweet since the build is anti-magic. If there’s anything else that is worth looking out for, let me know, but nothing stood out. I had a look through the various Mindstars and Seeds of the Black Tree could be a nice offhand for proccing passive AoE damage through Mechanical Arms, but I never got this so not tested.
The reason I chose to put a physical melee weapon into the psi-slot is to try and bolster an interaction between Mechanical Arms and the Kinetic and Thermal Auras. Kinetic and Thermal Aura says that if you have a conventional weapon in your psi-slot, it will add the damage to all your weapon “hits”, whereas if you have a Mindstar or a Gem, it will simply create a damage aura. Since we are running Mechanical Arms which also “hits” enemies, I wondered if the bonus damage from the aura would also be applied to each hit from Mechanical Arms. I don’t know if this is how it works. The way it’s worded seems like it should be, but if anyone could confirm or deny, that would be awesome.
(Maybe a staff would be best for added proc damage, though I’m not sure what in this build actually counts as a proc, and I’m not entirely sure a staff counts as a physical conventional weapon or as a ranged weapon)
I was mostly just looking for life and defenses on any gear that I took, but I would prioritise a weapon if it had added fire damage because that synergised with Furnance and would speed up Elemental Surge triggers.
Class Talents
Cursed/Shadows [?/?/?/0]
In my head, I’d been thinking of these as “pets”, but I really needed something that suited the passive damage concept of the build, that would also carry me through the early game until other things came online, and this was it. So I started thinking of these as a damage aura. You turn on the sustain and they bounce around dealing damage to things. Sometimes they disappear for a while, then they come back. They’re pretty nice. Not sure if I need to spend as many points as I did, but these guys are bread for the early game.
Psionic/Projection [5/5/0/0]
I’m hoping this works the way I think it does. Essentially, the idea is that having a physical weapon in your psi-slot, will allow the Kinetic and Thermal auras to apply their damage to every hit from Mechanical Arms, thus empowering you with physical and fire damage to trigger off Elemental Surge. If it doesn’t work that way, then there is a huge flaw in this build!
Steamtech/Dread [5/0/0/0]
5 points in Mechanical Arms. This was the core concept that started off the build. Creating that passive aura of death around you. It works with Psiblades. The idea is to synergise it with Projection. I’m pretty sure hits from this count as mind attacks that trigger Meteoric Crash. No Hope is great, but we don’t ever have the Dex to get that far into the tree.
Steamtech/Furnace [5/X/5/1]
I took this really late on a whim, but it seemed to have a lot of what I needed. Passive damage from Melting Point and Vent, defenses from Molten Metal, and Furnace scales other damage sources like Projection and Meteor Crash.
Steamtech/Thoughts of Iron [5/0/0/0]
Molten Iron Blood is defense and passive damage rolled into one.
Cursed/Gloom [5/?5/X]
This is a tough one. It’s a nice aura, it adds passive damage through Mindrot and spreads status effects. It scales our Mindpower, but it sort of blends into the background so I was never really aware of how much it was really doing for the amount of points invested into it.
Psionic/Discharge [5/1/5/0]
Mind Storm ended up being the first thing I cast whenever I came into range of an enemy. This turned the game from “walk through zones while everything dies” to “auto-explore into enemies and then hold down the ‘pass turn’ button until everything dies”. Backlash is more passive aura damage. Unlocking this tree is probably where I felt one of the largest power boosts.
Wild-gift/Ooze [1/1/0/0]
40% all damage resist.
Psionic/Absorption [?/?/?/?]
I didn’t really do much with this.
Generic Talents
Technique/Combat Training [5/X/X/0/0/0]
Thick Skin is good. Might as well.
Psionic/Psionic Feedback [X/5/X/5]
I ended up maxing this, but not until close to the end. Feedback became a huge part of the build, fuelling Mind Storm, keeping damage down, and absolutely massive amounts of healing.
Psionic/Augmented Mobility [X/X/X/X]
I pretty much took this for Telekenetic Leap which is nice, but I was so squeezed for generic points that I didn’t do much with it.
Wild-gift/Mindstar Mastery [5/1/5/X] [Bought for 500g from Zigur]
Grabbed this asap to get Psiblades and ended up casting Leaf Tide pretty much every combat. Never used Thorn Grab and probably could have saved a point on Nature’s Equilibrium as I had so much healing from other sources.
Wild-gift/Antimagic [X/X/X/X] [Free from Zigur Quest]
I used Anti-Magic Zone and Mana Clash whenever I was up against casters. Resolve and Shield are nice. I feel like I could have done more with this tree than just one point in each, but it worked fine.
Wild-gift/Fungus [?/?/?/?] [Free from Urkis Quest]
I don’t know. The build is pretty tanky, and towards the end (until I died of course), I don’t think I ever really dropped below 75% health. Maybe a couple of moments this saved me. It’s hard to judge. This could have been awesome, or it could have been 5 wasted points.
Wild-gift/Harmony [?/?/?/?]
I used One with Nature and Healing Nexus pretty frequently. It’s nice to have a way to shut-down enemy healing (Weirdling Beast especially, since we have so many sustains), but these points could probably also have been saved.
Final Thoughts
I don’t really know if this is a good or bad build. It seems like a dumb idea, and there were points in the game where I wasn’t sure if it would scale well. Then there were other times where it was absolutely absurd. It seemed like the more enemies you come against, the more powerful the build became, so in areas like Scourged Pit where there were huge amounts of enemies, it was just a bonkers explosion of death across the screen. The early game is a little rough but it becomes tanky as hell. I don’t think on paper the damage output is that high, but since you’re just passing turns and not really thinking, it doesn’t matter as long as you can tank and survive indefinitely. There were two enemies I struggled with in the game. I died once to Grushnak in Grushnak’s pride because I got complacent and was just passing turns and didn’t realise I was taking spiky damage. I’m not sure how it happened, but I was wearing a Ring of the Dead so I was able to revive. The second time I died was to an absolutely absurd amount of damage (like 2000+ physical damage) from some random rare in High Peak. I think this build should have easily gotten me through Nightmare but in this instance it didn’t. I’m sort of burned out after this so I’m going to take a little break, but I’d really appreciate anyone who is smarter and more knowledgeable than me to take a look over this write-up and offer any suggestions for changes/improvements, and definitely any corrections on mechanics that I have misunderstood. I know it’s a long write-up, but I wanted to be comprehensive, and I think I just want to get the concept out of my head for a little while and putting it all down on paper will help that.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Disclaimer: Just to repeat. This is not a build guide. I freakin’ died in High Peak on Nightmare. I do not endorse you playing this build. It is just a stupid idea I am trying to make work because I am stubborn. This is a build where you literally walk through the game and do not press buttons or engage with enemies. You just auto-explore and when you see an enemy you hold down the “Pass Turn” button until everything on the screen is dead. I’ve been stuck on Nightmare for weeks and I died in High Peak so I’m posting this for cathartic release before I go and cry in the shower for a while.
The Boring Origins of the Auramancer
I made a post last Friday in the Adventurer forum asking for help with a build I’d been trying to put together [Here]. The core concept was that I was trying to put together an Auramancer, a build that could walk through the game passively dealing damage to enemies without really casting spells/skills. The concept I’d been working on was okay, and whitelion gave some great suggestions to improve it. I spent the week unlocking the classes I needed to try it out, but I kept hitting a wall with it really early in the game. It has a really rough start. After dying repeatedly to Gunsnake and other assorted T1 trash I had to switch it up, so I hit reset on the whole concept.
Enter the anti-magic attempt.
While playing through EoR to unlock Raze, I did it with a Psyshot and sort of fell in love with Mechanical Arms, and although it doesn’t quite have the same range as the other auramancer concept, it got me thinking that I could try the same thing as an anti-magic character.
Here was my run: “Dead at Level 7”, the Level 50 Cornac Adventurer [Nightmare 1.7.2]
Died in High Peak to Kshakor the champion of Urh'Rok.
Post-Game Reflection
Since I don’t have a huge knowledge of the game, I was assigning points by “feel” rather than any sense of calculated break-points or ideas about min-maxing. I didn’t even plan what categories or prodigies I was going to take from the start (I took Furnace on a whim with Wyrm Bile and it turned out to be awesome). I winged it. It turned out to work better than I thought it would, and it was insanely fun.
By the time I got to the East I was just walking through zones and everything was passively dying around me. To an extent this starts much earlier, but it was probably by about Dreadfell or so that I really started feeling like I could just go into full-on lazy mode and not even engage with enemies anymore. In the T1s and T2s you can still do this, but you have to be a little more active in skill usage because you're not outputting the same amounts of damage.
Status effects didn’t matter at all. Stunned? Doesn’t matter, everything dies around you anyway. Blinded? Doesn’t matter, by the time you get your sight back, everything is already dead. Frozen? Great! I’ll just hang here in my ice block while everything dies.
The Build
Stats
Strength: Dump stat.
Dexterity: Take only as much as required for Mechanical Arms. Use gear boosts to avoid spending stats here.
Constitution: Third-stringer. Probably the safest choice to max after Willpower and Cunning. Put points here early as needed.
Magic: Useless stat. Do not waste points.
Willpower: High Priority Stat
Cunning: High Priority Stat
Early on split Willpower and Cunning to be able to afford skills. I put some points into Dex just to be able to unlock Mechanical Arms but I tried to use stats on gear as much as possible to be able to do this so as not to waste points on Dex. After getting enough Wil and Cun to get the talents I needed, I took Con to about 20 to take the edge off. I started maxing Wil first, making sure I had Cun to 50 in time for Level 25. Then I maxed Wil -> Cun -> Con in that order and dumped whatever stats I had after that into Str.
Category Points
I took Dread at 10 to get Mechanical Arms going since it was a core concept to my idea. I took an Inscription at 20 because I was suffering with Steam engines. I took Discharge at 32, with Mind Storm becoming one of my primary attacks for the rest of the game. With Wyrm Bile I took Furnace on a whim since it seemed to synergise well with everything else, and it ended up being pretty good. I don’t know if this is the best or right order to do things but that’s what I did and I’m not sure if I’d do it differently if I did it again.
Inscriptions
Steam Engine
Phys. Wild
Regen
[Flex Slot]
Ideally you would run one steam engine that could satisfy the drain cost of all of your skills, but it seems like luck is required for that. I ended up having to use two steam engines throughout the whole game because I never found one that put out enough steam. I took the Wild for convenience, but to be honest status effects just don’t matter with this build and I stopped using it later in the game and just started brute forcing through most status effects. Could probably just load up on Regens and Heals.
Prodigies
I had in mind that I would take Elemental Surge to contribute to the passive damage output. I don’t really know how good this was in the end. It’s not something I think I ever really noticed and it definitely didn’t feel like a big power upgrade when I took it at 25. On the other hand, when I took Meteoric Crash, that was huge. This thing was one-shotting groups of enemies as soon as they appeared on the screen, right up until the end.
A lot of the build was built around trying to trigger Elemental Surge and in my head I feel like it should have been really good, but I don’t know how well that is reflected in the numbers, or if there is something better.
Question: Is it sheer luck whether you see a meteor event to unlock Meteoric Crash?
Gear
Weapons: Two Mindstars (Psiblades)
Psi-Slot: The best Physical Melee weapon you can find.
Armour: I went with Light Body and then Heavy mix in other slots.
I don’t know if there are any specific artifacts that work great with this build. I don’t feel like I particularly found any. Cloud Caller makes the early game easy and synergises okay. It’s probably worth replacing later on, but I ended up wearing it right until the end because I never found anything that made me want to take it off. Spellhunt Remnants are sweet since the build is anti-magic. If there’s anything else that is worth looking out for, let me know, but nothing stood out. I had a look through the various Mindstars and Seeds of the Black Tree could be a nice offhand for proccing passive AoE damage through Mechanical Arms, but I never got this so not tested.
The reason I chose to put a physical melee weapon into the psi-slot is to try and bolster an interaction between Mechanical Arms and the Kinetic and Thermal Auras. Kinetic and Thermal Aura says that if you have a conventional weapon in your psi-slot, it will add the damage to all your weapon “hits”, whereas if you have a Mindstar or a Gem, it will simply create a damage aura. Since we are running Mechanical Arms which also “hits” enemies, I wondered if the bonus damage from the aura would also be applied to each hit from Mechanical Arms. I don’t know if this is how it works. The way it’s worded seems like it should be, but if anyone could confirm or deny, that would be awesome.
(Maybe a staff would be best for added proc damage, though I’m not sure what in this build actually counts as a proc, and I’m not entirely sure a staff counts as a physical conventional weapon or as a ranged weapon)
I was mostly just looking for life and defenses on any gear that I took, but I would prioritise a weapon if it had added fire damage because that synergised with Furnance and would speed up Elemental Surge triggers.
Class Talents
Cursed/Shadows [?/?/?/0]
In my head, I’d been thinking of these as “pets”, but I really needed something that suited the passive damage concept of the build, that would also carry me through the early game until other things came online, and this was it. So I started thinking of these as a damage aura. You turn on the sustain and they bounce around dealing damage to things. Sometimes they disappear for a while, then they come back. They’re pretty nice. Not sure if I need to spend as many points as I did, but these guys are bread for the early game.
Psionic/Projection [5/5/0/0]
I’m hoping this works the way I think it does. Essentially, the idea is that having a physical weapon in your psi-slot, will allow the Kinetic and Thermal auras to apply their damage to every hit from Mechanical Arms, thus empowering you with physical and fire damage to trigger off Elemental Surge. If it doesn’t work that way, then there is a huge flaw in this build!
Steamtech/Dread [5/0/0/0]
5 points in Mechanical Arms. This was the core concept that started off the build. Creating that passive aura of death around you. It works with Psiblades. The idea is to synergise it with Projection. I’m pretty sure hits from this count as mind attacks that trigger Meteoric Crash. No Hope is great, but we don’t ever have the Dex to get that far into the tree.
Steamtech/Furnace [5/X/5/1]
I took this really late on a whim, but it seemed to have a lot of what I needed. Passive damage from Melting Point and Vent, defenses from Molten Metal, and Furnace scales other damage sources like Projection and Meteor Crash.
Steamtech/Thoughts of Iron [5/0/0/0]
Molten Iron Blood is defense and passive damage rolled into one.
Cursed/Gloom [5/?5/X]
This is a tough one. It’s a nice aura, it adds passive damage through Mindrot and spreads status effects. It scales our Mindpower, but it sort of blends into the background so I was never really aware of how much it was really doing for the amount of points invested into it.
Psionic/Discharge [5/1/5/0]
Mind Storm ended up being the first thing I cast whenever I came into range of an enemy. This turned the game from “walk through zones while everything dies” to “auto-explore into enemies and then hold down the ‘pass turn’ button until everything dies”. Backlash is more passive aura damage. Unlocking this tree is probably where I felt one of the largest power boosts.
Wild-gift/Ooze [1/1/0/0]
40% all damage resist.
Psionic/Absorption [?/?/?/?]
I didn’t really do much with this.
Generic Talents
Technique/Combat Training [5/X/X/0/0/0]
Thick Skin is good. Might as well.
Psionic/Psionic Feedback [X/5/X/5]
I ended up maxing this, but not until close to the end. Feedback became a huge part of the build, fuelling Mind Storm, keeping damage down, and absolutely massive amounts of healing.
Psionic/Augmented Mobility [X/X/X/X]
I pretty much took this for Telekenetic Leap which is nice, but I was so squeezed for generic points that I didn’t do much with it.
Wild-gift/Mindstar Mastery [5/1/5/X] [Bought for 500g from Zigur]
Grabbed this asap to get Psiblades and ended up casting Leaf Tide pretty much every combat. Never used Thorn Grab and probably could have saved a point on Nature’s Equilibrium as I had so much healing from other sources.
Wild-gift/Antimagic [X/X/X/X] [Free from Zigur Quest]
I used Anti-Magic Zone and Mana Clash whenever I was up against casters. Resolve and Shield are nice. I feel like I could have done more with this tree than just one point in each, but it worked fine.
Wild-gift/Fungus [?/?/?/?] [Free from Urkis Quest]
I don’t know. The build is pretty tanky, and towards the end (until I died of course), I don’t think I ever really dropped below 75% health. Maybe a couple of moments this saved me. It’s hard to judge. This could have been awesome, or it could have been 5 wasted points.
Wild-gift/Harmony [?/?/?/?]
I used One with Nature and Healing Nexus pretty frequently. It’s nice to have a way to shut-down enemy healing (Weirdling Beast especially, since we have so many sustains), but these points could probably also have been saved.
Final Thoughts
I don’t really know if this is a good or bad build. It seems like a dumb idea, and there were points in the game where I wasn’t sure if it would scale well. Then there were other times where it was absolutely absurd. It seemed like the more enemies you come against, the more powerful the build became, so in areas like Scourged Pit where there were huge amounts of enemies, it was just a bonkers explosion of death across the screen. The early game is a little rough but it becomes tanky as hell. I don’t think on paper the damage output is that high, but since you’re just passing turns and not really thinking, it doesn’t matter as long as you can tank and survive indefinitely. There were two enemies I struggled with in the game. I died once to Grushnak in Grushnak’s pride because I got complacent and was just passing turns and didn’t realise I was taking spiky damage. I’m not sure how it happened, but I was wearing a Ring of the Dead so I was able to revive. The second time I died was to an absolutely absurd amount of damage (like 2000+ physical damage) from some random rare in High Peak. I think this build should have easily gotten me through Nightmare but in this instance it didn’t. I’m sort of burned out after this so I’m going to take a little break, but I’d really appreciate anyone who is smarter and more knowledgeable than me to take a look over this write-up and offer any suggestions for changes/improvements, and definitely any corrections on mechanics that I have misunderstood. I know it’s a long write-up, but I wanted to be comprehensive, and I think I just want to get the concept out of my head for a little while and putting it all down on paper will help that.
Thanks for taking the time to read.