A Pile of Steaming Ooze – a Tinker Oozemancer Guide for 1.5

[Number43]

Anyway, finished the game with the character, I died once more on high peak due to foolishly attempting an intimidating cave that showed up, and some of those multi hued dragons have huge damage. After that I stopped doing the vaults in high peak, though I had gone through several others with minimum trouble. Argonial got vitality again, but I had high enough damage and near 100% penetration that it didn't matter much, the enemies did little damage to me, and I came within a few turns of finishing it off before Aeryn died. I then did Atamathon and had less trouble with him than some of the high peak randbosses, though partly due to him not getting much of trouble in his random talents (half of them were unusable due to lack of equipment.)

[Snarvid]

Congrats on the win!

As someone who just wrote a guide about Tinker Oozemancers, though, I gotta ask - do you think you got serious benefit from Healing Nexus? It seems like one way to try to compensate for Oozemancer DPS against certain enemies, but the Tinkers model is just to do significantly more damage. I will say again, though, that I did have significant trouble against enemies with Resolve & Waters of Life, so maybe that's an area that Healing Nexus improves - does it have enough uptime to squash healing?

In other news, I'm currently running out of lives in mid Dreadfell, around level 38. You just need everything to be awesome right away and also in the long run in Madness, feel like if I made it to 42 I might have been able to go all the way by chaining Fungal Blood. I think my next run will be on Exploration mode to see whether there's an actual class-based bar to progress beyond just my unfamiliarity with Madness.

Madness lessons so far include:
- Superpower is probably better than PES on Madness, since Hunted! means you can't reliably rest back to full between fights, and you also spend more time running away from enemies so you might be running for the entire PES duration.
- That increased time between a kill and leaving a level is brutal.
- Enemy War Hounds, and to a lesser extent Ritch Flamespitters, are ungodly powerful on Madness. I think it's the combination of having 6-19 levels in the skill in question and pretty solid Mindpower backing it up. One touch kills without need of a crit if I can't split it with an Ooze.
- Mummified Eggsack is my friend.
- Track is my best friend.
- Best success so far was switching unlock order to Eyal at 20 and Tinkers at 36. On Insane you can afford to wait and getting the plans earlier is better, but you need the Eyal's Wrath damage ASAP and Acidfire's debuff likewise.

[GlassGo]

Probably good guide, but I'll never know since Select First Escort doesn't work.

[Snarvid]

Did you read the documentation? You pick the escort under one of your option tabs (gameplay, IIRC).

Works fine for me.

[Stenag]

https://te4.org/characters/175357/tome/ ... f526d3b4d4
Nice guide. Fungal blood was very fun to play with.

[Derael]

Why not levelling Oozewalk past level 1? It removes 3 effects at level 2, quite a good improvement, I feel. Or is something wrong with it being too quick?

[Funkymoses]

Got a win more or less following this guide here.
https://te4.org/characters/215406/tome/ ... e715d2abbe

Main differences:

1. took Corrosive Blades and Windtouched Speed because I'd found Spellhunt Remnants, so the sustain destruction Acidfire provides didn't seem as urgent.
2. Once nothing could touch me at about level 40 I decided to get Eyal's Wrath and see how Acidfire did. I did use it, but another two cooldown 10-range beam was far more damaging and useful over time.
3. I had a terrific 10-cooldown regen infusion so four points in fungus was 100% uptime for that; a second regen infusion was redundant but it just didn't matter.

This character finally let me figure out why the survival talent that reduces cooldowns for totems/charms is good: it works on items that aren't "all totems and charms go on cooldown." Spellhunt Remnants has a 50-turn cooldown after its first antimagic burst without it. With two points in it, that's 8 turns, so when the sorcerers are coming off a 10-turn spell disruption they immediately get another.

I had some irresponsible deaths early but this character cruised through the lategame, rarely dipping below 100% health.

[Snarvid]

Why not levelling Oozewalk past level 1? It removes 3 effects at level 2, quite a good improvement, I feel. Or is something wrong with it being too quick?

Nah, just points tight and I wasn’t often finding that I needed more than 2 effects being removed at a time by the time I would have bothered (early on more stun clears great but points tight, later on grounding strap usually has you covered).

[Chronosplit]

Interesting thing that I felt was worth noting about this build: I found the steam powered helm and gauntlets and they have me a huge boost. The two together give you 8% all damage and 30% crit mult. Not to mention 50% Disarm immunity if you aren't using Iron Grip. Most of this set synergizes even better if you're packing a generator too, as the steam crit's certainly welcome.

EDIT: I got a win, though this was in normal. https://te4.org/characters/160392/tome/ ... 7a8683a4ac

I loved this build, I felt like a mad scientist for at least part of the time. A couple of notes:
-I took Tinkers with my first cat point (plus some extra time to get the money), and I don't regret it one bit because I was still finding new schematics in High Peak. It took me forever to find a medical injector though.
-Your talk about Mind Parasite is right on the money for Normal. I found 4 points in this very much worth it, and even got it to stick on one of the final bossess. With a Heroism, I was able to apply it to Atamathon.
-About slime spit, I didn't invest until the very end. I don't really regret it, but Oozebeam was largely the better talent. I also had enough extra class points to go 5 into Oozewalk which is awesome.
-I have no clue why I have 5 in Smith. I think I slipped on the mouse and didn't realize it until it was too late. It didn't help that I only found one Alchemist to betray.
-3/5 in Resolve's reasoning was because with the mastery amulet I got for both that and Slime, I figured I should take advantage of it being 5.0. The resists saved me more than the regen. Looking back, I should've taken that lost point in Smith and those two (maybe that third in Ancestral Life because 2 wasn't pushing it at the time) to Device Mastery or Leaves Tide.
-I took a pip in Explosions for Headlamp early until I got a good lite, and I don't regret it. I was going to put more in if I came across Thunder Grenade for the stun, but I didn't get it until the very end of the game. If I had points to spare another choice might've actually gone into Steam Power; I was using tinkers quite a lot that would benefit from it (fatal attractor, toxic cannister, saw projector in the early game on things that had nature resist, sometimes even Itching Powder, etc.)
-I took Plate of the Blackened Mind for Mindpower and a handy Dominate. I didn't find the Scale Mail so this worked swimmingly.
-I never used a Movement. I got a crazy powerful generator from the tinker merchant that scaled with the right status, and I could eventually use my Rocket Boots for free.
-I actually didn't take Wild Growth anywhere due to feeling kinda iffy about Equilibrium levels. I probably could juggle it, but my current regen ended up being enough, as well as Conversion (no kidding, this was bonkers with my healmod and mindcrit combined. I didn't even know Conversion could crit.)
-I got Superpower for my first Prodigy because I didn't get Size Matters at that point, I didn't look back and actually found myself preferring it for the extra stuff thnks to the mindpower buff. I took Meteroic Crash for my second because I wanted to be weird. I actually found that it was great (and actually pretty hilarious seeing it proc off of something like Mana Clash or Call of the Ooze), but it didn't synergize terribly well in that it killed my summons pretty good too depending on what it was triggered from (this by the way benefits from the Bugfix Pack I used).

[Snarvid]

Drem Oozemancers are currently invincible-ish* (capable of winning Madness if you could stand the tedium), but they have effectively 2 fewer category points from losing the Cornac bonus+ being unable to enter Zigur and therefore needing to manually unlock Fungus (drop an inscription and Eyal's Wrath, take Superpower for your non-Fungal Blood prodigy). My guess is this will be patched out (although perhaps not because it's so awkward to use), I hope Drem will gain the ability to enter Zigur when it is.

*The simplest form of the invincibility thing is this: Slime Roots can reset Frenzy, Frenzy can make Slime Roots not go on cooldown, Fungal Blood + Ancestral Life add turns. While there are more elaborate versions of this with higher ranked Slime Roots (which remove the need for 100% turn gain on Ancestral Life), the core is doable as soon as you hit >100% turn gain on Ancestral Life:
- use Frenzy
- use Nature's Equilbrium, target yourself, regen cancel (nets you a small amount of time but is essentially free, doesn't go on cooldown due to Frenzy)
- use instant-speed infusion, Fungal Blood, regen cancel (nets you 1 turn + a small fraction)
- use Slime Roots (resets Frenzy and infusion, doesn't go on cooldown itself due to Frenzy)
- repeat

Each time you do the loop it's a new instance of Frenzy, so the game forgets what was used last time for the purposes of Frenzy preventing the ability from going on cooldown. Assuming you have enough respen that your opponent can't absorb infinite hits, they'll die eventually (or, with the right Tinkers on your Mindstars, relatively quickly). You should be durable enough to avoid being one-shot, and that's pretty much all you have to worry about.

[Cathbald]

use Nature's Equilbrium, target yourself, regen cancel (nets you a small amount of time but is essentially free, doesn't go on cooldown due to Frenzy)

It goes on cd because it's a gen talent not a class one. Combo doesn't work.
Next

[Snarvid]

Sorry, was testing a much more complicated rotation with Sludgegrip on a DevModded character and thought I figured this one out, which spared me a bunch of text and dependency on an item.

Next is the original variant I was testing (and have successfully tested): Sludgegrip/Oozing Heart/Slime Amulet/Mastery Point lets Slime Roots reset 3 random talents off cooldown, which is enough for Frenzy, Nature's Eq, and the infusion. Infinite back on. The mastery point option really cuts into your options, which I suppose is more of a fun-factor issue than anything else, once you have infinite time to heal/do damage/reset EQ.

10: Oozing Blades
20: Fungus
36: Mastery
Wyrm: Tinker

Now that we’ve hit the “Slime Roots resets 3 talents” threshold, you could also do two (inscription -> fungal blood -> regen cancels) followed by Frenzy and Slime Roots to accumulate as much time as you want and use other offensive talents that won't screw with Slime Roots due to Frenzy. But you do have to track how much bonus time you have if you're trying to burst down a really big opponent and the Nature's EQ option is easier to keep track of, and it also manages your EQ needs in a way that other talents generally don't.

I suppose there is still a vulnerability in the build is if you get hit by someone who turns off your sustains or puts extra talents on cooldown, or on levels where you can't teleport. So it's not a totally free win, although the former of these could be managed by using Track and only initially engaging with an enemy after accumulating some bonus time, such that they get no window to ever react... would seem to make entering a level and no-teleport zones the vulnerable moments for the character. You do keep accumulated time when switching levels or zones, though, so if you prep a little you're really only in trouble in no-teleport zones and when entering from the main map (and I suppose you could manage even that if you were really paranoid, by accumulating lots of extra turns and then using Rocket Boots or a Movement Infusion to reach it as quickly as possible).

I know the Fortress is no-teleport. Can't remember any others offhand, but if there are mission-critical ones that would be a big stumbling block. Otherwise, should be able to win Madness once you hit 30 (with Sludgegrip) or 36 (without). Once you step into a zone I *think* you should be able to clear the whole thing on the first turn, as long as you’re doing enough damage in order to be able to maintain the (get extra turns - Track - reset - call of the ooze - hit them with Nature’s Equilbrium if your EQ starts getting too high) thing. (Actually, I suppose if that works then there’s theoretically never a need to let time pass again - if you’ve got a decent movement infusion whose duration isn’t ticking down because time isn’t moving you should be able to go zone-to-zone-to-zone all in the same instant.)

[Snarvid]

Just playing around a bit, I think they will probably have to be nerfed even without the Fungal Bloom infinite turns thing. At level 12 you've got Frenzy -> Slime Roots, which lets you teleport & reset Frenzy while having 2 turns of Frenzy left to play with each time. A kiting monster with Acid Splash (at close ranges, keeps you in Mucus to manage EQ) and Call of the Ooze or Poison Spores.

Making Frenzy have a fixed cooldown is probably the simplest solution... this would hurt, what, TW for Invigorate? Oozemancer with Fungal Bloom could still have a really cool talent spam at the end of their time accumulation loop, given that you've got ~6 turns where time isn't passing and another 3 afterwards, letting you use most of your talents once without putting them on cooldown.

[joramsey]

Thanks for the guide! I've been following it pretty closely and just entered the East on this character https://te4.org/characters/201218/tome/ ... 29290c2710, so even if I die the next turn it's the farthest I've gotten on insane. Though I expect I will play even more conservatively now as my least favorite level (Vor Armory) is coming up.

If you have any advice for the current character, I'm all ears. I know I need to boost my stun/confusion/etc immunities as well increase my nature resist penetration. I have the gear for the latter but have opted to boost Will for EQ reasons and wear my spellhunt gloves.

edit: no worries about the advice—secured a win! My first on insane and no resurrections...so more kudos for your guide.

[Snarvid]

Nice! Going from "no wins on insane" to "deathless insane win" is a BIG difficulty upgrade, since it's actually easier than a roguelike insane win (since Blood of Life/etc can get you a resurrection or two). Well done, and glad the guide helped.