Hi All!
Do you want to kill 3-4 level 120 rare enemies with ~ 80 000 – 120 000 max life on madness with just 2 actions?
Then this guide is for you!
Welcome to the build with possibly the fastest killing potential in the whole game (among normal classes of course,
and not including broken classes with abuses, like Stone Warden with Deeprock…).
Before I start, I have to make some notes:
Note 1: the guide is for viable madness play, but not for a likely madness win. However with dirty tricks (abuses), you can win,
but if you play “normally” then the Prides will be a dividing line and High Peak is out of your league (Not the Sorcerers,
just High Peak rares/uniques/bosses, avoiding some enemies in High Peak will be really hard).
Note 2: - As always – I am using a non-conventional build & playstyle, so it can be really boring and/or very hard for other players
(who are used to a very different playstyle).
Note 3: this is a Wyrmic, so it lacks a few essential factors. These can be solved by inscriptions, prodigies and ESCORTS.
This build depends on an early temporal explorer escort (before level 10) and also needs an alchemist escort later too. These can be achieved by:
a, using an addon to choose your escorts or
b, simply restarting the game after you checked the first few escorts to get an early temporal explorer.
Why “Ouroboros”?
Because with this build, we can bypass our own instakill immunity and we can kill ourselves with a target:die effect, but we can also survive this.
We can Swallow ourselves, and normally we cannot survive this, not even Cauterize saves us.
But having See the Threads saves us from target:die effects by bringing us back to the original timeline when we casted the spell.
So this Wyrmic can “eat its own tail”, we can safely swallow ourselves.
Content of the Guide:
I., Introduction
II., Race
III., Stats
IV., Prodigies
V., Talents
VI., Inscriptions
VII., Escorts
VIII., Gear
IX., Abuses
X., Defenses
XI., Enemy Priority and Brain Exploding Talents
XII., Fighting With Enemies
I., Introduction
So, why are Wyrmics viable in madness at all, and why just up to the Prides/High Peak but not there (without abuses)?
In madness, some mechanisms has key importance that Wyrmics have:
A, Battlefield control, map alteration:
Creating safe places where we can rest, making walls that prevents our enemies to attack us or what separates 1-2 enemy
from other enemies while we kill them is a very strong mechanism. (Details for individual talents are in the Talents section)
Wyrmics have:
- Ice Wall
- Burrow
- Tornado
- Quake
B, Great mobility:
- Lightning Speed
Is a better version of a Movement Infusion that can last for even 5-9 turns. Combined with Burrow, we can attack from walls or can escape into walls.
C, Incredible Fast & Effective AoE Damage, Killing Capacity:
This is not necessary if the build can mitigate damage & effects very well, but this is not the case here.
Wyrmic is very fragile, that’s why fast & effective killing has key importance.
Wyrmics have:
- Static Field
- Swallow
Static Field is the fastest and (in my opinion) the best damaging talent in the whole game. A very important parameter: it is RELIABLE!
It is AoE, has a good radius and it only makes a mindpower vs physical save check. It applies a current life % based takeHit (and a normal damage) on the targets.
Late-game enemies have 70 – 150 000 life, crazy armor, crazy defensive talents and very high defense.
Static Field is just bypassing most of the defensive layers when it applies the life loss.
Static Field brings enemies down to low % life very fast and Swallow can instantly kill an enemy that is at low % life.
This two talent has a really good synergy, a Wyrmic can kill any rare/boss really fast, no matter how much maximum life it has.
D, Talent Cooldown Management:
- Nature’s Balance
With Nature’s Balance, we can reset our Wild-Gift talents, so we can re-use them again. This is incredibly strong on a class that has strong talents.
This means, we can alpha strike from walls via Lightning Speed & Burrow and double-use Static Field.
We can use a few more AoE talents, Ice Walls or Swallow, then we can retreat back to the walls.
E, Healing Capacity:
Wyrmics have:
- Nature’s Touch
- Fungus tree
- Harmony tree (after we ate the Sandworm Queen’s Heart)
With Fungus tree, Wyrmic can have a continuous Regeneration effect just with 1 Regeneration Infusion.
Wyrmic has 2 healing talents: Nature’s Touch and Sudden Growth.
Last but not least, Healing Nexus is incredible on madness. It not just prevents our enemies to heal back from our Static Fields,
but enemies will heal us instead. (Enemy healings can be crazy high on madness)
F, AoE Debuffing Capacity:
Wyrmics have:
- Freeze (Ice Breath)
- Blind (Sand Breath)
- Stun (Lightning Breath)
- Disarm (Corrosive Breath)
- Talent Fail chance (Venomous Breath)
- Confusion with 50% power (Bellowing Roar)
So a wide variety of good AoE debuffs, but just for 3 turns.
The good AoE with short duration further inspires the guerilla warfare. After we used multiply Static Fields and/or Swallow,
we can disable our enemies for 3 turns, so we can retreat back into walls safely.
G, And this specific build has:
- Drem Frenzy
- Stone Touch
And we can find:
- Acera
With Drem Frenzy (+ Nature’s Balance), we cannot just double-cast our Static Field at the start of each fight, but we can triple-cast it… really devastating.
The build also has Stone Touch, what is (in my opinion) a much overlooked talent.
If an enemy is stoned and taking a “damage instance” (it triggers on TakeHit) that is at least 30% of its maximum life,
then the instance will be set to the targets max life +1.
And… Hey! … that is what Static Field does, no? Dealing a current life % based Hit to enemies in a large radius…
… what is ~30% in case of elite & rare enemies.
This means any rare enemy that we can turn into stone, can be instantly killed with a single Static Field!
(Some enemies have die_at and some talents triggering onTakeHit, therefore reducing Static Fields life loss so not all enemies can be instantly killed.
Details at the Talents section)
Stone Touch is also a rage 5 beam that means we can turn multiple enemies into stone and Static Field is also an AoE,
so we can kill multiple rares at once with a Stone Touch + Static Field.
Furthermore: for this build, Acera (or Morrigor with Corrosive Worm) is just simply crazy.
We can deal serious amount of damage to enemies with a few actions or even kill them if they are stoned.
And then Corrosive Worm just explodes and deal ~30-40 000 radius 4 AoE acid damage, what is further enhanced by our acid damage modifier…
So, we can kill a rare, while dealing half of the life of a random boss and then the acid explosion from the dying rare
will deal ~80-100 000 AoE acid damage and kill the boss.
But Wyrmic lacks several things that are very essential on madness:
H, Lack of Direct Damage Reduction Talents:
Wyrmic only have:
- Icy Skin
what just gives extra HP and a little armor
- Wild Growth
what gives a little maximum HP and life regen
This also inspires further the guerilla warfare, we can just take damage for a few-several turns, and then we have to retreat.
This lack of damage reduction will be solved with:
- Stormshield Runes
- Using mindstars and using Leaves Tide for a 40-60% cancel damage chance
- Taking Cauterize prodigy at level 42
- Negating (debuffing) enemies
The 2 Stormshield Rune and the ~40-60% cancel damage chance will make us really tanky – but only for several turns.
But this is enough for us, we will retreat from fights after a few-several turns.
I, Lack of Detrimental Effect Clearing:
Wyrmic only have:
- Waters of Life
what is basically nothing…
Enemies on madness will throw several effects on us each turn, and these effects can have really crazy duration too (like 30 turn Stun).
Up to level 25, the lack of a very good effect clearing mechanism (like Dimensional Shift) can be handled, but we really need something around that point.
The lack of effect clearing will be handled with:
- taking Draconic Will prodigy at level 25
Wyrmic is qualified for the prodigy by class and our main stat is Willpower, so we will take Draconic Will prodigy.
This means, we will be immune to all non-other detrimental effects for 6 turns (or 40% of the time).
This also inspires further the guerilla warfare: we will have 6 turns to fight, then we have to retreat.
And why Wyrmics are not fully viable from a point?
This is because the takeHit on Static Field has a mindpower vs physical save check, and the kill on Swallow has a physical power vs physical save check.
Stoning also makes a spellpower vs spellsave check.
End-game enemies can have 130-150 saves on madness, so a Wyrmic can be easily negated just by enemy stats.
We do not have a mechanism that e.g. Chronomancers have that increases our effective power, so at end-game we can only kite and try to run away from several foes.
Furthermore: warrior type enemies, who can have Unflinching Resolve for a very high chance are simply passively removing the stoned effect.
They can also have Daunting Presence…
If we will be within radius 6 to any of this enemy, all of our powers will be reduced by a raw 130-160.
Gorbat Pride (and a part of Grushnak Pride) is also non-diggable, so (without abuses
) it’s really unlikely we can deal with the Prides.II., Race
Drem.
As I already mentioned, Drem Frenzy further enhances our guerilla warfare strategy.
We can already double-cast Static Field, but with a Drem, we can triple-cast our Static Field when we alpha striking.
What does triple-casting Static Field offer?
1, Kill all the white mob
Bring down any:
2, ELITE or RARE from 100% life to ~34% life
3, UNIQUE or RANDBOSS from 100% life to ~47% life
4, FIXED BOSS from 100% life to 55% life
In a radius of 7-8!
And we also have an instakill talent (Swallow) that kills an enemy if it’s below ~34-40% of its maximum life!
These values are just with 1.3 mastery and ~100 mindpower and just the takeHit part.
With Eye of the Wyrm and/or a mastery amulet, a 110-120 mindpower we can have better results.
If we have +size from belt and/or boots, we can also reach a level when we can instantly kill uniques and randbosses too with our 3 x Static Field + Swallow combo.
This is how our Wyrmic can deal 150 000 damage and kill a single enemy in 2-4 turns.
And this is how our little Wyrmic can deal even 500 – 600 000 damage totally in radius 7-8 in 2-4 turns.
Is Wyrmic strong enough?
Drem Frenzy is useful for many other things too, we can double or triple cast:
- Swallow (if we failed at first try)
- Ice Wall
- Tornado
- any Breath
- Bellowing Roar
So, our debuffing capacity can be way longer than just 3 turns.
III., Stats
Level up Willpower, this is top priority.
As soon as we have spare points, secondary stat is Magic to improve and max.
After we maxed both Will & Mag, we will level up our Strength.
IV., Prodigies
Level 25: Draconic Will
We have to take this prodigy at level 25 in order to play further. Otherwise enemies will easily kill us.
Level 42: Cauterize
We also have to take this prodigy at level 42 in order to reliably play further. At this point, enemies can one-shot us if the stormshield blocks are depleted.
V., Talents
I will just write about the talent trees that I am using: 5 from the 11 class trees (4 is enough) and all the generic trees (and even more).
For my madness runs, I unlocked Chronomancy, instead of unlocking Cunning – Survival.
So you will need to restart for an early Temporal Explorer escort or have an addon to choose your first escort.
The build also works with Survival & Track, but Chronomancy gives us a better tracking talent and Contingency + See the Threads too.
(so, for madness I advise to have Chronomancy)
I am saying Precognition is better than Track, because it also reveals traps and we can tune up our paradox (willpower character), so we can have a way longer duration.
While Track has a 4-8 turn duration, Precognition can have a 3-15 turns duration, so we can have an almost continuous effect.
Precognition is also a spell, so its cooldown can be reduced to 18-16. Because in madness we have hunted, it is essential to always know where enemies are.
The longer the uptime of the tracking effect, the more information it provides us.
The build also relies on an alchemist escort, but early escorts (T1-T2) with a wyrmic are relatively easy.
We can wall + quake them inside the environment, so we can trap them. Then we just have to clear the level before we dig them out.
Category point order:
Level 10: Chronomancy
Level 20: Stone Alchemy (or Inscription)
Level 34: Inscription (or Stone Alchemy)
Wyrm Bile: Inscription
We will also learn and unlock:
- Mindstar Mastery from Zigur
- Harmony by eating the Heart of the Sandworm Queen
You can notice that we are playing with a Drem, but also unlocking Mindstar Mastery.
With this build we just let Kroshkkur fall, this way we lose the Teleport Kroshkkur spell, so we can enter Zigur after replacing our starting runes with infusions.
Talents in Chronomancy tree are refundable, so we can go back to Zigur any time, just be sure: only the last 3 generic points are spent on Chronomancy,
before we have the 1.2 mastery from Zigur. In madness, characters starts with 500 gold, so the remaining ~850 gold can be collected during the Tier 1 areas.
After we have the 1.2 mastery in Mindstar Mastery, we need nothing from Zigur.
NOTE: the first two talents in Stone Alchemy are non-refundable, so do not learn these if you still want to go back to Zigur.
The build progression is:
The individual trees and talents in a bit detailed way:
1., Venom Drake Aspect:
Each talent point that we spend here is increasing our acid resistance with 1% passively (irrelevant for us).
a, Acidic Spray:
This talent is our main damage source for the early game and a wonderful talent. At eff. level 6.5 it is a 4 turn cooldown 8 range beam,
what has a really nice base damage (bit higher than the mages’ beams). Furthermore, it has a chance for disarming for 3 turns,
and it give a raw 20 mindpower bonus to us, what is very significant for the early stages. Max this asap.
The disarm has a 25% chance, makes a disarm immunity & a mindpower vs physical save check.
5 points
b, Corrosive Mist:
Irrelevant, just for unlock.
1 point
c, Dissolve:
We are not using our mindstars as a damage source. Irrelevant, just for unlock.
1 point
d, Corrosive Breath:
Very good AoE debuff (disarm for 3 turns), that making a disarm immunity & a mindpower vs physical save check to apply the effect.
We do not need the damage and we also do not need the better radius. We will fight mostly in zig-zag tunnels, from short range,
so 1 point is enough. After level ~30-35 we can improve this talent, because we will have a lot of class talent points.
1 point early, 5 points for end-game
2., Storm Drake Aspect:
Each talent point that we spend here is increasing our lightning resistance with 1% passively (irrelevant for us).
a, Lightning Speed:
One of Wyrmics core talent and essential for this build. We will use this in combination with Burrow to alpha strike our enemies from walls,
then after the strike we will reset this also with Nature’s Balance and we will use this again to retreat back to the walls.
The duration can be a mind-citical, so it can lasts really long.
The effect also improves our physical and lightning resistances (these are irrelevant for us) and the talent passively increases our movement speed
with each point by a small value, what is nice.
Be really aware: do not cast anything and do not bump into enemies while you have this effect, because you will instantly lose it.
(e.g. if your Contingency triggers, you will also lose the effect because you casted the bounded spell)
Enemies in madness will have the hunter effect, so they will always know where you are. They will appear in front of you via teleports/blindslide,
enemies will summon creatures in front of you and enemies will have way higher global & movement speeds than we have.
I advise to use the Passive mode if you are using Lightning Speed.
1 point immediately, slowly level up and max it around level 35
b, Static Field:
In my opinion, the very best offensive talent in the game, especially with all the other tools that a Wyrmic & this build have.
The talent has 2 part: first a Hit will be applied what is based on the enemies’ current life. After the Hit, a Damage projection (lightning) will be applied.
The Damage projection is just useful for the very early stages, later it will become irrelevant.
So, what does a Hit means?
This means, the life loss is not a damage, therefore it cannot be affected by any extra damage modifier and cannot even crit.
But this also means a huge part of the damage reduction effects are not triggering against it.
This also means: being stunned or numbed (Meditation sustained) do not affect this part.
Talents/effects triggering on Damage Projection:
1., Premonition (just gives Resistance by damage type, what will trigger later)
2., Wards
3., callbackOnTakeDamageBeforeResists talents
4., Affinity healing calculation
5., Resistances by entity type
6., Resistances by damage type
7., Psionic Shields
8., Blocking from Shields
9., Forge Shield
10., Abyssal Shield
11., Antimagic Shield
12., Flat damage reduction
13., Roll With It prodigy
14., Reduction against unseen attackers
15., Gloom-Sanctuary
16., Predator-Mark Prey
17., Flat damage cap
18., CallbackOnTakeDamage talents
19., Absolute Resistance
And there are a LOT of CallbackOnTakeDamage talents…
OnTakeHit:
20., Invulnerability (Time Prison)
21., Cancel damage chance
22., Phase Shift
23., Retribution Shield (Sun Paladin)
24., Incoming damage reduction (Snipe)
25., Mitosis
26., Displacement Shield
27., Time Shield
28., Damage Shield
29., Force of Will-Deflection
30., Ice Cube Damage Absorption
31., Solipsism-Dismissal
32., Resonance Field
33., If Cauterize triggered and we are invulnerable, damage value goes here into the effect
34., Solipsism damage to psi is calculated here
35., Stoned shattering effect checks & acts here (if the damage reaches the 30% of targets max life)
36., Clone on hit (e.g. Ooze enemies)
37., Solipsism psi damage is applied here
38., Second Life
39., Heartstart (just gives die_at, do not reduces the damage)
40., Eldritch Stone
41., Stone Link
42., CallbackOnHitTalents
43., Unstoppable
Some notable CallbackOnHit talents: Phantasmal Shield, Disruption Shield, Hiemal Shield, Bone Shield, Reality Smearing, Guardian Unity.
As you can see, most of these talents are magical sustains, so the Rune of Dissipation is important to have for the second part of the game.
Early game, these talents can be bypassed via tactical decisions, but from the second part
when e.g. Phantasmal Shield starting to reach 80% - 100% avoidance, we need the Rune of Dissipation.
If we leave out magical sustains, just: Mitosis, the 3 “damage” Shields, Deflection, Solipsism and Guardian Unity remains.
The damage shields and deflection are not a problem, they just “negate” one Static Field usually,
and Solipsism is also weak if the dude is only a Solipsist (their psi pool will deplete very fast).
In case of Guardian Unity, we have to wait 2 turns, after the initial hit and this can be solved with Stoning and/or a Biting Gale Rune easily,
so it also just blocks one Static Field.
The real pain is: Mitosis. Ooozemancers are really tanky.
The trick is: try to position yourself to hit the possibly spawning oozes too with your Static Field.
This way, you kill those too, while the oozemancer also takes hits.
You can also alter the environment, like casting an Ice Wall next to the Oozemancer, before using Static Field,
this way there will be no or less free space for the Bloated Oozes, and possibly just 1 or even none can spawn.
Choosing where and when to fight with the enemy is very important, therefore continuous use of Precognition too.
NOTE: Static Field makes a mindpower vs physical save check AND the check has a 10% lower limit.
This means, Static Field always has a 10% chance to succeed, even if the enemy has more than 20 more physical save than our mindpower (but do not rely on this 10%).
Also, with really high mindpower, the life loss % is also better: e.g. with ~120 mindpower and a mastery amulet,
we can bring down a random boss from 100% to 40% with 3 Static Fields or a fixed boss from 100% to 50%.
The fifth point (minimum radius 7) is very important because of enemies with Daunting Presence.
5 points early
c, Tornado:
A wonderful 1 pointer talent, what is very useful. It creates a homing projectile, that will always goes for its original target
(even if the target teleports to another direction). The projectile has a maximum of 20 turns “lifetime” and it goes 1 tile per turn,
so it’s very slow (what is very good for us).
The projectile does 2 things (it has no selffire, so we cannot knockback or damage ourselves):
On movements, it deals a small damage in radius 2 (irrelevant) and knocks back enemies from itself 2 tiles back.
This knockback just checks knockback immunity, but it DOES NOT make a power vs save check. So this is what we want.
On reaching its target, our little projectile explodes, deals damage in radius 2-4 (irrelevant) and knocks back enemies from itself 3 tiles back.
This knockback checks knockback immunity, but it also makes a mindpower vs physical save check with a 95% upper limit (5% chance to fail always)
AND it just using 80% of our mindpower. This is sad… this knockback is weak, we do not use Tornado for this.
So, how to use Tornado properly? It has a very nice 10 range, so always target the furthest enemy from you.
If an enemy is like 1-2 tiles away from you and you want to knock back this dude, instead target a dude furthest if you can.
A well set up & used Tornado can knock back an enemy for 20 turns and 20 tiles away.
Be aware, mobility talents like Rush, Blinslide, … are bypassing the projectile (the dude is directly moved into the end location),
but the projectile will change direction and still target the dude after this.
With Drem Frenzy and Nature’s Balance, we can set up 3 Tornados so we can keep away enemies really effectively,
while we are Static Fielding or shooting with Acidic Spray.
1 point
d, Lightning Breath:
One of the breaths that I do not use at all. The thing is: if I could stun an enemy, then I would instead stone it with Stone Touch
or freeze it with a Biting Gale Rune or Ice Breath.
The stun effect makes a stun/freeze immunity and a mindpower vs physical save check for apply.
This build is not relies on breaths, but the build is very loose on class points, so you can learn it. Probably 1 point is enough but I never used it.
0 point
3., Sand Drake Aspect:
Each talent point that we spend here is increasing our physical resistance with 0.5% passively (irrelevant for us).
a, Swallow:
A very fun, very thematic and very strong talent. One of our determinative talents. Very early game, we do not need it,
but after we built up out Static Field, we will level up this beauty to max too.
The cooldown is decreasing with talent level down to 6 and this is very nice, even if we fail, we can try again soon.
The talent first makes a weapon attack with weapon based nature damage (this is irrelevant for us) and then it tries to instantly kill the enemy.
We would like to just instakill an enemy that has very low % HP after our Static Fields. This talent is the only reason we would like to have accuracy.
We do not want to be at melee range to any enemy, just only if we are going close to swallow them.
Leveling up Swallow also buffs our physical & mental crit chance, but this is irrelevant for us.
After we leveled up Swallow to max, we can look for +size category on shoes & belts. Before reaching max talent level, the extra size is not important.
With eff. level 6.5, we can reach a 27% chance of a medium dude and 32% on a small dude (if we are also medium).
With +1 size: the thresholds are goes up to 31% and 36%.
With +2 size: the thresholds are goes up to 34% and 39%.
With +3 size: the thresholds are goes up to 36% and 41%.
With a mastery amulet: the thresholds are goes up to 39% and 43%.
First, we have to hit the enemy (accuracy vs defense check [and/or evasive talent checks]) and after this, the talent checks the life % of the enemy.
If it’s higher than our swallow threshold, we cannot swallow it.
After this, there is a 2 part check and both part has to be successful.
First part is: a physical power vs physical save check with a 95% upper limit (5% chance to fail always – this is sad)
OR check if the target is already dead.
Second part is: instakill immunity check OR check the targets current life %.
If the target has equal or lower than 5% of its maximum life, it can be swallowed down even if it is instakill immune.
(I think, this is the only talent that can instakill and can bypass instakill immunity)
By swallowing down an enemy, we will heal a little bit (target.level * 2 + 5) and our equilibrium will be lowered (-target.level - 5).
These effects are nice, but do not rely on these.
1 point early, 5 points from level ~28
b, Quake:
I have mixed feelings about this talent and I use it as rarely as I just have to.
The talent first makes a weapon attack against enemies (so first, we have to hit) within range 2-5 and tries to knock them back for 3 tiles.
This knockback makes a knockback immunity and a physical power vs physical save check with a 95% upper limit (5% chance to fail always).
Then its randomly switches the terrain tiles within its radius, but it do not affect Stairs and no_teleport tiles (like vault tiles).
So, this talent has a funny use: we can kill enemies inside a vault from outside, if they cannot open doors or teleport out to attack us
(first we have to open the main door of a vault to deactivate their “vaulted” status that gives enemies invulnerability).
This talent is also our “escorting” talent. When the escort spawns, we can ask the dude to stay in one place.
We can cast Ice Walls around him/her and then quake 1-3 times if needed more.
We can trap the escorts into the environment and we just have to clear the level without worrying about the dude.
Escorts before Dreadfell are easy with a Wyrmic (be aware it has friendlyfire).
With Quake, we can also replace our Ice Walls, and if an Ice Wall tile is moved from its original position, it will be permanent,
so we can create little covers for ourselves even in an open area.
The “intended” use – I guess - is to get rid of an enemy/enemies and make a safe place for ourselves, but this use is random,
therefore only use it this way if you really cannot handle the situation in any other way. Also, this use is not a “last turn life saver”.
Do not try to use Quake when you really close to die. If you are really close to die, while you are close to an enemy that can act/damage you
then you made wrong decisions – you should be somewhere else (in a zig-zag tunnel and waiting).
1 points early, 3 points at mid-game, 5 points for end-game
c, Burrow:
One of our core talents. We will use Burrow mostly in combination with Lightning Speed, what enables us to attack an enemy from walls,
and we can also reset these with Nature’s Balance so after the strike, we can retreat back into the walls.
While we have the effect, it gives us: armor penetration (irrelevant for us), physical resistance penetration (irrelevant),
we can move through walls (like Wraithform) and we will dig on movement.
This means, wall tiles are now valid tiles for us to be. So, if an enemy knocks us back or pulls us,
we can be knocked back into walls or pulled through walls too (be aware of this against sawbutchers with Explosive Saw).
This also means, we can teleport into walls with random teleports.
(Do not use a Teleport Rune, but instead look for Random Blink from Light Armours or Boots. These have a small radius, so they are very often safe to use)
Note, the effect just makes wall tiles valid, not tree tiles, so we cannot use our Burrow in any tree/mushroom area.
Important to know: we will have and use frequently Gem Portal from Stone Alchemy tree and we can only probability travel through tiles
that are BLOCKING our movement. So if we have our Burrow effect, we cannot probability travel through walls.
We have to manually deactivate the Burrow effect first.
4 points from mid-game, 5 points for end-game
d, Sand Breath:
Blind is a very strong, really nice debuff so we want this. Again, even 1 point is enough for us, because 5 range is okay for us
and the duration of the blind is constant. We will have several extra class points so by end game we can max this talent, just for the range.
Important: the description of this talent is incorrect. The apply power of the blind is NOT our mindpower, but our physical power.
1 point early, 5 points it for end-game
4., Cold Drake Aspect:
Each talent point that we spend here is increasing our cold resistance with 1% passively (irrelevant for us).
a, Ice Claw:
Just for unlock. Very early game we will use this talent, before switching to mindstars.
Having a little AoE Ice damage (Cold + 25% chance to freeze) is nice at the very early stages.
1 point
b, Icy Skin:
Our only “original” (what Wyrmic has by default) direct defensive talent, and it is also a very weak one.
The little Cold damage on taking a melee hit is just noticeable at the very early game and the armor is totally irrelevant for us playing on madness.
The talent also applies a multiplier for our flat maximum life, what is at least nice to have. This talent synergizes well with anything
that is giving us max life (on items or Wild Growth) and also it has an “abuse” with other multipliers like Chant of Fortitude (from a Sun Paladin escort).
Important to know: focusing on max life just effective from early game to ~Dreadfell. Later, having a high max life won’t gonna save you.
1 point early, 5 points from mid-game
c, Ice Wall:
One of the strongest non-direct defensive talent in the game. It’s not as good as Stone Wall, but if you learn how to use it and when to use it,
it can be close to – or as good in many situations.
The cooldown is decreasing by talent level, while the length and the duration is increasing, so it really has to be maxed.
The wall tiles are also dealing Ice damage (Cold + 25% chance to freeze) every turn to enemies within radius 2, so it has even more to offer defensively.
The walls are transparent, therefore not blocking enemy LoS and this can cause some funny results, like enemies try to target us with an AoE damage effect,
but they will damage themselves instead.
15 turn cooldown with 9 turn duration is already very nice, but we can cast this talent 2 times with Dram Frenzy and 3 times in a row due to Nature’s Balance.
This is invaluable.
We can use purely defensively to separate ourselves from enemies, or we can separate enemies from each other and deal with them 1 by 1.
It’s also a good defense against cloning talents like Inner Demons (that can just spawn on adjacent tiles) in combination with Burrow.
3 points asap, 5 points around level 30
d, Ice Breath:
The only breath talent in we would like to have a bit more damage, therefore a bit more talent level, due to the ice block.
I advise to use a Biting Gale Rune asap, but it can come handy if we also have another AoE freeze, even if its weaker and non-instant.
The freeze makes a stun/freeze immunity and a mindpower vs physical save to apply.
1 point early, 3 points around level 30, 5 points at end-game
5., Fire Drake Aspect:
In my opinion, the weakest Drake Aspect tree. We do not really need anything from here, but we will have several extra class points,
so and extra 50% AoE confusion can be nice.
Each talent point that we spend here is increasing our fire resistance with 1% passively (irrelevant for us).
a, Wing Buffet:
Just for unlock, never used it.
1 point after level ~35
b, Bellowing Roar:
An extra debuff that can come handy later, so why not learn it. If an enemy cannot be stoned, blinded or disarmed,
a 50% confusion can be nice. 4 points are enough for max confusion power, but we have the class points, so we can max it.
Note, the talents confusion power can go above 50% as you can see in the description, but the Confusion effect itself is hard capped at 50%.
0 point early, 5 points for end game
Further talents in this tree does not needed.
Generic trees
In generic talents, we are a bit point hungry, because we are using 8 generic trees overall.
6., Combat Training:
Float 1 point in Weapons Mastery, and remove it as soon as we switched to mindstars.
a, Heavy Armour Training:
Just for enabling us to wear metal boots, gloves, helms …
1 point
b, Combat Accuracy:
Items are way better source for accuracy than this talent, and we are a bit generic point hungry. Also, we just need accuracy for Swallow only
and enemy defense is nullified while it’s frozen, so we are not in a desperate need of very high accuracy at all.
1 point
7., Call of the Wild:
a, Meditation:
Our essential resource management talent. At early game – when we are dealing damage – we just sustain it between fights.
Later, when we are Static Fielding and Swallowing or Static Field + Stone Touch killing, we will continuously sustain it.
Yes, sustaining Meditation does not affect our offensive output, because numbed triggers just after stunned in the Damage projection function
and Static Field skips this, it is a Hit.
Same for Swallow, it is an instakill, so it’s not even a Hit.
The only case when Meditation should be deactivated, when we are using Acera, and when the Corrosive Worm explodes. This is an AoE acid damage.
Sustaining Meditation gives us mental save (irrelevant), healing factor (nice, but not necessary) and more importantly: equilibrium reduction per turn.
The reduction scales way better with mindpower than with talent level, so even 1 point is enough here. With our high mindpower,
we can reach 10-11 equilibrium reduction per turn, so we can safely cast or wild-gift talents.
Learning this talent also triggers an equilibrium reduction on resting, but this is irrelevant for us. Resting on madness is not really safe in most cases.
1 point
b, Nature’s Touch:
A very useful healing talent that can be used within range 1 on other friendly dudes also.
The healing can mind-crit, and undead actors cannot be healed with that. We are wilders, so we cannot be originally undead,
but if we would turn into an undead via Rak’Shor cunning (not advised) or via “undead” or “corpselight” egos, we cannot heal with this talent.
Be aware, you can still use the talent, but you cannot heal with it, so you will just lose an action.
This talent can also help keeping escorts alive, if you somehow did not quaked the dude inside the environment.
We are not relying in this healing in order to survive, so no need to level this up.
1 point
c, Earth’s Eyes:
A very useful 1 point wonder talent. We will continuously digging, therefore a magicmap effect is essential for us, even if it’s just radius 7.
That is enough.
We will almost continuously Meditating, so it will also grant us telepathy to all enemy within radius 3.
It’s also very cheap, just 3 EQ, use it continuously if you are digging.
1 point
d, Nature’s Balance:
One of our essential core talents. We can reset our Wild-Gift talents with this beauty and this is very strong with a class that has crazy talents.
Talents that we will always reset:
- Lightning Speed
- Burrow
- Static Field
But there are some other talents too that are nice to reset: Ice Wall, Quake, Tornado, Swallow and Leaves Tide.
I did not mention any Tier 4 talents, because this build is not dependent on Breaths. Wyrmic has relatively weak Tier 4 talents (except this one and Healing Nexus).
Important: the in-game description about talent Tier is incorrect. The description rounds up, while the code do not.
The effective talent level has to reach the integer value of the talent Tier to reset talents from that Tier.
3 points is enough for Tier 3 talents and for 6 talents, the fourth point just gives 1 additional talent.
3 points
8., Fungus
a, Wild Growth:
A little extra max life and life regen is very nice for the early game. We do not have good defensive layers,
so our survival depends on debuffing enemies, killing them quickly and using stormshield runes.
1 point
b, Fungal Growth:
This is the reason why we are using a Regeneration Infusion. This makes our healing capacity way better with just 1 Regen Infusion.
We do not need further points here, we will have a high mindpower and we do not rely on our regeneration for survival.
1 point
c, Ancestral Life:
I do not like this talent, because it is abusable up to a point where every character who has Fungus can enter into god-mode.
This build is about playing and not about hitting ourselves continuously while we time-lock enemies, so I do not use this.
You can also abuse this talent if you are using a Healing Infusion (so, instant healing). Before each encounter, you can damage yourself
and using an instant healing will set your energy up to 2000 (so, you can have a free turn).
This talent passively reducing our equilibrium with a very small amount each turn while we are having a Regeneration effect.
Early game this is nice, but later (with more equilibrium hungry talents and more mindpower for Meditation) it is irrelevant.
1 point
d, Sudden Growth:
Our second healing talent that is just worth to use if we have a high enough life regeneration. While we have our Regeneration effect
(what is almost continuous due to Fungal Growth), we can heal a good amount with this one, and there is no restriction for undeads here.
We can heal with this while we are wearing and “undead” belt or “corpselight” lantern.
1 point
9., Mindstar Mastery:
Bought from Zigur mindstar shop for 500 gold and increased its mastery to 1.2 for another 750 gold.
Mindstars are using our Willpower instead of Dexterity for calculating accuracy, so our Swallow are more reliable even if we cannot freeze the dude.
This is the first reason why we are using mindstars.
a, Psiblades:
The second reason why we are using mindstars.
Our weapon mastery, but we are not fighting with our weapons (just in early-mid game against some weaker enemies if we have to).
We will still max this talent because of the mindpower, willpower & cunning multiplier. With this ~1.87 x mindpower/willpower
we can have crazy amount of mindpower & willpower on our mindstars and we need this for our Static Fields.
(We can even find mindstars with ~30 willpower & ~80-90 mindpower)
1 point as we can unlock (depends on gold) and found 2 okay mindstars
5 points for end-game
b, Thorn Grab:
Just for unlock. This talent has range 1, so we have to be adjacent to our target, what is bad because if we will go next to a dude, we would like to swallow it anyway.
It applies an effect to the target that is a nature DoT (can mind-crit & affected by mindstar power multiplier) and reduces the targets global speed.
This is a different effect than slow, so the 2 can stack, also the application of the effect does not make any check.
But, we are strict on generic points, we have better talents to spend our points at and it’s not fits in our strategy well.
1 point
c, Leaves Tide:
The third reason why we are using mindstars.
Early game, we won’t gonna use it because we do not have high enough mindpower and good mindstars (mindstar power multiplier).
This means, we will have insignificant & non-reliable cancel damage chance. (~20-30%)
But once we found good Tier5 mindstars and we have ~100 or higher mindpower, this talent starts being reliable.
The cancel damage chance is capped at 40% BEFORE the mindstar power multiplier.
This means: with very high mindpower (~120) we only need 3 points in this talent to reach this 40% cap.
This also means: with very good mindstars, we can even have ~60% cancel damage chance. (and with Windborn Azurite imbued, we can even reach ~70%).
So, from the second part of the game, we will use this, but meanwhile we will still have our stormshields on.
Never rely just on this effect, even if you have ~67% cancel damage chance. You can be very unlucky any time for a few turns.
3-4 points for the second part of the game
d, Nature’s Equilibrium:
Another healing talent, but it requires a successful hit with our mainhand mindstar first. We really do not need this talent,
we have 2 other heals and we are using a Regeneration Infusion too. The equilibrium reduction is also irrelevant,
while we can continuously Meditate without any problem.
0 point
10., Harmony
Unlocked by consuming the Heart of the Sandworm Queen.
a, Waters of Life:
A very useful 1 point wonder talent. It does not remove any effects from us, but it instantly heals us
for every poison & disease we have (scales with willpower & can mind-crit).
It places an effect on us and we will heal (same amount as the poison/disease damage) instead of taking damage from poisons/diseases.
We will have Draconic Will from level 25, but it’s still a wonderful talent.
1 point
b, Elemental Harmony:
Just for unlock. We are strict on generics, and this sustain just not strong enough or fits into our strategy.
It’s also have a high sustain cost (20), so we do not use it, we do not really need anything that it offers.
1 point
c, One With Nature:
Just for unlock. We will only use 1 Regeneration Infusion, other than this we will use Runes.
1 point
d, Healing Nexus:
A really nice talent. It places a buff on us and it places a debuff on every enemy within its range.
The debuff apply do not have any check at all.
The buff on us multiplying all healing that we take (it’s different from healing factor) and also reduce our equilibrium by a medium amount at each heal.
Enemies with the debuff cannot heal and instead of them their healing will heal us, with the raw value.
So, that means, their healing factor do not counts, but instead only our healing factor counts.
The thing is, on madness enemies can heal crazy amounts. Even if we try to stone them and freeze them,
it’s really nice to have a utility tool to prevent them from healing. It’s really annoying, when we bring down an enemy from 100 000 life to 40 000
and with one action, the dude heals back to ~60 000.
Everything is just nice in this talent: it’s AoE, the duration is long enough, buffs our healing, redirects enemies’ healings, reduces our equilibrium.
3 points for the second part of the game
11., Chronomancy:
Unlocked at level 10 with category point, obtained from escort.
a, Precognition:
The best tracking talent for madness. It has a higher original duration than Track (at eff. level 5: 10 turns vs 8 turns),
but we can/will also tune up our paradox because we are a willpower character. This will offer us a 12-15 turn duration precognition effect,
and the talent is also a spell, so its cooldown can be reduced by spell cooldown reduction on items, down to 18-16.
Even with 1.0 mastery, it has a maximum of 23 radius, what is more than enough (radius 20 is enough, because our Hunted! “aura” will cap at 20).
But here, enemies are always moving around us, they always try to find a way next to us.
Enemies with pass_wall will just straightforward close-in to us, such as enemies with burrow.
Enemies with Conveyance will try to teleport next to us always. So we would like to know our surroundings as often as possible.
While Track has a significantly better radius, its uptime is just 40% (20 turn cooldown, 8 turn duration),
while Precognition can have a 100% uptime. It just provides ~2 times more information, so go for this instead of Track.
1 point at level 10, then slowly level it up as your Hunted! radius (character level) increases
5 points for end-game
b, Foresight:
Just for unlock.
1 point
c, Contingency:
A sustain, and on activation we can bind another spell into it that has no fixed cooldown and not requires a target.
Every time, when our life goes beyond the given threshold, Contingency will go on "cooldown" (special mechanism) and the bound spell will trigger.
If our Contingency has lower level then the bound spell, the spell will use Contingency’s talent level.
The triggered spell do not consume resources, the trigger do not put the spell on cooldown and the spell can even trigger if the spell is on cooldown.
Spells useful to bind: Stormshield Rune, Damage Shield Rune
NOTE: as you see, not just Chronomancy spells can be bound. If we bound a rune, 1 point is enough for Contingency (inscriptions have tlvl 1).
We will binding here a Shielding Rune first at the early game, then a Stormshield Rune, which is incredibly valuable.
Contingency triggers before Cauterize “resets” our life to the original value, so even if Cauterize triggers and our life do not go below the threshold,
Contingency gives us a free Stromshield Rune.
1 point for Runes
d, See the Threads:
This spell splits the timeline, so we cannot cast it if we already split the timeline.
Also, we can just activate this spell once in each map.
It saves the current state of the game [0] and applies a beneficial “other” effect on us.
We can act normally but when the effect ends, the game saves this new state again [1] and loads back the original state [0].
We can act again and when the effect ends it saves the state again [2] and load back [0] again.
This happens three times, so we will have three saved game states: [1], [2] and [3] and when the effect ends at the [3] state, we can choose, which version we want.
The game will load the chosen version and we can continue playing from that state.
NOTE: any time we die in one of these alternate timelines, the game will load back the original state [0] and the effect ends. But we do not die.
NOTE: this spell can be buggy, mostly if we leave a map, while we still have the effect.
We can activate this spell if we tracked a very strong enemy, before fighting with it, but this spell is not a last turn life saver at all.
See the Threads can give us an extra chance once per map and with this little Wyrmic, it’s really nice to have this.
This talent also allows us to eat ourselves alive, so instakill ourselves and still survive it.
2 points
12., Stone Alchemy:
Unlocked at level 20 (or 34) with category point, obtained from escort.
a, Extract Gems:
Just for unlock. We will find a lot of gems.
Note: this talent is unlearnable, so non-refundable.
1 point
b, Imbue Item:
Just for unlock. Or … we … can … imbue … a Citrine to our actual body armour.
+4 light radius & +4 infravision !!!
Note: this talent is also unlearnable, so non-refundable.
1 point
c, Gem Portal:
A wonderful talent in my opinion. We have to equip alchemist gems to our ammo slot, but we will find a ton of these and even we can create them.
We will use alchemist gems just for this talent.
This is a probability travel, so not a teleport. The talent works on non-digable tiles and on tree tiles too, but not on vault walls/tiles (so not on: no_teleport tiles).
We cannot use this talent while we are Frozen and we cannot use this talent on digable walls if we have our Burrow effect.
So the tiles that we would like to travel through has to block our movement, therefore do not forget to deactivate Burrow before using this on digable walls.
The cooldown decreases with talent level down to 10 (8-9 with spell cooldown reduction) and we will have spellpower, so the range will be very good (~25 tiles).
Because we will be mostly inside- or close to our zig-zag tunnels, a mobility talent that allows us to travel between walls without digging them is invaluable.
An 8-10 turn cooldown mobility talent that has a range of 25 and allows us to travel through walls and trees is just crazy good!
1 point when we unlock the tree, 5 points for end-game
d, Stone Touch:
Stoned is one of the most powerful debuffs in the game.
The talent at level 5 is a 5 range beam with a 6 turns duration stoning.
Stoning checks several things: Instakill immunity, Stone immunity, Stun/Freeze immunity and also making a spellpower vs spellsave check on apply.
Mainly fixed bosses have Instakill immunity and just a very few base types have Stone immunity (constructs/golems, ghosts, xorns).
So, the very important factor is the Stun immunity of the enemies. This is one of the reason why we are using a Biting Gale Rune,
which also applies the effect Wet on enemies (Wet halves enemy Stun immunity).
If an enemy is Stoned: it cannot act anything at all, gains 100% poison immunity, gains 100% cut immunity, cannot move, do not need to breath,
gains 20% physical resistance, gains 50% lightning resistance, gains 80% fire resistance.
Furthermore: if a Hit (OnTakeHit) is projected to a Stoned enemy, and the “damage” instance value is higher or equal than 30% of the targets maximum life,
the damage instance value will be set to: the targets maximum life +1.
So, this “shattering” mechanism is not an instakill effect, it is just setting the damage instance to a really high value.
This is, where our Static Field comes into the picture. If we manage to cumulate 102 or more mindpower
and have minimum 6.5 effective talent level in Static Field, we will deal 30% of the targets current life to any rare or lower rank enemy.
No matter how much absolute life it has, it can be 100 or 1 million…
That means, with 1 Static Field, we can deal a Hit (life loss) to any rare- enemy that is their maximum life +1.
We can turn into stone multiple enemies with one Stone Touch, and Static Field is also an AoE with radius 7, so this can be really devastating.
Especially if we found Acera… the Worm will immediately explode and deal a radius 4 acid AoE damage…
Even, before we reach the 30% threshold with Static Field to slain rares with 1 Static Field, the 6 turn Stoned on enemies is invaluable.
6 turn means: Static Field, Static Field, Nature’s Balance, Static Field and Swallow.
And we still have 1 more turn…
So, start fights with this talent (after a Biting Gale if you need to halve the Stun immunity of the dude).
Most of the enemies will be swallowed while they cannot even act.
Note: be aware of some enemies can free themselves passively from the Stoned effect.
These are: Classes that have Unflinching Resolve (Berserker, Bulwark, Archer, Brawler, and Marauder) (Stoned is a Stun effect),
Temporal Warden (with Vigilance).
Be aware, some effects triggers automatically so the actor do not have to act:
Mindslayer hitting with psionic weapon, Archmage’s Thunderstorm, Anorithil’s Corona
3 points asap for beam, and level it up to 5 very quickly
13., Drem Racial Tree:
a, Frenzy:
Frenzy is the only reason why we choose Drem. This talent enables us to initially double-cast: Static Field, Ice Wall, Swallow and Tornado.
Unfortunately with the 1.7 CombatTalentLimit change, the cooldown was nerfed (increased), but it’s still worth to put here some points
for a more reasonable cooldown.
The second and the third point is a good investment.
1 point at start, 3 points for the second half of the game
I know, Drem has 3 more talents in their tree, but further talents are really unnecessary for us.
Spiderskin has irrelevant damage and if there are multiple enemies are hitting us in melee in a fight,
then we have done something really wrong, and probably we are already dead.
Faceless gives mental save and Confusion immunity, but we have Draconic Will.
From Below it Devours gives us an AoE pulling summon for some turns, but we already have Tornado
and we have Stone Touch, Biting Gale Rune and we will fight in zig-zag tunnels mainly.
So we do not need it at all.
