Another bloggy playthrough diary :)

[Astral]

A lifesteal based Drac Rat can clear HGT very straightforwardly. How to beat VGT though is beyond me as well.

What I love a lot about Rats is how uniquely they approach some gods. Since their damage mostly comes from corrosion, they can even try something as silly as joining Taurog for the DPs to tank hits from an untouchable boss, then just fireball the thing down with increased spellpower, while laughing at Taurog's meaningless punishments.

[Lujo]

How's the lifesteal thing work? Might give it a whirl, it probably goes fine with resists stacking.

Also - well, I guess you can fiddle around with the rat and stuff, but I get exremely grumpy when I'm looking at too many of a monster class to get full borders with. I'll do it, but I'll grumble to keep myself (somewhat) sane. Next time I do a playthrough for whatever reason, I'll do my best to try to hack away just the dungeon completion on a profile so it's just a blank board with all the classes and races unlocked so the PQI doesn't streak, that ought to do wonders for my mood. Monster classess in particular are kind of terrible because you unlock them late, when you've done most of the other stuff so you're always kinda looking at a lot of them in a row, and since they always CP for the same thing it's not exactly pleasant. Since they also have their own penalties it also doesn't play well with the PQI, either.

[Astral]

It's quite nice. On 1st hit expect to not benefit much from lifesteal since your damage is puny, but after that it reduces damage as it should. On the plus side lifesteal is a really nice tool for healing from popcorn. Most rats would ignore the majority of monsters, this one can turn each of them into bloodcows. The low starting damage is even helpful, you're not gonna oneshot your popcorn so you can heal from them multiple times.

Due to resist cap shredding you can't have high lifetsteal and resistances at the same time, platemail works well though.

[Lujo]

How far do you shoot with lifesteal then? I usually go for no more than 2 hits on anything + vampiric blade if I can find it, just because it fits with blood shield + whatever that way...

[Lujo]

So, a bunch more stuff got done today:

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I did that purist Ick Swamp chemist, took a few tries because I was kinda distracted by what I was watching, but then I ended up using TT which I haven't tried before and it worked out splendidly somehow:



A bunch of largeish Byceps freebies on Itssamna, followed by a full Taurog swap health mode tankfest vs the Meat Man with a high level human, was quite good.

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Then this was flaming and the Rat just ran through it:



Not much to say, it was very quick and easy. Standard knockback stuff.

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Then I went for something I've been avoiding, probably because I was being offered screwy PQI's and the Gorgon really needs a buff after the whole poison rework thing - she was hurt by that and I don't think it was ever accounted for properly:



Anyone else with this setup ran through the dungeon like a knife through butter, but she struggled mightily. I did manage to get the best of Namtar down below due to some nice tricshots and good item purchases before decending but it was way too tight for comfort. This was essentially resist stackign dragonshield cb pos binlorgorgon, and it doesn't get much cheezier than that, and the poor thing just doesn't hold up to the rest of the guys.

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Then I finally did the streaky creeplight using, what else, the cashgrabber:



Yes, terribly exciting, I know, but then again I have to play these, you guys can just scroll down.

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Then it was Chemist or Rat Time, so I went and did this:



Funnily enough, I thought the dwarf chemist would be stronger than it feels. Maybe I just need a bit of practice, but it seems there just isn't that much you can do with a low level dwarf, and later you're so fat you don't really need to regen, just ding. Still, gotta try this guy in a tougher scenario with some resists. Not disapointing per se, but I do feel like I'm not yet where it's at with the dwarf chemist and it kinda looks like it can be stronger.

I am pretty confident about what was confusing me about halfings, gnomes, elves and dwarves and got some nice, concise stuff about playing them for the wiki. Not chemists, but those guys in general.

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Then I quickly did the obligatory rat, with just melee knockback this time. I'm trying to nail that "moment you know you've won and are ready to make the first meaningful move" thing with him, he's not so much confusing me as much as making me do more things than I ussually need to do. Whether he can do damage is based on CP, but whether he can get a hit in is based on levels and the two aren't exactly linked. The problem is that as opposed to any other pos guy he cares about whether the boss does physical or magical damage, how much damage the boss does, debuffs and tings (at least to a degree) while the whole point of playing a PoS guy is that you don't care about anything so it rubs me in the wrong way (it's still probably the fastest and least brain intensive way to play him in most places, mind you). So it's like - you can go nuts with Pissorff... but you also have to be able to read letters and numbers and tell basic shapes apart and stuff, which feel unusual after so much pos with guys who don't. The question of "why have this one guy who has to think his way through it at least a little, while all the other guys don't?" keeps poping up. Especially afterwards when I'm playing something else way more carefully because I still feel like I'm the Rat and then go "oh, right, you're not the rat" once or twice per run.

The heals on purchases are very strong (understatement), but, again - nobody else needs them while doing the exact same thing. Neither does he most of the time I guess that was supposed to be the primary thing about him, and the low base damage and stats are there to counteract it. Then the corrosion CP was added to give him some means of actually doing damage. Problem is that just ends up with him having really cheap "fireballs" hitting 2 guys at once and then you don't really need the heals all that much.

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Then this guy was wonderful:



Dracul, huuuuuge health with no effort put towards it and B2P. Haven't had anyone destroy the place quite this hard yet, or at least feel this unstoppable while it was going on. Not even the assassin, really, he can just cheat up a VT badge, but this guy well and trully kicked ass.

Well, I did prep Dragonshield and stuff - but it was soooo worth it

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This took 2 tries:



The first, failed try was an epic thing with a really, really screwy beggining which forced me to hit the first three pops on the ball for meager gains just to get the ball rolling and it was a tough fight with lots of sacrifice and careful play using everything at my disposal and ended up one hit away from getting it done. Hugely satisfactory, was probably lost to a missplay here and there and was very fun and epic. I could've won it, I'm pretty sure.

The second one simply had me go down with a crystal ball which started at 4 then 6 then 8 and was an utter possdown stomp. Never broke a sweat, never had to, it just played itself. Still, naga city fighter, that got itself done, wasn't expecting such a stomp tbh, but something must've went right somehow and the difference was very tangible.

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Then I went to rainbow the flaming Halls of Steel:



Bwahahahhahahahahahah, look at me, I'm the old Bloodmage ^^

Funny thing is, now that you lose the potion effect on level up, I could make a case for JJ Gnome chemists being a thing. I noticed Tinker played around with them, and, well, a straight up caster Chemist is a scary ole thing, but I kinda ran out of potions to keep regening and when you're regen fighting the size of the bar really doesn't matter that much. It does in a sense Astral pointed out once, that your initial barage of whatever hits harder so you have to regen fight less, which is good. But still, this guy did get me to finally go full chemist and actually use potions for stuff other than initial piety (bonanza) farming, and now I'm curious about the gnome. I'll play a few more Elves for sure, it's quite nuts. Think I still preffer goblins to anyone else for these guys, personally, at least with JJ.

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And then, as it happens, the freshly rainbowed Halls of Steel flamed up again, and I gotta do a rat somewhere, before I do the Orc Wizard there, and I'm too tired to do a vicious/Gaan'Telet rat just now, so I'll leave that for tommorrow.

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[Astral]

[Lujo]

First tihgs first:

Thanks for the info, it was quite helpful as you'll see from the first run pics What happened for me was that combining Dragonshield and Blood Shield let me get past stuff I couldn't lifesteal against, so I was never fully "naked", and I think some sort of that kind of thing could even get one through VGT with the right monster roster and favorable RNG. I backed it up with fireballs simply because GT actually does a fair job at pissorf proofing itself.

As for the whole races thing:



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So on to the runs, first up, the rat run I didn't do yesterday but did today instead:



Well, I put the resists and the lifesteal togather, platemail and the vampiric blade showed up, and it was quite breezy. Having both resists and lifesteal helped a lot with the bloodless floor (which showed up because ofc it did), and the random bloodless monsters you get from prepping Drac. I also had no meaningful bloodcows (a lot of snakes which were poisonous, a lot of undead, ended up using a lvl 4 meat man and a lvl 4 golem for what lifesteal I did which didn't end up killing the cow), and when you look at how few elements it really took I'm sorta optimistic about VGT.



That's really all it took. Unfortunately, you can't prep DS, Platemail and Vampiric Blade, but maybe someone with more experience with the rat can figure that out (and I suppose tweaking the pool with vetos somehow might also be a good idea).

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Then I went and did the redundant flaming rainbow, using the console hack:



That is how much I felt like playing that run.

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Then the game decided to play silly buggers and flamed up another rainbow (there were 3 rainbows it could choose on the entire map), so I said - two can play that game!



So I did this, as I'm faithful to my dedication to play 1 chemist 1 rat then 2 non-chemist-non-rat guys so the thread can have some variety for the lovely people reading it. I would've done the PQI, really, but that's borked too since the update, so it's spamming me with stuff I allready done. If you're experiencing acute lack of variety, please conact whoever thought fully random flame was a good idea.

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Then this took two tries, because the first try abruptly ended when the game registered my first click on the boss as a double click and killed me instantly. Which is a shame, because in the grand tradition of these things the first run looked much more interesting and much more involved with the actual class and race. And it looked like it would be a gread Chemist run, with actual regen and bycepss use and stuff, but the second one turned out to be just a bog standard possdown.

And not intentionally, I was actually going around at lvl 1 in mana form farming ludicrous Binlor resists, and while the first try had Drac, Pactmaker and Yendor, rather good for meleeing stuff down on a rather explored map as was the intention, the second one had TT and EM. And the sub was the blackspace-less Brandonnn sub, and there was a CB in the shop, also a pair of Elven Boots for the 16 mana, so I thought about it for a bit, and just dropped everything and possed down both bossess Assassin style (even converted bysceps before I killed anything).

As far as CB possdowns go, it went strangely well despite my potions not doing anything. Ended up using a health potion for the second form below, and maybe just one set of dodgestep on the second form (mainly to move him over to a lvl 9 wraith once what I was slapping him into dropped). I even desecrated EM and spent the whole map in TT after the intial Binlor farm fest, and the farmfest turned out to be completely irrelevant as I don't think I landed a single non-dode melee hit on the first two guys.

Eh, I really whish that first run didn't bug out, wasn't really looking to do it this way... Great big victory screen full of stuff - 85% of the stuff irellevant

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Felt bad, did a non Binlor rat to compensate:



Wasn't the best map for it, tbh, but binlor wouldn't have worked much better, either, as this guy is actually resistant to PoS (not that much of that in the game, but there you have it). Was ok, but as I said, gotta do it on a different map.

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Then I did the daily:



Eh, once you know that there's always handy alcoves in the right side of the map, and you have wheytwut it's very easy to consistently dodge the shifting of the brickwork. I actually bought Whoopaz this time

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Whereupon the game decided it really wants to be full retarded, so I said, fine, full retarded it is:



There's about 5-6 unnecessary icons in that victory screen, and that's a 3rd flaming rainbow today, out of 4. And I don't have too many sub-vicious rainbows, either, maybe 3 besides Hobbler's. Also if you're having trouble reading these console hack victory screens, all of that is bascially the bossfight, on all of them, and the stuff I kill is just "walls" that drop from possing the boss into them, there's not a smidgeon of effort invested into killing them (or getting levels from it), and the popcorn is just popcorn. Just in case anyone thinks I actually level and then start fighting the boss or something.

Now it's moved to something which isn't rainbowed in time for the Rat/Chemist thing, but if it moves to another rainbow I'll have to do one of them in a vicious dungeon, and I'm kind of tired, so I'll leave that for later.

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[Astral]

Glad it helped and nice job for the win! When I tried it I fully committed to lifesteal, prepped the dagger and took 3 points of blood hunger. I scored both the no xp and the bloodless floor and it still worked out, so I knew it has to be good on most cases. My solution to bloodless foes was impersonating Vampires, the massive health I gained out of bloodcows pushed me through trouble.

The reason I'm doubting Rats on VGT is due to their abysmal damage which causes them to burn through too much blackspace. If you think of Gettindare as a tool that allows you to beat stuff with -1 hit taken, then being a Rat means a +2-3 hit penalty, that's how much you need before you start dealing normal damage, which will force you to explore more to recover. In HGT there are only 3 subs, VGT's 9 will be very taxing and most likely exhaust your bloodcows by the end.

It's the same reason why Gorgons have trouble in VGT due to their low damage. Thanks to their poison they would be an auto-win class, but the blackspace is so low they can barely utilize it.

Nice summary on races!
I'd add that it looks self-explanatory for big bar races to try and set up many dings. For an Elf max mana is nailed down, all you want is refills then. You could think that a Dwarf should be played as a melee version of that, but no. At low levels you won't survive bosshits, even if you did you wouldn't hit back hard enough. When you set up several dings, especially on higher difficulty it's guaranteed you'll have to mow through chewy popcorn. For an Elf that's okay, you spend your heath on popcorn and the mana on the boss. But if you waste significant health on popcorn with a Dwarf what is left for killing the boss with?
On the other hand leveling up higher and settling for less dings works nicely, since level ups benefit Dwarfs in 2 ways. You get HP and damage, whereas an Elf only receives spellpower. Also there are more ways to improve health value than mana, so it's not impossible to create Dwarves who kill bosses without any sort of refills, for an Elf that takes extreme specialization.

Sad you misclicked yourself to death on the Chemist run, I know from experience that the 1st run is always more eventful in such cases. Even if it's only psychological sometimes, as in "you've already won here so why take your time again?"

[Lujo]

[Tinker]