EE:All is Dust
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This feature is part of the Extreme Edition fan-made expansion. |
All is Dust is the 
Heretic gold challenge. In this grueling run, you must take down the champions of the entire pantheon.
Preparations
No preparations.
Resources Available
This dungeon has the standard assortment of resources, but the only altar on the main floor is 
The Pactmaker and there are no shops. There are eight subdungeons, which hold the other altars as well as the first eight bosses.
Special Rules
The map starts partially explored. You have to defeat the eight subdungeon bosses to reveal the final boss (the Faithful Ascendant).
Monsters
All common enemies except 
Bandit are guaranteed to appear.
Monster difficulty is 100%.
Bosses
Champion Ascendant: 
Golem icon, 999 attack, 159 health, 
Magic Immune, 
First Strike
Archmage Ascendant: 
Dragon Spawn icon, 75 attack, 477 health, 
Physical Immune, 
Magical Attack
Trickster Ascendant: Bandit icon, 999 attack, 318 health, 
Blinks, 
Retaliate: Fireball
Deathmage Ascendant: 
Zombie icon, 37 attack, 954 health, 
Undead, Magical Attack
Foreman Ascendant: 
Goblin icon, 225 attack, 318 health, Magic Immune
Naturalist Ascendant: 
Warlock icon, 75 attack, 159 health, Physical Immune, Retaliate: Fireball
Heirophant Ascendant: 
Serpent icon, 75 attack, 636 health, 
Poisonous, 
Mana Burn, 
Curse Bearer
Madman Ascendant: 
Goat icon, 75 attack, 477 health, 20% resists, 
Corrosive: 1, 
Weakening
Faithful Ascendant: 
Gnome Crusader icon, 77 attack, 7777 health, 50% resists, 
Berserks at 50%.
Strategy
This run is LONG and you will spend most of it at level 10, so 
Human is the best choice here. You'll need careful planning to take down the first eight ascendants with enough resources left for the Faithful Ascendant.
Fortunately, you have access to all the gods essentially right off the bat, and the monsters in this dungeon are quite weak, so the only threat here is the Ascendants.
You can start by making a plan to take on all the ascendants. The Deathmage is easy - he has such low damage that a Human Heretic should be able to regen fight him with no problem.
Try to leave all piety sparkles on the floor until you need them.
You'll want to make sure that both 
The Earthmother and 
Binlor Ironshield are easily available. Start in The Earthmother - you don't want much from her besides 
IMAWAL, but you can take 
Entanglement and 
Vine Form on the first floor to get a bit of health, DR, and XP. As you work towards reaching level 2, if you end up with extra piety you can get more vine form.
Once you reach level 2, worship Binlor Ironshield. Use 
PISORF to farm up tons of piety, which you can use to get 
Stone Form, 
Stone Fist, and optionally 
Stone Soup. It's good to prioritize Stone Fist, since then you can use health to farm piety faster. Then, you can start using IMAWAL to convert excess piety to bonus damage. It's up to you how much you want to do this - it's a tradeoff of blackspace for damage. Using the main floor blackspace to farm damage (but saving the very edges where you can since you know it is just walls) and saving all the subdungeon blackspace is a good option - it ensures you will have massive damage for the rest of the run and you will have found all the items and boosters on floor 1, but you'll still have some blackspace to recover between ascendants.
After this, a good god for level 3 is 
Taurog. You can convert glyphs you don't want (probably everything worth CP except 
BURNDAYRAZ and maybe 
CYDSTEPP if it spawned, you can probably ditch IMAWAL too if needed) and kill low level magic damage enemies to get 45 piety for the sword and the armor. You may need to leave them on the ground for now - you will need a lot of glyphs ( PISORF, 
ENDISWAL, PISORF, 
WEYTWUT) later. If you have room, the sword can definitely be helpful though.
Then you can start levelling and fighting the Deathmage Ascendant. During the levelling process, you can worship 
Mystera Annur at some point, probably around level 6. She is the least important god here - you can take 
Magic a few times for some extra max mana, but otherwise she doesn't do much for you. Alternatively, you can slot her in later and take 
Refreshment to help with the Magic Immune bosses, but then you risk locking yourself out of worshipping every god if you aren't careful with XP.
At level 7, you can worship 
Jehora Jeheyu and take one of each boost. Wait till the end of the level so you don't get suprise mana burned or poisoned. After taking out the deathmage, your next target should probably be the Madman - you can fight it around L7 with a catapult. You'll get a few stacks of weakening and corrosion, but it isn't a huge deal for now. Don't worry if you need to catapult from 8 to 9 to take it out.
Now that you've killed two bosses, you should have some gold. You can worship 
Tikki Tooki and dump all your gold into piety. Take 
Dodging - in long fights it provides a lot of value. You should also try to get as many stacks of 
Reflexes as you can. You can use the first set along with either WEYTWUT from Jehora Jeheyu or the free 
GETINDARE to take out the Trickster Ascendant. Ideally that won't level you up so that you can get even more potions from the gold that gives you.
Now you have some options for your next ascendant. If you can kill another boss without levelling up, you can either take on the Foreman or the Champion next. For either of them, you can use PISORF and, if needed, WEYTWUT to set up some damage on them with indirect knockback. For the foreman, you may then be able to finish it off with just GETINDARE if you built up enough resists before the fight using ENDISWAL. For the champion, you will probably need a reflex or quicksilver potion to kill it, unless you have a layer of death protection.
Once you are near a level up (this can be before or after either of those ascendants), you can target the Hierophant. You may want to precast ENDISWAL if it gets you an extra hit. You can catapult it using popcorn, and then worship 
Glowing Guardian to finish it off and then clear the debuffs with 
Cleansing. This boon has an additional advantage - it gives you magical attack. This should make the Naturalist a pushover.
After killing the naturalist, you should get near a level up threshold again, killing the Foreman and Champion during the process if they are still alive. Once near the threshold, you can use more Cleansing to damage the Archmage ascendant. It has a lot more health, so you probably won't be able to kill it with these. Make sure to save at least 15 piety. Then, you can take 
Humility and catapult it, and finish it off with mana potions if needed.
With the eighth ascendant defeated, the Faithful Ascendant will reveal himself. He spawns in the very center of the map, so if you want to use your knockback damage on him you'll need to hold on to WEYTWUT until this point.
This fight is a straightforward one, but a strong test of your resources. First off, if you aren't L10 yet, get to L10. Then, you can worship the last god - 
Dracul. You should have enough piety to take 
Blood Hunger, and if you left lots of sparkles on the floor you can probably pick up 
Blood Shield as well, especially if you kill some popcorn.
Then, you can start fighting the boss. You can use ENDISWAL here for several purposes - opening up extra blackspace, accessing more sparkles, taking less damage, and eroding resistances (in case you aren't knocking the boss into walls). You can use additional Dracul piety in a few ways - you can either dump it all into blood tithe for some extra base damage and tons of health spike, or do that but save 45 for more lifesteal after you are done using ENDISWAL. The first option is probably stronger. Keep in mind you can use 
Consensus for 50 extra piety (and you have no reason not to take 
Scholar's Pact as well, in case you need another level up).
Try to prioritize regen fighting the boss, and save your spiking resources (catapults, bloodpools, popcorn to steal health from, potions) for after it starts berserking. If you have high enough damage and enough blackspace to get the boss's resists to 0 you should be fine - there are a LOT of bloodcows here to get a huge health spike from. Keep in mind you will desecrate Dracul on level up, so save your catapults as long as possible!
