Races

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There are seven playable regular races, each of which can convert Items and Glyphs into a different permanent bonus.

Race Points Conversion
Race: Human Human

100

+10% Bonus Damage

Race: Elf Elf

70

+1 Max Mana

Race: Dwarf Dwarf

80

+1 Max HP per level
(Rewind) +10 Max HP

Race: Halfling Halfling

80

1 Item: Health Potion Health Potion

Race: Gnome Gnome

90

1 Item: Mana Potion Mana Potion

Race: Orc Orc

80/100 (Rewind)

+2 Base Damage

Race: Goblin Goblin

85

5+1(stacking) XP

† Stacking means the first conversion adds +1, the second adds +2, the third adds +3 and so on.

Amount of conversion points

In a regular dungeon, there usually are :

  • 5 glyphs (100 pts each),
  • 6 potions (10 pts each),
  • 4-8 shops (on average 30 pts each ?) (number of shops depends on the level of your Bazaar)
  • and one potion shop (10 pts).

Add to this what you bring with you (lets say, between 20 and 150 conversion points). So, if you were to convert everything, you would get between 710 and 1000 points.

Overview

Standard races convert of either stats or refills. Your race is always an important component of the race/class package, and even though you can play without ever converting anything it can be a huge factor in what your best way of approaching a dungeon is.

The way each race is best play creates vast variance in what you're looking to do, how you're looking to use your glyphs, items and boons, what level do you start the boss fight et etc. Each one is really different about this and it makes for smoother gameplay with more obvious solutions in any run if you put your race "ahead" of your class when determining your strategy. Some clasess play smoother with some races than other, but any class can be played with any race as long as you know how to play the race to it's strenghts regardless of the class.

It's best to think of races as either front-loaded, back-loaded or timed (if anyone's got a better word for the last one feel free)

  • Front-loaded folks get the most benefits by converting things early. This can mean lots of early exploration, and fewer options present on the board as you convert glyphs and items before you really start fighting things in earnest. Orcs and to an extent Elves are quite front-loaded, with obvious benefits to converting things early.
  • Back-loaded guys don't benefit enough from their CP bonus early on to sacrifice the utility of glyphs and items ASAP, so they get ussually get what they're looking for if they put off some of their converting for a mid-game or even end-game game boost. Dwarves and Humans CP benefits are tier to their levels, and the power of the Gnome bonus at any point depends on a certain standard buildup of items and levels.
  • Timed guys don't necessarily have an optimal timing in advance and can convert when the player decides it gives them an edge. Halflings don't really care about when they convert at all but simply don't have to unless there's a good reason, and the power of the goblin CP is all about the timing of each particular conversion.

Humans

Humans are mostly back-loaded, meaning it's better to play the utility glyphs and items somewhat to get levels and then convert heavily at either mid levels or even before the boss fight.

Humans convert for 10% bonus damage for a 100 CP, which is a fancy way of saying they get +1 Dmg per level every 200 CP. It's a bit broader than that, but if you only take your natural base damage into account (+5 per level), that's what you get. Since there are 3 +10% dmg boosters on any map, hitting 500 CP with a human in addition to that adds up to +4 dmg per level. That's almost double of what you get naturally!

But it is tied to your level, and there's no real need to rush it. Hitting the glorious +4 does require you to find the boosters, and 500 CP means dumping all your glyphs unless you buy conversion fodder. No reason to waste all that utility until your level is high enough to make it really matter.

However, this means that Humans are quite fine with any class which doesn't need much help to level up, and they're particularly good with tanky classess and things which let them get their big-level big-damage hits in. If you're a human, your damage is probably a solved thing, what you're looking to do in a run is tank up and find health refills. And if you're a spellcaster - that just means you have an easier time leveling up and the few melee hits you get in will still be big when it matters.

The exception to this might be the Monk class, which has natrually lower base damage making it a bit unsinergistic with Humans.

Dwarves

Dwarves are hugely back-loaded. So much so that almost any race/class combination with Dwarves is likely to use the class to get the Dwarf big, rather than using the Dwarf to make the class more deadly.

Dwarves convert for +1 health per level for 80 CP. The effect is hardly noticable at lower levels and there is almost no point to convert early on. No inherent harm, because it gets recalculated whenever you do it, just like picking up a health booster. But Dwarves want levels for their bonus to kick in and explode, and sacrificing utility glyphs and leveling tools can be a bit suidical for them.

Health is what you pay for melee attacks with, and a high level dwarf will have plenty of it once you get around to converting things. Any ways of making the "cost for melee attacks" even lower (such as damage resistance), worth more (damage) or plain health refills (dings, boons, potions, lifesteal), in sufficient ammounts can turn you into a "healthmonster". But levels are the primary thing, and if possible efficient ones so that you can ding to refill mid-fight at least once or twice.

So the way to play them is to play your class and your glyphs to level the dwarf up a bit, use the health bonus to help you fight higher level stuff at mid-levels and have an enormous healthpool in addition to your class features for the boss fight.

Elves

Elves can be played in different ways effectively, but they are somewhat front-loaded to a degree. The reason is that mana pool size doesn't increase with levels, and glyph use and dings get more powerful if you hit certain thresholds. With 10 mana, you can only cast one Burndayraz in a fight, with 12 you can cast 2, and with 18 you can cast 3. Different thresholds for different glyphs, but the principle is the same - being an elf means you can hit yours with comparatively little exploration, preparations, shop luck or god worship. The sooner you do, the sooner you get more powerfull in every fight.

Elves convert for 1 point of max mana per 75 CP. This means you can hit moderate but powerful thresholds or "sweet spots" without sacrificing much utility, and you can go beyond the standard 13 mana everyone gets regardless of preps/shops or class. You can front load them heavily for heavy spellcaster approaches (leaving only Burndayraz) or you can just tack on enough to make anything a capable spellcaster/hybrid in addition to whatever else they are and get a bunch of Bunrdayraz/Pissorf/Healing/Whatever every time you ding mid-fight.

Halflings

Halflings are timed converters. Since they convert for health refills, there's no point to converting unless you actually need a health refill most of the time. However, a lot of the health boosts in the game can put your early health at a disproportionate ammount compared to what your natural base health is. A health potions restores 40% of your health pool, which at lvl1 is 10. But if you have, say, a Health Pendant, a cheap basic item which increasess your health by +10, you've got 20 health at a point where you're expected to only have 10. So 40% is almost a full health refill!

This also applies to many health boosts in the game (especially ones you can get from gods), and damage resistances in sufficient ammounts make your health "worth" more, while some items also work off potion use, so a Halfling is likely to have plenty of reasons to drink a potion or several at various points in the game. But just drink a potion, not necessarily convert anything for it, because there are 3 lying around every map.

Saving up a number of potions for the end fight, provided you can do melee hits on the boss is a perfectly valid thing with the Halfling and can result in a huge quantities of health refills as long as you boosted you health a bit. Or alternatively you can use the potions to fight things to level up while throwing spells at the boss. And that's not even getting into all the aplications for potions related to Gods and the BLOODTOPOWA glyph.

Halflings convert for a Health Potion for every 80 CP. With so many aplications, when you do it is really up to you, but holding off untill you know what you want to do with a particular potion lets you play with glyphs and items you'd otherwise convert. You can use the halfling to help level up the class, or you can use the class to help level (and tank up) the halfling.

Gnomes

Gnomes are in theory timed converters, meaning you convert when you need a mana refill. But in practice they are quite a bit more back-loaded than anything.

They convert for mana potions, but mana potions don't offer as much opportuinty to get use out of them for leveling purposes and general shennanigans as health potions do. The reason for this is that mana powers glyph use, and glyph use and mana restoring restoring benefits are much more dependent on the concrete size of you mana pool and your level than health use is. With your "natural" 13 mana, you cast two Burndayraz and you can drink a potion for one more, but the next potion will not get you another one unless you regenerate a bit. It can be worth it, but at lower levels it's not all that often the best bang for your buck. (Burning a potion for a first strike hit via the Getindare glyph on the other hand can be pretty sweet).

Melee hits paid with health can be made more potent in many ways (dmg increases, health pool size increases, damage resistance), but increasing Burndayraz damage in ways other than gaining levels is rather difficult and effects that do it are somewhat rare and costly. Spellcasting buildup for a non-elf (buying expensive spellcasting items and alocating inventory slots for them, picking up expensive boons, preping for mana pool size) is much less generally sinergistic with various classes and and is a bit more resource intensive than boosting health generally is. This is why Gnomes play more like Dwarves, and their benefits often kick in later in the run - once you've exhausted your mid-fight level ups and health stuff - you've always got a load of mana refills for your now-high level and powerful glyph use un form of a sack of potions.

You can put togather a very front loaded Gnome, if you pick a spellcastery class, prep him up and/or invest your effort into building up a big mana pool + item/boon collection, and any spellcaster can front-load the build and ding the big mana bar through the run, but the power of the Gnome conversion bonus itself is ultimately tied to levels, and the highest-reward timing on their conversion tends to be during the boss-fight.

Orc

Orcs are very, very much front-loaded. They convert for base damage, and this form of damage increase is otherwise quite rare. It's unrelated to your level, so if you dump enough CP into it, your character can get quite disproportionate base damage compared to the amount expected from the average low level character. The Orc converts for +2 base damage for 80 CP. You get +5 base dmg per level, so any means of acquiring +5 puts you at a +1 effective level as far as damage is concerned. Orcs can get +2 levels worth of damage for the paltry sum of 400 CP. This can help immensly with leveling up as you can apply the hits to higher level monsters.

It also sinergizes with anything that gives you a +% bonus based off your base damage. That kind of bonus is everywhere and all of it is tailored to help make 6 other races capable melee fighters. What this means is that the Orc will use his initial front-loading to powerlevel, but then everything else in the game designed to help other guys, and which works off levels, will kick in.

The Orc might need to find ways to not be a glass cannon - he can front-load the damage but not longevity. But the thing is that even if that was a problem, the AoE damage Pissorff glyph works off base damage directly rather than just levels. Any orc can get a bunch of virtual caster levels on that glyph, while also completely forgoing the need to worry about the way to apply his damage - you can always spellcast ragardless of how dangerous enemies are. So while Orcs are very straightforward melee CP mongers, they are even more straightforward spellcasters with Pissorf. Since the glyph takes very little spellcasting buildup compared to others, this makes almost any Orc at all a potentialy strong Spellcaster on top of whatever their class is good for.

Goblin

The goblin is a timed converter, meaning how benefical converting things with a goblin is is very relative. What he does is add a lot of additional XP to a dungeon, which has several potential benefits:

  • You can start a run at lvl 2 with just a single conversion pop. There are quite a few places where this is handy. Not the most important thing, but killing a lvl 3 or 4 monster at lvl 2 is in fact quite a bit easier than killing a lvl 2 monster at lvl 1 and this gives you more targets while also preventing any lvl1 monsters with debuffs from runing your day.
  • You can pad out high level kills. This is very beneficial, because one higher level kill, especially with addedd bonus experience from, say, IMAWAL, can get you close to the next level up. Then killing another, even higher level thing is a matter of just converting somethig for a mid-fight ding, and being relatively close to the next level-up. Alternatively, you can pop a conversion before you kill the higher level monster to ensure killing it levels you up to remove debuffs and the need to refill by exploring.
  • Your CP bonus can level you up mid fight, refilling both your bars, which makes all sorts of bar boosting features (items, boons, preps) very appealing as you're likely to get use plenty of use out of both. This makes anything present on the map potentially something the goblin can exploit. It also makes it advantageous to hold onto your conversions until after you've picked up something to boost your bars.
  • Fewer kills needed to level up - more popcorn left on the board to ding-mid fight with. And with the stacking bonus you can very often get one or two very high level end-game dings wihtout having to kill anything. This is especially true on multi-boss dungeons where the gold that bossess leave behind can easily turn into more refills.
  • You're also guaranteed to reach high levels which means higher base and glyph damage and higher health, and since you can also usually ding that once or twice it's possible to fight the whole map at the same time with a well played goblin.

However - Goblins convert for 5Xp + 1 per previous conversion, and there isn't a straight and obvious rule to when to do a lot of it or when to hoard conversion fodder. They make good generalists because they can really make use out of anything that's on the map one way or another, and it depends on your class and board layout. If your class is good for leveling - save the conversions for high-power late dings, if you class blows up with levels, pad out the leveling with tactical conversions.