[Broco]

I was doing really well yesterday and got to Floor 19 (the first time I've gone deep enough to see the "chaotic embers"). Then I got greedy and decided to grab a key even though I probably didn't need any better equipment to ascend (I was feeling confident and how bad could the trap be?).

Three Golems, a Naga and a Troll popped out of statues. I had never even seen a Golem before; looking at their stats I saw that three of them was way more than I could handle. They are vulnerable to Negation but I had none of that; and I had a pixie ally who can sometimes cast Negation but she just cast a lot of Slowness and Discord until she died. I tried to manuever into a doorjam but stepped on a paralysis trap; miraculously I survived until the end of paralysis thanks to my pixie's spells making them not attack me as much. I used an unidentified scroll; it was a teleport scroll so I got out of there (not that lucky; odds were pretty good that that was it). But I still didn't have a path to the down staircase so in my final mistake, I tried to kill the golems using the old hide-behind-door-and-warhammer trick, but it wasn't enough and they killed me. I should've tried harder to avoid fighting them at this point, since I had Telepathy and could be smarter about it.

[Broco]

I ascended too! I got most everything I wanted (except my armor was a somewhat lame runic scale mail), and I kept a troll ally from floor 12 who by the end could cast haste and firebolt (the latter was hazardous around gas, but he was able to kill like 4 tentacle horrors from a distance). Still wasn't easy though, I had to use my items very aggressively in the deeper floors, and as you can see my disposables were mostly depleted by the end.

[Broco]

Looks like nice improvements, it addresses a lot of problems I had. For me this is the biggest deal:

[Broco]

[Broco]

I'm fine with the over-nerfing of paralysis traps. An interesting side effect of it is that they're more usable as a tool you can use to paralyze enemies now (though I haven't dared try that so far). But certainly the searching change nerfed all other traps, none of which were truly abusive.

Overall, the trap nerfing and the greater treasure room spawn rate make 1.6.4 significantly easier than 1.6.2. But within reasonable limits.

[Broco]

I've ascended characters with regeneration and transference but not wisdom, so I don't necessarily agree it's so much better. For a long time transference was my favorite because I also liked war axes, and that combo lets you stomp right over tough enemy groups.

It really depends on other equipment you have. For wisdom, you obviously need staves and for transference you need a high-damage weapon. For regeneration you don't need anything else but it's slightly less good because even at high levels the regen is more for between fights than in the middle of one.

[Broco]

Still playing this. Found a Dar Priestess in a treasure room on Depth 8, end result:





With 5 high-level Dar Priestess clones surrounding me, I was unstoppable. I could fight multiple dragons at a time. I probably could've gotten 12 or 15 lumenstones, but I didn't want to press my luck in my first post-game run. The confusion runic helped a lot too, obviously.

[Broco]

Maybe you're confused by the double negative, but the point is to allow escape-artist builds that weren't feasible before.

Pender wrote on the official forums:

[Broco]

[Broco]

Yeah, Dar Priestess can dominate everything if it lives long enough. My best run (9 lumenstones), I rescued a rare floor 10 Dar Priestess -- so it couldn't die soon after I got it and had a huge ramp to acquire levels -- and eventually cloned it four times. So I had five Dar Priestesses with around 7 skills running around healing, hasting and protecting each other every turn and with enough health to absorb a single blow from a dragon without dying. I probably could've done a 25-lumenstone sweep since nothing could touch me and I didn't need any other items, but I stopped at 9 since it was already a personal best and I didn't want to push my luck.

In 1.7.3 the ally XP system was replaced with a weaker one to avoid this kind of steamrolling, so that game couldn't happen anymore though.

But certainly Dar Battlemages can make you lose the game almost regardless of your situation. I always try to take them out as soon as I spot them without giving them any turns to mess with me.

[Broco]

The manual seed is auto-populated with the last one you played so that's another way to retry seeds.