Desktop Dungeon bug on unlocking Siege of Lothlorien?

Question

The description says that I'll be able to play the Siege of Lothlorien when I gain access to all playable races. I have unlocked all the races and classes (although not yet finished everything with them) and yet I still don't have it available. Is this a bug?

Asked by corroded

Answer

I had this same thought. But actually the three "classes" on the far right are race/class combinations, and so you have to unlock all three of them before the siege of lothlorien will become unlocked. Better explanation containing spoilers below

Those three classes are the "monster" classes: Gorgon, Half-Dragon, and Vampire. When you select them, your choice of races on the top is ignored, and they are colored gray the same as the other races, so they are effectively both a race and a class.

Answered by bwarner

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Should I just give up or should I kill myself?

Question

I'm a big fan of Rogue, so of course I picked up Desktop Dungeons and got into it.

I've got a couple victories under my belt, and (of course) a couple losses as well.

One thing I'm wondering is about those losses. Once I've gotten to a point in a dungeon where I know that I'm not going to be able to beat the boss, what should I do? As in, is there any difference? There's some kind of a score that's calculated when the game is over, but does that score mean anything? Most importantly though, is there some particular way that I can turn a total loss into less of a loss?

Should I charge the final boss and die gloriously?
Or (as I suspect) is it all a waste of time and should I just hit that Retire button as soon as I know I won't win?

Answer

You can store up gold so that your next character is better off. So you may want to hold off on spending anything to make a try at what would be a futile boss attempt.

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When should I start drinking?

Question

My current strategy for Desktop Dungeons is to collect potions and save them up for the last battle. I only attack monsters if I can defeat them without using a potion, and then heal by revealing more parts of the map. But I've started wondering, would it be more advantageous to use potions earlier to help me defeat creatures that are above my level and therefore get experience faster, rather than just using them for the boss fight?

Answer

Health potions heal 40% of your max health. Comparatively, tiles recover 1 health per level per tile. Your base health is 10 per level, so without enhancements it takes 4 tiles of exploration to account for one potion. Consuming a potion also doesn't trigger enemy regeneration.

Mana potions heal 40% of your max mana. Tiles only recover 1 mana per tile, and your base mana does not increase without picking up mana items.

Vlad is very correct in that using potions just to speed up leveling is not very useful, especially if that level isn't going to make you survive the final conflict. But, excellent planning and luck may make an early potion very potent.

The main reason to use a potion in the early game is to maximize damage output while minimizing resource use. This isn't just for the immediate gains of what tiles you don't explore, but capitalizing on the position you're left in that will make future exploration less necessary. Maximizing damage output means using potions in the capacity such that their health or mana contribution is towards the destruction of your target. Using a health potion to survive killing foes for a mid-battle level up or a mana potion to afford a secondary casting of APHEELSIK is fairly wasteful.

For example, imagine a scenario where you've revealed a third of the dungeon so far. There are no monsters left you can defeat without potions, but there are many monsters that are 2 levels above you, some of which you could handle without a potion if you leveled up once. If you don't drink a potion, you could end up having to reveal a large portion of the dungeon looking for something to level up on. But if you can use a potion to defeat one of the 2 levels above you monsters and level up, you give yourself many more advancement opportunities which should far exceed the loss of that one potion.

Also, shoot to drink potions early game when you have a high maximum health. If you haven't found any health items, haven't bought a pendant of life, and otherwise do not have a lot of health, just stay away from big enemies and rely on exploration. As your health increases, the level of opponent you can take down using a single potion increases significantly.

Which leads to my next point: unless it's a requirement of a ridiculous chain assault you setup for victory that would make Rube Goldberg proud, you should probably never drink more than one potion of each kind to take out a single non-boss monster. The cost of using a potion impacts your ability to face all higher level foes, and the level catapult you may get for a single monster will still leave a large number of higher level foes. So if you must use a potion to take on a high level foe early on, figure out whether you can get it done in just one potion and some exploration. If that isn't enough, you should seek other opponents.

Mana potions are much less useful in the early game on their own. Even with wizard types, it usually takes 2-3 potions just to get a single spell slot back, and in the early game this won't really make a dent.

Their fault is their strength, however, because their lack of scaling with level makes them very useful if drinking a single mana potion saves you more than just a health potion. If you can drink a mana potion to pull off the BYSSEPS + GETINDARE combo that defeats a high level foe, it's actually more worth it. Just, as mentioned before, make sure you quaff the potion to contribute to damage.

The wonderful list of exceptions, where we assume you have enough money

This is not a comprehensive list, but just a couple class- or luck-specific strategies.

• If you find a keg store early on, this can make it a lot more viable to take on a good number of high level enemies, leaving a lot of ripe opportunities for future mid-battle level ups.

• In the free version of the game, the Glowing Guardian offers the equivalent of 2 full heals. These are excellent against bosses, so discovering early on that you have this option may allow early potions much easier.

• For obvious reasons, Halflings and Gnomes have a similar advantage that finding a keg store provides.

• Thieves have a trait that lets both forms of potion heal both attributes. If you have a spell like BURNDAYRAZ or GETINDARE or HALPMEH, you can probably get some very early nice kills by taking advantage of this trait, as it effectively doubles your potion stock.

• Assassins have a trait that instantly kill any enemies of a lower level, which means that a potion-induced level catapult is significantly more useful to them than other classes. They are pretty much the leaders of mid-battle leveling.

• Priests have a trait that makes health potions heal 100% health. This makes it a lot easier to spend only a single potion when taking on significantly stronger foes, but remember to still stick with "1 potion per non-boss".

• A Sorceror is usually better off using HALPMEH or CYDSTEPP than quaffing health potions.

• Bloodmages have a trait that makes mana potions heal 100% mana at the cost of some health. This makes them actually much less suited to using mana potions during the early game, because the mana gain is simply not worth it. So you'll probably be drinking later with them.

• Warlords have a very interesting synergy with potions that makes their potion strategy exceptionally complex. To give a peek, one who gets some mana items early on may prioritize the utility of early game Mana potions, but others may prioritize late-game to utterly crush foes. I will also note that you should probably save the bonus damage for the target, not for a mid-battle level.

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What is “mid-battle leveling”?

Question

The top answer to this question contains several references to "mid-battle leveling". I think this has to do with leveling up as a way of healing while fighting a difficult monster, but does someone want to clarify what this is?

Answer

Leveling up restores both your health and mana to full (and the former to a higher amount), which makes it among the most powerful of healing methods available. It also puts you in a better position against your foes.

Mid battle leveling is the practice of using this in the middle of fighting a powerful opponent. It consists of revealing and sparing several easily dispatched foes that contain just enough experience to give you a level up. It's primarily done when fighting a single boss, and in the case of special stages it is a way to preserve your potions for the second boss. However, it's not unheard of to use against normal enemies in the process of preparing for the boss.

Mid battle leveling often requires taking on higher level foes early on. The levels you gain from that means fewer of the lower level foes that you need to take on, so that you can leave them around for leveling up. You automatically have first strike on these foes, which means more health you can use to exchange blows with the boss. Depending on the setup, it may also be prudent to weaken some foes and use exploration to heal up.

How many monsters you use is based on your strategy. If you're really tricky, you can setup two or even three levels worth, though doing this while being at a level capable of taking on a boss is an occasionally difficult endeavour (but probably easiest in the Factory). For doing just a single level, often a single monster is sufficient.

Class choice can affect your ability to pull this off. Two of the more useful ones are the Assassin and the Paladin.

The Assassin has the special trait that lets it instantly kill lower level monsters. Since you automatically get first strike on them, it saves you all of the trouble of weakening monsters early, allowing you to devote a lot more of your health towards attacking the boss.

The Paladin also has a very unique synergy with mid battle leveling. It has a trait that restores a big chunk of your health whenever you kill an undead creature. By sparing undead creatures specifically, you can actually setup a mid-battle level stream that not only gets you the full heal, but also re-vitalizes you in the middle of the process. This lets you get even more hits in, and so Paladins tend to favour multi-monster components to their mid battle levels.

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In mid-battle leveling, does that mean you have to have revealed the whole map already?

Question

I kinda get the point that what you simply do for say a level 10 boss is to:

1. attack boss until his next hit will kill you.
2. kill an enemy that will level you up(so you probably need to have 29/30 exp then kill a level 1 enemy)
3. attack boss again etc

I try this also but if you suddenly enter a space that you haven't explored yet, you do get the heal but the boss also heals(usually more than what i damaged him...so im back to square one)

Am i doing it right? should i had explored the whole map first and setup my mid-level battle? But that means i can't heal via map anymore and must rely on 2-4 health and mana potions. right?

Answer

No, there is no requirement to have revealed the whole map, nor even a significant portion. You might consider a start-of-game mid-battle level to take on, say, a level 3 foe by killing a level 1 foes and just preparing for the next hit. You should be able to do this by just finding few enough enemies around the start.

The only map revelation you need is enough to set it off and stand advantageous to defeat the opponent. This may simply mean exploring as much as needed to reveal your full chain of kills. After all, one of the other advantages of mid-battle leveling is that it does not provide your opponent any chance of regeneration.

Or, it might mean exploring some amount, then using a much higher attack power such that you still have dealt significantly more damage to the opponent than what it heals for exploration. Monsters heal 1 health per level per tile, just as you do. Setting up exploration-involved fights means having at least that much attack power above theirs. For example, if you want to use a 3-tile slot to gain just enough, you want to have at least a 30 point advantage over a boss so that you don't lose everything that you just did. To adopt this towards mid-battle leveling, you don't need to compare it to the enemy's attack power, and simply just need it so that the health you need to survive a mid-battle level won't heal the boss such that your damage is undone. The higher above their healing rate you can make your damage, the better.

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How does APHEELSIK work?

Question

As an Assassin in Desktop Dungeons I'm trying to use the APHEELSIK glyph to help me kill higher level monsters. The game says APHEELSIK:

Poisons an enemy, negating health regeneration until player next deals damage.

So after attacking a zombie a few times I get low health and use APHEELSIK on the zombie. I assume that I can explore to regenerate health and mana well the zombie stays wounded (because I'm only exploring, not dealing damage) but then I come back and the zombie is fully regenerated!

So how does one use APHEELSIK in order to prevent monsters from regenerating health while you explore? Have I completely misinterpreted how to use APHEELSIK? Are certain monsters immune?

Answer

The problem is not in how you are using APHEELSIK, but in your target. Normally, you would use APHEELSIK in a battle where both you and the target monster have taken a reasonable amount of damage. By casting APHEELSIK on a monster, you prevent it from healing from things that would normally heal both you and wounded monsters (exploration and use of LEMMISI). However, Undead are immune:

Casting APHEELSIK on a Wraith, Zombie or Vampire will not inflict Poison on them, and thus has no effect on their Health Regeneration. It will still cost you Mana to cast the Glyph despite having no effect.

and both the Golem and Goat are resistant:

The Golem and Goat, with their significant Magic Resistance, are poor targets for APHEELSIK. There is a chance for the spell to fail equal to the monster's Magic Resistance score. So, for instance, a Goat (with 25% Magic Resistance) will be able to resist APHEELSIK 25% of the time on average. When resisted, APHEELSIK does not inflict Poison on the monster.

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How can I use LEMMISI effectively?

Question

I've always been converting this glyph immediately. Revealing three random tiles not only isn't very helpful, it actually removes future healing potential. I can get the same healing effect from just revealing three tiles that are actually near me. So why would I ever want to take up one of my glyph slots with LEMMISI?

Answer

It's basically meant more as a primitive healing factor, which is why there's actually a bonus point reward for using LEMMISI repeatedly in one stage. Don't use it to rob your future healing potential, use it as your healing potential.

If you're not a Wizard or Berserker, you make even with the mana cost. Wizards will regain 1 Mana, while Berserkers will spend 2 extra Mana. It's primarily for usage when you don't want to perform exploration directly. Some reasons you might want to do so include:

• As a primer to actual exploration. You have some damage, want to heal it before advancing. Use LEMMISI to possibly see what might be a better direction that you want to head in, rather than bruting through the darkness towards what may have been the worse direction to go.

• As an extension to the above, use it while facing off multiple visible opponents at once. This lets you get the normal healing effect of exploration while exploring the more remote parts of the map, instead of what is right near you.

• If you're in a situation where you can't directly explore due to big tough fellows in the way, but you can defeat one opponent if you had the aid of exploration regeneration (either just to get back to full health, or because you can beat the enemy's regeneration rate), then this helps.

• You've run out of normally reachable exploration, and there's some blackness that's buried inside of a bunch of stone blocks. Unless you're a transmuter (in which case you don't want LEMMISI in the first place), it's far cheaper to use LEMMISI than to dig through the walls.

• If you're a Sorceror, then you get extra healing on account of your ability. Since the mana cost equals the amount you'd regain from actual exploration, it's actually better healing.

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