Come to know capriphobia as I have! Let's Play Desktop Dungeons!

Okay then, I guess our ranked run will be as a bloodmage!



The theme of today's update... blood everywhere! YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!



So yeah. Here's our vampire! His goal for today: drain everyone's blood! All those victims out there... we must have them!



ASDF WHAT I DIDN'T ATTACK ANYTHING YET

...That's one of the core weaknesses of the vampire. Every square explored injures you. However, you can't be outright killed by this exploration-based damage, but it does make it kinda hard to fight things with first-strike early. You have first strike, fortunately, so you won't get killed if you can one-shot something but lack the health to do so.



See? The upshot of this is that rather than saving exploration until they really need it, vampires are better off exploring like crazy early on, so it can't hurt them as much later on.



Now, for the fun part of vampires. See how they don't have mana? They have to spend health points to cast spells! Like just about everything else about them, this means early game vampires have another problem: if they use BURNDAYRAZ right now, it'll injure them. This does have an upside, though: you can cast almost limitless spells later in the game, even considering that the cost for a spell goes up with repeated casts as a vampire.



To that end, vampires make pretty dang decent Mystera followers. That said, I'd prefer to hold off on worshipping her until we get all the glyphs discovered.



Like this one. We don't need mana, so we don't need blood magic. Vampires convert each glyph they get into extra life drain, with a starting 5% and an extra 5% per glyph converted.



Life drain does work on undead, but unfortunately, we don't do enough damage at our level to really make use of it.



This could help that considerably. But I won't get it, because I wish to save my gold for the ranked run.



I picked up WEYTWUT here. Unfortunately, this is even more useless than usual to a vampire. Every casting hurts you, and you're only going to cast it if you're trapped in your starting area, which means taking even more damage on top of that, regardless of success or failure.



This would be a super cool item if we weren't already endowed with natural first strike.



Since we're running out of room, I get curious and see if mana options can heal you like they do thieves. Apparently they do not!



This is a potentially useful glyph for vampires! Unfortunately, I can't see the boss and we're rapidly running out of room.



That's just how vampire runs go, sadly. Sometimes you just don't get a viable monster selection to start with.



Already, this looks much more promising. Bandits, in particular, are valuable to vampires, since they can't use either status effect on you.

Our boss for the day is Aequitas. Vampires tend to have options for either high health or low health bosses, really.



Yeah, I'll buy this at around half past never.



I dislike having to burn health potions this early. I could use the blood pools to heal, since, y'know, vampire, but I'll go without.



Our first goal is to punch through the starting area and get all the areas explored, so we can KILL EVERYTHING.



I killed a wraith down here. I'm not showing two shops selling bonebreakers. Frankly, though, that wouldn't surprise me at all.



Okay, BURNDAYRAZ get! Now we just have to get another level.



Bluh. Possibly useful, but I'd prefer another option if one exists.



For example, not this guy.



Well, guess we won't need to worry about spending gold!



Oooh, this is an interesting option. Granted, lowering our health with each boon isn't too attractive, but amping up our life drain sure is.



Did I mention that life drain works on zombies? It totally does.



The best part about life drain is against enemies that do low damage. If your attack power and life drain is high enough, you can completely undo the results of their attack. It's pretty dang sexy.



Know what else is sexy? BURNDAYRAZ cast straight from health. Once you hit level 3, you usually have enough BURNDAYRAZ to spam it until the enemy's health is low enough for you to stab them for the win. And since you have life drain and first strike, doing so actually gives you health back.

Starting to see just why vampires are the most broken class in the game?



Granted, losing health from exploration is kind of a big deal, but that's not nearly enough to outweigh the benefit of spells from health.



Just gonna try to kill enough people to hit level 5, if I can. I think I've more or less cleaned out the undead by this point, so Dracul should be safe.

No, wait, NOW I've cleaned out the undead.



I do so love thematic characters.



Our first boon is Bloodfury, on account of the life drain. Higher damage means more life drained!



Our health, even with Dracul's boons working against them, is to the point where we can use countless BURNDAYRAZ against an enemy and kill them effortlessly with a melee attack afterwards.



Nah, let's have more life drain instead.



This one isn't even a choice, it's a free conversion.



After this, I think we'll go kill Aequitas.



Huh, he's actually keeping pace with us through his possible damage alone. Dangerous!



But not really. Yay!



We've already killed the dungeon boss, but I still want to show off the dungeon itself.



Jehora is... not that great for vampires. You lose first strike and your immunities. Shame, since his boons aren't half bad for one.



I don't think HALPMEH actually works on vampires. It'd be just a bit too broken if it did. Infinite health and all that.



So, how awesome is 45% life drain?



So awesome, guys.



In fact, it's reached the point where meat men can't even hurt us now. Our life drain just outpaces their damage.

And we've killed everything in the dungeon.



Vampires: THE MOST broken class in Desktop Dungeons. Hands down.



Anyway, you guys all voted for it, so here goes... our elven bloodmage ranked run!



Now, as you know by now, ranked enemies are 20% stronger, both in health and damage, than normal ones. Considering my aptitude for bloodmages, this means we probably won't get anything grand out of this run, but hey, I aim to please.



This is a nice find early on, though.



See the stats of this goblin? 7 health, rather than the usual 6. Granted, a single point doesn't make much difference, but that's only at level 1. Stronger enemies are much more dangerous.



More bonebreakers. Good, we don't have enough of those.



Apparently, I thought trying to fight the level 2 serpent in melee was smart. But more importantly, there's a Mystera Annur altar here. I'm going to try to make the most of this, which in our case means holding off on worshipping her until we literally do not need our physical attack as well as have all the glyphs converted. Mystera is not the easiest of the gods to work with.



In the meantime, being poisoned like an idiot.



I do have blood pools, though, improved by the pendant of health, so that's something.



And the two telprot glyphs. I'll convert WEYTWUT right now, but since ENDISWAL never spawns for me, I'll leave PISORF alone for now.



durp a durp durp



Stupid serpents, think they're so much better than me.



Ah well, we're doing nicely anyhow.



Unfortunately, PISORF thought it'd be funny to block off the lower half of the dungeon. Ah well, we'll fix that in a bit.

First, though, let's see if we can't get another level or two.



It's important to be motivated!



Now, I could go Pactmaker here, and get nearly the same benefit as I would from worshipping Mystera. But then again, I could also go to Mystera, then convert to Pactmaker after picking up Magic and take Mana, assuming it's not too expensive.



Or I could just stick to Mystera because the conversion cost to the Pactmaker might be totally unreasonable. The game didn't let me check it, but the wiki says it costs about 30 piety, and you need 80 for Mana, and both gods are difficult to get piety with... yeah, not happening.



In the meantime, here is a bandit being incinerated.



Remember these? Well, they normally would be quite helpful for a bloodmage, actually. But we don't have the gold for it, and besides, we're going to join Mystera later. So, they don't get bought. Ah well.



More killing bandits!



Goo blobs, too. We're running out of exploration room, so I may convert BLUDTUPOWA soon. Doing so will let me cast BURNDAYRAZ twice.



Huh, we're getting this guy? Not a bad boss for a bloodmage to face, actually.



Okay, I'll take this and ditch BLUDTUPOWA. It would've been smarter, actually, to ditch PISORF, especially considering I'm going to follow Mystera later and could use BLUDTUPOWA with LEMMISI to recover mana between fights. Oh well.



I'll just make do with what I've got.



The high amount of bandits and gorgons in this dungeon certainly worked to our benefit.



The last of the gods here. Considering we have the Pactmaker available, there would be almost no reason for us to go Binlor here.



I sure hope we can get a level out of this.



Meh, close enough.

Okay, let's not dally any longer.



Mystera GO!



I use our starting piety on Magic and Faith. I didn't know how much mana we'd need to expend to get Magic and Flames, or just Flames, depending on whether I chose Faith or not, and whether my magic reserve would be enough to kill Lord Gobb, so I just said "screw it" and decided to work with the bloodmage's crazy-ass mana potions.



Here's one potion's worth. If I had converted PISORF before joining Mystera like a sane individual, I could use one extra BURNDAYRAZ per potion. Hopefully we'll have enough anyway.



We need to run around and drink up blood between potion uses each time, but meh, not like we'd need 'em for melee.



Haha! Ranked win with a bloodmage of Mystera!



I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING



And we got some decent point bonuses, too! Let's add this to the scoreboard, why don't we?



Granted, we didn't exclusively try for points or anything, but who cares about that?



And we're in!



You can click this button to check the online scoreboards. Let's go to the high score table and see.



Aw man, looks like it's got its fair share of hackers. Nothing we can do about that, though.



Here we are. 732 our of 1500 total. Not stellar, but I wasn't specifically trying for points, I was using a class and god that weren't my preference nor entirely optimal, and the top twenty-five or more scores are hackers anyway, so I think we did pretty dang good!

Next Time: The Siege of Lothlorien!

THE UPDATE WILL PROBABLY BE LATER TODAY

I AM MAKING THIS POST BECAUSE I AM JUST A LITTLE OCD AND WON'T HAVE TWO LP UPDATES WITHOUT INTERVENING POSTS

I AM REASONABLE

NOT SURE WHY THIS POST IS IN ALL CAPS

The Earthmother witnesses what you did there. How droll.



The newest addition to Desktop Dungeons, and the last update for it that I'll do. Probably.



There's a few things to note about it. First, there is a plot, albeit a threadbare one. It involves the defense of an elven kingdom or something, but who cares about elves.



I'll tell you who: we do, because they are going to make our games a pain. The second thing to note about the campaign is that each character is preselected for the level. Our first one is Sir Snafu Glitterfinger, an elf rogue. Now, I'm good with rogues. Elves are... not really an ideal race for playing rogues. Workable, yes, but not so much ideal.



The enemy selection here is also defined. In each level, the selection tends to be less on the friendly side, because this is the campaign and it pulls no punches.



The third thing is that these levels are all back-to-back, and if you die on one, you have to start over from the first level. Managing gold becomes a lot more important here.



Here's the big problem with the first area: half the enemies here, including the boss, have first strike. You're playing a rogue, which kinda lives and dies on their first strike. Starting to notice a problem?



The biggest hurdle here is finding a way to deal with everyone having first strike. There's three good ways to do it: find BURNDAYRAZ and kill everything with it, find a health boost and tough it out, or survive off the two enemy types that don't have first strike.



This really doesn't help us with any of the three choices.



Every one of the campaign stages has goats in it. This is generally a good thing, but it's important to remember what happens when goats get too powerful.



Figures, I deign to cast PISORF to make my job easier, and I have to cast it again when my mana is one point shy of doing so. Waste of a good potion, that.



Oh well, we got ourselves a way to ease up the hassle of the dungeon.



Imps, like usual, can blink when attacked, but the rogue does so much damage that this is rarely ever an issue. Or rather, that would be the case if you weren't forced to BURNDAYRAZ high-level imps just to get by. Oh well, you can take the gamble and hope they turn up in your area.



This one didn't.



Another benefit of the first level having imps is that, like the Library, it's pretty hard to get an unwinnable game generated.

Hard, not impossible.



Wow, the boss already? That was quick.

Anyway, here's Sergeant Gobbli. Basically the same as Lord Gobb, but with a bit of extra health. That might not seem like a huge deal, but remember: goblins are already very dangerous for rogues. They do not need any more buffs. A dwarf rogue can take a direct hit from Sergeant Gobbli without dying. An elven rogue can't do this until level 10 (maybe). Therefore, unless you plan on relying on BURNDAYRAZ for the whole fight, treat him like Gharbad.



I think we'll go for the Pactmaker here. Learning is always helpful.



Lacking the ability to take on goblins of our own level, we make up for it by fighting imps above our level. It works decently enough.



Rogues normally get average usage from BLUDTUPOWA, since they soften just about everything up with BURNDAYRAZ. Given that our first strike has lost value here, we'll be using it a lot more.



Also, given that we have to cast PISORF (remember when we had ENDISWAL? Good times) all the freakin' time.



One advantage of our situation is that we're almost certainly likely to hit the magic number of 18 for mana points, letting us use three BURNDAYRAZ. Sadly, increasing the maximum of a score does not scale the regeneration from exploration, which really hurts elves since their regeneration for mana doesn't scale up with level, the way health regeneration does.



Yeah no. If we did this, we'd never survive the boss.



Yes, I am using a midfight level to take on a level 4 goblin. Back off, maaaaaaan.



And hey, it worked.



This is actually pretty helpful to us. However, because I worry about later chapters being too hard without a surplus of gold, I don't buy it.



One thing I've learned: if you can gain loads of levels without exploring at all, by all means do so!



And if you can't, well, haha you suck.



Y'know what we need right now?



Yeah, that.



Now that we can survive physical attacks from high-level gorgons, we're in much better position than before.

This doesn't put us in a very good position, mind you, since we're rapidly running out of exploration.



Remember, every high-level gorgon we kill needs some mana and a bunch of health to kill. And yet, without the extra experience, we won't have enough to take down Sergeant Gobbli.



The same holds true for goblins. This is not an easy challenge.



At least there's always the pushover goats.



And the semi-pushover imps.



Oooh, this could be handy. Take!



The real important thing is to use what goats you can for mid-fight levels against really tough gorgons.



This is, of course, dependent on getting such goats and gorgons in places where you can access them. We didn't really get a map layout that worked for that.



Also, I get Mana instead of Health from the Pactmaker, possibly because I am stupid.



This foolish move makes me think I can take on the Sergeant.



Granted, another midfight level takes me close.



Just... not close enough.



And rather than taking my chances with a dodge to win, I try exploring to kill some enemies. It does not go as planned.



ASDFDFDFDFDFD



Here's what happens if you try to submit a score in a non-ranked game. Afterwards, it still asks if you want to submit your score, and says the submission is accepted if you click Yes. Still some bugs to iron out, I see.

Okay, not a problem. That was just an unlucky run, right?



If that's your opinion, you don't know how horrible my luck can get.



Tikki-Tooki is... really not that helpful here. We already have first strike, poison is all but useless, the first stage is where you have the most gold, and all that leaves in the end is a random dodge boost. Pass. The Earthmother is more feasible than that, but only barely so, due to all the goats.



Remember how we found BURNDAYRAZ early last run? Yeah we don't have that luxury here!



So we have to spend gold here just to get by.



Fortunately, extra health is worth its weight in gold to a rogue, especially without BURNDAYRAZ.



Call me crazy, but we might actually be able to win this one.



Haha, pointless dodges. Truly the hallmark of a rogue playthrough.



Jehora, huh? Well, we'd lose our dodge and first strike, so--



KALIR WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU FOOOOOOOL

So uh yeah. I was looking for the third altar by this point, figuring anything would be better than the Wonder Twins earlier. I saw Jehora, my brain went "jehora == gud" and I went for it instinctively. Now we don't even have dodge or first strike.



All we have are two relatively useless glyphs.



There is good news, though. Between the prevalence of first-strike enemies, the pendant of health we bought earlier, and the general uselessness of dodging, this actually is not as big a setback as you might expect. We'll do and take loads of damage, so our first priority is Bolstering.



We'll also get ourselves levels when we can.



OH LOOK, ENDISWAL, THIS IS SO USEFUL NOW THAT I HAVE PISORF AND AM WORSHIPPING JEHORA

Actually, that was just my opinion at the time. Jehora approves of both telprots and destroying walls, I'm just bitter at ENDISWAL only ever showing up when we don't need it.



Bolstering is obtained shortly thereafter.

Hey look, it's almost like we have a normal health score!



The reason for all these health boosts is right here. You saw how we couldn't even physically attack him earlier, right? We need the mentality of our monk playthrough here, where we became tough enough to physically attack Gharbad.



Speaking of being strong enough to physically attack Gharbad, this could be pretty useful...



Except Jehora gets very upset if you use GETINDARE. A -10 piety hit is pretty dang severe. But hey, we can kill that imp early, so no complaints here.



This imp, too. And now, to remedy our lack of first strike, we have BURNDAYRAZ.



Now we're really ahead of the game here.



Let's just take our level up as high as we can before the fight.



Most useless midfight level ever.



And look, we can actually take a hit from him! Maybe Jehora isn't such a bad idea here after all, even if you don't take Polymorph.



Oh, dang. We lose again! Welp, let's go take Chaos and get ourselves--



...fully healed?

Jehora, I take back everything bad I ever said about you.



With that, we can bring down the Sergeant!



Plot plot plot who cares. Nobody likes elves anyway.



After each chapter, your score is reported, with previous levels' scores added on.



The next stage, despite our setup, is even harder, for reasons that will not be immediately apparent.

We start off playing an elven wizard. Unlike our previous combo, this is actually a decently viable setup. We should be able to cast four BURNDAYRAZ easy by the time the level ends.



The enemy selection here, in addition, is very reminiscent of the Snake Pit. Which isn't a big deal for an elf wizard, since they can get to BURNDAYRAZ and the summarily ignore the attacks of enemies like this naga and that serpent.



Course, that depends on BURNDAYRAZ being readily available.



This is actually really useful to us. The boss is a modified dragonspawn, who I will demonstrate in short order.



Jehora really isn't too valuable to us for this one, outside of Polymorph.



Lacking any good way of fighting the naga and serpents, we're forced to use the mage plate to deal with the dragonspawn everywhere to get to the other glyphs.



Actually, Taurog is a pretty good choice here if you can deal with the naga beforehand. The wizard can make good use of the attack boosts, any magic resistance you get for the boss is helpful, the dragonspawn award good piety, and the elven glyph conversion bonus means you can use some magic once all other options are exhausted.



Speaking of magic, yoink!



Unfortunately, that naga is walling off the two glyphs next to each other, so I'll have to see if the other one can't help me get there.



In the end, the god I selected was Dracul. Hopefully the mage plate helps to cancel out the lowered health, and Bloodpower is definitely of value to a wizard.



This is not of value to us.



Bloodpower is quick and easy to obtain.



Remember earlier, when I said that having a higher max mana meant longer exploration time? Yeah, that's gonna bite us in the ass real quick.



In the meantime, though, let's get some levels and piety.



None of the enemies in the campaign are undead, so Dracul is an okay option for some stages. The lowered max health makes him a losing option in the first stage though.

Now, you'll notice that the naga blocking off that glyph is gone, right? Turns out WONAFYT can be used if you don't have PISORF or ENDISWAL to clear out a pathway. This is very risky though, since their level has to match yours and you might call something else first.



Granted, this won't let us get the other glyphs any time soon, but first strike is always handy for us.



I misclicked and stood over the shop for this fight. That meant that when I killed the naga, the shop would try to sell its stone of seekers at me again. I am not interested in your wares, peddler!



We're not doing too badly here, but y'know what would be really grand?



Yeah, higher attack power.



Here's the level 2 boss, Firecracker. Now, when you see the second screenshot, I want you to take a look at his stats, specifically his health.



Look familiar? It should: that's the same health that Super Meat Man has. Y'know, the highest health boss in the normal game, and already a big problem for wizards? That's the only similar stat, though. Firecracker does nearly twice the damage, and for extra fun, he's magic resistant. This is a dick move on more than one level. First, of course, in that making a boss tough for wizards even more tough is just plain unfair, and second in that the enemies in the stage don't prepare you for a boss like this. You go into the stage thinking "wizard in Snake Pit == full caster" and then this guy shows up to break that strategy hard. This is why Taurog is actually a decent choice here.

It's actually kind of interesting that the normally-not-so-viable gods are the big lifesavers here.



In the meantime, because we're still dealing with serpents and nagas, the thought of going back and worshipping Taurog never crossed my mind.



This is actually pretty helpful too, since the lowered cost and our good attack (and low health) means we can use this to put our massive mana bar to use keeping our health bar up.



Oh wait, no, what actually happened is that Dracul destroyed HALPMEH instantly upon touching it without telling us, because he hates holy magic. Thanks for that, Dracul.

Unfortunately, APHEELSIK would've been immensely more useful had it not been generated behind a level 7 naga. Thanks for that, game.



Maybe Bloodhunger can take the edge off of Firecracker's physical attacks for us.



In the meantime, let's get to a viable level.



I think around level 8 will probably work.



OH MAN I SURE AM GLAD APHEELSIK GENERATED WHERE IT DID



Let's kick up our magic resistance a little bit more. Maybe with that, we can win?

Haha, no.



And because we lost here, next time we load the campaign, we get to start over from square one.



Yeah, uh... I don't actually know if I can beat this, guys. It's highly luck-dependent, each level requires using some very unintuitive and difficult strategies to pull off, and I've never actually made it to the third stage, which is even worse. I'll just tell you right now: the boss is like Gharbad, only with thrice the health and blinking capabilities. Screw Lothlorien, man.

The res of the game, though? Even in a beta phase, this game is awesome and it should feel awesome. I eagerly await the commercial release, at which point I will probably be locked to the game screen for my whole life. If this LP hasn't convinced you to play it yet, ignore this last update and PLAY IT NOW GOGOGOGOGOGOG

Next Time: ...Is there even going to be a next time?

Haha. I can't really blame you for not beating it, but I am a bit disappointed you don't show off just how obscenely dickish the last level is - you didn't even mention what your race/class was.

Even if you don't decide to keep trying though, it was a good LP, and I enjoyed it, even if I just lurked and didn't post.

This LP (if it is indeed over) was a blast Kalir! Thanks for highlighting the game. Which now resides on my desktop at home and on a USB for playing other places!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhah ahahahahahahaha oh god

Yeah, screw the elves. If they only want to send out a single commando (or three commandos, I guess) to save their kingdom instead of the entire elvish army, they deserve to lose.

Aww, it's over(ish). I guess if I want my fill of this game I'll have to start playing it myself.

Fine, fine, I'm going. Gosh!

I think that if I ever get near the siege, I'm going to hack my through it just to win it once and see if its really as bad as you say...
Then I'm going to try repeatedly again and again after maxing out everything else to win it legit >=D


Oh crud its prolly worse then the assasain crypt runs will ever be >.<

It's probably a little easier to do the campaign after you've completed all the optional dungeojns with all characters.

I've maxed out the side dungeons, and beat the campaign on my second or third try. You only need some health for the first level, then spend a bunch on the second level.

While the third level's goat-boss sounds horrible, it's really not that bad -- as long as you find CYDSTEPP. With the elf mana boosts, you can usually cast it twice (with a pendant of mana or something). Once you can do that, you can get three hits in, level up, two more hits, then potion him to death.

Having 160 gold, 9 shops, and the best items available certainly helps.

That certainly would make it easier. It would also be ridiculously time-consuming and really not all that fun!

I'll try a bit more today to see if I can't brute-force the second level of the campaign, but no promises there.

You can do it!

Believe in me, who believes in you!

Amusing personal anecdote: my guild leader in WoW called me out on Vent last night. "Kol (toon name), you're a bastard." "Um, k, no argument here, but why?" "I spent the entire afternoon playing Desktop Dungeons."

Thanks for the excellent LP, it's put QCF firmly on my map of Awesome Guys That I Should Watch.

Whether you manage to take down Lothorien or not, this was a great LP and you showed off the game pretty skilfully!