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

So far? Not once. I'm actually a bit surprised by that, and am expecting my inevitable demise any day now.

possibly when it comes time to run the factory with a wizard

I think you haven't mentioned it, so just in case you don't know: Health regeneration is equal to your level for every revealed square, but this is true for enemies too. You can often use that to get kills you couldn't otherwise get without expending other resources.

Of course you'll start next to an altar of Jehora and the Burndayraz glyph.

Sorcerer, definitely.

Just so you can unlock Blood Mage and do a run through as one.

Man, Desktop Dungeons has gotten a lot more sophisticated since I last played it. Which was v.0.051 apparently.

Anyway, beating things up with bare hands is always awesome, so I say monk.

Berserker! Berserker!

I've been loving the LP and I even managed to beat the game myself today: fighter, thief (after numerous failed attempts)

dtsund provided a tiebreaker vote to sorcerer, so we're doing that next update. Spoilers: Super Meat Man happens again.

Welp, as we unlock enemies, we'll unlock less frustrating bosses. Though I do still see SMM quite a bit in my games.

The votes tied again this time for berserker and sorcerer. I didn't want to have another two-class update, though, so I annoyed dtsund into voting on the IRCs. He chose sorcerer!



The first four class portraits were all done by the aforementioned spelunking dude, but these new ones were made in a similar style by a fellow by the name of Brian Bugh! Before that, all of the portraits were initially just reused sprites from the original four, or worse, recolors! I would not have abided such nonsense with these neat characters, and neither did Brian. So here's our Sorcerer! This is a dude who knows magic!



These stats are indicative that we're out of the easymode dungeons and in the game proper. That's right, now the goats have 4 health! OH MAN!



We still get stuck with this joker game after game, though. The best part? He's in the hardest of the four side dungeons, too.



On the other hand, now we can see him at his full strength. 954 health is a LOT for any character to deal with.



The first altar we find is to the Pactmaker. I figure this early on, that kind of altar could be very useful, so I sign on with him.



We found the GETINDARE glyph, which lets us demonstrate the core gameplay element of the sorcerer.



Normally, if we beat the hell out of this here gorgon, we don't have enough to finish the fight.



But if we cast GETINDARE, even though the gorgon has first strike and would normally render such a move worthless: OH NO WHARE DID HP COME FROM

Yep. Due to Essence Transit, each magic point we spend as a sorcerer means 2 extra points of health. Because of that, we get a lot more mileage out of GETINDARE than a normal casterly sort of character.



Oh and the Pactmaker gives us a piety reward for existing.



My remarkable math skills help to show off here that you can't rely on Essence Transit for everything.



Just for most things.



The piety we gained from the ensuing level is put to use with the Learning boon. We'll hit level 10 in no time!



Teach you to highlight my shortcomings, you jerk!



Here's the new/old monster type unlocked with the priest win. I've already discussed serpents, they have poison and are boring. I'm standing on the PISORF glyph, though, which heals even more than GETINDARE (and by that I mean it just takes less time).

To a sorcerer, every glyph is useful, even IMAWAL!

This is why I convert it to an attack boost.



I wonder if Essence Transit heals poison?



Apparently not. It does heal you, though, so that's something.



And if we have maxed health, we can still explore for mana. See those blue orbs? That's what magic is made of, kids!



Leveling up will still cure poison.



Even outside of the easymode dungeons, gorgons are a piece of cake that is also made of experience points.



WEYTWUT isn't too useful unless your god approves of it, so we convert it.



Oh man, so close to getting that boon!



So let's misclick after taking the screenshot and get a significantly less useful one! grumble grumble



Mystera Annur is a good goddess if you're a pure magic user, like the wizard or the scrolldowntotheendoftheupdateifyouwanttospoilit. Not so much for a sorcerer.



Put a joke here about the limits of your patience regarding snakes and dungeons. Dungeons aren't exactly like planes, but I'll let it slide.



And after using GETINDARE as a healing spell for half the dungeon, we get BURNDAYRAZ for the other half. Hooray!



Wraiths are super bad news for sorcerers. They can use magic on them, sure, but your first instinct is to hit it so you don't waste your healing. Only that won't work, because then you'll be mana burned! You can still just shoot magic at them like normal, yeah, but that's kind of a waste of magic power.

Actually, now I think on it, you can use that to fight two monsters at once, using fire on the wraith while physically attacking something else.



We actually get the right boon here. Now we've got loads of magic, which can in turn be used for healing!



If that's not a close call, I don't know what is.

The last god here is the Glowing Guardian. He's about as useful for sorcerers as anyone else. Which is to say, you'll pick him up just before the boss if you don't already have a god.



Shops can sell potions now, apparently. Cool!



It's almost worth the risk of Gharbad for pushover fights like these.



Since we're running close to the end of our exploration here, I convert PISORF. We won't be needing it for the boss, after all.



I guess it's to be expected that Super Meat Man would keep coming back despite all the beatdowns from before. Seriously though this is getting ridiculous. I'd like to show off all the bosses.



Despite our combination of magic and might (and the mana shield I forgot to mention at all up until now), this edition is considerably too durable to face with our skill alone.



I usually like to save up the potions collected around the dungeon just for the boss, unless I'm playing a halfling or gnome (which is usually because I am playing a class that amplifies the effects of potions).



Now, you'd think I'd have to use a health potion here, right? One casting of GETINDARE, even after I convert BURNDAYRAZ, doesn't pack enough kick. Well, so did I.



But it turns out that our mana shield did enough damage to finish the job! Sorcerers get the same kind of mana shield as Jehora Jeheyu grants, which deals their level's worth in damage to anything that damages them.



Good riddance, Super Meat Man. Maybe adding new monsters will increase the likelihood of someone we haven't seen yet.



Oh look, it's my least favorite class. The bloodmage is the last of the magic-focused classes in the game, and they're of the opinion that the bright red bar would be best put to use fueling the blue one. They can also make use of blood pools left behind after killing enemies, which is always nice. The important thing, though, is that like all the final classes, bloodmages have a unique glyph that they start play with. In their case, BLUDTUPOWA, which disables health regeneration in favor of doubling magic regeneration. Now, winning with a bloodmage won't unlock new classes or monsters. It will, however, unlock the BLUDTUPOWA glyph for all other classes to use, rather than just themselves.



I get the feeling single updates are perhaps just a bit shorter than I'm used to. So hey, one more double update, why not? Let's check out the Library!



The Library, like the Snake Pit, is a themed dungeon. While the Snake Pit had all kinds of serpentine monsters with disabling status effects, the Library has all kinds of magic-using monsters. We've already seen warlocks, but there's two new ones to be found here.



For example, dragonspawn. Statwise, they're a lot like zombies, but they don't have as much health as zombies do. On the other hand, they do come packing a magical attack, which might throw a wrench in the plans of people with physical resistance. We'll eventually unlock these guys in normal dungeons as well.



The other ones in this dungeon are imps. They have low health and their attack is physical in nature, but every time you hit them, they teleport to a random square, as if you'd cast PISORF on them. The good news is that you rarely get walled off in the Library, thanks to these guys. The bad news is that if you don't kill them in one hit, they may telprot outside of your field of vision to heal. Imps are exclusive to the Library, just like naga are exclusive to the Snake Pit.

Since so many enemies use magic here and being trapped is, as previously mentioned, very unlikely, Binlor is kind of a worthless god in the Library.



Hey Aequitas, how's it going?



WONAFYT is not really an ideal glyph, but it will let us heal, so hey, let's take and subsequently use it.



As you can see here, I used it after fighting the adjacent dragonspawn, where I called a warlock in from who knows where. I then promptly ignore him complaining about the traffic while I use the health from the spell to continue fighting the dragonspawn.



This is not the right way to use WONAFYT.



Here, I had just attacked an imp. You can see it not too far from me. I chase after it and finish the job, but if it had telprotted into the right half of the dungeon, I'd have to find something else to kill.



Well, we can't really make use of the mana shield boon, for obvious reasons, but I would really like to show off Polymorph, so hey, why not.



More WONAFYT-based healing. I started thinking of it as "ghetto healing magic" after a while. Eventually, I wise up and learn to retreat to the open starting area to cast it, so as to avoid blocking myself off in a given area.



I'm running out of ways to make fun of this glyph. Stop appearing in my games, IMAWAL.



See, now I've caught on and used my ghetto healing magic in an open area.



The new boss is just over here, apparently!



The Matron of Flame, like Aequitas and J�rmungandr, has no outstanding traits that you wouldn't expect of a dragonspawn. In her case, that means a magical attack and pretty good health. She's pretty pissed off about the dragonspawn we've killed, despite us not actually killing that many.



I dunno about you, but I prefer it when insults towards me are actually earned.



Our relentless and reckless slaughter gives us enough approval for Jehora to inflict his own brand of upgrade on us.



If imps stay in the same area as you, they can get you some easy experience points.

Tower shields, in the normal dungeon, are really useful, especially if you've already got physical resistance from worshipping Binlor or being a monk or whatever. Here, though, it's even more of a dick move than the Binlor altar.



GETINDARE was pretty essential on our earlier game, but Jehora will throw a fit if we use it. Conversion it is, then.



how am i still alive



This sword is a lot more useful than the tower shield, so let's go ahead and pick it up.



I still can't kill this guy, though. What I can do, though, is finally afford the Polymorph boon!



Mix it up!



As you can see, the changes are totally random, and you can even get enemies outside of the usual restriction for dungeons. Here, we see that Aequitas turned into the zombie boss, the unusually-loquacious Frank. The Matron of Flame, however, turned into... Aequitas.

Jehora, you have a weird sense of humor.



The viper ward here grants poison immunity. Nothing in the library can poison me (assuming nothing became a snake). What the hell, Library.



I think we're okay to fight Aequitas now. Frank has even more health than the Matron did, so Polymorph made things a little bit harder on us.



I somehow forgot to convert WONAFYT before I got this far, so I end up having to use a few potions to even the odds.



There we go. Kind of a dumb move on my part, but we do have plenty of exploring room for recovering for the fight with Frank.



We find ourselves another glyph we can convert as well.



We're at a big disadvantage here, but we might be able to pull through anyway.



Even if I convert that glyph and take the health potion, I won't have the strength to finish off Frank. We need at least three hits.



So we opt for a desperate last chance...

And it fails. That's the peril of worshipping Jehora: he can be extremely beneficial, or he can screw you over twice.



After any loss in a roguelike, it's good practice to look at your game and figure out what you could have done differently. That way, if you get into a similar situation, you can figure out what other options are available to you.

1. I didn't need to take Polymorph. My resources were good enough to take on Aequitas and the Matron by themselves, but I did it anyway to show it off. Additionally, had I done that, I would've had better chances when it came time to take the Chaos boon.
2. If I had more gold from an earlier run, I could've bought the tower shield to lessen the impact of Frank's attacks. But I didn't, so that's kind of moot.
3. I could've converted WONAFYT at the start of the Aequitas battle so I'd need fewer health potions to do the job.
4. Hang on, if I'd remembered the mana shield, would I have survived a straight-up slugfest with Frank? Maybe!



Well, that was kind of a sad ending. But hey, now you know that I'm not invincible at this game. I'll take another stab at the library next update.

Next time: Keep those votes coming, guys! Berserker, rogue, monk, bloodmage, or transmuter?

Rogue!

Tiefling bloodmage named "Dusk".

Human Transmuter of Cheibriados.

I can't generate the requisite amount of angst to write an update like that, sorry.

BLOODMAGE

MAGEBLOOD

Bloodmage!!!
Because I can :P

SUFFER AS A BLOODMAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

WELP I GUESS WE ALL KNOW WHAT THE NEXT UPDATE WILL BE

Is it going to be Beserker? I kid, I still want Bloodmage.

The best is when Super Meat Man polymorphs into Super Meat Man.

Jehora, you crazy.

I almost wrote this update in the style of a terrible Livejournal page. However, I felt the need to highlight exactly what things I do wrong when playing a bloodmage.



So, right off the bat, we get out first glyph, BLUDTUPOWA. Since this will make our magical prowess even better, we'll want to find the BURNDAYRAZ glyph as soon as possible. I'll show off how it works once we find an actual other glyph.



Here's the enemy we unlocked for winning a sorcerer. Golems are basically the same as goats, only better. Higher magic resistance, health, and damage. This still makes them comparable to a serpent, mind you, but this is not the kind of enemy you want to be facing with a magic-using character.



Okay, now we've got WONAFYT, so let's demonstrate how BLUDTUPOWA works.



First, we cast it (and kill the thing we summoned). Afterwards, we cast BLUDTUPOWA. But wait, it doesn't have a cost, but just changes to an active state!



In this state, when we explore, we recover mana at twice the usual rate, but don't recover health at all. This makes BLUDTUPOWA a great glyph for people who like to kill enemies without using physical attacks, such as wizards and followers of Mystera Annur. As an aside, this makes bloodmages ideal Mystera followers.



But we don't have Mystera, we have Tikki-Tooki. I don't want to follow him just yet, though, on account of BURNDAYRAZ deficiency.



Considering the high density of serpents here, a viper ward sounds like a good investment. If we had BURNDAYRAZ, though, I wouldn't bother, since we effectively poison ourselves each time we activate BLUDTUPOWA.

You're probably catching onto a key weakness of bloodmages by now: the success of a bloodmage game is very much determined by how fast they find BURNDAYRAZ. Wizards can sense all the glyphs in the dungeon, and sorcerers have a mana shield and Essence Transit to make do without it, but bloodmages have neither luxury, and many of their traits are kinda dependent on magic.



Their other trait, Sanguine, is still pretty useful though. Healing is always welcome, and blood pools are rarely in short supply. However, sometimes you have to pick up a blood pool simply in order to keep exploring. This is kind of a downside, because enemies don't heal when you pick up a blood pool, but it does help you heal faster, so as long as you keep blood pools from going to waste, don't worry about exploring. I did in this game, which is Kalir Bloodmage Mistake #1.



Because of that trait, things which increase your max health are a good idea for bloodmages. However, dwarf bloodmages are not recommended, since it's a secondary feature to BLUDTUPOWA and Power-Hungry.



Oh hey, we found enough gold to buy the troll heart!



Jehora would be a decent choice for a bloodmage, but I'm a bit leery of them on account of zombies.



Kalir Bloodmage Mistake #2: I'm hellbent on killing level 2 enemies at level 1 for the bonus experience (which amounts to 1 extra point but EVERY POINT COUNTS PHNURGH). This is not easy for a bloodmage lacking BURNDAYRAZ.



Wow, anger issues much?



Lord Gobb is the goblin boss. His best feature is that he's not Super Meat Man. He's a lot like your average goblin, but in addition to his good attack power and first strike, he comes packing physical and magic resistance! He's probably middling difficulty as far as bosses go.

More non-BURNDAYRAZ glyphs.



WHERE THE HELL IS IT



Oh, there it is. After exploring like three quarters of the map so BLUDTUPOWA is almost useless, we finally find the thing that would've given it merit in the first place!



This does not help with my own crippling idiocy, however.



Kalir Bloodmage Mistake #3: I didn't pick up Tikki-Tooki the second I obtained BURNDAYRAZ. As such, this WEYTWUT glyph becomes a potion rather than a bunch of free piety.



I do manage a few more high-level kills, but at this point I'm thinking this game is something of a lost cause. This is mostly because I don't know how to play bloodmages.



Since the Glowing Guardian disapproves of unchivalrous behaviour (say, for a purely hypothetical example, draining the blood of your fallen enemies to unnaturally extend your own lifespan), bloodmages don't usually benefit much from him. Well, except for the usual case of benefitting from him mid-boss-fight.



This screenshot is important because it highlights how the mouse auto-moves to given spaces. If I'd just clicked on the zombie earlier, I would've attacked while moving right over that blood pool, wasting it in the process. Instead, I clicked first in an open space near the zombie. This is mostly used by other classes to avoid unnecessary exploration when fighting enemies, but bloodmages have to use this to avoid unnecessary blood pools as well. Between that and the toggling of BLUDTUPOWA, they make for a pretty careful class, despite the flavor.



We've explored almost the whole map and are only level 5. This is a terrible, terrible situation.



I tried magicking this guy to death, but I didn't have enough mana to do it even with dipping into my supply of mana potions. However, the game wouldn't let me drink a second potion, because doing so would kill me thanks to the Power-Hungry trait! I guess this feature is meant to limit gnome bloodmages from getting a near bottomless supply of BURNDAYRAZ against the boss, but I just find it a hassle because it means you have to expend healing resources just to keep potions available.



This will take us to level 7, which is still very inadequate for fighting Lord Gobb. And we've explored every possible tile without the assistance of LEMMISI. On the other hand, we can use spare mana to hit Lord Gobb without fear of him recovering.



I think I've probably wasted some potions around here for assorted things. I don't remember, the end of this run was something of a haze of depression and disbelief.



At this point, we decide to do what damage we can to Lord Gobb.



We get decently far before we have to ask the Glowing Guardian for help.



Only 39 piety? You cheapskate!

Welp, we exhausted every resource in the dungeon without killing Lord Gobb. I can't even enumerate how many screwups were here.



Can you tell why bloodmages are my least favorite class yet?



In all fairness, though, that was me playing a bloodmage while making some seriously stupid mistakes. I think they just put me in an odd mindset that doesn't fit with my playstyle is all.



Take two! I think an elf bloodmage will suit me better than a gnome one, actually.



Our first god this time is Binlor. Yeah, not happening. To be fair, though, Mining is a pretty useful boon for bloodmages.



Our second choice is Tikki-Tooki. If we don't get any better options and BURNDAYRAZ isn't hiding in the farthest reaches of the dungeon, we'll play under him this time.



Yeah, Tikki-Tooki it is.



Well, at least it's not Super Meat Man again.



The Iron Man is the boss version of the golem. Unremarkable stats, but that magic resistance is something to be feared and respected by any magic user, bloodmages included.



Fortunately, we found BURNDAYRAZ earlier, so this run should be significantly smoother.



Let's get stylish!



Unlike our wizard run, I'm going to focus chiefly on obtaining the Poison boon. Poison, if used properly, can be a game-changing option.



This should put us on the fast track to piety gain.



I do end up sending myself to a totally unknown area of the dungeon, but hey.



I think I was thinking I could get the First Strike boon from Tikki-Tooki and wouldn't need GETINDARE. In retrospect, it could've saved me some trouble, but oh well.

LEMMISI, if used in conjunction with BLUDTUPOWA, will replenish mana rather than health for your exploration. Which is all well and good, but unless you can't explore just by walking, you may want to leave it alone.



Upon converting it, we reach our ideal magical capacity for three BURNDAYRAZ shots!



And due to this, we can now use poison attacks.



The first property to note is that these award piety under Tikki-Tooki. This can counteract the piety loss from getting hit, but if you really want the piety, you should probably disregard Poison in favor of First Strike.



The second and more important trait is that if you injure an enemy, like so...



And then poison them...



Just like when you get poisoned, they don't recover health when you explore! As you can imagine, this is an incredibly powerful tactic against enemies like meat men, who have lots of health but low damage, meaning you can hit them with a bunch of attacks, poison them, and then go explore, while their sizable health is cut to a fraction of its former self. This is the tactic I used to kill Super Meat Man at level 2. In fact, in the older versions, this tactic was so powerful that they nerfed it recently, such that dealing damage at all will cure any poisoned targets. This means you need to reapply poison after each offensive.



Bloodmages, thanks to their improved mana recovery, can make very good usage of poison.



It does have a downside, though. Undead enemies, like zombies, aren't affected by poison! For this reason, high level zombies are usually a sign of bad luck (unless playing a priest).



High level goats can sometimes be dangerous.



Fortunately, we've got a few blood pools to spare, so we take him down three levels early for loads of experience.



Also, dodge chance, cuz why not.



We're now strong enough to hit the Iron Man (and subsequently poison him) without dying.



Too bad we've run out of exploration room, making such a tactic worthless.



Oh well. Let's wrassle, big guy!