Best Class

[Majora]

What is the most powerful class in this game, which can I get the farthest have most hopes for beating the game?

[jshepler]

Like many other games, your playstyle will have more of an effect of which is most powerful. All classes have the potential to be the same (more or less) end game. Melee classes can cast spells or use ranged. Ranged classes can cast spells and wield swords. Caster classes can wear armor and wield swords/bows just as good as the others. In this respect, it's a little like an elder scrolls game.

Choosing a class mostly only affects what you start with.


People will all have their opinions and here are mine.


Knight, Valkyrie, Barbarian, and Vandal are probably the easiest to start with, but I much prefer the wizard. I find it easier to get casters skilled up in weapons than it is to get non-casters skilled up in spells. I find some spells greatly increase the odds of surviving and also makes it more ejoyable. I like clean wounds (don't like the heal spell), haste self, remove curse, identify, and magic mapping. Those are my most desired spells to find. Levitation, light, lightning, magic missle are secondary. Teleport is fun, but you can get that from other items.

I also prefer classes that can get the commerce talent. Commerce reduces prices much more than you get can from having a high charisma. I'm talking 30 coin blesses, 15 coin identifies, 20 coin pies.

My first win was with the wizard who, in addition to slinging spells, wielded Excalibur and a polished shield, in full metal armor with a health bar almost as wide as my screen. Double-hasted (speed boots and spell of haste self stack), healing, removing curses, identifying, and beating the crap out of anything that got close. Nested bags of holding and I was running around with a vault of stuff in my pocket.

My current game is with the wizard and +7 battle bow shooting +7 steel arrows. Not much gets close to me.



Other people will have their own "must haves" or "this is required to win". That's fine for them and how they play, but I don't believe anything is "required" to win for everyone.

[!Supreme Grand Wizard Yoodiv]

Don't underestimate playing in co-op. You share identification of things, and can resurrect each other, and can trade items. It's a huge boost for as long as you both survive.

[FancyMustelid]

My preferred class is white witch or druid if I'm aiming to win.

Reasoning:

White Witch:

Purely for the powerful magic user aspect - being able to use most any spell you find early on and starting with an offensive spell.

Druid:

I don't think anything has changed about werewolf form. Being able to summon a small army of pets allows you to power through the first 1/3ish of the dungeon fairly quickly.

Hunter is another favorite of mine. Starting with decent ranged attacks adds a huge advantage.

However, as pointed out, class depends on play style. Also, the drops in the dungeon will help determine your play style. Being able to take any class and adapt that class to the dungeon as you go is where the true skill lies in this game. There's just so many possibilities for what "might" optimize your chances of winning that there's no definitive answer. And if you're going for leaderboards, you have to change your tactics around completely.

[janep]

Try the bard, it's for sure the only "easy mode" class in this game. You only need to get the storytelling talent at level 2 or 3, then you may swap your music instrument with any preferred weapon and just start killing everything to gain levels, you grow strong fast without any problems.

[fubarbarella♡]

Originally posted by stickyka:

And if you're going for leaderboards, you have to change your tactics around completely.

Tell me more please.

[FancyMustelid]

Originally posted by Zbornak:

Originally posted by stickyka:

And if you're going for leaderboards, you have to change your tactics around completely.

Tell me more please.

Well, I haven't tried for points yet, but to begin with, there's repeatedly clearing every floor. Apparently, monsters will eventually stop spawning. I don't know if this is due to an overall mob counter or a counter per so many hundreds of feet or if it's just due to your level getting to high. Regardless, the best way to handle this, I suppose, would be to get as deep as you can as fast as you can, which means taking some very risky chances.

Secondly, there's shopkeepers. You'll want to micromanage your items to sell them the cheapest stuff to acquire all of their money and then only convert what you have to through midas bag as I believe points are based at least partly on total gold value of your items. And converting things to gold will give a diminishing return.

Then there's wishes. You'll want to make wishes that maximize your points. I'm not sure what's the most point-value thing to wish for - maybe gold?

Back to shopkeepers as well as mobs. You can ressurect things and kill them again for xp. So, burning your heal spells/potions on shopkeeps (they have high xp yield) or monsters is a viable tactic for upping your xp reward as I'm sure xp/level/monsters slain contributes to points somehow. On this same line, you might want to take druid class since druid can turn werewolf and summon werewolves, unless that's been changed yet. You can kill your own pets for easy xp.

Also, summon monster spells will come in handy for getting points this way, I suppose. If you have the spell, you can summon monsters at the lower dungeon depths and fight plenty of more monsters. I imagine this spell will eventually stop summoning monsters at some point, but I can't verify that. You might want to leave a baker alive for this so you can convert monster drops into pies to keep your hunger under control since by this point you should have cleared the dungeon and may be running out of food drops.

I can't verify any of the above will actually help or even work, but I think it's sound reasoning. I'm sure someone on here is more knowledgeable about leaderboard scoring.

Keep in mind that v1.3 will probably add lower levels or at least a new area which will effectively allow a new start on the leaderboards.

There's also a method by which you can save-scum and "cheat" your way through, but you'll have to figure that one out on your own.

[MasterMindHaxer]

Just so you know, if you don't learn through death, you will never win. Try barbarian to learn the first few 1000ft, then try knight or archer for learning the rest without requiring much knowledge about how to play. Then you can try the other classes after you learn what you need to do.

[fubarbarella♡]

@styckyka Thank you so much for the extensive response! Makes sense to me, some useful tips in there. I don't think I'm going to bother going for top 20 untill I beat the game at least once, that in itself seems cumbersome enough;)
About the save-scum cheating thing, aha, I suppose that's how someone ends up #8 with a level 3 knight. I'm not going there though. One of the reasons I enjoy rogue-like games so much nowadays is because of this refreshing absense of reloading.

[FancyMustelid]

Originally posted by Zbornak:

@styckyka Thank you so much for the extensive response! Makes sense to me, some useful tips in there. I don't think I'm going to bother going for top 20 untill I beat the game at least once, that in itself seems cumbersome enough;)
About the save-scum cheating thing, aha, I suppose that's how someone ends up #8 with a level 3 knight. I'm not going there though. One of the reasons I enjoy rogue-like games so much nowadays is because of this refreshing absense of reloading.

Kudos to you! While I won't begrudge a person's preferred play method, I do begrudge it when they do it to offset leaderboards. It seems a childish thing to do, but people enjoy breaking rules as a hobby in and of itself.

You will definitely want to feel a mastery of the game before you go for leaderboards. There's so much stuff to learn, it's honestly a bit overwhelming. But that's where Wazhack really nails down the roguelike genre. You learn little by little with every game you play. Eventually, you develop your own strategy which will conflict with other peoples' tactics, but you make it work for you. For example, I rarely hit up fountains until later whereas many people use them early on. It works for me, but not for them because of our different strategies concerning fountains.