Lord Dredmor impossible?

[mabd]

Normal difficulty. So I was having fun, not having much trouble during the game (I died a few times, mostly because I wasn't being careful enough)... then I got to Mr. Dredmor. I've tried about 10-20 times and I can't get his health below about 95%. He seems to block or dodge almost everything and my attacks do practically nothing. His attacks on the other hand are ridiculous and get me from ~120 down to ~3 in one turn (super lightning attack, not sure what it's called). I need to teleport away and close a door to heal every 3-6 turns and the maximum number of times I've done that without dying was maybe 3 - and still his health is above 95%-ish. I've tried melee, arrows, poison arrows or flasks, using every single potion and mushroom I have...

I hate posting things like this - and actually never do - but... what the hell? It makes me mad and sad... I was looking forwards to trying out other skills (even if on easy), but meh. I also hate HAVING to play in a specific way and boosting certain skills, instead of having fun and spending skill points wherever you want (ok, I can accept a certain degree of "power leveling", I just don't like things like "you NEED this skill or that skill or you won't finish the game). And well, my class isn't the best and I'm not that good at the game, I can see that, no problem there. I'm not even complaining he's too hard or that he's impossible in my game, I'm just saying he is TOO increadibly impossible XD Worst case scenario I guess I'll get used to the idea of "meeting Lord Dredmor and having a cup of tea" as being my main quest...

Anyway, wondering if anyone else had this little issue. (and sorry if this was posted before, didn't find it).

[Haldurson]

Publicado originalmente por Dreamcypher:

So basically the way to beat him is to download cheats from the Workshop. Fantastic.

Not even close to being true (for one thing, most mods out there actually make the game tougher to beat). Dredmor is very beatable if you have a melee-focused character or not. I wouldn't even say that it's easier to beat him with a non-melee character.

But what I would say is that it's silly to insist that you must be able to kill him with one specific method (melee), as you say it should. You have all these tools, why should melee be the way to kill him?

Killing Dredmor is SUPPOSED to be hard -- he's the final boss. So making him difficult to kill with melee is not a defect in the game. He's hard to kill with magic as well. The problem isn't that melee is too weak, it's that there are other things in the game that may be too strong, such as thrown weapons and crossbow bolts.

The problem with melee is not that melee is too weak, it's that melee requires you to get really close to him and pound away, which gives you an additional requirement to have extraordinary defenses. It helps also to be able to get away to heal, and being at range gives you that ability. This is all because Dredmor is the final boss and he if he weren't a bad-ass, people would be complaining about that. And if you could just stand in front of him and pound away without risk, people would be complaining about that as well.

I've heard exactly your complaint before and it's so incredibly absurd and unrealistic. But you are not the first person to make that complaint. And as much as I might pray to the flying spaghetti monster, I know in my heart that you aren't going to be the last.

BTW, you can kill Dredmor with ANY build -- really you can. If you can survive long enough to reach him, and you equip yourself properly ANY character can beat him. Even with the most absurdly weak build, you can do it. The hard part is surviving to get to him, and equipping yourself well enough that you both do not die, and have the right weaponry and/or skills.

[AzureButterfly]

I'd say the most important thing with the Dredmor fight is having a skill that helps you put some distance between the two of you. My first character only managed to take him down because I had Move in Mysterious Ways, which let me make a quick dash to safety every time he dealt a major blow to my health.

Arrows are a big help, as has been said, and if they do any damage at all, it's progress. It becomes all about outlasting him at that point; you just need to play defensively.

My second character had it much easier, as I could just spam Gog's Tactical Pyre, while my Wyrmling distracted him, then slam a door in his face to leave him to burn. :) I was very surprised by how smoothly that one went.

[Mazey]

Here's another thing that can help to take down Dredmor: Play with perma-death on.

"What?" you ask, "How can perma-death be anything other than a hinderance?"

Simple, because it weeds out the weaker characters early on. If your character is strong enough to fight through 10/15 levels without dying even once, then it's almost certainly strong enough to beat Dredmor himself. With perma-death on you're not going to struggle through all 10 levels just to find out that you've built a weakling at the end, because that character would already be dead.

Edit: Further, perma-death trains you to be a better player, without the cruch of reloading, you have to be constantly careful, which is also the method you need to defeat Dredmor.

[Haldurson]

Publicado originalmente por Mazey:

Here's another thing that can help to take down Dredmor: Play with perma-death on.

It's one of those things that seems to be counter-intuitive, but it turns out to be true. I'm a veteran of other rogue-likes, so I'm used to playing with permadeath (most don't give you the option to turn it off). But I've heard lots of stories from people struggling with the game. Typically, they rush through the levels, they get to Dredmor eventually, and then get one-shotted. As soon as you hear that, you KNOW that the person was playing without permadeath, because there's no way that anyone playing WITH permadeath is going to get one-shotted by Dredmor, if they seriously could survive to level 15.

Play around with the game for a bit. But if you get frustrated, you also might want to try some of other people's posted builds.

I would recommend watching some Let's Play videos, except that I am surprised a lot by some of the really common mistakes that are made by people making those videos. So instead of perpetuating those mistakes, I let me mention a couple of things that you WON''T learn from a Let's Play, because the people who make those videos keep making the same mistakes.

1. Anyone can use a bow, or a thrown weapon -- you don't need the skill to use them. In nearly all of the Let's Play video's I've seen, people just run up at things and start pounding on them, even bosses, even when they have ranged weapons on them (either that or they simply refuse to pick up those items).
1.B. Anyone can use ANY weapon -- no skill is required to use a cool mace you find. The only thing that weapon skills do is to give you bonuses with those weapons, and give you some special attacks (That are actually usable regardless of whether you are wielding the right kind of weapon or not).
2. People get all these cool skills but then don't actually use them. If you have a buff, use it.
3. Try things -- if you don't know what something does, try it, and make a mental note. Might you die? Possibly. Or you might learn something that could save your life. Dying is great, so long as you learned something from it. Click on everything, pick up everything. Try dropping one thing on top of another thing. Think you don't have a skill for something? Try it anyway. Most things don't require special skills (anyone can craft -- it only takes skill to craft the best stuff).

[AzureButterfly]

On the subject of perma-death, I think it depends on the player whether or not going without it would be detrimental to their playing style.

I personally tend to avoid things where you can invest so much time into it, only to have it completely blow up in your face in the end. That's why I prefer perma-death off. Sure, you learn from your mistakes, but you can just as easily learn without having to start from scratch, as long as you take it seriously.

I actually managed to make it all the way to Dredmor without dying on my first character, and that was with perma-death off. I still played extremely cautiously, and anything that came close to killing me I made sure to avoid in the future. I have to admit that Dredmor legitimately defeated me though, as I got a bit too careless and gave him enough time to cast two of his nastier spells on me. I wouldn't have been happy if that had been the end of my playthrough, to say the least; it likely would have been enough to drive me away from continuing the game at all. Instead though, I learned from my mistake without receiving such a harsh penalty, which is good, because I really do enjoy this game. :)

I'm tempted to say that people who would be recklessly abusing the save system, doing rash things repeatedly and loading without a second thought, wouldn't enjoy this kind of game in the end anyway. It's simply not the right kind of mindset. You have to be willing to take things slowly and cautiously.

[Grib]

I have just beaten Dredmor for my first time and it was a melee rogue build with a bit of magic. I have actually killed him in melee by summoning slimes, mushroom beasts and moustache golems, because if he decides to hit anyone in melee - he will prefer hitting your minion insted of you.

When he landed his Thor's Fulminaric Bolt (the huge lightning nuke that takes like 60% of your HP) I just either drank a health potion or ate an Inky Hoglantern to turn invisible and run to the nearest satanic displacement glyph (the portal) to heal.

I believe it is quite easy to kill him in melee if:
1) You have either an invisibility skill or a lot of invisibility items (shrooms and potions)
2) You have minions to summon, so that would distract him from hitting you

If I would want to kill him in melee without these 2 things - what I would do is lure him to the satanic displacement glyph, so that I would be fighting him 1 step away from it. If he lands his super voltaic nuke - then you're just 1 step from safety. I believe it would be SUPER tedious to kill him that way, because Dredmor does not like to chase you and prefers to just bomb you from range with his spells.

[Mutaracha]

Ok so somehow i found Dredmor at level 10. As OP said, he is freaking difficult to kill, I'm a melee character and i can't do anything. Wtf?

[Haldurson]

What difficulty are you playing at? If you are not playing on Going Rogue, then yes, with decent gear, you CAN go head to head with him in melee, but it is hard, and you'll likely have to retreat time and again to heal (several ways to do that regardless of what skills you have).

That said, there are easier ways for a melee to kill him, even on Going Rogue. The key is thrown weapons. Thrown weapons are a melee build's best friend (you don't need the skill, just the items). The best are weapons that can stack DOTs on him (Damage over Time). Piercing damage is the best common damage to use, but he has other weaknesses.

Note that crossbows are not as good for melee fighters, but they will do in a pinch.

[Acid]

IF YOU WANT TO MELEE HIM BECOME ONE WITH THE DEMON

[7Soul]

I was just thinking this. I was playing on easy, as a throw rogue. Found him, threw a couple holy grenades and like 6 saw blades, took 1/8th of his hp. He shot something at me and took 90%+ of my life (I had 120 max). I drank a potion and used a healing mushroom, took a couple steps and died :(

[Haldurson]

If that happened on easy difficulty, your gear must have not been very good.
Just because he's POSSIBLE to kill, doesn't mean it's going to be really easy. BTW, the saw blades are amazing at killing him even on going rogue. But it's not like an easy kill. I recommend collecting not only the saw blades, but also invisibility potions/mushrooms, healing potions, purity potions etc. Rogueish characters are probably the hardest characters to play with in the game because the rogueish gear sucks, overall. Tank/Warrior is easier, as is certain mage builds. And certain hybrid builds are excellent. And certain support (ie. odd) builds are also really good (like crafting builds). And having really good resists on the more popular damage types (fire, cold, etc) is also advisable.

[Mutaracha]

Well, i was playing on easy and my gear had all the stars possible so i think it was pretty good. I finally managed to kill him using the red teleports that are in the ground just for recovering my health. Thanks God he doesn't regen his life!

[TrueWOPR]

I found he's easy to kill with thrown weapons, even if you have no skill in them.
Loop on some sort of CC and he's screwed.

[transce]

There is a thread on steam here called "Winning Builds" that has several examples of builds people have used to defeat Dredmor. You should definitely check it out if you're having problems.

[bengrue]

I've only ever won with Melee builds!

...but I always finish off Lord D with Nuke Bolts. >_>