!! Some NEW tricks !!

[Florent]

Yeah who bumped that old useless thread anyways ?

PS : I think the only way of gaining experience when killing a monster under a door is by being attacked by that monster in the process...

[beowuuf]

ameena: you gain fighter levels for taking damage - not that much experience, but it doesn't matter the source - i've gained a fighter level fallign through a pit, or rather, the corpse of my wizard did!
of course, because of the monster multiplier, this mean damage in combat will net you the most experience

[zoom]

Hey beowuuf!? to which version do you refer to?
I was always sceptically to this kind of rumour. Apparently it is none!
I have a dim memory of Hawk, getting the melee- option on the axe or on the sabre in the worm level shortly before he advanced to fighter level xyx!

[beowuuf]

normal pc dm i think...i'll try to set up a test dungeon and see if i am mis-remembering

[Florent]

Of course ! Those melee & other attacks are not connected to the levels... I've always remembered gaining the melee option being good omen for a fighter level soon to come !

[PaulH]

I managed to gain a level (ninja) for the first time today by merely swapping an object in 'swap object' actuator

[beowuuf]

bah, it must be in RTC, CSBwin, or my imagination this 'damage = fighter XP' thing then
i would swear, sweeeeeeeeeear that you got some small amount of experience. But i just walked into a brick wall i nthe deepest levle of the dungeo nwith a nothing character with 999 health, and he died without any additional levels

my fingers hurt

[zoom]

This calls for auto-fire.
Paul, i do not quite get what you mean by
Quote merely swapping an object in 'swap object' actuator . /quote
is this meant to be in-game or csbwineditor in ternally. I just do not get it

[PaulH]

The 'swap-object' actuator is a name assigned by Mr Stevens in CSBuild. An example of one is when you swap the firestaff for the firestaff with gem after you have zokathra'd it.

[beowuuf]

It doens't have to be swapping item for an item, it can also be pulling an item out by hand. For example, Zyx uses them in conflux to reward finding items in unusual places, such as a gem in a wall crack

[zoom]

hefty. does this involve any hidden skills? like the flip coin feat?

[beowuuf]

nope, just in CSBwin you can assign experience to that wall actuator, i believe

[Zibyx]

When I played on Atari, I used to gain Fighter experience trying to kill.... doors ! Some wooden doors got smashed that way. For efficiency, I'm sure that it is longer than smashing monsters but it helps increase fighter levels at beginning.

[Simon]

I have never gained a level upon explosion, always immediately after casting.

[Guest]

Return to Chaos, the Windows/Linux port of the Atari DM and CSB has a utility that allows you to track the experience gain of a particular skill, so you can know for sure whether or not a given action increases a certain skill or not. In this method I found that throwing heavier objects does NOT improve ninja skills. Anyway, here's what I remember doing for skills:

Fight way to the level with Diamond Edge and water elementals, open the path for water elementals. By this point you should (hopefully) be craftsman in everything. Then, you can lure the water elementals to the door after the three paths. What I do is face the door for this because attacking the door for fighters/ninjas takes less time than attacking the elemental. This deep in the dungeon, combined with being continually attacked gives huge experience bonuses.

Here's my big skill makers:

Fighter:
Everyone in the party use shields as their "weapon". Everyone can block very quickly, and you can use the key shortcuts to block as fast as possible without clicking the mouse. This seems to build a general "defensive" skill which is the same fighter skill built from being attacked by the water elemental.

Use Hardcleave and The Inquisitor to berserk-attack the door, you need expert skill for this. This builds a LOT of experience.

Ninja:
Use shields like building the fighter skills, but instead of blocking, use hitting instead. This builds the same skill shared by kicking/punching.

The rope: this one's obvious.

Priest:
Keep making healing potions so the water elemental doesn't kill anyone. If you've built your rope and defense skills, the elemental will eventually only deal single-digit damage, don't ask me why the rope gives this defense... This builds up a skill devoted solely to potions.

Keep casting fireshields. These seem to use their own exclusive skill.

Spell shields: ditto with fireshields.

Warcry: You need to back the elemental into a corner for this one to work, but it can be worth it. The elemental never attacks, and it builds the skill that seems exclusive to warcries. I tried the horn of fear, but that didn't build any skill.

Wizard:

Wizard skills seem to be broken down by element:

Fire, including fireball, light.

Poison: poison cloud, poison bolt.

Etherial: etherial fireball, zo.

I think the last one is lightning, but I can't be sure. If it isn't then lightning goes under "fire".

[beowuuf]

Some people seem to confuse Return to Chaos and CSB for windows/linux - seperate clones!
But yes, CSBwin does indeed have that feature, i keep forgetting the traces

Ninja levels build up your dexterity and associated ability to dodge....so guess the rope taps into that area

[Guest]

Thanks Beowolf, I got it mixed up. Anyway, since the ninja and fighter's defensive skills provide such a huge bonus to defense, I've been wondering if armor's really worth it in Dungeon Master since those skills alone reduce damage by 90% when they're built up.

[beowuuf]

if you can boost them up that high, then nope! Save the carryign capacity for chests filled with steaks and fast speed : )

I forgot to say, nice research btw!

[Guest]

I forgot that jab-attacking the door or elemental with vorpal blades can be a good way to raise a seperate fighter skill too. This is good for getting fighter skills up to expert so you can use the berserk attacks on the door.

[Komakino]

Disrupt with the Vorpal blade should give wizard levels, though you need to be journeyman (?) wizard for the option to be available. The first two combat options on the Vorpal blade are fighter related though.

Flourish on the Staff of Claws and Firestaff gives, eventually, fighter levels.

I also seem to remember that if you load your characters into the red eventually they can can carry more.

[Without Remorse]

Re-playing CSB it seems I had some of my information faulty after all. I'll post corrections later.

[SpiderOfMean]

When leveling in DM, it's important to notice that experience increases as you go down the dungeon. After lvl 5, you can run through 6 and 7, grab the first skeleton key on 7 and run all the way down to 13. Everything you do there will give you much more experience. If you're really trying to power-play the game, the potions are kinda broken. What you'll notice is that to a point, it takes less time to regain the mana to cast another buff (e.g. Wisdom Potion) than it does for that buff to wear off. So you can take any character (you play with more than one?), buff their wisdom to about 130, then their strength dex and vit to about 110. If you do this on lvl 13 at the bottom of the long staircase, you'll gain a lot of priest levels in the process. (and wizard levels because you're casting the "light" spell, who uses torches or the magic torch after lvl 5?) You'll need to rebuff yourself every once in a while for the remainder of the game, try keeping wisdom over 100 so you always have plenty of mana. Also, if you're having trouble wearing anything, like the Armor of Darc, just buff strength again.

Other notes on power playing the game: if you do the DAMAGE*HITPROBABILITY/RECOVERYTIME for all the weapons, you notice that Hardcleave (chop) and diamond edge (stab or chop) are the best by a long shot. The Fury (chop) is good, delta (chop) is good, the axe (chop) is also good. Most everything else sucks. Chop and stab are the best attacks on any weapon. Jab isn't bad. Most of the others are just bad, particularly melee and berserk.

Projectiles in general are bad, with one exception. You needn't swing your sword once on lvl 1, just throw things, anything and everything, screamers generally take about 2 objects each (including keys and food).
On lvl 2, use a combination of throwing and good tactics, lvl 3 you get the axe, use it (ONLY CHOP, YOU MAY HAVE THE URGE TO USE OTHER ATTACKS: DON'T! USE ONLY CHOP) till you get the delta (CHOP), use that till you get diamond edge (I think stab is slightly better due to the dex (to hit) modifier, use stab or chop depending on what kind of levels you're trying to gain. Stab for ninja, chop for warrior. All of the other weapons in the game can be ignored.

I warn if you use all of these tactics along with hit and run combat tactics the game will be overly easy, even with only 1 character. I consider using only chop (and stab) to be fair (but powerful), hit and run to be abuse of the AI but part of the game (it's really hard to tank all of the enemies, particularly early in the game), and buffing to be unfair bordering cheating. Fully buffed, I could easily fight two animated armors at the same time with only one character without retreating.

If you don’t want to buff strength, or in any case, I would like to point out that you don’t need to carry much of anything. I’ve been through the game without ever putting ANYTHING in my backpack (you can make an exception for keys if you like, or just ferry them around 2 at a time). You need one flask, there’s food everywhere, and plenty of water too, particularly the fountain at (09, 24, 22) is easily accessible once you have the skeleton keys, and pretty much everything else is junk (I mean seriously, who uses the rope? Or the sling? Or heaven forbid, the mace?).

You guys already know most of the other good tactics, so I won't mention them. Happy hunting.

[Without Remorse]

Interesting tips for playing solo. However, a lot of the recommended tactics do not build some of the hidden skills, more on that later. The rope's actually one of the best ways to get quick ninja levels, and builds a skill that seems to be devoted exclusively to the rope. As for fighting actual enemies, the faster attacks generally do seem to be better. But, if you're trying to build up fighter levels, berserking a door with an enemy behind you is the way to go, plus berserk shares the same hidden skill with chop. I've noticed that berserks are MUCH more effective on monsters once its hidden skill is built to about 200000 in hex, more actualy hits and more extreme damage (200+) on a regular basis, especially against golems.

[SpiderOfMean]

I dunno about berserk, with diamond edge, you get 30-50+ dmg per stab most of the time and it's cool down is 6 times faster. I've never bothered developing specific hidden skills. I never noticed a problem with leveling (I've never actively tried to level up my character), just playing the game strait through, casting spells whenever you have mana, seems to end me with << master in all 4 skills. I really want to stick with saying that everything not a weapon I mentioned (or a vorpal sword), armor, a flask or something needed for a puzzle is generally unnecessary. Heck, even leveling is generally unnecessairy, except to get more mana, with the AI the way it is, you don't take many hits most of the game. I haven't played CSB through and don't know how well all these tactics carry over.

[Without Remorse]

Yeah, it turns out that berserk and chop use different skills, whoops. However, berserk does share swing's hidden skill. As for going through DM, if I didn't practice levelling then my characters would be mere artisans on reaching Lord Chaos... don't know about any of you but I'd like my characters to have insurance in the form of higher hit points, higher base attributes, etc. I've got my Sonja's normal strength at over 90 from high levels, meaning she can use dark armor, carry a few weapons and equipment and more. Because, you know, being a dungeon-adventurer, I like to get my hands on anything I can find.

Anyway, I have noticed that developing weapon hidden skills especially impacts attacks like jab for the vorpal blades; I've seen characters with a low skill 7 hardly hit anything or maybe hit for 10 damage while characters with a high skill 7 rating regularly score 20-40 damage.

As for attacks like berserk, it's really meant to be used against enemies that have a lot of armor. Of course, this makes hardcleave preferable to the inquisitor due to its armor penetration, and diamond edge is pretty decent in any case.

EDIT:

jab increases skill 5, not 7. Skill 7 is for defense.

[beowuuf]

i hate training, in a truely deep and personal way, aswell as roling back
yah get what yah get when yah play the game. I'll stop to build up food, i'll use up spare mana as i travel, but i hate just camping anywhere and building up stats...seems like you oculd do that with an editor and save much time

[Ameena]

Yeah, training is really boring - I've never bothered with it 'cause I can't be arsed. About all the melee training my casters get is swapping round occasionally with my fighters to hack at Screamers and Skellies ('cause they're not too tough) and maybe Mummies.
By the time I get to Level 13 (Lord Chaos), they're all pretty much around Artisan-Expert in their "specialised" skills, and maybe Journeyman/Craftsman in those they're not so proficient in. And I only have one Priest, so three of them only have three skills anyway .
Actually, I do kind of train Ninja a bit since that wouldn't get any practice otherwise - just grab a boulder, chuck it loads of times till they have enough skill levels (around Journeyman) to make it land two squares away (so I have to move to pick it up), then switch leaders and repeat till they all have it. And it takes, like...ooh, about...erm...two mins.

[linflas]

totally agree, and i would even say :
in DM, you get more and more experience as long as you traverse levels, you don't need to stop somewhere and train for hours. people who had finished DM for the first time leveled mostly to expert/master in all skills.
in CSB, you clearly don't need to train because you team is already strong enough.
ok, i can admit that training zones in DM and CSB were made for gamers who played with reincarnated characters, but nothing more !

[beowuuf]

i think the food stations were just a good area to store items and replenish, not to train : )
i prefer to punch rocks and other critter to get ninja levels, you can usually get peopel to ~ journeyman that way too!
everyone tends to be a good priest by the time i finish, but wizards tend to be slow starters

[Selie]

Am I the only person who actually gets satisfaction out of training? I'll stop and train a bunch in some places, just because I can, and because it helps me level faster. Then again, I AM a very bad player, and I think the farthest I've been in is floor four or something. Fortunately, I have a permanent computer now, which means it's time for me to actually put effort into playing DM. Maybe I'll beat it sometime this year!

You guys put too much thought into how to play this game more easily. If you can plow through like that, take a challenge and play through as Tiggy with some crappy weapon or something. It's NOT an easy game, you're just good at it. Remember, no matter how awesome you get at the game, there will always be people like me to represent the mere mortals. ^_^