Making a "minimum character".

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Currently I'm planning to play a "Minimum Urgoth" in Dungeon Lords 1.5: basically, that character will never assign any advancement points. Neither will he increase his stats nor will he ever learn any skills. The poll is there for you to guess how far I can take this character without hitting an unsurpassable road block (=a boss/monster pack/whatever that I cannot overcome without dying hundreds of times). Of course this character will die a lot, but I'll try not to die too often, and I'll try to invent strategies out of thin air to defeat certain bosses. This character will have to do all storyline quests (mountain climbing will not be allowed) and he can do side quests if I think I can do them. If possible, I will take him all the way to Shaduroth and beat the game, but that's very unlikely.

I didn't start that character yet, but I'm interested in the opinions of other DL players and I'll probably try this challenge someday. The reason why I'm doing this is to finally make the game hard again.

Edit: That character will be played on Hard/More settings for monster difficulty!

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Which class(es) are you going to pick?

SWC

[Cionaoith]

With all your skills locked at zero, every piece of armor and every weapon equipped will result in penalties. I'd give your untrained Urgoth until the final battle of the Trial of the Elders (the wizard), and then he's toast.

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Which class(es) are you going to pick?

SWC

Starting as a Mage, then going for Adept. The reason being that this way, the shops will offer all available spells. Getting a second tier class will probably be impossible due to the requirements.

Yeah, the trial of the elders will be very hard, but I'll try to run in circles around the fire spout room and hopefully I won't run out of potions while waiting for the wizard to incinerate all those spirits. Don't know yet whether that will work. Crurently I'm growing bored with the deathlord-wannabe character whom I'm playing, so I might start the Minimum Urgoth now and see whether he has a chance!

Did I mention that I myself think Nauselom will be the end of the road? For all the other bosses and tough fights I have already thought of strategies but as of now I cannot see any way to defeat the Shadow Lord. The only thing I can do is to charge and pray for mercy from his nether spray, and maybe I'll get lucky and maybe I won't. If I want to kill him at all I will HAVE to go toe-to-toe with the Rod of Divinity at least once, and the spray is too fat and too fast to dodge at close range, so that's hopeless. I'm also not sure what to do about his telekill combo Teleport-Spray moves (where he teleports next to me, then casts nether spray), because my Urgoth will be dead as a doornail if he pulls them on me.

Edit: I went ahead and did the main storyline of Fargrove. He's a Mage and Adept now and already bought a few important spells. Deaths so far: zero. However, I was down on 1 HP once and down on 2 HP twice. Now I'm going to have to kill a lot of thieves to stock up on blast novas and poison clouds before trying the Trial of the Elders [does poison cloud work on elven spirits?]. I'm also trying to defeat the Mystery Woman/Vampiress, the whirlwind spell is very strong against her (even with a -2 arcane magic level because of the penalty) because she cannot melee me and her spells are interrupted most of the time, that way I already whittled away a fifth of her HP bar. If I manage to take her down, I might try my hands at Custard Mansion too. Current worn equipment: Suede Pants, Target Shield, Elven Sword (got lucky to get it to drop early in the Sewers), Throwing Knife, Galdryns Horn and Charm of Night. Reserve equipment: Goblin Shield, Warriors Cuff.

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Annoying game bugs... well, I won't waste my time writing two pages about my recent gaming session with this character so I'll come right to the point: my Minimum Urgoth died three times already, and to add insult to injury, the Mystery Woman forever disappeared although she was almost dead already! She just wasn't anywhere to be found in the Slums and I know that I didn't slay her already. So I can never finish that quest. My first death was to a pack of zombies in the slums because my guy was so stupid not to drink although I had pressed 1, the second time happened in the "Swamp of Bees" (that's how I call the marshlands between Arindale and Talendor because bees seem to spawn there more often than anywhere else) because those Harrowbarks locked me up and threw THREE more logs after I had already gone into inventory. Of course one of them hit and killed me. That makes me wonder how all of you multiplayer dudes/dudettes manage to kill them? In multiplayer, going into inventory won't stop them so you're likely to be stunned forever (until you die, of course)! Well, and my third death happened when fighting Malokan because there were too many annoying spiders and I could not keep all of them in whirlwinds the entire time. Malokan still lives, too, because whirlwind doesn't seem to impress him too much.

[Cionaoith]

I haven't played multiplayer (my computer barely runs this), but I rarely get stunned when fighting harrowbarks because I'm decently quick to dodge most of their attacks, and block the rest. I love my shields.

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Yeah, but a minimum character doesn't have a lot of useful shields... a few hard hits and any of my light shields breaks. Man, would I love being able to use a rusted round shield now!

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Finally got around to play my Urgoth again, now Malokan the Umbridge (or is that called Umbrage?) is dead and I got the reward of 5000 gold and the cool ring. Next up: L Cuda Flamebone. The amount of spells that I have available is on the rise quickly thanks to all the Barrowgrim Mages spawning in Talendor, who are worth 650 gold each. I'll make it through the Trial of the Elders come Hell or High Water, and no freaky wizard is gonna stop ME from doing that! Those elven spirits can prepare to eat whirlwinds, zaps, lightnings and fire bursts en masse!

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Update: My minimum urgoth character is now past the Naga Temple, and since my last entry he only died two more times, both of them bugged. First time was in Talendor where a bunch of goblin helos was annoying me to hell, I wanted to bash them with my melee weapon but I took quite some hits and was down to a sliver of red, so of course I hit the 1 button but my guy didn't drink and a stray arrow hit me and I died. The other time was in Ulm lower level where I tried to jump over a squad of Poison Slimes and wanted to drink a heal potion at the same time - he didn't drink, but one Poison Slime hit me a couple of times and I died. I consider this type of death bugged because when I hit the 1 key, I expect my guy to drink!

The screenshot shows me freeing Valdane. Now to the story of my quests:

- Trial of the Elders: Luckily the elven spirits are susceptible to poison clouds and so they were easily defeated, even the ones in the last room. I just stayed on the move while refreshing the cloud every so often until also the last elven master spirit croaked, and they only got off two or three shots at me. The fireball wizard also hit me rarely but I just drank always and generally had an easy time of it. The only "oops" moment during the entire trial was in the first room (! ), where the damage output of my elven sword just wasn't sufficient to push Elder Kyusho back far enough! After swinging at him for a long time I switched to fireball and got it done.

- Ulm: Fathien Elite Soldiers and Drey Mercenaries got a taste of my poison gas clouds and soon died. Myrus Fathien was also locked up in a gas cloud while I hacked away with my new two-handed sword (I had gotten that from one of the spirits in the Elders Trial). Demus Fathien was more stubborn and I had to stack multiple Whirlwinds on top of him to lock him into a corner, but then I just bashed away and he died soon enough. I ran past everything on the way to Vetrian (including those armies of scorpions in the lower levels), opened his cell door and ran back, killing a few of the monsters and running from the rest. Then the game tried to annoy me by spawning spiderlings and scorpions even in the top levels but after I had defeated most of them it went back to spawning Fathien soldiers.

I also noticed that without the Scout skill, the secret buttons can not only not be detected, but they cannot even be activated! But I ventured into the lower level and had to dive to get the skull lever rod (the second one was unreachable because I could not press the secret button), then dive back and open the grate to get to the correct tomb chamber. After that, I was out of liquid air potions but they prevented me from losing health underwater. I also died once to a pack of poison slimes although I had pressed the 1 key, but I reloaded the game after that. I also cleared out all the tomb chambers down there and locked up the dementor bosses with Whirlwinds while I bashed away. I also shot them with countless Zaps and Lightnings (didn't bother with poison cloud because I'm 99% sure they are immune). The Fathien Wraith took a long time to defeat but I eventually got it done, ran out of there and bought a ton and a half of new Poison Cloud charges at Elvithra's.

- After Ulm: Upon exiting their stronghold I tried to take down the two Fathien Elite Soldiers stationed outside but after hitting them with a couple Whirlwinds and Zaps and getting one of them down to about 1/2 of his health, suddenly his health bar was full again! So I ran from them because with my limited offensive capability I could not kill them at all. Then I talked to everyone, marveled at the new goodies I got and finally decided to go back to Fargrove. The town guards were locked up with whirlwinds and killed. Then, Gemmini Rickets annoyed me to death by stealing something from me, then running faster than possible in the water and disappearing! Of course I reloaded the game and made sure he didn't get away again! :laugh: Then I entered Davenmor manor and used at least two dozen Poison Gas Clouds on the initial assault of Barrowgrim's men, so they were all dead. I hurried to Okatta's room, locked up about 30 Barrowgrim supersoldiers in gas clouds and bashed away until Okatta was dead, then I hauled ass back to the cellar and released as many guards as I could to finish off the enemy soldiers quickly. When most of them were dead I released Davenmor to stop the enemy soldiers from respawning, and with help of the Palace Guards I cleared out everything. And the best about it is that this time I didn't even die to those gangrenous wyrms although I only had 60 HP total! I also got a ton of cash by selling Magus Staves and used it to buy a lot of spells.

- Naga Temple: Obviously there were quite a lot of Naga in there. I had a really hard time getting started because I kept running out of spells and even normal Naga Guards took off a lot of health with their Bronze Kris Blades and Pikes. When you only have 66 HP (the 6 extra HP were from the first Boon of the Relic) and 4 points of parry (the parry stat, not the skill, of course I had 0 points in the parry skill just like all other skills) you really feel how much damage those high-level monsters can do! I also whiffed a lot at them, and even though I hit way more with my sorry 18 points of Strike than I anticipated, it still wasn't enough to reliably take down those naga. I was using a green elven spear with 5-13 damage which wasn't much either. Then one of those Fire Gazers even managed to break my shield and because this character is screwed without his shield I had to go all the way back to the Forbidden Lands moon bridge, teleport to Arindale to buy a new shield, and go to the Naga Temple again. However, I managed to rescue all three captured guards by whirlwinding opposing naga guards out of the way. One time a captured guard was somehow bitten to death by a viper speech but I reloaded and made sure to kill the vipers before they could kill the guard again. Then it was mostly a matter of running back and forth to throw levers, open doors and get keys to proceed (I also got the demon key but I don't think I can defeat Ghazbu with this character). Only rarely the areas were crammed with naga causing me to break out my spells, the most difficult enemies were a bunch of Firespitters but I killed them with whirlwinds. Then I freed Valdane and ventured into the maze where the gas mask is to be found, got it and jumped into the gas chamber to get the sigil, and now it was time to face Nypheris!

- Naga Temple Final Area: It was good to have the gas mask (on one of my trips back to town to restore spells I was nearly killed by a Twisted Sylph because I didn't have the gas mask yet; thank god for that unpetrify crystal that I had bought!) but it also gave me a penalty of 2, making for a total of 5 which considerably reduced the effectiveness of my spells. I emptied all offensive spells I had and barely took off a fifth of her health. But in return I noticed that each attack of her (no matter the type) took off at least half of my health! I had a lot of close calls but luckily I managed to drink each time. Then I spent some time looking for the lever, the key and the lock, and got the Robes of Regeneration but didn't put them on because of the penalty. After that I spent the next hour baiting her to come to a spot where I could ping away with my throwing knives but she simply wouldn't cooperate. Either she moved around like crazy making it next to impossible to hit her, or she just didn't stop casting magicmissile/fireball/fireburst/whatever to prevent me from just firing away.

After a long battle I had enough of that because I got hit from her again and again causing damage to my gas mask. I could not afford to let her break the mask, because then I would be royally screwed thanks to her poison clouds which can kill even a 200 HP Ubertank, so it's clear what my Minimum Urgoth could expect from those clouds. I just had to make sure I kept the mask. But I couldn't go back either because the exit can only be used after killing Nypheris. And my spells recharged way too slowly and didn't do enough damage. So I changed my plans and switched to melee, using the long range of my spear to hack up old Bad Hair Day fair and square, only retreating behind the wall whenever she started her spellcasting animation and it wasn't a poison spell. It was always funny when she did cast poison spells because I could just stand there and bash away, unphased by the clouds. After a lot of swings from my spear she finally keeled over so I grabbed her stuff and got out of there. Now I'm using her Barbtongue Runeblade as my primary weapon. My next quest will be the Tomb of Souls where I want to bargain with Voraatus to increase my much-too-low Hit Points hoping to get up to at least 120.

Current equipment: Gas Mask (penalty -2), Throwing Knife (penalty -1), Elven Wood Shield (penalty -2), Barbtongue Runeblade (penalty -38)
Important spells: Poison Cloud (190 charges), Zap (21 charges), Whirlwind (15 charges), Lightning (9 charges)
Deaths total so far: five, one of them legit and four bugged. Reloaded three out of these five times so the character info shows two deaths.

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Sorry for all the double/triple posts, but I found out that the messages are limited to 10'000 characters and by editing my last post I would exceed that limit. Needless to say, there's another major update from my Minimum Urgoth character. Maybe he will even beat the game!

Before venturing into the Tomb of Souls I had to do some stuff to make it easier. First I went back to Skuldoon to get the quest from Vartugg. Then I visited Staroxia and exhausted all dialogue options of her, so I could unblock Grymlok's memory now. However, I noticed that I was getting a lot of cash from killing Goblin Warlocks and selling their staves so I decided to try to get Maloke Brane's quest out of the way, meaning I went back to Skuldoon and paid him so Big Bad Mog was activated now. Then I planned to visit Worglaw and buy his Totem of the Tree (usually I would just kill him and all spirits of the forest, but this time I didn't need experience anyway and their item drops aren't that great either) but I ran right into Mog on the way there. Mog and his flunkies were total wussies, like always. They died without really being dangerous (although Mog did get a few licks in on me once). Now I bought the totem from Worglaw and ran to Mog's safehouse where I was locked up by at least 20 Dire Wolves and 5-packs of Goblin Warlocks, Renegade Wylvans and Rhino Demons all camping outside the safehouse with me still in there. I had to find a way to get out of there again because the Warlocks were flinging fireballs by the door, the Rhinos were breathing gas by the wall causing me to choke and the Wylvans were constantly cursing me from outside. So I made liberal use of my Whirlwind spell and cleared the entrance so I could get out and run from the remaining foes. Of course I did not bother to kill the Wylvans because that would have taken forever. Then I was on my way back and went by the Sagathian Moors where a lot of haunted ghosts were lurking around, more than I have seen. Obviously I didn't waste my time but simply ran past everything and went to see Maloke Brane for the "reward" (useless experience and honor points).

Now I sold all the useless items in Arindale and used the money to buy more spells. Then I teleported to the Northlands, changed the totem for a staff of the grove and talked to Grymlok to unlock his memory. I also found out that because of the penalty I could not summon harrowbarks, they just didn't appear when I used the staff's charges so I sold it as well and bought another bunch of Whirlwind spellbooks. Next up was the Vale of Ruin where I ran past everything, activated the unholy arc, got the password and ran back. I didn't bother to fight any of the fearsome monsters spawning in the Vale because it just wasn't worth it (the game spawned a lot of difficult monsters, including Giant Serpents, Decapitated Defilers, Borloths, Dementors and Spiders). Once I got stuck in a hole and couldn't get out before the spiders were right on top of me so I loaded the game. In reality I probably could have gotten out of there again but I just hate those holes and made sure not to fall in again. And then, finally, I was ready to do the Tomb of Souls!

Right after entering the Tomb of Souls, my first encounter was a pack of spiders completely blocking the small hallway to the first larger room. And while I was still busy fighting them, a huge squad of succubi spawned in the same hallway, further blocking my advance! I hurried back to the entrance and exited, hoping that the demons would be removed from the game but I wasn't lucky so I had to fight all of them if I even wanted to get anywhere. And I found out that the succubi can take off large chunks of health so I had to watch out and use whirlwinds to get them out of the way. Then I was running by the areas looking for keys and stuff, got most of them, but then I slipped up when venturing back from the area where you fall in the water. What happened was that I pressed the button to shift back the wall, took a few steps forward and saw a HUGE amount of succubi and skeletons completely filling the entire room (it's the one with the sepulchre where you could get the Fiend of Ghazbu stuck in version 1.4) and accidentally I didn't instantly press my Inventory key to stop the monsters from attacking. That was sheer stupidity, as the demons went chop chop, and seconds later I'm staring at a dead Urgoth lying on the floor. I just wasn't careful enough, and the game punished me for that mistake. But then I reloaded the game, cast a ton of whirlwinds in their faces and got past them without dying again.

My next challenge was the Spirit Fiend "rite of passage" where healing is not allowed (on a side note, I don't know what happens when you accidentally do press your healing potion hotkey during that battle; does the challenge start over in that case?). The fiends weren't exactly easy, as their spells could take off a lot of health, but I still had my Whirlwind spell. By deliberately using them, the Fiends were slain and my Urgoth was not. Then I hurried to Voraatus, made my bargain, and I couldn't believe my luck: he had increased my Life to 118! :laugh: That's really sturdy, and now my Urgoth can actually take some hard hits and keep going! Then I hostiled Voraatus with a sword stroke and cast a ton and a half of Whirlwinds until he finally keeled. The demonic witnesses were healing themselves when I used whirlwind on them so I just ran out of there, got the Blade of Death and equipped it, and then exited the Tomb and sold all the useless heavy armor items and lower grade weapons at Arindale's House of Weapons. I had about 240'000 $ now and spent all of it on Whirlwinds, making for a total of 152 charges.

Now I wanted the showdown with the Fiend of Ghazbu!!! So I went there, opened the two chests, grabbed their contents, saved the game and made an extra backup of that save. Then I loaded up the game again, opened the sarchophagus, but when I try to cast a whirlwind, Ghazbu starts casting spells like mad. One of his spells was a lightning, and I could barely still see my life draining away and I was dead a second later. :speech: Of course I loaded the game again, and this time I already cast a whirlwind briefly before opening his sarchophagus. He still got off a few Flamethrowers but then I spammed him with whirlwinds doing quite some damage. I just tried to keep the winds going on him but eventually he went into a casting frenzy again, casting his own Whirlwind as well as a lot of other spells so I was running to try and stay alive but suddenly Ghazbu cast a Fire Nova, taking out about 100 HP of my full life bar. Then another spell of him hit me taking the last sliver of red and I was dead again. But I reloaded the game and made sure that Ghazbu could not cast one of those killer spells again! I had started the fight with 152 whirlwinds, 22 zaps and 9 lightnings. When Ghazbu finally died, I only had 52 whirlwinds, 0 zaps and 0 lightnings left. But Ghazbu has been slain by a untrained Minimum Urgoth who barely has any life, strike, parry and strength, no speed bonuses, no skills at all, and naught but a few level 0 spells and the sheer will of determination to get it done. Let it be told to you that this day the great Fiend of Ghazbu was humiliated by one of the most fragile and weak fighters who ever walked the lands of Dungeon Lords.

Deaths since last entry: three, all of them legit. One was because I stupidly didn't call the inventory while I was being hacked up by a squad of demons, and two were because Ghazbu used his ultimate killer spells on me leaving me with no chance.
Deaths total so far: eight.
Current equipment: Gas Mask (rarely used, mainly for Twisted Sylphs, penalty -2), Throwing Knife (penalty -1), Blade of Death (penalty -54), Elven Wood Shield (penalty -2)
Important spells: Whirlwind (152 charges), Poison Cloud (174 charges), Zap (22 charges), Lightning (23 charges)

Additional information: I changed the name of Ghazbu to "Mega Diablo 2" because he looks so similar to Diablo and because he has such a big amount of HP, and I reduced the experience gained from killing him. But before you shout out "cheater!!!": that's the only changes I made to him. I did not reduce his hit points. I did not strip him of any spells or reduce their effectiveness. I did not mod the damage of my character's weapons or spells. All I did was fighting Ghazbu with what I had available, and by determination I actually managed to win that fight, even though it took several hours.

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This will be my last entry, as my quest ended with defeat. Sadly, the Shadow Ruins has a place where I'm required to assign advancement points into a certain skill if I ever want to proceed, and because the rules for this character say that I'm not allowed to do so, I have to admit defeat here because I cannot keep him "pure" any more. Now, after devoting so many hours to this character and actually defeating most monsters and only dying nine times total, he has met the end of his road. My ninth and final death was in Khads domain where an iceball met me while I was in mid-air trying to jump over a gap. I'd like to tell you all about the Draedoth Temple and my victory over the Elemental of Evil, Baloroth and Khad, but I'm just not in the mood any longer because my character design was flawed from the beginning - it's completely impossible to go on in the shadow ruins without any skills. Not that I'm in danger of getting killed, far from it. No, it's the fact that a certain button requires the scout skill to be usable and this button is in the room with the big tower where I have to get to the top in order to activate a rune glyph, and mystic vision doesn't help and the rules prevent me from learning the scout skill.

Game over. I hope you enjoyed the story, but because of the fact that the button cannot be pressed, I would not recommend anyone to try his own minimum character (at least not one with the exact same rules). If I had known about that before starting, I might have made the exception that the player may put as many points into scout as he likes...

[Cionaoith]

That is disappointing. I was starting to believe you'd beat the game. It's especially disappointing that Scout was the skill that kept you from making it.

There is, however, a loophole to your rules. You did specify that it would be a "minimum" character, and it just so happens that the minimum requires at least one Scout point. The game changed the rules, not you, so you could continue based on that. Just increase Scout one point at a time until you can climb that tower.

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Yeah, I could, and maybe someday I will, but actually it would make the game much too easy - up to that point I could never see monsters or objects on the automap but rather I always had to look around me or listen for monster's sounds to know where they are. If only I could find a way to mod the game so the bricks can also be activated without scout, or a way to remove the already assigned points into scout - that might even work by using the hex editing tutorial mentioned in one of the threads! Maybe I'll give it a shot! But I won't try it soon because I have an important exam tomorrow.

edit: It worked like a charm!!! I tested it by assigning two points into scout, pushing the buttons and climbing up the tower, then hex edited the two scout points away and so I could go on playing!

Sorry, currently I'm not at home so I don't have access to the screenshots, but I can at least write the story:
- Shadow Ruins: After climbing up the tower I found out that I had to kill the teleporting dementor in order to create the shadow gate to get out of the area again, so I had to watch out not to fall down or I would die. The shades were really annoying and my whirlwinds only rarely hit them so I concentrated on taking out the dementor which I eventually did. Then I exited the room and searched for the other three rune glyphs. The room with the four pillars going up and down is always annoying but I did it on the first try. Then nothing remarkably happened for quite a while all the way up to the room with the floating crystal and the two dementors who can heal themselves as long as the player doesn't have the crystal. I had to try grabbing the crystal a few times until I finally did it, and I had to use some of my healing spells for that. But I simply ran out with the crystal and didn't bother to kill the dementors, then I battled the Giant Athena holding the other crystal and prepared for the battle with my nemesis, Nauselom.

- Shadow Ruins Final Area: So here he is, the most dangerous enemy in the entire game, with "you-are-now-dead" Nether Spray cheese, telekill moves, self-healing capability until you whack him once with the rod, and all that in a sardine can of a combat area where you have no chance to hide from him. I started whirlwinding him and soon got him to drop all the required crystals, and I also got sprayed a few times but luckily I managed to drink each time. Then I had to get close to hit him with the rod (had to fire off all those useless lightning charges first) but I whiffed all the time so I tried to summon skeletons to make it easier but because of the penalty no skeletons appeared at all. After a lot of swings I finally got a hit and went back to all-whirlwind-all-the-time. I had a lot of nasty close calls where I was down to a sliver because of his nether spray, and he also summoned shades who helped him by firing more nether blasts. Luckily I also had a very quick potion finger and survived all those attacks. In the end Nauselom resorted to his summon skeleton spell, casting it over and over, and then he died. VICTORY!!! I figured that from now on it would be a straight run to the end.

I whirlwinded the "Banshee Dementor" and his flunkies to death, sold all my stuff in Arindale, bought another bunch of Lightning and Restoration crystals, stashed the rod for my +3 to all attributes, visited Vartugg for the last quest and bought hundreds of Poison Clouds at Feros Duul. I emptied all my money and now I had over 800 poison cloud charges as well as 70-ish lightnings, 152 whirlwinds, 50 restorations and 22 zaps.

- Irynthabl: I ran past most of the monsters and used poison clouds when the passages were too crowded. The spell chest dropped ice nova and fire nova which are totally useless. The next chest dropped two heavy belts (useless for me) and a high-level bow, and the last chest dropped another bow, which was a Winter bow that I kept. But then I got locked up in the area with the chest because a squad of Troll Giants was blocking the exit, and it wasn't easy to get out of that mess again. Luckily it wasn't a bunch of harrowbark boos instead! Then I activated the last Brumbrunegan and encountered the Giant Copper Scorpio which was double-locked up by both Whirlwinds and Poison Gas Clouds and eventually died, having barely scratched my 130 hit points. Now I was in minotaur land but I forced all of them to breathe in metric tonnes of poison gas and got to the Death Keys without any trouble.

- Irynthabl Sanctum: This place was more of the same grind - lots of minotaurs who were soon breathing in poison gas. There were also Moonbeasts but they received the same treatment. The Athena Statues were another story, being immune to poison, they forced me to whirlwind and melee them, and they took some time to kill. I locked up all the soul gazers with whirlwinds and sword swings so they were all dead. Then I destroyed the Soul Spheres, locked up Ikrella and her losers in poison gas clouds and only got hurt by her once when she cast her own poison gas cloud and I wasn't quick enough to immediately activate my gas mask. Needless to say, Ikrella was no match for me.

- Lord Barrowgrim: I had to waste a lot of poison gas charges and whirlwinds to get all those Huge Monster Giant War Trolls out of the way, then I used my trusty Blade of Death and hacked the little midget to pieces. But I was running out of spells, and what's more, I was growing exhausted of the endless fighting so I didn't backtrack to Arindale to restock. Also, the soccer game Germany vs. Turkey was about to start in 90 minutes and I wanted to finish the game before that. So I placed the last relic and was about to try the final challenge for my Minimum Urgoth.

- Demon Realm: This was really pushing the limits of this character. Lots and lots of little and big demons requiring more than a whirlwind for each one, and poison cloud was useless and zap/lightning didn't do enough damage to be useful. I also had a few close calls when a lot of demons was attacking me at the same time, with my healing spell failing because I had the wrong weapon out (penalty -50 means no chance in hell to cast a restoration). The Gazers and Diablo demons took a long time and were quite annyoing but I used Freeze to speed it up a bit. I barely got through to Shaduroth, now running low on all useful spells (only 12 whirlwinds left). Then I activated him, dodged his first BBOD (Blue Breath of Death), grabbed all the relics and used the Ring of Protection. What followed was the most annoying boss fight that I ever had in any RPG (even worse than Diablo in the Diablo 2 game who self-heals in a certain version of the game and who can be unkillable if your damage output is too low) and honestly, I was glad when it was all over. It took at least 40 minutes to finally whittle away Shaduroth's health. Of course he couldn't kill me (he never can, no matter my character) but he just has way too many hit points. That doesn't make him harder, dear programmers. It just makes it that much more tedious, and what I would do if I was the programmer was to divide his HP by 10 while significantly improving his AI, spells, attack types and everything.

Well, but the important part was that Shaduroth eventually died. Now my Minimum Urgoth is ready to be crowned as the King of the Urgoth Tribe, having defeated all monsters and reached every goal I set for him. He finished his quest at character level 9, with 9 deaths total, and seven out of these nine times I reloaded. Slain bosses include the Fiend of Ghazbuul, the Giant Copper Scorpio, Mog and his flunkies, a Fire Drake, the "Blood Dementor" and more that I cannot think of now. All hail the King of the Urgoths!

When I had conceived this character build, I never even dreamed that I could be standing here, at the endgame sequence in Davenmor's palace. I had expected that his power would fade out at the Trial of the Elders, or if I found a way to pass it, then Nauselom would be the absolute killer boss who could never be defeated. But I just underestimated the sheer power of the Whirlwind spell. What a superb spell that is. I know you aren't going to believe this, but Whirlwind was the spell that allowed me to go this far, way beyond what I thought possible, and Cataclysm wouldn't have been nearly as powerful as this uberspell. And let's not forget poison cloud, for which I bought tons and tons of kataals and which I used as my primary crowd control skill. Last but not least, I want to thank all the nice Dungeon Lords forumers at Game Banshee who supported my quest, and especially Cionaoith who boosted my confidence by saying that he believed I would make it. I was already about to quit and Cionaoith got my hopes in finishing the game back up and I actually made it through. Big thanks to you!

[Lady Kate]

Better late than never at all!

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading of your experiences with a 'minumum' character! I'm slill enjoying levelling up and building up my characters. I don't forsee a time that I'll try this, but it was fun reading!

I too enjoy using the whirlwind and poison cloud spells. I use the whirlwind on moonbeasts and bulk up quickly. Who would have thought it was such a powerful spell?!

Thanks for sharing!

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Wow, it's definitely cool to see someone is still reading this! Oh man, now all of it is so long ago... I just digged out Dungeon Lords again three days ago and noticed again how much potential this game actually has! If only there was some modding tool, one that allows me to change monster spawns, item drops, class-specific skills and so on... because I don't want to use the save game editor (I don't trust that utility, there were lots of bug reports on this forum like character level reverting to 1, attribute limits and all kinds of annoying stuff) and so currently my only way to mod some stuff is to use a hex editor! Sure, I managed to change some of the monster spawns, so now there can also be slimes, gazers, succubi, giant huge monster war trolls, headless brutes, dementors, brimstone hellcats and many more monsters spawning in certain places, but I had to use workarounds to make it possible... all the "new" monster types can only be spawned if the game elects to spawn certain foes, for example if Chunnelers are spawned there is now a slight chance the game will also spawn succubi and other demons. What I actually want to do is to make it possible for succubi and hydras to spawn in the Vale of Ruin by themselves but I just could not find a list of spawn lists for the many different areas existing in this game!

Well, anyway, I'm back to playing again with a new dwarf who is currently Thief, Adept, Paladin and Budoka, and in 1.5 Fuiban Yi is an unholy pain in the posterior! The official guide says the third tier class (the one that comes after Budoka which is the one I'm going to learn) has an even nastier ascension boss who is using a cerberus band and a winter katana... let's see whether I can defeat him . But a powerful tool for modding would really be great, and allow me to add so much more to this game... there would have to be something similar as the "G.E.C.K." tool (which is for Fallout 3 and allows almost limitless modding), if there were one of them for Dungeon Lords, the game would be as popular as ever!

I'm offering 50'000 in-game gold pieces and 50 books of Blast Nova for a person who directs me to a good Dungeon Lords modding tool if it allows me to set which monster types can spawn in an area and change the skills a class grants to the player!