Presenting the Wilderness Walker build, an Assassin build that features near unbeatable combat power on a non boss level.
Requirements:
- Rogue with Assassin subclass and maxed Enhanced Lethality
- +2 Ring of Arcana
- Glyph of Camouflage on armor
- Blooming Enchantment on weapon
Optional boosters:
- More upgrades for your Ring of Arcana
- Greaves of Nature
- Wand of Regrowth
- Bounty Hunter skill
- Assassin's Reach skill
- Lethal Momentum skill (from a Scroll of Metamorphose)
- Rejuvenating Steps skill (from a Scroll of Metamorphose)
- Potion of Divine Inspiration
- Rat Skull trinket
The Wilderness Walker build doesn't care about enemy health or damage, because the character will only be visible for 2 turns at a time (one with Lethal Momentum) and all non boss enemies are executed. The Glyph of Camouflage and the Assassin's Preparation is the core of this build, allowing the player to step into grass and charge Preparation. The +2 Ring of Arcana boosts the length of the invisibility from the Glyph of Camouflage to the necessary 9 turns of invisibility to execute an enemy, where you become visible again. Then, the Blooming enchantment spawns grass on their corpse for you to reenter invisibility.
This works with any weapon and any armor (making this a good build for a tier 1 challenge) due to the fact that you will be hit little to no times and your Preparation ability lets you one tap non bosses. Boss fights (excluding the King of Dwarves) can be challenging, depending on the rest of your choices, but on a normal level it is incredibly easy to clear.
Here's what the individual optional boosters do:
- Further upgrades to the Ring of Arcana allows you to use the invisibility from the Glyph of Camouflage for longer, increasing range and tracking ability.
- The Greaves of Nature allow for massive amounts of dew drops to be harvested from the grass.
- The Wand of Regrowth can nearly replace the Cloak of Shadows, allowing you to spawn in a patch of grass where ever you wish.
- Using Scrolls of Metamorphose to obtain Lethal Momentum and Rejuvenating Steps is expensive, but it allows you to reduce to turns your visible after attacking to one single move and have near unlimited invisibility while maneuvering, respectively.
- The Potion of Divine Inspiration should be used on Tier 3 abilities, especially if you level Light Cloak up.
- Finally the Rat Skull is great to increase to number of Scrolls of Transmutation and Potions of Experience received while almost lacking a downside due to the ability to Execute the rare foes.
The three downsides of this build is as follows:
- Flooded levels lack many areas to find/grow grass
- Boss fights, and in particular, the Earthen Fist, are tricky, as the extensive wait times of Preparation are hard to handle
- Requirements for the Glyph and Enchantment make upgrading gear difficult.
I used this build to effortlessly glide through the Dwarven Metropolis and the Demon Halls and if I hadn't accidentally clicked the "Lets call it a day" button it would have been my new top run. I wasn't able to use any scrolls of Metamorphose or obtain the greaves but the run was still incredibly easy.
How does this compare to other optimized builds? What do you think of this build? Do you have any ideas for additional buffs?
I also prefer to play on random seeds. And, yes, the luck requirement is a tad ridicules.
It does take a while to clear individual levels. I didn't play it all at once (I had other things going on) so i don't know how repetitive it really was, but I did spend a lot of time bypassing enemies while I explored.
Waiting can be annoying, but I would always have spent time tracking and hunting my enemies while it charged. It was also great that it would charge as I moved around the levels, and when its a extra large I had plenty of time between assassinations.
I also very commonly use the Assassin in my runs, so I AM very used to the wait time. So, in general, I didn't suffer from the wait or repetitiveness but others definitely might.