Wahaha wrote:I just finished a 15 rune game with a minotaur of Zin with a +9 holy executioner's axe, >50 AC and ~25 EV (over 30 EV with Vitalize for hard fights), all resists, amulet of regen. Zin has a chance to block Hell effects, for those who don't know. Plus he always blocks mutation hell effects.
I hope that this character is considered "strong enough" to be "allowed" to do Hells. Well, I still had to go grind in Abyss 3 times, and if I was playing optimally it would've been more than 3 times. And that's with Zin who blocks some of the Hell effects!
The player you're referring to has a terrible win%, even less so with 15 runes and those are>100k, so you shouldn't take him seriously.
Wahaha wrote:The Hells were challenging. The challenge arose entirely from fighting strong enemies, and not from the draining effects. In some ways the Hells were LESS challenging than when summon Hell effects existed, because the summon hell effects can actually kill you while draining can't.
Nevertheless, the Hells were more challenging than before they had the modifiers like no scrolls, etc. The addition of new enemies increased the difficulty too. I think Hells are currently hard enough without the need for max hp draining effects. It feels good to be challenged by dangerous enemies and not by an arbitrary rapid decrease of max hp that has judged your build "not fast enough" even though you're deleting all enemies in Hells in a couple swings (I say this but it was still hard, especially Dis for this character).
Dis has -8 to AC but also -8 to weapon.
Your Char has an exec. axe so you can still kill something but with any weapon like a broad axe (+shield) you would notice the effect soon: you can't kill anything unless you have slaying from items you've found.
Dis will give almost no piety for the 'good' gods.
This means grinding (Pand.) for removing drain + stat drain + piety recovering is the new norm for melee fighters going into Dis.
I've completed several 15-rune runs in 0.28 and my experience is horrible.
Stat drain can indirectly kill you. I wouldn't advise anyone going into Hell with any stat<11 and to get out asap if you come close to this. This will leave you some chance to get out when a stat drain brings you into danger territory. I've died to stat-drain once and survived the other one barely.
Go into Pand. for grinding lessons.
For casters (I mean: lvl9-spells) )the new Hells are less scary.
If you already have screen-wide attacks you can more or less ignore whatever is filling the screen.
It doesn't really matter.
Just nuke them.
Stand on an exit, cast loud spells.
Get up.
Recover mana/hp.
Down again.
It can be that brain-dead, tedious and boring.
Also takes a lot of turns (unless chei/ash) to develop this type of char.
For this type of playing the smaller lvls (Hell 1-6) are easier.
Some additional notes on DIS:
Stabbing can be pretty much excellent (with max stealth). You have rooms/doors to manage noise. You need a back-up plan when monster wake up (I used polar vortex with some success. Takes several casts to take out the heavies with 28 INT and Ice=27)
Caustic shrikes come in groups most often.
This is a good chance to use scrolls of vuln. and hex them.
Dis used to be a lvl where everything is slow. Caustic shrikes changed that. Get hit by them once and you'll be left with a -3 weapon (unless slaying).