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[muxecoid]

After getting HMP ArchAoLT with relative ease I am trying to do the same on UV.

For sacrificed 20 slots you gain a whopping 30% speed which makes very early game even easier, than standard game.

I have 2 ideas to try.

One is melee build with vampire.  Use shotgun in early game while leveling. In lategame your vampiricism will sustain you.

Another idea is to get to Armoury somehow, find nano mod and eventually build a nanomanufacture/nanoshrapnel weapon.

In both cases I want WizKid on non technician.

I can clear up to chained court fairly well with my build. It is levels 6-7 that I struggle with. The number of sergeants drops limiting your ammo supply, the number of armoured enemies requiring multiple shots to kill even at point blank raises. And at that point I am still not strong to rely on melee, especially if level is full of open spaces.

My build so far is Fin->Bad->Bru->Bru->Ber->MVamp in preparation for melee lategame and Wz

What should I do to improve? Is WizKid a good skill to pursue?

[Omega Tyrant]

There's really no reason you should be taking Badass before Brute/Berserker, getting to hold onto an extra 50% heath benefits you little at this point and you don't need knockback reduction, while it's imperative you get as strong as you can in melee ASAP. Taking Finesse instead of Brute 3 can be acceptable, though you might want to change to taking Brute 3 instead of getting Finesse and WK as explained below.

Normally WK is a great investment as long as you know how to mod properly. However with 2 inventory slots, building Advanced/Master assemblies becomes a lot more difficult. Your plan to build a Nano weapon already relies on getting lucky enough to get a nano mod, but then you also won't be able to carry the needed mods to the level, then you'll have to hope upon finding the needed mods afterward. Additionally if you're not going for the Lightfoot Diamond/Angelic badges that require no melee kills, then there's really no reason to go for a Nano weapon as a melee build, the Chainsaw is more than enough, and then you have the guaranteed Spear/Scythe in Hell, you can easily rely solely on Melee past the Court with Vampyre. Additionally, if you get a Nano mod, you should probably make a Power Red Armor instead, so you get a great piece of armor and won't need to worry about running around with damaged/no armor as you can't carry backups.

So for this, I would recommend against going for WK and a Nano weapon, while getting a third level of Brute instead of Finesse on your way to Vampyre.

[LuckyDee]

I agree with Omega on the WK part. Apart from Ao100/AAo666 runs, I don't think I've ever combined MVm with WK - with the Spear (or Scythe) to count on, you hardly need any more punch, and even the chainsaw should serve you nicely.

Fin is a solid investment to me, since attack time can make a lot of difference for your DPS, with SoB being out of the question. TAN should allow you a little damage control, as you definitely don't want to take any levels in IRO (which decreases your chances of going berserk). And with HR being prohibited as well, you'll swiftly find yourself running out of sensible options anyway.

[khiijol]

i always build to WK after vampyre in my melee runs - usually do something like

bru -> bru -> ber -> tan -> bad -> mvmp -> tan -> fin -> fin -> wk -> wk  -> whatever

AOP red armor, especially with two levels of TAN, really helps in the later levels, and considering shamblers are total pushovers with a vampyre build you get a pretty good chance of getting an onyx pack right after your guaranteed red armor from the anomaly

i usually do the piercing chainsaw as it can be assembled without WK, and is more than enough power to cut through pretty much anything before hell and even most of it, usually i only swap out to the spear/scythe if surrounded by a lot of big monsters i need to take down quickly as possible

[Omega Tyrant]

WK can be worthwhile on Vampyre; besides farther modded armor/boots, I think the Ripper is superior to the Spear/Scythe for Vampyre, as besides better DPS, you can potentially be killing every two enemies for each one, thus clearing out hordes and taking less damage/healing faster, and you'll activate Berserker faster/easier. Though with only two inventory slots, it becomes less practical to make.

Fin is definitely the goto trait after Vampyre, though if WK isn't being picked up, I think taking the third level of Brute before Vampyre would be better than Fin.

[Tormuse]

Everyone's offering lots of good advice here!  :)  The only point I disagree with is LuckyDee's comment about Ironman.  (Sorry, LuckyDee)  It's true that levels in Iro make it less likely that you will go berserk from explosions and so on, but in my opinion, you don't go berserk from explosions often enough to make that worthwhile anyway; I'd rather have the extra hitpoints.

And yeah, Vampyre is the obvious choice of master trait for this challenge, since it covers your ammo worries and your health worries at the same time, but if you ever decide to do a non-melee build, then you're really going to want to work on increasing your damage per shot so you save as much ammo as possible.  The best traits for that would be Ammochain, (which I'm not a fan of, but can't deny that it's a real ammo-saver) and Sharpshooter.  (Constant max damage and accuracy and therefore max efficiency)  And it just so happens that I recorded myself playing through ArchAoLT with a Sharpshooter build fairly recently!  :D

[LuckyDee]

The only point I disagree with is LuckyDee's comment about Ironman.

That piece of advice is actually based entirely on one run, or rather the advice I got on the mortem. I had IRO1, which caused the Mastermind to not deal enough damage to trigger. Run ended right there D:

[Tormuse]

The Mastermind doesn't do enough damage to trigger berserk anyway, either with it's ranged attack or with its melee attack.  If someone said that not having Iro in that circumstance would have helped you, I think you were misled.  It mostly triggers from explosions, like from barrels, Barons, Revenants, Arch-Viles, Mancubi, and Cyberdemons, and also stronger melee attacks like from the Angel of Death.  It's nice when that berserk power happens, but (in my opinion, and I recognize that others have different opinions) having low hitpoints is too big a risk when the rapid-fire enemies like Captains, Commandoes, Arachnotrons, and the Mastermind can do massive amounts of damage without having any chance of making you berserk.

[Omega Tyrant]

I think not levelling IM as a Scout/Technician to aid Berserker procs can be a good tactic, a decent source of things will proc it, which besides getting you berserked, can significantly aid your survivability when the resistances kick in against the initial heavy blow. And multiple things can set it off reliably, including barrels and your own rockets. As a Marine though, I can see it being impractical to not invest in IM for Berserker, as Arch-viles are the only thing that will set it off reliably, and you'll have a hard time trying to intentionally set it off yourself.

[LuckyDee]

If someone said that not having Iro in that circumstance would have helped you, I think you were misled.

Funny you should say that, 'cause I could have sworn that it was you :)

EDIT: went through all my mortem posts, can't find it anymore :(

[muxecoid]

I switched my build a bit, now I take ToN first, than Bad.

I do not like IM, ToN is much better, the point of Vampyre is to have more mitigation and maintain your health through lifesteal, not to have more total health that you can not reliably regenerate.

I tried playing with not clearing the last wave in arena. I can clear it easily, but it makes chained court much harder. I wish there was an option to clear it fully for XP and than choose to decline the title of arena champion and rewards just to avoid tripled difficulty of Chained Court.

I'm a bit disappointed in nano weapons, now I want WZ mainly because I want to assemble red armor with PAO or PAN but..

[rage]
Fuck those schematic drops! I can hardly believe the brilliant developer who made this great game could even think of idea as idiotic as schematic drops. Every time I get to clear hell's armory on UV I get a useless schematic drop. Not Nano or Onyx for my armor. Not sniper's for plasma shotgun. Not even firestorm for missile launcher. Stupid useless schematic. And with disgustingly large number of assemblies in the game I know it will ruin a dozen more runs for me.

Adding insult to injury if you ragequit with "Q" the discovered schematic is not added to profile. Why would anyone think that not counting schematics from games you quit is a good idea? You better take a lava bath for your stupid schematic drops ragequits.

I tried tried discover some schematics, but it way too slow. I tried AoHu tech to start with more mods and I tried easiest difficulty, but discovering schematics either way is slow.

Seriously almost any way to introduce assemblies to players would be better. Why not add schematics as a reward for completing the game? Or as a reward in addition of normal drop, not as a replacement? Or as a common random drop on simple layers. Or WHY THE FUCK not make the list of all schematics known in game to begin with we are in 21st century everyone will look up stuff on wiki anyways.

It is so infuriating that it even affected my decision to not pre-order Jupiter's Hell yet.

Is there a hack to disable those schematic drops?
[/rage]

[khiijol]

i'm fine with the schematic drops - it wouldn't be a roguelike if the RNG didn't give you a totally useless item some of the time :)

[muxecoid]

The problem is not just RNG. The problem is that drops gradually persistently improve in quality with the number of games you play. Transferring stuff between different games is not very roguelike.

[Omega Tyrant]

Once you make an assembly or get the schematics for it, the schematics for it can never spawn again (and thus once you find all assemblies, you'll never get schematics again). Doing an Ao100 game is a good way to build all the assemblies (the only two assemblies you won't be able to make together in the same run are Nanofiber Skin Armor and Cybernano Armor), and you could do it as a Scavenger to help you get as many mods as quickly as possible. And you can kill yourself once you make enough assemblies if you don't want to do a whole Ao100 run. Or you could spam HNTR games up to the Armory/Deimos Lab as a Scavenger, and get yourself killed once you got some assemblies made. Just creating all the basic assemblies would significantly reduce the chance of schematics spawning, and master assemblies are very rare drops as schematics unless you're playing on Nightmare. Finding all the assemblies will also get you the Technician Diamond badge.

As for the Unchained Court, what part are you having difficulty with? I find it really hard on UV for most builds, though melee builds should have it easiest; grab a berserk, take out the Barons ASAP, destroy their corpses if they weren't killed on the right side, and then camp out in the door on the left side, while shooting at the Formers that come into view. Once the Arena Master comes into view, shoot at him to get his attention if he hasn't already initiated an attack, and then activate run and get a Berserk (while first closing the door if he hasn't already initiated an attack). Then when berserked, just run up to him and click until he dies, then just camp out in the middle and take out the rest of the formers, while gift dropping if you want to attract their attention faster.

[muxecoid]

I usually can clear chained court with archvile, but it often costs me a medpack, and even with it I am low on ammo and do not have full health on exit. Overall I feel it is much harder than Military base, and also appears 2 levels earlier. And with barons locked and no V it is order of magnitude easier. And as ArchAoLT you do not have room for arena staff anyway.

There is always a risk of barons or archvile destroying the berserk packs, or even destroying the chainsaw if you did not pick it first, or items that you dropped for some reason, like making room to pick up chainsaw. Is there a way to pick up chainsaw without having free slot in inventory?

After you killed barons (hopefully to the right of the structure) you go kill former captains. And you do so without berserk as it was used to kill all the barons and you have only one left. Then you find the archvile, but can not fight him, so you run back to pick the last berserker pack. by the time you arrive there are lots of formers nearby and by the time you kill him you take a lot of damage, even with berserk. You finish the remaining formers, mostly with shotguns.