Desktop Dungeons
I beat Matron of Flame at Gauntlet level 57 O_O (dealing over 1800 damage).
Sooo...the big thing I learned from this is that BLUDTOPOWA + Crystal Ball is actually an amazing combo; way better than I previously thought. With fireballs it deals 10 damage per tile; compare to the 3.33 damage per tile you deal if you only have one or the other. The weird thing is that superficially the combo doesn't seem that good. Normally, you regen 1 mana per tile. Either of these items on their own makes you regen 2 mana per tile. Awesome, right? Both of them together make you regen 3 mana per tile. This seems disappointing; 3? Not 4? Lame. In reality it's amazing: boss regen pretty much cancels out with 1.5 of mana regen per tile. So...with only one or the other, 2-1.5 = 0.5 practical mana, and with both, you get 3-1.5=1.5 practical mana. Triple the amount!
To give you an idea of just how good this is...normally the poison glyph is just better than BLUDTOPOWA. It deals almost 50% more damage per tile. If you already have Crystal Ball, however, suddenly BLUDTOPOWA is the better glyph. If you have all three, it's almost to the point that it's not worth the mana to poison the boss, your damage is just that high. (If your max MP is less than or equal to 16, casting poison is like a 5 mana fireball instead of 6 mana in this case. At 17+ max mana it gets more worthwhile, mind: 14 damage per tile instead of 10).
EDIT: of course, as soon as I post that something even nuttier happens. I beat Frank the Zombie at Gauntlet level 58. Frank being the boss I dismissed as not sensibly beatable above Gauntlet level 20 or so. Effectively the same combo, just swap out Crystal Ball with the even rarer Ring of the Battlemage.
This is actually making me consider Human over Elf. The problem with Human is that it's 100% worse if CYDSTEPP isn't on the map, and if APHEELSIK is the regen booster, then Human and Elf are basically tied.
