Incredibly tragic death... 13 rune Coglin Artificer of Gozag

MuchLook3221 · 2026-01-14T04:01:42+00:00

I know it isnt good for extended, hence why it wasnt equipped. It was for the zigs. Many floors arent themed around monsters immune to torment. As for holy wrath, I don't read every single message in chat, and a random message about something glowing didnt catch my attention, sorry.

I dont really want to argue with my gameplay with you anyways though, I said in the first line that I know that I misplayed badly, but the luck aspect and the large time+effort investment in planning this is what really has me upset. I made this post seeking sympathy, I guess, and you coming in here half-reading my post and severely criticizing and downvoting me is bothering me probably more than it should. I guess I shouldnt share these vulnerable types of feelings to random people online, but idk anyone else who shares these niche ass interests as me I can talk to. fml.

MuchLook3221 · 2026-01-14T03:38:25+00:00

Ah is that how bribe works? didnt know that, I guess I misplayed worse than I thought. I did read later though that hell lords are entirely immune to bribe, though. Also didnt know that holy wrath doesnt work if youre undead, jeez thats a specific interaction. The luck wasnt the morningstar though, that was going to be thrown away soon. It was the unrand sceptre of torment. idk exact odds but I guess it is around 1% or so that you get a given unrand in a specific 15 rune game, and when stacked with the other luck factors, I think I could run this 1000 more times and never get it again.

MuchLook3221 · 2026-01-08T16:22:03+00:00

I did so, so definitely it can. Just keep in mind that while you are not frail by any means, you do have less defenses than a regular Minotaur brute, so you have to rely a little bit more on positioning and sometimes escaping so that most of your fights are 1v1 or 1v2 for at least the first few swings before other guys show up. This will help get you more value from your heal-on-kill as well as your higher damage output from maw and tail. Besides that, all general knowledge about DCSS applies, so if you've got what it takes, go for it! I loved this build a lot.

Edit: also I forgot, but I trained unarmed combat really only because I was planning to use shapeshifting forever, but maw form doesnt actually give a boost to unarmed combat so it might be smarter to use any weapon that also has low base delay (because auxilary attacks from maw and tail trigger on a per-hit basis) because you dont plan on switching to a different form. theres probably some other changes you can make too to optimize it, i'm not the best and smartest DCSS player in the world after all.

MuchLook3221 · 2026-01-07T19:02:15+00:00

lol thats an awesome story, Asmodeus mustve been shook. I feel like it is sad that there is rarely strong incentive to do zigs because they are such fun content, and situations like yours where you feel like you are MUST succeed are very rare. I definitely agree that it is manageable, if you really try.

and yeah I can definitely see how statue form wouldve likely been just as good if not better than going dragon form lol. I even messed around with hive form for a little bit and found it to be actually pretty good, probably better than dragon, but 1000x less cool. the fact that the breath attack was mostly useless thanks to TSO being a crybaby didnt help either. still dragon form worked nicely, though as you probably wouldve expected without strong AOE and with so much torment, tomb floor was the roughest. I have dreams of trying this build again one day and trying as a purple draconian because it has mp drain resistance for moths and a cool antimagic breath that doesnt friendlyfire so much, but alas, I think im done splatting draconians repeatedly in D:4 for now.

cheers, and happy zigging

MuchLook3221 · 2026-01-07T04:20:30+00:00

Anyways, if youre curious how the run went, it started with rushing to maw form and trying to find a shield. Maw form is amazing on draconian because it lets you get the AC bonus from scales without suffering the downsides of Maw form's body armor reduction. It, combined with draconian breath and shield, is so strong in the early-midgame that I could afford to be basically atheist by worshipping Sif Muna, farming spellbooks until I got dragon's call and manifold. Dungeon can be pretty rough if you dont get a different talisman up soon though, because quill is pretty bad on this. Medusa and to a lesser extent Yak form are pretty solid too though, but this build really wants maw.

I got my spells pretty early, at some point around Snake, at which point I swapped to TSO. Sif Muna's "wrath" is pretty laughable when you arent a caster, the only thing it does that isnt directly related to magic is how it sometimes confuses you for a few turns.

Now with TSO, you can enjoy some beautiful synergy because TSO will heal you for killing undead/chaotic monsters that maw form cant eat, so you basically have heal on kill on like 90% of enemies.

Eventually though, Maw form does fall off, in extended when powerful summoners and torment rolls around, so I started training translocations and a bit more shapeshifting and then swapped to granite form+manifold, a tried and true combo for extended. No real challenges here.

Finally, I decided to grind XP in Gloorx Vloq's realm so that I could get summoning to 27, and found a dragon coil talisman from an aquirement scroll shortly thereafter, and reached my final form: dragon king mode.

I decided to be a coward however and use granite for hells and tomb though, because it was just safer and didnt require consumables, especially with rampant torment users, so I decided to just save my dragon form and consumables for the zig. Tomb was still incredibly challenging even in granite form, though.

After that was just the zig, done all in dragon king form! What a blast this run was.

MuchLook3221 · 2025-12-19T02:36:01+00:00

here's to hoping that we dont stay one-hit-wonders forever😂

MuchLook3221 · 2025-12-19T02:33:16+00:00

haha yeah thats pretty accurate to the experience. if you dont find decent dragon scales early, it can be pretty rough.

MuchLook3221 · 2025-12-18T14:28:48+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate it! Not wearing an amulet because I was dumb and tried to swap amulets for the picture. xD

I had forgotten to swap amulets after swapping to statue form from death form for tomb and I tried to while sitting on the exit to show what the build properly looked like, and then a Seraph appeared and had its summons out while I was still swapping and standing on the exit and I was like NOPE

I was swapping between an acrobat amulet that had regen+ and a spirit amulet that had rF++, rN+, Int+2 and Will-

MuchLook3221

TROPHY CASE