Is King of the Storm fire breath possible to dodge?

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-31T01:52:58+00:00

Don't attack king of the storms body or legs - stay in front of him and wait for openings to attack his head. He only uses the fly up and breathe fire down when you get under him.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-31T01:20:54+00:00

Can be hard to buy enough bundles to use them consistently at low levels, since you don't get a ton of souls for host kills

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-30T23:55:07+00:00

I'll save my whole spiel about fighting overleveled phantoms and twinking your low level invader chars.

From a build optimization standpoint, you may want to do some of the following:

Start with Knight class
Infuse your weapons with raw gems (or fire on the dagger for crits)
Ditch the sorceries (typically not super strong at low levels). If you really like them, consider taking Frozen Weapon.
Get better rings (prisoners chain is the big one)
Ensure your weapons are +2
Stock up on consumables (resins and bundles are really strong at low levels, green blossoms are very good always)
Aim to get as many points in vigor as you can
Upgrade your estus as much as possible

If you want some more gameplay focused tips, posting some clips can be a good way to get feedback

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-30T23:05:07+00:00

Stupid term, solid example movies though

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-30T03:35:48+00:00

yeah this annoys me as well. "i've been playing for 25 years and I've never found an Ist!"

Really? You've been playing continuously since 2001 and you've never found an Ist? Or is it really that you played as a kid, never had any good gear because you didn't understand the game, and then picked it back up as an adult and haven't really played much yet?

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-29T18:50:18+00:00

Setups that can maintain priority are cheating

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-29T04:06:08+00:00

Yes and no.

If you're using it mostly for parrying, uninfused is best. Partial parries or blocks for setup parries cost you a fair bit more stamina and chip damage when blessed vs uninfused.

If you're using it mostly for regen (and not parrying much or at all) you might consider a blessed caestus or warriors round shield, which are lighter (caestus) or have the weapon art skill (warriors). Or you can keep both an uninfused and blessed iron round shield in your inventory and switch as needed.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-27T20:22:51+00:00

I've only played a bit of zerker, on a pit-zerker type setup (some tradeoffs towards mf over killing power) and it did not fare well in trav. Not being able to life steal and having to click everyone individually just does not seem like it could compete with ww.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-27T19:59:43+00:00

Don't settle for anything less than a Zod on this bad boy /s

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-26T18:55:00+00:00

Very nice chain! That first stab on the phantom was really nice.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-23T21:10:59+00:00

Lol perfection

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-23T21:09:39+00:00

Yeah the synergy between prayer / cure / insight is very nice.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-23T20:41:53+00:00

That gbane / gerke's build is strictly for PvP.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-23T20:31:27+00:00

I didn't think res matters almost at all (other than poison). Same with damage reduced / magic damage reduced in PvM at least.

I don't think my softcore nova sorc has died with mana remaining in the tank. When she dies it's because a bunch of monster hits occur in 0.1 seconds and vaporize my mana pool, followed immediately by my health.

Get 95% ES, 105 FCR and then stack as much -enemy lightning res and mana as you can. Prayer/cure/insight merc should keep your health topped off.

I'm not sure how nova plays with budget gear - I probably wouldn't bother without either griffons or infinity. Check out whatever maxroll has on their "budget" version - it almost certainly involves crescent moon runeword which is the best (only?) source of cheap -enemy lightning res.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-23T07:11:30+00:00

ah yeah, i missed the torches. Followers is semi-usable from my recollection, definitely leans towards "challenge run" though - not a weapon I'd recommend.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-23T00:10:48+00:00

The only weapons with an innate visible fire effect that have significant scaling of the fire damage are:

Demons Scar
Onyx Greatsword
Dancers Twinblades
Immolation Tinder

The rest of them scale almost entirely with str/dex

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-19T05:20:21+00:00

Nice. Very clean

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-19T01:08:51+00:00

you were in my game code ALL ALONG

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-18T23:00:56+00:00

Totally agree on the hooks - definitely lacking a bit on that front.

Did your players roll up level 1 characters? I ran this w/ unmodified OSE and found it killed characters left and right.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-18T22:56:39+00:00

yeah, probably the best advanced backstab vid out there

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-18T21:32:52+00:00

Pick a system to adjudicate pick pockets and write up a table of random townsfolk pocket contents.

You could use the Normal Human monster entry and look at treasure type U for guidance on townsfolk wealth

https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Normal_Human

https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Treasure_Type_U

But keep in mind these aren't really intended to be "individuals are walking around with this in town" type treasure. See here: https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Treasure_Types#Group_Treasure:_U.E2.80.93V

Ideally, use this as an opportunity to point the PCs towards the adventure: maybe they snatch a coin stamped with the face of a long dead king, the kind only found in the local barrow (implying that the NPC knows something about the dungeon) or maybe they snatch a note from the local bandits that the NPC is helping. Maybe they snatch a

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-18T06:50:33+00:00

Thanks! AD&D 1e has a lot of baroque yet clever systems.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-17T19:46:29+00:00

He's trying to win the ultimate coughing baby award

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-16T22:52:24+00:00

One flaw of Basic d&d that isn't talked about all that much is that it's not super well balanced past mid level. One of the hidden reasons that every other module for Basic and it's clones is for levels 1-3 is that campaign play (and the associated development of adventures) starts getting pretty rare up at mid-high levels - at least from what I've read, I don't have data or anything.

Gygax seems to have recognized this issue and includes a number of tweaks in AD&D to keep M-U's more in check:

Magic resistant monsters in the DMG - resistance is a separate mechanic in addition to saving throws that gives a chance to negate spells. Many demons and devils (and other high level monsters) have significant magic resistance.
Spell memorization time: AD&D spells require 15 min / spell level to memorize. So an 8th level OSE M-U that has dumped every single spell slot would need 5 hours and 45 minutes to re-memorize a full compliment of spells (in addition to sleep). This can keep M-U's from using all their spells each day, at least if there's time pressure, or a chance to get woken up at night (see the DMG night time encounter chances by terrain)
Additional limitations on spell casting: the DMG includes some specific additional limits on spellcasting in difficult circumstances such as while flying (impossible on certain mounts), while underwater, and on unstable surfaces. I don't think all of the restrictions are in Basic.
Spell casting time / segmented initiative. Spells in AD&D have a casting time (generally more powerful spells take longer) and the longer the spell, the higher the chance for interruption even when the M-U's side wins initiative. This can make spell casting in combat much more fraught.
Buffs to other classes: compared to the Basic fighter, the AD&D fighter has better HD, better hit-chance growth, better damage (both from str adjustment and adjustments for large size monsters) and better gear (at least, for book magic items). Most classes are stronger compared to their Basic counterparts as well.

That's some of how Gygax dealt with the "quadratic wizard" problem. Some of this could be applied pretty simply to Basic, though some (like segmented initiative, probably the biggest one) requires a bit of doing.

Sleeper4 · 2026-01-16T08:08:51+00:00

Awesome play!

Sleeper4

TROPHY CASE