Welcome back to the first Class Post of 2023!
This week we’ll be looking at the most royal class in all of Desktop Dungeons: Rewind, the Rat Monarch. Are you ready to nibble your opponents to death with the power of supreme dental hygiene?
Abilities
🧀 Regal Hygiene - Rat bites corrode enemies. Gains one stack of Corrosive Strike per level.
🧀 Regal Perks - Sensitive whiskers detect deals. All shops are scouted. Buying an item regenerates 50% health and mana (may overheal)
🧀 Regal Size - Rats are the CORRECT size: Small. Lower maximum health and mana, all items are large.
Before we venture deeper into the Rat Monarch, we need to know what the Corrosion status is and how it works. When a monster is corroded, it takes extra damage equal to its corrosion on hit. This extra damage is also applied on spells, and can ramp up very high at later levels!
Regal Hygiene allows Rat Monarchs to give corrosion to an enemy on attack. The amount of corrosion applied increases by 1 per level (and 1 per 80 Conversion Points!) For example, if a level two Rat Monarch attacks a monster, that monster will now have two corrosion. The second attack will deal two extra damage from corrosion and apply two more stacks of corrosion, which means a third attack will deal four extra damage. Stacking corrosion is the main way that the Rat Monarch kills things!
Regal Size reduces Rat Monarch’s base damage, mana, and health. The reduction of base damage means that building up corrosion on enemies is your main way of killing them. Corrosion does not go away, meaning you can build corrosion by fighting, exploring to heal up, rinse, and repeat, until you’re able to kill the monster.
The second element of Regal Size is that all items are large items, so let's talk about inventory size in Desktop Dungeons: Rewind. Your inventory is made up of 30 slots, and each large item you are carrying fills five slots while small items only fill one. Potions are usually small items, but not to the Rat. This means that inventory management can become tricky, especially when wanting to make use of Regal Perks.
Regal Perks is here to help the Rat Monarch heal up while fighting enemies. One issue being that... You need inventory space to buy an item, and we’re already a little short on that. You’ll be making decisions about which items you’ll be holding onto throughout each run, and timing your spending to get value out of the healing. You’ll be converting the items you don’t need, making your corrosive nibbles stronger!
Regal Perks also shows the locations of shops on the map. This is very useful for conserving tiles for regen fighting (check out our Monk post to learn about that!)
Gods
🧀 Binlor Ironshield - Binlor is one of the best Gods to worship as the Rat Monarch. Binlor gives damage resistance through Stone Skin and Stone Form, which lets the rat build up corrosion while saving tiles to regen on later. The second reason is that the Rat has incredible synergy with Pisorf and Stone Fist, but we’ll get to that later… All in all, the God of Mining is here to help!
🧀 Mystera Annur - Rats like to attack things. Not for damage, but to build corrosion! Damage from spells benefits from corrosion, and so Mystera becomes a great choice to worship. Flames reduces your base damage and increases the damage of Burndayraz, making it great for the rat who doesn’t care about base damage. Magic can also help you to cast Pisorf and Burndayraz more often.
🧀 Jehora Jeheyu - Jehora lets you exchange your Health and Mana Potions for permanent boosts to health and mana. This covers up the weaknesses from Regal Size through increasing your stats and freeing up your inventory slots.
The Earthmother is another reasonable God because Vine Form boosts health and gives damage reduction, but Rats have issues with getting value out of Plantation because they struggle to kill weaker enemies quickly. Entanglement is also average because slowing enemies isn’t very beneficial.
Make sure to avoid worshipping Tikki Tooki and Taurog! Tikki punishes the player when they are hit multiple times by the same enemy, which rats love to do, and Taurog fills your inventory with sub-par items while punishing you for using glyphs.
Glyphs
🧀 Pisorf - Knockback is one of the most important things for Rats to have, and Pisorf is a great way to get it. Are you really a monarch if you aren’t pushing your subjects around? Pisorf is important because of how it interacts with corrosion. If you apply lots of corrosion to a monster and push it into another monster, you’ll deal the corrosion damage to both of them!
🧀 Burndayraz - No matter what build you’re cooking up, you’ll need fire. Burndayraz is great for the Rat as it allows you to trigger your corrosion damage without getting attacked, making it a great finisher for your combos! The Burning debuff can also be useful for regen fighting.
These are the main glyphs you’ll be holding onto, especially with your limited inventory space from Regal Size and amazing boost from conversions. One other glyph you can consider taking to the endgame is Cyddstep, which will let you build more corrosion and survive monster that kill you in a single hit. Bysseps is average because you aren’t a striker (through it can help reduce resistances), Halpmeh heals for less due to your lower base health, and Weytwut is mainly used for mobility which you can get from Pisorf or the Bear Mace.
Items
🧀 Bear Mace and Whurrgarbl - More knockback and regen fighting synergies, yay! The Bear Mace makes your attacks knockback your targets, and much like with Pisorf, the Bear Mace will let the Rat deal its corrosion damage to both targets. What is different about the Bear Mace is that the corrosion damage is triggered twice: once when you hit the enemy and a second time when they get knocked into the other enemy. Whurrgarbl applies burning to enemies on hit. Burning makes monsters regenerate less health, which allows you to regen fight better and kill higher level enemies faster.
🧀 Resistance items - As you’ll be taking lots of hits, items that reduce your damage taken are amazing. If you don’t want to prepare Bear Mace from the blacksmith, the Shield is a great option. The Shield reduces your damage taken from attacks by 2. Platemail is also a great find, as it reduces your damage taken by 2 per level at the cost of always attacking second. This is a great trade deal - perhaps the greatest in the history of trade deals - as we don’t mind attacking second because we’re finishing with Burndayraz anyways!.
Some other top purchase worth mentioning are the Venom Dagger to help with regen fighting, the Elven Boots to boost your mana for spells and Magic Resistance, and finally the Bloody Sigil to keep you healthy. Happy shopping!
Combos
🧀 Flambé - Corrode a couple times and then Fireball to finish (for anyone who likes their steaks well done.) If you want to fireball twice in a row, make sure to prepare Mana boosters!
🧀 Marinate and Tenderise - Marinate a high health low damage enemy, like a Meat Man, then use them as a makeshift weapon. Make sure to not over tenderise while pushing them around like a bowling ball of death!
🧀 Molecular Cooking - The hardest recipe and top combo that can help you double kill bosses at level one! Mix in damage reduction (or Cydstepp from your local store), Burndayraz, and plenty of Corrosion to prepare. Build up that signature corrosive flavour, tenderise and flambe, then finish with 20 minutes in the Pisorf oven. Add Imawal to taste.
And that's it for today's class post! If you want to be the Rat Monarch destined to build their empire, make sure to wishlist Desktop Dungeons: Rewind!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1976950/Desktop_Dungeons_Rewind/
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