Finally got my first ten wins today and I'm beyond proud of it! As an achievement hunter, the badges system really motivates me to keep pushing further.
Some details in case anyone's curious:
- Rankings 6 to 10 are 0-challenge runs and I got these first before enabling challenges. (Assassin * 2, Gladiator, Battlemage, and Champion. I didn't understand how to play the Huntress yet.)
- Ranking 5 is a Badder Bosses + Doom Slayer run with the Sniper. I was confident with the build enough so I left all the Spawners intact and indeed totally dominated the boss fight.
- Rankings 1 to 5 are 3-challenge runs (Badder Bosses + On Diet + Swarm Intelligence) with the other subclasses (Berserker, Warlock, Monk, and Warden. I still haven't understood Freerunner yet.)
Some particularly fun moments so far:
- During my 3-chal (including On Diet) Monk run, I got a Horn +0 in the Prison, so I started keeping only one safety ration in my inventory and feeding all the rest to upgrade the horn. Turned out Monk's Combined Energy + Focus talents totally broke the On Diet challenge and by the time I was in the Demon Halls, I had 6 rations, 3 pride potions, 6 mystery meats + 1 phantom piranha meat and the Horn +10 was still frequently near full. This is also the only run so far where I managed to bring four blessed Ankhs to the surface!
- The Warden run was blessed by RNG! I got the Rotberry seed quest, got a Wand of Corrosion +2 in the Caves so I immediately started dumping into it the SoUs I had hoarded, and later only used a single Enchantment Stone to get the Elastic glyph on my Bow. Basically I could hunker down in the bushes at will w/ the seed, cast a highly upgraded corrosive gas and keep knocking enemies into the gas and paralyzing them :D
Freerunner is kinda niche. He works very well with a ring of haste, and poorly with swarm intelligence. The idea is you run from fight to fight, and by the time you encounter another mob you have the ability recharged, and take every fight with 2x movement speed, bonus evasion (works well with ring of evasion), and stronger thrown weapons. The 2x movement speed while invisible is nice, too, and stacks with ring of haste.
My Freerunner attempt ended with the King (it's also visible on the 11th place in the screenshot). I think my main problem was I didn't realize you could create spells to grab ranged weapons (I just learned about this lol), so I was using the crossbow as a melee weapon during the fight.
Ohh that makes a lot of sense! I'll def keep your advice in mind when I try him out again :D