Single character run

[jinxology]

Has anyone made a single character run through of the whole game? I was just messing around with the concept, but I realized that a kill's total XP isn't actually split among members, characters just all get the same amount per monster (barring traits) regardless of # in your party. Can anyone verify this?

[Palandus]

With excessive cheating highly possible.

It is possible to go solo for the initial part of the game, but I don't think you would survive mid-game+ as a solo adventurer.

[jinxology]

Ah, good to know, saved me a lot of time. It would create a great deal of replayability with that campaign if it was a bit more possible.

[minmay]

I've completed a full solo run with a ratling farmer on hard. It's not that difficult. Assuming you have played through the game already and know what to expect, the biggest differences from a well-built 4-character party are probably that you have less total HP, resurrection potions are literally useless (you can't drink them while alive), and the opportunity cost for getting invisibility is a lot higher. Having 1 character instead of 4 doesn't magically change the tactics, you just get punished somewhat harder for doing things like trying to "face tank".
If you weren't playing sloppily with 4 characters and letting monsters hit you, the lowered HP and damage output isn't really a big problem. IMO the biggest difference is actually invisibility. It's 5 skill points for a spell that makes almost every enemy in the game harmless, which is an obviously wildly disproportionate return on a small investment on normal parties, but is noticeably annoying with a solo character because it's 5 levels/tomes that aren't going towards improving your damage. On the ratling farmer I think I trained heavy weapons -> invisibility skills -> alchemy -> armor (massive mistake here) -> critical, plus a few stray points that I thought I could afford because I didn't know level 20 costs 1000000 experience, so although nothing could damage me because of invisibility, I was also really bad at damaging anything, which made for pretty unfun combat.
I also did two full runs to test Toorum mode - battlemage for the first one, insane ironman farmer for the second one, again on hard. For those, because I'm a lame power gamer, instead of getting 3 air magic for invisibility, I just did Pyramid of Umas as soon as possible to get the sceptre of Isochronos (which gives you invisibility for just concentration 2).
For the insane ironman farmer Toorum, I went with light weapons 5 -> critical 5 -> concentration 2 -> alchemy 5 -> whatever for skills. My path was:
use first gold key on backbiter -> stop eating at level 6 -> grab gold key in Cache -> go to Sleet Island vault (getting another key) and use a key to get Spirit Mirror Pendant, pick up the venomfang pick -> eat the rest of the food I was carrying and catch and eat all the fish -> -> get boneblade from Cemetery with the other gold key -> go kill the summon stones to get the skill book (you don't want to try to do this without the venomfang pick) -> go back and do twigroot tunnels -> get serpent staff from bog -> do pyramid of umas -> get silver sceptre -> you're invincible now so just do whatever

The "avoid gaining experience until I get the spirit mirror pendant" part was obviously stupid, but I felt like being stupid. I definitely recommend light weapons so you don't drive yourself mad with heavy weapons' lousy DPS.

[jinxology]

Nice, thanks for sharing your experiences there, Minmay.

[Brodie301]

use a key to get Spirit Mirror Pendant,

Don't use a key to get this. Get for free in House of Needles

[minmay]

Getting to house of needles requires going through like 5 more levels. By that logic, you might as well say I shouldn't unlock Backbiter because I'll replace it with venomfang pick + Boneblade anyway, or that I shouldn't unlock Boneblade because I'll get a second sickle sword for free in Castle Nex anyway.

[Sir Tawmis]

I've completed a full solo run with a ratling farmer on hard. It's not that difficult. Assuming you have played through the game already and know what to expect

There must be certain things you avoided getting that are not "needed" I assume, that can trigger pretty difficult fights (and this was on normal mode!)

SpoilerShow

For example, getting Bane, triggers a number of Earth Elementals and about six suicidal fire elementals, that nearly took out my entire party because it was wave, after wave!

[minmay]

I didn't skip anything on that character (it was also the game where I decided I would get 77/77 secrets, 17/17 epic items, 11/11 treasures). I don't find the Bane room very difficult. It's just four summon stones and four fire elementals. Even if you choose to stay in the Bane room instead of going back to the teleporter or jumping down the pit, they don't attack all at once, summon stones are really easy to manipulate and fire elementals have no HP. So you're probably killing the first two summon stones for free, or at least one of them, then you have a couple monsters that you can almost perfectly control combined with some monsters that die in a single hit (and they never manage to actually find their way into the room very quickly anyway). Alternatively, if you really don't trust yourself, fire is the easiest resistance in the game to get - even if you don't have any of the corresponding items, you can just quaff several rage potions.
There are a couple fights where you pretty much need to use either invisibility, consumables, or bombs to consistently do them with a solo character (at least on hard), the ratling boss and the ancient claymore fight, but as it happens, invisibility, consumables, and bombs do in fact exist, so this isn't really a problem.

[Jhash]

I also did a single farmer run on hard, ironman, (also Old-School for the achievement) but i picked the lizardman route aiming for near 100 resistance in all elements. Much because I didn't want poison to be an issue, nor the fire elementals. In the end, I got 100 resistance in fire and poison, 98 (helped by gear) in frost and 70-ish in shock. One more statpoint and I would've gotten to 100 in frost, and changing one gearpiece would've taken me to 100 in shock.

I picked the resist and the fast metabolism traits, so normal health potions was as efficient as large ones. I mistakenly thought the greater health potions would be twice as effective as well. I'm not sure if it's worth spending the last four skillpoints in alchemy for the extra stats, but I probably would if I was to do it again.

The only magic I invested in was concentration 2 for the light spell, shield spell is a bonus. I haven't tried the invisibility spell on any playthrough so I was unsure if I'd be able to use it. The price in skillpoints is also rather high for a single character.

To my surprise, the flies was the biggest challenge, and I only managed to get past the first one using a stun weapon and enough tries for the stun to hit before I died.