or an equally overpowered and unpopular background.
The average DK experience goes like this:
You kill a rat.
_Yredelemnul grants you an undead servant!
Your zombie kills a rat.
_Yredelemnul grants you an undead servant!
You travel through a cleared level to a shop, and your zombies kill someone off-screen.
_Yredelemnul grants you an undead servant!
You do literally any action.
_Yredelemnul grants you an undead servant!
After winning a SEDK in 0.12, I was a bit sceptical about DKs, expecting undead allies to be mostly useless after the mid game, starting from Elf/Vaults and in the Depths. But this background turned out to be not only very consistent, but also one of the fastest in 0.15. Several wins required only 3 - 4 hours, which is even faster than playing a ranged char of Oka in this version.
DKs start with a +1 weapon of your choosing, leather armour, some Fighting, Dodging, Armour, 3 Invocations, and one star of piety. You can immediately raise undead, which costs 2 MP. Some species with low Invo and MP apts, like Te, Mu, or Mi, start with only 1 MP, which is not enough to raise zombies. A TrDK has to wait until XL 3.
At two stars, you get Injury Mirror, which is amazing for draining all your piety and for annihilating unseen horrors, ogres, and early uniques like Grinder (unless they one-shot you). Three stars give you AoE Raise Undead, so you don’t have to press aa on each and every corpse. Also, Yred starts sending permanent undead allies. Later you get Drain Life, which is rather situational, as it requires a good crowd of alive monsters to be useful. But the ability stays relevant until the orb chamber, where you can restore some HPs by draining draconians and orb guardians. The final five star ability lets you catch Pokemons™.
Unlike the current Yred, the 0.15 version didn’t let you catch animals and demons. So you couldn’t have a spectral hydra or spectral Lom Lobon. Nergalle turned out to be the best Pokemon: she hastes allies and spams spectral orcs. The only problem is that it’s hard to find her in a sea of summoned spectral orcs, so she usually gets destroyed after charging into enemy crowds.
Unlike regular summons, Yred’s zombies and allies could kill monsters off-screen. So you could go shopping from an S-branch to Orc:4 and get some free piety and even permanent allies during the trip.
After you kill your fist D:1 rat or bat and get a corpse, your char becomes much stronger thanks to Yred. Even a 1 HP zombie is useful for blocking monsters or kiting. Your undead snowball quickly becomes an undead avalanche and you just walk through floors collecting resources. On D:3-4, you get the first batch of permanent allies, usually a wight or few flying skulls, which are stronger than most monsters there. Phantasmal warriors start to appear on early Lair floors, and you finish Lair with a bone dragon or profane servitor. Your undead horde gets to the max strength of three bone dragons/servitors at the end of Orc, because Yred gives piety for killing any alive monster, even for plain orcs and other popcorn. If you have Faith, which is the best amulet ever for DK, you’ll get your allies much earlier. I often had the maximum number of bone dragons/servitors when finishing Lair.
With a minimal ally management, you get “free” D:4-15, Lair, Orc, S-branches, and the Vaults. The Depths are a bit trickier: a floor with too many undead and demons can wipe all your army. Elven Halls are also non-horde friendly, as there are too many corridors and not enough open spaces. But the real problem starts when you enter the Crypt. Usually you enter it with a big crowd of allies, move quickly through the first couple of floors and end up with nothing on the final floor. There are just not enough alive monsters to raise them as undead and to replace the losses of permanent allies. And since you move quickly, there’s no time for your permanent allies to regenerate. I’d recommend to avoid this branch, or at least park your undead somewhere else and clear the Crypt yourself.
The strong early and mid game allow conserving consumables, so I always had enough resources for Zot, even if my profane servitors and bone dragons didn’t survive fighting draconian packs and oofs. Most of my games went pretty similarly and smoothly, with two notable exceptions: DEDK and FeDK.
My DEDK wasn’t a regular mage. I played this char as a pure melee fighter, which was possible thanks to an early plate and large shield. I went all-Str and no magic until the 2nd S-branch where I finally learned Haste, which was great for buffing allies, and later got some other utility spells. In the end, I was tabbing oofs with a cutlass and with hasted mana vipers.
FeDK was the hardest: my first good run just walked through Lair and S-branches: two servitors and a bone dragon did everything themselves. Then I lost all my allies in the Crypt, lost two lives in a row in the Depths and splatted there. It was really annoying, as that first splat was due to me not noticing a hostile spriggan, who infiltrated my cloud of undead allies and was furiously poking my felid.
All DK chars play the same way and I wanted to try 0.15’s ranged combat, so I tried to abandon Yred on turn 0 a few times. It turns out, abandoning Yred early on is a very bad idea! Even a Sp has a hard time surviving the wrath: Yred could surround you with flying skulls on D:4, and you just die there. On D:8, Yred could send a spectral warrior against you. But a couple of my strong chars managed to survive the wrath: a Spriggan and Halfling.
A side note about 0.15’s potion of cancellation: the early version couldn’t remove some statuses it can remove now. I was very surprised, when I couldn’t remove -20 levels of Corrosion during a tRJ fight. Also, it couldn’t remove Flay and magic vulnerability.
So all my DKs were pretty similar: melee-focused hybrids with some support spells and with some Evocations. You can’t play a ranged char unless you constantly park your allies on previous floors. There are limited options for pure mages too: Airstrike, Mephitic Cloud, Poisonous Cloud, LRD, and the best spell for DKs/necromancers - Bolt of Draining. You can’t really spam any other damage spells, because your zombies block line of fire. On the other hand, Charms are very useful: Haste is a must-have spell. Hexes are fine too, but many of them require a line of fire. Summoners have a hard time: unlike Yred’s zombies and permanent allies, regular summons steal both XP and piety! So if you rely on summons, you’ll get fewer ally gifts. In general, all my chars were 1-2 XLs behind, thanks to XP-stealing.
Even though this background is exceptionally strong in the early and mid game, it wasn’t very popular. DK was removed in 0.16, which was released on 2015-03-11. If we count all games that started before the 0.16 release, DK would be the 22nd by the number of games and 21st by the number of wins.
If we check the total number of DK wins, we wouldn’t find many fans of this background as well:
!lg * dk won s=name
592 games for * (dk won): 25x Ge0ff, 16x 78291, 11x ophanim, 10x clouded, 9x Tenaya, 9x bmfx,
7x particleface, 7x Yermak, 6x comborobin, 5x WalkerBoh, 5x Pac, 5x hyperbolic, 5x elliptic, …
So why DKs were so unpopular?
The commit that removed them (f7a6202f2), says that “This zealot didn’t add any particular novel experience, given that the pre-temple gameplay is pretty similar to Necromancer, and starting w/ Yred means losing the interesting experience of picking a god in the dungeon.” But I’d like to expand that:
- It requires too much fiddling: you need to press
aaafter each and every fight. - The background provides limited options for developing your char, which leads to repetitive experience.
- You need to manually rest for your allies to regen, even if your char takes no damage in fights. It’s not necessary in early/mid branches with alive monsters, but it becomes a necessity for weaker chars and in the late game.
- Cross-level recall was added only in 0.12. Before that, you had to manually escort and park your permanent allies.
- DK falls on its face in branches without alive monsters: the Crypt and the extended. In theory, the holy floor could give you some piety in Pan, but it’s more likely that you quickly lose all your forces there.
- The UI is pretty bad: it’s hard to keep track of allies. The heart icons are less visible than the current alignment auras, although it was better for the console players. Not having unique spectral icons for pokemons is also sad.
So, unlike Healers, this background doesn’t need to be revived. If you want to try a few of them, I’d recommend 0.15, because it’s the version w/o item weight and item destruction. If you want skeletal warriors and ghouls that could pick up and equip items, try 0.14. If you also want unlimited bone dragons and servitors, then 0.13 is your version.
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