Jeremiah seems like they were designed to annoy people. They smite, they blink away from you, they summon lots of butterflies, and they have a trident of draining. Hides behind the butterflies and smites you, once you manage to clear through the horde of butterflies, they might drain you a bit before blinking away. Rewards aren’t that great either, their trident might be decent if you are running polearms and haven’t gotten a better one yet (although they spawn on D6-9, so you probably have a decent one already), and unless you like orbs (of either guile, mayhem, or energy), the only reward is the XP. I usually kill them, it just is far too much of a drawn-out fight.
1 Thank
I think he’s dangerous rather than merely annoying. If I’m strong enough to kill him I don’t think it’s a big issue. Jeremiah forces many characters to exploit corners, which is probably the intent. But if you exploit corners he’s not that annoying. He only summons butterflies when you’re in LOS, which is a bit weird flavour-wise, but gameplay-wise it’s exploitable.
But I will often skip half a level because I don’t feel strong enough to deal with him, and come back later when I’ve run into another strong unique.
1 Thank
I tend to just skip him. He’s not that hard to avoid, his loot is often meh, and yeah, it’s annoying to fight him. I might back after I find a good wand or fireball or something. Or I kill him on the way out!
I find Jeremiah most threatening when they’re with other enemies, especially ranged enemies, and especially orc priests, in which case I usually teleport away.
His polearms are usually +3 draining or thereabouts. Insanely strong for the level you find him, and the reach debuff is worth having available for big baddies. Especially if you’re Oka or training something with cross training anyways you’ll be able to hit about 1.0 swings.
1 Thank
At dungeon 6-9, there’s a decent chance you have something better. For comparison, Amaemon, who spawns at D8-12, lair, or orc 1, has a demon whip of venom(usually with less enchantment than Jeremiah’s trident), or, more rarely, Snakebite, and isn’t the annoying chore to kill that Jeremiah is.
Several times Amaemon has given me my endgame weapon. Just rebranded and enchanted. I like to see them.
It’s not really a zero sum game when it comes to early weapons. The existence of other weapons doesn’t make the trident any less amazing for where its found.
You don’t have to main polearms for a +3 trident of debuff to be a valuable tool in your arsenal and it’s strong enough to get through Lair and Orc at 1.0 swing (like 8ish polearms). A +9 trident of draining is enough to ascend a 4 runer, even if its not optimal, but you can comfortably get your first two runes with a few ?enchant weapons. Or save the scrolls for a demon trident that is very likely to drop later or a broad axe because cross training is a thing. Again, none of this is a zero sum game but having a swappable trident can help you save consumables.
I’d also like to clarify that Jeremiah’s trident IS the “probably you’ll have better”. I main TriMiFi and have over 250 games and 20 wins with the combo. I don’t know the sequell to back up my claim, but having something better on a pole arm by then is not something to count on.
All I’m saying is don’t discount that trident as mid. It’s solid af for just about any melee or summoner as a resource you can use to conserve consumables if nothing else.
2 Thanks
Jeremiah is training for later smite/torment summoners
The orb of guile is nice for builds that use it and yeah an ego trident that early is pretty good. And my gut feels like jeremiah generates more often than amaemon.
1 Thank