Blazing Star is a game changer

[Chilkoot]

Well, in typical BTIV fashion, I stumbled upon a game-changing strategy after years of playing and over a half-dozen playthoughs.

The Blazing Star, which you can pick up from an offering shrine (the visually bugged one) during the prologue/tutorial translates into essentially infinite money if you use it religiously and are willing to suffer through the risk/reward curve.

Case in point, my party is level 7, I've *just* finished Kylearan's tower, and I have pretty much best-in-slot gear (purchased) for every character and 2200 gold in inventory.

The catch is that you will need to make do with only half of your opportunity, with a reward of ~100+ gold after the encounter. Things to leverage in a low-opportunity situation:

• Trow's Advantage (skill) that refunds opportunity
  
• Red Boots for movement
  
• A tank. I never use one normally - even on legendary - but you'll want one to absorb the hurt as combat will last several rounds
  
• Abilities that cost no opportunity such as the Bard's drink/songs, magic, taunt, etc.
  
• Heavy use of levitate to control the battlefield

If you *really* want to cheese it, you can use the trinket every encounter by doing a quicksave/load after every encounter to remove the 2-encounter debuff and have the effect active for the whole game. Difficult? Yes. Fun? Hell yea!

The economy in this game breaks later on if you have a Master Thief anyway, but this trinket will open up vendor gear, recipes and craftables early on when you really want them. It's a game changer!

[svdp]

Ah yes, Blazing Star. I have (or at least had) that for a while on my character, but I never concentrated much on it, and it.... didn't seem to do anything much?

No doubt I was using it wrongly. I always thought it was a passive skill, or I didn't quite figure it out. What was it again, "in darkness something something - victory? and when lit money - or something. Been too long. :-p

But 2200 gold at level 7 is quite good, that's for sure. Though by level 15, everyone has enough money for anything. At least, anything worthwhile, and as said, at a certain point, there is little you can actually do with all that money.

Still... gold is far more useful at the start than at the end, so having it rapidly will be beneficial, yes.

[Chilkoot]

It's up to 300g/fight now lol. Insanity coin!

[svdp]

Originally posted by Chilkoot:

It's up to 300g/fight now lol. Insanity coin!

So... How does it work, again, precisely? I might give it another shot with my third playthrough, seen the fact I never paid much attention to it the first two times. It was some trinket one got from a shrine or a quest, or something, I believe?

Was it a passive thing? Or do you activate it before/during/at the end of the fight? There were two modes, if I remember correctly?

Been such a long time... I really should get on with my third playthrough. But alas. Last time I started it up was for testing for the bloke with his sweeping slash thingy, but I didn't do much else.

[Chilkoot]

Originally posted by svdp:

So... How does it work, again, precisely?

Shakedown:

• It's a trinket that must be equipped.
  
• You activate it outside of combat
  
• When you activate it, you can select one of two modes: 1) Guarantee first attack on next encounter (boring!) or 2) Cut opportunity in half on next encounter, but grant bonus gold (fun!)
  
• Gold reward is party level x20. So at level 15, the bonus gold is 300.
  
• There is a cooldown that prevents you from using it every encounter
  
• You can bypass the cooldown by doing a quicksave/load after each encounter

I have to say, it's made it very fun to be able to incrementally upgrade the party at each new town. All those small upgrades you bypass at vendors so you can buy the top-tier item later... no worries! It actually makes the vendors feel useful and part of the regular progression. The economy has always been broken in this game, and it's refreshing to see it function closer to what was probably the design intention with vendors.

[stinkysaurus]

If the character who activates Snuff the Torch dies in the middle of a fight, the opportunity point tax disappears the next round and you can fight much more effectively. But you still get the bonus money at the end of the fight.

I've been having Sybale run the trinket since she's a suicide queen anyway.

[Chilkoot]

Interesting! I had the dude that uses it in my party die once, and I noticed the opportunity pop back up, but I missed whether or not the bonus gold went through. This is good news.

[Chilkoot]

I hate to necro an old thread, but I've just started another Legendary/Dead Man's Tale run, and using the Blazing Star really ramps up the fun. If you've played before and are even finding Legendary a bit of a yawn-fest, this will turn the game on its ear for you.