Umbra and melting covenant 25

[Steven of Astora]

These are the last 2 primary clans I need on cov 25. Any suggestions with how I should pair them from someone who has had some cov 25 experience with either of them?

I enjoy playing umbra but find them super weak. But I can probably get a win with them with some grinding. But I am absolutely horrible at melting. No idea what would work best with them as a primary.

[Neon Black Interactive]

For umbra your best option is to pair with stygian and go for architect penumbra. This way you have a number of solid options of for aoe clear including shadow eater and sweepers, as well as solid single target dps via incant. You'll want to try really hard to set up an incant floor preferably with penumbra in the back. Cast your morsel production spells on the incant floor then feed them to a gorger elsewhere, preferably a shadow eater down on the bottom to deal with backliners or an alloyed construct up top to help punch through tanky frontline enemies that leak through.

For remnant who you pair them with isn't as relevant. I've had the easiest time pairing them with hellhorned but that may just be a fluke. The key piece here is burn bright rector flicker. Search for a molded and put holdover on to deal with bosses cause you can use the hold over molded to have rector fight the boss and tank for the other units on every floor. You will need solutions to backliners and some extra single target damage for the tanky dudes. This will likely end up coming from your secondary faction but remnant does have ways to accomplish these. Also just a heads up I think remnant in general is the hardest to win with at cov 25 cause of their high rolly, inconsistent nature.

[JOBBIN TIL' I DIE]

Remnant is a nightmare on 25 so far, I'm rarely offered enough damage to kill daedalus consistently, and if I do have bright rector i'm still at the mercy of having/drawing reform when I need it

[Leopanther]

Originally posted by JOBBIN TIL' I DIE:

Remnant is a nightmare on 25 so far, I'm rarely offered enough damage to kill daedalus consistently, and if I do have bright rector i'm still at the mercy of having/drawing reform when I need it

There's other ways to play Burn Bright Flicker besides reform. Put the revenge-burnout lady as tank in front of him. Have a few burnout increasing spells in deck (possibly with double-stack or holdover depending on how badly you need the stacks for the deck). The artifact that applies +3 burnout on every burnout unit and spell does a lot. Or simply get the 'Wickless Recruitment' spell which completely removes burnout from a unit - letting it stay around indefinitely.

For damage output, I usually have the burnout-revenge lady in front with a bunch of low-capacity dps burnout units behind her (like the 10x2 guys and buffing them up through upgrades, reforms etc before putting them safely behind her). Or the +10 dmg permanently on extinguish guy - he can scale to super high damage even if you get him a bit later if your deck can reliably make him die multiple times in the same fight (reform flicker, reform cards). The artifact that gives +10 dmg to any unit that dies can also be very strong scaling for a Remnant deck that focuses on having units die and reviving them again. (or the +40 dmg from reviving a unit with Formless Child)

Alternatively just build up Harvest Flicker with very high max HP and use the allied clan's mechanics for dps or sustain. Hellhorned have decent dps units, Stygian their spells or high-stacking frostbite or spell weakness from behind tank Flicker. Awoken can put spikes and regen on him, with a multi-hit or sweeper unit behind him. Umbra have morsel generation to really get those harvest stacks high, but I feel they're not really good at offering backline dps.

[Smooth Criminal]

Struggled a lot to win with Umbra main at 25, eventually I got to this setup that works reliably well in getting you to seraph and beating him.
Take:
- stygian secondary
- 2 freeze sharks with endless and +hp on 2 lower floors (get 1 and copy it)
- 2 random damage dealers behind them, quick+sweep works best to minimize enemy damage
- some random big damage spells to kill stuff that makes it through the sharks to top floor
- penumbra with +space on top floor with some random gorge dude who you will feed, can add a random damage dealer, keep 2-4 spaces free here (use them for morsels) to relocate sharks
- don't take any morsel or morsel supporting spells without consume
- frozen multistrike spell (get 1 and copy it) to kill bosses, big lifesteal spell should also work
- 1 space upgrade and 1 whatever upgrade

Now that should be enough to kill trash waves and for bosses you relocate endless sharks to top floor and pop the multisrikes to kill the boss while he chews through them.

Works for any main race pick, Umbra just happens to be the weakest one.


Melting is easy.
Get the burnout champion.
Get frozen ressurect spells and some +burnout buff for him.
Now after boss comes let them duke it out and ressurect him on each floor and that usually will be enough to kill the boss because of how massive stats on burnout champion are. For seraph you will need stealth or some big tanks in front of champion to give him enough time to kill the seraph, the blue lady works best.

[Steven of Astora]

I've been doing fairly well with melting so far. The burnout champion actually makes snowballing early quite easy and it scales well late game. Died to the final boss because I went for a legion of wax setup that really didn't end up panning out and also didn't get a single reform spell. But I think I can get that one without too much trouble now.

Umbra on the other hand is just giving me a headache. The feel so weak early and I can't seem to scale very well at all without taking a ton of pyre damage. Just really hate this class now in cov 25.

[Malkav0]

Try something new ^^ everyone use burnout Remnant. Go with harvest remnant paired with either imps or morsels =) watch the HP skyrocket. Umbra is much improvisation, cannot give you a clear path, but basically, lifesteal unit = win.

[IamSalvation [LATX]]

Got em both - just pair up with Stygian - Stygian can carry everything. Melting and Umbra have Champs that can carry early game. Stygian can always find a way to cheese the boss - be it Spellwekeness, stacking Frostbite or sapping.

My Melting - Stygian run was using Stealth with double Stack and some Reform cards and not many Melting units - avoid burnout units or plan to keep them alive with the Lady that gives Burnout on Revenge.

Umbra is a bit... special but it worked
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2125563862

Got the Shadowsiege from the Winged Event so i got him back pretty late - before that i was killing stuff with Spellweaknes doublestrike and Umbar Champ did some tanking.

[Steven of Astora]

I managed to get my melting run done. Got the artifact that reduced minions cost by 2 and just copied a bunch of multistriked demon friends. Not very elegant but it did the job. Also have a new appreciation for the card that gives stealth 2 to minions. Had that on holdover and it was definitely made the difference.

[Heten Beer]

For melting, I went with helhorned as secondary.
As stated above, I had the burnout Flicker with a burnout lady in front.
I managed to pick up a onehorn's tome fairly quickly and upgraded it with doublestack.
Duplicated it (twice I think). And I had a bit of luck with the relics, found the one where if you put down a unit, a spell in hand would cost 0.
Trimmed down my deck as much as possible.
Basicly came down to a few dregs and imps, mainly to trigger that artifact.. and then the tomes + some restoration (for the lady) + a bit of armour.
First few stages were the hardest.
By the last few bosses, my flicker champion had multistrike 6 at turn 3 or so. He laid waste to everything.
As with all runs, this was luck dependant (cards, artifacts, etc) but it turned out to be a very easy run.

As far as umbra goes, still struggling to get a win at cov 25 with them as well ^^.
Have no idea how to play them at that level.
Haven't once found that Shadowsiege unit :(, I imagine getting and upgrading/duping him would be a huge advantage.

[Heten Beer]

Originally posted by Heten Beer:

For melting, I went with helhorned as secondary.
As stated above, I had the burnout Flicker with a burnout lady in front.
I managed to pick up a onehorn's tome fairly quickly and upgraded it with doublestack.
Duplicated it (twice I think). And I had a bit of luck with the relics, found the one where if you put down a unit, a spell in hand would cost 0.
Trimmed down my deck as much as possible.
Basicly came down to a few dregs and imps, mainly to trigger that artifact.. and then the tomes + some restoration (for the lady) + a bit of armour.
First few stages were the hardest.
By the last few bosses, my flicker champion had multistrike 6 at turn 3 or so. He laid waste to everything.
As with all runs, this was luck dependant (cards, artifacts, etc) but it turned out to be a very easy run.

As far as umbra goes, still struggling to get a win at cov 25 with them as well ^^.
Have no idea how to play them at that level.
Haven't once found that Shadowsiege unit :(, I imagine getting and upgrading/duping him would be a huge advantage.

Ok.... after my last post, I decided to do 1 more run before dinner..
Went with umbra.
Starting artifact was Sketches.
After the 1st battle, I went for the side with umbra unit pick... this was a SHADOWSIEGE.
Next area was merchant of steel and dupe.
Got multistrike on it and duped it.
Next area was card removal and an event... it was the dupe event :o.
So basically, at stage 4, my entire mid level was filled with multistriking shadowsieges.
Picked up a few cards here and there (trample, daze entire lvl, sap, ..) but basically I could have ended each turn within 1 sec and that was it.
This was an insanely stupid lucky run! But yeah.. sometimes all you need is a bit of luck ^^.

[Steven of Astora]

Honestly my hope for this class is to just get a shadowsiege, dupe with multistrike and have a way to get them out consistently lol. But I'll keep trying to make an average run happen.

[Steven of Astora]

Finally got my umbra cov 25 finished! Sneko's eye with a handful of demon friends and gem troves. Took some cheesy artifacts to finish up these last 2 clans but a win is a win regardless. Probably will end up doing random runs now to actually get good.

[Malkav0]

Originally posted by Heten Beer:

Ok.... after my last post, I decided to do 1 more run before dinner..
Went with umbra.
Starting artifact was Sketches.
After the 1st battle, I went for the side with umbra unit pick... this was a SHADOWSIEGE.
Next area was merchant of steel and dupe.
Got multistrike on it and duped it.
Next area was card removal and an event... it was the dupe event :o.
So basically, at stage 4, my entire mid level was filled with multistriking shadowsieges.
Picked up a few cards here and there (trample, daze entire lvl, sap, ..) but basically I could have ended each turn within 1 sec and that was it.
This was an insanely stupid lucky run! But yeah.. sometimes all you need is a bit of luck ^^.

Looks like a super funny seed xD GG !

[Heten Beer]

Originally posted by Malkav0:

Originally posted by Heten Beer:

Looks like a super funny seed xD GG !

Dude, this was such an insanely lucky seed ^^ I was glad though, was really struggling with Umbra for some reason.
But just a quick question;
Do you guys also feel that sketches is a bit OP?
I haven't come across it that many times (perhaps it's a more rare artifact), but everytime I found it, it was basically GG.
Just to use this example; if you would normally have to/want to put down 4 shadowsieges... you would need an ascent spell (0 cost/holdover) and have 6 energy at the start of each turn to first put the shadowsiege down.
It also didn't really feel rewarding, this run.
I've had plenty of cov 25 runs where I had to think about each move, try and keep units alive, etc.. those felt really rewarding.
It's just such an awesome game to be fair ^^ Wouldn't mind a few more cov increases though ^^

[Malkav0]

Originally posted by Heten Beer:

Dude, this was such an insanely lucky seed ^^ I was glad though, was really struggling with Umbra for some reason.
But just a quick question;
Do you guys also feel that sketches is a bit OP?
I haven't come across it that many times (perhaps it's a more rare artifact), but everytime I found it, it was basically GG.
Just to use this example; if you would normally have to/want to put down 4 shadowsieges... you would need an ascent spell (0 cost/holdover) and have 6 energy at the start of each turn to first put the shadowsiege down.
It also didn't really feel rewarding, this run.
I've had plenty of cov 25 runs where I had to think about each move, try and keep units alive, etc.. those felt really rewarding.
It's just such an awesome game to be fair ^^ Wouldn't mind a few more cov increases though ^^

Seriously, sketches can be completely useless depending on what the run feeds you, so no, not OP. The goal of the game is precisely to seize such opportunities or know when to turn them down ^^ This seed won't repeat before a very long time. The covenant level must not fool you because one run was a powerfest, some are insanely hard :p
A run feeling rewarding is nice, a run feeling like you found a broken path early may not be rewarding but it's fun, it's another kind of reward =))