lil fade

[chand3123k]

Hey All,

I've been playing several runs with melting remnants and trying to win with Lil Fade on convenant 25 (no dlc). I was super close one run, but just couldn't make it ( I had lil fade with 150 spikes and my companion clan was stygian). ultimately his low health was an issue even towards the end of the run.

How are you guys using him? What clans do you pair with. Ultimately I would like to try all pairs as well. If you guys have any general tips for melting remnants with stygian, awoke, umbra, hell-horned etc. and any cool synergies you have seen with his Lil Fade's other paths. That would be awesome.

[Happiness Officer]

Funnily enough, Lil' Fade was my first Cov 25 win :) So I'll see what I can do!

To be honest, the spikes play is probably one of Lil Fade's harder builds. Unless you can get those kills scaling, she quickly falls behind. I've never actually completed a run with the full level 3 on that (I normally switch to leverage her endless upgrade). To explain: Whilst it's true you were able to enter that fight with ~150 spikes and attack... for comparison, looking at my Cov 25 screenshot (just before dealing the final blow - a little habit of mine) - I had her dealing 567. Though the other 2 upgrade paths don't give her much to start out with... the scaling can get pretty wild!

To be honest though, she doesn't overly synergise with the other factions heavily (or even most other units). She's more a one-girl-nightmare (for the enemies, not for you). But in general you can can base it off the following upgrade paths: (apologies in advance for forgetting the exact names of them). You generally just need to get her doing her thing whilst building a Plan B of hardhitters to pick up where she left off.

Endless / Quick play
This one is probably her most reliable path, and very straightforward. Put her out to die, let her, then rinse and repeat. Make sure she huffs it every turn, and rake in that damage growth. You don't need to worry too much about who you team her with, so long as there's room on the floor to place her at the front (and, as a naughty trick, place her at the back when the boss rocks up).

The only possible tag-team she has here is with the Wickless Baron, who can cash in on her getting squished. But this build she tends to just work solo whilst you work on getting other plays rolling. By the later point in the level, she hits really hard. Be on the hunt for the artifacts that give you +10Att on death, extinguish abilities trigger twice and the Remnant card that triggers extinguish ability. You'll be laughing.

Health/Attack/Burnout to friends play
Instead of boosting herself, she boosts your team! The big "gotcha" is the burnout, which will even apply to units without it... so you need to either stick to burnout units or make sure you're getting Lil' Fade back each turn, to keep stacking it on.

If you go down this path, you'll want to be more sparing of your monsters, so you have a better chance of reviving Lil' Fade. Umbra tend to be the best allies here as they can boost your space, allowing you to cram more units onto the floor to benefit from Lil' Fade's boosts. Ladies of the House, Parafin Enforcers and even Draffs work very well with this play. But the key is that you need 1 floor to keep investing in.

The double-extinguish artifact is another winner here, but also the one that applies +3 burnout. That'll stop your team of nasties all vanishing if you draw poorly.

Spikes play
As before, this one is the hardest IMO, so I can't really comment too much here.

[Sekzon]

quick:
chose your favourite assisting clan.

pick fire light ( +2 burnout +atck and hp on kill )

remove stewards and pick your units. one capacity units preferred. draff is one of the best. if you have sweep unit just fill the rest with one cap units.

merge a paraffin enforcer into a sweep or draff unit ( or smth with multistrike ) to have an exra easy time.

remove starter cards when there is opportunity to. don't remove the reforming cards. you just need your units and firelight plus reforming. only leave cards that buff your units or add to the reforming like hallowed halls. if you have a round where you struggle to get firelight back on the field you can even aim to put holdover on a primitive mold card. as long as you get firelight in front of your units things will go well.

[Limdood]

Using little fade with awoken allows some of the strongest setups.

Fire Light paired with sweepers is VERY fast scaling, though you still need to work to keep front units alive. Thin the deck out so you can consistently draw reforms for Fade. Use cards like glimmer or dripfall or exploding candle artifact to keep high damage backline enemies from wrecking the units behind Fade. Votive key (first unit played gets endless) can REALLY help, since you can let Fade die once without endless, then reform her and as long as you play her first, she'll have burnout 1 and endless, guaranteeing her death and extinguish each turn - and allows you to put quick on a sweeper. Combustible wax (burnout gives +3 stacks whenever applied) helps too, keeps a missed reform from being too horrible. Grabbing Hallowed Halls and giving it holdover is amazing...especially if you get the artifact that gives a free vine grasp each turn (units dying to burnout or hallowed halls die from the front and work their way back) to yank Fade to the front...pumps and reforms all units every turn.

Little Icarus also synergizes BEST with awoken. Petrified Crucible (spikes deal +1 damage) and Shard Channeler (spikes deal +1 damage) are almost instant "I win" buttons. Adaptive Mutation will turn Fade from a 200/1 with spikes 195 to a 1/200 with spikes 195. Get Gnarled root artifact (+1 attack per spikes) and it reapplies the bonus, so you get a super unit (Note, avoid adaptive mutation if facing Seraph the Chaste....in that case you want spike fade to die each turn so spikes don't get stripped off). Spike Fade generally wants to pick awoken cards that boost health, so she can kill as many units as possible before dying.

Even Eternal Flame works well with awoken, again because of sweepers. Use fade to kill the frontline unit each turn, the sweepers kill the back units, and dripfall or another heavy hitter deals with "second tank" units for waves that have multiple high HP guys in front.

Other general tips. Legion of wax is very strong (again with awoken for stat boosts). Make sure you upgrade it quickly and load your stat buffs onto it (not status effect buffs, they won't carry over). The reforms available with fade will keep it coming back again and again. Give it a multistrike stone and some other decent upgrade and it'll wreck things. Bounty stalker is really solid too IF you get it really early and can get burnout 1/endless upgrades for it. Without the DLC, you can't make it absurd (draff infused bounty stalker gets burnout 1 and multistrike without even using a gem slot), but its still strong. Other strong units are Big sludge and Wickless Baron. Melted in general suffers from not being able to kill backline units, so Multistrike upgrades are a MUST. Using spells (Fatal melting or spells from your supporting clan) to kill backline units is also really important if you can't get enough multistrike. Extra tip: sticking a "stealth 2" tomb unit right behind little fade for most of her paths can be really strong, and can help keep the units behind her alive....but be careful that some weird quirk doesn't accidentally kill the tomb and NOT fade (such as a sweeper popping the tomb, but Fade was reformed so had enough health to survive)

[Gabriot]

I'd rank her paths in a general sense as the following for each secondary clan:

Hellhorned: Icarus -> Endless -> Fire Light

Awoken: Fire Light -> Icarus -> Endless

Stygian: Fire Light -> Endless -> Icarus

Umbra: Icarus -> Endless -> Firelight

Wurmkin: Endless -> Icarus -> Firelight

It all really can change depending on your starting deck/artifacts as well. Some general thoughts on her paths:

Endless: This is always a safe pick and never "wrong" as it is the least reliant on starting cards / potential cards of the 3 paths. Icarus wants ways to increase her hp, firelight wants multistrikers/sweepers/low pip units/burnout extension/wide floors. Endless just does what she does regardless of the deck. You put her down and let her die until she's at a point where she can one shot the tanks, at that point you can just sit her at the back of your main floor since you may want to stop drawing her each turn since she costs you a draw each turn and can hurt your ability to dig through your deck. Sometimes you may still want to have her keep dying though if you calculate that you'll need her damage to be at a certain amount to kill the upcoming boss.

Fire Light: Significantly stronger at the end game versus the early game, really only a risk in rings 1-3 particularly if you didn't start with burnout extension or additional reform. She shines a lot more in clans that have access to sweepers, multistrikers, or low pip units. Generally want to avoid 3+pip units since you get the most value the more units you can fit on the floor behind her. Idea is to have her die as much as possible, but also have nothing else die (don't just put down stewards on other floors or other units on other floors willy nilly, because if they die they are now in the random reform pool and can cost you the fight if you don't reform little fade when you need her). Look to pick up cards like purifying cleanse, wicklash, hallowed halls early on so that you can keep the backliners burnout high. If your entire floor ends up burning out that's gonna be gg usually.

Little Icarus: Is probably the most dependent on outside factors versus the other 2 paths, since you really want to have armor/hp increase/damage shield/heals to truly make her shine. For that reason the only hard pass for me on this path is Stygian since they really don't provide any help here aside from guardian totem which really just isn't good enough for how much armor you're going to want here. You'll want to take any mark of invasion trials to try and get as many early slays as possible, and pray that rings 1-2 at least have some clergyman involved otherwise you won't scale her too well. If you can go into ring 3 with at least 10 spikes you'll be sitting well. I often by the end of a run might end up removing all my banner units sometimes with little icarus if I have some cards like adaptive mutation that really make her bonkers. But in general similar to fire light you don't want other units dying and convoluting your reform pool.

[Limdood]

Notably, taking a splash level of Eternal flame AFTER you've started on another path can often work well for Fade.

Starting Fire light and snagging 1 eternal flame means not worrying about reforming fade, AND makes her scale more slowly (1 health each death instead of 5) but you give up on some late game scaling (+12/+5 to all units from fire light 2 vs. +20/+5 from fire light 3)

Starting little Icarus and splashing eternal flame can also work, though I'd say its a little trickier....If you ditch out of spikes after battle #3, you probably don't want to get BACK into spikes path after battle #6, so you end up with a dangerous and powerful eternal flame Fade with a fair amount of spikes, but usually not the "1 shot everything" levels of spikes that pure spike fade gets. Going spikes -> spikes -> eternal flame helps you get a LOT of spikes, but by the end of battle 6, when you'd make that final choice between spikes 3 or endless 1, you've almost certainly got your deck built to work with reforming Fade consistently every turn, and probably to take advantage of raising her health/armor....so why would you want endless? So I'd suggest going Spikes -> spikes -> spikes or Spikes -> endless -> endless. I'd never suggest starting with endless and going into spikes later.

Icarus and Fire light don't really mix at all, and I can't really think of any situation where I'd consider mixing those paths other than "i wonder if I can still win with this handicap"

[Gentlest Giant]

Originally posted by Limdood:

Icarus and Fire light don't really mix at all, and I can't really think of any situation where I'd consider mixing those paths other than "i wonder if I can still win with this handicap"

You started out with Icarus, it didn't work out as you faced chonky bois and did not end up getting the support you need to get her going fro there. Instead of doubling down on scaling you won't get much out of, you make her a useful member of society.

Alternatively, you started out as Icarus and DID make it work out really well, but the second and third level of Icarus just isn't very important as she is already able to kill all backliners. Might as well make her help her friends become useful members of society.

[iSurvivedRKelly]

I find him easily the most op. Just make sure to have at least one stack of the skill that gives him endless, even 3. I usually try and go for spikes first then 2 levels of endless gain damage/health. By the top floor he will be doing 400+ damage, put him at the back only on the final floor for bosses and gg. Rest of the time keep him bottom floor and make sure he dies every turn & gets kills with spikes preferably.

[chand3123k]

You guys are all so awesome. I'm gonna try a few runs tonight with all of your guys suggestions. Ill keep you updated if I got a covenant 25 win with Little Fade.

[Happiness Officer]

Good luck! Let us know how you get on :)

[chand3123k]

Thank you guys for all of your suggestion. I got my first 25 covenant win with Awoken as my partner clan. I think the suggestion that did it for me was making sure Little Fade always got endless and putting her behind tanks.

I beat it using the endless and Firelight combo where someone had suggested to get low pip units and fill the floor with low pip sweepers so that Little Fade can buff them all. I had no cards or relics related to increasing health or spikes. I also am not sure about this win, because I got two really busted cavern events that made the game MUCH easier.

I think the first few runs with little fade, I was hell bent on choosing Icarus each time. And I am hearing that it isn't very good, or at least don't go purely into it. So the suggestion of what upgrades to choose first, second and last was helpful. Thank you all.

[iSurvivedRKelly]

Glad to hear. When you first glance at Little Fade you think meh. But as soon as you figure it out i think he/she is the most op champion by far. But such a fun build to play with reform etc