dark avatar of the serpent (rant)

[Mr. Poopdog]

What idiot thought it was a good idea to make 1 of the bosses a dmg check? it should feel rewarding when you make it far enough into a run because of skill, not the opposite... literally an end runner where sometimes no amount of skill can help you...

[Leviathan]

It is a bit of a dps check, but not only was already nerfed (5 extra seconds is a lot) but you can use his own attacks to kill the summons or make them a lot easier to kill even without enough dps on your part.

[n3mes1s]

What do you mean with dmg check? i dont understand.

And yup, hard mode needs a nerf, or better yet, we need better gameplay mechanics and some kind of character progression at least. We are humans and it doesnt matter how good we are, we make mistakes. Problem is, in hard mode you makes two mistakes, you are almost dead, you had a perfect run for 30 minutes and you reach the last room.. and all your work through the toilet. And no way to replenish or heal or anything after that. So fun. But again, its only one of the many problems of this game. Get used to it.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

it doesnt matter how good we are, we make mistakes. Problem is, in hard mode you makes two mistakes, you are almost dead, you had a perfect run for 30 minutes and you reach the last room..

Again, that's not true. In every hardmode run I do, I also make TONS of mistakes (you can watch the video in the parry post and if that's not a ton of mistakes I don't know what it is). But if what you said were true, I wouldn't have completed hardmode. Two mistakes won't kill you most of the time. Two very bad consecutive mistakes in a perfectly wrong place (Three elite babies fight just when they're about to attack, for example) will most likely kill you. But there are tons of places in which you can make more than two mistakes without grave consequences, and also you can recover from mistakes (more below), so you can still make two very bad mistakes in a perfectly wrong place without it killing the run, given that you recover from the first one before you make the second one. So yes, you're allowed to be human and make mistakes.

With the new update you also have a lot of options to help with them, and in any run you'll find some of them. For example.

1. Heal per greed kill relic. This is a very rare relic, but helps a lot.
2. Heal per kill weapons. They're mostly easy to find, what is not easy is to get the one you want.
3. Heal per burning kill relic. This is a very common relic and you can combine it with the blessing giving fire to your nonelemental attacks or to any fire weapon. It heals three times as much per kill as the greed kill one.
4. Heal per crit relic. Very rare relic. Very broken even after nerf.
5. 10-20-30 Damage reduction from champions and bosses relic
6. No single source of damage you take can exceed 10% of max health relic. Doesn't help a lot with some multi attack enemies, it does help a lot with bosses/champions, one-big-attack enemies and elites. This is basically a relic made to help you with hardmode since very few enemies hit that hard outside it.
7. Heal per gold offering relic, it can heal a lot, it's not that good in pantheon since you want to make a lot of blood offers.
8. Heal when you pass through a door relic. It heals you up to 12% of your health everytime you pass through a door.
9. Blessing which heals 50% of your health after every non optional boss.
10. Increase healing effects relic. You can double the effect of every healing relic or blessing mentioned above. Just one of the very rare versions of this with any healing effect will do wonders.
11. Increasing gains for selling items relic. Another broken effect. If an item heals you for selling it you heal more. If it gives you stats it gives you more. If it removes corruption it removes more. It's not a rare item but if you get one you can easily have a run where you get to more than 90 of one or more stats, and you can also get up to 48 corruption reduction from some items, or a lot of divine favors. I think I got one of these in my first Ordeal win. It made the run feel really easy and it was one of the reasons it took me so much effort to beat Revelation after beating Ordeal so easily.
12. Revival cursed relics. Definitely rare, but when you find one, you take it and that can save you. In my first Clovis Challenge win I got two of those and used both of them against Clovis.
13. Cursed weapons+elemental attacks. Cursed weapons can double other weapons affixes, they often have a 2% healing per kill effect, they interact very well with elemental effects, lighting in particular. Usually not worth keeping but some of them work very well with the appropriate affixes. The heal per damage heavy weapon is also very useful for healing against big groups of enemies. Few things can top a main weapon with very good affixes plus a cursed secondary weapon doubling them.
14. Shields in general. They make parrying easier, the charged attack charges fast and interrupts enemy attacks. Also cursed shields are great: Every attack from the golem shield will interrupt enemy attacks so you can interrupt literally anything. You can even stunlock some bosses if you're lucky.
15. Corruption reduction effects. You can use healing rooms without many worries if your corruption is low.
16. Curses: Headless (if you get it early enough), dark torch (removes the extra damage from darkness), Bloodlust (unless you already have lots of healing), Mortal Harvest, healing for a 300 gold fee after door curse.

So, all of those will help you in hardmode so that you are allowed to make a lot of mistakes. But you don't need all of those, just a few will be enough to help you. Some of them (11) will only start being useful after a while, which is still fine since mistakes only get really punishing close to the end of the run.

[deadliftdead]

Hard mode doesn't need a nerf. You need to get better. Dead Cells has Boss Cells, Hades has Heat, every rogue-like worth anything has a difficulty progression mechanic; for CotDG it's later explorations. If it's too much for you, reduce the heat, remove the boss cells or play earlier explorations. Or bash your head against that difficulty barrier until you overcome it.

As for the Serpent Avatar, he is a DPS check. It is extremely frustrating when you cannot get rid his summons in time. Knowing this, whenever I go through the Serpent temple on my runs I check my kill speed against serpent cultists and focus on getting more damage buffs if lacking.

One thing I abhor about this fight, is that his summons can summon vermin or shadowbats upon death. I hope that gets nerfed.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by deadliftdead:

Dead Cells has Boss Cells

I love current 5BC :D . It's completely crazy and I love that. I loved the previous update more but I get why they nerfed it lol.

Originally posted by deadliftdead:

One thing I abhor about this fight, is that his summons can summon vermin or shadowbats upon death. I hope that gets nerfed.

I mean it's not that bad, it's just really annoying.

Also vermin curse can help a lot with serpent avatar too lol

[deadliftdead]

That's true, more often than not, the vermin explosions help. But bats are always a nuisance, espescially if you use a slow weapon like two-handed or spears, where bats can interrupt your combos.

I haven't played the last few DC updates yet, but I'll give them a try, now that you've recommended them.

[n3mes1s]

Blah, fanboys will be always fanboys lol. You can keep trying defending this game all you want, the true fact is that its completely dumb. The design is terrible, boring, character fullfillement is ZERO, hard mode is completely disgusting, rng is extreme for no reason, we have currencies in the game that have ZERO purpose, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

And i dont know what games you played but, sure let the enemies hit you three or four times in the last room. Lets see how good you keep that up. Do you guys know how many runs i tried to find crit healing, just to give you an example? more than 30 runs, of course i had to re-enter and exit more than ten times a run to be able to find a proper main weapon on the main room (because its completely absurd that you need to do that to "re-roll" the rng weapons at the start).

Until then, i never EVER found a single one. And this applies more or less to basically every single useful relic around. Not to mention, builds for my weapons. I had to wait for ten runs to have luck and find a 30% poison boost, fire or whatever, until i could build an effective build on my main weapon. Because apparently in hard mode, main weapons are completely USELESS unless you have a fire/poison/lighting build on them. This game is pretty beautiful on paper and on normal mode to a point, in hard mode is when you start to realize how bad the design is, and how badly the game needs improvements to make it actually fun.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Blah, fanboys will be always fanboys lol. You can keep trying defending this game all you want, the true fact is that its completely dumb. The design is terrible, boring, character fullfillement is ZERO, hard mode is completely disgusting, rng is extreme for no reason, we have currencies in the game that have ZERO purpose, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Right now you look like the guy who was complaining about tank mode controls in the game.
"The design is terrible, boring" Because you say so? You've been arguing about presumed flaws in design and have been refuted. So, while the game has its flaws, it's not terrible design as you state.

"character fullfillement is ZERO" Because you didn't bother filling the codex and reading it?

"hard mode is completely disgusting" Because... you say so?

" rng is extreme for no reason" rng is one of the flaws in the game. Is it extreme? No.

"we have currencies in the game that have ZERO purpose" It has the purpose of putting a limit on progression. It eventually loses its purpose when you unlock everything, but that's normal for this kind of games. Think of it as a score. Score in... Super Mario Bros has no use at all, it's there still and it's fine.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

And i dont know what games you played but, sure let the enemies hit you three or four times in the last room. Lets see how good you keep that up. \

Done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn22o4j-jig
Last room is last 3-4 fights before serpent boss. I count at least three hits.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Do you guys know how many runs i tried to find crit healing,

Do not TRY to find crit healing. Do not try to find any of the stuff which helps in hardmode. Some of it will appear, and you adapt to it.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

just to give you an example? more than 30 runs, of course i had to re-enter and exit more than ten times a run to be able to find a proper main weapon on the main room (because its completely absurd that you need to do that to "re-roll" the rng weapons at the start).

I guess I understand why you're not having fun. You don't need to reroll the weapons at the start. While I agree that you should be able to do it more easily if you focus on it so much it will get boring. But you still don't need to. If you get good weapons that's fine, but otherwise there is a reason there are weapon rooms in the temple. Weapon rooms will always have a guaranteed very rare or cursed weapon, and those you can reroll easily.

And any set of initial weapons will be enough to go through the temple until the first boss.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Until then, i never EVER found a single one.

That must be a complete exaggeration, or the unluckiest person I've seen ever. Crit per heal wasn't even very rare before the update.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

And this applies more or less to basically every single useful relic around. Not to mention, builds for my weapons. I had to wait for ten runs to have luck and find a 30% poison boost, fire or whatever, until i could build an effective build on my main weapon.

Yeah that's your issue for two reasons. First. Most of the relics I mentioned above are not very rare only. Second, The issue that arises when you wait until you get the right weapon at the start is that you aren't guaranteed to get relics that support that weapon the best way. What you do is... if items aren't helping your weapon, you change it. That's a reason there are weapon rooms in the temples.

That said, effects which increase elemental damage are easy to find, so I don't know what kind of unluck are you having.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Because apparently in hard mode, main weapons are completely USELESS unless you have a fire/poison/lighting build on them.

Not at all. Elemental weapons are good, but you also have stuff like
1. Claws. The ones which crit after perfect dodge are nice, and the ones which scale with constitution are broken.
2. Maces. I didn't like them before. The one which crits in finisher is great, and the one which illuminates is great too since you won't take extra darkness damage while using it. Forge hammer is good if you mix it with something which causes fire, for example the blessing which turns nonelemental attacks into fire attacks. It's guaranteed crits and you can also use the heal per burning kill relic with it. That relic comes in all rarities so it's easy to get it.
3. Swords. The Crit when only one enemy is really good since it's guaranteed crits against bosses. I didn't like the one which has critical charged attacks, but now that I know that you can mix them into combos, it's nice. The one which doesn't spend stamina in the finisher is nice since then you can avoid relying so much in parrying to keep attacking. I still don't like the wind one.
4. Throwing weapons. I don't like them overall, but the ones with 100% damage against weakened enemies is very strong.

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

This game is pretty beautiful on paper and on normal mode to a point, in hard mode is when you start to realize how bad the design is, and how badly the game needs improvements to make it actually fun.

That's what you think. Should you justify it appropiately, it might become what I think, too.

[Spitfire]

whatever the offtopic is....
dps-check doesnt belong here. in nearly every game with that it sucks if its not part of the game straight up. throwing in one of these bosses, like they did, quite ruins it. ive beaten it many times, but for some playthroughs that doesnt have much dps luck or focus it simply sucks.

[Leviathan]

Originally posted by Spitfire:

whatever the offtopic is....
dps-check doesnt belong here. in nearly every game with that it sucks if its not part of the game straight up. throwing in one of these bosses, like they did, quite ruins it. ive beaten it many times, but for some playthroughs that doesnt have much dps luck or focus it simply sucks.

Dunno. but after the first time I fought it, where it just healed and was annoying, it just stopped being so. It's not hard to get enough dps to beat it; you just position yourself so that the boss hurts the summons, which lowers A LOT the requirement for dps. It's not even that high right now. I remember having beaten it consistently with low dps builds even if I don't cause a lot of damage between summons.