Olympus difficulty

[TKoS]

I'd like to give some feedback on the new zone, olympus and I'd like to say that I really appreciate the new olympian boons and the overall game flow, way better than july.

About the new zone, the overall damage dealt by enemies is a bit "off-board": yeah, we must get used to their patterns, but a Satyr dealing 30 damage with a rocket or a bomb or the guardians dealing 16 damage per shot may be heavy to deal with. The mid boss can consistenly provide 22 damage hit or more, and one after one other.
The most frustrating thing is that most of these attacks, and this is true for prometheus too, staggers you for "quite some time", and this mean that you will be hit by the whole attack sequence with no dash available: just now prometheus threw his punches and it was a 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 unavoidable because each hit would stagger me a bit (and the satyrs around dealing 30 damage x rocket in opens space).

I'm sure that one should get used to the patters, but as happened for the first chronos (that was an almost unbeatable continous streak of attacks and summonings), maybe you are givin us way too much to deal with (counting that Carybdis and Eris can easily take 1-2 death defiance aways due to a slip of the finger or a lack of concentration).

Maybe it's me, but olympus may be a bit too punishing now.

Last but not least: can you provide a way to "spend" the green water and the cinders? Got tons of them and they are useless now.

[Neo NiGHTS ®]

No, it's not just you. There's been a few topics on that already. I myself have made one :p

But, until there's another update, it's just like you said: getting used to it.
And, in the end, once you get used, it isn't too hard, but it's still very punishment. So while you manage to have everything under control, it's as easy/hard as any other stage. But if you do mess up, yes, expect some heavy punishing.
(a tip: hammer upgrades that help destroy armor is your friend)


As for excessive stuff, you can now sell them at the broker.

[Specific Beef]

As you say, it's mostly about getting used to it. You probably remember learning the telegraphs of the nastiest enemy moves in the underworld, and by now you've learned to see the telegraphs themselves in advance.

It's the same with the surface, but it just takes time. It has to be punishing if you mess up, because this is an assault on the home of the gods. The player has to feel like it's a serious proposition and you're not getting through without care.

[MONGREL INTRUDER]

2 things to add:

1st: i am pretty set on some of the things being bugs, like the high damage bullets stunlocking mel - there's no way this is intentional it has no counterplay. another example is the dracon flame waves just going through walls, surely a bug prayge, these of course inflate the difficulty

2nd: my other theory is that supergiant made the overworld tougher to balance all the extra help mel gets. we have our normal ally free rooms but also have the help from athena, artemis, icarus, more boons from hermes delivery and less dud resource rooms, and possibly more in the 4th area, so they found the enemies needed to be tougher to compensate

[Crow Buddy]

First, find a weapon that you love using. The whole thing is gonna hinge on that. For me, that's the Moonstone axe. Others would say the rest of Mel's weapons are just as viable, the Black Coat (you may not have unlocked yet) but it's basically speedy cheat codes for Mel with auto-lock-on missiles.

Next, upgrade your arcana abilities, upgrade the weapon you like (if you can), and take Hecate's Silver Wheel keepsake.

You'll want as many Death Defiances as possible, make sure to have at least 1 or 2, Frinos also gives you a health bump, so take him.

Lean into learning your weapon and get very comfy with it. Make sure you practice Casting, and the charged version, the omega Cast. You're gonna be doing that a lot. Every time the cool down is available, you should try to land your Cast.

Start with 0 fear, just do normal clears. Don't try to beat Prometheus at first, I mean if you can, that's awesome, but just focus on each boss, one by one. Pay attention to their patterns and skills. Hecate's Silver Wheel will help you slow down time so you can take a closer look at their attacks.

Eris, in particular, with her speed, can be tricky. Use the Cast abilities to kite her around and try to blast her through the pillars in the arena. Hide behind the pillars when she's loaded her weapon, advance and attack while she's reloading.

If you can get crowd control boons, like Demeter's Freeze, that's ideal. Letting all the enemies go nuts and attack at full-speed is a great way to take chip damage. CC'ing monsters is key, that's why the Cast ability is so important.

Personally, I like Selene's Hexes a lot. I think they help supplement Mel's damage and crowd control on the surface a great deal. Dark Side is excellent for a new player, because Mel is invulnerable, so you can make mistakes and not be punished.

You're gonna take damage on the Surface, it's just gonna happen. Try not to sweat getting beaten up a little, as long as you can use a Fountain to recover most of Mel's HP. Taking a little bit of incidental damage so you can finish off a boss or a powerful minion is often worth it.

[Super Buu]

It took me four attempts to beat the new area. I am generally quite good at these games, I bodied the original Chrinks (My nickname for Chronos.) so hard that I didn't even realize other people thought he was difficult until I read abut it.
That is to say, it should not have taken me four attempts. This place is over tuned.

[WhyNotZoidberg]

It's definitely not "just getting used to it", many creatures can fire offscreen with immensly overtuned chain attacks or 60 dmg attacks and are arithmetically just much, much stronger than anything in else you can encounter compared to the underworld. Overall, olympus feels unnecessarily overtuned and punishing. And if one attack potentially costs you a DD, then it's not just needing to learn the patterns.

Also, there's a lot of cheap encounters, e.g. the random eagle drop, that dashes immediately out of the short cutscene when entering over the entire screen, hitting you immediately. Quite a few of these things are a problem, they are only found in olympus and many appear like nobody thought what they were doing when implementing it.

Olympus feels really badly balanced and waaaay overtuned compared to anything else in the game. I can beat eris no hit with almost any weapon if I try hard enough, but olympus feels like you can't even avoid certain hits because of their area, feeling like they are almost homing in and potentiall being launched off screen.

So yeah, I agree, Olympus is really overtuned and needs an urgent touch up to be fun.

[Jerac]

Dunno. To me, once I started to reliably clear Chronos, it wasn't too bad to finish Olympus either? There were some definitely "oof" moments, but somehow the game keeps throwing hearts at Melinoe on Olympus path for me. Maybe I am just lucky, but 2 death defiances + 300 health does give a lot of breathing room. I even failed every single uberattack puzzle from the final Olympus boss and still survived; with 7 hp but did!

I was using the skull weapon which really wasn't optimized for damage, altough it was kinda safe.

Anyway for me it makes at lot of sense for the other path to be harder than the first one, considering the player has already learned a lot of the game.

[Fire walk with me]

Very likely overtuned regardless at this time and will be balanced in a future patch. Newest content always takes some time to find equilibrium.

I will say for arcana strength is a beast. I was a death defiance purist for a long time, but at 32 fear and above I just couldn't hang without the additional dmg reduction and dps output.

Dodge is far more useful than may players maybe realize as well. Wispy wiles is insane in a stacked Zeus build.

Good luck.