First, and likely easiest, Extremer Measures run

[Manxome]

Did my first run with level 4 Extreme Measures, and I suspect this is also the easiest time I'll have fighting the enhanced final boss for quite some time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2250045715

For most boons, powering them up to level 9 would be a waste, due to sharply diminishing returns...but hangover continues adding at least 1 damage per tick per level with seemingly no upper limit (presumably because they didn't want to go fractional). I didn't take an empirical measurement, but if everything there interacts like I'd expect, it looks like this hangover caps out at ~300 dps.

14 damage * 5 stacks / 0.35 sec interval = 200 dps base damage
+12% strong drink, +15% blood frenzy, +25% family favorite: 200 * 1.52 = 304 dps
(or exactly 300 dps if damage is rounded down on each individual tick of each individual stack)

The Twin Fists of Malphon have a fast 5-hit combo, which makes getting to max stacks easy, and Hermes is making it even faster than normal with an epic Swift Strike boon (+30% attack speed). Only need to get close occasionally to renew the hangover. Those swift hits are also triggering Support Fire (epic, Lv2) for an extra 16-damage arrow attached to each 15-damage punch.

So including the hangover (and assuming I wait for its full effect before attacking again), my 5-hit combo (with +30% attack speed) effectively deals ~1400 damage. (That's assuming the hangover ticks 11 times in its 4-second duration and that the last almost-tick is wasted.)

In between applications, I can stand back and pummel the boss with rapid-fire Phalanx Shots (epic, ~120 base damage) because I'm using Stygian Blood (regenerate bloodstones every 3 sec instead of retrieving them) augmented with Fully Loaded (Artemis' legendary boon) for +2 bloodstones, allowing me to cast 3 times every 3 seconds. (Sadly, I didn't get Exit Wounds to combo with that. Had to choose between Exit Wounds and Fully Loaded on my last Artemis boon.)

There's also a Pressure Points boon in there adding a 3% crit chance (not included in any of the damage numbers above).

As for my defense:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2250062632

The Lambent Plume is providing 32.7% dodge chance and move speed, and then Aspect of Zagreus gives another 15% dodge chance. Not sure if those add (as implied by the plus signs) or apply successively, but pessimistically that's still a combined dodge chance of 42.8%, effectively extending my life bar by about 75%.

Though, honestly, that barely makes up for my bizarrely low max HP. Usually my max life would be in the high 200's at least (I recently had a run with over 400).

Epic Greatest Reflex lets me dash 5 times in a row, which was awfully handy for the successive large-AoE hits in a pattern I hadn't faced before. ("Oops, he's got another follow-up attack after that one. Guess I'll keep dashing!") Shame I didn't get a dash boon that would do something passively during all those dashes, but oh well.

My close-in combos to apply hangover are very short, but if he manages to hit me during that time anyway, I've got 30% damage reduction from Sturdy (and my combo won't be interrupted).

Positive Outlook (damage reduction below 40% health) applies more often than you'd think at first blush, because Death Defiance only restores you to 50%; with 3 revives, "below 40%" applies to roughly 64% of your combined health bars. (And the percentage of attacks may be even higher, since your health goes down slower during the times when the damage reduction applies.)

Any enemy projectiles that make it past my Phalanx Shots also move 40% slower, due to Calculated Risk. (Yes, I have 2 duo boons plus a legendary: Curse of Nausea, Calculated Risk, and Fully Loaded.)

For the record, I started the fight at full health and with all 3 death defiance, which means I suffered 233 damage (plus any overkill on the hits that triggered my revives). Considering it was my first time seeing all the new attack patterns, I feel fairly good about that. (My summon also would have provided some healing--which combos great with all the dodge chance and damage reduction--but I didn't use it before the fight ended.)

[Medicles]

What is the purpose of this thread? It doesnt do anything to tell us your build when its basically impossible to copy, so what exactly is this here?

[it's love]

Originally posted by Medicles:

What is the purpose of this thread? It doesnt do anything to tell us your build when its basically impossible to copy, so what exactly is this here?

Man just wanted to brag I guess

[Medicles]

Originally posted by Crazed Rabbit:

Originally posted by Medicles:

What is the purpose of this thread? It doesnt do anything to tell us your build when its basically impossible to copy, so what exactly is this here?

Man just wanted to brag I guess

Seems so.

[Shamanalah]

I mean you have 5 dash.

Anytime I get 5 dash it's insta-win.

[Robin]

Your math is off by factor of 5 though. You already assume 5 stacks when doing the base dps hangover calculations. But then you multiply by 5 again when you do the 5-hit combo calculation.

I mean don't get me wrong, I find hangover one of the funnest and easiest to win with mechanics and even at 300 damage per 5 stack it's still quite good imo, but let's not exagerate (unless I'm making a mistake somewhere).

But congrats on doing a 4 exrtreme measures! First (and only) time I tried it it was quite the rush :)

[Manxome]

Originally posted by Medicles:

What is the purpose of this thread? It doesnt do anything to tell us your build when its basically impossible to copy, so what exactly is this here?

This is the discussion forum, not the guides area. It is not my job to help you win.

But if you want stuff to copy, there's actually plenty in there. You probably can't replicate the entire build, but there are individual pieces that are useful on their own and entirely plausible to aim for:

- You can get hangover on a rapid-fire attack, pom it up, and look for global damage multipliers / seek out the prerequisites for a chance at Curse of Nausea. (You can't get a specific duo boon every run, but you can dramatically increase your odds by paying attention to the prerequisites and using Fated Persuasion rerolls. In this run, I took Curse of Vengeance specifically to qualify for Curse of Nausea, and it paid off.)

- You can equip Stygian Soul, get any good cast, and look for bonuses to your bloodstone count (in addition to Fully Loaded, you can get them from chaos boons and well items)

- You can equip a cumulative keepsake (Lambent Plume or Pierced Butterfly) for an entire run and focus on building up its bonus

- You can slowly build up a mental list of random things that happen to synergize with each other, so that if you happen to get an opportunity to combine them, you remember to take it instead of letting it pass by (a big part of getting good builds in this game is being able to recognize whatever opportunities you happen to get offered)

[Manxome]

Originally posted by Robin:

Your math is off by factor of 5 though. You already assume 5 stacks when doing the base dps hangover calculations. But then you multiply by 5 again when you do the 5-hit combo calculation.

No, the extra multiple in the combo calculation is from the fact that I am calculating the damage for the entire hangover duration instead of the per-second damage. So that's ~1400 damage over ~4 seconds, of which ~1200 is from the hangover doing 300 dps and the rest is from the Support Fire and the actual punches.

[Shamanalah]

Or you can have a totally different build and do it.

Your point is kinda moot. I did it with the bow and was carried hard. You had a 37 winning streak, you obviously completed and played the game a lot.

You probably have the mirror upgrade that gives more chance for duo and legend than I do. The more you play the easier the game become with all the unlock.

IDK why you made the thread. It's not even giving helpful advice just analysing your build for whatever reason.

Bump the heat to 50 then it's gonna be a nice talk.

[Medicles]

Originally posted by Manxome:

Originally posted by Medicles:

What is the purpose of this thread? It doesnt do anything to tell us your build when its basically impossible to copy, so what exactly is this here?

This is the discussion forum, not the guides area. It is not my job to help you win.

But if you want stuff to copy, there's actually plenty in there. You probably can't replicate the entire build, but there are individual pieces that are useful on their own and entirely plausible to aim for:

- You can get hangover on a rapid-fire attack, pom it up, and look for global damage multipliers / seek out the prerequisites for a chance at Curse of Nausea. (You can't get a specific duo boon every run, but you can dramatically increase your odds by paying attention to the prerequisites and using Fated Persuasion rerolls. In this run, I took Curse of Vengeance specifically to qualify for Curse of Nausea, and it paid off.)

- You can equip Stygian Soul, get any good cast, and look for bonuses to your bloodstone count (in addition to Fully Loaded, you can get them from chaos boons and well items)

- You can equip a cumulative keepsake (Lambent Plume or Pierced Butterfly) for an entire run and focus on building up its bonus

- You can slowly build up a mental list of random things that happen to synergize with each other, so that if you happen to get an opportunity to combine them, you remember to take it instead of letting it pass by (a big part of getting good builds in this game is being able to recognize whatever opportunities you happen to get offered)

Exactly, its a forum for discussions and you are not giving anything to discuss. You just told us your build and what you were able to do with it. Congratulations, i guess. What exactly are we suppose to discuss here?

You are saying that its not a guide, yet you try to give me advice on how to play, which is certainly not needed, since the game is simple enough.

Ohhhh, i can equip cumulative keepsakes to help me during the run? You dont say, i would have never guessed that. And status effects being efficient with rapid-fire attacks? Man, what would i do without you man, thats brilliant. Its not like i have done this for more than 20 years in other games, noooooo, you are the one who is giving me the most important informations about video-games right here.

[Manxome]

Originally posted by Medicles:

you try to give me advice on how to play, which is certainly not needed, since the game is simple enough.

You complain that there's no advice, and then you complain that there's advice.

I get the distinct impression that you're actually upset about something else. I don't know if you're having a bad day or what, but I suggest we drop this topic.

[Robin]

Originally posted by Manxome:

Originally posted by Robin:

Your math is off by factor of 5 though. You already assume 5 stacks when doing the base dps hangover calculations. But then you multiply by 5 again when you do the 5-hit combo calculation.

No, the extra multiple in the combo calculation is from the fact that I am calculating the damage for the entire hangover duration instead of the per-second damage. So that's ~1400 damage over ~4 seconds, of which ~1200 is from the hangover doing 300 dps and the rest is from the Support Fire and the actual punches.

Ah I see. Btw why do you use a 0.35 second interval instead of the in-game stated 0.5 interval? From what I can tell you get a bit over 650 hangover dps over the full duration, but I don't think you're really getting to 1200.

[Morphic]

Cool Story Bro.

Realistically speaking, this basically just a flex post of "See how great I am/did!". The only thing people can glean from this is that Hangover is good and doesn't suffer from exponential diminishing returns since it will always increase tick damage by 1. Which, most people playing more than ~20 hours, will realize Hangover is good.(Tho I doubt they would have 9 Pom'ed it, so that's a neat tidbit)

RNG being RNG, I feel your build had such an easy going time due to Rarity. Like Shamanalah said, you had 5 Dashes which is nearly a win condition all to itself. The 2 Duos plus a Legendary and the Epics are icing on the cake really.

Also I'm not sure how you calculate Dodge Chance when you said "pessimistically that's 42.8%". As if it is multiplicative(most Rogue-likes do this) then there's a couple of different ways the game might handle it. E.g. if the game considers 15% Dodge the base then it'd be 15 x 0.327 = 4.905(32.7% of 15%) so it'd be 15% + 4.9% = Combined it would be 19.9% Dodge Chance. If it considers the 32.7% the base, then it'd be 37.6% Dodge. Whereas if it handled additively it would be a total of 47.7% Dodge Chance. Which I am inclined to believe the game handles all percentages by straight addition since that is seemingly how other percentage based boons are handled.

So pessimistically your Dodge Chance would be 19.9%, which is a massive difference. Optimistically your Dodge Chance would by 47.7%, which would nearly double your EHP.(but statistics and all that)

Basically, your post can be summarized as "Higher rarity boons make a big difference, Fists are good, Hangover provides great passive DPS, Dodge Chance improves survivability, Dashes are OP and I beat the hardest boss no sweat.". Congrats on the win though.

[Bravo]

Originally posted by Robin:

Originally posted by Manxome:

No, the extra multiple in the combo calculation is from the fact that I am calculating the damage for the entire hangover duration instead of the per-second damage. So that's ~1400 damage over ~4 seconds, of which ~1200 is from the hangover doing 300 dps and the rest is from the Support Fire and the actual punches.

Ah I see. Btw why do you use a 0.35 second interval instead of the in-game stated 0.5 interval? From what I can tell you get a bit over 650 hangover dps over the full duration, but I don't think you're really getting to 1200.

Curse of Nausea, duo ares/dionysus boon reduces that time from 0.5s to 0.35

[Manxome]

Originally posted by Robin:

why do you use a 0.35 second interval instead of the in-game stated 0.5 interval? From what I can tell you get a bit over 650 hangover dps over the full duration, but I don't think you're really getting to 1200.

The duo boon Curse of Nausea reduces the damage interval (see the first screenshot).

And it's not quite 1200. Guess I should've shown my work:

4 seconds / 0.35 interval = 11.43 ticks in the full duration, but I assumed that only 11 of those would get used and the extra partial tick would be wasted.

14 damage per tick * 11 ticks * 5 stacks * 1.52 global damage multiplier = 1170.4 damage

But depending on how the game handles rounding, it might only be 1155. (If you apply the damage bonus to the per-tick damage and then round down before multiplying by stacks or ticks.)

I should also note that I am including the +15% damage from blood frenzy, which only applies after my first revive.

Originally posted by Morphic:

Also I'm not sure how you calculate Dodge Chance when you said "pessimistically that's 42.8%". As if it is multiplicative(most Rogue-likes do this) then there's a couple of different ways the game might handle it. E.g. if the game considers 15% Dodge the base then it'd be 15 x 0.327 = 4.905(32.7% of 15%) so it'd be 15% + 4.9% = Combined it would be 19.9% Dodge Chance. If it considers the 32.7% the base, then it'd be 37.6% Dodge. Whereas if it handled additively it would be a total of 47.7% Dodge Chance. Which I am inclined to believe the game handles all percentages by straight addition since that is seemingly how other percentage based boons are handled.

Sanity check: No reasonable implementation is going to give a combined dodge chance that is lower than any of the individual dodge chances. 32.7% dodge chance plus anything is not going to be 19.9%.

There are two common ways for games to stack bonuses of this nature. One is to add the individual effects together and then apply their sum to the base effect. For example, 20% dodge plus 10% dodge might equal 30% dodge.

The other is to apply the two effects sequentially. First, you have a 20% chance to dodge; then, you get a separate 10% chance to dodge (which only matters if the first dodge failed). This is equivalent to multiplying the failure chances: 0.8 probability to get hit, times 0.9 probability to get hit, equals 0.72 probability to get hit, which is equivalent to a 28% dodge chance. (Sanity check: higher than each of the individual chances, but lower than the sum.)

So in my particular run, the math was
1 - (1 - 0.15)*(1 - 0.327)
= 1 - (0.85 * 0.673)
= 1 - 0.57205
= 0.42795, which I rounded to 42.8%

Notice that for modifiers that increase the base value of something (e.g. damage bonus), the multiplicative method results in a stronger combined effect, but for modifiers that reduce the base value of something (e.g. damage reduction), the additive method results in a stronger combined effect. (And in particular, adding up reductions implied that you could eventually reduce something all the way to zero--e.g. get 100% dodge.)

According to the wiki[hades.gamepedia.com], all damage bonuses in the game are additive (except for critical hits), but all damage reduction in the game is multiplicative. (That is, it always uses the method that gives the weaker combined effect.) It doesn't specifically mention dodge chance, but if I had to guess, I'd say it probably works like damage reduction.

This is a reasonably common approach for a game to take, as a strategy for limiting extreme effects. (Though it is by no means universal, and some famous games have been known to use different rules for damage reduction and dodge/block chance for no clear reason.)

Originally posted by Morphic:

Realistically speaking, this basically just a flex post of "See how great I am/did!"

I am fielding a surprising number of technical questions for a post that people keep claiming has no informative content.

[All talk and no fight]

OP, I don't know if you like taking your runs slow but those best times are pretty slow, If you want to move as fast as sonic forget about the poms, centaur hearts max life means you can outlast the final boss dealing way more damage to him than he can do to you. I see you use the flipside of Boiling blood, thats only a 25% damage reduction from enemies whereas you could be dealing 50% more damage to them!
I don't know why I'm telling you this you probably found your favorite way to play