Keter realization is way too hard

[ebola]

I just finished the game, and I gotta say I don't enjoy the second and final Keter realization fights. All of the fights after the realization are fine but the Heart of Aspiration and Silent Girl are way too hard. I get that the gimmick for the Heart fight is to use Learn on C when she's using her block counter dice to get cheesy staggers, but without doing that it feels like the fight is just impossible. And the only way I got through the Silent Girl fight is by blitzing the boss in her 2nd phase through her 9 protection with a lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Slash power stacking. Even then I failed to kill her five times before I was able to do it. In hindsight maybe I could have beaten Silent Girl by abusing Learn on the two tentacles in the back, but because they respawn anyway it seems hopeless.

I think the Heart fight would be better if the amount of strength the boss gets wasn't always a lot more than you could reasonably hope to win against, no matter what you do. That, or if it didn't heal massively after hitting you with its attacks. I think the Silent Girl fight would be better if the minions in phase 2 didn't respawn, since they're already extremely hard to kill, and you start off with a time limit. The devs are good with balance on the other fights, so just in general I think these two phases should get looked at.

[DoT]

heart of aspiration can be cheesed the same way you can cheese yan in like 3 turns, without the cheese, heart of aspiration is not fun to fight

[Flygoniaks]

So, here's something interesting you might not be aware of. It seems they made a few small changes to the Keter Realization this update.

I happened to be playing the Keter realization before this week's update, and went to bed before completing the Remorse phase. When I got up yesterday, I found that there were a few changes to the last phase that made it slightly easier to deal with/build around:

• One of the dice effects was changed to "[on hit] reduce cost of target's 'Guilt' by 1" (previously it was "on clash win"). This makes it easier because it comes immediately after a dice with the effect "[on clash win] destroy target's next die."
  
• The dice with the effect "[on hit] increase cost of target's 'Guilt' by 2" got moved from the second die of the page to the first (or, the block die preceding it was removed). This is easier since beating a 7-13 roll is a lot simpler if it's the first die.

There might have been more changes, but these are the ones I noticed having played the old version of the phase the day prior. Honestly, these aren't very big changes in terms of the overall difficulty, but they definitely make it easier to do without very specific builds.

I don't know for sure, but I've heard they also made the Aspiration phase just a little more bearable, apparently by adding ways to reduce "Hankering." Honestly, I was able to beat Aspiration with only a little bit of cheesing (no "Learn" strats or anything), and Remorse was the only phase I had a lot of trouble with, but I know a lot of people would appreciate this.

I guess I should give my opinion on this as well. Personally, I think the Keter realization should be hard, since you have to beat ALL of the floor realizations to unlock it. It's the final challenge, and it deserves a difficulty worthy of that. So I think the difficulty is mostly fine where it stands now (you can disagree if you want, of course).

However, I've noticed a pattern with Aspiration and Remorse in that people have a lot of difficulty doing these phases the intended way and would rather just cheese them since it's much easier that way. That's a sign that they might have made a few mistakes here and there, and in this case, I think it's OK to make these fights a little bit more reasonable so players are encouraged to do them in the way they were supposed to be done.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

So, here's something interesting you might not be aware of. It seems they made a few small changes to the Keter Realization this update.

I happened to be playing the Keter realization before this week's update, and went to bed before completing the Remorse phase. When I got up yesterday, I found that there were a few changes to the last phase that made it slightly easier to deal with/build around:

• One of the dice effects was changed to "[on hit] reduce cost of target's 'Guilt' by 1" (previously it was "on clash win"). This makes it easier because it comes immediately after a dice with the effect "[on clash win] destroy target's next die."
  
• The dice with the effect "[on hit] increase cost of target's 'Guilt' by 2" got moved from the second die of the page to the first (or, the block die preceding it was removed). This is easier since beating a 7-13 roll is a lot simpler if it's the first die.

There might have been more changes, but these are the ones I noticed having played the old version of the phase the day prior. Honestly, these aren't very big changes in terms of the overall difficulty, but they definitely make it easier to do without very specific builds.

I don't know for sure, but I've heard they also made the Aspiration phase just a little more bearable, apparently by adding ways to reduce "Hankering." Honestly, I was able to beat Aspiration with only a little bit of cheesing (no "Learn" strats or anything), and Remorse was the only phase I had a lot of trouble with, but I know a lot of people would appreciate this.

I guess I should give my opinion on this as well. Personally, I think the Keter realization should be hard, since you have to beat ALL of the floor realizations to unlock it. It's the final challenge, and it deserves a difficulty worthy of that. So I think the difficulty is mostly fine where it stands now (you can disagree if you want, of course).

However, I've noticed a pattern with Aspiration and Remorse in that people have a lot of difficulty doing these phases the intended way and would rather just cheese them since it's much easier that way. That's a sign that they might have made a few mistakes here and there, and in this case, I think it's OK to make these fights a little bit more reasonable so players are encouraged to do them in the way they were supposed to be done.

At least its not a gauntlet through each abnormality like the other realizations.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Whisper:

At least its not a gauntlet through each abnormality like the other realizations.

Yeah, that's another reason why I think the difficulty is OK. You can adjust your builds for each phase if you're really having trouble, rather than doing them back-to-back.

[ebola]

Just because you can adjust your builds each phase doesn't mean it has to be insanely hard. What I dislike about it isn't that it's hard, but that specifically it's way harder than the content after it. You are also almost required to take all of the pages off of the teams you JUST MADE for the Reverb Ensemble and put them on Keter, then take them off again to put onto five more teams... I spent more time making decks than actually fighting the Reverb 2ndsemble.

[(● ◡ ●)]

Against SG you can always grab pluto and just spam mass with light regen on angela besides others like yan etc.

[none]

Originally posted by (● ◡ ●):

Against SG you can always grab pluto and just spam mass with light regen on angela besides others like yan etc.

isn't that dangerous? or is the light contract bug got fixed recently?

[Starakira]

I only find it challenging the first time. I still find Apocalypse Bird more challenging than Keter and required me to use my strongest pages to beat (5+ tries for this). I didn't even cheese any of the fights in Keter realization. I beat the Heart normally by going I am fire, burn those who dare to care for me and spam mass attacks every turn and if things go wrong, I can just sacrifice a Nugget to redirect all the Heart's attack. If you cheese the Heart it will become even easier. It took me 2 tries to beat the Heart and 3 tries to figure out the Queen's puzzle. The last fight only needed first try. If you already know how the mechanic works, the fights actually are really easy. I also didn't have to rip my entire library, so I still can face the Ensemble after that. Maybe it's just you who haven't quite figure out the solid strategy just yet.

[none]

Originally posted by Starakira:

I only find it challenging the first time. I still find Apocalypse Bird more challenging than Keter and required me to use my strongest pages to beat (5+ tries for this). I didn't even cheese any of the fights in Keter realization. I beat the Heart normally by going I am fire, burn those who dare to care for me and spam mass attacks every turn and if things go wrong, I can just sacrifice a Nugget to redirect all the Heart's attack. If you cheese the Heart it will become even easier. It took me 2 tries to beat the Heart and 3 tries to figure out the Queen's puzzle. The last fight only needed first try. If you already know how the mechanic works, the fights actually are really easy. I also didn't have to rip my entire library, so I still can face the Ensemble after that. Maybe it's just you who haven't quite figure out the solid strategy just yet.

well, the burning power build is actually an optimal strategy for 3 out of 5 fight (Heart, Pinocchio, and SG) so it is quite easy to do the realization using that way if other people want to.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Starakira:

I only find it challenging the first time. I still find Apocalypse Bird more challenging than Keter and required me to use my strongest pages to beat (5+ tries for this). I didn't even cheese any of the fights in Keter realization. I beat the Heart normally by going I am fire, burn those who dare to care for me and spam mass attacks every turn and if things go wrong, I can just sacrifice a Nugget to redirect all the Heart's attack. If you cheese the Heart it will become even easier. It took me 2 tries to beat the Heart and 3 tries to figure out the Queen's puzzle. The last fight only needed first try. If you already know how the mechanic works, the fights actually are really easy. I also didn't have to rip my entire library, so I still can face the Ensemble after that. Maybe it's just you who haven't quite figure out the solid strategy just yet.

I lost my first fight with silent girl at the very end poetically because I wanted to see the attack at the end of the 9 card draw.

She drives a stake into angela's heart lol. Brutally.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by ebola:

Just because you can adjust your builds each phase doesn't mean it has to be insanely hard. What I dislike about it isn't that it's hard, but that specifically it's way harder than the content after it. You are also almost required to take all of the pages off of the teams you JUST MADE for the Reverb Ensemble and put them on Keter, then take them off again to put onto five more teams... I spent more time making decks than actually fighting the Reverb 2ndsemble.

I... actually think that's intentional. I always felt like the Distorted Ensemble was intended as a "victory lap" meant to be a fun, somewhat challenging sendoff to your journey rather than the hardest challenge in the whole game. It was pretty cathartic on my first playthrough.

Even when it was first introduced, I think a lot of people felt the Black Silence was harder.

[ebola]

Originally posted by Flygoniaks:

I... actually think that's intentional. I always felt like the Distorted Ensemble was intended as a "victory lap" meant to be a fun, somewhat challenging sendoff to your journey rather than the hardest challenge in the whole game.

Black Silence deserves to be the hardest fight in the game I think. Right now Silent Girl is. I agree though, I enjoyed the Distorted Ensemble fight being easy. I would be okay with Keter Realization being hard if it was at least an interesting fight or cool. It's just a slog to get through Silent Girl's first phase, and the best way to do it is just by ignoring the mechanic. The problem with the Keter Realization fights being so difficult is they far overstay their welcome.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by ebola:

Black Silence deserves to be the hardest fight in the game I think. Right now Silent Girl is. I agree though, I enjoyed the Distorted Ensemble fight being easy. I would be okay with Keter Realization being hard if it was at least an interesting fight or cool. It's just a slog to get through Silent Girl's first phase, and the best way to do it is just by ignoring the mechanic. The problem with the Keter Realization fights being so difficult is they far overstay their welcome.

...you JUST said that your main complaint is not that the Keter Realization is hard in general, but that it's HARDER than the Distorted Ensemble. And now you're saying that you LIKE the Distorted Ensemble being easy, which implies that you want the Keter Realization to be easy as well? I'm getting really confused over what you're trying to argue at this point.

Honestly, I found Silent Girl's first phase to be fairly easy, but I agree that it's often best to just ignore the mechanic at times. It's only the second phase that I found pretty difficult.

[Senran]

Got to finally do the Keter Realization today after weeks of procrastination, and Heart seems far more manageable than what it used to be according to the posts there. Heart ended up at +5 on my first try, and given her low initial rolls it's pretty easy to deal with with such boosts. Didn't have Xiao who seems rather suited here, so I'm sure it's possible to drop her lower without it.

Silent Girl's mechanics during the first phase feel really irrelevant, it's just a race to outdie the nail and hammer. For the second phase I nearly didn't interact with the Guilt cost management, but using the debuffs to cancel the +10 power was an interesting trick. However the tentacles at the back really needed a warning about their attack pattern, there's 0 warning about it and after 5 turns it comes as a punch in the gut.

Fun Realization overall with a bunch of tricks left and right (except Marionette who ended up being rather straightforward) with some nice narrative closure and setups, but damn does it bloat an endgame that already felt stretched out.

[Flygoniaks]

Originally posted by Senran:

Got to finally do the Keter Realization today after weeks of procrastination, and Heart seems far more manageable than what it used to be according to the posts there. Heart ended up at +5 on my first try, and given her low initial rolls it's pretty easy to deal with with such boosts. Didn't have Xiao who seems rather suited here, so I'm sure it's possible to drop her lower without it.

I've heard that the Heart phase apparently got nerfed this week's update. Were there ways to reduce "Hankering" that you noticed? Even before the nerf, on my fight against her (which only had a small amount of cheesing) the most Hankering it got at once was 8, which frankly wasn't the end of the world (most of my librarians beat the Mass Attack anyway).

Originally posted by Senran:

However the tentacles at the back really needed a warning about their attack pattern, there's 0 warning about it and after 5 turns it comes as a punch in the gut.

I STILL don't get what the deal is with the back tentacles. 90% of the time they do nothing, and the other 10% of the time they come out with extremely powerful attacks with no warning. Even a description of their behavior as a passive would be helpful. I swear I even had a time where one back tentacle was attacking, while the other still did nothing...