I find conjuration focus a lot harder than sorcery focus

[Darloth]

Aiming to put most of my points into a minion based conjuration build seems just harder to do than the various sorcery builds. Even without death cleave, sorcery can scale really well and arch sorcerer can be picked up early to help a huge variety of cheap spells.

The cheap conjurations, without upgrades, kinda suck. Even if you get arch conjurer, they still aren't amazing.

It's very possible I'm just awful at making a conjurer build though, so please, let me know what I'm doing wrong.

I've failed at wolves + bears, I've failed at drakes, I've failed at wolves + blue lions + angels (though that got further - the damage from the angels really helps, maybe I should have got them earlier)

What conjuration builds have you found to work really well, and perhaps more importantly, how did you get to that point in the early levels after everything gets a ranged attack and Wolf starts being sometimes a waste of a turn.

[creativity88]

I got referred to the discord - there is quite a bit of useful information there. How useful i can't really say because I have had advice from what must be some of the best players and I cannot get past rift 9 or so. I have tried chaos, sorcery, wolves, death bolt, fire all without success so far.

[Tenebria]

Mostly I make conjuration builds work by avoiding arch conjurer. Nature lord is better for wolves, lion. Holy focus thing is better for seraph archon. Dragon talent for dragons etc.

If you're having trouble at the beginning:
Floor 1. Wolves, summon 3 of em and let em clear
Floor 2. The wolves will clear this, if you pick a tough floor gonna need to use the mana pot maybe. That should get you Lions and lion damage
After that wolf damage,lion holy bolt,nature lord, lion max shields, then upgrade the wolves health,pounce,clay,pack

Or
Fireball,flame gate,duration,archon,duration,essence aura,pyrophillia,melting armor works too for an easy start

Also conjuration major advice: AVOID Gnomes, Chain lightning elves, and slimes you can't kill fast, but especially gnomes

[Tenebria]

Floor 9, Humble horde, so only 2 points per floor
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607621407
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607621379
I went and finished out the run for you.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607657542
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607657554
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607657574
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607657607
So normally you would have 24 more points than I did, which will more than make up the difference from the two shrines

[treehann]

Dayum Tenebria, you really beat the game using only two summons and a max of two skills :O

[Tenebria]

Also, here's a wolf only start.
In order:
wolf health pounce damage clay
Then Regen vigour Nature Lord
Floor 10: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607918885

[Darloth]

Honestly I think I've done better limiting myself to wolf only, because it forces you to acknowledge their limitations. Still not even got close to winning with it though, wheras I can regularly at least REACH mordred with a sorcery style build. . . (Except that one time I killed myself on floor 21 with a greedy orb of corruption for more loot.)

Speaking of wolf... has anyone -ever- found a good use for the non-clay types? Clay is expensive but seems like a big power upgrade, wheras the other types... don't really seem to be a big upgrade? Still kinda pricy though.

[Tenebria]

Originally posted by Darloth:

Speaking of wolf... has anyone -ever- found a good use for the non-clay types? Clay is expensive but seems like a big power upgrade, wheras the other types... don't really seem to be a big upgrade? Still kinda pricy though.

Clay doesn't help with killing mordred, so blood is a little better for that. I've grabbed it to go with a late nature shrine when running a non nature build. Ice not so much, it locks you out of the replay damage shrines and the chaos damage on kill talent. In theory, if you could reliably get wolves to 51hp, then the dark resist on blood would be worth it to take another mordred hit

[glythe]

Blue Lion is one of the best summons for the point investment - especially if you get any discounts.

It flies - which is a huge problem on many maps for ground based pets.
shields you - which is amazing
can be upgraded to change from physical damage to ranged attacks.
Has lots of charges.
Has good hp/resists base which means any shrine upgrade has a huge benefit.

[Rusted Bornite]

I seem to be having better luck by avoiding wolves in my conjuration builds. My only two wins so far have been with unholy alliance builds, which I find have a much better ability to pump out area of effect damage along with the summons. Blue lions and wolves are great, but their lack of aoe damage always seemed to get me killed before i could reach mordred.

The extra damage from the unholy alliance skill does a lot of work, especially in the early levels and when you combine with ghost spam. I find the extra minion damage, along with the sorcery like aoe capabilities, give me a far better fighting chance against things with annoying ranged attacks.

As for trying drakes, like you mentioned, I managed to get a drake build to mordred, but ended up dying due to ice dragon freeze, lol. A few things that i found worked best were: get two dragons to start (avoid ice dragon, as it also freezes your fire dragon), then get dragon lord (Extra charges on your dragons is super important, and the extra stats will make them beat the crap out of early levels), then get the other dragon skill that gives them resistances, and then get the other two dragons. The pyrophilia skill, where allies heal when they see fire damage, is also super important to get, as it will turn your fire dragons into healers for your team.

A common mistake i see people make is summoning multiple dragons all at once without the breath resistance skill. Its best to summon one type of dragon at a time until you get that skill, ie. summon 2 void dragons, wait for them to die, then summon 2 fire dragons.

https://i.imgur.com/qGZPkYJ.png

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2608338858

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2608338679

[UmbralAngel]

I am not sure that I will be able to finish the game this run but I am doing pretty well (just got to floor 19) with a less focused build.

Wolves, Fireball, Healing Light, Arc Lightning, Holy Fire, Flame Gate, Spider Queen, Invoke Savagery, Void Beam, Call Archon.

Skills: Forest Lord & Minion Regeneration

Flame Gate combined with fireball can clear out masses of enemies while also creating a small squad of fire demons. Holy fire can snipe any big creatures that minions have trouble dealing with. Healing light makes the wolves much more charge efficient, and invoke savagery makes your minions better able to take on strong melee foes or gates with lots of HP.
Call Archon is really powerful in the late game as you can just sandwich yourself between Archon with a wolf and an enemy on the other side and get a large number of shield charges for a low cost.

[glythe]

There really should be a skill that lets you keep summons between levels until they die. The skill would only apply to spells whose entire purpose is to summon something like wolf or blue lion. It would not apply to spells with a secondary effect or spells that make a pet from something.

Originally posted by UmbralAngel:

I am not sure that I will be able to finish the game this run

Wolves, Fireball, Healing Light, Arc Lightning, Holy Fire, Flame Gate, Spider Queen, Invoke Savagery, Void Beam, Call Archon.

Skills: Forest Lord & Minion Regeneration

I have an idea you will have a problem with the last boss.

[treehann]

Originally posted by glythe:

I have an idea you will have a problem with the last boss.

Is there like a recommended list of boxes one should check before the boss?

[Onomoki]

The Imp Summonings, if you upgrade them to giant Imps, and pick skills that enchance their duration - is insanely powerful. I achieved my first victory with them. The bear is cute, but worthless

[Tenebria]

Originally posted by treehann:

Originally posted by glythe:

I have an idea you will have a problem with the last boss.

Is there like a recommended list of boxes one should check before the boss?

1. Teleport Consumables or vision range consumables or a movement spell
2. At least 200 health
3. A spell that summons multiple minions or does multiple hits or does shield burn or does damage and summon minions on target or ignores LoS

[Cotton Eye Jonii-chan]

Originally posted by Tenebria:

Originally posted by treehann:

Is there like a recommended list of boxes one should check before the boss?

1. Teleport Consumables or vision range consumables or a movement spell
2. At least 200 health
3. A spell that summons multiple minions or does multiple hits or does shield burn or does damage and summon minions on target or ignores LoS

This is definitely a good starting point, you can get away with doing it differently (if you can get darkness resist comfortably, you need substantially less health), but if you have all of those things you should be able to handle mordred pretty easily.