Impossible situations for solo player

[Madine]

I have found some enemy waves phisically impossible to avoid damage like when explosive blowfish spawn at a very high rate from all angles. Does the game scale down when playing solo? It doesn't feel like it sometimes. I know the game is better played coop but one can't always have a partner ready. Should I avoid playing this solo? Cause I find it frustrating at times.

[Madine]

Again, my runs always end with the explosive blowfish wave from all sides... how is this balanced for solo? Maybe you should remove the single player tag from the steam page because is totally impossible to clear that one stage with just one player.

[NekiCoule]

Yeah, I played through the game with a friend and we basically steamrolled the game. I figured I would try how it feels to play solo, and the difficulty seems to be the exact same, at the difference you're just as fast and just as strong as your usual self.

Playing solo in this game is extremely though! I'm not sure I can beat the final boss unless I have a golded run. It just has way too many HPs and there are way too many enemies to hit at the same time.

Thing is, you end up spending your time running on the boat instead of shooting with the sheer amount of bullets that end up being shot at your boat, meaning you cannot deal with anything else like the blowfishes, bomb birds or other close range hitters.

[TheyCalledMeMad]

On the plus side: when you do a solo run, you know *exactly* who's doing defense for each section of the boat (all you, all the time). Since you're doing all the defense, and the sentry gun doesn't fire as fast as a player, the combat takes longer, so the enemies have more chances to damage the boat.

That said, I just finished my first run solo (after *barely* failing to beat Eye on my previous co-op run).

[S.]

I just bought the game, have been playing solo for the past hour or so in which I am enjoying it quite a lot BUT.....

Got to the part where the 10 blow fish spawn on one side, slowly make their way to the ship and blow up, then spawn on the other side and do the same thing, so I died at the part where you did...

So dumb for solo play to have that type of enemy or stage.

Yet, after how ever many months, it still hasn't been fixed or made easier for solo play?

[Snatiation]

yes sometimes its impossible to avoid taking damage as solo player. i thought i was the only one having this issue

[Snatiation]

also tips for solo players?

[Asubakatchin]

I was like you until yesterday, until I looted a harpoon improvement, which allows you to pierce targets.
Which causes the entire line of explosive fish to explode in 2 hits.
I always take the character who gets a harpoon on every target hit.
I also had an improvement that boosted DPS based on dollars owned (which I therefore had to avoid spending).
But I still died on the boss of the second map, too many life points and too many targets everywhere, I got split in two in phase 2.
I think it's just impossible to finish the game solo, unless you have upgraded all the elements of the boat and or have the perfect run with all the good bonus.

[Asubakatchin]

Finally, it is entirely possible to complete the game alone.
You just need to know the sequence of boss fights and have the right upgrades.
On the other hand, the end boss is really HARDCORE!
It is in 3 phases and it is really sporty to defeat it.
The ideal is to have the upgrade that allows you to send attacks from a distance with the paddle and/or to have bombs to easily kill the waves of explosive fish which are one of the biggest dangers in the game.

[Lord_Abaddon]

So some tips for the people having issues.

Take 2 sentries, you shouldn't be manning guns in solo. yes it sucks you give up a really solid source of dps and an aspect of gameplay but your job is swabbing the poop deck and beating enemies off near your boat.

the only exception for firing sentries is the waves of blowfish, they explode and take each other out. by jumping on a sentry and focusing one down you can eliminate an entire wave.

for the bosses pretty much just play clean up its boring but by the time you reload and destroy anything on deack or getting close you're busy 100% of the time sentries will shoot what they need to shoot and do consistent dps.

Krillsotpoh or toad are probably the best two soloing characters. I prefer krills because he can knock stuff back quick and does good damage with his 2 hit combo but the faster attacks are also good for clearing the deck.

play around what you get, I prefer for solo high capacity ammo or eggs if possible. most enemies stagger out of their attack animation if hit so having potatoes or beans for your guns make sure while you're killing invaders the sentries are still shooting.

[Clawyer]

One important thing to know for melee enemies (and, yes, bomb fish):
If you roll and immediately hit the attack button you will not start a combo but instead use the last hit of your combo. This way you will instantly push enemies away.
If a bomb fish wants to explode it first pumps itself up and it then detonates a second later. If you hit it away from your boat during that time it will explode harmlessly.
This also works on the small owl enemies in region 3.

Waves with multiple bomb fish can be solved by making one bomb fish explode near the others, making one detonate will detonate all surrounding fishes as well.

[Soul Fire]

Originally posted by Lord_Abaddon:

So some tips for the people having issues.

Take 2 sentries, you shouldn't be manning guns in solo. yes it sucks you give up a really solid source of dps and an aspect of gameplay but your job is swabbing the poop deck and beating enemies off near your boat.

the only exception for firing sentries is the waves of blowfish, they explode and take each other out. by jumping on a sentry and focusing one down you can eliminate an entire wave.

for the bosses pretty much just play clean up its boring but by the time you reload and destroy anything on deack or getting close you're busy 100% of the time sentries will shoot what they need to shoot and do consistent dps.

Krillsotpoh or toad are probably the best two soloing characters. I prefer krills because he can knock stuff back quick and does good damage with his 2 hit combo but the faster attacks are also good for clearing the deck.

play around what you get, I prefer for solo high capacity ammo or eggs if possible. most enemies stagger out of their attack animation if hit so having potatoes or beans for your guns make sure while you're killing invaders the sentries are still shooting.

I Disagree with that but it is a very viable strat if your running a more melee focused character.

I run double cannon on one side and was able to beat lighthouse 15 solo with all ships,
I recommend lotte for that simply because you can leave the auto cannon to it's own devices most of the time due to passive reload (gets faster with more mag capacity). Double cannon because of extra ammo and dps once it reaches level 10, thanks to rage that increases crit chance and fire speed on reloads for a bit.

From my experience you want to put as much damage down range as you can and kill off the enemy's as quickly as possible limiting the amount, there are some situations where you will be overwhelmed otherwise as you stated. The main thing there is be ready to jump of the cannon at any second while firing in case you need to deflect/push/kill an enemy/projectile away from or on the boat.

But yes as you said the most important thing would be to play around the items the game gives you, and work with a build based on that, I tend to focus on pure dps items if I can't find them then I work with what I have.

I recommend the wave hulk for that extra artefact slot ship, Harpoon builds are busted with lotte (on hit harpoon effects, mag up for passive reload, triple shot, bouncing and harpoon damage) if done right, eggs are you mentioned with the right combo are also busted, if your willing to take risks using the red scourge the basic ammo it provides is good damage paired with bouncing shot and quill at a base and can become more insane later. Shellbie is also not bad to they give a fairly decent buff with the ammo load.

Just don't run Shelbie and lotte together if you do mp, they compete on that job for ammo loading.

I have never tried a bomb build though, I think it could be good with the right setup but it suffers from ammo issues to much for me.