is lighthouse level 1 even possible?

[Thicc]

I was playing about 10 games today, and I could only get to the final boss and lose badly.
It seems that everything depends on the RNG, if you get good items, something you don't control at all, and honestly artifacts that give "2%" of such a thing are a complete joke. And I know that this has always been the case, but now that the enemies become more difficult, I think it would be important that your character can also get better things, and please, give more space to the slots of the ship, than only giving 3 it's ridiculous.
Did the developers even test the DLC?
Something important here is that I play alone, and I don't really have "hardcore" friends to play this. I comment this because if they seriously say that it is possible in duo and not solo, then the game is poorly designed, as simple as that.

[Clawyer]

I have started playing with the brightness on in coop, but when my coop partner didn't have time to play with me I did one solo run on brightness 3. Things were fine until the end of The Edge (area 3) where a large group of birds nearly sunk my boat. I beat the run, but I have to concede that I had gathered the silver bullet (crit on first shot) and the warrior .. statue? (the item that reloads all cannons on a hit) and a few other nice accessories, so I was able to kill the boss without having to fight any waves, so I cannot really assess the difficulty of beating the boss waves alone.

The importance of watching out for critically hitting enemy projectiles is something you have to get used to. There will be quite a few encounters where you will not be manning the cannon, reflecting projectiles in order to deal damage instead. This also means that my usual go-to cannons for the game without brightness, the cannons using a charging up mechanic (sniper and spread shot) have taken a hit in viability, you simply don't have the time to make full use of them.

There are also some things that might help if you practice them:
Perfect timing on a reflect will deal critical damage.
You can intercept projectiles flying over your character even if they are supposed to hit a spot far away from you.
Skeletal enemies will all fire their on-death projectiles at a single spot on your boat, so you can stand there and reflect multiple times in a row, dealing damage that way.
Enemies can be interrupted by hitting them with a shot (but this will get more difficult from brightness 5 on as enemy attack speed is sped up).
Knowing the exact composition of the waves of enemies will let you identify the most dangerous targets.
And, if you run is not going very well, you might be able to get multiple uses out of the beacon by storing the boss chest for later use of the tendrils.

[Radowan]

Lighthouse 1: Not that impossible, you just need to be precise on reflecting shots.

Lighthouse 2: Yep, pretty much if you are not lucky enough to have a broken DPS combo before Boss 3, you are as good as dead. When you dont kill the 3rd boss before the guaranteed stun event the critical fires deal you 20+ damage per second and you cannot cover the whole deck alone.

Lighhouse 5: If you encounter any swarm of white birds/snakes on Map 3 - you are dead - you just kill them fast and you are ovewhelmed with guaranteed critical afterlife fires or you are killing them slow and you are killed by their fierce boosted attack speed. :P

But on the other hand, this game is marked as Roguelike title and a true roguelike cannot be won all the time... you must enjoy the journey, not the victory ;)

[Fridolynn]

I play solo, and of the three runs I've tried so far, the most 'successful' died on the third boss. I'll try again sometime over the weekend with two auto-cannons and myself as dedicated projectile refector.

[Clawyer]

The third boss is easier if you don't have two auto cannons but instead use the grapeshot cannon to hit one of the heads.
If you stun the boss it will summon skeletal adds that can kill you with critical hits and after a certain health threshold it will start the star pattern stun rays. One of both will kill you. As long as you don't make them collapse by shooting all of their back-parts you will stay in phase 1, making the fight significantly easier if you manage to avoid the single stun ray.

[Thirsty]

In coop the first three were pretty easy tbh, idk about solo tho

[DR GRIM <TWM>]

I play local co-op and we have not been very lucky with the gear after 5 attempts. But it really feels like the game has gone from casual and fun to hardcore in no time. I mean that level where a ton of birds surrounds the ship and just rain on your deck. It gets so confusing so fast you don't really know how to handle the situation. It's hard to learn if you don't get a chance. We feel a tad let down by the fact that Brightness 1 is already too demanding. I never expected to make it to level 20 or whatever the max is but devs should kind of fine tune the difficulty and prevent it from spiking so brutally.

Please note that we have beaten the game on regular a few times even with sub par gear but we don't always succeed and we are fine with it, we still enjoy the game, world and of course art style.

[Globsy]

My co-op partner and I 1 shot each tier from 1-14 then bugged out on 15 and beat it 2nd go. Honestly the game isn't thaaaat hard but there are certain waves that can very quickly tack on damage especially if you don't have a decent ammo type.

My suggestions are:
1. Focus on ammo types, if you get frozen wave or something similar it will make a huge difference. You can even hit the third boss directly with it.

2. Focus on cannon damage output, if you get enough the final encounter might as well not exist.

3. Avoid combat in act 3, by the end of our journey to lighthouse 15 the final zone was by far the most dangerous place to be including bosses. I'd sooner fight the 3rd boss every zone than any encounter in act 3.

4. Prioritise like this: Enemies on board > Enemies that shoot projectiles > Enemies with rage buffs (That's a later affix) > Enemies which explode > The Rest. By focusing on enemies on your ship you can deflect critical shots at the same time, otherwise critical shots are probably the worst part of the affixes.

5. If you get a Skeleton bird in act 3, focus on the non-skeletal ones first. They do essentially the same thing but don't have revenge shots so you might as well get past them.

6. If you have tons of skeleton enemies just remember that their revenge shots almost always land near the cannons. So if you can take out a bunch all at once you should because you can easily deflect all of them in one go.

7. invest in siren upgrades. Spend some time grinding for them if you can. More rerolls is very powerful for finding ammo types. More dupes is also extremely overpowered.

8. ALWAYS get the trinket tile. This tile is almost always the best one, in act 2 you should pick up the chest, chuck it on a tile on your ship. Clear the 2nd boss and dupe the chest twice over. This brings your trinket total from 2 to 6 and you're more likely to get what you want.

[Denys]

I am afraid this game is becoming a coop only experience now. Its sad since my partner is not always available to play.

[Geo]

Not sure with solo, with coop is perfectly playable, so far at 10 with my friend, but with the crits + attack speed of enemies it definately seems to be pushing the coop side alot more than solo now, not sure how you could realistically defend vs that many projectiles solo

[Fridolynn]

Originally posted by Agan:

I play solo, and of the three runs I've tried so far, the most 'successful' died on the third boss. I'll try again sometime over the weekend with two auto-cannons and myself as dedicated projectile refector.

I'm back, baby! Two auto-cannons seems the way to go in solo mode. I'm on lighthouse lvl 4 now, and each victory was a first try success. It's a different game experience for sure, being a dedicated deck hand.

[Templar]

I already finished lvl 15 lighthouse. For single player, you can take two sentery gun and lotte, so you can focus on the deflect and peddle

[Endy]

I finished 1-5 solo with Lotte and 2 Auto Turrents.

The first projectile always seems to be a critical one (not "some projectiles will be critical ones) and there's only one active at a time.

The final boss can be pretty hard when you don't kill him quick. So you'll want a strong build like bombs in magazines +2 (duplicatet twice after act 2). Since they reload with lotte (and reload faster with a bigger magazine) this can work pretty well.

I also had a bird build but this was the toughest, since I had to face the hordes in between the final boss phases.

But I'll be glad when my teammate finally has time to continue ship of fools together

[Madness]

Git gud

[Fried.No.Mash♠]

I've completed all the lighthouse brightness. I recommend focusing on good ammo especially with Oil to weaken & Resonance/DoT to prevent big ranged mobs from spamming a bunch of projectiles.

Only the first projectile launched onto the boat will be critical, just let the rest hit and melee to put them out. You'll need to be lucky for a longer paddle range, if not you can still reflect multiple projectiles thats hitting diff parts of the boat IF you are closer to the Enemies launching them. Also, you gotta get gud at micro managing.

[Endy]

I cleared 1-13 solo now and failed only once on stage 1 at the final boss (had everything unlocked before the Lighthouse came up)

If anyone needs some tips, this is how I did:

- Choose Lotte (Ammo refill)
- Choose Auto Turrent (x2)
- Buy at Barnaby (once unlocked)
- Buy at Briny (if he offers something)
- Collect 2 Seagulls to load your cannons (pretty good starting ammo, 13dmg, piercing which refills since you have Lotte)
- Start the run
- Act 1: load your Turrents with Gold Bags if you see then (Spread 3 and give LOTS of gold since it reloads itself with Lotte) if you get overwhelmed fill 1 Turrent with another Ammo
- learn to reflect projectiles like a boss and let the Turrents do most of the work themselves (which will be slow but you'll be at 1500 to 2000 gold at the end of Act 1 maybe. This is good for shops or the cursed purse Trinket. Try to switch to better ammo according to the items you collected then.)
- Recycle twice (Ammo/Artifact/Trinket) to get your best chances to get something good
- Act 2: try to get a good synergy or strong item to duplicate after the crab boss to get very high DPS. Examples:
- Bomb Hat Artifact x3 (+6 Bomb Ammo) and a good Bomb Ammo (remember your Magazine refills)
- Harpune Artifact x3 (+30 Harpune DMG) and loading Harpune big packs into your Turrents (which refill) (or +5 Harpune DMG Trinket x3)
- some Cursed Trinkets x3 (Purse for +30 DMG at 1000+ gold; (Drill for +9 DMG for every board missing aka. berserk build)
- bird Artifact x3 (faster cooldown or more eggs) + Explosive Bird
- Act 3: learn to reflect projectiles even better and try go get what you're missing (Trinkets are usually good and don't need space on your ship.)
- Act 4: ignore the Treasures on the map and go straight to the boss and kill it x3 before it summons anything