How to actually deal damage?

[Tuss]

Bit of a tricky question to ask, but I've been running into some troubles when trying to change up my main strategy. (Also I'm bad at remembering names for things so apologies for that)

I'm at about floor 85 and the strategy that's been carrying me so far has been one that's involved the Defiler's "Unholy Night" trait and a handful of spells that inflict debuffs to the entire enemy team, specifically one that gives everything burning and another that inflicts a debuff and gives your guys a buff for each enemy with burning. Pretty effective combo!

However, when I try to deviate from this strategy, I often run into the problem of dealing 0 damage. For example, if I face some monsters that can't be debuffed, I'd like to fall back to another AOE spell, Planets, one of my monsters has equipped. However, even though their INT is high, it often does little if not 0 damage.

My current issue is with the party I'm trying to try which is made up of the skeleton dudes that do stuff when resurrected (Osseriens?) along with the Purgatorian class. I have it set up where each time one is resurrected, they attack 3 times and someone casts Murder of Crows along with a ton of other spells. Even if the enemy goes first, once they kill one of my guys it's like I'm taking ten turns in a row. Which should be good! Except none of my attacks deal any damage, and only start to do so after I suicide-buff the team several times. The weird thing is though, that attacking normally often has results. I'll do the buff loop a few times and maybe deal 5% of a health bar in damage off the resurrection attacks, but attack once normally and suddenly it's a one-shot. Frustrating!

I understand there's the class system that can modify damage taken/given, but my party's a right mix and it's a consistent problem. It crops up in my previous party example, where often I'll try to use Kick, which deals damage based on number of debuffs, but one of my monsters will deal 0 while the next one will one-shot, despite them both being the same class and race with plenty of INT and targeting the same enemy. I can't imagine one having like 400 more INT than the other is enough of a difference to go from 0 to thousands of damage.

Anyway, I guess my question is if there's a list of things one should consider when making strategic decisions to know which will be fruitful and which aren't? Are there hidden qualities to certain things that make them less effective than one would think? (For example, the 3 attacks on revive could be like Fury Swipes' which deal much less damage, even though it doesn't say so). Are some classes just better for it, having the right mix of perks that snowball better than others?

I'm fine with even a little bit of damage, but it's frustrating when I go to use a spell or something that promises to cast itself like 20 times due to the conditions being right, only to be met with the "dududududududu" of a bunch of zeroes.

[leqesai]

Purgatorian is an interesting specialization insofar as you may not be ideally suited for it at only realm depth 85. Purgatorian relies on fair knowledge of synergistic qualities between traits and perks.

Purgatorian wants dead creatures not creatures that are constantly reviving.

You may want to invest in some manner of stat-boosting stuff. You're doing 0 damage because your stats are insufficient for the enemies based on their defensive qualities (stats and traits).

Post your build here and we can give some specific advice regarding your team composition that might make it more effective.

[Chronocide]

Similar Topic here (with, I think, the answers you seek): https://steamcommunity.com/app/1289810/discussions/0/6960928795827227392/

[Tuss]

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Similar Topic here (with, I think, the answers you seek): https://steamcommunity.com/app/1289810/discussions/0/6960928795827227392/

Thanks for passing your findings forward!

There's a lot of good stuff in that thread and the list that's linked within. However the damage formula as provided doesn't answer the mystery of how I keep hitting 0 so often. At worst I should be dealing like 9 damage per attack, unless there's an insane amount of damage reduction buffs on my enemies that my own perks don't negate, which I can't see being the case, at least from what I've seen of my opponents' traits and things. Artifacts might be a wrench sometimes, but not *that* consistently.

Thank you for the link though! Definitely bookmarking that google doc. (Also gonna relink it here just for archival's sake https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UgH21dSoJdDDm-O-o3UcSZSM8Eo45QRNU8mcRqZpzCk/edit#heading=h.s324le4owhcp )

[leqesai]

Originally posted by Tuss:

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Similar Topic here (with, I think, the answers you seek): https://steamcommunity.com/app/1289810/discussions/0/6960928795827227392/

Thanks for passing your findings forward!

There's a lot of good stuff in that thread and the list that's linked within. However the damage formula as provided doesn't answer the mystery of how I keep hitting 0 so often. At worst I should be dealing like 9 damage per attack, unless there's an insane amount of damage reduction buffs on my enemies that my own perks don't negate, which I can't see being the case, at least from what I've seen of my opponents' traits and things. Artifacts might be a wrench sometimes, but not *that* consistently.

Thank you for the link though! Definitely bookmarking that google doc. (Also gonna relink it here just for archival's sake https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UgH21dSoJdDDm-O-o3UcSZSM8Eo45QRNU8mcRqZpzCk/edit#heading=h.s324le4owhcp )

As already noted, if you share your build here we can better understand your unique issue.

it is very common to hit for 0 when your stats are not sufficient to cause damage. There are also numerous traits (both on your part and those of the enemies) that can result in damage negation.

In game go to options and there will be a thing there to copy your team to the clipboard. Just paste that into a reply here so we can see what you're dealing with.

[Tuss]

Oh how I wish I could! Unfortunately I've been playing it on Switch, and have asked here since there's not exactly many forums to ask. But it has at least born fruit as I have met two players that are willing to offer assistance!

For lack of that, I suppose I'll simply share the important aspects:

My party is a pack of Ossein with various fusions.

At the start of battle, after artifacts etc. come into effect, two of them have 3189 attack, two have 2402 attack, and the last two have 1806 attack (though those last two have the most INT of the rest so I'm cool with that). I don't have any particular traits equipped besides the Ossein tribal master one. The rest is just stat boosting.

It's difficult to make a good testing environment. Managed to end up with two situations with just one enemy left, and while one had ~4k defence where I figured that'd make sense, another had ~2.7 defence and still rewarded me with zeroes despite being hit with one of my 3k attack dudes. There wasn't any floor intensity either, and if there were any traits being applied by the dead creatures then they weren't keeping me from getting zeroes on them (got lucky and picked a weaker realm). But then I go facing monsters with equivalent stats and get to deal decent damage, so I don't know what's going on, thus the purpose of the thread.

Also I went with Purgatorian because a) It comes with a perk that lets me kill my creatures on demand, which helps get the revive train going, and b) makes sure I have a backup plan in case I get a bit too suicide happy. I'd love to make use of the Graveborn perks, but 3 revives being the limit worries me too much. Plus the limitation is a bit of a nobo with Ossein, which want to use Rebirth to revive, which Graveborn prevents. Purgatorian at least buffs per death, which is gonna be happening a lot with my intended strategy, even if I won't have many dead creatures at once.

Also also, apologies for not acknowledging your initial reply, Leqesai. When clicking the Steam notification, it brought me to Chronocide's and there was no indication there were replies above.

[leqesai]

Originally posted by Tuss:

Oh how I wish I could! Unfortunately I've been playing it on Switch, and have asked here since there's not exactly many forums to ask. But it has at least born fruit as I have met two players that are willing to offer assistance!

For lack of that, I suppose I'll simply share the important aspects:

My party is a pack of Ossein with various fusions.

At the start of battle, after artifacts etc. come into effect, two of them have 3189 attack, two have 2402 attack, and the last two have 1806 attack (though those last two have the most INT of the rest so I'm cool with that). I don't have any particular traits equipped besides the Ossein tribal master one. The rest is just stat boosting.

It's difficult to make a good testing environment. Managed to end up with two situations with just one enemy left, and while one had ~4k defence where I figured that'd make sense, another had ~2.7 defence and still rewarded me with zeroes despite being hit with one of my 3k attack dudes. There wasn't any floor intensity either, and if there were any traits being applied by the dead creatures then they weren't keeping me from getting zeroes on them (got lucky and picked a weaker realm). But then I go facing monsters with equivalent stats and get to deal decent damage, so I don't know what's going on, thus the purpose of the thread.

Also I went with Purgatorian because a) It comes with a perk that lets me kill my creatures on demand, which helps get the revive train going, and b) makes sure I have a backup plan in case I get a bit too suicide happy. I'd love to make use of the Graveborn perks, but 3 revives being the limit worries me too much. Plus the limitation is a bit of a nobo with Ossein, which want to use Rebirth to revive, which Graveborn prevents. Purgatorian at least buffs per death, which is gonna be happening a lot with my intended strategy, even if I won't have many dead creatures at once.

Also also, apologies for not acknowledging your initial reply, Leqesai. When clicking the Steam notification, it brought me to Chronocide's and there was no indication there were replies above.

I can see what you're shooting for with the Osseins but basically what you're doing is you're using Purgatorian for a primary-use single perk. The extra damage from each killed creature is nice but you aren't scaling your stats. Every 10% bonus you get from the purgatorian trait requires valuable turns and also has diminishing returns insofar as you go about calculating damage based on your initial stats.

IE: If you are doing 100 damage, every time one of your creatures dies you're adding 10 damage. So with 10 deaths you're only doing 200 damage. 20 deaths and you're at 300 damage.

What are you fusing your Ossein's with?

You could do some simple stat gain tricks if you do something like this...

Creature 1:
Primary: Whatever Ossein you like
Fused trait: Terror Wight (This creature gains 25% of the attack, intelligence, defense and speed of the creatures in your team that die)
Artifact trait: Nihilist Paralyzer (Your creatures gain 75% of this creature's attack when it dies)

So whenever your creatures die they boost creature 1's stats, and then when creature 1 dies it boosts everyone else's attack stats; which then in turn means when they die the attack stats gained by creature 1 are increased.

Without taking into consideration the diminishing returns on gained stats the math would break down into something like this with the following numbers

Creature 1: 100 attack
Creature 2: 100 attack
Creature 3: 100 attack
Creature 4: 100 attack
Creature 5: 100 attack
Creature 6: 100 attack

If creatures 2-6 die, they're each adding 25 to creature 1's attack which would put him at 225 after one round of your creatures dying.

Then when you kill creature 1, the rest of your creatures gain 168 attack putting them all at 268. Now when they die they're giving creature 1 67 attack. One round of all 5 creatures dying means creature 1 is now at 560 attack.... then when he dies the rest of your creatures' attack stat jumps from 268 to 688.

So with a total of 12 deaths you're at 5.6x the attack stat of creature 1 and 6.8x the attack stat of creatures 2-6... You're also benefiting from the 120% extra damage (10% for each killed creature) multiplier from Purgatorian.

You could also use Bestial Koloss somewhere in your team to turn 20% of those stat gains into maximum health.

There are ways to bypass the diminishing stats formula but you're not at that point in the game yet.

[Tuss]

I'm not necessarily using Purgatorian *just* for the suicide perk, as a few others do help, especially the ones that let traits continue to be effective when dead, but ultimately it is the most useful class I think to my intended strategy that wouldn't just be general goodstuff.

Terror Wight was definitely one I was considering, as I'll need to rejigger my lineup regardless since apparently the "attack 3 times on revive" doesn't stack like I thought it would (or at least the animation doesn't play). I fused two sets of Ossein for the non-stackable/redundant traits, but for the rest one has the "when this dies deal damage equal to % of health", another has "creatures you control under 35% health deal 100% more damage" (which I assume works when they're dead), another has the "when this attacks revive another at 50% health" which helps keep my team churning after the rebirths run out (It's great it stacks with the revive attacks to revive 3 at once), and I forget what the fourth one is. Terror Wight wasn't a top one though since it only affects the one creature rather than the team. I dunno if I have any Nihilist Paralyzer items, but that definitely sounds like one I'd want!

I'll probably swap out the low health damage boost one in my rejiggering. I for some reason completely forgot about phoenixes which would no doubt do nicely, so I'll see about maybe adding Volatile Phoenix since the 5 random spells on revive too frequently end up reviving my enemies as well. Royal Phoenix might also be fun since the turn 1 enemy would just kill one of my guys, give me a dozen turns, then they'd never get a turn again as my dudes hog the top of the timeline.

[navyrob]

Message to the OP: This is how the game actually plays out as you grow -

1. You clear floors mindlessly
2. You hit a brick wall. Could be a boss with new mechanics you havent seen. Could be an enemy combo that wrecks you every time etc.
3. You figure out a way past the wall
4. Return to 1

So what you HAVE to do is to build a SCALING strategy. This means that even if you are fighting monsters 1000x your level you still clear them mindlessly. These strategies exist and the game requires that you embrace them to progress. Whatever strat you are doing now is meaningless in the larger scheme of progression.

You have to reset your strat and refocus your goal of creating scaling teams to get to the real juicy stuff.

[Tuss]

Originally posted by navyrob:

Message to the OP: This is how the game actually plays out as you grow -

1. You clear floors mindlessly
2. You hit a brick wall. Could be a boss with new mechanics you havent seen. Could be an enemy combo that wrecks you every time etc.
3. You figure out a way past the wall
4. Return to 1

So what you HAVE to do is to build a SCALING strategy. This means that even if you are fighting monsters 1000x your level you still clear them mindlessly. These strategies exist and the game requires that you embrace them to progress. Whatever strat you are doing now is meaningless in the larger scheme of progression.

You have to reset your strat and refocus your goal of creating scaling teams to get to the real juicy stuff.

I don't know why you're trying to make the game sound lame.

I'm aware of trying different strategies. My issue was one that pervaded multiple strategies I attempted, thus why I was asking for advice. I managed to figure it out, so further attitude is unnecessary.

[Chronocide]

Originally posted by Tuss:

Originally posted by navyrob:

Message to the OP: This is how the game actually plays out as you grow -

1. You clear floors mindlessly
2. You hit a brick wall. Could be a boss with new mechanics you havent seen. Could be an enemy combo that wrecks you every time etc.
3. You figure out a way past the wall
4. Return to 1

So what you HAVE to do is to build a SCALING strategy. This means that even if you are fighting monsters 1000x your level you still clear them mindlessly. These strategies exist and the game requires that you embrace them to progress. Whatever strat you are doing now is meaningless in the larger scheme of progression.

You have to reset your strat and refocus your goal of creating scaling teams to get to the real juicy stuff.

I don't know why you're trying to make the game sound lame.

I'm aware of trying different strategies. My issue was one that pervaded multiple strategies I attempted, thus why I was asking for advice. I managed to figure it out, so further attitude is unnecessary.

I don't think he is.

My go to "mindless" approach is a Mimic+Wisp Watcher

Goes first, usually, and automatically casts 5 spells. High INT and spell potency. Totally wipes most things. Quite often, I never get to use any of my creatures because the enemy is gone before I get a chance. It's pretty mindless.

The other 5 creatures are there for when this tactic doesn't work. But, really, most of the time, those 5 creatures don't do anything at all.

The other 5 break down into a long term battle options and short term battle options.

On the short term, got basic attackers that attack either with magic or physical damage, plus maybe a provoker. If I can wipe them here, great.

On the long battle end, some opponents require a long tedious battle and for that I need abilities to revive, increase stats, and regain spells (either additional charges, ethereal gem generation, or unseal sealed spells).

Additionally, it can be important to have a solution for when you get stuck against an opponent that can't really hurt you and you can't really hurt. Things that generate random effects can be useful in this situation. Elemental Tome (spell gem) has gotten me unstuck many, many times.

[leqesai]

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Originally posted by Tuss:

I don't know why you're trying to make the game sound lame.

I'm aware of trying different strategies. My issue was one that pervaded multiple strategies I attempted, thus why I was asking for advice. I managed to figure it out, so further attitude is unnecessary.

I don't think he is.

My go to "mindless" approach is a Mimic+Wisp Watcher

Goes first, usually, and automatically casts 5 spells. High INT and spell potency. Totally wipes most things. Quite often, I never get to use any of my creatures because the enemy is gone before I get a chance. It's pretty mindless.

The other 5 creatures are there for when this tactic doesn't work. But, really, most of the time, those 5 creatures don't do anything at all.

The other 5 break down into a long term battle options and short term battle options.

On the short term, got basic attackers that attack either with magic or physical damage, plus maybe a provoker. If I can wipe them here, great.

On the long battle end, some opponents require a long tedious battle and for that I need abilities to revive, increase stats, and regain spells (either additional charges, ethereal gem generation, or unseal sealed spells).

Additionally, it can be important to have a solution for when you get stuck against an opponent that can't really hurt you and you can't really hurt. Things that generate random effects can be useful in this situation. Elemental Tome (spell gem) has gotten me unstuck many, many times.

My endgame 'mindless' setup basically blinks enemies out of existence (almost everything, including avatars, false gods and nether bosses) instantly :)
The setup works on pretty much every spec too (except the challenge specs).

It doesn't get more mindless than playing the game with one hand while watching tv because every fight ends pretty much instantly (sometimes realm modifiers may make fights last for one round of turns but still takes less than 30 seconds).

It took quite awhile to land on the "perfect" build setup (like 300-500 hours in and out of game) but man was it satisfying to finally land on something that could clear everything with 0 risk in one or two turns. *chef kiss* the real endgame is pure mindlessness :P

[Lord Coggswaffle YT]

After a bit of messing about at about floor 90 I swapped from necromancer (which I was struggling to kill most enemies at instability 5) to pyromancer. Initially I tried to go more attack based build, but ultimately I settled on a caster build iffrit team, using racials and spellgems based around spamming tons of spells fast that massively scale burn damage to the point by the time they take their first turn they are either dead or take 3-500 million damage from the burn. Doesn't mean I don't miss playing the necromancer, just means sometimes early on a build doesn't click as easily as others. Once you get access to essentially all of the races and have a considerable amount of artifact modifiers then you'll find all kinds of new ways to play your favorite build and make it far more bonkers.

I'm now at 204 depth and with a few rare situations just bulldoze content now. About the only thing that messes me up is spell slots sealed along with casting capped at a single time per round.

[leqesai]

Originally posted by Lord Coggswaffle YT:

After a bit of messing about at about floor 90 I swapped from necromancer (which I was struggling to kill most enemies at instability 5) to pyromancer. Initially I tried to go more attack based build, but ultimately I settled on a caster build iffrit team, using racials and spellgems based around spamming tons of spells fast that massively scale burn damage to the point by the time they take their first turn they are either dead or take 3-500 million damage from the burn. Doesn't mean I don't miss playing the necromancer, just means sometimes early on a build doesn't click as easily as others. Once you get access to essentially all of the races and have a considerable amount of artifact modifiers then you'll find all kinds of new ways to play your favorite build and make it far more bonkers.

Just an aside, Pyro is one of the most overpowered specs in the game specifically due to how wild the scaling on Burn can get very quickly.

If you want easy mode, Pyro is basically easy mode.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by leqesai:

Originally posted by Lord Coggswaffle YT:

After a bit of messing about at about floor 90 I swapped from necromancer (which I was struggling to kill most enemies at instability 5) to pyromancer. Initially I tried to go more attack based build, but ultimately I settled on a caster build iffrit team, using racials and spellgems based around spamming tons of spells fast that massively scale burn damage to the point by the time they take their first turn they are either dead or take 3-500 million damage from the burn. Doesn't mean I don't miss playing the necromancer, just means sometimes early on a build doesn't click as easily as others. Once you get access to essentially all of the races and have a considerable amount of artifact modifiers then you'll find all kinds of new ways to play your favorite build and make it far more bonkers.

Just an aside, Pyro is one of the most overpowered specs in the game specifically due to how wild the scaling on Burn can get very quickly.

If you want easy mode, Pyro is basically easy mode.

Most of that is just burn being really crazy in general. You don't strictly need Pyromancer if you're casting the thing that doubles burn damage 90 times a turn.

[leqesai]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

Originally posted by leqesai:

Just an aside, Pyro is one of the most overpowered specs in the game specifically due to how wild the scaling on Burn can get very quickly.

If you want easy mode, Pyro is basically easy mode.

Most of that is just burn being really crazy in general. You don't strictly need Pyromancer if you're casting the thing that doubles burn damage 90 times a turn.

Right. Burn is the key to killing the enemies quickly but Pyro also makes burn much better. Stopping enemy resurrection is huge as is enemies always having burn status and no cast charge expended on burn spells.

You can make builds around pretty much any status effect in the game without speccing into the exact spec that the status effect is built around... the specs just make them stronger. The specs also make building around that status effect easier.