Is a melee only build viable against all bosses?

[rustdwarf]

Has anyone tried melee only run through the entire game including bosses?
no throwables, just smaking things

[Torops]

I was trying vs ch1 and ch2 bosses. Its possible but very hard. I wasnt trying melee vs ch3 and dlc bosses, so not shure, but sometimes they both going to the earth. So i thing it possible, but unreally hard xd

[HURT AND HATE]

I killed the first boss with 3-5 molotovs. They are easy to buy if you return to the menu.

The second boss can be killed with melee if you build a build for health loss and over damage.

The third boss? To hell with it. "They" made a lot of game mechanics for show and abandoned them. Tomahawk, Winchester, voodoo doll.

[HURT AND HATE]

a year ago, farmed melee to 1,500,000 damage
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3156659750

[rustdwarf]

I just figured out that
- ch3 boss goes down to the ledge from time to time
- you can damage ch1 boss with melee, but you have to jump
- spirit enemies can be avoided with the chicken leg amulet
- boo hags can be avoided or dealt with using gold oil
but
- ch2 boss needs bonefires to be lit, and you can't do that with melee only

so I guess the answer seems to be no, you can't beat the game using ONLY melee weapons no throwables

[TK]

Originally posted by rustdwarf:

I just figured out that
- ch3 boss goes down to the ledge from time to time
- you can damage ch1 boss with melee, but you have to jump
- spirit enemies can be avoided with the chicken leg amulet
- boo hags can be avoided or dealt with using gold oil
but
- ch2 boss needs bonefires to be lit, and you can't do that with melee only

so I guess the answer seems to be no, you can't beat the game using ONLY melee weapons no throwables

Is he invincible now when the fires aren't lit? In early access I slashed his legs and he kept recovering but the berserker perk stacked so high that at some it would chunk him to much to outheal.

[rustdwarf]

Originally posted by TK:

Originally posted by rustdwarf:

I just figured out that
- ch3 boss goes down to the ledge from time to time
- you can damage ch1 boss with melee, but you have to jump
- spirit enemies can be avoided with the chicken leg amulet
- boo hags can be avoided or dealt with using gold oil
but
- ch2 boss needs bonefires to be lit, and you can't do that with melee only

so I guess the answer seems to be no, you can't beat the game using ONLY melee weapons no throwables

Is he invincible now when the fires aren't lit? In early access I slashed his legs and he kept recovering but the berserker perk stacked so high that at some it would chunk him to much to outheal.

I think you are indeed right, I forgot he had regeneration, not invincibility

OK gonna give this one a try

[rustdwarf]

So I'm wasn't having any luck with axing down the ch2 boss without bonfires.
It would appear that it's not only regeneration, but also invincibility. I'm not sure how it works, he seemed vulnerable to some attacks and some did nothing. Perhaps it depends on attack animation frames or something. (*edit or maybe regeneration is just that fast, it was hard to tell in the heat of battle, but it was pretty fast)

However...

Critical stealth damage does apply to the boss, so stacking roughly 1200 additional damage on the Left Hand Path I was able to take him down with a single backstab.

Chapter 3 here I come!
honestly I'm mostly curious to see how well will I perform against bears and multiple invisible dudes at once

[rustdwarf]

Originally posted by сursed:

a year ago, farmed melee to 1,500,000 damage
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3156659750

I wonder how that works?
I'm building around pretty much the same health loosing combo LHP + Coin necklace + Rib (+30% HP potion) with Berserk and Adrenalin Rush. But I don't think it is mathematically possible to have 1M damage and besides your health bar is full.

[HURT AND HATE]

I attacked the meat fury in Act 3. She activates block and is immortal.

I dealt 100 knife hits with the Berserker skill level 2 (+10% damage for each hit on the enemy for a short time). And switched to the weapon axe.

[rustdwarf]

Originally posted by сursed:

I attacked the meat fury in Act 3. She activates block and is immortal.

I dealt 100 knife hits with the Berserker skill level 2 (+10% damage for each hit on the enemy for a short time). And switched to the weapon axe.

Oh you mean the boo hag?

[HURT AND HATE]

y

[rustdwarf]

So I've completed the melee only (no throwables!) run and here is what I can say about it

Chapter 1
grabbed living vine asap, then saved up for the bone knife
Regular enemies are an absolute breeze, melee stealth kills all day everyday baby
Wendingo's are the toughest, but they can be headshot-stealth-crited in one shot with the living vine
Chapter 1 boss is the hardest part of the challenge and I died the most here. This is the moment when the game's hit detection really shows it's clunkiness. You have to awkwardly jump and time your swings to end the boss quickly and the damage eats away your health. I'm not sure I can repeat it and I certainly never want to try it again
Very unpleasant, just molotov-burn it.

Chapter 2
Regular enemies don't pose much of a threat from the start, bone knife is quite sufficient in stealth kills, and when it's not, living vine is your friend.
But this is also the chapter melee builds get most of their prime gear, namely the Left Hand axe, Endless Hunger, the Coin Neclace, the Rib, the Chicken-leg necklace, and the face skins for additional armor.
Casually one-shotting Death Stalkers is great!
I did mention already that I couldn't chop at the boss in fair battle, his regen is too high. But he can be brought down with a single backstab with the Left Hand if you stack roughly 1200 additional damage on it

Chapter 3
pretty much same thing as chapter 2, you can stack a lot of damage on the Left Hand, and even just left-click enemies to death with Endless Hunger (later switched to Needle of Fate as best of both worlds between bone knife and endless hunger). No issues one-shotting hell bears from stealth with some damage pre-stacked on top. Boo hags are easily avoided with stealth, and you can carry a separate gold oiled weapon to finish them off if you want.
Got bored already and finished the chapter with a Cultist's mask.
The final boss is a no-brainer. He has the most telegraphed and avoidable attacks in the entire game, and quite an understandable window of opportunity to damage him.
Don't chug on health potions rapidly, once you are <30% HP, Adrenalin + Left Hand does short work of of the final baddy.

unfortunately don't have a DLC yet so this is it for now.

[Potato Salad]

i want to see the video of melee only run pl0x

[rustdwarf]

Sorry dude, don't have it

[The Creature]

Can confirm, it's very much possible apart from CH2 boss depending on your rules, just a pain in the butt for some segments of CH2 and very early CH3. With some set up getting some OP artifacts and building for it, no standard enemies (even the Wendigos, Death Stalkers, etc.) require anything additional beyond maxing out your damage and some combo of face tanking their damage, stunning them, and combo'ing damage. By CH3 you get some stuff allowing consecutive melee hits to do really ridiculous damage, so the only roadblocks end up being the bosses as a whole and some cases where you'd maybe need stealth, and you can always toss on a heart to heal without spending money if you care. Overall though this is what I remember from doing it a while ago (8 months or so, hence the fuzzy memory):

CH1 comes down to getting the few good items available and they carry you through, especially the Bone Knife and Living Vines, plus I believe there's enough levels to be gathered and gold oil to bonk the boss relatively quickly to keep it from being a problem.

I do have to make an exception for lighting the fires in CH2 like rustdwarf said unless farming up, but if you're willing to do that the boss becomes way more possible even without cheese strats. You get the rest of your major perks and weapons and some of the artifacts by this point, but since you can stealth or run away from 99% of the enemies if necessary I suspect you could do this chapter with MUCH less.

CH3 has two options: You can either become virtually unkillable by doing the CH3 Alvaro easter egg, touching up any final helpful few perks, and grabbing the best weapons available (honestly I just used a pair of knives, one for stealth one for combo'ing damage though I don't remember the names). But at that point, you should have enough levels and be able to farm up a bit of money to take out the boss. As rustdwarf pointed out, the CH3 boss isn't too bad to fight melee only.

I have NOT done CH4 melee only yet, but I think it should be possible, if only barely. As usual, getting the right setup as early as possible is probably important, though the more limited pool of artifacts (1 chapter worth instead of 3) makes it more of a challenge and is probably more stealth and running away based. I'm not gonna say the DLC CH4 is 100% doable but I don't recall a situation where a melee weapon couldn't feasibly work.

TLDR I'm just here to tell you that CH1-3 is possible *with the exception of lighting the CH2 fires to make the boss killable* and I suspect CH4 is also possible though it'd be tougher.