Path around lava feels unbalanced.

[Mad Wombat]

OK, so at this point, I am in act 9. My runs include all the islands, I get the HP belt. I do all the monk training. I fight most of the optional fights except jaguar, gorilla, chimera and bronze dragon. My runs take about 15 minutes.

I have been stuck ending the run on "Path around lava" for the past 30-40 runs. And I am still not close to getting through. It went from "it takes 60 seconds and you die around 50 second mark" to "it takes 30 seconds and you die around 10 second mark", but the increments are tiny and I expect that it might take me another 20-30 runs to get through.

This is just not fun. Up to this point this game was heavily dependent on tweaking and optimization. With only a few places where you had to simply grind for a few runs. And even in those places there was usually some stuff I could optimize to make the performance better.

But my past 20-30 runs have all been fire and forget. The only thing I changed in the 20 runs is that now I have enough agility to jump gorge instead of making rope. I have looked through the whole sequence and there is no place anywhere where I can get my agility higher by the time I end up at "path around lava". All I can do is run and run and run and run.

My agility instinct is 1115 so it takes it a few runs to gain more levels. So the results only change every 2-3 runs. I stopped even looking at the death screen to see what changed if anything. I just click the next reincarnation, wait for it to be over and click again.

Really, this is not fun.

[Simbu]

I assume you are skipping something vital if you are having such a hard time with path around lava.

Generally the best path is chapter 7, chapter 8, then chapter 6, with mine route for hp belt. With that setup you should get to chapter 9, and path around lava with more then 30 of falcons, seals, sharks, pelicans, and quite a few soups. You should also have a full inventory of corn cobs before you start path around lava.

If you are running all funnels, that is most likely your problem. The funnels become more and more difficult every completion, so you could be eating all your food before going to chapter 9. Corn cobs alone will not be enough to get past. Generally when you try a full attempt at chapter 9, you want to disable all funnels.

If all of that is still not enough... you should be able to turn off bull meat cooking, and save those for the lava path... but really that shouldn't be required with how overgrinded your stats are. I get to chapter 10 with almost 100 less agility levels, and never have a problem.

[␥]

Up to that point, path around lava has the highest mandatory combat/exploration damage of 400k base decay/s. Walrus is 250k/s, and golem and hydra are 200k/s. The optional stuff is higher, of course (500k/s jaguar, 750k/s gorilla and chimera, 1.5m/s bronze dragon, and 1.25m/s poachers).

Almost immediately after clearing path around lava, you run into cross lava flow, which is a 750m agility failure check that hits for 5m damage. Assuming you're running mine route with a 1.38x tool modifier, you'd need your agility to be at least a 185 generation level to match your 1115 instinct level to clear it (~755m) without hitting another wall.

River route gives you an extra 25% agility tool modifier and increased inventory capacity, but you lose the MHP belt and combat tool. Depending on your approximate agility generation level, river route might be temporarily required to get past cross lava flow shortly afterwards. While it would also decrease the time required for path around lava, the reduced MHP would make it counterproductive without other changes.

The key in all of this is your decay, reducing combat/exploration decay, and better offsetting it with food:

-You should always be using claim shield instead of reject shield, as the 20% multiplicative reduction to combat/exploration decay gets you much greater mileage than the 1.5x MHP gain. Increasing shield funnel gets you a multiplicative 1% reduction per level on top of that.

-Inspect hourglass/funnel hourglass work similarly with food cooldown reductions.

-Tooth funnel increases food value by a multiplicative 1.25% while increasing cooldown by 1%.

-Hourglass & shield funnel xp&decay compound by 1.1 per level, while tooth funnel xp&decay compound by 1.15 per level. Pushing any of them too high will burn through your food reserves and make path around lava more difficult.

-In a NG+0/perkless run (no passive jobs) you can manually reserve raw food (ie: bull meat) and manually cook it to get through difficult areas like this. There is also a setting for configuring this behavior (Override exhausted) in the game settings if you want to reconfigure your automation for it instead of manually controlling it.

-You only need to clear 2 of the 3 islands to progress into chapter 9. You can either skip chapter 6 and lose the 20% inspect hourglass for a 3x decay reduction, or you can skip chapter 8 for a 1.5x decay reduction (factoring in limestone hut) but lose falcons/seals. Chapter 7 is never worth skipping in this context, and whether you want to skip at all depends on how your base decay compares to the additional decay from path around lava.

[alexander.julian.erhard]

If your runs end at 15 minutes, your time based decay should be negligible even with all 3 islands (assuming all possible huts, only 2589/s?), so for you the issue is primarily a function of HP regeneration vs damage from path around lava. Plus maybe a bad max HP, which you can´t really do anything about for the moment though because you die so early.

However provided you have gotten a decent amount of funnel levels
(10 or more. I grinded out to level 14 in my current playthrough before really focusing on chapter 9, but I also have the benefit of 2 levels of most NG+ perks),
obviously choose the shield in chapter 7, get the -20% food cooldown from chapter 6, if you save up all possible food starting from chapter 3
(game settings -> set "override exhausted" to disabled and set cook bull to disabled),
you should be able to get a regeneration rate close to or above the damage of path around lava.
If you´re below 10 funnels, definitely do some more!

However at your point in the game, you might have to micromanage the seals in chapter 8, so you´ll be able to gather a decent amount of uncooked seals (at least 7-8 if path around lava takes 30s) which, as the second best available food source up to path around lava, you´ll definitely need.

Also as others have recommended, 7-8-6 is a good route, because you´ll only lose your stew to the fixed damages of chapter 8, and compared to for example 7-6-8 you can bring the soup from chapter 6 to chapter 9. If you can beat the gorilla, that can reduce the amount of food lost to "get ransacked".
It is definitely the best route for bringing the most food into chapter 9, which will be relevant once you beat path around lava.
Although maybe if you really can´t beat it with all tips, you should try doing 8-6-7 or 8-7-6 so you´ll also be able to bring some stew to chapter 9.

[alexander.julian.erhard]

A bit of math to prove that path around lava shouldn´t be too difficult as long as you save up as many different types of food as possible, even with a lower number of funnels, let´s say 5 of each:

Base HP of all Foods you can potentially bring into chapter 9:
Crab: 500 HP
Goat: 1500 HP
Vulture: 3000 HP
Eel: 5000 HP
Lobster: 12,5k HP
Pie: 15k HP
Shark: 50k HP
Pelican: 75k HP
Soup: 100k HP
Stew: 150k HP
Bull: 175k HP
Falcon: 200k HP
Seal: 250k HP
Corncob: 300k HP

Sum of all foods (which is probably doable with an unconventional 8-7-6 or 8-6-7 route and if you micromanage the seals): 1337,5k
All foods except stew if you do 7-8-6 (which is the usually recommended route because it collects the highest possible total food value, which will become relevant once you make it past path around lava): 1187,5k

So can we get a faster HP regeneration than damage from path around lava?
First assuming we have no benefits from funnels or certain explorations, we divide those values by 5 to get our average HP/s:
267,5k/s for the "all foods" variant and 237,5k/s for the "no stew 7-6-8" variant.
From chapter 6, we can get -20% food cooldown, that increases HP/s by *1,25, to
334,375k/s or 296,875k/s.
Adding for example 5 funnels each, we get: Each food cooldown funnel multiplies food consumption by 0,99, therefore multiplies HP/s by 1/0,99 =1,0101.
Each food value funnel multiplies food value by 1,0125, but reduces consumption speed to 1,01, therefore multiplies HP/s by 1,0125/1,01 = 1,0024
5 levels of each funnel therefore boost the regeneration up to
355,98k/s or 316,06k/s.

Now looking at the incoming damage/s:
We have a base 400k/s. By taking the shield in chapter 7, this gets multiplied by 0,8 and reduces the damage down to 320k/s.
With another 5 funnel levels, it gets multiplied by 0,99 per level, further down to 304,31k/s.

So even the lower HP/s 7-8-6 route should provide more HP/s than path around lava has damage/s, with only 5 funnels each.

Also if I have calculated correctly, at 15 minutes your decay should only be:
Base 0,5
* 0,5^7 from 7 huts (two in chapter 1, one each in chapter 2, 3, 4, 5, 7)
* 2^5 from decay doublers (four between chapter 3 and 4, one between chapter 4 and 5)
* 3^6 from decay triplers (one at the end of chapter 2, one when fleeing the city in chapter 5, one each for entering chapters 6-9)
* 1,25^15 from 15 minutes
= 2,6k damage/s

[Mad Wombat]

Guys. You don't need to prove me wrong with math. I have empirical evidence that says your math is wrong. At this point I have been stuck at the "path around lava" for over 60 runs. I am not running out of food. I run out of HP.

I end up at the path with 30 of both corncobs and cooked falcons and I don't even go through half of it. I pick up the belt and my HP is 3.87M at this point. And going up about 3K every run.

I go through every stage and I do every optional goal except for a few high damage optional fights I mentioned in my original post. I picked every agility related path I could find, so I would train agility faster.

At this point when I die to lava I only have about 3.5 seconds left on the task clock. But it has been between 3 and 4 second for the past 15 runs or so, so it is unclear to me how many runs it might take until I can pass this stage.

This is really frustrating. I kinda want to finish the game, I am around 450 generations total and don't want to quit, but this is just dumb.

This is what my game looks like at the end of a run

https://imgur.com/a/s4gxS4m

[␥]

Okay, so first thing I'm seeing is... why don't you have any seals?

Second thing, and this is a big red flag, you're at sub 13 minutes on that death with a 349k decay/s. Your base decay should be in the ~1500/s range, assuming:

-you did all 3 islands
-you built all the huts
-you have no NG+ perks (which would only reduce the decay more)

...which leaves 347k+ decay/s from path around lava.

Seeing as path around lava is 320k/s with claim shield and 0 shield funnels, I can infer that you're using reject shield in chapter 7 for the 1.5x MHP gain modifier instead of the 20% damage reduction, which is dumb.

That's also probably why you have no seals. You're probably burning them all on fight poachers and/or the tooth funnel because you're taking more damage than you should from rejecting the shield.

Edit: My empirically wrong math also tells me you've probably got a level 14 shield funnel. With claim shield, you could reduce your effective decay/s in this exact scenario from ~349k/s -> ~280k/s. You'd also have seals, which would increase your food/s from ~147k/s -> ~221k/s.

[Simbu]

Originally posted by Mad Wombat:

I am not running out of food. I run out of HP.

Where are the seals, pelicans, sharks, and soups. It seems like you are running out of food to me.

[Jay Ren]

Yeah, uh, you should be hitting that point with a lot of food. you must be doing something optional you shouldn't be.

Some peeps (myself included) find a couple checks around there easier with river route. but like, this isn't the kind of thing that's fixed with a minor optimisation, you should just flast out have more resources on hand at that point.

if I had to guess, you are fighting something like the jaguar (don't), are funneling (don't), are rejecting the sheild (don't), or have some weird food gathering setting.

You certainly shouldn't be dieing /faster/ as your skill goes up. That only happons for Seals and later similar checks.

[Simbu]

The problem is almost certainly that they are doing all funnels, and doing chapter 6-7-8. They only have falcons and corn because they fail to complete funneling at the dragon tooth, which eats all their food except what they can refill after. The only other explanation is just really poor automation setup to leave areas with no food.

An hourglass value of 1.72 is quite high if you aren't funneling for that point of the game, and a shield funnel level of 14 if ␥ has the math right is quite high without perks.

Not claiming shield for the 20% damage reduction as well is just silly, but oh well.

[Mad Wombat]

OK, answering questions:

I don't hunt the seals because they waste more health than they give. I should give it another try, but last time I tried them, I was losing more health hunting them than generated from eating them.

I don't have soups because those are in act 6. That was 3 acts ago, I ate them all while going through the previous acts. Same goes for sharks and pelicans

My decay in the screenshot is 349K because I died to the lava. Lava adds 347K. My idle decay before the lava is around 2K.

My funnels are hourglass 14, shield 14 and tooth 8. And yes, I do reject shield for more HP. I will try accepting.

I attempt funneling the hourglass and tooth on every run, but funneling the shield kills me, so I only do it occasionally.

[Mad Wombat]

Turns out that simply accepting the shield was the solution. I guess I am sacrificing long term health gain for this, but at least I am past the "path around lava".

Now I die jumping into volcano which is a lot of progress. I will try to optimize my food a bit better, so I am left with more stuff at that stage.

[␥]

Originally posted by Mad Wombat:

I don't hunt the seals because they waste more health than they give. I should give it another try, but last time I tried them, I was losing more health hunting them than generated from eating them.

Regarding this in particular, I believe catch seals is a base 220k completion damage, while a cooked seal recovers a base of 250k + an additional ~26.12k from your tooth funnel. So you're actually netting roughly 56.12k healing per seal. Earlier on you might not have noticed this because your base decay was initially high enough to eat through that extra healing, and you didn't have the extra bit from the tooth funnel. Now, your base decay is ridiculously low, and the extra time spent on seals shouldn't harm you.

Catching seals (and similar completion damage gathering jobs: magma blocks and steel later on) also reduces your existing food cooldowns by 10% every time the job is completed. Ideally, if you have falcons and cooked seals available when you catch seals, this means you're maximally generating an additional 10% of both falcon + cooked seal food value (~49.7k) in healing for every seal caught.

That particular mechanic was added a long while back because people were backsliding when their skill levels got too high and rapidly catching seals with a high fishing level, for example, would outpace their MHP gains and burn through their HP reserves, potentially killing them early or requiring tedious automation changes to circumvent.

[Simbu]

Originally posted by Mad Wombat:

I don't hunt the seals because they waste more health than they give. I should give it another try, but last time I tried them, I was losing more health hunting them than generated from eating them.

I don't have soups because those are in act 6. That was 3 acts ago, I ate them all while going through the previous acts. Same goes for sharks and pelicans

I attempt funneling the hourglass and tooth on every run, but funneling the shield kills me, so I only do it occasionally.

Seals are basically storing HP. You spend 4 million hp and recover it mostly with falcons, but then you can recover that 4 million hp later., with a bit of a boost so more like 5 million. They are a very strong food source. You should be able to max out your inventory with 60 seals quite easily at this point in the game... which is like 16 million HP.

Change your order of islands, do act 6 after act 8. That gives you a lot more food for chapter 9.

Don't funnel on every run, it consumes too much food if you want to progress to chapter 10.

[thefollowingcharacters]

Ok, people way over complicated the answer.

I noticed you've now jumped into the volcano. You are at the point in the game where you sometimes must decide NOT to do certain things.

For example, are you trying to do Jaguar, failing, and losing hp? Don't do that.
Are you trying to kill the Gorilla then get rampaged by the monkeys? Don't do that.

You have to think about total decay, and places where food cannot be farmed for extended periods of time. When that happens think, "How can I bring as much food as possible with the lowest decay?"

So look at the three islands, think about the fact that every island TRIPLES your decay, think about cart vs mine for extra food vs extra hp, and think what to do next.

Here's the answer, but keep the above mentality in mind going forward as you'll need to go back and do Jaguar and Chimera eventually:

1. Start river. You get agility tool and sailing tool. This will help you greatly in chapter 9.
2. Start with chapter 7. This will get you 40 capacity for food. This is more HP than the mine belt at this point. Get the shield almost every time from now on. 20% reduction willbe far more beneficial going forward. Do NOT do any funnels.
3. Go to chapter 6. Do the FIRST funnel only for the bonus cooldown time on food. Do NOT do Jaguar, climb rocks and leap the gorge to save time. Get ransacked.

From here you'll need to grind out chapter 9's grind of social and sailing (You'll see) Eventually it will end and you'll be able to get food again. But, keep in mind as you keep improving, there are things you may need to go back to. Keep it in mind.


Last note: Especially in a new game, there is no harm in grinding out funnels as much as you can first. You may need to switch the order of the islands around to get successful funnels, but basically if you're on the last island and you can't funnel for a max upgrade, you've reached as far as you can go FOR NOW. Always consider going back as your max hp increases and it becomes easier to go through chapter 9.

[alexander.julian.erhard]

Originally posted by Mad Wombat:

Turns out that simply accepting the shield was the solution. I guess I am sacrificing long term health gain for this, but at least I am past the "path around lava".

Rejecting the shield when your runs are short (15 minutes you mentioned for runs where you didn´t go for the shield) is basically worthless, your max health gain might be sub 1k.
Long runs are where max HP shines, and in my opinion, there are only a few points in he game where reject shields feel worth it at the moment:

1. The first time you make it to the shield decision and know you can´t survive longer than a couple of seconds. Then getting a bit more max HP out of a hopefully relatively long run is worth it.
2. Somewhere in the middle of chapter 8 (around the time seals are unlocked), you can potentially make it through chapter 7 without going to chapter 6 first. This usually leads to longer runs (~42 min) and 15-20k max health gain again. If you can also make it there while rejecting shield you can potentially make 23-30k max health. Switch back to the shield once you make it to funnel tooth though.
3. Very late in the game at chapter 11 when you can do all previous doublers with ease. Yes, decay damages are probably the fastest way to complete 11, but with all doublers including the shield you can see max HP gains of 4-7M per run!

Originally posted by Mad Wombat:

Now I die jumping into volcano which is a lot of progress. I will try to optimize my food a bit better, so I am left with more stuff at that stage.

Once you make it here, reaching this point with as much food as possible is key.
This usually makes river the better choice.
However it may be worth to skip chapter 6 (just do 7-8-9) and the associated 3x decay, if you can pass path around lava without it.
Otherwise 7-8-6-9 should give the most storeable HP in total, but with 3x decay probably lead to shorter lives.