Entropy question. Am I playing wrong?

[Black Snake]

Asking for legit help. Playing Knight difficulty. I just started chapter 16 and I generally get gold medals on most battles so I know I'm not god awful. But with all the heavy red/blue enemy battles the game is now throwing out, I feel like Lute is constantly near maxing out on her Entropy. Battles have devolved into listening to her constantly shouting "I'm losing my power" or "I can't leave her alone." every 3 seconds. I try to not keep the entropy on but it seems like the threshold is constantly at max as soon as I turn on the bubble.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to keep the entropy low on these Long fights against giant enemies with healthbars the size of buses? I've tried upgrading the entropy as much as possible.

Side note the combat in this game is great but I don't understand why there feels to be a need for a entropy bar to begin with. There's already enough things to juggle and the fights keep ramping up with more and more red/blue enemy battles. What does the entropy bar add other than a constant timer where you have to wait for it to decrease?

[SeekerHammerdin]

The entropy is affected by the various Lute upgrades. Some upgrades will lead to entropy going up faster, I don't remember the specific ones since I haven't looked in a while, but the upgrades you buy will mention if they up entropy or not.

If you happen to buy a lot of them, you'll have it go up really fast without the further upgrades that lower entropy growth. These upgrades to make entropy go up are also available at earlier levels, so it's easy to pick a bunch.

So if you're having trouble with it going up too fast, try to readjust your Lute upgrades a bit.

Later on when you have a bunch of points it'll matter less as you'll stack more upgrades that reduce entropy for her various moves as well as reduce the time she'll be away after an overcharge. That last one is especially good, since overcharging means she can hit a bunch of enemies fairly hard and be back almost immediately afterward.

[SeekerHammerdin]

Ah yeah, as for keeping entropy low, pretty much just have to hit the right enemies often, there's not a whole lot more to it. If you think you won't be able to get some hits in, turn the field off to get entropy down.

For example, the abominations have that three hit combo, so during that you could get back and take the field off, and once it finishes then bring it back on and got back to hitting.

The fields being limited on time like that promotes a more aggressive style of play, so you gotta really lay into them when you can.

[Black Snake]

Thanks for the assistance. I may have to change my playstyle a bit. As it stands now, Lute gets caught in a loop of constantly saying the same phrases back to back during combat and it has gotten a bit annoying.

[WhiteLezard]

There are upgrades that diminish entropy as you kill enemies and ones that keep Lute from disappearing for a couple seconds when maxed; have those on mind too.

[Black Snake]

Originally posted by WhiteLezard:

There are upgrades that diminish entropy as you kill enemies and ones that keep Lute from disappearing for a couple seconds when maxed; have those on mind too.

I have those two. But a lot of the late game fights are against just two of the huge enemies and nothing else. So you have nothing to kill as you try to chip away at their massive health bar.

[Blathanna]

Originally posted by Black Snake:

Asking for legit help. Playing Knight difficulty. I just started chapter 16 and I generally get gold medals on most battles so I know I'm not god awful. But with all the heavy red/blue enemy battles the game is now throwing out, I feel like Lute is constantly near maxing out on her Entropy. Battles have devolved into listening to her constantly shouting "I'm losing my power" or "I can't leave her alone." every 3 seconds. I try to not keep the entropy on but it seems like the threshold is constantly at max as soon as I turn on the bubble.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to keep the entropy low on these Long fights against giant enemies with healthbars the size of buses? I've tried upgrading the entropy as much as possible.

Side note the combat in this game is great but I don't understand why there feels to be a need for a entropy bar to begin with. There's already enough things to juggle and the fights keep ramping up with more and more red/blue enemy battles. What does the entropy bar add other than a constant timer where you have to wait for it to decrease?

Don't take any Chaos trait for Lute if you have issue with Entropy they increase Entropy when she uses an offence counter. Honestly with the rest her passive and having Entropy maxed out and knowing which weapon to use on what enemy's and when to toggle on and off the barrier combat become quite easy.

Out side of chapter 17 and a handful of other encounter once you have all the tools unlocked and lvl up Briar is way OP. Only cluster fights where some enemy can only be slowed and not fully interrupt their moves like the stinger. Or teleporting enemy's it pretty much a stomp fest.

[pawelex94]

Originally posted by Black Snake:

Originally posted by WhiteLezard:

There are upgrades that diminish entropy as you kill enemies and ones that keep Lute from disappearing for a couple seconds when maxed; have those on mind too.

I have those two. But a lot of the late game fights are against just two of the huge enemies and nothing else. So you have nothing to kill as you try to chip away at their massive health bar.

Exacly
Still having nightmares from chapter 23
Most of the time without important health shards and with no npc anywhere to refill resources
Late game fights were so much turning red and blue auras on and off ye....

[SeekerHammerdin]

Originally posted by pawelex94:

Originally posted by Black Snake:

I have those two. But a lot of the late game fights are against just two of the huge enemies and nothing else. So you have nothing to kill as you try to chip away at their massive health bar.

Exacly
Still having nightmares from chapter 23
Most of the time without important health shards and with no npc anywhere to refill resources
Late game fights were so much turning red and blue auras on and off ye....

Are you sure you meant chapter 23?

I would understand 17 and 18 since those can throw some really annoying stuff at you, but chapter 23 gives you crystals in the arena that max your unity, and these crystals respawn, there's two for each combat area.

You can basically spam Rapture during that chapter for just about every encounter (maybe like one that doesn't have it).

[WhiteLezard]

Chapter 23 is kind of a trap because if you get hit too much you won't be able to use the crystals, and the level intends you to stay on permanent Berserk mode.

[SeekerHammerdin]

Huh, never really noticed that, I know that in rapture you can't do counters, but your dash is so fast and covers so much space that I generally don't get hit in that mode anyway, so I hadn't berserked on that level except for the beginning where you're forced.

[Koros Antavo]

Anyway, if your entropy goes up for no reason, it's probably the fault of those pesky Chaos updates which produce explosive sigils. Just pick any different path.

It seems to me, Trickery is the only good path here. Aforementioned Chaos increases entropy, and Mastery requires you to pay attention to enemy animations BEFORE they make an attack, which is never happening in a spectacle fighter. And trickery has plenty of useful upgrades.

[postjm]

Originally posted by Koros Antavo:

Anyway, if your entropy goes up for no reason, it's probably the fault of those pesky Chaos updates which produce explosive sigils. Just pick any different path.

It seems to me, Trickery is the only good path here. Aforementioned Chaos increases entropy, and Mastery requires you to pay attention to enemy animations BEFORE they make an attack, which is never happening in a spectacle fighter. And trickery has plenty of useful upgrades.

I started feeling like I was missing something because the Trickery path seemed so obviously the best in every case.
I'm sure there are ways you can cheese the Chaos upgrades for ridiculous low-effort damage, and high-skilled players might prefer mastery, but for most people, Trickery ends up looking like the "correct" choice rather than a play-style decision.

[Koros Antavo]

Chaos is fine, more or less. It is annoying in how it disrupts your play, but the explosions are quite powerful. But I cannot see Mastery ever working with their perfect parry system.

In ordrer to execute a perfect parry, you need to press the button the very moment the prompt appears on screen. To do that, you either need inhuman reflexes and a flawless delay-less setup, or you need to watch the enemies carefully and respond to their animations rather than the prompt.

The problem here is, you don't respond to the actual attack, like most games with parry systems require you to do. If you wait until the singular frame before the enemy attack reaches you, you're already hopelessly late. Instead, you basically must respond to the first twitch of the muscle the enemy makes before the attack. THEN it's a perfect parry.

The system itself, while unusual, is not fundamentally bad. It incentivises paying close attention to your enemies and studying their movement instead of UI prompts, which would normally be a good thing... if the game's main inspirations weren't freaking DMC and God of War! There simply is no time or mindspace for such careful observation on this battlefield, which makes the Mastery branch entirely useless everywhere except during bossfights.

[Koros Antavo]

Originally posted by postjm:

...

Also, based pfp.

It also made me think you must have played El Shaddai... and you actually own the game