AOE builds are hopeless?

[Nathan]

Even with the new Blood Astronomia (which I was hoping would make them viable), they are still so weak and are easily overwhelmed, no?

[Aristocratic Cthulhu]

Yeah, Blood Astronomia is very weak. I tried making a build around it and even with all five weapons plus Duplicator and Attractorb it only did 9.7million damage, roughly as much as the individual weapons themselves.

[Hedning]

How is cats or water filling the entire screen bad? I guess it depends on what you are giving up for it.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Nathan:

Even with the new Blood Astronomia (which I was hoping would make them viable), they are still so weak and are easily overwhelmed, no?

i dunno what you're talking about, la borra can outdamage most weapons in my play.

[Olathoë]

Blood Astronomia is very useful in early and mid game for gaining exp. Also with aoe, you don't have to worry about shot speed. Christine with cooldown reduction just clears enemies from screen before shots would even hit or at least pushes them back for gorgeous moon to have time do its job. Also like mentioned. La Borra's dps is huge with area and duration. Also I found in one game that cats that weren't even fully leveled had 4 times maxed victory sword dps.

[KellyR]

Weak? Dude, if you can't breeze through the game with a single weapon Soul Eater run using Silent Old Sanctuary you're just doing something wrong. Add in Tragic Princess and Blood Astronomia and it's just insanely good.

[Talithmara]

Disclaimer: I am not a pro and am not in any way calling this a "good" run. I just wanted to show what Blood Astronomia can do if somewhat reasonably built for:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866422847

I did a run to specifically see how far Blood Astronomia - Not the weapons, could take me, and this was the result. Apparently banishing a weapon you already have at least one level in still lets it be limit broken? Weird, but okay.

I won't lie: Pentagram and Gorgeous Moon DID save my neck, and the very end was only possible thanks to the Crimson Shroud. However, my point is not "can this solo," since Blood Astronomia is clearly intended to be used alongside other items, and not as a solo carry. I feel like even grabbing it just because you have Lancet/Laurel and are going after the reaper is a solid choice, even before considering that it can be made better alongside other options.

To explain my choices:

- I banished the Song of Mana in an attempt to keep the impact minmal. I ended up not evolving the garlic, though I had originally intended to evolve the garlic for the healing.

- I did not use Peppino since I wanted to test on The Bone Zone, and that slow speed would make escaping the Green Reaper a matter of pentagram activation timing. Peppino's large magnet boost would make this very powerful, but alas.

- I did use Christina because I hate earlygame Pentagram. I need to get it later once level ups come fast, to burn through upgrades ASAP. However, her personal cooldown reduction would have made this much better.

- I did not test it on any of the +Amount characters since, to put it bluntly, I've barely touched Gallo and wanted to try them more. That's it. That's the only reason.

- Divine Bloodline was my second Arcana because I honestly suspected this would go worse than it did, and I wanted the reflected damage/ bonus to max HP as a safety net of sorts. I also don't know if this is just confirmation bias or not, but I thought I saw it increase the Blood Astronomia damage while I was messing around with Poe on a 1 weapon run earlier, though I don't know if that's real or just power ups.

- Mad Groove was my third Arcana because I was mostly AFK and didn't want to manually chase down the Rings and Metaglios. Needless to say, I did need to spend a few minutes kiting the enemies that guard them, since I was already well over level 100 and they scale.

- I got Candybox and Super Candybox back to back near the end so I just grabbed the Lightning Ring/Loop since I had the evolution item anyways. I honestly almost skipped, but thought "eh, it's harmless."

[Talithmara]

Follow up:

Silent Old Sanctuary was mentioned. I never thought of using it with one weapon before since "active" slot implied... not closed. So I tested it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866454920

... yeah, uh, heh, this is silly.

[Wizu]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/873440573015613502/1022856668297568326/bloodastro.jpg

Oh yeah this is pretty nuts. Killed all 4 guardians too.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Talithmara:

Follow up:

Silent Old Sanctuary was mentioned. I never thought of using it with one weapon before since "active" slot implied... not closed. So I tested it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866454920

... yeah, uh, heh, this is silly.

Yeah, that specific arcana is basically the only reason to even use the weapon limiter.

[Sea Base]

Originally posted by HeraldOfOpera:

Originally posted by Talithmara:

Follow up:

Silent Old Sanctuary was mentioned. I never thought of using it with one weapon before since "active" slot implied... not closed. So I tested it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866454920

... yeah, uh, heh, this is silly.

Yeah, that specific arcana is basically the only reason to even use the weapon limiter.

With enough Eggs, it's a great idea to use the limiter to save on game performance, so it doesn't take an hour or more to play one run.

[RoboPot]

https://imgur.com/1GujvAh
"Weak"

[Hedning]

Originally posted by RoboPot:

https://imgur.com/1GujvAh
"Weak"

I have just started collecting eggs... that's a lot of eggs. I don't know how much a difference almost 7500 eggs does, but I bet it's a lot. With insane bonuses from elsewhere can you really say anything about that one buff?

[RoboPot]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Originally posted by RoboPot:

https://imgur.com/1GujvAh
"Weak"

I have just started collecting eggs... that's a lot of eggs. I don't know how much a difference almost 7500 eggs does, but I bet it's a lot. With insane bonuses from elsewhere can you really say anything about that one buff?

Originally posted by Talithmara:

Follow up:

Silent Old Sanctuary was mentioned. I never thought of using it with one weapon before since "active" slot implied... not closed. So I tested it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866454920

... yeah, uh, heh, this is silly.

[Thundercracker]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2866679234
this showcases what is possible with a character that has "a few" eggs on them.

blood astronomicon was my starting arcana, i had screen filling AOE by 2 mins, and i couldent see more than enemy death animations till about 28 mins. managed to farm up a so-so amount of gold while doing this. i also gave up a chunk of astronomicon damage by evolving the laurel and lancet, only the base forms proc astronomicon.

[Wizu]

The worst part about Blood Astronomicon is that it cant effectively be used for farming, your gold per run goes down if you dont start with Wicked Season+Disco of Gold first. Its super good at finishing a no-egg map run tho, just start with the arcana that gives you more powah for empty slots, only use 1 weapon and then as 2nd arcana in 11 mins use Blood.

Personal favourite is garlic since Blood finally gives it the dmg it needs to dominate.