Struggling on Darkness 15

[soldyne]

I get it, Darkness 15 is meant to be hard. I am going for the achievements where you need to use a specific gun or character and I am just not getting enough damage to survive the last 5 mins of any run.

the only gun that works is Bat Gun and it is above and beyond the best gun in the game. nothing else I've tried will get damage high enough to kill anything in the last 5 minutes.

I have tried so many summon builds and they just don't scale for enough damage to kill anything in the end.

any suggestions or vids to watch? what about rune selection? I am going for a dodge build and that seems to help.

[chimmon]

First of all, make sure you have your runes maxed. Going straight from 1 to 15 doesn't give enough points, so replaying on lower levels to grind helps.

For Shield runes, I always go with: Vigilance (Pickup range means more/quicker exp), Momentum (Speed is your best defense), Healing or Blessing (depends on the character), and finally, Growth (100% essential just for the exp boost. The extra life can also come in handy if you're lucky).

For Sword runes, it depends on your character + gun. Either go all elemental, or none. The caveat is that Cadence is the best final tier skill. The others are too situational. You want the consistency of every 3rd shot. (Although it's wonky with the Salvo Knife.)

The easiest runs I've had have been with Spark & Dual SMGs or Yuki & Watering Gun. Both of them go heavy into Fire & Ice, and Spark adds electricity for unlimited ammo. The most powerful end-game character is Diamond, but she relies on RNG to get her cumulative buffs going, and so can have a much harder time surviving until then.

If you want the Batgun, I'd go with Lilith. She NEEDS pulsing summons, but once she gets it every ghost will AoE every couple of seconds and that makes things so much easier.

[Demonking]

I have to say, having played quite a few rounds of it myself I need to stress upon you that you will not get enough damage to be to reliably kill the hordes as soon as you might want to. Early on picks like dodge chance, speed, and anything that'll give you knock back are actually quite useful for survival and can lend to damage later. Other options is of course if your gun fires quickly, lightning is still about as effective as it always is. Fire's a little slow but depending on your build it'll help you kill bosses a lot faster than your normally will. Curse is basically the only way your gun is keeping it up and frost is just useful for keeping your running space clear.

If you have it, I actually suggest water gun + cultist. Go for curse and pick the option that makes the flower gain bonuses from your base damage. The tentacles will handle applying the curse while your flower is spitting out enough damage to handle most threats. Another fun one along these lines is also shotgun + shooting in random directions. If you put the option that has her shooting a second one behind her, it doesn't follow the normal rules and instead shoots in a random direction too. One of my first clears on night 15 was actually because of that.

Anyway a good rune to pack on most night 15 runs is actually upon reload, knock back enemies. If you're reloading a lot and quickly it can help in the early game where you just simply don't have the damage to turn off your brain.

[soldyne]

Thanks for the tips.
I think I found the winning character. Yuki!
her freezing butterflies are amazing. I already knew the power of freeze and that it could freeze bosses, but, I didn't realize until I played around with her that the butterflies can freeze in an area, not just the enemy they hit and they pierce and don't vanish after freezing an enemy.

She also gets upgrades to summon two butterflies and have them freeze pulse more often. I then pair this with the Frost Mage tree and the final 5 mins went from being a harrowing dodge fest to being a shooting gallery. the final tree boss thing at the end of the forest was nothing. it just stayed perma-frozen till I melted it.

The only real drawback is that she summons them after 6 shots of the gun so fire rate is important to keep butterflies on the field.

so for people struggling on Darkness 15 the best gun with any character is the Bat Gun, The Best character with any gun is Yuki (just my humble opinion of course).