overwhelming starts

[MightyLad]

i cant help but feel like im never doing enough with the first few stages, and cant seem to build any real synergy in them. i often feel forced into taking new spells over upgrading them or taking skills, since i can never get enough SP to get any of the latter anyway. attempting to save it up doesnt work, since im too underpowered to ever risk it. building around a single element type seems impossible, since its only a matter of time before my run is chalked by enemys that are resistant, or even immune to the exact damage type i build into, and splitting into multiple doesnt help either. every run seems to flop by stage five, and i just dont have any good way of fixing it. i dont want to say the game is bad, and im not having the worst time, but this feels like its too much for me. i try my best to observe the rifts before i enter them, which helps i guess, but then i end up in a situation where none of them seem possible, even if i reroll them. im just not sure what im doing wrong exactly. if there were an easy mode, i could at least have room to experiment and soak in what im at least trying to do, but by the time i feel like im getting the hang of whatever i stick together or find any potent combinations, im basically already screwed by one thing or another. am i just bad at this, is RNG always screwing me, or is the scaling just commonly too much early on? i can never seem to tell... can anyone lend some pointers?

[Stafford's Bees]

Play a game and take a screen shot when you think things have started to turn ugly. Maybe someone can tell you what you could try at that point, or what you could have tried leading up to it.

[my butt is erect]

rng shouldn't make you lose within 5 levels, not often. You CAN go like 80% into an element and just buy another cheap spell or 2 to handle an immunity or high resist. 1-2 SP is not a lot and another spell is a huge asset. Also there are many "redeal" skills which add elements other than what you're damaging with. Besides that a lot of spells have an upgrade that give it a second element or lower resists. There are plenty of spells that do several elements of damage and so can synergize with other spells of whatever single element. In the most serious cases there is a spell that straight up reverses enemies' resistsances in an area. Playing into this correctly will get you through earlier levels pretty easy once you get it.

If you're really having trouble then minions and minion bufing spells/skills might be one of the easier ways to win. Nature focus most likely. Even wolves will get you surprisingly far mostly reliant on them and their synergy skills. The clay wolves are about unkillable if you choose rift correctly, or the 3x wolf upgrade for swarming synergies. The ice wolves are probably more situational. You can also make the clays invincible in many situation with ironize or almost invinsible with whatever it was that gives 25 to several resists on your minions.

Really there's just too much information in the game to parse quickly and you'll just have to fail for a while and also spend a lot of time reading about spells skills and upgrades you don't know yet. Keep looking and eventually you find something new but important and have an epiphany. It all flows mroe smoothly as you start the memorize the types of enemies, the way they attack and what their immunities will be (learn the meaning of clay, metallic, etc, as these determine resists an enemy has).

Personally part of the game's greatness was struggling to figure out how to play, and eventually it clicked and you start feeling smart about how you're making all the pieces connect.

In general you should never spend all your points until you pick your next rift, unless it's very early in the game or you know it won't be possible to win without them. Remember spells costing 1 or 2 can be plenty to solve a resistance problem for early game.

[blepping]

Originally posted by poongoolie (rip heavy crew):

Also there are many "redeal" skills which add elements other than what you're damaging with.

Redeal effects only use damage that was actually applied, so if you have a 100% dark resist monster and a spell that does dark damage with a redeal 100% as fire effect you'll still do 0 damage to that monster with your spell.

So unfortunately those effects aren't really too much of a solution to resistant monsters. I agree with the rest of your post though.

[my butt is erect]

Yeah it's still a half solution to partial resistances and cascades of different damage types. But no not full immunities by itself. When I said "what you're damaging" I was trying to imply it only counts if it does damage, but I wasn't clear there.