"Cooled Steel" How to beat?

[Wolfbane]

So struggling with the Hard Challenge on B tier called "Cooled Steel"
https://prnt.sc/q7zx8YTskIzz

Suggestions on how to beat it?

Quick Mode: Yes
Character: ?
Weapon: ?
Gear: ?
Plan: ?

[skeletalhammer]

Also how are people beating it with 500 base corruption? I do Dwindling Fire starting with level 3 fire spirit and that gets me through pretty easily, but in Cooled Steel you can't get it.

[Lt_Duckweed]

Originally posted by skeletalhammer:

Also how are people beating it with 500 base corruption? I do Dwindling Fire starting with level 3 fire spirit and that gets me through pretty easily, but in Cooled Steel you can't get it.

Quick Mode: Yes

Character: Corrupted

Weapon: 9th level Death Aura and 1st level Blood Syphoon

Gear: XP mult per lvl helm, rings and gloves def pierce per lvl, as many hp mult per lvl, attack speed mult per level, and area mult mods as I can fit in remaining gear slots.

Plan:
1. Use a combination of Trainers Gloves and Knight Amulets to start with 9th level Death Aura and 1st level Blood Syphoon.
2. As soon as I load into the stage, I swap the gloves for Diamond Knuckles and the amulets for Storm Stones. This bumps my piercing scaling up as well as attack speed and lets me slowly chew through the first few enemies (At CS98 or greater). If running lower level CS and not having Diamond Knuckles yet, 2 Holy Crossguards works instead of the above.
3. After my first level up, I swap to rings with def pierce per level and enemy count. Card priority is xp gain, enemy count, area, pickup range, attack speed, survivability, anything else.

For just running base level CS with no corruption, the only truely essential mod is defense piercing per player level, all the rest is nice for scaling the level of the challenge. If you don't have the xp mult per player level mods yet for helmet, just put on as many regular xp mult mods as you can. Swap in solar stones before picking up any big amount of xp to sneak in a few more levels.

EDIT: for CS1, the dmg and def pierce mult is 0.97 per stage, and completed zones always count as 16 stages (even if you early bossed them) so the total number of stages in a quick run is: 4*16 + 10 = 74. So at the final boss the overall CS multiplier will be 0.97^74, which is about 0.105 aka 10.5%.

[Chalenor]

Do Trainer Gloves and Knight Amulet only appear on certain stages or equipment quality levels? Been grinding for gear and have picked up all the defense piercing/shredding per level stuff to beat higher levels of CS and DF, but I have never seen those mods that level up your weapons.

[Lt_Duckweed]

Originally posted by Chalenor:

Do Trainer Gloves and Knight Amulet only appear on certain stages or equipment quality levels? Been grinding for gear and have picked up all the defense piercing/shredding per level stuff to beat higher levels of CS and DF, but I have never seen those mods that level up your weapons.

Trainer's Gloves are a unique equipment drop from the E-Rank broken weapon challenge.
Knight's Pendant is a unique equipment drop from the D-Rank dual wielding challenge.
There's a lot of unique drops for various challenges, there is a guide on here for all the uniques.

[Chalenor]

Originally posted by Lt_Duckweed:

Trainer's Gloves are a unique equipment drop from the E-Rank broken weapon challenge.
Knight's Pendant is a unique equipment drop from the D-Rank dual wielding challenge.
There's a lot of unique drops for various challenges, there is a guide on here for all the uniques.

Oh, cool, thanks. I had no idea there was a guide, and I had already done all these challenges before the gear update, so I would've never known.

[S'bass thulu]

Boss man. Yeah, the guides were useful in learning to go back and get the expert monocle. Didn't think to see what other unique items I was missing for completing them early. Great plan LD. Thanks.

[Convery]

Bit of a cheat, but Gunslinger is OP enough with the flamethrower that you can't really fail unless you pick up corruption multipliers..

[Calm Koala]

Originally posted by Convery:

Bit of a cheat, but Gunslinger is OP enough with the flamethrower that you can't really fail unless you pick up corruption multipliers..

Looks like you didn't play Cooled Steel with Gunslinger, otherwise you'd know he can't use heroic weapons in this challenge.

[S'bass thulu]

My thought too CK.

[Chalenor]

Originally posted by Lt_Duckweed:

1. Use a combination of Trainers Gloves and Knight Amulets to start with 9th level Death Aura and 1st level Blood Syphoon.

Any particular reason you use a slot for 1 extra overlevel on Death Aura versus taking a 3rd weapon in, like Katana?

[S'bass thulu]

SSS leveled trainer's gloves give 8th rank starting for a weapon, so I gotta assume Lt. Duckweed's working with mastered Trainer's gloves, which is smart. The 1st level weapon comes from whatever your knight amulet is, and if you don't like the one you get from completing the dual rank challenge, keep running it until you get one you like.

My knight amulet, lucky enough, was swordrang first try... So as is I do lvl. 8 death aura and lvl 1 swordrang.... but Blood syphoon is good to play around with as its talent is healing Rog instantly. With some talent cost reduction perks and talent charge plus perks it really is a great back up for getting busted up... which will happen in CS.

When experience points are limited like in CS it's wise to get whatever card count boost possible to start, avoid evolutions if you can find a combo that works for you, and then focus on building your rog vs getting more and more weapon cards.

To start off with a maxed out weapon, let alone a second is huge... so I guess a third in this case doesn't really affect the total cards you need to get to move to the build but try it. If it works it works... not meaning to speak for LD.

[Lt_Duckweed]

Originally posted by Chalenor:

Originally posted by Lt_Duckweed:

1. Use a combination of Trainers Gloves and Knight Amulets to start with 9th level Death Aura and 1st level Blood Syphoon.

Any particular reason you use a slot for 1 extra overlevel on Death Aura versus taking a 3rd weapon in, like Katana?

Mostly it's because I dismantled all my other knights amulets, but I found I don't really need more than these two weapons. And the overlevel on Death Aura extends its range which lets it offscreen enemies easier.

[Troop]

Originally posted by Lt_Duckweed:

Originally posted by skeletalhammer:

Also how are people beating it with 500 base corruption? I do Dwindling Fire starting with level 3 fire spirit and that gets me through pretty easily, but in Cooled Steel you can't get it.

1. Use a combination of Trainers Gloves and Knight Amulets to start with 9th level Death Aura and 1st level Blood Syphoon.

how do you forge Death Aura and 1st level Blood Syphoon?

[Radiowavehero]

Man reading the strategy for this is kind of frustrating , the whole reason I switched from ARPGs like POE and diablo to playing these Survivor type games is because they were streamlined , you pick a character , pick skills for a build and just kill a buncha stuff mindlessly for 30 minutes without needing to worry about minmaxing gear.

But now the gear grind is back, honestly I wish it wasn't cuz I like everything else about this game.

[Lt_Duckweed]

Originally posted by Radiowavehero:

Man reading the strategy for this is kind of frustrating , the whole reason I switched from ARPGs like POE and diablo to playing these Survivor type games is because they were streamlined , you pick a character , pick skills for a build and just kill a buncha stuff mindlessly for 30 minutes without needing to worry about minmaxing gear.

But now the gear grind is back, honestly I wish it wasn't cuz I like everything else about this game.

I mean, you don't *have* to gear grind to beat CS level 1. If you just save it for last (it is considered one of the most difficult challenges for a reason) then you can most likely just slap together the best gear you have at the time and probably make your way through it.

The build I described is very much built for going really really high level on Cooled Steel, which is only really needed if you are masochist like me trying to grind to very high levels of gear that is, honestly, well past the intended progression curve at this point in the game's development.

You don't *need* MAX or SSS (or even SS) gear to do any of the current content aside from grinding certain challenges to absurd levels.