Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
VICTORY's glory is great, and you may know this by three paths, the sanctioned stat, the sanctioned power, and the sanctioned action.
The sanctioned stat and power are WILLPOWER BLOOD LINK. The meaning of these words is VICTORY and their attainment is Royalty.
The sanctioned action is to Stand Still.
- totally not meti
... also apparently the sanctioned item is golden axe, because I never found anything better and you might as well go all in if the RNGod is telling you to.
So yeah, fairly maximally minimalist build. One stat, one power, one action (... mostly; I did step around occasionally and prayed like twice or something), one item. Ihra/Summoner/Dumuzi. Third cycle (my first third cycle win, even! Also I don't think this could cut it on 4th cycle, heh). I'd been trying (and failing) to do Ihra mono-willpower summoning builds, and decided to try just spamming the single summoning abilities and seeing if anything works. Summoner/Flame Chant didn't. Druid/Invigoration didn't*. Summoner/Grove Cult didn't.
Summoner/Blood Link. Well. Here I am :V
Outside of getting saved by golden axe and the Ihra willpower mixed with the faintly ridiculous healing I was getting (several points, I took like 6-700, later up to ~1k, damage an attack for several attacks, 'cause I couldn't move fast enough, and I was healing that damage in full before the next attack would come), it was a fairly smooth run? Very, very, very slow, the run took several hours**, but smooth. Sedjhet, gilded dead, and golden axe kept me alive in the first turn and mostly safe from AoE effects, and after that infinite hemogoblins filling sometimes literally the entire level did the rest. Biggest trouble prior to the King was arbiters -- they just about killed me several times, stacking the tile attack on top of their regular one (spawned too close to get goblins in the way, moving wouldn't have helped, heh) knocking me down to sub 200 hp from my full ~1.4k... repeatedly, for several turns. Fortunately my healing was busted, so going from 1400 to 200 and back to 1400 (checking it in the last fight, I was seeing healing numbers >600 per instance... and instances every time my allies attacked) before they could hit me again was. Not easy? But consistent.
Well. At least until the last fight. The last fight was. Close. Down to 6 HP close. The problem for most of the fight was just. Damage? I couldn't kill the summoned demons particularly quick, I was basically reliant on blood mage bleed to actually kill anything (including, eventually, the King), and that was slow. So stuff wasn't dying fast enough to stick damage on the King, the King was scaling, got the point I was losing ~10 hemogoblins in between times I got to act, I was ping-ponging between <10% hp and full like every other turn... it was close. I would have been dead without golden axe, without Sedjhet armor, without gaining several levels from killing summoned demons, without the cluch level of blood link that got me, without Ihra willpower HP, without a lot of things. It was absolutely knife's edge most of that fight.
But. I didn't die. I eventually managed to get within 3 tiles of the King without dying. Got in position so I could bleed them without getting hit with their ever-scaling damage (it ended up literally besides a gold demon, so the last few dozen turns of the King's life, I was sitting their getting wailed on by one). And. Bled them to death, ever spawning hoards of hemogoblins holding everything else at bay.
Hemogoblins just. They don't do much damage without some kind of power synergy boosting them. It (barely) worked as a minimalist build, but less blood link and a smattering of other abilities (obv psychomorphism, couple kinesis effects, etc.) would have worked just as well on summoning saturation and did so, so much more damage.
===
So far as general observation goes, I've definitely noticed there's, like. No. Items that give an effect on summon, ally death, ally attack, ally heal, ally anything. Closest to it is a few that's on kill, and all of those I can remember are player centered or adjacent effects, which isn't exactly helpful with a mass summoning strategy, ha. Other than that, there's just that one robe that boosts HP. There's plenty that synergizes with psychomorphism in particular, but summoning heavy builds that don't use that are kinda' out of luck on directly beneficial itemization. Hopefully something neat will show up later!
It's also kinda' interesting how wildly hostile to summons the final area is compared to the rest of the game. I'd sorta' noticed it on previous runs, but this one that just squished everything prior suddenly slowing way, waaay down and having lots and lots of allies dying really made it stand out. It goes from fairly few AoE/multi-hit/extreme damage attacks to... most or all of that, on just about all the enemies (the only one without AoE effects is... gold demon, which hits like a truck) you'll encounter there.
If I weren't coming off of this slog of a run, I'd probably mumble something about ludonarrative design and the inversion of ally reliability, but mostly I just wonder if there's room for abilities or items that trigger when multiple allies are hit at the same time, sort of an anti-AoE effect. Could be interesting, and make mass summoning not quite so punished in the final maps.
* The big problem there, I think, is that you hit paragon before you hit Earth Mage, and paragon is... not great, at absolute minimum for a mono-power build -- I suspect it could manage with earth mage, and with your speed as low as mono-will Ihra gets, you kinda' need something activating on game turn (or have psychomorphism+ice disks or whatever) to not die a horrible death, heh. Neat possible change for paragon -- and maybe shapeshifter -- would be to require at least two of the relevant effects instead of just any amount. That'd mean the mono-element builds could mono-element without tripping over paragon or whatev'.
** Incidentally, happy to report PoA doesn't seem to have a problem with staying on while the computer is asleep. I eventually had to conk out for the night and get back to it the next day, heh.
Bonus: Post final level clear screenshot, showing the hemogoblin's final form :D https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972749559
I call it "two hours jojo ora ora noises". Unlike the summoner, it took a good bit of vigor, and had more items, but it was still no str/no will, all pugilism, mostly dex. The sanctioned action was to Hit, heh.
Was remarkably straightforward, Tengu to give scaling, Mubarizin to add some damage, Hadad to add damage variety, then go forth and punch. Most everything fell over fairly rapidly, add on the oodles of dodge I was getting from dex-pumping and piling on the punch, and, well. Mostly things didn't hit me. Other than white demons (*shakes fist at 90% blunt res), most things died within one attack round. The tengu scaling added to umptibillion hits from pugilism meant things just died faster the longer any particular map went.
It was fun, ahaha!
Bonus screenshot, intabah puttin' in work:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972923942
E: and checking, yes, that meant there were at least 864 intabah procs that round, probably a few more due to the final number having some fall off. ora ora ora ora
Here's my entry to the "Single skill winning run". I picked thralls because they seemed to have the best stats of the on entrance summons currently, but the poise stacking from War Chant was honestly a big help too. On some levels it let me set summons to hold and hide behind a mostly invincible phalanx while my fire staff slowly whittled down enemies.
Paragon wasn't all that helpful, but(unlike a previous attempt of this run with Mehtar) it at least wasn't detrimental. The biggest impact was being able to stack anoint on myself and make my weapon attacks deal relevant damage in some fights.
Past a certain point the summons shifted from doing everything to shielding me while I nuked enemies with Ashem's prayers. The Ihra prayer refill was actually helpful in a couple of the void levels too, letting me really spam them out to deal with demons.
I got somewhat lucky on the final level, in that there was only one violet demon between me and the King of Many Colours, but I think I could still have pushed through with the help of the Ihra prayer refill even on a less favourable map.
The build would also have been a lot better if I'd picked up the no friendly fire skill from Astral and wielded Staff of Chaos, but by that point I was committed to the single skill lifestyle.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973483540
More or less the same strategy as the last run, but using druid/ratmen banner for bodyblockers instead of skills and Alhaja's +1 to all prayers each level instead of +3 to all prayers on str level. Could definitely have failed if there were more violet demons on the last floor though.
That is a build I had not considered. I hope it gets nerfed so everyone doesn't swap to it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973550574
I tried pure pug tengu build on 7th cycle, but it kept dying to hits from the -10% dodge chance. I was able to put some layers on it and i think this is the the next ora-ora build for higher cycles. If you can't find armor you can just put 40 strength for the max 80% dmg reduction
... also hey arc, neat to run into b12 folks occasionally, ehehe.
Sadly I forgot to make a screenshot and it didn't land in the Hall of Glory.
I had to put 15 points in Strength to get my minimal speed up, as well as quite a few points in Life. Ended with 3k health. The rest went into Willpower.
It did take a few tries, and the successful one got an early Golden Axe. The biggest problem is something getting through your nomads and killing you before the first game turn rolls over.
Edit: I also got my "Destruction 3" achievement with it, which was kind of the plan.