250 hours, all achievements, outer dark owned, Cycle thoughts

[ShockMeSane]

Really enjoyed your game and definitely got my moneys worth, and I have beaten the last cycle (32? Outer Dark) at least 10 times with different builds. Please accept this as constructive criticism. I will offer advice that you can ignore or take in.

These are thoughts for the END CYCLES, not the base game, the base game is so easy you can win with anything:

*Malaga is by far the scariest enemy in Outer Dark, because they show up so early that there is no build that can have the speed and dps required on their first appearances, later of course they become easy, but if you accidentally click the first Malaga square, gg

*If you held a gun to my head and said, win cycle 32 or die, I'd go Goblin/Sorcerer/Apophis/Ill Prophet. I'd feel pretty confident I'd be going home to my family as long as I didn't accidentally click an early Malaga.

Which sort of leads into the point that the "stand still" builds are vastly superior for this content, either by design or accident. Even the super fast fire/lightning melee builds are incredibly RNG reliant to win. It probably took me 4 tries and some rl praying to win with a standard fire/lightning build that is god mode on normal difficulty.

Also, all the shapeshift forms that cap your speed are 100% death against enemies with 400+ speed.

I completely understand and accept that the game is not really balanced for this content, but i do think it is worth at least a bit of thought. Thanks, great game! Also, maybe some really hard achievements would be fun :)

[Disnag Burnazog]

sorcerer in cycle 32? the class that has really low defences? what's the logic here

[ShockMeSane]

I mean, have you played it? I don't even know if I've lost a cycle 32 with Sorcerer. You need zero defenses when you have 9k hp and have a triple redundancy of survival with Intervention. You just do so much damage a round that even the last boss needs 6 rounds to kill you and he'll be way dead before 6 rounds.

[ShockMeSane]

With goblin/apophis you literally have so much scaling all you need to do is dump your first 10 levels into DEX and then go full WIL and the game is trivially easy if you understand the interactions. The only crucial piece of gear is the pants to give you an extra damage type. The gloves in the void that make poison damage give you meditate are of course a best in slot but you cant count on getting them but if you do something easy becomes laughably easy.

Honestly its a pretty gear-proof build. As a goblin every destroyed item is +1 speed so you'll be rocking well over 100 pretty early with about 1/3 of your points in DEX. You never need put a single one in STR because of Apophis. You can win with almost any variety of gear on the highest difficulty, all you need is a pants that gives you an extra damage type.

[Yami]

Also, all the shapeshift forms that cap your speed are 100% death against enemies with 400+ speed.

I've had some good high cycle (25+) runs where i use those forms as intermediaries (e.g. geistform on prayer then self damage on prayer procs batform with its innate speed)

[Nudal]

Not quite as far, but yeah this all sounds correct. Personally, I would add Golganth as another early game avoid in most cases. Those things have ruined plenty of strong starts for me because I was too busy looking at the items I needed/wanted instead of the monster pool.

[ColorlessGreenIdea]

Originally posted by ShockMeSane:

*If you held a gun to my head and said, win cycle 32 or die, I'd go Goblin/Sorcerer/Apophis/Ill Prophet. I'd feel pretty confident I'd be going home to my family as long as I didn't accidentally click an early Malaga.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283419393

I was curious and wanted to try this build myself. You were right, this is crazy strong. The only thing I had any trouble with was the Mind Warren (I lost ALL my divine intervention charges fighting the queen but managed to last long enough to survive thanks to Poison Skin). Admittedly I did get pretty much a god roll with loot RNG (Crystal Rod AND Ill Manica AND Crow Visage AND Staff of Chaos). What skills did you use for this build? For me it seems the Ill Prophet power is strong enough to kill pretty much anything on its own (with good enough equipment), so the only skills I found relevant were Poison Skin (for healing) and Snakeform (was my favorite skill prenerf and I still enjoy it).

Playing this has also convinced me that even after the nerf Apophis is STILL the strongest god in the game.

[bruce777]

Wow. I was at Cycle 12 when I read this post. I figured I had recently graduated, after a year, from newbie-ville to intermediate status after mastering the use of the Phoenix and Apophis deities and winning a few pure martial builds.

There are more than 13,000 Culture/Class/Deity combinations. When you multiply in all of the Prestige and skill and gear combinations, you're talking about BILLIONS of combinations. This game is DEEP. It's really amazing to realize it was built by a poet who learned coding just to make this as his first game. I need to wear a bag over my head, because I'm a poet and lawyer who's been learning programming languages and dabbling with making games for 40 years and, let me just say I'm humbled beyond words.

So with this post I just saw this Apophis/Goblin/Ill Prophet combination, and damn is it overpowered!!! Today I've used that to crush my enemies and hear the lamentations of their women twice, once as a Sorcerer and next as a Summoner. I'm now going to march through and do that with every single class I haven't won with yet.

The key is to never take Vigor and to always take Willpower. And, of course, it helps if you get both the Staff of Chaos and the Staff of Life, as I did on my last run.

Thanks to the OP.

[Zols]

I too tried this out, but prefer the ice gloves (for the extra summon for slow/heal/meditate stacks via summoning) which can be found in the normal area over the the ones that can only be found in the void. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283618389

The idea i went with is to be able to spam the third prayer and fully heal yourself each time from it via the summons (3 points in grove cult with about 8/9 points in oozemancy does the trick, before getting oozemancy up to 8/9, just hit prayer 3 once then prayer 2 once to fully heal and at that point you will have killed at least 1 thing to top off the prayer again) and to increase meditate stacks through summoning and let the summons provide a block/extra dmg in addition to the heal. Ideally with the azumui sash pants but did not get it that run.

Plague chant (and maybe burning ooze but i find i get alot of value out of it) is the one that can be swapped out for something else possibly (although lowering res will definitely increase the dmg of your other dmgs types obviously), testing it by swapping out for overgrowth for the plant pets in order to slow down ranged attackers (and by ranged attackers i mean ranged dude's in the "special dungeon" in the star map).

Robe of wind is bis chest for this i find, since the ooze's will hold off anything from getting close to your cultist's most of the time (assuming anything can get close to u/them) thus giving your cultist's time to build up the speed needed for higher cycles. Other items im still debating trying out is possible the helm that does a "hit" at 1 dude on any range and getting rid of plague chant burning ooze for 2 abilites that proc "on it" stuff.

So far since cycle 16 (when i started using it) it is just wreckin stuff (unless i neglect oozemancy too much early on in favor of star cult's, in which case i have died twice, but only to...ummm, one of the serpent mob's, i find having 4/5 points into oozemancy early game prevents this though).

Still doing some fine tuning with the spec to see which is the most optimal, but so far its just pwnin. Tis not uncommon to enter room's later on and have all the mobs just go POP off the bat instantly. But ya, OP's suggestion is definitely very very strong and can be done multiple ways.

edit: just tried switching out ill prophet for magus, seems stronger actually (at least early game, using it on cycle 27+ atm and its melting stuff)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3284454682

ya, definitely feels like arch magus is better then ill prophet (100% safer early game in my opinion then ill prophet), to me at least.

projection and invig (off the bat) are 1 point only, plague can get by with 1 point for most of the run (with a second point later on), 3 points in grove cult for most of the run then a 4th if you get chaos staff, 5-7 points for oozemancy (with getting 4/5 points kinda early being very helpful), 3 points into star cult asap to rush arch magus asap. Burning ooze is also mainly another 1 point (once you got a good army of cultist's its decent, even more so if you can get robe of wind).

[GreenOwlHead]

Thanks guys. I tried Goblin/Apophis after I was struggling at 10th cycle. yeah, Not only I beat it finally, this was "the easiest, broken" build ever I tried.

[JackThejil]

Ah, easiest, broken... arsonist, when it first was implemented, for me. It used to not have a range limitation, and with a gigantic pile of on-entrance summons and mono-will, you'd wipe the entire map the moment you entered it. Any map, every map, every cycle (at the time). It was a thing of beauty that got nerfed :V

[Gienah Corvi]

Still can't beat level 17 with that build above. Just tried, failed on Obelisk boss.

Lv 17 is just stomping me like level 7 was. There's definitely certain levels that are MUCH harder than others. I've been trying all kinds of various builds on this level that have been posted since none of my have been working, and losing non-stop. At Obelisk boss or the final boss. Also getting horrible RNG on this level.

Beat 5 in a row before, now 17 I just cannot get past.

Ill prophet, Arch-magus, torturer, plus all the standard high speed builds I've won with. Nothing is working lol.

Seems I need extremely high health, extremely high speed, extremely good defense, and extremely high damage to beat this one.

Lv 17 sucks. Ulfsire, could these super tiers at least be outlined? Or whatever it is that's going on.

[Balm]

Originally posted by Gienah Corvi:

Still can't beat level 17 with that build above. Just tried, failed on Obelisk boss.

Lv 17 is just stomping me like level 7 was. There's definitely certain levels that are MUCH harder than others. I've been trying all kinds of various builds on this level that have been posted since none of my have been working, and losing non-stop. At Obelisk boss or the final boss. Also getting horrible RNG on this level.

Beat 5 in a row before, now 17 I just cannot get past.

Ill prophet, Arch-magus, torturer, plus all the standard high speed builds I've won with. Nothing is working lol.

Seems I need extremely high health, extremely high speed, extremely good defense, and extremely high damage to beat this one.

Lv 17 sucks. Ulfsire, could these super tiers at least be outlined? Or whatever it is that's going on.

Apparently you can just walk out of the level if you can get to the exit, and continue progressing. I have to assume some of these high cycle guys are using that strategy on occasion.

[Draken]

I think it might be more about enemy selection as well.
At the higher cycles there are specific enemies that will hard counter some builds.
Knowing which enemies to choose and which not is often more important than the shiny item that would slightly improve your build.

[Zols]

TL/DR: No skipping by running to the exit of any room, spec properly, rush star cultist (3 points) and get magus asap, more detailed spec on page 21 of post your victory thread at top of general discussion. Scroll down in this post to check out screen shots bare minimum to see how to spec early game.

@ balm, never walked out before on any of my runs (running away means less xp/less lvls). From cycle 16 i used nothing but ill prophet mainly and switched to arch magus later (arch magus better really since you dont need the map to be flooded with the tile stuff and my spec has me deal fire/poison dmg via my cultists/ooze's attacking anything) using mainly the build i posted in this thread. Died maybe 3 times from cycle 17 onwards till 32. Got more info on how to build it in the "post your victories thread" pinned at the top of general discussions on how go spec it on page 20 or 21.

Only scary mob early on is boga's and that one mob with 20 range that shoots piercing projectiles for my build but onyl early on and once you got enough summons on entrance it willl go pop. Star cultist is part of the main key to my version of the built. (the yellow masked queen is a big no no though due to low psch res). If your not winning with the spec, its most likely due to not being properly specced/you messed up the gear and/or you ran into boga's early on.

You dont wanna use prayer in the first 2-3 areas either. No point unless you got points into oozemancy. Your starting weapon can very easily last the entire run. Invigoration can be replaced with the talent in the astral tree that gives your pets immunity to your dmg to help you get magus earlier. The items i got in my screen shot as BIS with others listed that can be taken in my other post in the post your victory thread.

To truely make it shine early on before you get to snowball status, you really need to use a combo of prayer 2 and 3 and need a min of 1 point into both groove cult and oozemancy to get it going.

Also taking the paths that give you the most items to DE (but always take a path that gives a BiS item over anything else). Just standing instead of using prayers is also what i do generally for the first few maps. Also a good idea to only pray once or twice then just stand once or twice to get a kill to get the prayer back up (but again, you should be killing stuff like crazy with the spec).

Here is what your spec should look like before your first tower.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288534178

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288534717

After tower (beat it very easily with minimal rotation between prayer 2/3 and just standing when needed to keep prayer up to cap)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288535611

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288535665

Notice i had none of my BiS items. You can pass on the talent that teleports mobs away to some extend till day 3/4, but not too much harm it getting it by day 3. I was swimming in talent points before the first tower and had more then enough to make the spec go into snowball mode before the first tower boss. So ya..... if the spec isint working for ya, then your not speccing it properly and not doing proper prayer/standing rotation (or again, your up against boga's, then can slice through the pets pretty easily early on, they the only real scary mob early game, but even then, early cycle's aka pre cycle 23/24 they should not be too much of an issue).

Dont forget you can swap your weapon from your main hand to your off hand and vice versa during combat, so once you get a weapon that isint gonna make you encumbered, put it in your off hand, and if you see that stuff isint blowing up, mouse over the mob to check it's resistance's and switch to your off hand if need be to make use of your default class's ability(though i generally never did this since my pets gave me more then enough time to burn any/everything even if the target was resistant to one of the dmg types i used).

Just remeber, the who idea of this spec is you should NEVER have to move from your starting spot. Ever. You move only after everything is dead.

And finished the run https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288590080

Skipped the tower in the stars cause it was the yellow masked queen. She is risky since its all about if you can LoS her to win. So if your in her LoS, then you need to hope astrocisim can teleport her to a spot out of your LoS, and if that fails, then chance's are your dead. Spec can beat pretty much all the other star tower boss's/lvls though. Also did not get my BiS slot chest peice. Had to make do with second BiS chest.

[Gienah Corvi]

Nope. Still failed. I restarted until I had it perfect, tried it, have almost the same stats. Couldn't burn down the final boss at all. Was doing basically no damage to him with my minions or stand still:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288656274

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288656352