OK, So Level 6 is not nearly as hard as you might think it is. (full clear video included)

[Bone_Reaper]

Genuinely, it's beatable with just D tier cards with 47 DNA total, and even then it's still rather consistent and you would need to play very poorly or get Unlucky to lose many times.

The full Level 6 Clear run: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2309618098
with D tier only it's around 30 minutes for the level. Normally around 15 to 17 if you just get the D tier start on shop level 2 and then upgrade killing power with the last 2 slots after.


That clear has no farming put in to it, i literally went and streamed me going form level 1 to 6 in an hour and 42 minutes, and died at the half way point of Level 5 once, this gave me 5 more DNA then in i had if i never died, though only 2 of those 5 were even used in the build so a bit more luck in the previous levels or just a quick level 3 half run to get to that 47 number is all it would take if you get a bit unlucky.

Here's the full stream from start to end: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2309600451


Now on level 6 in more detail, since i finally went and actually got a video of it, the only actually hard part starts 30 seconds before the boss spawns, when Black Swordsmen start spawning, at this point you should have been already using the Path in the video to Kite the rest of the enemies and conserve hp, so that you would not have to pick up any ore very few Healing Pick Ups, since you do in fact need them around.

The swordsmen continue to spawn for a total of 6 minutes this is the only time in the level you are in any real danger aside form a very bad spawn for the later 2 Samurai where both spawn and instantly try to dash at you, though this is so abysmally rare, and you can generally tank a total of 2 to 3 of there hits in the whole run with the HP and healing you have spawned around. and the Chip damage form any other enemy is irrelevant aside form the Samurai and Black Swordsmen, though as long as the samurai are running after you they will not catch up, and if they do you having 2 level 2 Zombies means you are spawning them often enough to usually eat the Samurai's hit instead of them hitting you.

As for dodging the Swordsmen, well you really can't dodge them all, but the Pistol at level 3 is good enough that in a lot of the cases you can move a bit to the side to avoid hits while the pistol stuns the Swordsmen, but it is inevitable that you get hit by them, and so you need to be very focused and aware of where easy to get healing and Shield pick ups are on the path, and avoid them the best you can until you need them, as in if you are missing more then 300 hp or for shields you just take them as soon as you see them if the swordsmen are spawning in.

this way you should be able to out last the wave, and after 6 minutes or so you are probably around 1/2nd or 1/3rd of your total hp, and then you are safe as soon as they stop spawning in if you just stick to the path, and no matter what getting a random pick up that takes you away from the path be it DNA or a shop, IT IS NOT WORTH IT!


So what's the actual problem with level 6 and why are so many people stuck on it?

Well i think i know what it most likely is if not a lack of awareness from the player, then a lack of clarity form the Devs on a core mechanic that is really only required on this level, though a few other levels do get major use out of it. Knockback. The problem is that you have 0 good ways of actually knowing what weapons have knockback and which don't or how good it would be in use without testing each weapon on their own, which is hard when you are only a quarter of the way through the game, and the biggest need for it is the 1st one.

the early weapons that you have access to at this sage most of the time that have Good or Decent Knockback are the Pistol, the Assault Rifle, Dark Side and the Shotgun, most others don't work too well or are so slow that the knockback they do have is not constant enough to be useful in Level 6, and that's about it, the Problem is that you generally wouldn't know this since the cards don't have good information on them and the info they do have is not very usable aside form single shot weapons, since summons, burst fire and spread shot weapons all have misleading information on their cards sadly. and since you are not told about this Key mechanic but Level 6 is built around it, as the black swordsmen take normal knockback but are hard to kill, so Piercing and Knockback is needed, sadly again knockback is not mentioned anywhere in the game generally, only in 1 S tier card for AoE cards only, and that is of no help on level 6.

This is me saying that level 6 is not that bad, it's just the game being pretty bad at telling you it's trying to teach you something that it still never tells you about.

Hope this can be of help someone.

[George | tinyBuild]

Hey, have you considered publishing a guide here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2348610/guides/ Your insights are quite helpful, and putting them in Guides may help them gain more visibility.

[Bone_Reaper]

Originally posted by George | tinyBuild:

Hey, have you considered publishing a guide here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2348610/guides/ Your insights are quite helpful, and putting them in Guides may help them gain more visibility.

I probably will after i am fully familiar with all the cards, as for now i only have in depth experience with D tier cards and a few other random cards here and there, and then a high general knowledge on most other cards, enough to get me through the game, but not enough to actually make a full on guide that i would want anyone to use, so currently i am just playing the game through with D tier only on stream, as well as last night i started a C tier only run, which so far is stuck already on Level 4 and seems to actually be weaker in it's stating cards then D tier.

[Bone_Reaper]

Originally posted by George | tinyBuild:

Hey, have you considered publishing a guide here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2348610/guides/ Your insights are quite helpful, and putting them in Guides may help them gain more visibility.

also adding an indication to core weapon that have decent knockback is a MUST, this is an actual issue and is from what i can tell the primary reason why people struggle or outright quit on level 6, since even if it is built around knockback there is 0 intuitive indication on which weapons have knockback or that it is even a viable option to consider.

a line of text on the card in the Card Menu, or a mark in the description that when hovered over says "Knockback", this would probably help a lot, though the biggest design flaw in the game currently is the unclear or useless way the card information is presented to the player, since constant single shot weapons have actually ok information in them, but anything else is just misleading or Wrong information, since having the long cooldown of a burst fire weapon paired with only a single projectile's damage, or the fact that shotguns also only show the damage of only a single projectile, which just isn't accurate to the weapons performance.

Then there is the inconsistency of Summoning cards as well with the Heretic Fork shoeing very different information from any other summoning, where they usually show the Max amount and Cooldown, but the Fork shows Cooldown and Damage, the fact is that all 3 pieces of information are needed to accurately choose if a card is good and or good for your entire Deck.

So for the cards to be generally more usable they need/should to have:
Damage (obviously)
Cooldown (obviously)
Max Summons (obviously)
Total Burst Count (as in 15 damage x 5 times or 15/5x)
Total Spread Count (as in 5 pellets x 10 damage or 5x/10)
The difference in the order is to show which type of weapon it is, this could be a way to show that.
Knockback (Needed as a mark or text, just in some way, this could be even a new tag on weapons to bring even more attention to it, and the ability could boost the damage or knockback of knockback weapons or something similar)

[George | tinyBuild]

Gotcha.

Congrats on 100%-ing the game, btw.

[Bone_Reaper]

Originally posted by George | tinyBuild:

Gotcha.

Congrats on 100%-ing the game, btw.

Thanks

[dvn]

The key to beating level 6 is still just - turn on auto aim. The fact that it isn't on by default is the whole reason people struggle with this level.

[George | tinyBuild]

Originally posted by dvn:

The key to beating level 6 is still just - turn on auto aim. The fact that it isn't on by default is the whole reason people struggle with this level.

An interesting point. We'll check this. However, the boss is better targeted manually on Lvl 6. Also, the reason why we left it off by default is to teach players how to target enemies.

[Bone_Reaper]

Originally posted by dvn:

The key to beating level 6 is still just - turn on auto aim. The fact that it isn't on by default is the whole reason people struggle with this level.

not really, auto aim is not a fix-all solution, it is for sure very helpful, but if you don't have targeted knockback weapons in your deck of if you aren't going for them to begin with then auto aim does nothing for you.

yes it does for sure help a lot, but it being on by default doesn't seem like the right answer to me, as aiming can do mostly everything auto aim can, but it can also target things other then just the closest target which in this level speeds up the later parts with the boss significantly, since with Beam and piercing weapons you can still target the boss behind the Swordsmen, while auto aim would only target the closest Swordsmen. And learning to actually aim has more benefits then just using auto aim all the time, so i do think normal aiming being the default is the right choice, though the tutorial Should explain the R's function and not leave it to guess work, though seeing an R in the bottom corner and and pressing it shows it move, ans nothing happens, then it's not a stretch to assume that Holding it would do something, and seeing that your cursor disappears and the slime not aiming automatically is pretty safe to assume that an average person can figure out what it is, if they just pay attention to the screen a bit.

[Schmalols]

I did what you said, still no where close to beating level 6:

I used summons to distract, and I used all the items you mentioned having knockback (pistol, assault rifle,shotgun, etc.)

I also was using the fast blob, with some food items to get boosted hp.

The map design (up-down) rather than squarish, with walls in the middle, doesn't help either.

Also, for what it's worth, from using level 3 of all the "knockback" weapons you mentioned, I really didn't see much of a knockback at all. Maybe kind of a "slow" or "stop" effect, but not much than that. Not even sure if it's actually there, quite frankly.

But thanks, in any case.

[Bone_Reaper]

Originally posted by Schmalols:

I did what you said, still no where close to beating level 6:

I used summons to distract, and I used all the items you mentioned having knockback (pistol, assault rifle,shotgun, etc.)

I also was using the fast blob, with some food items to get boosted hp.

The map design (up-down) rather than squarish, with walls in the middle, doesn't help either.

Also, for what it's worth, from using level 3 of all the "knockback" weapons you mentioned, I really didn't see much of a knockback at all. Maybe kind of a "slow" or "stop" effect, but not much than that. Not even sure if it's actually there, quite frankly.

But thanks, in any case.

yeah knockback weapons do not just throw the enemies to the other side of the room, otherwise the game would be laughably easy, the thing is that they stop enemies that come from in front of you which is counteracting their forward momentum, and then you as the slime on the kiting path need to adjust yourself a bit to get around the stunned enemy, and only the damage form the Swordsmen matters the Lightsaber enemies do so little in comparison that you shouldn't bother trying to dodge them since that might put you in a bad spot to dodge a Swordsmen.

as for builds at that stage, you should have level 3 Eye Launcher and a level 3 Pistol by around 6 minutes, then at least a level 2 Blaster and a level 2 Zombie, and the priority goes like this, get level 2 version of all 4 of these, then upgrade Eye Launcher and Pistol as fast as you can, keep the shop only at level 2 and only upgrade it to level 2 after the upgrade price is 0, after you have both level 3s and level 2s, get 1 more level 2 Zombie and 1 more level 2 Blaster then and only then should you be upgrading the store past level 2 to get something potentially better.

In the Highlight i have attached to the original post on the level clear, look at it starting from 6:00 till around 12:00 this is the time you need to live through and DO NOT go for pick ups other then Healing off the path, unless you are familiar enough and trust that you are safe, in my clear i do go for DNA and such since i'm confidant that i'll be fine, but i also have over 200 hours in the game at this point, and only go for healing pick ups if they are to the side, never backwards, since you are not trying to kill anything in the time form 6 to 12, just living. So you only want to take them to stay alive better, in my clear i did not get below half hp during that time so there is at least twice the room for error since i still have a few healing pick ups in the map at that point.

after the 6 to 12 period you just stay on the path and slowly get more killing power in to those last 2 slots you have, and technically you could upgrade the blaster at this point to compress it a bit to get a 3rd free slot, but do not compress the summons.


If you want i can try to help you make an actual Deck + DNA set up if you tell me your total DNA amount (you can press the reset meta button on the top right of the Meta menu to get back all the DNA you have spent and also see how much you have total), and post pictures of all the cards you have unlocked so far on Imgur, so i can use my 100% file to go in with the same amount of meta and build a Deck with the exact cards you have available.