Share Your Builds (Hard Mode)

[Icy]

I'm just looking for inspiration so I don't end up using the same builds over and over. I'm curious to see what kind of builds everyone's running that helps them consistently beat higher challenge runs!

One of my go-to builds is

Planet + Wind Song
(Highest challenge so far: 15, but easily)
Costume: Deer
Talent: 5 Haste, 10 MP Regen, and 20 Luck.
Wishing Fountain: Dark Planet and Wings
Important Items: Giant Telescope and Sheet Music 'Galaxy'
Fruit Skewer: Planet 100% Wind Song 50% Academy -50%, Curse -50%.

Weapon: Sword and Shield, Perfect Balance, Indomitable

It's pretty straight forward. High amounts of attack speed lets your planets go wild. Deer lets you start with some of the harder items to find.

Bonus: I like the Red Fox's costumes, but I can't find a build that really fits her since she's a jack of all trades on account of her inventory size. Any ideas on something that she could benefit from with all that extra inventory space?

[Archangel]

Crocodile, sturdy + guardian.

Talents 20 in luck the rest in defence

Picked items from the luck fountain are up to you, I like the shield scroll + whatever i feel like experimenting at the time

Weapon katana and going the increased dmg per defence route.

Your atacks junk and with the 2nd upgrade the sheathed attacks are mad strong

[Bone_Reaper]

i don't really have any specific builds in mind, though a fact i'd like to share is to fully ban Sturdy in runs, sicne that eliminates 29 artifacts form the pool of possible ones, which is over 10% of all artifacts (at endgame there are 252 artifacts you can see at any point), this is really useful for practically all none direct damage builds, and even some direct ones if you are going for elemental damage on your weapon.

[nul]

Originally posted by Icy:

Bonus: I like the Red Fox's costumes, but I can't find a build that really fits her since she's a jack of all trades on account of her inventory size. Any ideas on something that she could benefit from with all that extra inventory space?

When I play fox, I don't use skewers or wishing well, and I go down with twig. Fox is what I play when I want to have a regular random experience. Letting the build come to me instead of seeking it. Find a few things, pick from available weapon upgrades without rerolling. Figure out where I wanna go from there. The extra inventory space lets you easily max out two combos while still having a small handful of tablets.

[bluu]

skeleton costume with flower staff bolt grimare upgrades focused on solar blade + academy, and crit. can average 20k dps on dummy

[britzerland]

This build showed 7.5k DPS at the dummy before final boss during a run. But the DPS in practice is higher as the more enemies attack you the more it refills your dash counter, and used dash counts are your attacks.
It also is invincible a lot of the time as you do most of your damage from the act of dashing.

- Sword and Shield -> Frost Shard -> Blizzards eye. Blizzards eye throws frost hammer every time you use a dash point. Normally it is a 6 second cooldown frost relic artifact, but now the cooldown is effectively as fast as you can recharge your dash count.
- Pick character with dash recovery speed, or Cold damage amplification, or +6 inventory slots character or any other character you like. Vampire and skeleton can be used in nearly any build too. White wolf is not compatible.
- Fruit skewer: some mix of glacier / / frost relic / precision / shadow.
- Starting artifact: Ice wings, to make frost relic activate 2 additional times. For the common item pick compression bandage for +30% dash recovery speed.
- For miracle choose either dash recovery speed one or +6 inventory slots or possibly if you have low dice maybe frost relic / crit. But dont sleep on inventory slots.
- Build up your crit / ice damage / frost relic damage throughout the run
- Key artifacts: Battle bracelet of lerid (rare) at 2 stars counts dashing through enemy attacks as evasion. Elastic band (advanced) recovers 2 dash count when you evade. So if you are dashing around the enemy while they are attacking your dash count can keep getting refilled. The range of Frost Hammer is short and you need to be dashing on top of the enemies already to hit them.
- put Golden Needle of the North under frost hammer for +35% damage

There are also two non-unique artifacts (meaning you can hold multiple of each) which give dash recovery speed. Picking a few up when given the chance is not a bad idea.
- Crabapple fruit (academy) (advanced)
- Yakumo Short Blade (sturdy) (rare)

For a more exotic build you can aim to get Eternal Eclipse (rare) which adds 30% solar blade and 30% frost relic damage and makes solar blade fire on frost relic hits (and this build maximises those). It can make either frost relic scale off fire damage or solar blade scale off cold damage. You may wish to start with six leaf clover if attempting this as the number of relevant legendary artifacts goes up. But the +2 additional triggers for Frost Relic you get from Ice Wings are also so important that you really dont want to miss those.

[Jack Blastem]

Cleared 35 with the Bat and fire aura staff yesterday. Just stack the hell out of burn bonuses and stay away from stuff. Don't attack or anything. Just stay in range to keep them burning.

[Jack Blastem]

Originally posted by britzerland:

This build showed 7.5k DPS at the dummy before final boss during a run. But the DPS in practice is higher as the more enemies attack you the more it refills your dash counter, and used dash counts are your attacks.
It also is invincible a lot of the time as you do most of your damage from the act of dashing.

- Sword and Shield -> Frost Shard -> Blizzards eye. Blizzards eye throws frost hammer every time you use a dash point. Normally it is a 6 second cooldown frost relic artifact, but now the cooldown is effectively as fast as you can recharge your dash count.
- Pick character with dash recovery speed, or Cold damage amplification, or +6 inventory slots character or any other character you like. Vampire and skeleton can be used in nearly any build too. White wolf is not compatible.
- Fruit skewer: some mix of glacier / / frost relic / precision / shadow.
- Starting artifact: Ice wings, to make frost relic activate 2 additional times. For the common item pick compression bandage for +30% dash recovery speed.
- For miracle choose either dash recovery speed one or +6 inventory slots or possibly if you have low dice maybe frost relic / crit. But dont sleep on inventory slots.
- Build up your crit / ice damage / frost relic damage throughout the run
- Key artifacts: Battle bracelet of lerid (rare) at 2 stars counts dashing through enemy attacks as evasion. Elastic band (advanced) recovers 2 dash count when you evade. So if you are dashing around the enemy while they are attacking your dash count can keep getting refilled. The range of Frost Hammer is short and you need to be dashing on top of the enemies already to hit them.
- put Golden Needle of the North under frost hammer for +35% damage

There are also two non-unique artifacts (meaning you can hold multiple of each) which give dash recovery speed. Picking a few up when given the chance is not a bad idea.
- Crabapple fruit (academy) (advanced)
- Yakumo Short Blade (sturdy) (rare)

For a more exotic build you can aim to get Eternal Eclipse (rare) which adds 30% solar blade and 30% frost relic damage and makes solar blade fire on frost relic hits (and this build maximises those). It can make either frost relic scale off fire damage or solar blade scale off cold damage. You may wish to start with six leaf clover if attempting this as the number of relevant legendary artifacts goes up. But the +2 additional triggers for Frost Relic you get from Ice Wings are also so important that you really dont want to miss those.

Just beat hard mode 40 with this build. Many thanks for that. I would call this the strongest build for clearing hard modes by a large margin that I have seen so far. The other notable one being the special attack sword and shield build but it is VASTLY slower and carries more risk. I would prefer Fire Aura Staff or Electro Chakram Staff over it. But I also found that build on a post saying they had cleared max hard mode. So I am not qualified to say either way yet. This doesn't have 1 shot potential which is very very nice as long as you keep a lazy eye on your mana from time to time.

I used the Skeleton.
Fruit skewer: Carrot, 2 Frost Relic and 1 Windsong. Banned Sturdy
Talents: 20 Endure, 20 Willpower, 5 Ingenuity
Wishing Fountain: Ice Wings and Compression Bandage

Through the whole run I only had 1 potential scare and it wasent even on the last boss. I got just about everything you could need, except for Frost Relic cooldown which would only speed this build up dramatically. Frozen Bow and Snow Mountain Bat did a decent contribution towards the end but barely came close to half of the hammers. Can skip the scabbard of exorcism, dropping your shield is a pointless risk. Notable stats: I had 10 glacier and only managed 8 frost relic combo. I stacked the evasion bonuses for my dashes.

10/10 Would run again.

[the chazz]

Originally posted by Jack Blastem:

The other notable one being the special attack sword and shield build but it is VASTLY slower and carries more risk. I would prefer Fire Aura Staff or Electro Chakram Staff over it. But I also found that build on a post saying they had cleared max hard mode. So I am not qualified to say either way yet.

Pretty sure we saw the same post. It's the "best" build I've seen. To me it's the best because it's so well rounded. It's not doing 40k+ dps, but it does more than enough to comfortably oneshot room enemies and make quick work of bosses. It feels good immediately, since your first or second room is an anvil once you're at endgame so that's instantly +40% special attack damage. But most importantly, you can't die (if you play right and it's not hard to play at all. just constantly hold down right click and tap left click and spam spacebar to keep dashing).

It feels super fast.
It's not slow except for the Qliphoth fight right at the end and only relative to the builds that go all in on dps and focus on little else. I get it to around 5-6k dps on a dummy. In terms of risk there is no risk at all. You can't be killed. That's the point of the build, it thrives in hardmode.
You probably never added wing song when you tried it if you were just going off that post, because it doesn't mention it. The build would feel very slow without it. Wind song really elevates the build:

Wind Song = attack speed as high as possible for your special attack animation spam, but also because Grip of Fear's special attack has an enhanced version that starts stacking once every 3 seconds. What's important is that the stack gain rate is based off your attack speed.
Wind Song also gives you dash counts, this synergizes with your perfect defense as you'll be constantly dashing and the artifact 'Hand Mirror' gives you extra 10 shield when you dash.
Also gives +50% melee range for your special attack with 'Wind Sheet Music'. The enhanced version of your special attack already has 200% increased range. You're not covering the screen but you're not ever gonna miss either.

The bond active artifact 'Rock Elephant' (guardian + wind song) shoots spears. The damage of these spears is equal to 200% of your defense. The amount of spears is based off your attack speed. And the cooldown for the artifact is reduced by 3 seconds every time you dash...

[鼻ほじはどまん]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3782490121
best build

[crazyabe111]

Funny staff goes BRRR
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3782589676

[tanino]

Originally posted by Jack Blastem:

Originally posted by britzerland:

This build showed 7.5k DPS at the dummy before final boss during a run. But the DPS in practice is higher as the more enemies attack you the more it refills your dash counter, and used dash counts are your attacks.
It also is invincible a lot of the time as you do most of your damage from the act of dashing.

- Sword and Shield -> Frost Shard -> Blizzards eye. Blizzards eye throws frost hammer every time you use a dash point. Normally it is a 6 second cooldown frost relic artifact, but now the cooldown is effectively as fast as you can recharge your dash count.
- Pick character with dash recovery speed, or Cold damage amplification, or +6 inventory slots character or any other character you like. Vampire and skeleton can be used in nearly any build too. White wolf is not compatible.
- Fruit skewer: some mix of glacier / / frost relic / precision / shadow.
- Starting artifact: Ice wings, to make frost relic activate 2 additional times. For the common item pick compression bandage for +30% dash recovery speed.
- For miracle choose either dash recovery speed one or +6 inventory slots or possibly if you have low dice maybe frost relic / crit. But dont sleep on inventory slots.
- Build up your crit / ice damage / frost relic damage throughout the run
- Key artifacts: Battle bracelet of lerid (rare) at 2 stars counts dashing through enemy attacks as evasion. Elastic band (advanced) recovers 2 dash count when you evade. So if you are dashing around the enemy while they are attacking your dash count can keep getting refilled. The range of Frost Hammer is short and you need to be dashing on top of the enemies already to hit them.
- put Golden Needle of the North under frost hammer for +35% damage

There are also two non-unique artifacts (meaning you can hold multiple of each) which give dash recovery speed. Picking a few up when given the chance is not a bad idea.
- Crabapple fruit (academy) (advanced)
- Yakumo Short Blade (sturdy) (rare)

For a more exotic build you can aim to get Eternal Eclipse (rare) which adds 30% solar blade and 30% frost relic damage and makes solar blade fire on frost relic hits (and this build maximises those). It can make either frost relic scale off fire damage or solar blade scale off cold damage. You may wish to start with six leaf clover if attempting this as the number of relevant legendary artifacts goes up. But the +2 additional triggers for Frost Relic you get from Ice Wings are also so important that you really dont want to miss those.

Just beat hard mode 40 with this build. Many thanks for that. I would call this the strongest build for clearing hard modes by a large margin that I have seen so far. The other notable one being the special attack sword and shield build but it is VASTLY slower and carries more risk. I would prefer Fire Aura Staff or Electro Chakram Staff over it. But I also found that build on a post saying they had cleared max hard mode. So I am not qualified to say either way yet. This doesn't have 1 shot potential which is very very nice as long as you keep a lazy eye on your mana from time to time.

I used the Skeleton.
Fruit skewer: Carrot, 2 Frost Relic and 1 Windsong. Banned Sturdy
Talents: 20 Endure, 20 Willpower, 5 Ingenuity
Wishing Fountain: Ice Wings and Compression Bandage

Through the whole run I only had 1 potential scare and it wasent even on the last boss. I got just about everything you could need, except for Frost Relic cooldown which would only speed this build up dramatically. Frozen Bow and Snow Mountain Bat did a decent contribution towards the end but barely came close to half of the hammers. Can skip the scabbard of exorcism, dropping your shield is a pointless risk. Notable stats: I had 10 glacier and only managed 8 frost relic combo. I stacked the evasion bonuses for my dashes.

10/10 Would run again.

I tried but I don't know what im doing wrong, I keep getting hit while im dashing and I just die in seconds every time. I wasn't able to make it past the second floor on Hard 50 using this. I thought the dash is an iframe but I guess it is not since I keep getting hit during it.

[Xersin]

Originally posted by tanino:

Originally posted by Jack Blastem:

Just beat hard mode 40 with this build. Many thanks for that. I would call this the strongest build for clearing hard modes by a large margin that I have seen so far. The other notable one being the special attack sword and shield build but it is VASTLY slower and carries more risk. I would prefer Fire Aura Staff or Electro Chakram Staff over it. But I also found that build on a post saying they had cleared max hard mode. So I am not qualified to say either way yet. This doesn't have 1 shot potential which is very very nice as long as you keep a lazy eye on your mana from time to time.

I used the Skeleton.
Fruit skewer: Carrot, 2 Frost Relic and 1 Windsong. Banned Sturdy
Talents: 20 Endure, 20 Willpower, 5 Ingenuity
Wishing Fountain: Ice Wings and Compression Bandage

Through the whole run I only had 1 potential scare and it wasent even on the last boss. I got just about everything you could need, except for Frost Relic cooldown which would only speed this build up dramatically. Frozen Bow and Snow Mountain Bat did a decent contribution towards the end but barely came close to half of the hammers. Can skip the scabbard of exorcism, dropping your shield is a pointless risk. Notable stats: I had 10 glacier and only managed 8 frost relic combo. I stacked the evasion bonuses for my dashes.

10/10 Would run again.

I tried but I don't know what im doing wrong, I keep getting hit while im dashing and I just die in seconds every time. I wasn't able to make it past the second floor on Hard 50 using this. I thought the dash is an iframe but I guess it is not since I keep getting hit during it.

Dashes have iframes on every character but the wolf. If you're taking damage, and not wolf, that means you're off on your timing.