The Puppet

[mar3usmc]

Just starting this discussion on the puppet and whether or not any of you find him useful vs just having another standard character.

[Phelsarus'Beel]

So far i did not realy used the puppet in combat but i can see why its usefull to have it instead of another thrall.

The basic advantage of the puppet is its that you can build it your way so you can create a tanky mage or a high damaging healer or just something completly different and i guess later on you get alot of realy good parts to make up for the "lost" thrall

[Kelson]

So do you have a maximum number of Thralls you can have in your beastiary that you can swap into your active party? I'm curious if taking the Puppet limits your options of getting any of the other Thralls or if it's just a bonus? The customization options sound great, but I have only played through Catacombs 1, so haven't found any doll parts yet.

[raixel]

In Catacombs 1, I found a Basic something or other body, and a healing arm for my puppet. He was level 1, but the Healing arm the same 2 base healing spells as the cultist, and the body gave him similar stats to the sorcerer. He seems awesome so far, even though I need to up his levels.

The only bad thing I can see is that its totally RNG based about the parts you get for him, so you could end up with a totally useless puppet if youo dont get good drops, or a ton of awesome parts if the RNG gods smile on you.

And I'm not 100% sure, because like you I'm in Cat 1, but I think you get a total of 6 minions based on what Ive heard others saying. And AFAIK the puppet counts as 1 of them - you either end up with 5 summons and the puppet, or 6 summons.

I could be wrong tho.

[wanderthe5th]

There are shops for the puppet parts later on in the catacombs.

I haven't used the puppet at all because up through catacombs 6 I've not seen any arms that give it more than 2 skills and none with focus. Maybe its top tier parts are better, but I'm not sure how to make it useful at this point.

[DocRask]

The puppet rune blade is good in combo with a magic attack from another charcter because it lays down fire or ice weakness.

[Kelson]

Thanks for the info :) I should hopefully have 2 more Thrall slots then (I have my 3 current active party members + the Puppet so far). That might be enough for me to try out a couple of the Thralls I'm most curious about without having to create a new playthrough. Though I'll probably do that anyway for fun.

[Grakor]

I'll confirm that at least for the first good while, it's 6 thralls or 5 thralls + puppet. The catacombs levels after you get the next three thralls are...something different.

[MagiKarp]

I think the puppet has the highest damage potential with two "Master guillotine hand". The problem with the puppet is that it's even more reliant on items than the other characters and the parts get really expensive to buy if you don't find them.

[Warutsu]

MagiKarp touched well on the Puppet's overall usefulness. With his later equipment, he is godly in any pure role (pure mage, pure healer, pure DPS) and usually has very decent defenses regardless of which set you give him. I have found that he becomes less useful when you attempt to diversify his role. He can't really match the sustainability of other cross-class characters like the Vampire, thus making him reliant on items and other characters. Another drawback is the expense of his parts, though one can grind in the catacombs for part drops and sell them for a good price at the puppet shop if they are not the parts you are looking for, which makes equipping him somewhat easier.

A good tactic I have found that helps diversify him is to combine two arms with the same purpose. For example, instead of equipping two Flamethrower arms for maximum magic damage, equip one Flamethrower arm and another that uses or boosts Magic, such as a Healer arm or Divine arm. This way, he is allowed a wider skill set without sacrificing the pure benefits to his stats. It is important that the head and body also be synergistic; pairing a Physical head with a Magical body hinders the potential of both. The Arms are more important for skill choice than stat build, and can be chosen independently of the other parts so long as their skills are in keeping with the stat trend.

Speaking from what I have tried (mage, healer, and DPS, as mentioned earlier) personally, I would agree with MagiKarp and say that his best role is physical attacking. While two Master Guillotine Arms make for the best damage output, sacrificing one of the Guillotine Arms for a Rune Arm made my Puppet far more adaptable to most enemies, as well as allowed him to synchronize well with the Sorcerer's elemental attacks, a gain that I favored over a marginal difference in total damage output.

[Pathborn]

Originally posted by MagiKarp:

I think the puppet has the highest damage potential with two "Master guillotine hand". The problem with the puppet is that it's even more reliant on items than the other characters and the parts get really expensive to buy if you don't find them.

i can confirm this. if you have the power slash ability with two master guillotine hands, the puppet can wipe out pretty much any enemy in the game with that one ability in one turn, including most of the bosses. so i'd say that that hand in particular is way overpowered. you can't get that item until the cellblock 8 labyrinth, but once you can afford two of them (they only cost 10k) the game is basically won. i believe each of those arms is more powerful than any other weapon you can get in the game; two of them together with an ability that attacks all enemies at once? just unbeatable.