Carnage Bonus Challenges are to me impossible to understand.

[Castigo]

I have beaten the game at Knight difficulty and I am now trying to beat it at Sufferance.
I am also trying to do it while obtaining the three challenges for every level.

The "time" and the "kill combo" challenges are pretty easy but the "carnage bonus" challenge is proving to be almost impossible.

I have managed to achieve it for the first two levels but it required many attempts.
I had to make a perfect run (never miss a hyper drive (while also having the item to make it last longer and actually enter the hyper drive only when there was the most possible enemies on the level to stack up hyper drive kills), never miss a parry, never miss a power surge against purple enemies, ...) and managed BARELY to achieve it.

For reference: the first level required 25k carnage bonus and I managed to score 26k, and the second level required 40k and I achieved 40'050.

The problem is now for the third level, Viscera.
I had the perfect run. Both as before and with another approach, which maximized the sword ultimate move.
In the first case I reached barely the 30k.
Using the sword power moves I reached 38k, but it charge up very slowly: I basically used only the sword and I still only managed to fully charge it twice.

The challenge is won AT 60K, which seems unreachable.

I have beaten the game and I'd say that I am pretty good at it (I mean, I am top 50 in most levels) but I really do not see how one can stack up carnage points to reach 60k.

As far as I know to increase the carnage bonus one can:
1) execute big enemies
2) parry
3) hyper drive (the slowmo thing) and also killing as many mobs in slowmo
4) making purple enemies blow up
5) use the sword final move

Am I missing something? I see in the leaderboard that there are people with even 80k in Viscera, but I really do not see how.

[bishoujoe]

You're not missing anything, just need to maximize whatever approach you're going for. For Viscera, it was easiest for me to almost completely skip slo-mo mode (only using it once or twice) and instead build up full sword meter, mapping out what points had the most enemies (only kills cause by the initial explosion of this move will add carnage). A full slo-mo or mixed approach is also do-able; just need to stop killing things for a few seconds on a fat wave before triggering either.

As for your comment on only getting 2 fully charged meters for a full layer: are you using the 4th sword by chance? I noticed what's probably a bug in that the 4th sword just about halves your sword meter gain, regardless of how you gain it. If it isn't this, then you're likely killing some parry-able and executable enemies too quickly, as parries/executes add almost a full sword meter. You're able to trigger a lot more than 2 on this layer.

Getting all carnage challenges was also the toughest achievement for me, but they're definitely do-able. GL

[Castigo]

Thanks for the reply.

In the meanwhile I managed to do it on the third layer.
I managed to do the sword final move 3 times, while also never missing a purple enemy with a power surge and also parrying monsters without going in slowmo, that actually burns one sword charge.

Yes I use the 4th sword but it seems to be charging at the same pace of the others. I find it to be the best option to never run out of heavy gun ammos.

Also using the last heavy rifle seems to be helpful, as it farm the most health shards and also helps to stack up hyper drive kills if needed.

GL everyone.

[sezycei]

Originally posted by Castigo:

Thanks for the reply.

In the meanwhile I managed to do it on the third layer.
I managed to do the sword final move 3 times, while also never missing a purple enemy with a power surge and also parrying monsters without going in slowmo, that actually burns one sword charge.

Yes I use the 4th sword but it seems to be charging at the same pace of the others. I find it to be the best option to never run out of heavy gun ammos.

Also using the last heavy rifle seems to be helpful, as it farm the most health shards and also helps to stack up hyper drive kills if needed.

GL everyone.

I think the Heavensword thing was just recently patched, I thought it was intentional because its active reload is so strong. But what santagasm mentioned used to be an issue.

[TheMediator]

The carnage bonuses are massively overtuned. You basically have to use the sword charge bonus equip item and last hit the majority of big enemies with the sword to get bonus uses of carnage, and not miss any shatters, parries, executes, etc.

Most of the top players runs on these levels don't even earn this badge, because it's so bad on speed and maintaining your score multiplier to line up all of these sword kills.

It's obviously possible to earn these badges but it's honestly pretty cooked. It's a cute challenge run I guess to earn the badge but the 1st and 3rd badges are reflections of mastery and the 2nd badge is a meme run so I'm not really a big fan of it sitting next to the other two.

It is what it is.

[xaerock [RVR-42]]

I think even more important than getting the sword surges is making sure you kill a lot of enemies with each use of the ability. If you only killed 5 enemies with your sword surge (the bonus should pop up on the HUD) this was a big waste vs using it at a better spot later.

Like posted above you really don't want to miss any counters or executes though. Also somewhat hidden: meleeing the crystal enemy that runs away gives a big chunk of sword gauge. Missing carapace detonations isn't super bad, especially if you used a sword surge there. If you could time carapace detonates during a hyper though.. that's basically ideal and seems like the developers intent

You probably want to aim for ~15 kills per hyper and 20-30 per sword surge. Those should be well enough for the challenges + also give a net bonus for score over the time bonus lost.

Originally posted by TheMediator:

The carnage bonuses are massively overtuned. You basically have to use the sword charge bonus equip item and last hit the majority of big enemies with the sword to get bonus uses of carnage, and not miss any shatters, parries, executes, etc.

Most of the top players runs on these levels don't even earn this badge, because it's so bad on speed and maintaining your score multiplier to line up all of these sword kills.

It's obviously possible to earn these badges but it's honestly pretty cooked. It's a cute challenge run I guess to earn the badge but the 1st and 3rd badges are reflections of mastery and the 2nd badge is a meme run so I'm not really a big fan of it sitting next to the other two.

It is what it is.

I haven't checked the leaderboards in a couple days but from what I saw some of the top scores from around launch seem cheated i.e. have impossible to reach times and suspect equipment (pistol 1, extended hyper accessory without ever using hyper, listening to speedrunners heavy 3 seems the fastest etc.). Could also compare to console leaderboards

From my experience going for top 3-ish placements the carnage challenges are the opposite of a meme run but the key to getting high scores past the obvious stuff, could be too difficult though. After that you try to get those big sword surges / hypers as optimally/quickly as possible which is impossible to pull off perfectly and always a balancing act.

[xaerock [RVR-42]]

Originally posted by Castigo:

I see in the leaderboard that there are people with even 80k in Viscera, but I really do not see how.

fwiw here's a video getting over 80k: https://youtu.be/o7Nwlgw14AU

The sword surges here are kind of far from optimal, I'd like to aim for 30 enemies each. After Layer 3 the stages seem to lean more towards hypers which heavy 5 isn't amazing at. It's very hard to nail everything in the longer levels but you shouldn't need to for the challenges. I managed to get a run of Layer 2 with 72k carnage which is much closer to perfect