Abyssal Armor and Crucible

[seancass35]

getting the Abyssal Armor and i have the gauntlets, the plate, and the boots...read on the forums that to get the shoulder piece you have to complete all the levels in the crucible but i have only up to 75. do i have to unlock 76-100 in New Game +? and another question does getting the shoulder piece in the crucible have to be done by doing all the waves in one sitting?

[JD777]

Yeah I just got the fourth part in new game + after a few of the main story missions.I don't remeber which one though.I hope it doesn't have to be done in one sitting , but I don't know about that one.

[Samuel LG]

"do i have to unlock 76-100 in New Game +?" No, you can try to complete the crucible in the first playthrough, but the 76-100 waves are very dificult and ppl recomend to do it at lvl 30.

" does getting the shoulder piece in the crucible have to be done by doing all the waves in one sitting?" No, you get it just finishing the 100 wave. It doesnt matter if you did it starting again from wave 1 or from wave 76.

[MAXX]

Well Abyssal Armore is not that great, It just have a lof of defense and some +7 Critical chance on each piece, is nice If u just to take a picture with it, but has no Special attributes like the one WAR just to wear.

[crkTyphoon]

That is not entirely correct. It is the ONLY Armor (or for that matter equipment parts overall) that grows and levels as Death does. So if you level up while wearing it, so will it's stats!
So make sure to acquire it as early as possible, to get the most benefit out of it.
There are a couple of ways to cheese your wins through the harder levels of The Crucible, in order to obtain it earlier, one way being to rush the Necromancer tree, to acquire crows and level their flocks as well as their cold damage (to freeze opponents) and life sap (helps you staying alive) and make sure to have a possessed weapon equipped that does cold damage, has crit rate and grants health and wrath on crit/hits. That would be the "legal" way to cheese yourself through most of the game. Zombies work too, to an extend, as they help you focus on larger opponents while distracting smaller ones.
Another way, would be, to abuse the platforms edges as some times these can lead to enemy AI breaking and just standing there for a couple of seconds, or allowing you to soft stun lock them for quite a while. But that I would only recommend if you have beaten it properly in another run and now are just in it for the reward, it takes away quite a lot of the skill experience itself by defeating the purpose of the entire arena.
One last way of cheesing, is to use Crowd Control weapons vs small opponents, that have cr, ice damage, generate wrath on hit and wrath on crit and use a small and fast secondary weapon with similar stats for large oppoents, just to freeze lock everything and perma spam crows (note, that for that purpose of freezing, you don't actually want the fire damage on your zombies!!!).