Level 60 Builds For Co-Op Online

[Johnzin]

I have been playing this game so much since stuck at home with this pandemic. And looks like there's still a large presence of people on the Switch. Might be with the constant sales for it on Nintendo and being stuck at home. But coming back and re-building the level 60 characters for Adventure + inverted friendly fire (seems to be the standard online format).

I just wanted to share what I have been using and have been really great way to play online with inverted friendly fire.

Just some notes, I think when building a character you should always maximize HP and healing, then resistance if you're an elemental character and spell charges/mana regeneration. Then damage. I find it crazy when playing with level 60 characters that are just dying to their own spells. No point of a Carabel who freezes herself or a Marvek who burns themselves and die. Especially Rudolfus who just can't take Death damage cause no healing skill points / pure only damage, especially poisoning themselves. Since inverted damage, you should be able to survive your own spells.

If I had to tier all the characters under my viewing of fun and quick play style. With 4 player + inverse friendly fire + no ignore indirect + high DPS + blink away to next place to make the game fast and fun and easy. You do need to have played a few times through the game to know spawn points and elements / when to blink / chest + quill blink respawner.


Owl / Marvek > Rudolfus > Selius / Carabel >> Cornelius > Gislan > Amadeus >>> Nim


Soloing the game is a different story. So is the arena. Builds for that differ on whats needed. I think there's more Ice resist and then Fire resist more than the rest of the elements by far in Adventure mode. Every character, except Gislan, Cornelius and Amadeus, should be blinking into the middle of all the enemies and unloading their elemental spells / melee to kill as quick as possible.

I will include their builds for level 60 skill points, the better starting wizard type, and their staff.


Cornelius (glass cannon version) [#2, Cornflower]
Rudolfus's Moon Staff
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Cornelius.html#55000505115505505551100000000000

Since he's a jack of all trade, no weakness if he makes a tank / survival build. That was boring though. So I made him a killing machine. Best with solo or 2 players cause density of monsters. Does the highest damage soloing with no limits.


Gislan [any of the 4]
Rudolfus's Moon Staff
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Gislan.html#0555055155100000000005050150501

Practically the tankiest character, maybe besides Selius. Heals constantly. Lowest damage. I have played 4 player co op Gislan run just to meme the 4 player white mage FF1 runs. Literally unkillable due to 21% spell damage is healing, heals herself just for existing and when healing others, you heal even more. I choose this build since if you're doing co-op and the role is a Life Spell user / healer, its better to be tanky than a damaging character. There are builds out there that can increase her damage output, but what makes her unique would be removed which is passive healing + buffing.


Marvek [#1, 2 or 4, Torrid, Searing, or Gilded]
Rudolfus's Moon Staff / Marvek's Searing Staff
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Marvek.html#50500400000550015004015505000351

Great for solo and multiplayer. High damage output, choose Fire spells with high priority. 76% resist (casting fire / another marvek makes you immune). Barrier and damage makes you a tank. Best spells to grab is Meteor shower / totem / AOE Bullets / fire spray and large fireball to do massive damage upclose since you dont take Fire Damage. Small fireball helps out too. Due to not taking high damage, stunning all enemies that do not have Fire immunity ring, healing and barrier, you are a walking god. Just spam all of your fire spells UP CLOSE. they all AOE by nature. Do not get scared of hurting yourself / teammates. Unfortunately you get stunned with Fire spells of your own while your immune.....oddly


Rudolfus [#4, Gilded]
Rudolfus's Moon Staff
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Rudolfus.html#0555501001105550004510505001000

I use this build because it heals a lot and its better to be alive and healing yourself because damage over time character. And this isn't the melee build. This build can move the skill points around a little if you want to do melee with the Scythe. You should be fighting up close by spamming your 3 AOE spells, Death Circle + Pulse in one small area and just jumping around in there and spamming more spells kills most enemies. Once you get the Death Flower, you become DPS AF. You may want to switch the build with more death res +Gislan's Staff of Acylon cause the amount of death damage is insane. Casting 4 flowers + your 4 Pulse + 3 death circles allows you to do insane damage in one area. You'll learn to just keep jumping around to dodge your own pulse / flower while forcing all enemies to stay within area. Very fun character who does insane damage. More fragile than Owl / Marvek by far. Frost Cloud + Hailstorm and AOE spells are good on this character, besides Bullet AOE due to lack of resist besides death.


Carabel [#2 or #4, Rimy or Gilded]
Scythe of Anatasis
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Carabel.html#5351500011450105101055000505001

Honestly a way more fun Nim. Always start the fight out with casting a Ice AOE, which you start with Ice bullets or Frost cloud right in front of you. This character fights up close with Ice. This gives you your Ice Barrier so you can spam all the Ice AOE spells you want. You are immune to Ice. Compared to Selius, you want to get AOE rather than spray / shards. So Ice Barrage, Ice Nova, Frost Cloud, Hailstorm and whatever left is okay while melee. The game allows you to melee during Ice nova so casting and melee at the same time allows you to rack up high damage. Especially casting AOE Ice allowing you to attack while casting too. She also comes with 15% chance of adding 50 ice damage to melee attacks + getting hit by melee so up close is great.


Owl [#4, Gilded]
Owl's Lightning Rod / Rudolfus's Moon Staff
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Owl.html#5550000500105500504115500411010

Insane damage, probably the highest DPS in the game. Lightning resist enemies are less than the other Fire / Ice. Get up in the enemies, cast Sticky Circle, spam your Lightning Bullets AOE, then Lightning Bolt, Lighting Wave, and Spray in every direction. And if anything is still alive, your regeneration rate is high enough to repeat the rest of your Lightning spell list. Also if you have Lightning barrage, its okay. Very deceptively tanky build if you're using Ruldolfus' Moon Staff as you are healing so much, and the Mana barrier builds up quickly when youre spamming. This character is trigger happy spam. You can even cast Zap on yourself and your friends to walk around AOE-ing everything. It is important to know this is the only character I listed that gains full immunity to a spell type at all times (before spell casting / Ice Barrier), meaning you can shoot and spam Lighting anywhere. Do not get lightning beam, it is not spammable. This character mows down crowds like crazy.


Nim [#2, Boreal]
Scythe of Anatasis
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Nim.html#0100000000550051505150505055051

Tankiest healing AOE steam build. This character is not fun to me. Its good that right now the standard method of play is inverse friendly fire without Ignore Indirect on Switch. This character doesnt do much spell casting cause youre just melee-ing and having steam damage around you for higher DPS in the enemy dense crowds. Use Sticky Circle and Ice Nova to help out, but be careful cause you don't have Ice / Slow / Freeze resist. This skill tree can easily be moved around, since its just building melee damage and healing through damage, but stunning and AOE at the same time. I dont find him fun cause he has to use blink to increase his DPS.


Amadeus [any of the 4]
The Staff of Trinity
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Amadeus.html#0515055100105050505000505500100

There was already a discussion about this character, how he is kinda like a jack of all trades with a really strong defining Box spell. You have to have practice in aiming the Box. And using it solely for Golems / Big targets to do the high damage needed. And bring a box into battle and learn to use blink just to. He has to reserve his blink to efficiently use the box. I do not find him fun. He can do massive damage to single target, but that isnt as strong of damage as Marvek / Rudolfus / Owl spamming and healing within the dense crowd of enemies. He is like a less fun Cornelius unless you have so much favoritism to the Box.


Selius [#4, Shadow]
Rudolfus's Moon Staff
https://npskills.github.io/hardcore/Selius.html#05015050110535000501115055500000

This character is interesting, he plays both on the Ice and Fire side. Death is good too but not when you're comparing it to Fire and Ice. Allows you to hit Fire res monsters with Fire and Ice res monsters with Ice. But compared to Marvek / Carabel. He adds "Shadow Fire" to Fire damage, so you can actually kill Fire monsters with Fire. Same applies to Ice, he is able to hit lightning damage to ice monsters. Although its 9% and 10% chances, he does amazing damage. Just spam your Icicle shower on everything, even ice enemies. Then go for Ice and Fire Spells that are mutli-casting, like Icicle shard, Ice Nova, Ice Barrage, Fire Barrage and Meteor. You will get lots of Shadow and Lightning damage out of it. And while casting Ice Nova + Hail Storm, just melee and cast spells at the same time. Frozen enemies double your melee damage. The game allows you to cast ice Nova while melee-ing. Good thing is that you have high resistance to stunning / freezing. Not immune, so be careful

[erictang30316]

Hey John, it's so cool to know someone's still playing this and not less on switch too!

My buddy and I have been trying to beat the game with no stave, no skill points and no healing spells on hardcore but have not managed to do it (got up to level 30)

Do we have to subscribe to the online service in order to play with you? Assuming you're crazy enough to try the near impossible with us that is...

It is definitely possible, we've previously completed a no skill points, no healing spell (or stave with healing properties) run on hardcore with double gilded Marvek.

[Johnzin]

I'm uncertain about the online service with Nintendo, I remember getting the game and playing it for a long while before Nintendo started it's service in Oct 2018.

That run sounds crazy! Sounds insane how you beat the last boss or really and bosses without healing cause there's no health drops.

Unfortunately I am busy for a week or two with moving between houses, packing and unpackaging. But best of luck.

[Johnzin]

Just looked in reddit. Yes, you'll need online subscription with Nintendo to play the game online

[erictang30316]

Ahh, bummer, thanks for looking into it. We could subscribe to it if there are peeps who are already subscribed and still playing the game, doesn't seem like this is the case though...

In terms of a no heal no skill points hardcore run, it was insane but many times more fun than an average hardcore run! The way we approached it was by experimenting with different trial runs - 1st run with full skill points with no heal, then 2nd run we decreased the amount of skill points allocated by half, we carried on until we're confident enough to know that beating the game without skill points and heal is possible (which it is).

This may come as a surprise but the last boss is actually not the hardest boss, sure it takes a while to take down but her attacks are slow and the only thing you need to watch out for is her steam spray. The hardest boss is actually Chimera, where it can one hit KO you even at full 300hp, and you're basically racing against time to defeat it since your damage output is practically minimal with no skill points, and the tiles keep getting destroyed.

We posted a somewhat basic guide a few months back on how to survive hardcore with no heal and no skill points, dangerous enemies to note etc etc, basically it's mostly dodging and bursting down the more dangerous enemies to give yourself a better chance of surviving, feel free to check it out.

[Johnzin]

Originally posted by erictang30316:

Ahh, bummer, thanks for looking into it. We could subscribe to it if there are peeps who are already subscribed and still playing the game, doesn't seem like this is the case though...

In terms of a no heal no skill points hardcore run, it was insane but many times more fun than an average hardcore run! The way we approached it was by experimenting with different trial runs - 1st run with full skill points with no heal, then 2nd run we decreased the amount of skill points allocated by half, we carried on until we're confident enough to know that beating the game without skill points and heal is possible (which it is).

This may come as a surprise but the last boss is actually not the hardest boss, sure it takes a while to take down but her attacks are slow and the only thing you need to watch out for is her steam spray. The hardest boss is actually Chimera, where it can one hit KO you even at full 300hp, and you're basically racing against time to defeat it since your damage output is practically minimal with no skill points, and the tiles keep getting destroyed.

We posted a somewhat basic guide a few months back on how to survive hardcore with no heal and no skill points, dangerous enemies to note etc etc, basically it's mostly dodging and bursting down the more dangerous enemies to give yourself a better chance of surviving, feel free to check it out.

There are still people online on the Switch, probably around half a dozen games with everyone staying at home and the game being on sale.